A group of 51 mainly African undocumented immigrants who have been moored off Malta for five days will be taken in by several countries, reports said on Thursday. The migrants were rescued by a Spanish fishing vessel from a boat that was adrift and had run out of food.
A tiny United States marine force landed in Lebanon on Thursday to evacuate Americans stranded by a nine-day old Israeli bombardment, which has killed more than 300 people but failed to stop Hezbollah rocket strikes on Israel. It was the US military’s first return to Lebanon since it withdrew in 1984, months after a Shi’ite Muslim suicide bomber destroyed a marine barracks, killing 241 US service personnel.
Uganda said on Thursday it will organise a trip next week for relatives of Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels, including LRA supremo Joseph Kony’s mother, to visit their kin at a jungle hideout. ”This is a confidence-building measure,” Ugandan delegation spokesperson Paddy Ankunda said from the southern Sudanese capital of Juba.
Shops reopened and cars passed through Abidjan’s previously barricades streets on Thursday following a near-complete shutdown of Côte d’Ivoire’s commercial capital by hard-line supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo. The Young Patriot militants said they had made their point with one day of protest.
Two foreign TV journalists and their two Lebanese assistants were abducted by the Hezbollah militia in Beirut on Thursday on suspicion of spying, a Lebanese internal security forces officer said. "The crew was filming in the area of the Sanayeh gardens [a public park] when Hezbollah elements seized them on suspicion of being spies," the officer told the media.
Former France captain Zinedine Zidane and Italy defender Marco Materazzi were both fined and banned by Fifa on Thursday after the headbutting incident that marred the World Cup final on July 9. Zidane, who has retired as a player, was fined  014 and handed a three-match ban by Fifa’s five-man disciplinary committee following his red card for headbutting Materazzi.
Former Brazil coach Carlos Alberto Parreira said in an interview published on Thursday that he expects to be named as new coach of South Africa, hosts of the 2010 World Cup. The 63-year-old made the revelation to Thursday’s Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper, a day after he resigned from his post with Brazil.
Ethiopian troops in armoured vehicles rolled into the central Somali town of Baidoa on Thursday and set up a camp near the home of the interim president, residents said, less than a day after Islamic militants reached the outskirts of the base of a United Nations-backed, but largely powerless, government.
An ill-tempered parrot left English police a vital clue as to the thief who took the bird from a pet shop. Tristand Maidment (23) pleaded guilty on Thursday to stealing a macaw named Mickey from a pet shop in Frome, south-western England, last month.
Chaos erupted in Reiger Park, Boksburg, when residents clashed with metro police over illegal electricity connections on Thursday. Inspector Jimmy Makobo said employees of a private electricity company, JAR, had been sent to the area to disconnect illegal connections when about 500 locals became violent.