June 27 (Reuters) - Rating agency Moody's Investor Service said on Wednesday a strengthening US dollar since mid-April has increased the credit risk of several emerging markets due to currency depreciation.

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's main opposition leader on Wednesday said he feared the government would use a blast that hit a weekend rally by President Emmerson Mnangagwa as an excuse to clamp down on opponents ahead of a July 30 vote.

LUSAKA (Reuters) - Zambia aims to eradicate malaria, the country's biggest killer, within three years after deaths from the disease halved last year from 2014, the health minister said on Wednesday.

LONDON, June 27 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Far from the hullabaloo of the World Cup in Russia, innovators are using the universal appeal of soccer to set up businesses that do good.

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - The forces behind Saturday's grenade attack at a rally attended by Ethiopia's Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, could strike again, the government said.

NIZHNY NOVGOROD, Russia, June 27 (Reuters) - If Senegal fail to hold off Colombia in their last group game on Thursday and are knocked out of the World Cup in Russia, all five African representatives will have been eliminated, in the worst return for the continent since the 1982 finals in Spain.

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - South Sudanese rival leaders signed a peace agreement in Khartoum on Wednesday under which a ceasefire would take hold after 72 hours, Sudan's foreign minister said, although a rebel spokesman rejected other points.

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - South Africa's main opposition group broke the law when it sacked the mayor of Cape Town, judges ruled on Wednesday, in a further blow to a movement already split by the dispute.

NAIROBI (Reuters) - African law enforcement agencies should work closer together to stop the heroin and other hard drugs passing through their territories, a senior U.N. official said.

JOS, Nigeria (Reuters) - More than 200 people were killed last weekend in violence in central Nigeria's Plateau state, the state governor said late on Tuesday.

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa accused a dissident ZANU-PF faction that supported Robert Mugabe's wife's leadership ambitions of responsibility for an explosion at a rally he attended last week, according to a BBC interview.

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - South Sudan's President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar reached an agreement on "some points" in peace talks in Khartoum on Tuesday, Sudan's foreign minister said.

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - A Sudanese court on Tuesday overturned a death sentence on a teenager who killed her husband whom she alleged had tried to rape her and jailed her for five years instead, the girl's lawyer said.

JOHANNESBURG, June 27 (Reuters) - South African gold producer AngloGold Ashanti said on Wednesday Ghana's environmental protection agency has issued permits for its Obuasi mine, paving the way for the redevelopment of the mine.

BAMAKO (Reuters) - Malian forces involved in the fight against Islamist militants in the West African nation executed 12 civilians in retaliation after a soldier was killed in an attack in May, the U.N. mission in Mali said on Tuesday.

ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika on Tuesday dismissed the country's powerful police chief, General Abdelghani Hamel, the official news agency APS said.

RABAT (Reuters) - The Moroccan leader of protests over economic and social problems in the Rif region and the northern city of Al Hoceima was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Tuesday by a Casablanca court.