Jack Kim

Hosni Mubarak was back in court on Thursday over the killing of protesters, a day after the presiding judge summoned Egypt's military ruler and other top officials to testify next week in the trial of the toppled ex-president.

Libya's interim government is drafting a proposal that would shrink the responsibilities of the National Oil Corp (NOC) to make it a purely commercial organisation, a member of the interim government has told Reuters.

The voice of Muammar Gaddafi boomed out from his hiding place on Thursday, denying he had fled Libya and cursing as rats and stray dogs those whose efforts to start governing in his place are being frustrated by his diehard followers.

Ugandan teachers went on strike for the second time this year on Monday after fruitless month-long talks with the government for a 100 percent pay rise, the latest in a string of protests in the east African country.

A senior police officer said at the trial of Hosni Mubarak on Monday he was not aware of any order to fire on protesters who ousted him, as supporters and opponents of the deposed Egyptian president scuffled inside and outside the courtroom.

Libyan forces made ready to storm a desert town held by loyalists of Muammar Gaddafi on Monday but held off in the hope of a surrender that would avoid bloodshed.

An independent inquiry will investigate allegations that British security services were involved in illegally sending terror suspects to Libya where they risked being tortured by Muammar Gaddafi's government, officials said on Monday.

Famine has spread to six out of eight regions in southern Somalia, with 750,000 people facing imminent starvation, the United Nations said on Monday, and hundreds of people are dying each day despite a ramping up of aid relief.

Syrian forces raided houses in Hama on Thursday, residents said, hours after the city's attorney general declared on YouTube he had resigned in protest against the suppression of street demonstrations.

Thirty-five prisoners facing terrorism charges escaped through a sewage pipe from a temporary jail in Iraq's restive northern city of Mosul on Thursday before 21 were recaptured, officials said.

Food will be increasingly scarce in famine-struck southern Somalia until next year's harvest, the head of the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said Thursday.

Israel's social protest movement faces its moment of truth on Saturday when the turnout for a March of a Million demonstration in Tel Aviv will show whether a popular push for reform can be sustained, a leading organiser said.

Scandal enveloped Silvio Berlusconi anew Thursday after a businessman linked to a 2009 prostitution case was arrested on suspicion of extorting hundreds of thousands of euros from the Italian prime minister.

France's Socialists are distancing themselves from Dominique Strauss-Kahn as the ex-IMF chief, once their best-placed presidential contender but now dogged by sex assault accusations, prepares to return from the United States.

Vandals defaced a monument to victims of a World War Two pogrom against Jews in Poland, covering it with racist inscriptions and swastikas in green paint, police said on Thursday.

Muammar Gaddafi, driven into hiding by his foes, on Thursday urged his supporters to fight on, even as Libya's new interim rulers met world leaders to discuss reshaping a nation torn by 42 years of one-man rule and six months of war.

The Kenyan shilling was stable against the dollar on Friday, and traders said prevailing tight shilling liquidity was expected to keep the local currency on a strengthening bias, while the main share index broke a four-day losing streak.

South Africa's mines minister Susan Shabangu will in a few weeks time give her assessment of how much progress the industry has made in reaching the targets of a charter aimed at giving previously excluded blacks a higher share of ownership, her spokesperson said on Friday.

An interbank borrowing rate of 26 percent in Kenya is unacceptable, a senior Treasury official said on Friday, and staff from the ministry of finance and the central bank are working on a plan to deal with interest rates while supporting the shilling currency.

Guinea is in advanced talks with state-owned China Power Investment to develop a bauxite mine and build an alumina refinery, deep water port and a power plant in the West African state, Guinean government sources said.

South Africa's rand advanced to a one-week high against the dollar, breaking through resistance at 7.15, supported by a rise in U.S. stocks.

Ghana's parliament on Friday approved a $3 billion Chinese loan and the country's finance minister said the west African nation was in talks with China's Exim bank for loans worth another $6 billion, which are part of a broader Chinese package.

Russia needs a change of leadership and free elections to stop it sliding backwards 20 years after a coup that hastened the end of the Soviet Union, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said on Wednesday.

Kurdish guerrillas killed seven Turkish soldiers in an attack on a military convoy in southeastern Turkey on Wednesday, officials said, and the government vowed to retaliate, saying its patience had snapped.

Russia pitched on Wednesday a proposal to Iran's foreign minister which it hopes could bring a breakthrough in a confrontation over Tehran's nuclear programme, despite doubts in the West that the plan can make much headway.

Israel will stick to its refusal to apologise to Turkey for killing nine of its citizens on a Gaza-bound ship, an Israeli official said on Wednesday, entrenching a position that Ankara said would kill any prospects for reconciliation.

Syrian troops raided houses in a Sunni district of the besieged port of Latakia on Wednesday, residents said, arresting hundreds of people and taking them to a stadium after a four-day tank assault to crush protests against President Bashar al-Assad.

Protests swelled across India on Wednesday in support of a self-styled Gandhian anti-corruption campaigner fasting to the death in jail, with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's struggling government at a loss over how to end the standoff.

Britain said on Wednesday that hundreds of thousands of children could starve to death in Somalia if the international community did not ramp up its response to the famine there.