GENEVA. — Cuba’s foreign minister demanded yesterday that Washington shut its controversial jail at Guantanamo Bay and return the long-held military base to Havana. The comments by Bruno Rodriguez

LONDON. — South Africa says the UK’s decision to end direct aid — which is currently worth £19 million — should have been communicated through official diplomatic channels, the international relations

KHARTOUM. Dozens of people have been killed in a gold mine collapse in Sudan's Darfur, said the chief of the district where fighting over gold in January led to the region's worst unrest in years. It is not

N'DJAMENA. Chad has arrested a group of people for conspiring in what the government described as a "destabilisation plot" in the landlocked central African country, which has a history of

BARI. — Italian police yesterday arrested four of six men they suspect are members of an Islamist militant cell which was planning attacks in the United States, Israel and Italy, though no specific targets were named by police. The men aimed to train militants and

KASHGAR. — Eleven suspected terrorists linked to a deadly attack on April 23 in north-west China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region have been captured, local police sources said on Monday. Police said that as of Sunday, they had nabbed all 19 suspects from the region’s Kashgar

PESHAWAR. — A Pakistani court yesterday imposed a lifetime ban on former president Pervez Musharraf from contesting elections, derailing his efforts to regain influence by winning a seat in Parliament. It was the first time a court in Pakistan had declared

JERUSALEM. — Chinese special envoy to the Middle East Wu Sike said on Monday that China is willing to exert efforts for the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Wu made the remarks after holding separate meetings in Jerusalem with Israeli Deputy

JOHANNESBURG. — US civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson has called on young South Africans to go to school because their country was “free but not equal”.
Jackson, a church minister and well-known black community organiser in the United States, was in

PARIS. — The roundabout surrounding the Arc de Triomphe, one of the busiest and most famous in Paris, had to be evacuated yesterday after a false bomb alert, police sources said.

GABORONE. — Botswana’s President Ian Khama has received two stitches in his face after being clawed by a cheetah, a government spokesman said yesterday.
The incident occurred last week at a Botswana Defence Force facility where soldiers enlisted in the battle against poaching learn about the animals they help to protect.