WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama told his Lebanese counterpart on Monday he was concerned about Lebanese Hezbollah militants fighting in Syria to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the White House said. Obama and Lebanese President Michel Suleiman spoke by telephone the same day Syrian activists said about 30 Hezbollah fighters and 20 Syrian soldiers and militiamen loyal to Assad had been killed in the fiercest fighting this year in the rebel stronghold of Qusair. Lebanon has maintained a policy of "dissociation" from Syria's 2-year-old conflict. ...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday appointed former Dutch development minister Albert Gerard Koenders as U.N. special envoy for Mali and head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the West African country. Ban said Aichatou Mindaoudou Souleymane of Niger would replace Koenders as head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast. Souleymane is currently deputy envoy for the African Union and U.N. peacekeeping mission in Darfur. Koenders was the Dutch minister for development cooperation between 2007 and 2010 before he took up the Ivory Coast role in 2011. ...

ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Year-on-year consumer price inflation in Ivory Coast rose to 3.9 percent in April from 3.6 percent in March, figures from the National Statistics Institute showed on Monday. The monthly report showed food and soft drink prices climbed 4.8 percent, utility prices rose 2.9 percent and communication costs fell 0.3 percent. Healthcare prices declined 1.7 percent and transport prices increased 2.1 percent. Ivory Coast's economy makes up around 40 percent of the eight-nation West African CFA franc currency zone.