Berlin - Amnesty International appealed Monday to Germany and other European nations to provide homes to 50 detainees from the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay.
Abuja - German President Horst Koehler said Monday that Africa should have a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council
Continuing his six-day visit to Nigeria, Koehler said that in efforts to reform the body, there must be a "fair representation of Africa," although he did not specify which country should be considered to hold the seat.
The German president also said that a fair representation for all the world's regions should be assured as well in other international organizations such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Koehler himself had previously headed the IMF.
Koehler said this issue should be taken up in the debate concerning the causes of the international financial crisis.
Zurich - FIFA president Joseph Blatter called Monday for professional referees as a measure to protect football from the threat of match-fixing.
Blatter told a congress of football's world governing body in Zurich on sport betting that there appeared to "no limits" on what people were prepared to bet.
In reference to a recent match-fixing scandal in Germany which led to the jailing of a former referee, Blatter said there were still no professional referees in the Bundesliga.
"Nobody can say that the money is not there. We have to protect those who could be or already are the targets of such methods," he said.
Monte Carlo - Jamaican supersprinter Usain Bolt and Russian pole vault queen Yelena Isinbayeva are among the six finalists for the World Athlete of the Year award.
The governing body IAAF said in a statement on Monday that the Bolt, who won 100m, 200m and 4x100m gold at the Beijing Olympics in world record times, double long-distance gold medallist Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia and 110m hurdles Olympic champion Dayron Robles of Cuba were the final three men.
Isinbayeva won pole vault gold with a world record. She is joined by 5,000m and 10,000m Olympic champion Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia and Kenyan 800m sensation Pamela Jelimo, who also ran to gold in Beijing in August, in the women's list.
Moscow/Tbilisi - Two Georgian police officers were killed when a land mine exploded near the border of South Ossetia, where Georgia went to war with Russia in August.
The Georgian Interior Ministry said the mine detonated while the policemen were on patrol in the border village of Dvani around 7:15 am (0415 GMT) on Monday.
A second mine exploded shortly after, injuring three policemen who arrived at the scene to help, the ministry said in a statement.
Dvani is just south-west of the separatist capital of South Ossetia near the Georgian of Gori in a buffer zone occupied by Russian troops until EU military observers replaced them last month.
