Addis Ababa - The African Union (AU) will press for a negotiated peace settlement in the troubled Darfur region in western Sudan, rather than back the warrants of arrest slapped on the Sudanese President Hassan el-Bashir and others accused by the International Criminal Court (ICC), the AU Commission (AUC) Deputy Chairperson, Mr Erastus Mwencha, said in an exclusive interview with PANA here Friday.Sounds like a good idea on paper.
NEW YORK (AP) — Most Republican governors have broken with their GOP colleagues in Congress and are pushing for passage of President Barack Obama's economic aid plan that would send billions to states for education, public works and health care.I'm split on whether this plan will work, but Obama certainly has good intentions.
TAMPA, Fla. — Outside Maxim’s Super Bowl party Friday night, on the other side of the velvet rope, police officers and burly bouncers shooed unwelcome visitors. They also guarded the door, for a few hours, from a troubled economy.Bush's economic policy was thrown out by bouncers.
KHARTOUM (AFP) — Sudan on Thursday accused Chad of sending troops across their border to deliver supplies to a rebel group in the war-torn Darfur region.
Unions and liberal activist groups are pressuring key Republican senators to get on board with the Obama administration's economic stimulus proposal, after every Republican in the House voted against the plan Wednesday.Well, the support of every Democrat in the House was enough to get the bill passed there. Obama should have no problem, but the GOP's support wouldn't hurt.
Elephants will remain at the Los Angeles Zoo, the City Council decided today, voting 11 to 4 to complete construction of the six-acre, $42-million Pachyderm Forest that opponents said is too small and too expensive.Beats letting all those elephants get poached.
Reporting from Springfield, Ill. -- Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich will come to Springfield to make the closing argument in his impeachment trial Thursday, state Senate President John J. Cullerton said.Oh Blago, the news media will miss your antics after you get kicked out of your comfy position. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Blagojevich, who has boycotted the impeachment trial so far, will not take questions from senators, Cullerton said.
Jan. 28 (Bloomberg) -- More than 9,000 people have been displaced in Sudan’s Darfur region as a result of aerial bombing and fighting in the past two weeks, the United Nations said.
Sudanese government aircraft have been bombing rebel positions near the northern state capital of El-Fasher and the southern town of Muhajiriya for the past few days, the UN-led peacekeeping mission in Darfur, Unamid, said in statements. Ground battles between government forces and rebels from the Justice and Equality Movement have also taken place in both locations, it said.
“The security situation in Darfur remains tense,” Unamid said in an e-mailed statement today. “The Unamid camps in Gereda and Muhajiriya, South Darfur, continue to face an increase in the number of civilians seeking refuge as a result of recent clashes.”
The UN says that as many as 300,000 people have died in the region in the past six years, mainly through disease and malnutrition, while violence has forced 3 million more to flee their homes. The government puts the death toll at about 10,000.
In the town of Muhajiriya, 3,000 people have gathered around the peacekeeping base seeking shelter and protection, Unamid said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. About 2,000 people fled their homes and have arrived in El-Fasher and in other places along the border between North and South Darfur states, according to Zeljko Nikolich of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Another 4,000 are on their way, he said by phone from El-Fasher yesterday. Nikolich said OCHA received the figures in reports that could not be verified.
Gained Territory
JEM claims to have made gains in the Darfur area since a battle in Muhajiriya on Jan. 15, after a battle which dislodged a faction of the Sudan Liberation Army led by Minni Minnawi.
John Updike, a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, whose jeweled prose and quicksilver intellect made him for decades one of America's foremost literary figures, died today. He was 76.I can't say I'm familiar with Updike's work, but I'd love to check it out someday. Rest in peace.
Mr. Updike, a long-time resident of Beverly Farms, died of lung cancer at Hospice of the North Shore in Danvers, said his wife, Martha.
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — For weeks, residents of Illinois have read snippets of what their governor, Rod R. Blagojevich, is supposed to have said on his telephone — profanity-laced remarks about how the opportunity to choose a senator to replace President Obama was “golden,” and how he saw himself as a sports agent peddling an athlete around town.Remember that one guy you went to school with who was always doing stupid stuff to get attention?
But on Tuesday, for the first time, a small handful of the phone calls are expected to be played aloud in public here as part of Mr. Blagojevich’s impeachment trial in the state capital. Finally, lawmakers say, everyone will hear the governor’s voice, hear his tones, hear, they say, what he really meant.
WASHINGTON —President Obama spent more than two hours in closed-door meetings with Congressional Republicans on Tuesday afternoon, outlining his economic stimulus plan and fielding an array of critical questions, before he urged legislators to “put politics aside and do the American people’s business right now.”Republicans aren't gonna put politics aside when they think you're a socialist, Barry. But hey, at least you're playing their game and cutting taxes.
Several Republicans said they would like the tax cuts to move more swiftly, according to people in the room, but the president replied that $275 billion was the most he would be willing to negotiate.
Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Rebels in Sudan’s western Darfur region said they have taken control of two southern towns while the United Nations reported that the government resumed aerial bombardments in the north.
The Justice and Equality Movement, the most powerful rebel faction in Darfur, said today its fighters captured the towns of Sheiria and Khazan Djedid after clashes with government forces 25 kilometers (15 miles) northeast of Muhajiriya, which the rebels occupied this month.
WASHINGTON - The Senate voted to confirm Timothy Geithner, President Barack Obama's pick for treasury secretary, Monday evening, after delaying a vote because Geithner failed to pay some of his federal taxes in 2001.Is got?
Under normal circumstances, failing to pay your taxes is a surefire way to torpedo your nomination to a Cabinet position.
