Nairobi - Sudanese government forces and government-aligned militia have forced adults and children into slave labour and sexual service in Sudan's restive Darfur province, a new report by a coalition of African charities has found.

The Darfur Consortium said it had eyewitness accounts from over 100 people that showed men had been forced to work as farm labourers for the Janjaweed militia, while women and children had been used as sex slaves and domestic help for Sudanese troops in Khartoum.

New Delhi, Dec 17 : Defence Minister A K Antony today said the government will continue efforts to pursue tracing the 54 missing Prisoners of Wars (PoWs).

Addressing a meeting of the war widows here, Antony said, "The fate of the PoWs and their families continues to haunt him. We tried our best but still we are not able to find the truth. The family members of the PoWs went to Pakistan, but they were not allowed to see all the places. We have not abandoned our efforts and will continue whatever humanly is possible in this regard to locate these people."

Washington, Dec 17 : A White House spokeswoman has said that Iraqi leaders will decide whether punishment is appropriate for the journalist who stunned observers by hurling two shoes at US President George W. Bush from close range.

"The president believes that Iraq is a sovereign country, a democratic country, and they will have a process that they follow on this. The president harbors no hard feelings about the incident," White House press secretary Dana Perino told reporters.

The surprising scene happened on Sunday in Baghdad during an unanticipated trip by Bush, The News reported.

Bangkok - An estimated 3 million foreign tourists are expected to go "missing" from Thailand this high season - December to March - as a result of the recent closure of Bangkok's two airports by protestors, the tourism council predicted Wednesday.

From November 25 to December 3, the anti-government People's Alliance for Democracy seized and closed Bangkok's two international airports - Suvarnabhumi and Don Mueang - stranding about 350,000 international travellers in the capital.

London, Dec. 17 : Pakistan's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, has said that former prime minister Benazir Bhutto wanted Islamabad and New Delhi to engage in a series of dialogue aimed at burying the past and building a future free of terrorism, extremism and militancy in South Asia.

Beirut - United Nations forces operating in Lebanon have received warnings of a possible attack by al-Qaeda terrorists, Lebanese newspapers reported Wednesday.

The daily al-Akhbar, a pro-Syrian newspaper, said the United States had warned United Nations Interim Forces in southern Lebanon on December 10 of an imminent terrorist attack.

The report quoted an unnamed European diplomatic source as saying the United States provided UNIFIL with information that al-Qaeda would probably launch a "suicide attack" against UNIFIL convoys, which led to a state of alert by the peacekeepers, the Lebanese Army and security agencies.