Critics say that the body’s aim of wiping out the disease is overly optimistic, however, considering there is no vaccine, millions remain untreated and donations have slumped amid the economic crisis.

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There were 2.7 million new HIV infections last year, approximately the same figure as in the three previous years, said the report from UNAIDS, the joint United Nations program on HIV and AIDS. The figures largely confirm earlier findings released by the group in June.

At the end of last year, there were about 34 million people with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. While that is a slight rise from previous years, experts say that’s due to people surviving longer. Last year, there were 1.8 million AIDS-related deaths, down from 1.9 million in 2009.

The outbreak continues to hit hardest in southern Africa. But while the number of new infections there has fallen by more than 26 percent since the peak in 1997, the virus is surging elsewhere.

In eastern Europe and central Asia, there has been a 250 percent jump in the number of people infected with HIV in the past decade, due largely to the spread among injecting drug users. In North America and western Europe, the outbreak “remains stubbornly steady,” according to the report.

“It’s looking promising, but the numbers are still at a scary level,” said Sophie Harman, a global health expert at City University in London. She was not connected to the UNAIDS report.

In its strategy for the next few years, UNAIDS says it is working toward zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. Harman said that was an admirable goal but wasn’t sure it was achievable. “They need to get real,” she said. “Maybe they need to aim high but if their main goal is eradication, it’s highly unlikely that will ever happen.”

Dr. Paul De Lay, deputy executive director of UNAIDS, acknowledged the idea of eliminating AIDS infections and deaths is “more of a vision for the future,” and would likely not be accomplished without new tools like a vaccine, which could take several decades. Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for an AIDS-free generation and promised more money for programs in Africa.

The application for full U.N. member sidesteps nearly two decades of troubled negotiations and risks a threatened American veto.

Nearly two decades after embarking on historic peace talks with Israel, Palestinians prepared to sidestep that troubled route on Friday to seek U.N. recognition of an independent state — hoping to leverage this dramatic move on the world stage to realize their dream of an independent homeland.

Earlier in the week, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rebuffed an intense, U.S.-led effort to sway him from the statehood bid, saying he would submit the application to U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon as planned. A top aide, Mohammed Ishtayeh, said Thursday that Abbas asked Ban and the Council’s Lebanese president this month to process the application without delay.

“We’re going without any hesitation and continuing despite all the pressures,” Abbas told members of the Palestinian diaspora at a hotel in New York on Thursday night. “We seek to achieve our right and we want our independent state.”

To be sure, Abbas’ appeal to the U.N. to recognize Palestinian independence in theWest Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip would not deliver any immediate changes on the ground: Israel would remain an occupying force in those first two territories and continue to severely restrict access to Gaza, ruled by Palestinian Hamas militants.

Beyond that, Security Council action on the membership request could take weeks or months.

Ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, now envoy to the group of Middle East negotiators known as the Quartet, acknowledged that Abbas had forced a renewed bout of activity aimed at restarting peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

“If this is a tactic in one sense it’s worked brilliantly — people are focused now on what we can do to relaunch a negotiation,” Blair told BBC radio.

The strategy also put the Palestinians in direct confrontation with the U.S., which has threatened to veto their membership bid in the U.N. Security Council, reasoning, like Israel, that statehood can only be achieved through direct negotiations between the parties to the long and bloody conflict.

Also hanging heavy in the air was the threat of renewed violence over frustrated Palestinian aspirations — perhaps not immediate, because Abbas has vowed to prevent unrest, but possibly down the road if negotiations continue to stall.

Yet by seeking approval at a world forum overwhelmingly sympathetic to their quest, Palestinians hope to make it harder for Israel to resist already heavy global pressure to negotiate the borders of a future Palestine based on lines Israel held before capturing the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza in 1967.

In recent weeks, international mediators have been furiously trying to piece together a formula that would let the Palestinians abandon their plan to ask the Security Council for full U.N. membership, and instead make do with the more modest goal of asking a sympathetic General Assembly to elevate their status from permanent observer to nonmember observer state. The other part of that formula would include the resumption of negotiations in short order.

The U.S. and Israel have been pressuring council members to either vote against the plan or abstain when it comes up for a vote. The vote would require the support of nine of the council’s 15 members to pass, but even if the Palestinians could line up that backing, a U.S. veto is assured.

The resumption of talks seems an elusive goal, with both sides digging in to positions that have tripped up negotiations for years. Israel insists that negotiations go ahead without any preconditions. But Palestinians say they will not return to the bargaining table without assurances that Israel would halt settlement building and drop its opposition to basing negotiations on the borders it held before capturing the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza in 1967.

Israel has warned that the Palestinian appeal to the U.N. will have a disastrous effect on negotiations, which have been the cornerstone of international Mideast policy for the past two decades. Netanyahu, who is to address the General Assembly later Friday, shortly after Abbas makes his own address, opposes negotiations based on 1967 lines, saying a return to those frontiers would expose Israel’s heartland to rocket fire from the West Bank.

He also fears that if that principle becomes the baseline for negotiations, then Palestinians won’t settle for anything less, despite previous understandings between the Palestinians and previous Israeli governments to swap land where settlement blocs stand for Israeli territory.

Talks for all intents and purposes broke down nearly three years ago after Israel went to war in the Gaza Strip and prepared to hold national elections that ultimately propelled Netanyahu to power for a second time. A last round was launched a year ago, with the ambitious aim of producing a framework accord for a peace deal, but broke down just three weeks later after an Israeli settlement construction slowdown expired.

Palestinians say they turned to the U.N. in desperation over 18 failed years of peace talks. But Israelis say the Palestinians are to blame for their own predicament and accuse them of going to the United Nations precisely to avoid talks.

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Witnesses told The Associated Press that a sedan broke through the exit at the U.N. compound, ramming through two separate gates as guards tried to stop the vehicle. The suicide bomber inside drove the car just up to the main reception of the building before detonating, inflicting the most damage possible, witnesses said.

“I saw scattered bodies,” said Michael Ofilaje, a UNICEF worker at the building. “Many people are dead.”

He said it felt like “the blast came from the basement and shook the building.”

The building houses about 400 employees of the U.N. in Nigeria, including the majority of its offices. A local U.N. spokesman declined to comment, but a local hospital administrator told the AP it had treated as many as 40 victims so far, with more people coming in.

