SUDAN

Sudanese riot police and security agents surrounded organisers of a protest against alleged election fraud on Sunday, witnesses said, in the latest sign of a clampdown following uprisings across the Arab world.

At least 10 people were killed in clashes between Arab nomads, militia fighters and police in Sudan's flashpoint Abyei region, officials said, in the first report of significant violence since a tentative peace deal.

President Barack Obama termed the Gaddafi's crackdown on protestors in Libya as outrageous and unacceptable and is looking at the full range of options to respond to the crisis.

Sudan has appointed private sector businessmen to help manage its state oil firm Sudapet, which owns stakes in all of Sudan's oil blocks, to improve the company's efficiency and widen its scope, the oil minister said.

Perhaps wary of the unrest that has swept over his country’s Arab neighbors to the north, the president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir will not seek re-election in four years, according to Rabie Abdel Ati, a senior official of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP).

South Sudan will consider building new pipelines if it finds fresh oil reserves after independence, an official said, a move that could anger Khartoum if the route avoids the north through which exports now flow.

A Chinese company has won a 900 million euro ($1.21 billion) contract to build a new international airport in the Sudanese capital Khartoum, underscoring the close links between China and sanctions-hit Sudan.

Attacks by a renegade militia in south Sudan's oil state of Jonglei have killed at least 211 people, a southern minister said Tuesday, doubling earlier estimates of the death count.

Kenya Airways reported an 8.9 percent rise in passenger volumes in the final quarter of 2010 after introducing new routes and more frequent flights to Juba in south Sudan.

Sudanese security forces briefly held prominent opposition figure Mariam al-Mahdi and other women on Thursday, witnesses said, the latest detentions in a crackdown on anti-government protests.

Libya has handed out more than $2 billion in loans to dozens of governments across the globe, according to an internal document that shows the oil exporter's diplomatic ambitions and its struggles to recover its debts.

A minister in the government of South Sudan was shot dead inside his ministry on Wednesday, days after referendum results confirmed the region will become Africa's newest independent state, officials said.

Resource-rich African governments risk unrest if they hold back the benefits of soaring global commodity prices from their own people, delegates to a major mining conference were told on Wednesday.

South Sudan voted overwhelmingly to declare independence in final results of a referendum announced on Monday, opening the door to Africa's newest state and a fresh period of uncertainty for the fractured region.

Even as results of a landmark vote show the people of Southern Sudan have decided to form a new nation and international leaders congratulate them, recent reported violent incidents in the North and South indicate that peace in the embattled nation is fragile.

A mutiny by Sudanese troops refusing to leave the south ahead of its expected independence has spread through towns in an oil-producing state, with at least 50 people killed in the past four days, officials said.

South Sudanese leaders said on Sunday they were considering building a new capital after their expected independence as the current hub Juba lacked infrastructure and space for new business.

As popular protests are bring down governments or seriously compromising rulers in the Middle East, one person looking at the turn of events uneasily is the Saudi Arabian King Abdullah.

Sudan's north will continue to use the Sudanese pound after the oil-producing south secedes on July 9, a central bank official said on Thursday, dousing reports that Khartoum may adopt a new currency.

South Sudan almost unanimously voted to declare independence from the north in a referendum, officials said on Sunday, sparking mass celebrations in the southern capital Juba.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak overhauled his government on Monday to try to defuse a popular uprising against his 30-year rule but angry protesters rejected the changes and said he must surrender power.