African leaders at a summit on Wednesday chose Togolese President Gnassingbe Eyadema to coordinate talks between the government and rebels in Côte d’Ivoire, which has been split in two by a month-long uprising.

African leaders at a summit on Wednesday chose Togolese President Gnassingbe Eyadema to coordinate talks between the government and rebels in Cote d’Ivoire, which has been split in two by a month-long uprising.

Thousands of corpses of the foot soldiers who perished in Napoleon’s disastrous 1812 retreat from Moscow have been discovered in a mass grave in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, offering a rich insight into the conditions and circumstances of history’s most tragic military march.

Fear of environmental pollution in central Europe was growing this week as it became clear that the recent flooding had caused large amounts of chlorine gas to leak in the Czech Republic. The Spolana chemicals plant on the river Elbe was the site of what an official described as ”a mini Chernobyl”.

Six thousand kilometres up a mountain deep in the Siberian taiga, the middle-aged man appears in a velvet crimson robe, long brown hair framing a beatific smile. He sits down in a log cabin perched on the brow of the hill.