LAGOS, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Nigeria's army said it had launched an offensive to push Boko Haram militants out of a remote northeast town near the border with Niger, as it fought to end a seven-year insurgency destabilizing the region.

JOHANNESBURG, Sept 21 (Reuters) - South African police fired teargas on Wednesday to disperse students marching near the University of the Witwatersrand in downtown Johannesburg to protest at higher tuition fees.

(Reuters) - Target Corp on Wednesday announced a new $5 billion share buyback plan.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - At least three South African universities suspended classes on Wednesday because of student protests over tuition fees after the government recommended above-inflation increases for 2017.

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - Retired South African cleric and anti-apartheid campaigner Archbishop Desmond Tutu was discharged from hospital on Wednesday, after he was re-admitted on Saturday to treat an infection, his family said.

GABORONE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's 92-year-old President Robert Mugabe should step aside without delay and allow new leadership of a country whose political and economic implosion since 2000 is dragging down the whole of southern Africa, Botswana President Ian Khama said.

LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigerian troops have been fighting with the Boko Haram militant group over control of a northeastern town, the army said on Wednesday.

BRUSSELS, Sept 21 (Reuters) - The European Union's new 44 billion euro ($49 billion) Africa fund aims to entice private investors to some of the world's poorest nations and slow mass migration to Europe, the EU's development chief Neven Mimica said.

ZARIA, Nigeria (Reuters) - Riders wearing brightly colored warrior robes and bearing spears were again packing the streets of this northern Nigerian city, greeting their traditional ruler as locals celebrated a thousand-year-old tradition in a region hit by Boko Haram.