The Obama administration on Wednesday sharpened its condemnation of a bloody crackdown on Libyan opposition demonstrators as it broadened its outreach to government officials, dissidents, rights activists and youth in other Arab nations across a Middle East that is seething with unrest.

Caught up in stunning news like the rest of the world, President Barack Obama learned of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's resignation during an Oval Office meeting. He watched the celebration on television and prepared to make an afternoon statement.

Heavy automatic weapons fire pounded the anti-government protest camp in Cairo's Tahrir Square before dawn on Thursday in a dramatic escalation of what appeared to be a well-orchestrated series of assaults on the demonstrators. At least three protesters were killed by gunfire, according to one of the activists.

Soldiers in a central Nigerian city opened fire Saturday on university students protesting continuing violence between Christians and Muslims, witnesses said, with at least nine people killed in the ensuing violence.

A coalition of opposition groups called for a million people to take to Cairo's streets Tuesday to demand the removal of President Hosni Mubarak, the clearest sign yet that a unified leadership was trying to emerge for Egypt's powerful but disparate protest movement.

Former South African President Nelson Mandela was in the hospital Thursday for what his office said were routine tests, as the 92-year-old anti-apartheid icon's overnight stay drew extraordinary media attention.

The cholera epidemic that has raged across this country is claiming fewer victims, with a sharp drop in new cases everywhere from the shimmering rice fields of the Artibonite Valley to the crowded urban slums.

Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, a once feared and reviled dictator who was ousted in a popular uprising nearly 25 years ago, made a surprise return to Haiti as the country wrestles with a political crisis, cholera outbreak and the stalled reconstruction from last year's devastating earthquake.

Chicago Bulls forward Luol Deng (LOO'-ul dehng) arrived to a hero's welcome at a polling place in Chicago where southern Sudanese are voting on their country's future.

South African authorities say at least 39 people have died in flooding and thunderstorms in the eastern part of the country.

President Barack Obama is quietly but strategically stepping up his outreach to Africa, using this year to increase his engagement with a continent that is personally meaningful to him and important to U.S. interests.

The pipelines run through the north. Most of the oil is in the south. That may explain why Akuoc Ten Diing and five other Southern Sudanese officials were treated to a 10-day, all-expense paid tour of China's domestic oil industry this fall.

Nigeria's president says he is launching a book chronicling his Facebook interactions with his Facebook friends to encourage reading as Africa's most populous country heads into an election year.

Supporters of one of her competitors in Haiti's presidential election set barricades on fire and threw rubble at cars when initial results put him third. The No. 2 finisher urged his partisans to mobilize and his staff warned they could start a war.

For a few hours, Sydney swapped opera for Oprah.

Supporters of one of her competitors in Haiti's presidential election set barricades on fire and threw rubble at cars when initial results put him third. The No. 2 finisher urged his partisans to mobilize and his staff warned they could start a war.

Drug maker Pfizer Inc. hired investigators to uncover "corruption links" to Nigeria's embattled former attorney general in an attempt to stop federal cases over a 1996 drug study, according to a U.S. embassy cable released Friday by WikiLeaks.

A popular singer vowed to legally challenge election results that narrowly ousted him from Haiti's presidential race after his supporters barricaded streets and set fires in violence that threatened the fragile stability that followed a devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.

Furious supporters of an apparently eliminated candidate set fires and manned barricades in the streets of Haiti's capital Wednesday after officials announced that government protege Jude Celestin and former first lady Mirlande Manigat would advance to a runoff in presidential elections.

Efforts are under way to clean up an oil spill in the harbor of Jamaica's capital.

As the heavily armed Nigerian soldiers slipped closer to a suspected militant camp in the country's oil-rich southern delta, they were ready for a fight after suffering casualties only days earlier.

A gray-haired woman, her eyes sunken and unfocused from dehydration, stumbles up a dirt path slumped on the shoulder of a young man, heading to a rural clinic so overcrowded that plastic tarps have been strung up outside to shade dozens who can't fit inside.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is buying a controlling stake in South Africa's Massmart in a 17 billion rand (approximately $2 billion) deal. The investment gives the world's biggest retailer a foothold in the country as it looks to accelerate growth beyond its U.S. business.

Mawethu Mguli and hundreds of other workers at the gold mine in Orkney have gone months without pay at a time when gold is going for around $1,400 an ounce.

