The prospect of peace in the Darfur province of Sudan continues to recede as rebels fighting the Khartoum government dig in their heels. African Union mediators in the Nigerian capital of Abuja granted a second 48-hour extension recently to Darfur’s warring factions to consider an 85-page draft peace pact — this after United States Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick failed to persuade Darfur rebel groups to put pen to paper. (* stubborn)
The government of Serbia was staggering towards collapse recently because of the continued liberty of General Ratko Mladic, Europe’s most-wanted man and genocide suspect. The European Union called off talks on Serbia’s integration with the EU after Belgrade reneged on its promise to arrest the fugitive former Bosnian war commander.
Conversations about when to start having children are not, broadly speaking, a male speciality. Conversations initiated by men about the effect of age on male fertility may be even more of a rarity. ”The age thing?” says Mark, a middle-aged father who spent his 30s and 40s vaguely wanting children but working and travelling and developing complicated interests instead.
In an isolated village in Kenya’s western Siaya district, near Lake Victoria, 75-year-old William Onyango gazes at a faded newspaper clipping pinned to the wall of his dank, makeshift store. ”American politician to visit Kenya”, says the headline. A smiling Senator Barack Obama gazes from the photograph accompanying the article.
The controversial United States ambassador to Zimbabwe, Christopher Dell, has again defied Harare by publicly accusing the government of ”burgeoning corruption”. Last November, Zimbabwe threatened to invoke an unspecified clause in the Vienna Convention on diplomatic guidelines to expel Dell for ”meddling” in Zimbabwe’s internal affairs.
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Tottenham Hotspur have tried to keep their bid for Champions League football next season alive by asking the Premier League for a replay of their match against West Ham after several of their players were struck down by food poisoning on the morning of the game. Tottenham lost the end-of-season match 2-1 at Upton Park on Sunday.
The Constitutional Court on Tuesday reserved judgment in the application of three HIV-positive women for leave to appeal against a judgment of the Johannesburg High Court. The high court found last year that the women’s right to privacy, dignity and psychological integrity were not infringed by the publication of their names and HIV status in politician Patricia de Lille’s biography.
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The Congress of South African Trade Unions has welcomed Jacob Zuma’s apology for having unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman. It said it agreed with Judge Willem van der Merwe that ”it is totally unacceptable that a man should have unprotected sex with a person other than his regular partner and definitely not with a person who, to his knowledge, is HIV-positive”.
Divisions emerged on Tuesday in the Darfur rebel group that signed a peace deal with Khartoum last week. Ibrahim Ahmed Ibrahim, top adviser to Sudan Liberation Movement leader Minni Arko Minnawi, sent a letter to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan charging that his boss had been pressured into signing Friday’s peace agreement.