Olayinka Shitu is 16. He came to Germany from Nigeria. But not with his mother or father. He arrived in Berlin ”with someone who then left me”, he says cryptically.

Americans travelling on small aircraft will be asked to weigh themselves as well as their luggage for the next month in response to concerns that the nation’s growing girth may be jeopardising air safety.

In Paris, they always seem to be dreaming up nice things for the people who live there. Last summer the mayor, Bertrand Delanoe, spent £2,5-million transforming quays along the Seine into a temporary beach, with sand, loungers, umbrellas and games for children. It proved so popular he’s going to do it again this year.

Hundreds of US soldiers supported by bombers and attack helicopters were last night locked in their most serious battle in Afghanistan for nearly a year.

FBI supervisors have been ordered to count the number of Muslims and mosques in their areas and interview up to 5 000 Iraqi-Americans and immigrants in order to assess how vulnerable they are to terrorist attack.

Ivory Coast’s Interior Minister Paul Yao N’dre said late on Tuesday that a French-brokered accord signed last week to end four months of conflict is ”null and void.”

President Bush claimed yesterday that the US had fresh evidence of links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, as Washington prepared to release its secret files on Saddam Hussein in a bid to gain global support for a war.

More than 10 people have been killed over the past three months in political violence in the IFP-controlled tribal area near Empangeni in KwaZulu-Natal, according to the ANC. Bheki Cele said the IFP was using traditional leaders as ”party machinery”.

James Morris, the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Humanitarian Needs in Southern Africa, will start a week-long tour of four of the worst affected countries in the region on Thursday, the UN said in a statement on Tuesday.