Nearly a third of the -million urgently requested by the United Nations for the Asian tsunami relief effort has now been received, the UN’s emergency relief coordinator said on Tuesday. Jan Egeland told the leading aid donors in Geneva that he had urged the speedy release of their government’s unprecedented -billion pledges.

One of the strongmen of Palestinian politics, Jibril Rajoub, resigned from the government on Tuesday night as the newly elected President, Mahmoud Abbas, prepared to embark on a long-awaited shake-up of the security services. Abbas has consistently opposed the use of violence in the four-year-old Palestinian uprising.

Standing amid the ruins, Suwandi reflected on what had happened to his old workplace — a giant cement factory next to the sea. "I’m very sad. I don’t have a job any more. We lost all our money in here," he explained, pointing at his office, now a mangled heap of metal and oversized tubing.

A comprehensive peace deal between the government of Sudan and the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army on January 9 capped a year of slow but steady progress in efforts to end the 21-year-old civil war in southern Sudan.

There’s a lot of disinformation that is deliberately being spread around at the moment. Every whisper suggesting that the Asian tsunami was not natural, or was due to something other than an earthquake, is being systematically debunked quite thoroughly in the mass media. Ian Fraser offers up everything you need to know about the Asian tsunami — because if it’s online, it must be true.

Plastic bottles could provide the cheapest and most practical way of preventing water-borne diseases in regions affected by the recent tsunami, say Swiss scientists. Solar water disinfection, or Sodis, relies on radiation and heat from the sun to kill most bacteria and viruses in the water

The president of soccer world governing body Fifa, Sepp Blatter, arrived in South Africa on Wednesday morning and said he is delighted to be involved in the first World Cup to be held in Africa. Blatter was met at Johannesburg International airport by South African Football Association president Molefi Oliphant and CEO Danny Jordaan.