A UN summit on the plight of the planet's one billion hungry opens here Monday, with activists warning it risks being a waste of time as leaders of the world's wealthiest nations are to be conspicuous by their absence.

A UN summit on the plight of the planet's one billion hungry opens here Monday, with activists warning it risks being a waste of time as leaders of the world's wealthiest nations are to be conspicuous by their absence.

ROME (Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, in Rome for a U.N. food summit, spent several hours in the company of 200 Italian women recruited by an agency and tried to convert them to Islam, Italian media reported Monday.

ROME (Reuters) - Libya's Muammar Gaddafi called for an end to the purchase of African farmland by food-importing nations at a U.N. hunger summit on Monday, describing it as "new feudalism" which could spread to Latin America as well.

British experts are searching for the body of journalist Alec Collett, who was kidnapped and killed 25 years ago at the height of Lebanon's civil war, a security source said on Monday.

ROME (Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, in Rome for a U.N. food summit, spent several hours in the company of 200 Italian women recruited by an agency and tried to convert them to Islam, Italian media reported on Monday.

Libya's Gadhafi tries to convert 200 young Italian women, paid by modeling agency, to Islam. Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi hosted a soiree in Rome for some 200 young Italian women, but instead of the party they expected the women were given a lecture on Islam and copies of the Quran, a news report said Monday.

Former Cabinet minister, 4 others on trial in Mozambique's biggest graft case. A former Cabinet minister and four other defendants are standing trial in the biggest corruption case to go to court in Mozambique since independence in 1975.

Flamboyant Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi has hired 200 young Italian women for another evening of political and religious discussion on the margins of the UN food summit, reports said Tuesday.

British experts working in eastern Lebanon have recovered a body believed to be that of journalist Alec Collett, killed at the height of the civil war, a security source said on Wednesday.

The remains of two bodies found by British experts in eastern Lebanon were being tested Wednesday to determine if they included that of British journalist Alec Collett, a security source said.

Egypt suspended its membership of the Union of North African Football Federations on Thursday, complaining that Algerian fans had thrown stones at their supporters during the country's World Cup exit.

Egypt, whose state-owned media staked so much on qualifying for the World Cup finals for the first time in two decades, vented its anguish on Thursday in an escalating diplomatic row with its Algerian vanquishers.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A special committee of the U.N. General Assembly condemned North Korea and Myanmar on Thursday for what it said were widespread human rights violations in the two Asian countries.

Egypt, whose state-owned media staked so much on qualifying for the World Cup finals for the first time in two decades, vented its anguish in an escalating diplomatic row with its Algerian vanquishers.

FIFA has opened disciplinary proceedings against Egypt following the violence before their World Cup qualifier with Algeria in Cairo last week, world football's governing body said.

FIFA has opened disciplinary proceedings against Egypt following an outburst of violence during a World Cup clash in Cairo last week which left several members of the Algerian national team injured, world football's governing body said.

FIFA has opened disciplinary proceedings against Egypt following an outburst of violence before a World Cup clash in Cairo last week which left several members of the Algerian national team injured, world football's governing body said.

Qatari-hosted talks between the Sudanese government and Darfur rebels due to begin on Monday in Doha have again been postponed, a mediator said on Sunday, amid a lingering split in rebel ranks.

Leaders representing over 60 African and South American countries backed a new regional financial system Sunday for the two continents to gain more clout and boost development.