UN chief Ban Ki-moon and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir today announced that new peace talks to end the four-year conflict in Darfur will start October 27 in Libya.

The UN in New York yesterday said weapons inspectors may have been exposed to hazardous chemical agents.

United Nations weapons inspectors have found a dangerous nerve gas in an office in New York, a UN spokeswoman said today.

The key international Middle East mediators known as the Quartet will confer with Tony Blair for the first time next week in his new role as their representative in efforts to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the UN said today.

A UN inquiry has identified people who may have been involved in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri and is investigating new information about the buyers of a van used in the bombing, the chief investigator said.

When Nagasaki’s mayor was fatally shot in southern Japan, it was not much of a surprise that a gangster was arrested for the attack.

Liberians are today choosing between a wealthy international soccer star and a Harvard-educated female politician vying for the country’s top job in a brains-versus-brawn presidential run-off that many hope will herald a new era after a quarter century of coups and war.

Investigators probing the United Nations oil-for-food programme have found evidence of “gross mismanagement” and possible corruption by the agency that oversaw compensation for victims of Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Iraq’s deputy UN ambassador said early today.

Kosovo’s former prime minister has surrendered to the UN war crimes tribunal a day after the ethnic Albanian resigned to face charges stemming from the province’s fight for independence from Belgrade.

Four people were killed and two wounded when gunmen and police fought an armed battle in a diplomatic quarter of the Syrian capital Damascus, officials said.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell urged the Red Cross and other relief organisations to stay in Iraq following a wave of suicide car bombings in Baghdad that killed around 40 people.

AMONG the survivors recovering in Kinshasa General Hospital after the Congo air disaster, which saw more than 100 passengers sucked out of their plane when the cargo ramp opened mid-flight, was a policeman, who gave his name only as Katembo.