Alessandra Vellucci, a spokeswoman for the U.N. office in Geneva, confirmed that the global body’s offices in Abuja had been bombed.

She told the AP that there was no word yet on casualties.

U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq in New York said, “There are some indications of fatalities, but we are trying to get confirmation.”

The building, located in the same neighborhood as the U.S. embassy and other diplomatic posts in Abuja, had a huge hole punched in it. Workers brought three large cranes to the building by midday Friday, trying to pull away the concrete and rubble to try and find survivors. Others at the site stood around, stunned, as medical workers began carrying out what appeared to be the dead.

“This is getting out of hand,” said a U.N. staffer who identified himself as Bodunrin. “If they can get into the U.N. House, they can reach anywhere.”

Ali Tikko, who was in a building 100 yards (meters) from the site of the blast when it occurred said, “I heard one big boom.” Outside his window, he said, he could see a part of the damage.

“I see a number of people lying on the floor, at least four or five. I cannot see if they are dead. There are a lot of security around,” said Tikko who was reached by telephone Friday morning.

Local police spokesman Jimoh Moshood confirmed the blast, but said police were still investigating the cause. Reuben Abati, a spokesman for President Goodluck Jonathan, said the presidency would later issue a statement on the attack.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the blast, but oil-rich Nigeria faces terrorism threats on multiple fronts. Last year, a militant group from the country’s crude-producing Niger Delta blew up car bombs in the capital during Nigeria’s 50th independence anniversary ceremony, killing at least 12.

Nigeria, a nation of 150 million, is split between a largely Christian south and Muslim north. In recent months, the country has faced an increasing threat from a radical Muslim sect called Boko Haram, which wants to implement a strict version of Shariah law in the nation. The sect has carried out assassinations and bombings, including the June car bombing of the national headquarters of Nigeria’s federal police that killed at least two people.

Earlier this month, the commander for U.S. military operations in Africa said Boko Haram may be trying to link with two al-Qaida-linked groups in other African countries to mount joint attacks in Nigeria.

Gen. Carter Ham told AP on Aug. 17 during a visit to Nigeria that “multiple sources” indicate Boko Haram made contacts with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, which operates in northwest Africa, and with al-Shabab in Somalia.

“I think it would be the most dangerous thing to happen not only to the Africans, but to us as well,” Carter said.

The UN summit in September marks the 10-year commemoration of the 2001 World Conference Against Racism that was held in the South African city of Durban.

The US and Israel walked out of that meeting over a draft resolution that criticised Israel and equated Zionism with racism.

The United States will not participate in the upcoming conference because the Durban process “included ugly displays of intolerance and anti-Semitism”, Joseph E. Macmanus, acting US assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, wrote in a letter to Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand today.

Sen Gillibrand welcomed the administration’s decision.

“It is an insult to America that the United Nations has decided to hold the Durban III conference in New York just days from the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks,” the New York senator said.

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JOHANNESBURG — A U.N.-led alliance on Wednesday urged young people to change behaviors that increase their risk of contracting AIDS, and called on their elders to provide leadership, education and support.

Their joint report released Wednesday, “Opportunity in Crisis: Preventing HIV from early adolescence to young adulthood,” says that around the world some 2,500 young people are infected daily with HIV, and that in the year 2009 people between the ages of 15 and 24 accounted for 41 percent of new HIV infections among all those over the age of 15.

The organizations that released the report urge communities, leaders and young people to act to stop sex with multiple partners or with older partners, whose prevalence of HIV is statistically higher.

That behavior, the groups say, is “fueling HIV transmission among young people, particularly young women.”

The alliance includes U.N. agencies for children, AIDS, education, health and women, the International Labor Organization and the World Bank.

“We must protect the second decade of life, so that the journey from childhood to adulthood is not derailed by HIV — a journey that is especially fraught for girls and young women,” U.N. children’s agency director Anthony Lake said in a statement Wednesday.

The report said poverty and unemployment have to be addressed because they can push young people into prostitution. They also cited concerns about discrimination against women, which can keep women from refusing unwanted sex, negotiating safe sex, or objecting to a partner’s infidelity. It also says many teens lack access to basic information about HIV and how to prevent AIDS, and to testing services.

But the groups pointed to strategies that can help, such as a campaign in Tanzania to ridicule the idea of men pursuing younger women.

“Existing prevention strategies have had limited success, so we have to look for creative new approaches to reverse the HIV/AIDS epidemic,” Mahmoud Mohieldin, the World Bank’s managing director, said in a statement. “These must address people’s very basic needs for education, economic security, inclusion, dignity, and human rights. These issues are particularly crucial when we consider the health and well-being of adolescent girls, mothers and children, and socially marginalized groups.”

A report from the United Nations indicates that 67 million kids around the world are not attending school. A big portion of that number is the 28 million children that are prevented as a result of armed conflicts.

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Not only do many of these conflicts involve children being used as soldiers themselves (as in Congo, Myanmar, Chad and Sudan to name a few) but they are also diverting public funds from education to military spending.

Huffington Post reports:

UNESCO’s 2011 Global Monitoring Report concluded that the world is not on track to achieve the goal set by world leaders at a U.N. summit in 2000 “by a wide margin,” despite progress in many areas.

According to the report, overall aid to basic education has doubled since 2002 to US$4.7 billion, but falls far short of the $16 billion required to help low-income countries.

The report calls for tougher action against human rights violations to ensure all youngsters get a primary school education, an overhaul of global aid priorities, and greater attention to the ways education failures can increase the risk of conflict.

The U.N. education agency has set a goal of creating universal primary education by 2015, but if current trends continue, they are likely to fall far short of that target.

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As a young minister living in New York, Young made frequent appearances on the CBS-TV show “Look Up and Live” from 1957 to 1960.

The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences said Wednesday that Young was one of the first black Americans with a regular television presence. Currently, he hosts the syndicated show “Andrew Young Presents.”

The academy said it is giving Young an award for lifetime achievement on Friday, presented by former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw. The Emmys give out this award irregularly, with Walt Disney Co. chief Robert Iger the most recent recipient in 2005.

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – A contingent of U.N. peacekeepers is the likely source of a cholera outbreak in Haiti that has killed more than 2,000 people, a French scientist said in a report obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press.

