Minister Collins Chabane says 28 heads of state have been confirmed for Nelson Mandela’s memorial service, with many still expected.
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But experts warn that drugs alone will not win it, after the pharmaceutical giants agree to work together on an ambitious project.
As Republicans feud, President Barack Obama this week takes his re-election blueprint of economic justice, direct and unfiltered, to the voters.
A rights group in the Democratic Republic of Congo has called for new elections following November’s controversial legislative and presidential polls.
The Supreme Court now takes centre stage as the arbiter of a poll that five opposition candidates have rejected in the DRC’s presidential election.
Desmond Tutu and other members of a group of global statesmen known as The Elders on Tuesday praised South Sudan’s landmark independence referendum.
Organisers pressed on with the marathon task of collating the verdict of South Sudan’s independence referendum on Monday.
Organisers of a landmark South Sudan independence vote confirmed on Thursday the turnout threshold needed for it to be valid has been reached.
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/ 11 January 2011
Turnout at south Sudan’s independence referendum has defied gloomy expectations and is almost guaranteed to reach the 60% needed for a valid poll.
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/ 24 November 2008
Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter and Graça Machel visited a church housing Zimbabwean refugees on Sunday as they continued efforts to ease the crisis.
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/ 22 November 2008
A delegation of the Elders has cancelled its trip to Zimbabwe after it was refused entry into the country, it was announced on Saturday.
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/ 15 November 2008
The former United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, is to lead a high-profile team on a humanitarian mission to Zimbabwe.
Former United States president Jimmy Carter has said Israel holds at least 150 nuclear weapons, the first time a US president has publicly acknowledged the state’s atomic arsenal. Asked how a future US president should deal with the Iranian nuclear threat, Carter put the risk in context by listing atomic weapons held globally.
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”.
United States President George Bush used a visit to Israel on Thursday to denounce Democratic party offers to negotiate with America’s enemies in the Middle East as comparable to appeasement of Hitler. Although Bush did not name any Democratic politician, the party’s presidential contender Barack Obama has offered to open negotiations with the Iranian leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
As the Democratic primary contest heads to its climax, the Republicans are firing the opening shots of an election barrage to come against their probable White House opponent, Barack Obama. Republican John McCain and his colleagues already see Hillary Clinton’s campaign as mortally wounded.
Hamas is ready to accept a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders but ”it will not recognise Israel”, the Islamist movement’s exiled chief Khaled Meshaal told a news conference on Monday. ”We accept a Palestinian state within the June 4 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital … but without recognition of Israel,” he said.
A rebel group from Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta said it attacked two major oil pipelines there on Monday in what it called a message to the United States. In an email, a faction of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta said its commandos had carried out attacks against the pipelines located at Isaka River and Abonnema River.
Former United States president Jimmy Carter said on Monday Hamas leaders told him they would accept a peace agreement negotiated by their rival, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, if Palestinians approved the deal in a vote. In a speech, Carter said Hamas ”said they would accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders if approved by Palestinians.”
Former United States president Jimmy Carter met Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Damascus on Friday for talks expected to focus on ways to include the Islamist group in efforts to achieve Palestinian-Israeli peace. High-level Hamas members also attended the meeting, at which Carter would also raise with Meshaal the fate of an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas.
A Palestinian journalist who died in Gaza on Wednesday was killed by metal darts from a shell fired by an Israeli tank, doctors said on Thursday. Thousands gathered for the funeral of Fadel Shana (23), a Reuters cameraman. His body was carried through the streets of Gaza City, draped in a Palestinian flag.
Former United States president Jimmy Carter met Gaza-based leaders of Islamist Hamas in Cairo on Thursday, defying US and Israeli criticism that saw him barred from visiting the Palestinian territory. Nobel Peace Prize-winner Carter is considered to be the architect of the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty.
United States Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama spent a fourth day on Monday defending himself for calling people in small towns with economic blight ”bitter” in a controversy that rival Hillary Clinton is trying to use for a comeback. Republican John McCain also sought political gain from the flap.
Former communist rebels in Nepal appear to be on the brink of a historic sweep in elections that will decide the political future of the Himalayan nation and end the rule of its 239-year-old royal dynasty. The Maoists’ party has won 42 seats and is leading in 58 constituencies, the election commission said in a statement on its website.
Hillary Clinton vowed on Saturday night to continue her battle for the party’s presidential nomination amid increasing pressure from senior Democrats for her to quit the race. Speaking to a cheering crowd at an Indianapolis high school, she said it was important to give everyone a chance to have their voices heard.
A cattle farmer in Australia’s remote northern outback on Friday said he had found a giant ball of twisted metal, which he believes is space junk from a rocket used to launch communications satellites. James Stirton found the odd-shaped ball last year on on his 40 000 hectare property, about 800km west of Brisbane.
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/ 11 February 2008
Hillary Clinton shook up her campaign as Democratic rival Barack Obama overtook in the race for delegates to win the party nomination for the White House. Obama is expected to extend his lead in the so-called Potomac Primary on Tuesday after defeating Clinton on the weekend.
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/ 31 December 2007
Disguised as an Irish priest and taking advantage of the New Year festivities, Donald Woods launched a dramatic escape 30 years ago to expose one of South Africa’s most notorious apartheid crimes. As the country prepared to ring in the new year, the white liberal editor managed to evade house arrest and cross over into the tiny kingdom of Lesotho.
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/ 4 December 2007
A delegation of the world’s elder statesmen on Tuesday called for an immediate ceasefire in Sudan’s Darfur and for the international community to urgently honour its pledge to send in a peacekeeping force. ”The future of Darfur, and indeed the whole of Sudan, sits on a knife-edge,” said a report following a fact-finding mission.
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/ 11 November 2007
He is a former governor of Arkansas from a town called Hope. He has a nice line in campaign humour and speaks like a Deep South preacher. He is also running for president. But this is not Bill Clinton of 1992. This is Mike Huckabee, a long-shot Republican contender for the 2008 White House who has burst into the leading pack of the race.
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/ 10 November 2007
Benazir Bhutto was going nowhere. A phalanx of riot police stood at the end of her leafy street, tapping their shields and manning a barbed-wire barricade. Armoured vehicles rolled in. Officers even prowled the neighbours’ gardens, just in case the opposition leader might vault her back wall.
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/ 2 November 2007
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe is ignoring approaches from former South African president Nelson Mandela to step down, reports said on Friday. The Zimbabwe Independent, quoting unnamed sources, also said that former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan had tried to meet with Mugabe to discuss his retirement.