Egypt’s High Court on Monday rejected the latest bid by jailed opposition leader Ayman Nur to be released on medical grounds, his lawyer said, adding that he would now seek a presidential pardon. The court was due to release details of its verdict against the one-time pro-democracy darling of the West later.
Rising above the escalating violence in and around Tibet, the message from around the world was loud and clear: ”Let the Games begin.” European nations and Olympic committees said on Monday they opposed a boycott of the Beijing Games over China’s handling of the unrest in Tibet.
Hundreds of Serbs in north Kosovo clashed with United Nations police and Nato peacekeepers on Monday in the worst violence since the Albanian majority declared independence last month. Riots erupted in the town of Mitrovica after several hundred UN special police backed by French Nato peacekeepers stormed a UN court in the town and arrested dozens of Serbs.
Conservatives won a majority in Iran’s parliamentary vote, state television said on Sunday, but the new assembly may still give President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a tougher time ahead of next year’s presidential election. Western powers embroiled in a deepening stand-off with Tehran over its disputed nuclear plans condemned Friday’s election as unfair.
China flooded the streets of Lhasa with riot police on Saturday as the international community urged an end to the bloodshed in Tibet that has already claimed at least 10 — possibly dozens more — lives. Thousands of protesters smashed government offices in Xiahe after marching through the streets chanting support for the Dalai Lama.
Chad and the United Nations Children’s Fund began on Friday to send home 103 African children that a French charity had sought to fly to France in October for adoption, authorities said. Eighty-three children were the first to leave an orphanage in Abeche, eastern Chad, on Friday in two buses.
France on Tuesday won European Union approval to give â,¬99-million to several companies hoping to build a European rival to United States internet search giant Google. The EU executive says this helped fill a funding gap for something that might not otherwise win financial support.
United Nations peacekeeping troops are heading for ”Iraq-style disaster” in Darfur as long as talks between the government and rebel groups remain stalled and the United States maintains its hostile stance, Sudanese officials and regional experts warned on Wednesday.
When rumours of a ”gay wedding” spread through the town of Ksar el Kebir, the only evidence produced was a video on YouTube of a man dancing in women’s clothes. Four people are now in prison accused of homosexual acts, Islamists are decrying a decline in morals and liberals are warning that the kingdom risks sleep-walking into extremism.
Zimbabwe’s crackdown on political dissent may need to be discussed by the United Nations Security Council, a prominent Southern African human rights activist declared this week. Opponents of President Robert Mugabe have reported large-scale harassment and intimidation in the tense period leading to elections due later this month.
If you have just blown the budget on a new high-definition TV, look away now. Japanese broadcasters and the BBC are working on a system 33 times more detailed than the best sets on the market. The BBC plans to use the technology, named Super Hi-Vision, to screen coverage of the 2012 Olympics on big screens in city centres across Britain.
A ”virulent and vicious” smear campaign is being waged against Zimbabwe over the list of observers invited to witness the country’s elections on March 29, the country’s ambassador to South Africa, Simon Moyo, said on Monday. The campaign is being driven by the West and certain sections of the South African media, he said in a statement.
In its half-century history, the European Union has absorbed wave upon wave of immigrants. Now, according to the EU’s two senior foreign policy officials, Europe needs to brace itself for a new wave of migration with a very different cause — global warming.
Senegal wants the international community to guarantee a peace accord between Chad and Sudan to end years of conflict between the two feuding neighbours, President Abdoulaye Wade said. The Senegalese leader will host the signing of a peace pact on Wednesday between Chadian President Idriss Déby Itno and Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir
Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica dramatically resigned on Saturday, saying his government had collapsed over the issue of Kosovo’s declaration of independence last month. Plunging the country into a new political crisis, he said he would call national elections for May 11.
European Union member states and the United States have been excluded from a list of observers who will be invited to monitor the March 29 general elections in Zimbabwe, the government announced on Friday. The only European country that had been invited to send monitors was Russia, while the Commonwealth was also left off the invitation list.
The sun-blasted desert between this small Chadian border town and Sudan’s Darfur is scattered with stunted trees and thorny shrubs. Beneath each one, Sudanese refugees huddle under blankets or sheets tied to branches, desperately seeking shade.