Epidemiologist Renaud Piarroux, who studied the outbreak for the Haitian and French governments, concluded that there was no doubt that the cholera originated in contaminated water next to a U.N. base outside the town of Mirebalais along a tributary to Haiti’s Artibonite river.

“No other hypothesis could be found to explain the outbreak of a cholera epidemic in this village … not affected by the earthquake earlier this year and located dozens of kilometers from the coast and (quake refugee tent) camps,” he wrote in a report that has not yet been publicly released.

The AP obtained a copy from an international official who released it on condition of anonymity. Piarroux declined in an e-mail interview to discuss his findings.

The French Foreign Ministry confirmed that Dr. Renaud Piarroux’s report has been completed and sent to officials in Haiti and at the United Nations. France commmissioned the report at Haiti’s request.

The report calls for a further investigation of the outbreak and improved medical surveillance and sanitation procedures for U.N. peacekeeping troops.

Many Haitians suspect that the Nepalese troops were the source of the outbreak, and anger at the troops sparked a week of violent riots, but the French scientist’s report is the first scientific study linking the base to cholera.

Piarroux said in his report that he cannot prove there was cholera inside the base. But he also said that septic tanks and pipes that would have helped to confirm the presence of the bacteria were no longer at the base when he visited.

Nepalese troops earlier confirmed they had replaced a leaking pipe, which contained a foul-smelling runoff that the U.N. denies was human waste, between two visits by an AP reporter in October.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier confirmed that the strain of cholera bacteria in Haiti matched one from South Asia, a region that includes Nepal, but the U.N. denied its troops were to blame and said it was more important to focus on fighting the outbreak than on its origin.

U.N. officials said Tuesday there is still no conclusive evidence that the peacekeepers caused the infection.

“We have neither accepted nor dismissed his findings, as it’s one report among others,” U.N. mission spokesman Vincenzo Pugliese said. “The Nepalese contingent in Mirebalais is just one piece of the cholera puzzle, since there is no conclusive evidence at this point that the Nepalese camp was or was not the source of the epidemic.”

Since it emerged in late October, the disease has spread throughout much of the country and sickened at least 100,000 people. The U.N. says up to 650,000 people in Haiti could get cholera over the next six months.

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP)– Protesters who hold Nepalese U.N. peacekeepers responsible for a deadly outbreak of cholera that has killed 1,000 in three weeks threw stones and threatened to set fire to a base in the country’s second-largest city Monday, Haitian radio and eyewitnesses reported.

The protesters also blame the unit for the death of a Haitian youth at the base in August.

The demonstrations began in Cap-Haitien about 6 a.m. (6 a.m. EST; 1100 GMT) and have paralyzed much of the northern port city, national television reporter Johnny Joseph told The Associated Press by phone.

Demonstrators are also targeting other U.N. bases and Haitian national police stations in the city, he said. U.N. police spokesman Andre Leclerc said the demonstrators blocked traffic in the area.

Radio Kiskeya and Radio Caraibes reported that U.N. soldiers and Haitian police fired tear gas and projectiles to disperse at least 1,000 protesters at the Nepalese base. Joseph said at least three people were injured by Haitian police.

A case of cholera had never before been documented in Haiti, and fear and confusion is following its destructive path. President Rene Preval addressed the nation on Sunday to dispel myths and educate people on good sanitation and hygiene.

Cholera is transmitted by feces and can easily be prevented if people have access to safe drinking water and can regularly wash their hands.

But those conditions don’t exist in much of Haiti, and tens of thousands of people have been sickened as the disease has spread across the countryside and to nearly all the country’s major population centers, including the capital, Port-au-Prince. Doctors Without Borders and other medical aid groups have expressed concern that the outbreak could eventually sicken hundreds of thousands of people.

The suspicions surround a different Nepalese base located on the Artibonite River system where the outbreak started. The soldiers arrived there in October following outbreaks in their home country and about a week before Haiti’s epidemic began.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the strain now ravaging the country matched a strain specific to South Asia, but said they had not pinpointed the origin of the outbreak.

Following an Associated Press investigation, the U.N. acknowledged that there were sanitation problems at the base, but says its soldiers were not responsible for the outbreak. No formal or independent investigation has taken place despite calls from Haitian human-rights groups and U.S. health care experts.

Presidential candidates have seized on the suspicions to denounce the 12,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force ahead of Nov. 28 elections.

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KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) – Actor Don Cheadle has become a spokesman for the United Nations environment program.

He was appointed Saturday in Rwanda’s capital as a U.N. Environment Program Goodwill Ambassador and vowed to fight climate change and promote environment conservation.

UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner announced the appointment, saying that Cheadle would help raise green awareness among millions of people around the globe.

Cheadle also named a baby gorilla Zoya, a name chosen by internet users as part of a UNEP awareness program.

In 2004, Cheadle starred in the film Hotel Rwanda which told the world about the Rwandan genocide in 1994 that claimed the lives of more than 500,000 people, mostly Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The Rwandan government, however, was critical of the film.

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International activists joined envoys from the United Nations and African Union in Senegal to “promote the adoption of a resolution that explicitly bans female genital mutilation as a practice that is contrary to human rights.”

The cutting or removal of young girls’ and women’s clitoris and/or labia affects some 120 to 140 million women in 28 countries, mostly in Africa and the Middle East, according to the World Health Organisation.

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Often carried out for deep-seated religious or cultural reasons, it can lead to infection, urinary tract problems, mental trauma, sterility or complications during childbirth, and in some cases fatal haemorrhaging.

In Africa, around 91 million girls aged nine and under have undergone the practice, with three million operated on each year, the UN population fund’s envoy Rose Gkuba told the conference.

“Now is the time to move forwards with a specific resolution at the United Nations that can give a new boost, a new hope to activists, governments and lawmakers,” Italian Senate deputy leader and campaigner Emma Bonino said.

“There is no miracle solution,” she told the conference. “Only a complex strategy that needs to be implemented.”

The African Union’s envoy Yetunda Teriba stressed that the West had a role to play in combating genital mutilations.

“Migrants have exported the practice,” she said. “Although most of the victims are in Africa, the problem is growing in Europe among migrant and refugee communities.”

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But Senegal’s parliament speaker Mamadou Seck said the key to fighting genital mutilation was “education and persuasion, to convince but not coerce.”

