About 1,500 opposition activists demonstrated against President Hosny Mubarak on Saturday, a day after he was declared the overwhelming victor in elections that extended his 24-year rule. Police kept close watch on the marchers, but did not intervene in as they wended their way through the middle-class, downtown shopping district for almost three hours, chanting slogans such as "There's the thief, there he is."
■ Italy
Immigrants' bodies found
The coastguard discovered the bodies of 12 African immigrants on a Sicilian beach yesterday. The bodies were discovered at Gela in the south of the island, close to a boat the immigrants were believed to have travelled in. Also yesterday the coastguard intercepted a boat carrying 100 illegal immigrants believed to be from Eritrea in eastern Africa. Many of the passengers were so weak they had to be hospitalized. In recent weeks more and more boats carrying African immigrants have reached the southern Italian coast.
■ United States
Red Cross needs volunteers
The American Red Cross said it needs 40,000 additional volunteers in the next few weeks to replace worn-out relief workers helping Hurricane Katrina victims. "This is a disaster of such scope and such significance that it is not going to go away in a few weeks or a few months," said Ken Degnan, public affairs specialist for the Red Cross. "We need more people." The relief agency is sheltering 160,000 survivors, has provided 6 million meals and is operating 675 shelters in 23 states, an effort that is taxing the 114-year-old organization. The agency is asking recruits to contact their local Red Cross, which will provide training in such fields as shelter management, public health and working through government bureaucracies set up to assist disaster victims.
■ Zimbabwe
Squatter camps resurface
Squatter camps are reappearing in the capital Harare four months after President Robert Mugabe's government launched a controversial blitz against illegal housing. Wood and plastic shacks are being built at the sites of houses demolished during Operation Restore Order, an urban clearance campaign launched in May that saw police raze shacks, cottages and flea markets deemed illegal. The UN estimates that around 700,000 people were left homeless and jobless by the operation. "I don't know where to go and I can't afford the high rentals," one squatter living in a shack in Harare said.
■ Switzerland
Animal torturers sought
Police admit they have few clues about a wave of sadistic attacks on farm animals after the gruesome discovery of the carcass of yet another victim -- a cow whose udder was cut off. The carcass found Friday in a meadow at Aeugst am Albis, near Zurich, brings to 47 the number of cases involving cattle, horses, sheep, rabbits and cats tortured to death in rural areas in the past four months, particularly in Basel, Aargau and Solothern. Police, who have been at pains to avoid dramatizing the incidents for fear of encouraging copycats, are attempting to establish if the Zurich case is linked with a series of attacks near the German border. The victims either died or had to be put down and some bore traces of bestiality, or sexual assault.
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