The United Nations Security Council authorised on Tuesday up to 26 000 troops and police for Darfur and approved the use of force to protect civilians in Sudan’s arid western region. Expected to cost more than -billion in the first year, the combined ”hybrid” UN-African Union operation aims to quell violence in Darfur.
The United Nations Security Council reached broad agreement on a draft resolution to authorise up to 26Â 000 troops and police for Sudan’s Darfur region, with a vote anticipated this week. Britain and France distributed a fourth revised text late on Monday to be sent to governments of the 15 council members.
Oil prices closed at more than a barrel, near an all-time high, on Friday on technical buying and news of faster-than-expected economic growth. ”We’ve got a highly charged market here, and it doesn’t take much of a headline to spark a 5% price move,” said an analyst.
After five years of soaring shares and an economic upswing lasting nearly as long, fear is now spreading its way through Wall Street. Investors are worried that the debacle on the American real-estate and construction market will have serious effects on more than just the mortgage market.
Publishers vying for the rights to rocker Keith Richards’ autobiography have pushed up the Rolling Stones co-founder’s advance to ,3-million, according to a report. The bidding has narrowed down to two publishing houses, HarperCollins, a unit of News Corporation, and Little Brown, a division of Hachette Filipacchi.
He is a two-year-old cat and looks innocent enough. But at the nursing home where he lives in the United States state of Rhode Island, Oscar has developed a reputation as an angel of death. Since being adopted, he has revealed a rather morbid tendency to pick which patient is going to die next.
The United Nations intends to send a team of investigators to Côte d’Ivoire next week to investigate sexual abuse. A contingent of 734 peacekeepers from Morocco has been confined to barracks on allegations of sexually exploiting under-age girls.
The United Nations said on Friday it is investigating allegations of widespread sexual abuse by a unit of peacekeepers in Côte d’Ivoire and confined the soldiers in question to base. A United Nations statement did not say which country the soldiers were from or how many were under investigation.
An 83-year-old steam pipe exploded underground in midtown Manhattan on Wednesday, shaking buildings, creating a towering geyser of debris and sending people fleeing in scenes reminiscent of the September 11 attacks. Officials in New York and Washington promptly ruled out terrorism.
The old jokes may be the best, but according to a psychological study conducted in the United States, our ability even to spot a one-liner deteriorates as we age. Researchers asked one group of people aged from 65 to their late 80s and another in their early 20s to pick one of four endings to the opening lines of a series of jokes.
The United Nations Security Council is expected to authorise up to 26 000 troops and police for Darfur but implementation will take months providing the world body finds enough personnel and Sudan cooperates. On Wednesday, Britain, France and Ghana circulated a draft resolution for a joint African Union-UN force.
An 11-strong crew of mostly German explorers set out from New York on Wednesday on a reed boat bound for southern Spain in a bid to prove that Stone Age man conducted similar trans-Atlantic voyages. ”We want to rewrite history,” Dominique Goerlitz, a botanist and experimental archeologist leading the expedition said.
From New York to the Antarctic, from Shanghai to Rio de Janeiro, the world is getting ready to rock on Saturday as organisers of the Live Earth events seek to raise awareness of global warming. We publish a selection of the acts to look out for at the eight Live Earth concerts being promoted by former US vice-president Al Gore.
It is a funeral fit for a superhero. In the drizzling rain at Arlington National Cemetery, thousands of grieving patriots solemnly watch as the pallbearers — Iron Man, the Black Panther, Ben Grimm and Ms Marvel — carry a casket draped with an American flag. Yes, Captain America is dead and buried.
The internet’s key oversight agency is on track to start testing addresses entirely in foreign characters by November, but rules for determining which ones to permit likely will take another year or two to develop. Individuals and companies outside the United States long have clamoured for non-English scripts.
One day after backing a proposal for autonomy in the disputed Western Sahara region, the United Nations appeared to be backtracking on Friday, saying it would reissue a report without mentioning the idea. The UN secretary general issued a report on Thursday saying that autonomy for Western Sahara should be tested.