But the race to halt the economic slide before the midterm elections in 2010 is so tight that President Barack Obama's choice for treasury secretary, New York Federal Reserve Bank chief Timothy Geithner, is got a pass on his tax troubles from the president and most senators, Democrats and Republicans.
President Barack Obama has called for the US to become energy independent, saying its reliance on foreign oil and global warming posed threats.Damn straight, Barry.
The Sudanese military has launched an air and ground assault on insurgents' positions in South Darfur, according to a rebel group.Here's the really disgusting part of this article...
The UN says up to 300,000 people in Darfur have died and more than 2.2 million have been displaced since the uprising against Sudan's Arab-dominated government started in February 2003.
Khartoum says just 10,000 have died. It says the scale of the suffering has been exaggerated for political reasons.
KHARTOUM, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Sudanese government planes bombed a key town in south Darfur on Saturday, a week after its seizure by Darfuri JEM rebels, peacekeepers and insurgents said.The full article has lots of info about the Darfur War's current status, lots of numbers and such. But yeah, this sucks.
GENEVA (AFP) — Sudanese forces broke international law when they opened fire on a group of displaced people in Darfur last August, killing 33 of them, including women and children, a UN investigation concluded Friday.Still no word on if the ICC will arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for crimes against humanity.
"Government security forces committed violations of international human rights law against the civilian population of Kalma IDP camp," the joint investigation by the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN-African peacekeeping mission in Darfur said.
"It was established that the security forces used lethal force in an unnecessary, disproportionate and therefore unlawful manner," it added.
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama was at Hillary Clinton's side Thursday after she took charge of the State Department amid cheering staffers on a day when foreign policy underscored everything, from the new president signing an order to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the announcement of new special envoys to deal with crises abroad.The question is, should suspected terrorists have the same rights as Americans? I'm split.
"I believe with all of my heart that this is a new era for America," Secretary of State Clinton said to a raucous, cheering crowd of about 1,000 people in the main lobby of the department's headquarters.
Obama visited later in the day to emphasize his administration's commitment to diplomacy. Standing by her side in the ornate Ben Franklin Room, Clinton introduced former Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell, D-Maine, as a special envoy for the Middle East.
Former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke was announced as a special adviser on Afghanistan and Pakistan. The posts are the first of several new special envoys the administration plans to create to deal with particularly vexing problems abroad.
Obama on Thursday formally ordered a re-evaluation of how terrorist suspects are treated by U.S. law, including a decision to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within a year.
At a ceremony today, President Barack Obama laid out his ethics and pay rules and Vice President Joe Biden poked Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who flubbed the president's oath of office.You were poked by Joe Biden.
(01-22) 04:00 PST Washington - -- President Obama packed symbolism, ceremony and action in a whirlwind first day in office that began with a prayer service at the National Cathedral and ended with a closed meeting with military commanders at which he directed a reassessment of U.S. strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan, a key campaign promise.
LONDON (Reuters) - The Financial Services Authority (FSA), the country's financial watchdog, said on Wednesday it expects banks to reform, but not shed their "originate and distribute" model.Funny how when America's economy tanks, so does much of the world's.
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - War ends in the Gaza Strip, a new U.S. president is sworn in, and suddenly this week there is new talk about talks between sworn enemies Israel and Hamas.omg negotiating with terrorists obama sux
US President Barack Obama has issued executive orders on government ethics and transparency as part of a packed first full day in office.I'm all for transparency, especially if it's letting taxpayers know where the money's going. Just do the military a favor and keep our strategy on the down low.
The measures include curbs on lobbying and a pay freeze for senior White House staff. Federal employees will have to sign up to new ethics procedures.
The new president said he was beginning "a new era of openness" in government.
US President Barack Obama has used his inaugural address to pledge a "new era of responsibility" in a time of crisis at home and abroad.President Obama. I can't believe I'm writing that. I'm glad that I'm able to.
Mr Obama spoke after taking the oath of office as America's 44th president - and its first African-American leader.
More than one million people gathered in the National Mall in a wintry Washington DC, to see Mr Obama take the oath shortly after 1200 (1700 GMT).
He later joined a parade, smiling and waving en route to the White House.
Mr Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama travelled in the armoured presidential limousine as the motorcade travelled at walking-pace towards 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Crowds cheered and waved as the cars rolled slowly past.
Then the motorcade stopped and the couple stepped out of the car and walked, waving to the hundreds of wellwishers lining the route - many of whom had waited 10 hours in the cold.
After climbing back inside the limousine - so heavily armoured it is known as The Beast - the president and first lady emerged once again amid loud cheers and screams from the crowd.
The BBC's Gavin Hewitt, in the crowd on the parade route, said the happy and smiling Mr and Mrs Obama finally seemed able to celebrate their achievement.
Many thousands of people who braved the cold to stand for hours in the streets to catch a glimpse of Mr Obama will be able to go home happy, our correspondent says.
After reviewing the inaugural parade as it marches past the White House, the couple were due to attend a series of balls.
Meanwhile, Senator Ted Kennedy, whose collapse during an inaugural lunch at Congress threatened to mar the celebrations, is said to be feeling well again after suffering "simple fatigue".
New team
Barack Hussein Obama became America's newest president at a ceremony on the steps of the Capitol building where, his hand on a Bible, he repeated the traditional oath of office, promising to "preserve, protect and defend" the United States.
In his speech, he acknowledged that he faced many serious challenges but pledged to begin the work of "rebuilding America".
After seven hectic days in the Middle East, the UN chief is heading back to New York.Two ceasefires? Good work, Mr. Ban. Too bad Darfur's a tougher nut to crack.
Ban Ki-moon's aim when he left was to press for a ceasefire in Gaza, and call for humanitarian aid to be delivered to those in need. He returns with two ceasefires, and no Egyptian-negotiated truce agreement between Israel and Hamas.
