Hundreds of Somali refugees have fled to Kenya after rebels suspected of links to al Qaeda seized a Somali town near the border, residents said. Al Shabaab insurgents, who Washington says are a proxy for Osama bin Laden’s group in Somalia, took control of Dhobley on Saturday after chasing rival Hizbul Islam rebels out of town. Al Shabaab [...]
Honduras chooses a new president on Sunday in an election that may defuse a crisis caused by the actions of President Manuel Zelaya, but the vote is splitting Washington and Latin America. Neither Zelaya nor arch-rival Roberto Micheletti, the country’s leader, are running in the election, which could give a new president the chance to take Honduras [...]
U.S. President Barack Obama has given an award to a leading women’s rights activist in Zimbabwe, labeling Robert Mugabe a “dictator” in the process. Obama presented Magodonga Mahlangu and her organization Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) with the 2009 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award in a White House ceremony. “Each time they see Magodonga beaten back, beaten black [...]
A student leader of China’s 1989 pro-democracy movement who has long lived in the United States went on trial in China on Thursday, a day after U.S. President Barack Obama finished a visit that raised human rights. Zhou Yongjun faced fraud charges at the trial in Shehong County in southwest Sichuan province, his long-time girlfriend and a [...]
A doctor who died at the Kahrizak detention center, closed after the deaths there of several protesters against June’s disputed election,committed suicide, state media said on Wednesday. Iran’s parliament has begun an investigation into the death last week of Ramin Pourandarjani, who was serving his military service as a doctor at the facility. “The death of Ramin Pourandarjani [...]
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told American TV audiences that Afghan President Hamid Karzai needed to take steps to fight graft, including setting up a new anti-corruption task force, if he wants to keep U.S. support. Less than 24 hours later, there was Karzai’s interior minister at a luxury hotel in Kabul — flanked by [...]
A Chinese human rights activist has been camping out at Tokyo’s international airport since 4 November because Beijing has barred him from re-entering China. Feng Zhenghu, a Shanghai-based activist, said in a phone conversation that he had been sleeping on a couch near the immigration checkpoint and surviving on food and water given to him by passing [...]
Military operations against Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) have reduced the rebels to at most 100 in Congo but most remaining fighters are in Central African Republic, the region’s weakest link, the United Nations said. Having terrorised civilians in northern Uganda for nearly two decades, the rebels crossed into Congo’s remote northeast in late-2005, where a group [...]
Defense lawyers for a top prime minister’s aide can raise torture allegations at his trial, a judge ruled today in a case that has shaken Zimbabwe’s troubled coalition government.
Judge Chinembiri Bhunu also ruled that a weapons dealer can testify at Roy Bennett’s trial, setting the stage for lawyers to spar over his testimony and how it was [...]
North and South Korean naval forces exchanged fire today in disputed waters, a South Korean defense official has stated. The two Koreas clashed off their west coast, the first such incident in seven years, each blaming the other for the incident. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak convened an emergency security meeting and urged the military to to ensure [...]
