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U.S. President Barack Obama issued a new executive order last week to fight human trafficking, touting his administration's handling of the issue. "When a little boy is kidnapped, turned into a child soldier, forced to kill or be killed -- that's slavery," Obama said in a speech at the Clinton Global Initiative. "It is barbaric, and it is evil, and it has no place in a civilized world. Now, as a nation, we've long rejected such cruelty." But for the third year in a row, Obama has waived almost all U.S. sanctions that would punish certain countries that use child...

North Carolina is a verdant state with long, sandy beaches. Its humid summers make air conditioning desirable: in fact, its 10 million people use more electricity than Indonesia's 237 million. Related A soldier maintains vigil near an oil reservoir in South Sudan in 2010. Sudan lost three-quarters of its oil production after its separation.Roberto Schmidt / AF Comment Messy Sudan divorce is not pouring oil on troubled waters Comment King Coal's return bad news for Big Oil and greener energy â–  Spotlight on Iraq as Opec meets "North Carolina is unique of all the states," says Daniel Fine of the...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered his ministers to accelerate efforts to deport citizens of South Sudan, the Ivory Coast, Ghana and Ethiopia who are living in Israel illegally on Sunday. Speaking at Sunday's cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said that while it is not possible to expel citizens of Eritrea and Sudan, whose lives would be at risk in their home countries, holding facilities for them must be built in the Negev as quickly as possible. (Snip) Sudan is classified as an enemy country, another reason that infiltrators can't be returned there, he said, while Eritrea, though it has diplomatic relations with

THE DEAD BABY MEDIA If the text on that one is too small for you, it's a CNN piece headlined, "Why the Syrian regime is killing babies." There's not much to add to that. The Syrian regime may be killing babies, but CNN killed journalism. With some help from the New York Times, the Washington Post and the BBC. Anyone who has spent time in the Middle East knows quite well that parading around dead bodies is part of the Muslim ceremony of rallying for the next attack. These aren't funerals, these are corpse parades and the corpses are often...

Sudan war mirrors region's oil conflicts Khartoum, Sudan Apr 18, 2012 The brewing war between Sudan and the fledgling state of South Sudan is a battle for oil and there are other potential conflicts in the Middle East and Africa that could signal supply disruption whatever happens in the U.S.-Iran face-off in the Persian Gulf. Libya, one of North Africa's main producers, seems to heading for a new civil war only six months after Moammar Gadhafi's regime was overthrown with rival militias struggling for control of the country's oil riches. But, more importantly, there's a growing power struggle in Iraq,...

After ethnically cleansing its over 500,000 Christians, the rogue Arab Islamist regime of the Sudan has declared war on the Christian and black South Sudan, which broke away last year after peace talks under UN auspices supposedly ended the civil war, in which an estimated 2 million, mostly civilians in the south and in Darfur were killed.

A prominent member of Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP) says the country is officially in a state of war with South Sudan. Rabie Abdelati Obeid condemned as unacceptable the “illegal invasion” of its territory after forces from South Sudan seized the key disputed oil town of Heglig. Obeid’s comments came after Sudan’s parliament unanimously voted to declare South Sudan an “enemy.” He said the people of the Republic of Sudan assign the same status to South Sudan’s ruling party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM). “They are now angry,” he said, “since the invasion of Heglig…,” where “the Sudanese...

Several Democratic senators are calling on the Obama administration to allow Syrians who are already in the United States to stay, at least temporarily, out of concern it would be "too dangerous" for them to return home. The senators want President Obama to invoke what's known as "temporary protected status" for thousands of Syrians in the U.S. The designation typically is given to foreign nationals whose home countries are beset by war or natural disaster and who could face harm should they return. The senators argued that Syrians in the U.S. are in just that kind of predicament, as Syrian...

JUBA (Reuters) - South Sudan said on Friday it was working out a plan to shut down oil production within two weeks after Sudan said it had started seizing southern oil to compensate for what it said were unpaid transit fees. South Sudan seceded last July under a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war between north and south, but the two have remained at loggerheads over oil, the disputed Abyei region and even the location of the border. The two are locked in a row over sharing oil revenues after South Sudan took two-thirds of output when...

South Sudan on Tuesday accused its northern neighbor Sudan of stealing more than 2.1 million barrels of oil, and warned buyers and shippers that they might face prosecution. The accusation has cast a pall over a new round of talks on sharing oil revenues. South Sudan's chief negotiator at the African Union-mediated talks accused the Khartoum government of confiscating and selling southern oil, saying it is creating an economic and political crisis. The oil is shipped from landlocked Southern Sudan by pipeline to Port Sudan, where it is loaded onto ships for export. The two countries produce about 500,000 barrels...