South Africa will continue engaging with the European Union to ensure new trade agreements with African countries do not harm regional integration, President Thabo Mbeki said on Thursday. Africa’s biggest economy has criticised the economic partnership agreements (EPA) designed to open up trade.
Sri Lanka was hit by scathing criticism over its human rights record on Thursday, with its government fingered over hundreds of ”disappearances” and an influential panel storming off the island. The move is a major blow to the image of the island’s government, which pulled out of a truce with Tamil Tiger rebels in January.
Four Sudanese civilians died when a grenade went off as they tried to retrieve a body believed to be of a French soldier killed after he strayed into Sudan from Chad, the army said on Thursday. A spokesperson said a group of Sudanese nomads found the body on Wednesday near the border with Chad.
British humanitarian agencies on Thursday said the situation in the Gaza Strip was the worst in 40 years and urged the European Union to hold talks with Hamas. ”The situation for 1,5-million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is worse now than at any time since the beginning of the Israeli military occupation in 1967,” the eight NGOs said in a joint report.
Simba Makoni’s decision to enter the presidential race is a ploy by former colonial power Britain to divide Zimbabweans, a state-controlled newspaper reported President Robert Mugabe as saying on Wednesday. Mugabe told ruling Zanu-PF supporters at a rally that voters have to ”bury British regime-change schemes”, the Herald reported.
Sudanese authorities have found a body that they believe is that of a French European Union soldier missing after a clash near the Chadian border on Monday, a spokesperson for the EU military force in Chad said. ”The arrangements for the formal identification and recovery of the remains are being organised,” Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Poulain said on Wednesday.
Sudan vowed on Wednesday to continue its search for a French special forces soldier missing in war-torn Darfur for two days after his European Union peacekeeping patrol strayed across the border from Chad. The commando went missing on Monday when at least one vehicle taking part in the EU’s mission to Chad crossed into Sudan.
Letting celebrities get away with drug crimes is sending out the wrong message to impressionable young people, a United Nations report warned on Wednesday. The UN drug control agency has for the first time highlighted the damaging influence drug-using celebrities — such as Amy Winehouse, Pete Doherty and Kate Moss in Britain — have on fans.
Russian gas monopoly Gazprom accused the Ukraine on Wednesday of planning to siphon off gas that Russia transits through Ukrainian territory to the European Union, as a payment dispute escalated. Ukraine is the main transit route for Russian supplies to the European Union and a previous such dispute in 2006 led to knock-on disruption in EU countries.
Russia and Ukraine slid towards a new gas war on Tuesday as Moscow slashed supplies to the ex-Soviet republic by 50% and Ukraine’s state gas company said it may cut deliveries to Europe. Russian gas monopoly Gazprom was to cut supplies to 50% of their normal level on Tuesday at 5pm GMT, doubling a 25% cut already in force since Monday.
Congolese rebels loyal to renegade Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda have said they will return to a ceasefire commission monitoring a rocky January peace deal. The United Nations and Western governments brokered the January deal in the hope of establishing a lasting peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s turbulent east.
Reviving Zimbabwe’s moribund economy would require inflation-battered citizens to swallow the bitter pill of reduced state spending and higher interest rates to attract foreign cash, analysts say. The ousting of veteran President Robert Mugabe is essential to pave the way for reforms to put the country back on track, they believe.
The West cast doubt on Russia’s presidential election on Monday after Dmitry Medvedev won a landslide victory and vowed to follow the course set by outgoing leader Vladimir Putin. Near complete results gave Medvedev 70,2% of Sunday’s vote, crushing his nearest rival, Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, who won 17,8%.
Israel was facing widespread international condemnation on Sunday for its onslaught in Gaza, as the United Nations and European Union demanded an end to a ”disproportionate” response to Palestinian rocket attacks, which were also denounced.
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/ 29 February 2008
All Turkish troops involved in a major ground offensive against Kurdish rebels inside northern Iraq have withdrawn to Turkey, Iraq’s foreign minister said on Friday. Turkey sent thousands of troops into remote, mountainous northern Iraq on February 21 to crush rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party.