The future of the United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, was once more in question on Tuesday after a commission of inquiry revealed it was ”urgently reviewing” a newly disclosed document that cast fresh light on Annan’s role in the ”oil-for-food” corruption scandal.
Egypt is leading behind-the-scenes efforts to curb further ballotbox successes by the militant Palestinian group Hamas in planned parliamentary elections in Gaza and the West Bank. The ”Stop Hamas” campaign is part of a strategy to secure a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in August.
Martin Bashir, the British journalist whose documentary sparked the controversy that led to Michael Jackson facing charges for child molestation, was on Tuesday waiting to hear whether the pop star would restart legal action against him and his former employers following his acquittal.
The number of refugees around the world rose by one million in 2004, to 11,5-million, according to the United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. People fleeing Sudan’s troubled Darfur region to Chad and Iraqis crossing into Syria contributed to the increase, the private aid group said in its annual survey.
One of the most celebrated department stores in Paris closes its doors on Wednesday for years, perhaps for ever, having fallen foul of health and safety regulations. Founded in 1870, La Samaritaine, a Paris landmark, had its golden age during the 1930s at the height of the Art Deco era, but has been in decline for 30 years.
The HIV/Aids pandemic in Burma is “being fuelled by a mixture of ignorance, denial and lack of government action".
Mbulaeni Mulaudzi and LJ van Zyl, two of South Africa’s most talented young athletes, recorded brilliant victories at the Athens Super Grand Prix on Tuesday night and boosted South Africa’s hopes for the World Championships in Helsinki in August.
When Ernie Els last played at Pinnehurst number two, he found himself with the weekend off. Now, six years later the two-time United States Open winner has learned from his mistakes. ”In ’99 I wasn’t quite on my game and I wasn’t hitting it in the fairways and that cost me,” explained Els here on Tuesday as he prepared for the 105th US Open.
Zimbabwe police say they have razed more than 20Â 000 shacks and other structures in what President Robert Mugabe calls an urban clean-up campaign — but what critics at home and abroad have decried as an assault on the poor.
A suicide bomber struck outside a bank as elderly men and women waited to cash their pension checks, killing 23 people and wounding nearly 100 in the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk. Elsewhere, five Iraqi soldiers were killed and two wounded in a suicide car bombing at a checkpoint in Kan’an, 50km north of Baghdad.