London

France is sending its foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, today to Ivory Coast, its former West African colony where rebels have opened a new front in the insurgency now in its fourth month.

One of the most prestigious universities in America, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said yesterday that it had begun an inquiry into claims that its scientists had covered up evidence of critical problems with President Bush’s proposed national missile defence system.

A baby boom is being reported in China, the result of millions of couples deciding to have their permitted child before the inauspicious year of the goat begins in a month’s time.

Cybercafes in southern California are fast gaining a reputation as the 21st century equivalent of the wild west saloon after an escalating number of violent incidents led to a gunfight outside an internet cafe this week, in which one youth was shot in the leg and another suffered head wounds.

The last vestiges of the independent media in Zimbabwe face new pressure as the government prepares for next week’s launch of a repressive new licensing system which will give it the power to close any newspaper and to stop any journalist working.

Libya has withdrawn a small army unit which has been guarding the government of the Central African Republic in its capital, Bangui, for the past 19 months.

Basem Maswadeh knew he was in trouble when an Israeli soldier pushed him into the barber’s chair and reached for the clippers.

The French police arrested a former soldier yesterday whose tip-off led them to arrest a Paris airport baggage handler in whose car a cache of guns and explosives was found.

UN inspection teams in Iraq have found ”zilch” so far, but have had little help from intelligence agencies to guide them in their hunt for illicit weapons, one of the inspectors said yesterday.

Spy satellites and surveillance planes are being used by US intelligence to track about 15 cargo ships which it believes are owned or controlled by al-Qaida, it was reported yesterday.

Millions of Germans and other continental Europeans will settle down in front of their TV sets tonight for what has become a New Year’s Eve ritual — the showing of an aged British comedy sketch that is unknown in the UK.

As Daniel arap Moi raised his ivory club to speak as Kenya’s president for the last time yesterday, a street-boy wriggled onto the dais beside him.

The Reagan administration and its special Middle East envoy, Donald Rumsfeld, did little to stop Iraq developing weapons of mass destruction in the 1980s, even though they knew Saddam Hussein was using chemical weapons ”almost daily” against Iran, it was reported yesterday.

Kenya was given its first new government since independence yesterday when the opposition leader Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner by a landslide of Friday’s general election.

The Saudi government has agreed to allow American planes to use its bases in a war with Iraq, US military commanders have claimed – providing a crucial strategic boost for the Bush administration as it ordered the deployment of thousands more troops, two more aircraft carriers, and one of the navy’s two hospital ships to the Gulf region.

The knesset has begun proceedings to bar three Arab members and their parties from next month’s general election because of their support for the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation.

The cash-strapped Ethiopian government has called on its creditors to accept its multimillion dollar offer of partial compensation for the assets seized by the previous military regime.

As armies mass again on the borders of Mesopotamia, film-makers are fighting to be first over the top with a movie about the original and most rapacious western imperialist of them all – Alexander the Great.

Kenyans revelled in a day few dared to dream of in four decades, as the preliminary results yesterday from Friday’s elections suggested a landslide victory for the opposition, sweeping away many crooks and cronies of a ruling party that has terrorised and impoverished them since independence.

The letter contained only hints of what Moazzam Begg’s interrogators may have done to him. He wrote of hunger and being kept awake by bright lights. ‘I still don’t know what will happen with me,’ he lamented to his wife back home in Birmingham.

UN nuclear inspectors in North Korea announced yesterday that they are preparing to quit the country in the next few days, denouncing the regime as ‘a country in defiance of its international obligations’.

A convoy of anti-war activists, likely to include dozens of British volunteers, will leave London next month to act as human shields protecting strategic sites in Iraq.

The United States has sent the first of what is expected to be a 1 000-strong force to Israel to bolster defences against missile attacks ahead of a possible war in Iraq.

The photographer Herb Ritts, whose art was once described as making men and women look ”like gods”, has died in Los Angeles at the age of 50

A cult which believes that humans were first created by aliens claimed yesterday that it had won the clandestine and increasingly bizarre race to produce a human clone. It said a baby girl was born on Thursday from an egg fertilised by a skin cell from her mother.

President Daniel arap Moi’s 24-year rule drew to a close with scenes of uncharacteristic order and calm yesterday as a record number of Kenyans turned out to vote for his successor.

The Iraqi government disclosed yesterday that food distribution has been increased so that civilians can stockpile supplies for a US-led war.

By the time police swept into the poshest suburb of Malawi’s capital and surrounded the high red walls of house number 159 it was too late. Peter Wang had disappeared, leaving behind a family, a criminal empire and a gaping hole in what was supposed to be a triumph over elephant poaching.

France is planning to tighten restrictions on the smoking of cannabis in an attempt to curb its steadily rising popularity.

The Israeli army killed at least seven Palestinians in a series of ”targeted assassinations” in the West Bank yesterday.

Nato has a ”moral obligation” to support the US if it goes to war against Iraq, Nato secretary general George Robertson said today. Church leaders meanwhile used their Christmas messages to appeal for peace.

UN inspectors yesterday opened a new phase in their operations inside Iraq, questioning key scientists in the hope they will provide evidence of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons which the Bush administration believes will act as the trigger for military action.