Oil rose for a third straight session on Tuesday to more than a barrel, boosted by a rumoured attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Police across Europe have broken up an Iraqi-run network that smuggled illegal immigrants into the continent for fees of up to €12 000.
EU leaders threaten Sudan with sanctions if it does not cooperate fully with the International Criminal Court by handing over war-crimes suspects.
Conflicting messages emerge from Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) as the country’s run-off presidential poll draws closer.
A hit-and-run offensive by rebels in Chad has tested the strength and neutrality of a European Union military force deployed to protect refugees.
The European Union is on track to hit its short-term target for reducing emissions of the gases that create global warming, but challenges remain.
The current climate in Zimbabwe was ”not at all” the proper one for an election, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said in an interview broadcast on Tuesday.
Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi said on Tuesday a European Union proposal for an economic and security union with southern Mediterranean states was an insult to Arabs and Africans.
The United States and European Union plan a joint call for United Nations monitors to be sent to Zimbabwe after a human rights group alleged systematic government murder and brutality.
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is to send up to 400 observers to this month’s run-off poll in Zimbabwe, double the number who oversaw the first round.
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, whose 28-year rule has brought widespread hunger to his country, on Tuesday defended the seizure of land from white farmers, saying he is undoing a legacy of Zimbabwe’s former colonial masters. Mugabe spoke to world leaders at a United Nations summit on the global food crisis against a backdrop of sharp criticism over his participation.
The United Nations urged a summit on the global food crisis on Tuesday to help stop the spread of starvation threatening nearly one billion people by lowering trade barriers and removing export bans. ”Nothing is more degrading than hunger, especially when man-made,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told world leaders.
Britain is ”reviewing” Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s honorary knighthood, a government spokesperson said on Monday, amid reports that the first steps had been taken to revoke the title. On Monday, Channel 4 News television reported, without citing its sources, that the first steps had been taken to strip Mugabe of the knighthood.
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe made a surprise appearance on Monday at a world food summit in Rome, drawing fierce criticism from the British government. In his first official trip abroad since elections in March, Mugabe attended the summit organised by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation.
Britain criticised as obscene the presence of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe at this week’s global food summit in Rome, saying he had inflicted shortages on millions of his own people by his ”profound misrule”. Mugabe flew into Rome late on Sunday, making his first official trip abroad since elections condemned by Western leaders as fraudulent.
The rise of biofuels is not only adding to the global food price crisis but also poses a risk for peasants, pushed off their land to make way for energy crops, a report prepared for this week’s food summit said. The use of food such as maize, palm oil and sugar to produce fuel has been blamed in part for record high commodity prices.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe flew into Rome for a global food summit on Sunday, his first official trip abroad since elections condemned by Western and opposition leaders as fraudulent. A British Foreign Office spokesperson said: ”It is a matter of concern to us and we would prefer that he did not attend.”
Macedonia’s parliamentary election descended into chaos on Sunday after one person was killed and nine wounded in shootings in ethnic Albanian areas, with voting halted in one town after a gun battle. The poll is seen as a test of the nation’s political maturity after campaign violence raised fears that slow progress toward European Union membership could be further delayed.
At least three people were wounded in a shooting in an ethnic Albanian area of the Macedonian capital, Skopje, during the country’s parliamentary election on Sunday, police and party officials said. ”We were attacked,” said Izet Mexhiti, a senior official of the ethnic Albanian Democratic Union for Integration party.
A landmark international convention banning cluster munitions was formally adopted by 111 countries in Dublin, Ireland, on Friday in a move supporters hope will stigmatise the lethal weapons as much as landmines. There were no objections to its adoption, which came after 12 days of robust negotiations.
Osama bin Laden has plenty on his mind but he managed to pay close attention this month to the events surrounding Israel’s 60th anniversary and the parallel commemoration of the ”nakba” — the catastrophe — that the creation of the Jewish state in 1948 meant for the Palestinians.
Western governments lashed out at the extension of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s house arrest, but the outrage at Burma’s generals was tempered by concern over disrupting aid flows to desperate cyclone victims. Burma has been promised millions of dollars in Western aid after Cyclone Nargis, but this cut no ice with the junta regarding the opposition leader.
Fifa president Sepp Blatter will forge ahead with plans to curb the number of foreign players at soccer clubs, saying on Tuesday that the organisation should coral the world of sport into helping make it happen. The Swiss head of world soccer’s governing body insisted that Fifa would not be ”going into confrontation” with any employment laws.
World leaders are to meet next week for urgent talks aimed at preventing tens of millions of the world’s poor dying of hunger as a result of soaring food prices. The summit in Rome is expected to pledge immediate aid to poor countries threatened by malnutrition as well as charting longer-term strategies for improving food production.
A World Trade Organisation (WTO) mediator issued new proposals on Monday for opening up services such as telecoms and banking as part of a global trade deal. But the new text, replacing a previous document issued in February, did not set dates for revised offers or final commitments in the services negotiations.
French fishermen headed into tense talks on Monday to decide on whether to keep up their strikes and blockades over fuel costs, as a hard-core fringe continued to disrupt port activities. About 50 fishermen from Brittany, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean were meeting in the key fishing port of Boulogne-sur-mer.
Environment ministers from the G8 rich nations on Monday urged their leaders to set a global target to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, a small but vital step in the fight against climate change. But they stopped short of suggesting specific interim targets ahead of 2050, a key demand of developing countries in tough United Nations-led talks to forge a new treaty on global warming.
Britain and other European governments should break from the United States over the international embargo on Gaza, former US president Jimmy Carter said on Sunday. Carter described the current European Union position on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as ”supine” and its failure to criticise the Israeli blockade of Gaza as ”embarrassing”.
The founder and chief commander of Colombia’s Farc rebel force, Manuel Marulanda, has died after more than 40 years fighting the state from jungle and mountain camps. If confirmed, the death of Manuel Marulanda, who organised the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guerrillas in the 1960s, would be the heaviest blow yet to Latin America’s oldest insurgency.
The Iranian government has proposed the creation of an international consortium to enrich uranium on its own soil as a way of defusing the tense stand-off over its nuclear programme. The proposal is part of a ”new and comprehensive initiative” put forward by Iran ahead of a planned visit to Tehran by Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief.
There were tears and sweat aplenty in Moscow’s Luzhniki stadium on Wednesday, but barely any blood. English fans kept calm. Russia’s police avoided running amok. The result was that stereotypes of Russia as a harsh forbidding place lost another chunk of credibility, and its quest to be treated as a ”normal” country on the post-Cold War stage advanced a further step.
British Airways risks further undermining its relationship with pilots on Thursday as it starts selling tickets for its transatlantic OpenSkies airline. The Paris-to-New York service will begin flying on June 19 with the threat of crippling industrial action still hanging over its owner.