Haiti's election ended in discord Sunday, with nearly all the major presidential candidates calling for the vote to be voided over fraud and U.N. peacekeepers lamenting "numerous incidents that marred the elections."

Tut Gatyiel didn't have a choice when he fled his home in Southern Sudan as a boy because of civil war.

Pope Benedict XVI sought to "kick-start a debate" when he said some condom use may be justified, Vatican insiders say, raising hopes the church may be starting to back away from a complete ban that would allow condoms to play a role in the battle against AIDS.

Haitians angry over the cholera epidemic ignored exhortations from health workers to stop violence that is disrupting treatment efforts, and authorities feared more unrest in the capital Friday.

Anti-U.N. rioting fueled by cholera fears scaled down in northern Haiti on Wednesday, but a third demostrator was killed in clashes and small-scale demonstrations took to the streets of the capital.

During three days in India, Michelle Obama danced with children and then danced some more. She played hopscotch and clasped hands with each of the 15 schoolgirls she joined for a museum field trip.

An outbreak of a parasitic tropical disease has killed more than 300 people in Southern Sudan — and the worst of the health crisis is yet to come, officials say.

International aid groups said Thursday they're launching a mass polio immunization campaign in three Central African nations in response to a polio outbreak suspected in more than 100 deaths and deemed "unusual" because it targets adults more than children.

A cholera epidemic has spread into Haiti's capital, imperiling nearly 3 million people living in Port-au-Prince, nearly half of them in unsanitary tent camps for the homeless from the Jan. 12 earthquake.

Michelle Obama strolled with 15 schoolgirls and took turns holding each one's hand during a field trip Monday through a museum of Indian craft work.

It wasn't until after midnight that Southern Sudan's beauty pageant reached its fever pitch. It wasn't a swimsuit competition that got the crowd going early Sunday, though. It was the traditional culture show.

Hurricane Tomas flooded the earthquake-shattered remains of a Haitian town on Friday, forcing families who had already lost their homes in one disaster to flee another. In the country's capital, quake refugees resisted calls to abandon flimsy tarp and tent camps.

U.S. civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson called Tuesday for an African version of the Marshall Plan, saying the continent deserved reconstruction and assistance, similar to that given to postwar Europe, after the years of "colonial rape" it suffered.

It was the jewel of Haiti's post-earthquake recovery: an organized relocation camp with thousands of tents billed as hurricane-resistant, lined up in neat rows on graded mountain soil.

South Africa's mining minister says prospecting licenses had been issued to bogus companies because of incompetence.

The ministers in charge of state-owned businesses and public works were among those changed Sunday in a Cabinet shuffle President Jacob Zuma said would speed change in the lives of poor South Africans.

U.N. investigators took samples of foul-smelling waste trickling behind a Nepalese peacekeeping base toward an infected river system on Wednesday, following persistent accusations that excrement from the newly arrived unit caused the cholera epidemic that has sickened more than 4,000 people in the earthquake-ravaged nation.

At least 142 people have died in a cholera outbreak, and aid groups are rushing in medicine and other supplies Friday to combat Haiti's deadliest health problem since its devastating earthquake.

Civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson is starting a group in the United Kingdom to oppose what he calls the abuse of police powers to stop and search people.

Two inmates were shot to death trying to escape from the roof of Haiti's quake-damaged national penitentiary and a third was trampled to death inside during a prison riot Sunday, authorities said.

Oprah Winfrey says she's "profoundly disappointed" that a former dorm matron at her school in South Africa was cleared of charges of sexually abusing girls.

The U.N. Security Council on Thursday watched demonstrations by Southern Sudan's police force, which is preparing for what officials fear may be a violent independence vote in a region that has already suffered through a debilitating two-decade war.

Sudan's ruling party on Tuesday laid down a series of conditions for holding a crucial referendum on southern secession, including demarcating the borders and redeploying southern forces, that could further inflame tensions in the divided country.

On the edge of a ruined city of concrete and tin, fallen walls reveal what for decades was a hidden refuge: a field of well-trimmed grass.

A 16-year-old who believes she was kicked out of class for speaking her first language at school has prompted government investigations, and the case is demonstrating how volatile the issue of language and education remains in South Africa.

Stevie Wonder wants global copyright overseers to help blind and visually impaired people access billions of science, history and other books they cannot read.

Malawi will not officially promote male circumcision as an HIV-prevention strategy, two officials said Wednesday, citing a lack of evidence to support the practice.

