By GEOFFREY YORK, Toronto Globe and Mail

For the first time in history, an international criminal court is set to issue an arrest warrant for the leader of a country, accusing him of orchestrating a campaign of murder, torture and rape.

It began with elements of farce: a feud between two tycoons who both declared themselves the ruler of the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar. But it ended in tragedy, with deadly gunfire that left at least 28 people dead and more than 200 wounded.

When the global financial crisis erupted last fall, Africa was one of the few regions of the world that hoped to survive unscathed.
After all, Africa's banks had little exposure to the toxic debts of the Western financial system. Focused on their domestic markets, and relatively well regulated, Africa's banks were able to escape the worst of the global storm.

He is known as the Terminator, a ruthless military commander, accused of massacres and wanted by the International Criminal Court for conscripting child soldiers and for other war crimes.

BEIJING -- When he visited South Korea a few years ago, Jang Song-taek was sometimes seen in his pajamas, wandering the hallways of his hotel, always followed by an entourage of obsequious underlings.When he overslept one morning, nobody in the North Korean delegation dared to knock on his door. Instead, they begged a South Korean to rouse him from his slumber.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- In a potentially seismic shift in South African politics, a breakaway faction of the African National Congress has decided to form a new political party that could threaten the ANC's monopoly on power for the first time since the apartheid era.

BEIJING -- For the Chinese factories that churn out Christmas toys and Christmas trees, the holiday season has lost a lot of its cheer this year. For many, the season is becoming bleaker all the time.

BEIJING -- Faced with an unexpectedly sharp decline in its economic growth, China is hastily cobbling together a package of fiscal stimulus measures in hopes of avoiding a more painful unraveling of its economic boom.

BEIJING -- With a tide of economic nationalism rising, China is promising to review Coca-Cola Co.'s attempted $2.4-billion takeover of a Chinese juice manufacturer, casting a shadow over a deal that would be the biggest-ever foreign corporate acquisition in that country.