Former Liberian President Charles Taylor was jailed for 50 years today for helping rebels commit what a court in The Hague called some of the worst war crimes in history.

Two rebel groups that seized control of the northern half of Mali have agreed to work together to create an independent Islamic state on the territory they occupy.

This novel by the first black woman to win France's Prix Goncourt exerts a hypnotic allure.

UN humanitarian chief Baroness Amos has called for a rapid response to the food crisis in Burkina Faso.

Portugal's unemployment is almost 15 per cent, VAT at 23 per cent has kicked in, and its bailed-out economy stutters along ever more painfully. But a solution, of sorts, is at hand for the country's beleaguered population: emigrate to Portugal's former colony of Angola.

According to Anna Richardson, "we each make about 200 eating decisions a day". Judging from the ballooning of the national waistline, pretty much all of those decisions are "Oh go on then. I shouldn't but I will".

Convicted war criminal and former Liberian President Charles Taylor told judges at his sentencing hearing today that he sympathizes with victims of the civil war in Sierra Leone he helped foment, and judges should render their sentence against him in a spirit of "reconciliation, not retribution."

Briefly

Charles Taylor may have sanctioned mass murder and rape in exchange for blood diamonds in West Africa, but his lawyers fear he would be unsafe in a British prison, it was revealed yesterday.

Charles Taylor may have sanctioned mass murder and rape in exchange for blood diamonds in West Africa, but his lawyers fear he would be unsafe in a British prison, it was revealed yesterday.

Disease, malnutrition and poverty make for toughest conditions in world to raise children

Robbers angered by a crowd burning one of their colleagues alive attacked a cattle market in north east Nigeria, killing at least 34 people in the latest violence fanning across the bloodied region, witnesses and an official said.