The UN Security Council and the African Union are "categorically rejecting" rebel attempts to divide Mali and are calling for Guinea-Bissau's military rulers to relinquish power.

Turkey has raised the stakes on Syria by reminding Nato countries of their treaty responsibilities, but no country or group is willing to act first, writes Anne-Marie Slaughter

Mortars blasted through the capital of the small, coup-prone nation of Guinea-Bissau as the military sealed off the city’s central area and lobbed grenades at the prime minister’s home, according to a diplomat and witnesses.

A Portuguese court has denied a US request for the extradition of American fugitive George Wright who has spent more than four decades on the run.

Ivory Coast's incumbent leader has seized the nation's electric company and its distribution centre.

Senegal is one of the poorest countries in the world with its GDP only marginally higher than Haiti’s, but that has not stopped the government from going ahead with a plan to offer a new home to 163 victims of the catastrophic earthquake.

Renegade soldiers seized the head of Guinea-Bissau’s armed forces and briefly detained the prime minister today in an apparent coup attempt, a minister said.

Real life has ended up beating fiction for British author Frederick Forsyth, who jetted into Guinea-Bissau this week for book research.

The president of tiny African state Guinea-Bissau was assassinated in his palace today hours after a bomb killed his rival, the head of the military.

Rebel soldiers murdered Guinea-Bissau’s President Joao Bernardo Vieira today hours after a bomb killed his rival, the armed forces chief of the West African nation.

The president of Guinea-Bissau reassured residents of the West African nation by news conference from his bullet-scarred home after mutinous soldiers fought their way into the residence in a three-hour gunbattle with his guards.

MUTINOUS soldiers fought their way into the fortified residence of Guinea-Bissau’s president yesterday, launching a three-hour gunbattle with his guards, as the leader and his family hid elsewhere in the building, a top official said.

Rescue teams were searching for missing migrants after a crowded wooden boat was struck by a big wave and capsized off the Canary Islands.

President Lansana Conte declared a state of emergency in Guinea tonight, announcing in a broadcast on state radio and television he had ordered the army to "take all necessary measures" to restore order after three days of violent protests.

BUREAUCRACY is threatening to overwhelm the UN as it struggles to process hundreds of thousands of pages worth of reports each year, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has warned.

In 2005, the United Nations delivered 1,200 reports on issues ranging from Guinea-Bissau to the rights of women in the developing world. Its human rights office alone produced 44,000 pages of documents – which in turn had to be translated into six official languages.

A boat carrying Africans illegally trying to reach Spain’s Canary Islands capsized off Mauritania’s coast, killing at least four and leaving more than two dozen missing and presumed dead, officials said today.

Spanish and Moroccan officials had no comment on reports today that their respective security forces were responsible for shooting at five immigrants who were killed when hundreds rushed a barrier at one of its two enclaves on the northern Morocco coast.

A new report by women in 150 countries concludes that many women all over the world are worse off today than they were 10 years ago and accuses governments of failing to keep their pledge to achieve equality of the sexes.

The world’s population will increase by 40% to 9.1 billion in 2050, but virtually all the growth will be in the developing world, especially in the 50 poorest countries, the United Nations Population Division said.

One in four children in Sierra Leone dies before the age of five, and one in 10 in Iraq.

One in 10 babies in the world is born to a teenage mother, greatly increasing the risk of death to both mother and child, humanitarian group Save the Children said today.

Daily life ground to a halt across Spain today as the grieving nation observed a period of solemn silence to honour the 198 people killed in the Madrid train massacre

THE army launched a coup in the West Africa country of Guinea-Bissau yesterday, arresting the president and ordering government ministers detained, according to reports.

Top West African mediators were today travelling into the heart of Ivory Coast’s rebel-held territory to deliver a ceasefire offer from the government.

After a 16 year odyssey to four continents, a shipload of burned household waste is being dumped in the US state that produced it.