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Gold prices rose Monday, hitting fresh 24-year highs as investor interest in the yellow metal booms. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, spot gold was up $7.70 at $527 an ounce in morning trading. In European trading, spot gold rose as high as $541.30 an ounce. Spot gold is trading at levels not seen since 1981. Traders said the contract is testing resistance at $541.80 and $543.20, and that resistance would likely be a short-term top followed by a dip to $523.10 and $531.00. Long-term charts say that if the contract breaks through $543.20, however, it would be going for...

Veterinarians have treated an elderly lion in Rome's zoo for arthritis by inserting some 50 gold pellets into the animal's muscles, the zoo's chief veterinarian said today. The Asian lion, named Bellamy, had difficulty walking until the procedure two weeks ago in which 24-karat gold pellets each measuring 1 millimeter (0.04 inches) in diameter were inserted, Klaus Gunther Friedrich said. "We implantd gold into his spinal muscles and near the joints," he said, adding that gold helps to relieve muscle contraction around painful areas. "The lion is getting old, if we hadn't intervened the situation would have got worse," crippling...

Ghosts of Rwanda: The Failure of the African Union in Darfur; An international abandonment of the "Responsibility to Protect" (Part 1 of 2) By Eric Reeves Nov 13, 2005 — The ghosts of Rwanda are stirring ever more ominously in Darfur. Differences in geography, history, and genocidal means do less and less to obscure the ghastly similarities between international failure in 1994 and the world’s current willingness to allow ethnically-targeted human destruction to proceed essentially unchecked. To be sure, the Hutu genocidaires in Rwanda accomplished their frenzied destruction of perhaps 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in approximately 100 days; the...

EL FASHER, NORTH DARFUR, 8 June (IRIN) - As he peers down the barrel of his ancient, Russian-made machine gun, Emanuel Ndagijimana epitomises the constraints and expectations faced by the African Union's (AU) first-ever peacekeeping force. At 22, the Rwandan soldier is one of 2,370 AU peacekeepers helping to maintain a shaky ceasefire in Darfur, western Sudan, the scene of what the UN has called "one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters". Around him are peacekeepers from Chad, Senegal, Kenya and South Africa. The AU force is an army that has begged and borrowed its way into existence. But the...

CAIRO [MENL] -- The African Union plans to deploy an additional 5,000 troops to Sudan to stabilize the war-torn province of Darfour. The United States and other NATO allies intend to help airlift the AU troops to Darfour over the next few months. U.S. officials said the air transports would be ready by July 2005. "I hope some can start to come in this month and [the rest] be brought in over the summer," U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said. "But ultimately it's an African Union decision."

A new Islamic advocacy group in Boca Raton is under scrutiny for its ties to William W. Baker, a former chairman of the neo-Nazi political party of presidential candidate David Duke who was run out of town last year when he attempted to speak at Florida Atlantic University. Local Jewish and civic leaders said Friday they were alarmed that the Assadiq Islamic Education Foundation, whose headquarters are listed at 831 E. Palmetto Park Road in Boca, had invited Baker back to Boca as featured speaker at an April 30 banquet at the Boca Marriott. Invited by Muslim students to speak...

The College Republicans promoted the "Carnivore Initiative," an effort to get students to eat more meat, on the Quad Wednesday with wings, ribs and a pledge-singing campaign. "I will celebrate the fact that I am on top of the food chain," read part of the pledge, which 82 people signed, according to CR President Mike Inganamort. "We had a really successful year this year, and this gives us a chance to give back - in meat," he said. Secretary Jackie Puente said the initiative is a response to vegetarian and vegan movements on campus that she said have deprived students...

AU's Campus Republicans Fence Michelle Malkin Out By Richard Leiby Sunday, September 12, 2004; Page D03 Flame-throwing syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin, whose latest book supports the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, was all set to appear at American University tomorrow as the year's kickoff speaker for the College Republicans. But her topic proved too hot for them to handle. Abruptly canceling her speech last week, Mike Inganamort, president of the campus Republicans, told Malkin in an e-mail: "Our first priority for the next two months is ensuring President Bush be re-elected. Staff members for the Bush campaign...

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) on Monday called for a "Green Revolution" to feed Africa's hungry, saying the world's poorest continent must kick-start food output if it is to achieve long-term peace. Annan told a food conference ahead of this week's African Union summit in the Ethiopian capital Africa was unlikely to reach its target of halving hunger by 2015, leaving millions doomed to chronic poverty and vulnerable to everything from natural disasters to the global AIDS (news - web sites) epidemic. "Let us generate a uniquely African Green Revolution - a...