A Zimbabwean court has freed on bail four Americans arrested and accused of treating AIDS patients without proper medical licenses.

A report detailing hundreds of gruesome attacks against civilians in Congo over a 10-year period won't be released until October, the U.N.'s top human rights official said Thursday, after Rwanda angrily protested the findings in a draft version.

President Barack Obama is opening a new round of Mideast peacemaking, bringing Israeli and Palestinian leaders together Wednesday for talks aimed at forging agreement within one year on a two-state solution: a sovereign Palestine and a secure Israel.

Hip hop artist Wyclef Jean said he was in hiding Tuesday after receiving death threats as he and more than 30 other potential candidates for Haiti's presidency waited to find out if they would be allowed to run in the November election.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC warned Sunday that thieves in Nigeria's oil-rich and restive southern delta are increasingly targeting the company's crude pipelines, including at least three incidents of sabotage this month alone.

Steve Jean grew up making clothes, and so did his parents and grandparents. Now he's helping create a new generation of textile workers that aid agencies hope will help Haiti rebound from a devastating earthquake.

A U.S.-based think tank is painting a grim picture of the earthquake recovery effort in Haiti, adding its voice to widespread accusations of ineffectual local leadership.

Zimbabwe began selling hundreds of thousands of carats of rough diamonds Wednesday that were mined from an area where human rights groups say soldiers killed 200 people, raped women and forced children into hard labor.

After the hip-hop party was over, the cheering supporters back in their tents and the speaker trucks parked for the night, newly minted presidential candidate Wyclef Jean sat down to talk business — promoting Haiti's and defending his own.

Naomi Campbell told a war crimes tribunal Thursday that she had received some "dirty-looking stones" after a 1997 dinner party with former Liberian ruler Charles Taylor — but added that she didn't know if the stones were actually diamonds or who sent the gift.

Wyclef Jean's planned run for Haiti's presidency is bound to make entertainment headlines, but the hip-hop artist's brother knows trying to take charge of this earthquake-devastated and politically unstable country is a deadly serious affair.

Singer Wyclef Jean is considering a run for president of Haiti but has not decided whether to seek a five-year term as leader of the quake-ravaged nation, the musician's family said Monday.

Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu announced Thursday he is retiring from public life later this year when he turns 79, saying "the time has now come to slow down" and spend more time with his family.

A South African community once riven by anti-foreigner violence came together Sunday in the spirit of Nelson Mandela to play a little soccer.

Actress Mia Farrow met with young victims of war and sexual abuse during a three-day trip through Uganda.

South Africa may reap a long-term windfall for defying the skeptics and successfully hosting the World Cup. Short term, however, the profits are heading elsewhere while unions gripe and the nation's already staggering unemployment rate climbs even higher.

Pirates kidnapped 12 foreign sailors off the coast of Nigeria's restive and oil-rich southern delta during an attack that left one crew member injured, a naval spokesman said Saturday.

South African health officials said Tuesday they are alarmed by the rise in deaths among men who have had botched traditional circumcisions, after 39 young men died in the last month after undergoing the rite of passage into manhood.

The U.S. Embassy is advising travelers to exercise caution in Haiti after four U.S. citizens were killed in separate robberies near Port-au-Prince's airport.

KINGSTON, Jamaica — Christopher "Dudus" Coke was born into gang royalty, running a smuggling operation that supplied drugs up and down the U.S. East Coast. He used the proceeds to cast himself as a Jamaican Robin Hood, and his power grew to rival that of the prime minister.

NAIROBI, Kenya — A group of anti-abortion Kenyan churches and Christian groups on Monday blamed Kenya's government for involvement in two explosions that ripped through a packed rally protesting the country's proposed constitution.

HARARE, Zimbabwe — A Zimbabwean defense lawyer says a prominent activist has accused police of mistreating him after his arrest on claims he gave false information about human rights abuses in the country's diamond industry.

NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenyan police Thursday said a man who they had initially arrested on kidnapping charges has confessed to killing 19 people in three years and claimed his target was to slay 100.

JOHANNESBURG — The first World Cup ever held in Africa opened Friday in a dazzling burst of joy, color and noise — and just a tinge of sadness.

