The road to Zarqa from Amman runs for 15km through beige hills peppered with limestone quarries, past factories, military camps, a scrapyard for big yellow cabs and a KFC joint. Trucks, taxis and military Land Rovers speed up and down, leaving trails of dust and black smoke. Like every other town in that part of Jordan, Zarqa is a place of filthy streets, traffic jams, donkey carts and grey breeze-block buildings.
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President George Bush announced on Monday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will address the United Nations Security Council, seeking a rapid deployment of peacekeepers to Sudan. Bush said Rice would address the Security Council on Tuesday, following last week’s peace agreement between the government and rebels.
Khartoum said on Monday it will next week start disarming militias accused of carrying out atrocities in the western Darfur region. The process of disarming all militias will ”begin on May 15 and President Omar al-Beshir has already instructed the armed forces to commence”, said Majzoub al-Khalifa Ahmed, Khartoum’s chief negotiator on Darfur.
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Jacob Zuma castigated the media for having pre-judged him after he was acquitted on a charge of rape by the Johannesburg High Court on Monday. Speaking in Zulu after the verdict, he told supporters at Beyers Naude Square: ”They insulted me and called me names.”
The task of accomplishing national reconciliation has not yet been concluded, President Thabo Mbeki said on Monday. Addressing a joint sitting of Parliament to mark the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution, he warned against disregard for the law and the rights of others. Mbeki also urged continued respect for democracy.
Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has undergone surgery to relieve pressure on his brain following his fall from a palm tree, his spokesperson confirmed on Monday. Richards (62) underwent the operation in Auckland, New Zealand, where he was taken for treatment to a brain haemorrhage following the accident on the south Pacific Ocean island of Fiji two weeks ago.
Heavy rains and flooding since the beginning of the year have killed 102 people and damaged thousands of homes across much of Colombia, according to state rescue agency Socorro Nacional. On Sunday, four more people died in a landslide in a poor Bogotá neighbourhood, and much of the capital remains under emergency warning due to elevated river levels.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has written to United States President George Bush to ”propose new ways” to resolve a quarter-century of tensions between the arch-foes, Tehran announced on Monday. The historic move brings an end to a 26-year-old break in official top-level contacts with Washington and comes amid US calls for sanctions.
India’s ruling Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi was set for a landslide victory on Monday in a by-election aimed at bringing her back to Parliament after she resigned to calm a political storm. But sizzling temperatures kept people indoors and only 40% of some one-million registered voters turned out in her home constituency of Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh state.