Three Italian women were brutally attacked while on a surfing holiday at a Cape Verde resort island, dragged into the woods, and left for dead at the bottom of a hole, according to the single survivor who recounted the tragedy today.

A man’s body was found in the wheel well of a British Airways jumbo jet at Los Angeles International Airport, authorities said today.

Somalia’s transitional government lifted a broadcast ban today, said the government spokesman, a day after it had ordered three Somali radio stations and an international television channel to stop operations.

The first African peacekeepers to help the government assert its authority in Somalia are expected by the end of January, the prime minister said today.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says there has been progress in Darfur but the world will not accept mere promises from Sudan’s new government to halt the violence.

A man’s leg and partial torso fell from a South African jetliner onto a suburban New York home yesterday as the aircraft prepared to land at John F. Kennedy Airport, authorities and the airline said.

Stephane Peterhansel claimed his second successive four-wheeled Dakar title after he finished 11th on the 16th and final stage of the event yesterday.

France and the UN today launched the evacuation of thousands of foreigners trapped for days by violent attacks targeting French civilians and troops in Ivory Coast.

Beyers Naude, an Afrikaner cleric who spent half his life using the Bible to justify apartheid before becoming one of the anti-apartheid movement’s most important moral voices, died early today.

WEST AFRICAN leaders promised to send peacekeepers to Liberia despite new rebel attacks that shattered a short-lived ceasefire considered crucial to restoring peace in the troubled country.

REBELS took control of a key bridge at Liberia’s capital yesterday in fighting that shattered a day-old ceasefire, sending thousands of families fleeing in a city desperately short of food, water and shelter.