Sudanese authorities were on Saturday trying to establish contact with kidnappers who snatched two foreign aid workers from their offices in Darfur.
Darfur rebels on Sunday seized the town of Umm Baru near the border with neighbouring Chad from Sudanese soldiers, the UN-African Union Mission said.
President Omar al-Bashir is seeking to rally the Sudanese people behind him ahead of a decision by the ICC on whether to seek his arrest.
Researchers from some 60 countries will try to better understand the Earth’s poles in 2007 and the effect of climate change as part of the first "International Polar Year" since the 1950s. The scientific effort, unlike previous undertakings, will be marked by the spectre of global warming and transformed by collaboration with Inuits living in the Arctic.