Senegal is one of 19 African countries that have banned the practice and its Families Minister Ndeye Khady Diop said a nationwide campaign between 2000 and 2005 managed to reduce the number of mutilations by over 70 percent.

Dakar is preparing to launch a second campaign that hopes to eradicate the practice completely by 2015, she said.

From BlackVoices.com:

After years of battling drought and civil and tribal wars, the Sudan, the largest country on the African continent, is experiencing looming famine.

An entire population is teetering on the verge of severe starvation, and the children are the ones who are mostly affected: Little ones with eyes that are sunken in, reed thin legs barely able to support them, exposed ribs, distended bellies, skin barely clinging to their bones, gazes that are lifeless – 46 percent of children in Sudan are just biding their time, waiting to die.

The number of people in southern Sudan, in particular, who are in dire need of food assistance has more than quadrupled from 1 million in 2009 to 4.3 million this year, according to the U.N. Thus far, charitable organizations have fed an estimated 80,000 people, but experts are theorizing that the worst is yet to come because the harvest is not expected until fall, and that is dependent on whether the rains come at all. Even if the rains do come, though, there are no seeds for the people to plant and grow their food.

Click here to view photos following Food From Farm To Fork:

Humanitarian efforts by such groups as Save the Children and Medair have actually searched for the hungriest children in communities throughout the devastated land and placed them in therapeutic-feeding programs, where diets with primarily fortified peanut butter were given to them to bring them back from the brink.

“We are only just entering the start of the hunger gap, so we would expect nutrition levels to worsen in the coming months,” said Kate Foster, Director of Program Development for Save the Children in Southern Sudan (SCiSS).

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Haiti’s government has declared the search and rescue phase for survivors of the earthquake over, the United Nations said Saturday, saying there was little hope of finding more people alive 10 days after much of the capital was reduced to rubble.

The statement from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs comes the day after an Israeli team reported pulling a man out of the debris of a two-story home and relatives said an elderly woman had been rescued.

Spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said she was unable to comment on the rescue reports. But she said the government’s Friday afternoon decision didn’t mean rescue teams still searching for survivors would be stopped from carrying out whatever work they felt necessary.

“It doesn’t mean the government will order them to stop. In case there is the slightest sign of life, they will act,” she told The Associated Press.

She added, however, that “except for miracles, hope is unfortunately fading.”

Some 132 people were pulled alive from beneath collapsed buildings byinternational search and rescue teams since the Jan. 12 disaster, she said. Humanitarian relief efforts are still being scaled up in the capitalPort-au-Prince, Jacmel, Leogane and other areas affected by the quake, Byrs said.

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An Israeli military spokeswoman said Saturday no decision had yet been taken to halt their search and rescue operations.

The Israeli delegation was initially intended to be in Haiti for two weeks. However the spokeswoman, who could not be named citing military regulations, said it was continuously assessing the situation to see whether they should continue or not.

The 7.0-magnitude quake killed an estimated 200,000 people, according to Haitian government figures cited by the European Commission. Countless dead remained buried in thousands of collapsed and toppled buildings in Port-au-Prince, while as many as 200,000 have fled the city of 2 million, the U.S. Agency for International Development reported.

About 609,000 people are homeless in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, and the United Nationsestimates that up to 1 million people could leave Haiti’s destroyed cities for rural areas already struggling with extreme poverty.

On Saturday, some are expected to gather for the funeral of the archbishop of Port-au-Prince, Msgr. Joseph Serge Miot, near the ruins of his cathedral.

Far away, celebrities and artists made impassioned pleas Friday for charitable donations during an internationally broadcast telethon.

“The Haitian people need our help,” said George Clooney, who helped organize the two-hour telecast. “They need to know that they are not alone. They need to know that we still care.”

Scores of aid organizations, big and small, have stepped up deliveries of food, water, medical supplies and other aid to the homeless and other needy in seaside city. But obstacles remained at every turn to getting help into people’s hands.

“I want to leave but I don’t have any money. I don’t know where to go,” said Demonere Mirlande, a 33-year-old mother who lost her home but survived along with her three young children.

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The slender student and tailor with deep-set eyes emerged so ghostly white that his mother told rescuers she thought he was a corpse. In an interview with The Associated Press, he described coming out of the shower when the quake hit.

“I felt the house dancing around me,” Buso said from a bed in an Israeli field hospital. “I didn’t know if I was up or down.”

He told of passing out in the rubble, dreaming at times that he could hear his mother crying. The furniture in his room had collapsed around him in such a way that it created a small space for him amid the ruins of the house. He had no food. When he got desperately thirsty, he drank his urine.

“I am here today because God wants it,” Buso said.

Also Friday, an 84-year-old woman was said by relatives to have been pulled from the wreckage of her home, according to doctors administering oxygen and intravenous fluids to her at the General Hospital. She was in critical condition.

Rescuers said they were encouraged but all too aware that few trapped people can survive for that long.

“Statistically you can say that the chances of survival is very low,” said Fernando Alvarez Bravo, a representative in Mexico for rescue crews founded during the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, and still at work inHaiti on Friday. “But the hope it gives the population to recover and find their loved ones helps them to recover quickly. They don’t feel abandoned.”

The rescues came two days after many international search teams began packing up their gear and other aid groups remained to grapple with challenges of helping survivors.

In the three miles (five kilometers) or so between Port-au-Prince and hard-hit Carrefour, satellite images show 691 blockages on the road — collapsed houses or other debris — the U.N. reported.

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Despite dimming odds, rescue workers pulled more people alive from the rubble — including a 7-year-old girl who survived more than four days eating dried fruit rolls in the supermarket that collapsed around her — as water and emergency aid deliveries improved on Sunday, though not nearly enough to meet Haiti’s desperate need.

The United Nations World Food Program said it planned to distribute 200 tons of food aid on Monday to 95,000 people at eight locations, and appealed anew for public donations to the relief effort.

On Sunday, the mood managed to stay mostly calm, as residents carried leather-bound Bibles to pray outside their ruined churches. But there were reports of more looting and shootings, including of four men who witnesses said were shot by the police on suspicion of looting. There were fewer bodies in the streets, though in some places residents began burning corpses left behind.

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COPENHAGEN – The largest and most important U.N. climate changeconference in history opened Monday, with organizers warning diplomats from 192 nations that this could be the best, last chance for a deal to protect the world from calamitous global warming.

