By Agnieszka Flak JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Operations at a chrome mine in South Africa owned by chemicals group LANXESS have been suspended since Thursday after workers started an illegal strike over bonus payments, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) said on Saturday. The dispute at the mine in Rustenburg, 120 km (70 miles) northwest of Johannesburg, adds to growing labour tensions around South Africa's platinum belt, which are set to intensify over looming job cuts and wage talks in the sector. ...

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian police angered by the kidnapping of seven colleagues by Islamist gunmen kept a crossing into the Gaza Strip closed again on Saturday, stranding hundreds of Palestinian travellers, witnesses said. The protest began on Friday when police strung barbed wire across the Rafah border post and chained up the gates, local residents said, a day after the abductions. Gunmen demanding the release of jailed Islamist militants had seized seven policemen and soldiers on a road between the Sinai towns of el-Arish and Rafah. ...

MOSCOW (AP) — Wrestling's governing body has approved new rule and constitutional changes aimed at modernizing the sport and keeping it in the Olympics after 2016.

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraqi authorities say gunmen have broken into the house of an anti-terrorism police officer in the southern suburbs of Baghdad, killing five people including him and his sleeping family.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday appointed former Dutch development minister Albert Gerard Koenders as U.N. special envoy for Mali and head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the West African country. Ban said Aichatou Mindaoudou Souleymane of Niger would replace Koenders as head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast. Souleymane is currently deputy envoy for the African Union and U.N. peacekeeping mission in Darfur. Koenders was the Dutch minister for development cooperation between 2007 and 2010 before he took up the Ivory Coast role in 2011. ...

LAS VEGAS (AP) — O.J. Simpson's former lawyer defended himself point-by-point Friday against allegations he botched the former football star's armed-robbery trial, after giving damaging testimony that Simpson actually knew his buddies had guns when they went to a hotel room together to reclaim some sports memorabilia.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Former Olympics champion Poul-Erik Hoyer has pledged to improve the image of badminton after winning the presidency of the sport's world governing body.

ADEN (Reuters) - Gunmen shot dead a senior Yemeni military intelligence officer who had been targeted for assassination by al Qaeda-linked militants, a local security official said. Colonel Abdullah al-Rabaki was walking home in the city of Mukalla in Hadramawt Province late on Friday when the gunmen shot him six times with a revolver fitted with a silencer, the official said. They escaped on a motorbike. Leaflets from Islamist militants allied to al Qaeda had previously been circulated in the city on Yemen's south coast, calling for Rabaki's assassination, the official said. ...

By Hereward Holland JUBA (Reuters) - Sudan's foreign minister said on Friday neighbour South Sudan had promised him it would not let rebels operate across their shared border, defusing a row that had threatened a key oil deal. The countries, which fought one of Africa's longest civil before a 2005 peace deal, agreed in March to resume cross-border crude exports and defuse tensions that have plagued them since South Sudan's secession in 2011. ...

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Motorcycle-riding gunmen assassinated a police chief in front of his house after he led an anti-Taliban campaign in western Afghanistan, an official said Saturday.

By Lanre Ola MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Nigerian warplanes struck militant camps in the northeast on Friday in a major push against an Islamist insurgency, drawing a sharp warning from the United States to respect human rights and not harm civilians. Troops used jets and helicopters to bombard targets in their biggest offensive since the Boko Haram group launched a revolt almost four years ago to establish a breakaway Islamic state and one military source said at least 30 militants had been killed. ...

MALMO, Sweden (AP) — Flashy skirts, fake tans, fur and feathers: It's the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest.

ALEXANDRIA (Reuters) - One person died and dozens were wounded during clashes between Muslims and Christians late Friday night outside a Coptic church in Egypt's second city, state newspaper al-Ahram reported, in the latest violent sectarian row in the Muslim-majority country. A quarrel between two young men, one Christian and one Muslim, morphed into a family feud that sparked clashes in a western district of Alexandria. The two sides threw firebombs at each other before security forces intervened and cordoned off the area around the church. ...

By Lesley Wroughton WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf on Friday defended her government's record on good governance and transparency, following an independent audit that cast doubt on her anti-corruption efforts. She said a recent audit of resource contracts by accounting firm Moore Stephens contracts had been commissioned to fix, and not hide, problems in the West African country. The independent audit showed that almost all the $8 billion worth of resource contracts signed by Liberia since 2009 violated the country's laws and showed widespread irregularities. ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite Democratic fears, predictions of the demise of President Barack Obama's agenda appear exaggerated after a week of cascading controversies, political triage by the administration and party leaders in Congress and lack of evidence to date of wrongdoing close to the Oval Office.

By Daniel Bases NEW YORK (Reuters) - Europe's top trade official for the first time late on Friday officially cited Chinese mobile telecommunications equipment makers Huawei and ZTE Corp for violating anti-dumping and anti-subsidy guidelines. European Union Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said he was prepared to launch a formal investigation into anti-competitive behavior by these Chinese companies in order to protect a "strategic" sector of Europe's economy. ...

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Dan Bylsma has spent more than four years watching Sidney Crosby be Sidney Crosby.

IRVING, Texas (AP) — The last thing Keegan Bradley wanted to do at the 18th hole with a cozy lead was flirt with the water on the left.

BALTIMORE (AP) — There are only two outcomes when it comes to Saturday's Preakness Stakes — either the Kentucky Derby winner Orb wins the race to set up a Triple Crown try in the Belmont Stakes in three weeks, or another horse pulls an upset and prevents a shot at history.

BALTIMORE (AP) — Orb is ready for his whirl at history.