• China secretly tried an outspoken human rights lawyer in Beijing, his family and lawyers said, drawing condemnation from dissidents. Gao Zhisheng was tried on Tuesday on charges of inciting subversion of state power, although no verdict was announced, said Ding Xikui, one of his lawyers.

• Somali Islamist forces and pro-government troops dug in on either side of a frontline in the divided Horn of Africa nation which has this week slid closer to all-out war. Regional power Ethiopia, however, scoffed at an Islamist vow to attack Somali government lines unless Addis Ababa withdraws within a week troops backing the interim administration at Baidoa, the only town it holds on its own turf.

• Botswana's High Court ruled that hundreds of Bushmen had been wrongly evicted from ancestral hunting grounds in the Kalahari desert and should be allowed to return. The court ruled 2-1 for the Bushmen in the key issues of the case, which saw Africa's last hunter gatherers take on one of the continent's most admired governments in a dispute over diamond rich land and development priorities.

• The UN new human rights watchdog agreed to send a high-level mission to Sudan's Darfur to probe allegations of worsening abuses against the civilian population. The move, seen as a way to increase international pressure on Khartoum to accept UN peacekeepers, coincided with a call from the US Sudan envoy for the country to act within the next week to help the UN bolster African Union forces.