Sudan

The Sudanese government is allowing four aid organizations expelled from the country after its president was accused of war crimes to return under slightly different names, the U.N. humanitarian chief said Thursday. Sudan ordered 13 of the largest international aid groups to leave in early March, accusing them of cooperating and giving false testimony to the International Criminal Court, which issued an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the country's Darfur region.

When President Obama called the slaughter of innocents in any part of the world to be a "stain on our collective conscience," one of the examples he cited was the violence unleashed in Darfur by the Islamic-led government of Sudan.

A Sudanese official said Thursday that hundreds of people were killed early this year when foreign warplanes bombed three convoys smuggling African migrants through Sudan along with weapons that apparently were destined for the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

Ask a Sudanese citizen what troubles him these days and he might not even mention Darfur or the International Criminal Court arrest warrant against the president.

Three foreign staff members of Doctors Without Borders were freed two days after they were abducted in Sudan's troubled Darfur region, the Italian Foreign Ministry said Friday.

Kidnappers holding nine Chinese oil workers killed five of them Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ali Sadiq said. Two others managed to escape, and two remain captive, he said.

He's accused of torturing enemies, cozying up to Osama bin Laden in the 1990s and plotting to assassinate Egypt's president. But presidential advisor Nafie Ali Nafie says his moderation and pragmatism won him his latest assignment: overseeing the Sudanese government's response to the conflict in Darfur.