Diplomats failed to agree on Friday on a follow-up meeting to an acrimonious 2001 conference on racism after two weeks of difficult negotiations between Western and Islamic countries. The meeting was unable to decide on the venue or duration of a conference to chart progress in the fight against racism since the landmark conference in Durban seven years ago.
South African double amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius should know within three weeks if he can compete at the Beijing Olympics, an official for the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) said on Wednesday. ”We have been asked to deliver a decision as soon as possible,” CAS secretary general Mathieu Reeb said on the last day of Pistorius’s two-day hearing.
Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered the hallucinogenic drug LSD, has died aged 102, the organisation that republished his book on the mind-altering substance said. Hofmann died at his home in Basel, Switzerland on Tuesday, the California-based Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies said on its website.
United Nations agencies and the World Bank pledged on Tuesday to set up a task force to tackle an unprecedented rise in global food prices that is threatening to spread social unrest. The international bodies called on countries not to restrict exports of food to secure supplies at home.
United Nations agencies and the World Bank pledged urgent action on Tuesday to tackle an unprecedented rise in global food prices that is hurting developing countries. The international bodies called on countries not to restrict exports of food to secure supplies at home, warning that could only make the problem worse.
Kenya’s food crisis was set to worsen after a fungus wiped out 10% to 20% of its annual rice production, the United Nations said on Friday. The fungus destroyed 5 600ha of rice in the Mwea Irrigation Scheme in Central Province, known as the rice basket of the country, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The United Nations will close its human rights office in Angola after the authorities there withdrew their cooperation, the office of the high commissioner said on Friday. Angola has ordered the office to cease its operations by the end of May after pulling out of talks to establish a formal agreement to regulate the rights body’s work in the country.
The United Nations agency charged with relieving world hunger on Friday made an appeal for $256-million more in funds to cope with sharp rises in food prices. The World Food Programme request came on top of another "extraordinary emergency appeal" of $500-million made by the agency in March to top up its 2008 budget.
The United Nations refugee agency on Tuesday unveiled a new partnership with internet giant Google to help track refugees from Iraq to Darfur and raise public awareness of its work. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees launched its new service using the ”Google Earth Outreach” programme.
Time waits for no man, or woman — even a queen, as Marie Antoinette found to her cost amid the tumult of the French Revolution in the late 18th century. France’s last queen was to have received the "most complicated and most sophisticated" watch possible back in 1783 at the behest of an admirer.
fireman was found guilty of arson and sentenced to seven-and-a-half years behind bars on Friday after being convicted of starting 20 blazes across northern Switzerland. The 31-year-old farmer even set his own property alight, with total damage from his spree during 2002/04 running to several million Swiss francs (one Swiss franc equals $1).
The United Nations refugee agency on Friday launched a fresh appeal for ,3-million to help more than 2,5-million displaced people in the Sudanese region of Darfur. ”The funds will be used to help 2,5-million displaced Darfurians”, UN High Commissioner for Refugees spokesperson Ron Redmond said.
UBS AG doubled its writedowns from the subprime crisis, parted company with its chairperson and asked shareholders for more emergency capital on Tuesday in a second dramatic attempt to reverse its fortunes. The Swiss bank wrote down an additional -billion on United States real estate and related assets, causing a net loss of 12-billion Swiss francs.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) is concerned that rival armed groups in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are recruiting child soldiers again. Julien Harneis, a representative of Unicef, said more child soldiers have been recruited in the two eastern Kivu provinces in the last two months after a post-ceasefire lull.
Climate change is now officially a human rights issue, as the United Nations Human Rights Council on Friday passed a resolution on the subject, recognising that the world’s poor are particularly vulnerable. The council also gave the green light for a study into the impact of climate change on human rights.
The World Intellectual Property Organisation (Wipo) ousted a record number of cybersquatters from websites with domain names referring to trademarked companies, foundations and celebrities in 2007. Wipo, a United Nations agency based in Geneva, received 2 156 complaints alleging ”abusive registration of trademarks on the internet” last year.
