Sudan on Friday repeated an African Union-backed call to postpone efforts to try President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes by a year to enable peace efforts in Darfur.

“We are asking for one year for postponement because this will give us time to work for peace in Darfur which we have already started with one movement ... we have many movements, more than ten, about 15,” Foreign Minister Deng Alor Kuol said on an official visit to South Africa.

By Sarah El Deeb

George Clooney says refugees from Sudan’s war-wracked Darfur region that he’s been visiting this week are echoing a message: “Bring us justice.”

“These people are still in danger everyday,” the actor told The Associated Press Friday by telephone from Chad. “They are underfed, there is a million things ... going wrong.”

By Celean Jacobson

A young male hippo has made a new home in a sewage plant, South African wildlife officials said Thursday.

The nearly 1,800-pound (800 kilogram) hippo wandered into Cape Town’s Cape Flats Waste Water Treatment plant from an adjacent marsh after a fence was stolen, said Julia Wood, manager of the city’s biodiversity program.

Party loyalists on Saturday lavished Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe with praise as he marked his 85th birthday against the backdrop of a deadly cholera epidemic and crippling economic crisis.

“Like a mighty crocodile, you have remained resilient, focused and resolute against all odds and stood by the principles of our liberation struggle as well as the sovereignty of our beloved motherland, Zimbabwe,” the Defence Ministry said in a newspaper advertisement.