Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib has broken down in a Sydney court while describing how he was given electric shocks in Pakistan and Egypt.

When asked whether an investigation was under way into the ship's sinking, the spokesman said: "The investigation will commence once all the passengers are safely on the mainland."

Darfur rebels on Sunday said freshly deployed Chinese peacekeepers were not welcome and as Khartoum's "allies" in Sudan's war-ravaged western region threatened they were not immune from attack.

And in the most chilling assessment since the Government admitted the security blunder, the man in charge of setting up the country's biggest medical records database has said he does not believe it is possible to make such systems foolproof.

United Nations officials said that Somalia has higher malnutrition rates, more current bloodshed and many fewer aid workers than Darfur, which is often publicized as the world's most pressing humanitarian crisis

With the click of a shutter, Marine Lance Corporal James Blake Miller, a country boy from Kentucky, became an emblem of the war in Iraq. The image would change two lives - his and mine.

Sixteen-foot waves washed away hundreds of thatched homes, destroying crops and killing livestock. Television news reports said more than 100 fishing boats in the Bay of Bengal had failed to return home overnight

According to a recent report by the UN's Organisation for Migration, southern Africa was a "fertile ground" for human trafficking. The report identifies Mozambique, Malawi and Lesotho as "key source countries for women and children trafficked to South

Developing nations are being pushed to grow crops for ethanol, rather than food - all thanks to political expediency

Rio de Janeiro security authorities have tried to discredit a top-level report accusing police of summary executions, just as a United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings is due to visit Brazil.