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Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has been elected as chairman of the 53-nation African Union. ... A BBC correspondent at the summit says Col Gaddafi was seen to be the obvious choice, but some delegates are uneasy about his nomination. AU spokeswoman Habiba Mejri-Sheikh said Col Gaddafi was elected "by the heads of state in a closed-door session, for a one-year period". ... On Sunday, the summit debated a Libyan-backed proposal to set up a single government - the United States of Africa. In a compromise, the summit agreed to transform the African Union Commission, which oversees the body, into an...

MAVERICK priest Father Peter Kennedy says he will lead a breakaway congregation if Brisbane's catholic Archbishop forces him to leave St Mary's Church.There are fears that exclusion from the historic South Brisbane property will be the final act in a long-running dispute that has reached the Vatican. The dispute has attracted national and international attention because it represents the battle between conservative and less traditional forces within the Catholic Church. There are more Roman Catholics in Australia than any other religious group. Each week, St Mary's attracts large congregations while many more orthodox Catholic parishes struggle to fill pews. In...

"Sir, you have done India proud." That was how the anchorman of a television channel in Delhi addressed the Indian navy chief, Admiral Sureesh Mehta, on the victorious sea battle by warship INS Tabar with would-be hijackers as dusk was falling on Tuesday evening in the Gulf of Aden. Those words would have made Sir Francis Drake, the 16th-century British navigator and slaver-politician of the Elizabethan era, truly envious. Sir Francis had bigger claims to fame in a life cut short by dysentery while attacking San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1595. Unsurprisingly, the patriotic Indian media dutifully expressed its gratitude...

MUTSAMUDU (Comoros) - Tanzanian troops mandated by the African Union (AU) entered Tuesday morning in the capital of Comorian island of Anjouan Mutsamudu, as part of the operation to overthrow the president of the island Mohamed Bacar , witnesses reported to the AFP. Tanzanian soldiers were visible in the city centre where they have not encountered any resistance from forces loyal to the authorities of Anjouan deemed illegal by the federal government and the AU. The arrival of soldiers from the AU has been greeted with cries of joy inhabitants of Mutsamudu, the witnesses said. The "Democracy in the...

MORONI, Comoros (AFP) — African Union troops will arrive Monday in the Comoros before launching a military offensive against the island of Anjouan and its rebellious leader, the government of the Indian Ocean nation said. Anjouan leader Mohamed Bacar is at loggerheads with Comoros' President Ahmed Abdallah Sambi after he held local elections last year against the orders of the government and the AU. "In the next 24 hours, we will see soldiers and military equipment arrive at our airports," government spokesman Abdourahim Said Bakar told AFP. Libya, Senegal, Sudan and Tanzania, which chairs the AU, have offered to supply...

A caller to "The Chris Core Show" this morning (heard on 630 WMAL in Washington, D.C. from 9:00 - Noon) told Chris that the majority of the students assembled at the Obama - Kennedy event yesterday (Mon., 1/28/08)at American University in Tenleytown, DC were told by their teachers to attend the event and that "roll call" would be taken there. The caller (named "Lee") said that many of the students were there for 3 hours prior to the start of the event and that many of them were non too happy about it. He spoke to a few of them,...

KHARTOUM, Sudan - An American diplomat and his driver were shot to death Tuesday in the Sudanese capital, the U.S. Embassy said, a day after a joint African Union-United Nations force took over peacekeeping in Sudan's Darfur region. It was not immediately known if the motive for the attack was political or a random crime. "This afternoon, the American officer succumbed to his injuries and passed away," said Walter Braunohler, the spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum. Braunohler said the diplomat, whose name was not released, worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development. The Sudanese Foreign Ministry identified...

KHARTOUM -- At least 10 African Union (AU) troops have been killed and 50 reported missing from their base in Sudan's western Darfur region, in the bloodiest attack on the peacekeeping force, the AU said Sunday. "At least 10 soldiers were killed, seven wounded, and dozens are missing," African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) spokesman Noureddine Mezni said of the attack Saturday night on Haskanita base in southern Darfur. An AU statement said 50 personnel were missing after a "sustained attack by a large-and-organized group of heavily-armed men," who broke into the camp with 30 vehicles, forcing AU troops to...