The two-week conference, the climax of two years of contentious negotiations, convened in an upbeat mood after a series of promises by rich and emerging economies to curb their greenhouse gases, but with major issues yet to be resolved.

Conference president Connie Hedegaard said the key to an agreement is finding a way to raise and channel public and private financing to poor countries for years to come to help them fight the effects ofclimate change.

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Hedegaard — Denmark‘s former climate minister — said if governments miss their chance at the Copenhagen summit, a better opportunity may never come.

“This is our chance. If we miss it, it could take years before we got a new and better one. If we ever do,” she said.

Denmark’s prime minister said 110 heads of state and government will attend the final days of the conference. President Barack Obama’s decision to attend the end of the conference, not the middle, was taken as a signal that an agreement was getting closer.

The conference opened with video clips of children from around the globe urging delegates to help them grow up in a world without catastrophic warming.

At stake is a deal that aims to wean the world away from fossil fuels and other pollutants to greener sources of energy, and to transfer hundreds of billions of dollars from rich to poor countries every year over decades to help them adapt to climate change.

Scientists say without such an agreement, the Earth will face the consequences of ever-rising temperatures, leading to the extinction of plant and animal species, the flooding of coastal cities, more extreme weather events, drought and the spread of diseases.

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“The evidence is now overwhelming” that the world needs early action to combat global warming, said Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an U.N. expert panel.

He defended climate research in the face of a controversy over e-mails pilfered from a British university, whichglobal warming skeptics say show scientists have been conspiring to hide evidence that doesn’t fit their theories.

“The recent incident of stealing the e-mails of scientists at the University of East Anglia shows that some would go to the extent of carrying out illegal acts perhaps in an attempt to discredit the IPCC,” he told the conference.

Negotiations have dragged on for two years, only recently showing signs of breakthroughs with new commitments from The United States, China and India to control greenhouse gas emissions.

The first week of the conference will focus on refining the complex text of a draft treaty. But major decisions will await the arrival next week of environment ministers and the heads of state in the final days of the conference, which ends Dec. 18.

“The time for formal statements is over. The time for restating well-known positions is past,” said the U.N.’s top climate official, Yvo de Boer. “Copenhagen will only be a success it delivers significant and immediate action.”

Among those decisions is a proposed fund of $10 billion each year for the next three years to help poor countries create climate change strategies. After that, hundreds of billions of dollars will be needed every year to set the world on a new energy path and adapt to new climates.

“The deal that we invite leaders to sign up on will be one that affects all aspects of society, just as the changing climate does,” said Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen. “Negotiators cannot do this alone, nor can politicians. The ultimate responsibility rests with the citizens of the world, who will ultimately bear the fatal consequences if we fail to act.”

A study released by the U.N. Environment Program on Sunday indicated that pledges by industrial countriesand major emerging nations fall just short of the reductions of greenhouse gas emissions that scientists have said are needed to keep average temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees C (3.6 F).

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UNITED NATIONS – The U.N. chief is naming blind pop star Stevie Wonder a United Nations Messenger of Peace to focus on helping people with disabilities.

U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said his designation as a U.N. peace envoy will be officially announced on Thursday by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

She said the singer-songwriter, who has won 25 Grammy awards, is being recognized for his philanthropic work with the U.S. President’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities, the Children’s Diabetes Foundation and Junior Blind of America.

Wonder will be the 11th U.N. Messenger of Peace, joining a list of notable figures including Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, actor Michael Douglas, primate expert Jane Goodall and conductor Daniel Barenboim.

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From CNN:

United Nations — The United Nations has suspended assistance to a Congolese army brigade battling rebels amid allegations that its troops killed 62 civilians, including women and children, between May and September.

The U.N. director of peacekeeping, Alain Le Roy, announced the move in an interview Sunday with Democratic Republic of Congo-based Radio Okapi.

The killings allegedly occurred near Lukweti — a village in North Kivu province in eastern Congo — about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of the regional capital, Goma.

The U.N. mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo — known by its French acronym MONUC — has been providing logistical and operational support to Congolese troops since May as they battle Rwandan Hutu rebel groups in the easternmost provinces of the war-torn nation.

The support includes medical evacuations, resupply of materiel and transport.

Click here to read more.

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JOHANNESBURG — Zimbabwe’s government has blocked a visit by the United Nations’ torture investigator who was to examine alleged attacks on opposition activists by ruling party supporters, the world body said Wednesday.

The office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said Manfred Nowak was initially invited to Zimbabwe for a week-long trip beginning Wednesday.

RELATED: EU Will Continue Sanctions Against Zimbabwe

However, Zimbabwe’s government canceled the visit while Nowak was in Johannesburg en route to Zimbabwe, citing talks over the country’s fragile power-sharing agreement, the U.N. said.

Longtime opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai joined into a unity government with longtime ruler Robert Mugabe in February, but withdrew temporarily from the coalition earlier this month accusing Mugabe’s party of human rights violations.

Foreign ministers from three of the southern African nations that pushed for the coalition — Mozambique, Zambia and Angola — were due in Harare Thursday for talks with Tsvangirai and Mugabe to try to revive the agreement.

RELATED: World Bank Gives Zimbabwe $74 Million To Revitalize Agriculture

The U.N. said Wednesday that Nowak welcomes “all efforts to resolve the political crisis” in Zimbabwe, but he did not consider this a valid reason to cancel his planned visit.

Opposition supporters and human rights defenders have accused Mugabe’s aides of violence, harassment and carrying out arbitrary arrests.

On Tuesday, Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change said one of its security officials was beaten by the president’s militants, and said the attack was part of new violence unleashed because it has stepped back from the governing coalition.

“Recent allegations that MDC supporters and human rights defenders have been arrested, harassed and intimidated during the past few days, highlight the urgency of objective fact-finding by an independent U.N. expert,” the U.N. said.

Ephraim Masawi, a spokesman for Mugabe’s party, denied the allegations, saying they were “cheap propaganda” intended to mask the failure of Tsvangirai’s party to explain his decision to withdraw temporarily from the coalition.