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is sending five American military officers to South Sudan amid recent outbreaks of violence in the newly independent African nation. The White House said the U.S. forces will join the United Nations mission in the capital of Juba and focus on strategic planning and operations. They are not expected to engage in combat operations, but will be armed for personal protection. Obama issued a memorandum Tuesday declaring that the U.S. officers could not be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court during their deployment because South Sudan is not a party to the ICC. The White...

It's not every day that the leader of a brand-new country makes his maiden foreign voyage to Jerusalem, capital of the most besieged country in the world, but Salva Kiir, president of South Sudan, accompanied by his foreign and defense ministers, did just that in late December. Israel's President Shimon Peres hailed his visit as a "moving and historic moment." The visit spurred talk of South Sudan locating its embassy in Jerusalem, making it the only government anywhere in the world to do so. This unusual development results from an unusual story. Today's Sudan took shape in the nineteenth century...

The mystery surrounding Russian-made tanks that the government denied were destined for South Sudan last year has been unravelled by a secret diplomatic cable. A 2009 cable released by whistleblowing site WikiLeaks says a senior State Department official produced satellite images that appeared to show that the tanks unloaded in Kenya were trans-shipped to South Sudan. The evidence contradicted claims by Kenyan officials that the hardware imported from Ukraine was intended for the Kenyan military. A bill of lading and manifest of the hijacked MV Faina, which was seen by the Nation when the ship was released by pirates showed...

The people of South Kordofan have become caught up in the unresolved contradiction of the post-John Garang Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), which is now leading South Sudan into independence; what happens when a national federalist political movement becomes an ethnic separatist political movement? This is the problem in several areas of Sudan outside the new borders of South Sudan, areas in which the then federalist SPLM/A recruited fighters to combat the Khartoum regime in the interests of creating a federal “New Sudan.” With South Sudan declaring full independence on July 9, a force of roughly 40,000 Nuba SPLA fighters...

A new camp has been opened in western Ethiopia as deadly fighting continues to displace tens of thousands of people in Sudan's Blue Nile, which lies on the border with the newly-independent nation of South Sudan, the United Nations said on Saturday. The new camp is located in the town of Tongo, from the border areas of Kurmuk, Bamza and Almahal. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesperson Adrian Edwards said 533 refugees have already been moved to the new camp. The camp has a capacity for 3,000 people and has the possibility of being expanded if necessary. Over...

Sudan is a kind of diabolical Groundhog Day. In the film by that name, Phil Connors (Bill Murray) re-lives the same day over and over again until he learns the lessons needed to change his life and save the lives of others. In Sudan today, people of the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile State are re-living the horrific nightmare from which they thought they had finally awakened after the signing of Sudan’s 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. But in this case, it is the United States government that has failed to learn the lessons needed to change conditions and save the...

UNITED NATIONS — The U.N.’s top human rights official called Friday for an “independent, thorough and credible investigation” into allegations that Sudan’s air force had bombed a refugee camp in South Sudan. “If indeed it is established that an international crime or serious human rights violation has been committed, then those responsible should be brought to justice,” said Navi Pillay, the high commissioner for human rights.

NAIROBI, Kenya – A U.S. satellite monitoring group said Friday that Sudan's military is upgrading air bases near the border with South Sudan and building up air resources in what could be a precursor to a widened aerial bombing campaign. The report came one day after officials accused Sudan of bombing a refugee camp in South Sudan, which became the world's newest country only four months ago. Four bombs fell in and around a camp called Yida in Unity State. No casualties were reported, though one bomb landed on the ground of school while 300 students were in class. That...

South Sudan is to phase out Arabic as the language of instruction in schools within the next three years, an official said today. The minister for General Education, Joseph Ukel, said Arabic will be gradually replaced with English as the official medium of communication in schools and public offices as enshrined in the new country’s constitution. Arabic language has been used in North Sudan in close association with the Islamic religion and got fully entrenched in the South during the imposition of Sharia law in the early 1990s. “Within the next three years, we will have replaced Arabic with English...

Sudan will go ahead with plans to adopt an entirely Islamic constitution and strengthen Islamic law, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said on Wednesday, three months after its former civil war enemy South Sudan became independent. Juba seceded on July 9 after a referendum agreed under a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war between the mainly Muslim north and the South where most follow Christian and traditional beliefs. Bashir had said in December that Sudan would adopt an Islamic constitution if Juba seceded but many southerners had hoped he would not deliver on this. His comments will add...