A peace deal signed three months ago between Sudan’s government and the main rebel group in Darfur has failed to halt violence in the region, the United Nations said on Wednesday, citing an increase in rape and continued attacks by militias and rebel factions.
A man who was arrested in the Strand, near Cape Town, on Tuesday on theft and housebreaking charges was found dead in the cell where he was kept two hours after his death, police said. The man was arrested at 1pm and was found dead at 3pm, Captain Elliot Sinyangana said on Wednesday.
A powerful crime gang torched courthouses and threw small bombs at police stations for the third straight night in Brazil’s richest state of São Paulo on Wednesday, and the federal government offered to send in the army to quell the violence.
Three lions killed two security guards at a game farm near Virginia in the Free State on Wednesday, police said. Captain Rosa Benade said the two men — one aged 36 and the other 70 — worked as security guards at the farm, which is situated 7km from Hennenman.
Israel decided on Wednesday to expand its ground offensive in Lebanon despite United Nations diplomacy to end the four-week-old war. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s security cabinet ordered the move to send troops further into Lebanon, possibly as far as the Litani River, up to 20km from the border, to strike at Hezbollah.
Over 100 fires were burning on Wednesday in Galicia, northern Spain, an official said, as police investigated claims, including from the minister of environment, that arsonists had been at work. Sixty-seven of the 110 fires were out of control, according to a local government spokesperson, who said firefighters had spent the night trying to prevent the flames from spreading.
Almost 2Â 000 bodies were taken to Baghdad’s morgue in July, the highest tally in five months of rising sectarian bloodshed that has forced the United States to boost troop levels in the capital to head off a civil war. Morgue assistant manager Dr Abdul Razzaq al-Obaidi said on Wednesday that about 90% had died violently.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe said on Wednesday he was in good health, and denied suggestions in web-based media that he had left the country at the weekend to seek medical treatment. State television said Mugabe returned home after a three-day private visit to Malaysia to join his wife who had accompanied a group of local students to a university there.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged half a billion dollars to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria, the fund announced on Wednesday. The promise came in the run-up to the 16th International Aids Conference, opening in the Canadian city of Toronto on Sunday.
Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army rebels on Wednesday stormed out of peace talks with the government demanding that the latter declare a ceasefire to help efforts to end their two-decade civil war, officials said. "We stormed out of the talks after we informed the mediator that we are not ready to proceed with the negotiations," Obonyo Olweny said.