From Gothamist.com:

Last week we got sent a press release about a KFC publicity stunt at the UN, and shrugged it off because we’re not corporate tools who reblog each and every publicity stunt (unless it involves American Apparel). But what makes this one interesting is that the stunt has deeply embarrassed UN security, who allowed a guy dressed like Colonel Sanders into restricted areas of the UN without security clearance. The guy even got a photo op with current president of the United Nations General Assembly, Libya’s Dr. Ali A. Treki!

A publicist for KFC tells us “the Colonel and a photographer were able to talk their way into the UN building to talk to officials about the request that Grilled Nation ‘earn a seat’ as the 193rd UN member state.” Acceptance by the international community is long overdue! How long can the UN keep sitting on its hands?

Security is “still trying to find out exactly what happened,” says Michele Montas, spokeswoman for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. “It should not have happened—that I will stress, and very strongly. There was some lapse in security and the individual in question… was, on the initiative of one security guard, taken… into the UN.” Perhaps a little free chicken greased the right palm?

Click here to read more.

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NEW YORK – President Barack Obama summoned the world to a “a new era of engagement” in his maiden address to the U.N. General Assembly, offering a litany of policy shifts intended to show that the United States had no interest in a go-it-alone stance on international issues.

“The time has come for the world to move in a new direction,” Obama told U.N. delegates. “Our work must begin now.”

RELATED: Obama In Midest For 12 Hours Of Diplomacy

But the president also took a tough stance, saying in essence that he expected plenty in return for reaching out.

“We have sought in word and deed a new era of engagement with the world,” Obama said, echoing the cooperative theme he promised as a candidate and has since used as a pillar of his foreign policy. “Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility.”

Obama said he understood “an almost reflexive anti-Americanism” in recent years, but said that cannot be the template for America’s relations with the world.

RELATED: Obama Challenges Wall Street On Anniversary Of Lehman’s Collapse

“Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world’s problems alone,” Obama said.

It came in Obama’s first speech to this world body, a forum like none other for a leader hoping to wash away any lasting images of U.S. unilateralism under George W. Bush.

“In an era where our destiny is shared, power is no longer a zero-sum game,” Obama said. “No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed. That is the future America wants.”

Click here to read more.

[SOURCE: MSNBC]

From CNN:

Torrential rains and flooding have affected 600,000 people in 16 West African nations, the United Nations reported Tuesday.

The worst hit have been Burkina Faso, Senegal, Ghana and Niger, said Yvon Edoumou, a spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Senegalese capital, Dakar. So far, 159 people have died, he said.

Edoumou said removing water from flooded areas is a top priority, but powerful pumps are in short supply.

“Some people refused to leave their homes so they are living in floodwaters,” he said.

The United Nations has not yet received reports of waterborne diseases, but Edoumou said a real threat exists of diarrhea or, worse, cholera.

Private aid agencies are working with the United Nations to distribute food and other emergency items. Oxfam International is assessing the crisis in Burkina Faso, where 150,000 people have been affected in the capital, Ouagadougou, and key infrastructure has been damaged, including a central hospital, schools, bridges and roads. The flooding in Burkina Faso is the worst in 90 years.

Click here to read more.

Sudanese police fired tear gas and beat women protesting at the trial Tuesday of a female journalist who faces a flogging for wearing trousers in public.

Sudanese journalist Lubna Hussein could receive 40 lashes if found guilty of violating the country’s indecency law which follows a strict interpretation of Islam. The 43-year-old says the law is un-Islamic and “oppressive,” and she’s trying to use her trial to rally support to change it.

“I am not afraid of flogging. … It’s about changing the law,” Hussein said, speaking to The Associated Press after a hearing Tuesday.

Hussein said she would take the issue all the way to Sudan’s constitutional court if necessary, but that if the court rules against her and orders the flogging, she’s ready “to receive (even) 40,000 lashes” if that what it takes to abolish the law.

Hussein was among 13 women arrested July 3 in a raid by the public order police on a popular cafe in Khartoum. Ten of the women were fined and flogged two days later. But Hussein and two others decided to go to trial.

In an attempt to rally support, Hussein printed invitations to diplomats, international media, and activists to attend her trial which opened last week. She also resigned from her job in the U.N.’s public information office in Khartoum, declining the immunity that went along with the job to challenge the law.

Around 100 supporters, including many women in trousers as well as others in traditional dress, protested outside the court Tuesday.

Witnesses said police wielding batons beat up one of Hussein’s lawyers, Manal Awad Khogali, while keeping media and cameras at bay. No injuries were immediately reported.

“We are here to protest against this law that oppresses women and debases them,” said one of the protesters, Amal Habani, a female columnist for the daily Ajraas Al Hurria, or Bells of Freedom in Arabic.

While the police broke up the demonstration outside the Khartoum Criminal Court, the judge adjourned Hussein’s trial for a month to clarify whether her resignation has been accepted by the United Nations.

The 1991 indecency law was adopted by Sudan’s Islamic regime which came to power after a coup led by President Omar al-Bashir in 1989. It follows a strict interpretation of Islamic law that imposes physical punishment on “those who commit an indecent act that violates public morale; or who dress indecently.”

Trousers are considered indecent under the law. Activists and lawyers say it is implemented arbitrarily, and leaves the definition of “indecent acts” up to the implementing police officer.

Hussein said the law is unconstituational, and is not supported by Islamic text. Flogging is a common punishment for drinking and making alcohol, and whatever else the law enforcer deems indecent. Recently, a famous Sudanese singer, who took to the stage under the influence of alcohol, was flogged.

“Flogging is an insult to human dignity,” Hussein said. “If the (rulers) claim this is based on Islamic Shariah (law), can anyone show me a verse in the Quran or in the prophet’s teachings that speak of flogging women because of their dress code?”

Rabie Abdel Attie, a government spokesman, called the uproar over the case politically motivated and said only the constitutional court can decide to repeal the law.

“There is no need for all that noise. There are clearly political motivations behind this thrust,” he said.

The public order police force patrols the streets of Khartoum, enforcing an alcohol ban and often scolding young men and women mingling in public.

Hussein said many women endure the flogging in silence, because they fear the stigma associated with being tried under the indecency law.

Hussein wore the same clothes Tuesday that she wore when arrested, including the dark-colored pants that authorities found offensive. She said she is required to wear the outfit to court so officials can see the clothing when making their decision. But Hussein said she’s also been wearing the outfit every day, even when not in court, to highlight her case.

