Paris  - The humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders said Wednesday evening in Paris that it has pulled 70 staff members out of the Darfur conflict region of Sudan on the orders of the Khartoum government.

"We were ordered in writing a few days ago to withdraw for security reasons international workers from several locations by Wednesday," a spokeswoman for the group said.

Rio de Janeiro - At least eight people died and seven others were injured Wednesday in southern Brazil when the hospital shuttle bus they were travelling in crashed near the town of Venancio Aires, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul.

According to preliminary police reports, the accident happened early Wednesday. The bus belonged to the town of Sobradinho, and was taking sick people to a hospital in state capital Porto Alegre.

Amsterdam  - The International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague on Wednesday, did not include a count of genocide against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for alleged atrocities in Darfur as had been widely expected.

The ICC listed only five counts of crimes against humanity and two of war crimes, but left the door open for amendments to the charge sheet to include genocide if more evidence is gathered in the case against him.

Sana'a, Yemen  - A man convicted of killing ten people in a shooting rampage outside a mosque in north-western Yemen last year was executed by a firing squad in his home city Wednesday, a security source said.

A police firing squad shot dead Abdullah Saleh al-Kohali, 27, in the central prison of Amran, some 70 kilometres north of the capital Sana'a, the source said.

He was executed after the verdict sentencing him to death was read out by a judge at the prison's courtyard, the source added.

Kiev  - Masked government agents broke into the headquarters of Ukraine national natural gas company Naftogaz Ukrainy on Wednesday to search the premises, with the country's national intelligence agency SBU saying the raid was part of an anti-corruption action.

The armed men wore black combat uniforms commonly used by Ukrainian special force police and military units, witnesses said.

The SBU assault teams totalling 20-30 troopers were moving through Naftogaz offices searching for unidentified documents, they said.

Washington  - The Chinese immigrant who brutally stabbed, beheaded and then ate the flesh of his seatmate on a Greyhound Canada bus last July, on Tuesday pleaded not guilty to a charge of second- degree murder.

A statement of events on the bus that night was read out in a court in Winnipeg, Canada, as the trial of Vincent Li, 40, started Tuesday. It said Li apologized to police when he was arrested for the gruesome killing of carnival worker Tim McLean, 22, and pleaded with officers to kill him.