U.N. envoy in Congo for talks amid new fighting

GOMA, Congo -- Renewed fighting broke out Saturday between rebels and soldiers in eastern Congo, as a U.N. special envoy flew in for emergency talks and said President Joseph Kabila was ready to meet his main rival.

Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo spoke in Congo's capital, Kinshasa, before flying to the eastern city of Goma. Fighting erupted in August in the east, displacing 250,000 people and raising fears the violence could spread through the region.

Obasanjo met Kabila late Friday and said the Congolese leader "did not give anything that I would call conditions" for holding talks with rebel leader Laurent Nkunda. "But we are at the exploratory stage now," Obasanjo said.

Congo's government has always said it was willing to meet Nkunda, but only along with the myriad other militias operating in the region -- not alone.

Nkunda says he is fighting to protect ethnic Tutsis from Hutu militias who fled to Congo after Rwanda's 1994 genocide. The mass slaughter left more than 500,000 dead, most of them Tutsis.

Pakistan agrees to $7.6 billion IMF bailout

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistan said Saturday it had agreed to borrow $7.6 billion from the International Monetary Fund in an effort to stabilize the economy of this strategically important U.S. ally on the front lines of the battle against al-Qaida and the Taliban.

The government had been reluctant to go to the IMF but had little choice once even close allies the United States, China and Saudi Arabia snubbed its pleas for significant bilateral aid.

Pakistan's finance chief said the IMF agreed to the bailout after endorsing plans to tackle the country's huge budget and trade deficits.

Opposition lawmakers fear the IMF will impose austerity measures that will hurt ordinary Pakistanis, two-thirds of whom live on $2 dollar a day or less. But the IMF said the package included steps to protect the poor from cutbacks.

The loan will boost Pakistan's foreign currency reserves, which have seen a rapid decline that raised the prospect of a run on the local currency and a default on the country's foreign debt.

Deaths in China milk scandal go uncounted

LITI VILLAGE, China -- Li Xiaokai died of kidney failure on the old wooden bed in the family farmhouse, just before dawn on a drizzly Sept. 10.

Her grandmother wrapped the 9-month-old in a wool blanket. Her father handed the body to village men for burial by a muddy creek. The doctors and family never knew why she got sick. A day later, state media reported that the type of infant formula she drank had been adulterated with an industrial chemical.

Yet the deaths of Xiaokai and at least four other babies are not included in China's official death toll from its worst food safety scare in years. The Health Ministry's count stands at only three deaths.

The stories of these uncounted babies suggest that China's tainted milk scandal has exacted a higher human toll than the government has so far acknowledged. Without an official verdict on the deaths, families worry they will be unable to bring lawsuits and refused compensation.

So far, nobody is suggesting large numbers of deaths are being concealed. But so many months passed before the scandal was exposed that it's likely more babies fell sick or died than official figures reflect.

Beijing's apparent reluctance to admit a higher toll is reinforcing perceptions that the authoritarian government cares more about tamping down criticism than helping families. Lawyers, doctors and reporters have said privately that authorities pressured them to not play up the human cost or efforts to get compensation from the government or Sanlu, the formula maker.

Darfur refugees seek justice over peace

KALMA CAMP, Sudan -- Refugees in this crowded camp -- where mass graves hold the victims of one of the bloodiest Sudanese government attacks against them -- see little hope in a new drive for peace aimed at ending the nearly six-year war in Darfur. What they want is justice.

For many of the refugees, that means putting Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on trial for genocide.

Khalthoum Adam, a 50-year-old woman in Kalma Camp, says that peace deal or no, without a trial she won't return to her home village not far from Kalma. She fears violence by Arab camel herders she says are still holding the land she and her family were driven out of by attacking planes and government militia five years ago.

"They will be sending us to another danger" if camp residents are forced to return home as part of a peace agreement, she said. "If [al-Bashir] doesn't go to trial, we will stay in the camps."

Adam spoke as she emerged from Kalma with a group of women to collect grain from nearby fields, guarded by U.N. peacekeepers to prevent the frequent attacks on women who dare step out of the camps.

Distrust of al-Bashir and his Arab-led government is deep and bitter among the 2.7 million mostly ethnic Africans driven from their homes. Some observers say their fears must be taken into account amid new, still struggling efforts to get Darfur rebel leaders and the government back to the negotiating table.