Her trial opened last Wednesday but immediately adjourned to give her the opportunity to resign from her U.N. job.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was “deeply concerned” about Hussein’s case and that flogging is a violation of international human rights standards.

The U.N. Staff Union urged authorities last week not to flog Hussein, calling the punishment cruel, inhuman and degrading.

From Reuters:

The global economic crisis will help push 100 million people into poverty this year through lost jobs and lower earnings, leaving one sixth of the world’s population living in hunger, a U.N. agency said on Friday.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) forecast the number of people living in hunger would reach a record high of 1.02 billion this year, exacerbated by persistently high prices for staples following the food crisis of 2006-2008.

Not only will the global slowdown destroy livelihoods in the developing world — where almost all of the world’s hungry live — it will reduce aid spending from wealthy countries by around a quarter, just when it is most needed, the FAO warned.

“The silent hunger crisis … poses a serious risk for world peace and security,” said FAO Director General Jacques Diouf. “We urgently need to forge a broad consensus on the total and rapid eradication of hunger.”

Click here for the full report.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said Monday that Haiti has the best chance in decades to escape poverty and political upheaval and he will seek in his new job as U.N. special envoy to improve life for the estimated 9 million Haitians.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and was in the throes of a food crisis and political deadlock when four tropical storms battered it last fall, killing some 800 people and doing $1 billion in damage. Hunger worsened, poverty deepened and hard-won stability threatened to come apart five years after a bloody rebellion.

Clinton said he will try to do in Haiti what the U.N. attempted to do when he was the top U.N. envoy promoting recovery from the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami — “to leave things better than they were before the natural disasters.”

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who appointed Clinton to the US$1-a-year post on May 19, told a news conference that “no one is better placed” than the former U.S. president to help Haiti’s president and prime minister promote their new economic development program and to help ensure that governments deliver on the US$335 million they pledged in April for Haiti’s recovery.

“Haiti is at a turning point,” Ban said. “It has a real chance for stability and potential prosperity. … And we wanted to send a message to the international community: Haiti needs and deserves our help.”

Sitting beside the secretary-general, Clinton said that even after the devastation caused by last year’s storms “I think Haiti … has the best chance to escape the darker aspects of its history in the 35 years I have been going there.”

He said this was because of the leadership of President Rene Preval and Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis, the “good job” done by U.N. peacekeepers and international police in improving security, U.S. legislation passed last year giving Haitian products “extraordinary access” to U.S. markets, Ban’s interest, and the success of the donors conference.

Clinton said he will follow the “very impressive program” produced by the Haitian government — which is similar to one commissioned by the U.N. but focuses more on immediate needs — and work to generate new jobs and improve the availability of basic services.

Schools, hospitals, housing, public facilities, roads and infrastructure will be “built back better” and improvements will be made to prevent and mitigate future disasters and speed recovery, he said.

Clinton said he will also encourage international investment, make Haiti a more attractive prospect including by improving power supplies, accelerate efforts to promote clean energy, encourage donors to honor their commitments, and put the spotlight on “both the pain and the promise of Haiti” and its economic opportunities.

“I will be accountable in this work to the secretary-general and the United Nations, and to the people of Haiti and their governmental leaders,” Clinton said.

He said he had read speculation in the Haitian press that his job “was somehow an imperialist plot to take over Haiti.”

“All I want to do is help the Haitians take over control of their own destiny,” Clinton stressed. “That’s all I have ever wanted for Haiti, and that’s all the secretary-general wants.”

Haiti’s Foreign Minister Alrich Nicolas read a letter from Preval praising Ban for focusing attention on Haiti’s urgent needs and saying “our country and our people could not hope for a better friend and advocate than President Bill Clinton.”

Clinton said he would be putting together a small staff over the next few days and hoped to visit Haiti “pretty soon.”

In response to a question, he said both the White House and the State Department had given a green light for him to take the U.N. job. “I would not have done this otherwise,” Clinton said.

From TheRoot.com:

When political leaders face urgent problems and a polarized public, a commission that honestly gathers facts and encourages a consensus is needed. Yet at a time when Americans are struggling to address torture, hate crimes, marriage inequality, police misconduct and racial profiling, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is either silent or on the wrong side of every major human rights issue.

Click here for more.

From SouthFloridaCaribbeanNews.com:

The United Nations (UN) has established a trust fund for a permanent memorial to honour the victims of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade.

A ceremony was held recently at the UN headquarters in New York to launch the Permanent Memorial Trust Fund and to announce the appointment of hip-hop pioneer and philanthropist Russell Simmons as Goodwill Ambassador for the project.

Jamaica’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Raymond O. Wolfe, in his remarks at the launch, said that as Jamaican and a Caribbean national, he was proud of this important initiative, which is being led by member states of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) with strong support from the African Union.

“It is with a sense of duty and deep humility that we seek to honour the memories of our ancestors, who were brought to the Caribbean and other regions as a result of the transatlantic slave trade. (This) ceremony takes us one step forward in realising our objective,” said Ambassador Wolfe, who is also chair of the Permanent Memorial Committee.

He urged the world community to view the project as a “tangible source of hope and a means of remembrance of the struggles to break free of the hardships faced under the pernicious system of slavery and colonial rule”.

Mr. Simmons, for his part, told the gathering that it was a great honour to be appointed the face and voice of such an iconic initiative that will remind generations of their shared history and legacy. He said that the story of slavery was not being told enough.

Click here for more.

The United Nations named former President Bill Clinton on Tuesday as its special envoy to Haiti, with a mission to help the impoverished nation achieve some measure of stability after devastating floods and other crises.

Clinton — who will be paid $1 a year and travel to Haiti several times annually — said he was honored to accept the post.

“I believe Haiti is better positioned to make progress for all its people than at any time since I first visited in 1978,” he said in a statement.

“Last year’s natural disasters took a great toll, but Haiti’s government and people have the determination and ability to ‘build back better,’ not just to repair the damage done but to lay the foundations for the long term sustainable development that has eluded them for so long,” the former president said.

Clinton is popular in Haiti, but the U.N.’s peacekeepers have been widely criticized despite providing the nation with its only real security for years. The peacekeepers have patrolled since 2004 and are training an under-equipped national police force to retake control, but some consider the blue helmets to be an unwanted occupation force.

