In Brief

DISAPPROVAL – Hundreds of Ethiopians took to the streets of the capital on Saturday to protest the landmark conviction by a United States court of an Ethiopian man for sexually mutilating his two-year-old daughter with scissors.

Organisers said some 2 000 people turned out in Addis Ababa for a march in support of Khalid Adem, a 31-year-old Ethiopian immigrant who was convicted of female genital mutilation by a court in the southern US state of Georgia. * MORE MONEY – British finance minister Gordon Brown, eager to boost his credentials as prime minister in waiting, flew into Iraq for the first time on Saturday and pledged an extra £100m to help rebuild the country.Brown, on a surprise visit to British troops in southern Iraq, suggested that their numbers could be reduced over the next few months as the Baghdad government takes over fuller control * SUICIDE – A suicide car bomber posing as a contractor looking for workers blew himself up among a crowd of labourers in a mainly Shiite city in Iraq, killing at least 22 people, while a triple car bomb attack at a Baghdad bus station killed at least five people and wounded 32.* WORRIED – APEC nations expressed their “strong concern” at North Korea’s nuclear test and urged it to resume disarmament talks, in a statement read behind closed doors to leaders here at the end of a regional summit.* KILLED – Crocodiles have killed at least nine people in Somalia, where devastating floods have displaced at least 50 000 others, bringing the death toll to over 50 in the lawless African nation, elders and witnesses said.* CRITICAL – Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert criticised a UN General Assembly resolution calling for a fact-finding mission to probe a shelling in Gaza that left 19 Palestinians dead.* NOT TRUE – Sudan denied on Saturday that it had agreed to the deployment of combined United Nations and African Union peacekeeping forces in its troubled Darfur region.Nampa-AFP-AP-Reuters* MORE MONEY – British finance minister Gordon Brown, eager to boost his credentials as prime minister in waiting, flew into Iraq for the first time on Saturday and pledged an extra £100m to help rebuild the country.Brown, on a surprise visit to British troops in southern Iraq, suggested that their numbers could be reduced over the next few months as the Baghdad government takes over fuller control * SUICIDE – A suicide car bomber posing as a contractor looking for workers blew himself up among a crowd of labourers in a mainly Shiite city in Iraq, killing at least 22 people, while a triple car bomb attack at a Baghdad bus station killed at least five people and wounded 32.* WORRIED – APEC nations expressed their “strong concern” at North Korea’s nuclear test and urged it to resume disarmament talks, in a statement read behind closed doors to leaders here at the end of a regional summit.* KILLED – Crocodiles have killed at least nine people in Somalia, where devastating floods have displaced at least 50 000 others, bringing the death toll to over 50 in the lawless African nation, elders and witnesses said.* CRITICAL – Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert criticised a UN General Assembly resolution calling for a fact-finding mission to probe a shelling in Gaza that left 19 Palestinians dead.* NOT TRUE – Sudan denied on Saturday that it had agreed to the deployment of combined United Nations and African Union peacekeeping forces in its troubled Darfur region.Nampa-AFP-AP-Reuters