Sudan said on Saturday it has invited back a European Commission envoy who was expelled a day earlier for "interfering" in domestic affairs, following an apology. "Sudan has accepted the apology of Louis Michel, the European development commissioner, to Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ali al-Sadek said.
North Korea said on Saturday that at least 600 people are dead or missing following devastating floods, twice the previous official toll. Torrential rain, strong winds and landslides left at least 600 people dead or missing and thousands of people injured, the official Korean Central News Agency said, citing figures from the Central Statistics Bureau.
The Lebanese army resumed its air raids and shelling of militants holed up at Nahr al-Bared on Saturday after evacuating the last remaining civilians from the battered refugee camp. Helicopters carried out repeated raids dropping 250kg and 400kg bombs on the small area still controlled by the al-Qaeda-inspired Fatah al-Islam militants.
Somalia’s top Islamist leader vowed on Saturday to wage a stronger insurgency in the capital, Mogadishu, until all Ethiopian troops withdraw from the war-shattered Horn of Africa nation. Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed said Somalis must defend their nation against Ethiopian forces deployed in Mogadishu to bolster the feeble government.
Former French Prime Minister Raymond Barre, an economist who also served as a European commissioner, died on August 25, his family said. He was 83. Barre was plucked from the obscurity of being a backroom technocrat and thrust into frontline politics when then president Valery Giscard d’Estaing made him prime minister in August 1976, dubbing him ”France’s best economist”.
United States President George Bush signalled on Saturday his unwillingness to consider early US troop reductions in Iraq, saying new offensive operations were just in their ”early stages”. The statement followed a fervent plea by John Warner, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who publicly asked the president to initiate at least a symbolic withdrawal.
The number of Somalis in need of humanitarian aid in the conflict-riddled nation has catapulted by 50% to 1,5-million, famine monitors said on Friday. As insecurity continues to choke the delivery of aid, the donor-funded Food Security Analysis Unit said the country’s breadbasket regions suffered from multiple shocks spurred by poor harvest, rains and instability.
Welsh rugby was plunged into a financial row on Friday just two weeks before Gareth Jenkins’s team open their World Cup campaign against Canada. Wales’s four regional teams have met with the Welsh Rugby Union seeking compensation of almost £1-million for the loss of their leading players for the duration of the World Cup.
The only clue from South African Football Association communications director Morio Sanyane as to why coach Carlos Albert Parreira did not return to South Africa on Friday with the locally based Bafana Bafana players after the 1-0 defeat against Scotland was that he was ”remaining in England for a couple of days to keep tabs on some of the South African players”.
KJ Choi, who is having a career year on the PGA Tour, fired a 66 to take a two-shot lead after the second round of the -million Barclays Classic tournament on Friday. The 37-year-old South Korean star shot 64 on Thursday and has now rolled in 12 birdies over the first two rounds to reach 12-under-par 130 at the Westchester Country Club course.