Outgoing Treasury Secretary John Snow was seen as a loyal but uninspired cheerleader for a roaring United States economy that has been one of the few bright spots for US President George Bush in his second term. Snow’s impending departure has been one of Washington’s worst-kept secrets.
Thousands of desperate Indonesian quake survivors were still waiting for aid on Tuesday as they prepared for a fourth night under makeshift tents, despite pledges that help would come quickly. The death toll from Saturday’s powerful earthquake had risen to nearly 5Â 700.
”If South Africa wants to send me back to Zimbabwe it would be a death sentence,” former Zimbabwean opposition MP Roy Bennett told the Mail & Guardian Online in Johannesburg on Tuesday. Bennett fled to South Africa in March after being implicated in an arms find in Mutare, eastern Zimbabwe.
Hours before the expiry of a May 31 deadline by the African Union to Darfur rebel groups still holding out from signing a peace deal, the pan-African body said on Tuesday it was hopeful the insurgents would beat the ultimatum. ”Until the May 31 deadline expires, we are hopeful that the parties that have not signed will sign,” AU Peace and Security Commissioner Said Djinnit said.
Firefighters in the Kazakh capital Astana were on Tuesday battling to put out a blaze at a 32-storey skyscraper dubbed the "cigarette lighter". Flames and smoke could be seen pouring out of the building, which houses the ex-Soviet Central Asian state’s transport and communications ministry.
Israeli troops staged their first ground operation in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday since pulling out of the territory last year, killing three Islamic Jihad militants and a Palestinian police officer. Three other militants were also killed in the occupied West Bank overnight, making it the deadliest spike in violence since the radical Islamist movement Hamas came to power.
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) marched in Pretoria on Tuesday, saying it could not support the ”lies” the government was telling the United Nations about its treatment programme. ”We as the TAC cannot support the lies that government is telling the UN. The first lie is that we have the biggest [treatment] programme in the world,” said TAC chairperson Zackie Achmat.
At least 13 people were killed and 15 injured when a crowded bus smashed head-on into a cargo truck in south-eastern Kenya early on Tuesday, trapping many passengers in the wreckage, police said. The bus was travelling from Nairobi to the port city of Mombasa when it hit the truck shortly after midnight local time.
A defence witness in Saddam Hussein’s trial over the killings of Iraqi Shi’ite villagers claimed many of those allegedly executed were still alive and said the prosecution case was built on bribes. The anonymous witness said he was a teenager in Dujail in 1982, when an attempt on Saddam’s life led to what the prosecution has termed was a massive crackdown on the village.
Somalia is on the brink of major disaster as conflict spirals out of control in Mogadishu and donors fail to respond to humanitarian emergencies in the lawless nation, a senior United Nations envoy said on Tuesday. Already beset with drought and poverty, the people of Somalia have been further hit by the fighting that has engulfed the capital.