NEW YORK — The U.N. Security Council yesterday authorized a new peacekeeping mission for Darfur, a complex military effort with 26,000 African and U.N. forces under a single command that will be the largest ever attempted by the world body. The resolution setting up the mission also calls for an immediate cease-fire in the Darfur region of Western Sudan and sets a timetable for the force to be fully deployed by early 2008. No U.S. troops will participate directly in the mission, but they likely will help move troops and materiel. "We call in particular on [Sudanese] President [Omar] Bashir...

Blair threatens force over Darfur Julian Borger Tuesday March 27, 2007 Guardian Unlimited )UK) African Union soldiers on patrol in the town of Muhujariya in south Darfur. Photograph: Khaled el Fiqi/EPA Tony Blair is pushing the United Nations to declare a no-fly zone over Darfur, enforced if necessary by the bombing of Sudanese military airfields used for raids on the province, the Guardian has learned. The controversial initiative comes as a classified new report by a UN panel of experts alleges Sudan has violated UN resolutions by moving arms into Darfur, conducting overflights and disguising its military planes as UN...

AUBURN, Ala. — The game starts in the lazy morning hours against a seemingly pedestrian team with a freshman quarterback and double rushing threats. No, Auburn is not having nightmarish flashbacks to the Arkansas debacle. The fifth-ranked Tigers instead face that benign-looking scenario for a second time Saturday when Georgia visits for a 11:30 a.m. (CST) kickoff. The first time was disastrous, with Arkansas stunning a still-groggy crowd with a fast start and dominating 27-10 back on Oct. 7. That experience has made the Tigers (9-1, 5-1 Southeastern Conference) especially wary for this one, even as they insist that a...

Sudan accepts Blair's five-point peace plan After two hours of talks and a warning on sanctions, Khartoum agrees to give African Union troops freedom of movement in Darfur Patrick Wintour in Khartoum Thursday October 7, 2004 The Guardian Sudan bowed to a five-point plan tabled by Tony Blair during talks in Khartoum yesterday, which included accepting the free movement of 3,500 African Union troops as ceasefire monitors in Darfur province. Mr Blair also urged Sudan to return its troops to barracks and accept a deadline of December 31 for an agreement on devolution for the south of the country. He...

The United Nations has described the situation in Darfur as the world's gravest humanitarian crisis. In 2004, then-secretary of state Colin Powell called it genocide. On Tuesday, a US Congressional delegation that had visited Sudan told UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, "The issue of Darfur challenges the conscience of our country." So what is being done about it? Darfur is a province in the southwest of Sudan, an Arab country. The area had a population of about 6 million - about 2 million have fled to neighboring Chad, while about 400,000 were killed by the Sudanese military and the Janjaweed militias...

Brian Steidle's only weapons against mass killing were his pen, paper, and camera. The former Marine captain catalogs what they caught in Darfur, Sudan, with quick-fire urgency: toddlers with their faces smashed in, men castrated and left to bleed to death, charred bodies of villagers locked in huts later burned down. Charged only with monitoring ceasefire violations in the war-wracked region, he soon grew weary of playing spectator to genocide. So after six months, the 28-year-old Mr. Steidle returned to the United States a month ago and launched his own offensive to stop the killing. In mid-March he criss-crossed Washington,...

Could it be that racism isn't the real cause of Cronulla? ___ Cronulla, Cronulla and Cronulla dominates the newspapers this morning – the Falconio verdict and the Hicks judgement came in too late. So let's look at some of the underlying causes of the disturbances on Sydney's southern beaches. First, there are small matters of geography that people outside Sydney probably aren't aware of – what a self-contained area Cronulla itself is and the sense of identity that this engenders. Then there's the whole issue of the Sutherland Shire area – the Shire, always – and the sense of difference...

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."