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The death of Nelson Mandela's great-granddaughter cast a shadow over the opening day of the World Cup on Friday, dampening the spirits of a nation proud and excited to be hosting the world's most popular sporting event.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - A hurricane season predicted to be one of the wettest on record opens Tuesday in the Caribbean, where hundreds of thousands of Haitian earthquake victims have only tarps or fraying tents to protect them in a major storm.

Tailor Gaoussou Traore displays an Ivory Coast football jersey he made, alongside jerseys for other national and club teams, in his workshop in the Treichville neighborhood of Abidjan, Ivory Coast. The bright orange Ivory Coast jerseys hanging outside a little sewing shop in downtown Abidjan look just like the real thing. But the $5 price tag betrays the shirt for what it is a very convincing fake. In the lead up to the World Cup, the counterfeit merchandise business is booming. AP Photo

First lady Michelle Obama, right, talks to Haiti's President Rene Preval at the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince April 13. This week, protestors called for Preval to resign. AP Photo/Brennan Linsley

DURBAN, South Africa – South Africa President Jacob Zuma opened Durban's new international airport on Saturday, the final part of the country's major World Cup infrastructure.

In this photo taken April 23, a Haitian flag waves as people gather at a refugee camp named Obama on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. The organized relocation camp at Corail-Cesselesse has thousands of spacious, hurricane-resistant tents on groomed, graded mountain soil. The settlement three miles down the road named after the U.S. president in hopes of getting attention from foreigners has leaky plastic tarps and wooden sticks pitched on a muddy slope. AP/Ramon Espinosa

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The rubble from Haiti's shattered capital is rising in heaps at the port, dumped for sorting and recycling by a fleet of heavy, exhaust-belching trucks.

One of the suspects, center, with his face covered, in the murder of white supremacist leader Eugene Terreblanche, is led out of the court by police in Ventersdorp, South Africa, Tuesday. Whites and Blacks have faced off angrily in song in front of a heavily guarded courthouse where a teenager and another farm worker who allegedly confessed to killing a white supremacist leader in a wage dispute have appeared. AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam

TRIPOLI, Libya - Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi suggested Monday that Nigeria be split along ethnic lines, like Yugoslavia, into several mini-states as a way of resolving violence in Africa's most populous nation.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Aid officials say they have finally figured out where to put hundreds of thousands of Haitians who lost their homes in a cataclysmic earthquake: right back where they came from.

NAIROBI, Kenya – Kenya's government is trying to launch a witness protection program, yet those who were threatened after the country's post-election violence left more than 1,000 dead say they're so afraid that they want no part of it.

JOHANNESBURG – Nelson Mandela's ex-wife denied Friday that she had given an interview to a British newspaper in which she was quoted sharply criticizing the anti-apartheid icon.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - U.S. troops are withdrawing from the shattered capital, leaving many Haitians anxious that the most visible portion of international aid is ending even as the city is still mired in misery and vulnerable to unrest.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Haitian President Rene Preval is heading to the U.S. to discuss what is needed to rebuild his shattered country.

HARARE, Zimbabwe – A Zimbabwean court has rejected an attempt to oust the Parliament speaker, who is a top aide to the prime minister.

Some help may have been more of a hindrance in Haiti relief efforts.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Homeless victims of Haiti's earthquake said Monday that police are halting deliveries of food and water to try to force them to leave their camp on the grounds of the prime minister's office.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Christian and Voodoo leaders put aside their differences for a moment Friday, joining hands under a canopy of tropical trees as some earthquake survivors on crutches and in wheelchairs mourned the more than 200,000 Haitians killed by an earthquake one month ago.

KAMPALA, Uganda — Rioters angry over political and land issues clashed with government forces for a second day Friday, and at least six people were killed in Uganda's capital and an outlying area.

KABUL — The U.N.-backed commission investigating fraud in Afghanistan's election issued its first orders Thursday to exclude some ballots from the final tally, throwing out votes from 83 polling stations in areas of strong support for President Hamid Karzai.

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — More than 200 people including many schoolchildren returning from holidays remained missing Thursday, a day after a wooden boat capsized at sea and left at least eight dead, police said.

JOHANNESBURG — South Africa's top communist in the Cabinet is in danger of losing his working-class hero status after splashing out about $120,000 in taxpayers' money for the latest BMW 750i.

MOGADISHU, Somalia — A Somali Islamic court hacked a hand each from two screaming men accused of theft and lashed another accused of rape on Wednesday, officials and a witness said, the latest in a series of harsh punishments that have elicited both admiration and revulsion from the war-weary population.