French Philippe Van Wilkelberg (c), worker of the French charity Zoe's Ark, arrives at N'Djamena courthouse, Dec. 22.

LE BOURGET, France, Dec. 29--Six French charity workers sentenced to eight years of forced labor in Chad for trying to kidnap 103 children were jailed shortly after arriving back in France, judicial officials said.
The six landed at the Le Bourget Airport, north of Paris, at around 9 p.m. Friday and were later taken to an area jail, said Francois Molins, the state prosecutor for the Paris suburb of Bobigny, reported AFP.
They were weak and visibly demoralized by their ordeal, Molins told reporters at a press conference. He said medical personnel at the jail would determine whether any of the aid workers would be hospitalized.
The six, from the charity group Zoe’s Ark, were sentenced by a court in the Chadian capital, N’Djamena and were transferred to France under a 1976 judicial accord between the two countries that allows for convicts’ repatriations.
Because France does not have forced labor, it is likely the French justice system will commute or reduce their sentences.
But under the judicial accord, Chadian officials must agree to the terms of any sentencing changes, judicial officials have said.

NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec. 29--Hundreds of people stoned cars and rival ethnic groups fought in a sprawling slum Saturday amid tensions over delayed results from the closest presidential election in Kenya’s history, witnesses said .
A millionaire opposition leader who cast himself as a champion of the poor appears poised to win the race, but only partial and unofficial tallies have been released from Thursday’s vote, AP said.
In the Kibera slum, the main constituency of opposition candidate Raila Odinga, young men with machetes were running through the maze of potholed tracks and ramshackle dwellings. People set up makeshift roadblocks.
About 20 miles outside Nairobi, hundreds of people were massed along a main highway. “They are looting houses and stoning cars,“ Irungu Wakogi, a witness, told The Associated Press by telephone.
The race pits President Mwai Kibaki against his former ally, Odinga, and marks the first time an incumbent has faced a credible challenge in Kenya’s four decades of independence from Britain. The race focused largely on corruption, with both candidates vowing to end the graft and tribal favoritism that has tainted politics here for years.
A string of Kibaki’s allies in parliament also were being unseated in the vote.
Kenyans clustered around radios and televisions as results trickled in, but by early Saturday the electoral commission had announced preliminary results in only 99 of Kenya’s 210 constituencies.

KATHMANDU, Nepal, Dec. 29--Nepal’s provisional parliament approved a motion to abolish the monarchy late Friday, as part of negotiations with former Maoist rebels to underpin a fragile peace deal.
According to Reuters, the result comes after the rebels fought a decade-long insurgency demanding an end to the monarchy, and analysts say the result is a compromise because King Gyanendra will remain in the palace for now, albeit stripped of all powers.
Lawmakers voted for Nepal, once the world’s only Hindu kingdom, to become a “federal democratic republican state“.
The motion was passed by a majority of 270 votes in the 329-seat parliament, which includes the Maoists. Three votes were cast against it and the rest abstained or were absent.
Speaker Subas Nemwang read out the result after the vote.
But Nepal will become a republic only after the first meeting of a special assembly, which is due to be elected by mid-April next year, said Home Minister Krishna Prasad Sitaula.

BEIJING, Dec. 29--Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda played a friendly game of catch on his visit to China on Saturday, a symbol of warming ties between the North Asian rivals despite an intractable row over gas resources in disputed waters.
In a show of amity that would have been unthinkable two years ago, when anti-Japanese protests erupted on Chinese streets, Fukuda and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao--both decked out in baseball uniforms--tossed a ball in a state guesthouse gym, reported Reuters.
Fukuda, who took power earlier this year, has said he would not visit Japan’s Yasukuni war shrine, which is seen by critics as a symbol of the country’s militarist past, cooling tension over Japan’s wartime invasion of China.

January
-South Korea’s Ban Ki-moon becomes the new United Nations Secretary-General, replacing Kofi Annan.
-Bulgaria and Romania join the European Union.

February
-The International Court of Justice finds Serbia guilty of failing to prevent genocide in the Srebrenica massacre, but clears it of direct responsibility and complicity in the case.

March
-The Pentagon releases the transcript of a military hearing in which Khalid Sheikh Mohammed says he “was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z“.

April
-Boris Yeltsin, the first freely elected Russian president, dies.

May
-Nicolas Sarkozy is elected President of the French Republic, defeating SŽgol�ne Royal with 53% of the vote in the French Presidential Election.

June
-Tony Blair resigns as prime minister of the United Kingdom; New Labour Party leader, Gordon Brown, is appointed prime minister by Queen Elizabeth II.

July
-Portugal takes over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union from Germany.
-Pakistani Army commandos capture the Red Mosque in a 35-hour battle; the cleric who led the mosque’s violent anti-vice campaign is among those killed.
-A strong earthquake in northwestern Japan causes malfunctions at the world’s most powerful nuclear power plant, including radioactive water spilled into the Sea of Japan.