Software company Unitas Software has been named as the North’s fastest growing tech company after it broke into the top 10 of this year’s Deloitte Technology Fast 50.

Negotiators moved to lower expectations ahead of the opening of the Darfur peace talks today, with almost none of the key rebel leaders present to negotiate an agreement with the Sudanese government.

ONE of the “finest lawyers of his generation” was among tributes made yesterday at Cork District Court to solicitor Gerrard McCarthy, who died unexpectedly on Tuesday last week.

Gunmen have killed two African Union peacekeepers and critically wounded a third in Darfur, the African Union said in a statement today.

ONE of the biggest remaining Darfur rebel alliances yesterday said it would respect a ceasefire and was ready to resume peace talks with Sudan’s government.

The UK's Stable Lads Association is to restructure the role of its national secretary into two separate positions.

SUDAN’S Darfur region is facing a new wave of killings and rapes, with fighting between rebel factions displacing thousands of villagers despite a recent peace agreement, the UN humanitarian chief has warned.

The African Union has accused Sudanese government forces of attacking civilians in Darfur, committing acts of “calculated and wanton destruction” that have killed at least 44 people and displaced thousands more during the past two weeks.

The UN World Food Program suspended food convoys to the Darfur region in western Sudan after rebel forces attacked the market town of Ghubaysh and the government retaliated, UN humanitarian officials said.

CHAOS is looming in Sudan’s western Darfur region as violence increases, order collapses, and the number of desperate people in need of humanitarian aid reaches nearly 2.3 million, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a report to the United Nations Security Council.

Sudan has claimed 25 people, including 22 policemen, were killed in rebel attacks on Monday on several camps housing tens of thousands of people displaced by the 21-month Darfur conflict.

NEW technology allowing video conference-style international link-ups for court cases is being incorporated into Cork’s Washington Street Courthouse, which will be back in business by the end of January 2005. It is five-and-a-half years since the doors of the historic building closed for renovations.

SECURITY in Sudan’s Darfur region is a “farce” with the government engaged in ethnic cleansing and rebel groups looting and abducting civilians in violation of an April cease-fire, a rights group said yesterday.

African Union monitors are investigating claims that the Sudanese military bombarded a village with helicopter gunships, driving terrified farmers from their homes, just days before the expiry of a United Nations deadline to end the violence in Darfur.

FOR the people of Sudan it remains to be seen whether the visit of British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, the last-minute commitments by the government of Sudan to allow access by international organisations and recent steps to arrest some members of the Janjaweed will translate into real action to end the cycle of violence, rape and killing.

HUNDREDS of villages in the Darfur region of western Sudan have been abandoned after a year-and-a-half of attacks by Arab militias, known as the janjaweed.

SUDANESE President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said yesterday that Western nations were exploiting the Darfur conflict to gain control of resources like oil and gold in the arid region.

WHILE world leaders recently gathered to mark the tenth anniversary of Rwanda’s genocide, another horror story has been unfolding in Sudan.

US newspaper heiress turned actress Patty Hearst said that Sara Jane Olson and members of the Symbionese Liberation Army charged with murder in a 1970s bank robbery had their ‘‘own little jihad’’ going, adding that she is ready and willing to testify against them.

A former revolutionary on the run in the US for 25 years has appeared in court.

A Lebanese military court has jailed 12 people for collaboration and contact with Israel during its occupation of the country.

A Lebanese military court has jailed 22 people for collaboration with Israel.