NAIROBI (AFP) - The Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda have held their first talks after signing a peace deal to end decades of deadly conflict in mineral-rich eastern Congo, the two countries said on Friday. Eastern DRC, a region bordering Rwanda with lucrative natural resources, has been plagued by violence for more than three decades and the unrest has claimed thousands of lives. The crisis intensified early this year when the M23 armed group and Rwandan troops captured the major city of Goma in January, followed by Bukavu in February, setting up parallel administrations in each.

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LONDON (Reuters) - At least 16 flights to and from London’s Heathrow Airport were canceled on Thursday, a day after technical problems with Britain’s air traffic control system caused widespread disruption across the country’s airports.  National Air Traffic Services (NATS), which provides air traffic control services for planes flying in UK airspace and the eastern part of the North Atlantic, said on Wednesday its systems were fully operational with capacity returning to normal after it switched to a back-up system. 

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SAN SALVADOR (AFP) - El Salvador’s lawmakers have adopted a constitutional reform to abolish presidential term limits and allow current leader Nayib Bukele – who enjoys overwhelming majority support in parliament – to run indefinitely. The reform, reviewed under an expedited procedure, was adopted by Bukele’s 57 supporters in the Legislative Assembly, and voted against by only three opposition members.

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MOKOPANE, South Africa (AP) — A South African university launched an anti-poaching campaign to inject the horns of rhinos with radioactive isotopes that it says are harmless for the animals but can be detected by customs agents. Under the collaborative project involving the University of the Witwatersrand, nuclear energy officials and conservationists, five rhinos were injected in what the university hopes will be the start of a mass injection of the declining rhino population. Last year, about 20 rhinos at a sanctuary were injected with isotopes in trials that paved the way for Thursday’s launch. 

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PARIS (AFP) - The head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos said that he had agreed with his NASA counterpart during talks in the United States to extend the International Space Station’s (ISS) operation until 2028. Space is one of the final areas of U.S.-Russia cooperation amid an almost complete breakdown in relations between Moscow and Washington over the Ukraine conflict. Roscosmos said earlier this week that its chief, Dmitry Bakanov, arrived in the United States for talks with NASA’s acting administrator Sean Duffy, the first such meeting since 2018.”The dialogue went well. We agreed that we will operate the ISS until 2028... And we will work on the issue of de-orbiting it until 2030,” Bakanov was quoted as saying by the TASS news agency.