Chad’s President Idriss Déby, heeding international calls to protect refugees from Sudan’s volatile Darfur region, has backed off a threat to expel them, despite blaming Khartoum for last week’s deadly rebel attack on the capital, a United Nations official said.
The Iraqna Mobile Phone Company made a fresh plea on Tuesday for the release of two Kenyan telecommunication engineers kidnapped in Baghdad three months ago. Iraqna, a subsidiary of the Cairo-based Orascom Telecommunications, ran advertisements in most Iraqi dailies on Tuesday asking the captors of the two engineers — Moses Munyao and George Noballa — to free them unharmed.
Australia’s inspirational playmaker Stephen Larkham was ruled out of rugby for four to six weeks on Tuesday in a dent to the ACT Brumbies Super 14 hopes and the Wallabies’ Test preparations. The five-eighth said a scan had revealed he had suffered a grade two hamstring tear in the Brumbies’ loss to the Waratahs last Saturday.
Five people were arrested on Monday in connection with the murders of Crazy Monkey — Straight Outta Benoni actor Brett Goldin and a friend Richard Bloom. Their bodies were found in a field next to the off-ramp from the M5 freeway to Klipfontein road in Mowbray, Cape Town, early on Monday, Superintendent Billy Jones said.
Zimbabweans mark 26 years of independence on Tuesday with little to celebrate amid deepening economic hardships, personal tragedies and a rapidly widening gap between the rich elite and the poor majority. President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party on Monday said it was ”disturbed” that young Zimbabweans, in particular, showed no pride in their nation’s independence from colonial-era white rule.
Rural Ireland is fighting the growing trend for tourists to spend long weekends in Dublin with a plan to woo visitors to the Emerald Isle’s hidden gems. "There is a European trend for mini-breaks of three or four days. In our country, this favours the cities, like Dublin, Cork or Galway," said Damian O’Brien, in charge of developing cultural tourism in Ireland.
Although the United States is resisting pressure to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambitions through direct talks with Tehran, rather than sanctions or military strikes, it still intends to meet senior Iranian officials for discussions on Iraq at which it will demand an end to Iranian meddling, according to Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador in Baghdad.
New laws have been passed in the United States to counter the activities of a bizarre church that has been disrupting military funerals with anti-gay protests on the grounds that the soldiers died fighting for a land that tolerates homosexuality. Since last year, the Westboro Baptist church, based in Topeka, Kansas, has been picketing funerals of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, waving signs saying, ”Thank God for Dead Soldiers”.
Authorities in Romania and Bulgaria were working frantically on Monday to shore up flood defences after the Danube reached its highest levels for more than a century. Emergency teams and soldiers were trying to prevent further flooding, after a weekend in which hundreds of people were forced to flee their homes. Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria were the worst hit.
Research across the world shows that involved parents enhance children’s achievement. This also increases the resources available to children, teachers, parents and the school, and often leads to collaboration with businesses within the community.