Attacks on four villages in West Darfur in January and February by the Sudanese armed forces amounted to a ”deliberate” military strategy. The attacks resulted in at least 115 deaths, according to a report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN African Union Mission in Darfur.
Fifa president Sepp Blatter showed his solidarity with the construction workers who are getting 10 stadiums in South Africa ready for the 2010 World Cup. Blatter met with leaders of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) on Tuesday and said he wanted them to be treated fairly while building and upgrading World Cup venues.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Canadian jurist Louise Arbour, said on Friday she will step down when her current term in office expires on June 30. ”It is very much for personal reasons. I’m not prepared to make this commitment for another four years,” said Arbour in Geneva.
Colombia said on Tuesday that Farc rebels had been planning to make a ”dirty bomb” with radioactive material, threatening the entire Latin American region. The charges by Vice-President Francisco Santos marked a dramatic turn in a regional crisis that has seen Venezuela and Ecuador cut diplomatic ties with Colombia.
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/ 26 February 2008
The European Union is concerned about competing with China for access to resources and markets in Africa, which partly explains its drive to hook African states into economic partnership agreements (EPAs). According to South Africa’s deputy minister of trade, the EU is afraid that it will lose its foothold on the African continent
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/ 19 February 2008
The United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday it had withdrawn a team caring for refugees from the Chad/Darfur border after aerial bombing. Seven refugees from Darfur crossed the border into Chad on Monday night, carrying with them a 55-year-old woman who had lost both her legs during an alleged bombardment.
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/ 19 February 2008
With billions of dollars in illegal bets exchanged every year and allegations of match-fixing rife, the world’s most popular sport is waging a battle to protect its integrity. Early Warning System has the task of trying to keep Asian crime syndicates and other gambling mafias around the world from fixing matches.
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/ 18 February 2008
Société Générale, at the centre of a huge trading scandal, began investigating trades executed by Jerome Kerviel months before his activities were exposed in January, a media report said on Monday. A senior executive of Fimat began investigating at the end of September deals executed by Fimat employee Moussa Bakir for Kerviel.
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/ 14 February 2008
Double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius has asked world sport’s highest court to overturn a ruling that he is ineligible to compete in the Olympics. The International Association of Athletics Federations ruled last month that the South African cannot participate in the Beijing Games because his prosthetics give him a clear competitive advantage.
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/ 12 February 2008
Rape and sexual violence against children and women are spreading in conflict zones in Africa like an epidemic, the United Nations children’s agency Unicef said on Tuesday. Rape was particularly prevalent in countries suffering both conflicts and natural disasters.
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/ 12 February 2008
Russia and China have proposed a new treaty to ban the use of weapons in space, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a conference on disarmament in Geneva on Tuesday. ”Without preventing an arms race in space, international security will be wanting,” Lavrov told the conference.
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/ 11 February 2008
Paintings worth about -million were stolen from a Zurich museum in an armed robbery in the second dramatic art theft in the area within days, police said on Monday. Oil paintings by Cezanne, Degas, van Gogh and Monet were among those stolen in broad daylight on Sunday from the private Buehrle Collection in Zurich.
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/ 30 January 2008
Frequent power failures in South Africa won’t affect the 2010 Soccer World Cup, the man who is expected to be the country’s next president said on Tuesday. African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma met Fifa president Sepp Blatter after attending the World Economic Forum in Davos last week.
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/ 28 January 2008
Wikia, a profit-oriented company set up by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, is aiming for a public listing in the long term. ”For Wikipedia itself I think we will always be a charity … but for Wikia, my for-profit company, yes, absolutely,” Wales said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos last week.
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/ 28 January 2008
Serious concerns were raised in Davos last week about the ability of the Chinese government to spy on the country’s 500-million cellphone users. China’s biggest cellphone company stunned delegates by revealing that the company had unlimited access to the personal data of its customers and handed it over to Chinese security officials when demanded.
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/ 27 January 2008
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Jacob Zuma, who survived rape and corruption charges to become the president-in-waiting, has harsh words for Kenya and Nigeria, where recent elections were marred by alleged fraud, violence and disputed results. ”What has happened in Kenya I think is absolutely not right,” Zuma said on Saturday.