Ghana

Sudan lost its bid to assume the rotating leadership of the African Union to Ghana after regional leaders snubbed Khartoum for a second time because of international outrage over bloodshed in the Darfur region. Alpha Oumar Konare, the African Union's top diplomat, told reporters that Ghanaian President John Kufuor would take the chairman post.

Officials began counting ballots in presidential and parliamentary elections in Ghana. In courtyards throughout the capital, election officials put tape around plywood tables and began sorting ballots. Onlookers whooped as the stack for their choice grew taller.

From childcare to medical internships, Projects Abroad offers high school students an opportunity to travel and help nurture a community in another country. This year about 1,000 students from around the world will volunteer through Projects Abroad's High School Special program.  Care and Community Projects in which students split their time between childcare and group renovation projects are the most popular programs in Ghana, Argentina and India, the three countries where most U.S. high school students want to volunteer this summer.  Projects Abroad says that Ghana's reputation for safety and welcoming volunteers has made it popular for several years.

Sparks from a welder's torch started a raging fire on a moored Greek tanker, killing three people, officials and witnesses said. Twelve other people were feared dead. The inferno forced the closure of the West African nation's sole oil refinery. The blaze touched off an explosion aboard the MV Polaris at Ghana's main port of Tema, 12 miles east of the capital, Accra, witnesses said.

Iran was rejected in its bid Tuesday to join the U.N. Commission on Human Rights after receiving only nine votes, while Iraq won entry by 28 votes. Other commission members elected in a secret ballot conducted by the U.N.'s Economic and Social Council were Ghana, Senegal, Madagascar, Pakistan, the Philippines, France, Italy and the United States.

Overfishing by subsidized European fleets off the coast of West Africa is hurting local fisheries and forcing people to slaughter wildlife to get enough to eat, researchers reported in the current issue of the journal Science. The researchers said the so-called bush meat trade in Ghana is strongly driven by a lack of fish, and added that the country risked even worse poverty and social unrest -- as well as the loss of an irreplaceable natural resource -- unless something changes.

The zombie movie has few storytelling avenues beyond attack-chomp-slaughter-run, and George Romero has by now explored them all, and memorably. What separates new entry "The Dead," then, is its physical arena: the harsh, withering expanse of northwest Africa. By setting their zombie-pocalypse in a war-torn region of unforgiving climate, punishing earth and decimated villages, British filmmaking brothers Howard J. and Jon Ford — who filmed in Burkina Faso and Ghana — get an initially visceral metaphoric punch not unconnected to the routinely troubling news media images often beamed from this ravaged continent.

Group C: UNITED STATES VS. ALGERIA Where: Loftus Versfeld Stadium, Pretoria. Time: 7 a.m. PDT. TV: ESPN, ESPN Deportes, Univision. Radio: Sirius/XM, KLYY-FM 97.5 and KDLD-FM 103.1. The buzz: When the U.S. was knocked out of Germany '06, it was an African team, Ghana, that did the damage. Algeria will try to duplicate the feat, but Algeria is a few rungs lower on the FIFA rankings than Ghana was four years ago. Even so, the game appears to be a tossup.