■ Russia
Oil pipeline project rejected
The Kremlin's environmental safety body rejected a plan for a controversial crude oil pipeline that ecologists have said could threaten the world's biggest freshwater lake. The proposals for the pipeline from eastern Siberia to the Pacific coast were not in line with environmental legislation, the Federal Service for Ecological, Technological and Nuclear Supervision said in a statement posted on its Web site late on Friday. The decision is a blow for state pipeline monopoly Transneft, which had backed a route passing within a kilometer of Lake Baikal, which is a UNESCO protected site and home to 20 percent of the world's fresh water.
■ Sudan
Thousands flee conflict
The conflict in Darfur is slipping back into major violence as peace talks aimed at ending the crisis in the nation's western region plunge into deadlock and the UN Security Council starts to press for UN peacekeepers to replace the African Union. Up to 70,000 people have fled in recent days from displacement camps where they had settled to escape earlier armed raids north of the city of Nyala. Several hundred more have crossed the border into Chad to seek refuge. Baba Gana Kingibe, head of the Africa Union Mission in Sudan, blamed anti-government rebels -- the Sudan Liberation Army -- for provoking the new violence by attacking the government-held towns of Shearia on Jan. 16 and Golo a week later.
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