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.

IRISH student Patrick Devine remains in a Senegalese prison following his court appearance yesterday.

An Irish student has spent almost three weeks locked up in Senegal after an alleged cheeky prank went wrong, it was revealed today.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir today rejected the deployment of UN troops in Darfur, saying they were not required and that African Union troops could maintain order in the war-wracked region of western Sudan.

Two of the three rebel groups in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region are refusing to sign a peace plan today, jeopardising efforts to end the bloodbath that has cost at least 180,000 lives.

The US and Britain pressed Sudan’s government and Darfur rebels to meet today’s deadline for a peace deal, even as ground units stepped up fighting that has killed at least 180,000 people and left millions more homeless.

Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo yesterday called for aid to help combat the “severe degradation” of three-quarters of African farmland, a leading cause of hunger and poverty on the continent.

Tens of thousands of Sudanese people marched through Khartoum protesting against plans to deploy UN peacekeepers in conflict-torn Darfur.

BARCELONA striker Samuel Eto’o was crowned the African Player of the Year for the third year in succession yesterday.

The UN Security Council has demanded that the warring parties in Sudan’s Darfur region honour a ceasefire agreement and reaffirmed its determination to hold accountable anyone impeding the peace process and breaking the arms embargo.

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.

International donors pledged an additional €160m to fund the African Union peacekeeping operation in Darfur today during a conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to raise money to stop the ongoing violence in western Sudan.

UNITED NATIONS Secretary-General Kofi Annan demanded speedy prosecution of Sudanese officials and militiamen guilty of crimes against humanity in Darfur, as members of the Security Council came under renewed pressure to tackle the issue.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan demanded speedy prosecution of Sudanese officials and militiamen guilty of crimes against humanity in Darfur, as members of the Security Council came under renewed pressure to tackle the issue at last.

Northern Uganda is the world’s biggest neglected humanitarian crisis, with 20,000 kidnapped children, many of them forced to serve as combatants, says the head of UN humanitarian affairs.

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.

The United Nations begins a three-day fact-finding mission in troubled Darfur today to establish whether the Sudanese government has fulfilled its pledges to improve security and rein in Arab militia accused of months of atrocities.

The Red Cross is mounting a major airlift of relief supplies to Sudan’s troubled Darfur region, in its largest such operation since the Iraq war.

Darfur peace talks made little headway today as Sudanese insurgents insisted they would not lay down their weapons until pro-government Arab militiamen stop targeting largely black African civilians in their country’s troubled western region.

President Robert Mugabe sensationally pulled Zimbabwe out of the Commonwealth after members decided to extend the southern African country’s suspension from the group of Britain and its former colonies.

President George W Bush said today he had confidence in CIA Director George Tenet despite his agency’s failure to warn Bush against making allegations about Iraq’s nuclear weapons programme which were later found to be false.

The chairman of Miss World has vigorously denied that the beauty pageant caused the riots in Nigeria that left dozens of people dead.

Leaders of three key Commonwealth nations will meet later this month to consider how to respond to the deteriorating human rights situation in Zimbabwe.

Police in Zimbabwe have arrested a retired white farmer for suspected involvement in the deaths of two ruling party militants in eastern Zimbabwe, the farmer’s relatives said today.

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe said yesterday that he approves of a Commonwealth-backed deal to end his country’s farm seizure crisis.

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe said today that he approves of a deal to end his country’s farm seizure crisis.