Human rights activists on Friday pressed members of the United Nations Human Rights Commission to back a resolution condemning widespread abuses in Nepal.
If the 53-nation body fails to do so, it risks discrediting itself further as a group committed to stopping human rights abuses, said Loubna Freih, spokesperson for the New York-based Human Rights Watch.
It’s far from a case of looking a gift horse in the mouth, but a present from the Jordanian royal stables has nonetheless seen Israeli officials galloping around trying to prevent a diplomatic row.
A convoy of four United States embassy vehicles was attacked on Friday by angry residents in Lebanon in connection with a child-custody dispute between a Lebanese and his American wife, police said. Men threw stones at the vehicles, which were on their way to the house of Nidal al-Maqhur in the northern city of Hermel, they said.
Trade union Solidarity will apply for an urgent interdict to oppose the choice of provisional liquidators of DRD Gold’s operations in North West province.The application would be heard by the Pretoria High Court on Monday, Solidarity spokesperson Reint Dykema said on Friday.
The Highlanders continued their winning streak and consigned the ACT Brumbies to a third straight defeat with a nail-biting 19-18 Super 12 rugby win in Dunedin on Friday. A late Brumbies assault on the Highlanders line wasn’t successful and their poor record at Carisbrook continued, as did their faltering season.
Gun-wielding robots could soon be patrolling the world’s most heavily fortified border under a plan by South Korea’s Defence Ministry to bolster its frontier with the North. Plans call for the robots to be installed on the 250-kilometre-long border by 2011.
Zimbabwe’s pro-democracy opposition on Friday dismissed as a ”cover-up” the explanation offered by the country’s election boss of discrepancies in voting figures. On Thursday, chairperson of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission George Chiweshe denied accusations that the organisation had ”fiddled the results” of parliamentary elections on March 31.
South Africa’s Highveld Steel and Vanadium (Hiveld, HVL) on Friday soared to an all-time high of R63,50 per share on the JSE Securities Exchange SA due to the shortage in vanadium metal, which has seen the price of the commodity rocket. At 1.25pm, Hiveld was quoted at R62,50 per share, up 7,8% or R4,50 from its previous close of R58.
Presidents, prime ministers and kings joined millions of pilgrims, prelates and other religious leaders crowding St Peter’s Square and Rome in paying a final farewell on Friday to Pope John Paul II at a funeral capping one of the largest religious gatherings in the West in modern times.
Militia groups in southern Sudan are threatening to wreck a fragile peace that has emerged nearly three months after Khartoum and the region’s main rebel force inked a deal to end 21 years of war, residents and aid workers said on Friday. About 30 such groups continue to terrorise Upper Nile state, collecting illegal taxes and abducting locals, they said.