Weblog Did the ACLU Disrupt My Talk at American University? March 15, 2004 Did the ACLU Disrupt My Talk at American University? When I spoke at American University in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 20, 2004, a number of those in the audience engaged in a variety of antics, as described by the school newspaper, the Eagle: As Pipes took the podium at approximately 8:15 p.m., almost a third of the crowd of 150 took out black pieces of cloth and, in unison, wrapped the cloth around their mouths as a sort of "gag." This was apparently meant as a form...

Dr. Daniel Pipes Tuesday, January 20, 2003 at 8:15 PM McDowell Formal Lounge Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum, a member of the presidentially appointed board of the U.S. Institute of Peace, and a prize winning columnist for the New York Sun and the Jerusalem Post. MSNBC describes him as one of the best known "Mideast policy luminaries." He has taught at the University of Chicago, Harvard University, and the U.S. Naval War College. He has served in various capacities at the Departments of State and Defense. Please join us as we kick off KPU's spring...

The appointment of Robert Mugabe to a senior post in the African Union may look like a snub to President Bush; in reality, though, it is a snub to the wretched people of Zimbabwe. The AU seems set to go the way of its predecessor, the Organisation for African Unity, in becoming a haven for crooks and tyrants. This is partly because, in common with other international bureaucracies, it is not answerable to anyone, leaving its members free to arrange things in their own interest. Which is precisely the problem with many of its member states. Governments that do not...

<p>Area college leaders applauded the U.S. Supreme Court's twin decisions yesterday regarding the University of Michigan's use of race in its admissions policies, saying the rulings offer a pragmatic way to achieve student diversity and a 25-year time limit to revisit affirmative action.</p>

An initiative aimed at bolstering homegrown African peacekeeping efforts has been welcomed in a continent that has traditionally relied on outside help when its many conflicts have gotten out of hand. Military commanders from numerous African countries agreed recently to establish a standby peacekeeping force within the next few years, designed to intervene in conflicts like those currently underway in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Liberia and Burundi. Jan Kamenju, a retired army lieutenant-colonel now based at the Security Research and Information Center in Nairobi said it was certainly possible to establish the envisaged force, although the process would...

<p>NEW YORK — As time runs out for Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to disarm or face a military thrashing from the United States and its allies, "pro-war" — or "anti-anti-war" — Americans are saying they have had enough of the recent protests in various cities at home and abroad.</p>

The drama of hunger in southern Africa is proceeding along its inexorable course. In Zimbabwe alone, five million people face food shortages. And this is despite the fact that Zimbabwe, leaving aside oil-rich Libya, is probably the richest country in Africa. The excellent infrastructure inherited by Robert Mugabe when he took over Zimbabwe in 1980 would have been adequate to overcome the current shortages. But at this point the policies he is pursuing can only be described as paranoid, while holding on to power seems to be his sole concern. His regime has now issued an ultimatum ordering all white...

African Union: a fact file one and a half cols DURBAN - The African Union (AU), which comes into being at a summit this week in Durban that marks the demise of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) after 39 years, is loosely modelled on the European Union and embodies a similar aim of continental integration. It will be an altogether more powerful body than the 53-nation OAU and will start life under the chairmanship of South African President Thabo Mbeki. The brainchild of Libyan leader Moamer Gaddafi, the AU had a protracted gestation period. Its constitution was signed at...

AU born amid rumbles of division Joern Staby in Durban THE African Union was born in Durban yesterday amid firm pledges from most African leaders to fight poverty, corruption and war by setting the continent on the path of peace, prosperity, development and good governance. Waves of applause greeted leaders and dignitaries as they arrived in Durban's Absa stadium, reaching a deafening crescendo when President Thabo Mbeki and former President Nelson Mandela entered. The colourful crowd of around 25 000 reserved its biggest cheer for Mandela, erupting into chants of "Nelson Mandela, Nelson Mandela" as Africa's elder statesman took his...

Jul 9, 10:55 am ET By Manoah Esipisu and Nicholas KotchDURBAN, South Africa (Reuters) - Africa's new political union was launched Tuesday with the continent's economic powerhouse, South Africa, firmly in the driving seat.At least 40 of the continent's 53 presidents and monarchs were in the port resort of Durban to see the launch of the African Union (AU) with President Thabo Mbeki as chairman for its first year."Through our actions let us proclaim to the world that this is a continent on the rise," Mbeki told some 20,000 people in a sports stadium before a helicopter fly-past and a...