A tribal dispute on the border of Sudan's Darfur region has killed 38 people, the United Nations said on Wednesday. "According to reports received by the UN, 16 Maaliya and 22 Hamar tribesmen were killed following clashes" on December 5, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its weekly bulletin. The fighting, apparently sparked by a dispute over grazing rights, occurred in West Kordofan state just over the border from East Darfur's Adila region. "Fighting stopped following the deployment of SAF (Sudan Armed Forces) and negotiations between tribal leaders from both tribes.

Food shortages and fighting between government forces and rebels have forced almost 3,000 people to flee their homes in Sudan's Blue Nile state, the United Nations said on Wednesday. The latest displacement comes after Defence Minister Abdelrahim Mohammed Hussein said in November that an operation had begun to crush Sudanese rebels. An estimated 2,800 people, mostly women and children, fled from four areas of Bau district southwest of the state capital Ed Damazin, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in its latest weekly bulletin. "This displacement is the result of fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Sudan People’s Liberation Movement–North (SPLM-N) as well as a result of food insecurity in their areas of origin," OCHA said.

LONDON (AP) — Global efforts to curb malaria are stalling after a drop in funds to buy bed nets, according to the latest report Wednesday from the World Health Organization.

Three Sudanese have been jailed for three to five years for arson and looting during fuel-price protests in September, police said Tuesday. Theirs were among the first major sentences handed down for the worst urban unrest of President Omar al-Bashir's 24-year rule. The court in the Khartoum-area district of Ombada convicted them of attacking a commercial centre, Khartoum State Police said on their website. The police statement also said two people were fined and sentenced to three years in jail for setting fire to a police station.

By Khalid Abdel Aziz and Maggie Fick KHARTOUM/CAIRO (Reuters) - Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's appointment of an old military ally as his deputy may shield one of Africa's longest-serving rulers from risks at home and abroad. In a government shake-up, Bashir named Lieutenant General Bakri Hassan Saleh - a confidant who helped him stage his 1989 coup and crush many rebellions - as first vice president, replacing veteran politician Ali Osman Taha. By positioning Saleh one step away from his own job, Bashir may be crafting a strategy to avoid being handed over to the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide if he keeps his promise to step down in 2015. The reshuffle announced on Sunday by Bashir underscores the diminishing role of Islamists such as Taha as the president turns to more trusted allies in the military, an organization important to his survival in a country with a history of coups.

One rebel fighter was killed and three were wounded in Sudan's Blue Nile state during attacks against military convoys that also left several government troops dead, the insurgents said Tuesday. Defence Minister Abdelrahim Mohammed Hussein said in November that an operation had begun to crush insurgents. Rebel spokesman Arnu Ngutulu Lodi said several bodies of government troops were left "on the ground"."From our side we lost one martyr and three wounded," he said. Ethnic insurgents from the SPLA-N have been fighting since September 2011 in Blue Nile.

By Balazs Koranyi OSLO (Reuters) - Israel, Egypt and North Korea should renounce chemical weapons, especially after Syria joined the convention banning them and three other nations plan to do so, the chief of an international watchdog said on Tuesday. Ahmet Uzumcu, head of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said Angola, Myanmar and South Sudan were preparing to join the pact. "Now since Syria has become a member country, I think (Israel) can reconsider," Uzumcu told Reuters in Oslo, where he accepted the 2013 Nobel award for the OPCW. Israel, which has observer status at the OPCW, signed the convention in 1993, but has never ratified it.

Water ministers from Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan on Monday "successfully" held talks on an Ethiopian dam project, Sudan's minister said, after Egypt's objections delayed formation of a committee to implement expert advice. Cairo fears the Grand Renaissance dam project could diminish its water supply. "We have addressed a significant part of the issues on the follow-up of the implementation of the recommendations of the international panel of experts," Sudan's Water Resources and Electricity Minister, Muattaz Musa Abdallah Salim, said in a brief statement to reporters after the talks which lasted several hours. At a meeting in Khartoum last month, ministers from the three nations failed to agree on the composition of the committee which would follow through on expert recommendations about the Grand Renaissance project, Sudan's Foreign Minister Ali Karti said earlier.