Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita on Wednesday pledged to unite Mali as he was sworn in to lead the deeply-divided west African nation’s emergence from months of political crisis and conflict.

Egypt’s interior minister escaped an assassination attempt yesterday when a suspected car bomb struck his convoy in a Cairo neighborhood, in the first attack on a senior government official since the country’s Islamist president was toppled in a coup two months ago.

Turkish army deployed additional troops and weapons along the Syrian border on Wednesday amid fears of a potential military intervention led by the United States. Reinforcements from Turkey’s military command in Gaziantep province