• A German court sentenced a Moroccan friend of the September 11 hijackers to 15 years in prison yesterday for being an accessory to mass murder. Mounir El Motassadeq, a member of a group of radical Arab students in Hamburg who helped organise the 2001 attacks, is one of only two men convicted of involvement in the plot which resulted in the death of nearly 3,000 people in the US.

• The youngest son of Belgium's King Albert has been called as a witness in a navy fraud trial that has put the monarchy in an embarrassing light and raised questions about public funding of the royal family. Prince Laurent, 11th in line to the throne and a navy captain, may have to testify for the defence of a former aide, a retired naval officer, over €2.2 million alleged by prosecutors to have been embezzled from the military.

• Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf entered Mogadishu, capping a remarkable turn-around in the capital Islamists ruled for six months until they were ousted before the New Year. As Yusuf entered the city for the first time since taking office in 2004, protected by his own soldiers and Ethiopian troops who helped route the Islamists, he ruled out talks with his foes.

• Kazakh Prime Minister Danial Akhmetov resigned unexpectedly, forcing the entire cabinet to quit and casting doubt on who will head the oil producing state's government. Former Soviet Kazakhstan, the largest republic in Central Asia, borders China and Russia and holds huge energy reserves exploited by Western companies looking to circumvent the Arab-dominated OPEC.

• Two Moroccan journalists who published a list of popular jokes about religion, sex and politics should be jailed for up to five years and their magazine banned, the state prosecutor said yesterday. Morocco's press is viewed abroad as one of the freest in the Arab world, and several independent titles regularly upbraid government officials and attack corruption or nepotism.