The release of Apple’s much-ballyhooed iPhone on Friday is expected to give a boost to the emerging market for multipurpose cellphones and possibly even help rival ”smartphone” devices. The global market for smartphones will this year reach 10% of the one billion cellphones sold worldwide according to analyst firms Canalys and IDC.
Don’t think of the Minisode Network as a brand-new website. Think of it as a long-overdue public service. Who among us hasn’t felt the double-edged sword of our media age: so much video from TV, DVDs, the internet and even cellphones … but too little time to watch it all? The Minisode Network has a solution.
Personal identity has taken on a new meaning in the digital age, where basic facts like your name, address or age are far less important to some people than the collected records of what you were looking at online. United States marketers will nearly double their spending on such advertising to -billion next year from -million in 2007.
Morocco and Western Sahara’s independence movement kept negotiations alive on the future of the resource-rich territory, agreeing on Tuesday to meet again in August. But statements by the two sides suggested neither had made concessions on the key question of whether Western Sahara would become independent.
The Wall Street Journal, whose parent Dow Jones is the target of a -billion takeover offer by News Corporaiton, is set to shake up its newsroom by reassigning and replacing several top editors, the New York Times reported on its website.
Russian revolutionaries and rebellious teenagers were the big hits at the Tony Awards on Sunday when Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of the Utopia and the rock musical Spring Awakening took home the top honours. Stoppard’s epic trilogy won seven of the awards given for Broadway productions and performances, including best play and director.
The top antitrust official at the United States Justice Department last month backed Microsoft by urging state prosecutors to reject a confidential complaint filed by Google, the New York Times reported on Sunday. Google accused Microsoft of designing its Vista operating system to discourage use of Google’s desktop search program.
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal court asked the United Nations Security Council on Thursday to put pressure on Sudan because of its refusal to hand over two suspects charged with war crimes. The ICC issued arrest warrants in February for Ahmad Harun, a former state minister of interior, and Ali Kushayb, a militia leader.
The United Nations and the African Union were close to a deal on Wednesday on fielding 23Â 000 peacekeepers in Sudan’s violent Darfur region, but full deployment is not expected until next year at the earliest. Sudan has still to agree to the large force, after it refused to have an operation controlled solely by the United Nations.
David Bowie spent less than a minute on stage, the Beastie Boys asked if anyone could fix one of their computers and Manchester United boasted they had given the world David Beckham. The somewhat surreal occasion was a gala ceremony in New York on Tuesday for the 11th annual Webby Awards, the ”Oscars of the internet”.
Coca-Cola said on Tuesday it will reduce the amount of water used to produce its beverages and put more effort into recycling the water it uses in manufacturing. Coke, which along with its bottlers used 290-billion litres of water for beverage production last year, said it would make a -million commitment to the WWF.
Despite pressure for Sudan to accept a force of 23 000 troops and police, a African Union committee has not approved plans sent by the United Nations. Sudan has been sent an copy of details drawn up recently but a submission cannot happen until the AU’s Peace and Security Committee gives its consent.
CNN will give away access to an online video service that now costs (about R177) a year, becoming the latest news organisation to revamp its revenue model on the web. Spokesperson Jennifer Martin said the change, effective July 1, reflects lower costs associated with delivering bandwidth-intensive video.
A fierce battle is under way this weekend to rescue a proposed global climate agreement in time for the Group of Eight (G8) summit in a fortnight’s time in Germany, after sources close to the talks said Washington appeared to be edging away from outright rejection of moves to halt rising world temperatures.
The United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU) have agreed on a highly mobile, robust joint force to help protect civilians and restore security to the Darfur region — but Sudan still holds the key to its deployment. The report proposes tripling the number of peacekeepers now in Darfur with an AU-UN ”hybrid” force of at least 23 000 soldiers.
Seven insurers have agreed to pay an additional -billion to developers of the World Trade Centre, resolving all outstanding claims from the September 11 2001 attacks and speeding redevelopment of the site, New York State officials announced on Wednesday.