China said in Beijing Thursday it strongly opposes the practice of using the Olympic Games to hype political issues such as Darfur, saying it is in fact destroying and disturbing the preparation works of Olympic Games.

The U.S. government says it deplores Sudan's decision to name a suspected Darfur militia leader to a senior government position.

A U.S. based rights group is urging Turkey to press Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who is in Ankara for a three-day visit Monday, to end atrocities in the Sudan's war-torn Darfur region.

A US diplomat has died after a shooting incident in the Sudanese capital Khartoum.

The United Nations-African Union Hybrid Mission in Darfur (UNIMAD) begins operations today. UN participation in the mission is so far symbolic since most of the forces on the ground are from the African Union, which has 7,000 soldiers stationed in Darfur from its previous peacekeeping mission.

Darfur will receive one of the UN's largest ever deployments of peace-keeping troops in the coming weeks, the Prime Minister has said.

Israel on Sunday said that it will no longer allow refugees from Darfur to stay after they sneak across the border from Egypt, drawing criticism from those who say the Jewish state is morally obliged to offer sanctuary to people fleeing mass murder.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is set to travel to Sudan, including the volatile Darfur region, in the coming weeks. From VOA's United Nations bureau, Suzanne Presto looks at recent developments in the U.N.'s role in Darfur.

The U.N. Security Council approved the creation of a hybrid United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force to quell the violence and instability plaguing the Darfur region of Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and two million others forced to flee their homes.

US President George W Bush holds talks with with the new British prime minister, Gordon Brown hoping to secure support for a peace deal on Darfur and movement on stalled world trade talks.

The House of Representatives is considering a $34-billion measure for U.S. international assistance programs and other foreign affairs priorities. Known as the foreign operations bill, the measure contains money for a range of global priorities, from AIDS treatment and prevention, and assistance to Darfur to peacekeeping and democracy-building.

A U.N. Security Council delegation visiting Sudan says the Khartoum government has agreed to the deployment of a United Nations and African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur.