China has cracked a terrorist group plotting to kidnap foreigners during the Beijing Olympics, police said on Thursday. The announcement follows the revelation of two other terror plots last month, but there has been scepticism over whether Beijing is inflating a terror threat to justify tighter control on dissent ahead of the Olympics.
Israel warned on Thursday it will retaliate against Hamas, blaming the Palestinian Islamist group for a deadly explosion of violence in the Gaza Strip that followed a month of relative calm. Israeli authorities said they temporarily shut down the Nahal Oz fuel terminal following Wednesday’s attack.
A new war could break out between Eritrea and Ethiopia if the United Nations peacekeeping mission that has been prevented from patrolling both sides of the border withdraws entirely, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned on Wednesday. The two neighbours have been feuding over their border since Eritrea gained independence in 1993.
Uganda’s top rebel leader, Joseph Kony, was expected to sign an historic peace deal on Thursday to end one of Africa’s longest and most brutal civil conflicts. The Lord’s Resistance Army chief was due in the southern Sudan jungle town of Ri-Kwangba to initial an agreement that is to be signed separately by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni four days later.
South Africa should use its powerful position on the United Nations Security Council to put the Zimbabwean election saga on the international body’s agenda, Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille said on Wednesday. Zille, who is currently in New York, said in a statement she would meet South Africa’s ambassador to the United Nations.
Thousands of rebels massed in Sudan are about to attack neighbouring Chad in an attempt to destabilise it, Chad’s defence minister said on Wednesday. ”Once again the regime of [Sudanese President] Omar al-Bashir … is massing, training and heavily arming thousands of its mercenaries,” said Defence Minister Mahamat Ali Abdallah.
Kenyan leaders were on Wednesday under pressure to resume talks on forming a coalition government in a bid to end a devastating political crisis, a day after hundreds demonstrated to demand a new Cabinet. The much-delayed unveiling of a national-unity government is a key step in implementing a power-sharing deal aimed at quelling deadly violence.
Rising food prices could spark worldwide unrest and threaten political stability, the United Nations’s top humanitarian official warned on Tuesday after two days of rioting in Egypt over the doubling of prices of basic foods in a year and protests in other parts of the world.
Two staff members of the United Nations refugee agency narrowly escaped an ambush on their vehicle by armed militiamen in Somalia’s northern breakaway region of Puntland, the agency said in a statement on Tuesday. The vehicle was carrying a foreign aid worker and a local driver.
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.
The top United States general and diplomat in Iraq testify in politically charged hearings in Congress on Tuesday, and face a grilling from three senators vying to inherit the war as the next US president. General David Petraeus and ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker will appear to update progress in the war.
Zimbabwe awaited a key court ruling on Tuesday, which could order an end to the 10-day wait for presidential election results as pressure on veteran leader Robert Mugabe mounts. The High Court was due to rule on a petition by the opposition demanding the electoral commission immediately declare the outcome of the March 29 polls.
Girls as young as 11 have suffered rape by Sudanese government forces and armed groups across Darfur more than five years after war began there, a rights organisation said on Monday. Human Rights Watch said sexual violence is rife in Darfur, where neither Sudanese security forces nor international peacekeepers are properly protecting women and girls.
As climate-change guilt among tourists grows, hotels and resorts are finding they need to do more to please the green consumer than simply ask them to re-use their towels. Undersea air-cooling systems, intelligent lighting and spas constructed entirely from mud are all being employed to woo tourists concerned about their carbon footprint.
African governments are nervously confronting a mounting wave of often deadly social unrest caused by the soaring cost of food and fuel. Forty people died during price riots in Cameroon in February. There also have been deadly troubles in Côte d’Ivoire and Mauritania and other violent demonstrations in Senegal and Burkina Faso — where a nationwide strike against price rises is to start on Tuesday.
Dozens of ex-combatants from Sierra Leone’s 10-year civil war gathered on Saturday for ”healing ceremonies” to make peace with victims of the brutal conflict that left thousands dead. ”Small-scale ceremonies have already been held in other parts in the district,” said Beatrice Allie, one of the coordinators of the project.
The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) gave a gloomy report on Saturday on prospects for the world economy to a dozen leaders debating how to respond to global financial turmoil. Dominique Strauss-Kahn told a high-powered forum that most of the downside risks to the world economy feared six months ago had now become reality.
United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon warned in a new report on Friday that without adequate air and transport equipment the joint United Nations-African Union mission in Darfur would be severely hampered. Ban said the deployment of two mixed UN-AU battalions to shore up the Darfur peacekeeping operation, known as Unamid, was being accelerated.
There have been numerous disagreements during a week of intense climate-change talks in Bangkok but there is one point all sides agree on — a long, tough road lies ahead. The five-day negotiations stretched past midnight on Friday before reaching a deal aimed solely at setting up more talks.
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.
The South African government needs to ratify an international treaty on preventing torture, South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) chief executive Tseliso Thipanyane said on Friday. Thipanyane said he is concerned about the government’s ”terrible attitude” towards the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture.
More than 160 nations agreed in Bangkok on Friday to consider how to reduce rapidly growing greenhouse gas emissions from air and sea travel, in an early move towards a new global-warming treaty. The accord was the first hurdle in succeeding the Kyoto agreement in the fight against climate change.
A top United Nations official warned on Friday of ”very grave” humanitarian problems in Iraq, including a lack of food and the internal displacement of more than two million people. ”There are very grave humanitarian problems. The most serious is the internal displacement of the Iraqis,” UN Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes said.
Developing countries and environmental groups accused the World Bank on Friday of trying to seize control of the billions of dollars of aid that will be used to tackle climate change in the next four decades. ”The World Bank’s foray into climate change has gone down like a lead balloon,” Friends of the Earth campaigner Tom Picken said.
A leadership meeting of President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party will decide on Friday to contest a runoff election against opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, a senior official said. Referring to a meeting of the Zanu-PF politburo, a senior party member told Reuters: ”I have no doubt the resolution will be in favour of a run-off, I have no doubt about that.
For Koula Hadjipieris and Hassan Chirakli the wall of hate came down at 10am on Thursday. That’s when Hadjipieris called her lifelong Turkish Cypriot friend and said: ”I’m coming over.” They were words that in Nicosia, the last divided capital in Europe, Chirakli had hoped to hear all his adult life.
Kenya’s feuding political factions on Thursday announced the deadlock over a coalition government had been broken and that the new line-up would be announced on Sunday. The breakthrough came after a meeting between President Mwai Kibaki and prime minister-designate Raila Odinga amid weeks of bitter wrangling.
Torture and inhumane treatment in prisons was ”a casualty of Africa’s war on crime” international human rights expert Mumba Malila told a conference in Cape Town on Thursday. Malila is special rapporteur on prisons for the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
Greek and Turkish Cypriots on Thursday pulled down barricades that have separated them for half a century, reopening Ledra Street, a potent symbol of Cyprus’s ethnic partition. The highly symbolic gesture comes as the two communities prepare talks to end the Mediterranean island’s division.
Air travel is booming as the world’s population grows and fares fall, but its impact on the Earth’s sensitive climate must be taken into account in any new global-warming pact, green groups say. More than 900 delegates flew into Bangkok this week for a meeting on global warming, spewing about 4 181 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Zimbabweans waited anxiously on Thursday for an end to a deafening official silence over the outcome of their presidential election, after the opposition took control of Parliament. The country’s electoral commission wrapped up final results on the parliamentary contest in the early hours, in which President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party lost its majority.
Kenya’s opposition on Wednesday accused the government of trying to spoil a power-sharing deal by seeking to vet new Cabinet ministers. President Mwai Kibaki and opposition chief Raila Odinga are at odds over the shape and size of a coalition Cabinet created under a pact to solve a post-election crisis that degenerated into ethnic violence.