Having Clinton as the U.N.’s public face in Haiti could temper such sentiment.

Clinton is still well-regarded here for using the threat of U.S. military force to oust a dictatorship in 1994, then sending Army troops and Marines to pave the way for the return of elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been deposed in a coup.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton also praised the appointment of such “a high-profile envoy,” without mentioning their marriage or the requirement that State Department lawyers review Bill Clinton’s international activities to avoid conflicts of interest.

“It’s the kind of partnership we are looking for across the board,” she told reporters at the White House, explaining that she had already been preparing a team to help Haiti. “This is going to be an added bit of leverage and focus for us.”

Many poor Haitians — Aristide’s power base — still long for their leader’s return from exile after he was toppled a second time by a rebellion in 2004.

In March, Clinton toured the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince with the U.N. chief to encourage investment after a year that saw a food crisis, destabilizing riots and four devastating tropical storms. The former president was mobbed by enthusiastic crowds.

The following month, he attended a donors conference in Washington that resulted in pledges of $324 million for the struggling country. Haiti is the hemisphere’s poorest nation and has been mired for decades in political and social turmoil.

“I am confident that President Clinton will bring energy, dynamism and focus to the task of mobilizing international support for Haiti’s economic recovery and reconstruction,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said.

Because of the Clintons’ marriage, State Department lawyers must approve some of Bill Clinton’s international activities under an agreement between the U.S. Senate and the Clinton Foundation, which works in Haiti on a number of issues including health care, AIDS, the environment and economic development.

Haiti does not currently have a special U.N. envoy, and it is not clear what Clinton’s duties will be. The Miami Herald, which first reported the appointment, said he will be expected to visit the Caribbean country — a two-hour flight from Miami — at least four times a year.

Clinton visited Haiti as president in 1995 and again in 2003. Hillary Clinton has also visited several times, most recently for an April meeting with President Rene Preval en route to the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad.

The Obama administration is reconsidering its planned boycott of a controversial U.N. racism conference that is deeply opposed by Israel and Jewish groups and will be attended by Iran’s president, the State Department said late Monday.

In a move likely to upset its staunchest Mideast ally and its supporters, the department said the administration was pleased by a diplomatic push to revise an objectionable document that the meeting will adopt and suggested it could attend the meeting if the efforts succeed.

“We hope that these remaining concerns will be addressed so that the United States can re-engage the conference process with the hope of arriving at a conference document that we can support,” spokesman Robert Wood said in a statement.

The announcement came as the administration reviews its policy on Iran with an eye toward engaging the Islamic government and as Iran’s official news agency reported that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will attend the April 20-25 World Conference Against Racism in Geneva.

In February, the Obama administration said it would not attend the U.N. meeting unless its final document was changed to drop all references to Israel and the defamation of religion.

Although specific references to Israel subsequently were deleted, the document retained language affirming the findings of the first World Conference Against Racism, held in Durban, South Africa, that many believed were anti-Semitic.

The United States and Israel walked out of the 2001 conference in Durban over a draft resolution that singled out Israel for criticism and likened Zionism — the movement to establish and maintain a Jewish state — to racism.

In February, after attending preparatory meetings for the follow-up conference, the Obama administration said it would not attend “Durban II” unless the meeting’s final document was changed to drop references to Israel, defamation of religion and demands for reparations for slavery.

Wood said Monday that there had been “substantial improvements” to the draft but that there were elements that “continue to pose significant concerns,” including the affirmation of the Durban declaration and a portion on incitement to religious hatred that the U.S. sees as “suggested support for restrictions on freedom of expression.”

Israel and Canada already have announced they will boycott the meeting.

Israel, which was deeply concerned when the administration sent a delegation to the preparatory meeting, has lobbied hard for the U.S. to stay away from the conference.

A defiant Sudanese president rallied Arab supporters in Darfur Wednesday by saying no war crimes court or the U.N. Security Council can touch even “an eyelash” on him despite an international order for his arrest.

Speaking to thousands at a rally near the southern Darfur town of Nyala, Omar al-Bashir denounced the West for allegedly seeking to “create chaos in Sudan” and trying to split Darfur from the rest of the country.

His remarks reflected his confidence amid support from the Arab League, whose chief Amr Moussa said this week that the 22-nation group will not act on the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant when al-Bashir flies to an Arab summit in Qatar at the end of the month.

“No ICC or Security Council or any other party will change our path or touch an eyelash in our eye,” al-Bashir shouted at the rally in Niyala’s nomad Sabadou area. “The president of Sudan is not elected by Britain or America. Sudan is an independent country.”

This was al-Bashir’s second visit to Darfur since the ICC issued the warrant on March 4 on charges of war crimes in the western Sudanese region.

The Netherlands-based court accuses al-Bashir of orchestrating atrocities against civilians in Darfur, where his Arab-led government has been battling ethnic African rebels since 2003. Up to 300,000 people have been killed and 2.7 million have been driven from their homes.

Many fear the warrant could unleash violence against civilians and the joint U.N.-African Union mission in Darfur.

The Sudanese government responded to the warrant by expelling 13 large foreign aid agencies, most of them operating in Darfur, as al-Bashir accused them of spying for the ICC. The U.N. estimates that the expulsion threatens more than 3 million people with the loss of food aid, health care or suitable drinking water.

Al-Bashir again denounced the warrant at Wednesday’s rally, saying his “holy fighters are ready to fight.” His speech was broadcast live on Sudanese state television and showed a smiling al-Bashir, speaking from a truck to chanting supporters, mostly tribesmen dressed in traditional white robes and turbans. Behind the crowd, a group of tribesmen paraded, galloping on horseback.

Al-Bashir claimed the West seeks to create chaos in Sudan similar to Iraq, where he said U.S. forces “killed women and children, looted the country and planted sedition.”

“Those criminals want to do the same in Sudan,” he said, occasionally waving his cane. “We will not give them the chance to sabotage our country.”

He also asserted that ethnic conflict between Darfur’s Arabs and Africans was the work of “Satan” and urged them to “cure the demons” and restore peace in the region.

Al-Bashir’s expulsion of aid groups has worried Washington. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Tuesday on the Sudanese president to reverse the order or at least replace the groups with sufficient resources to address the humanitarian crisis.

In a signal the Obama administration intends to step up involvement in the African country, President Barack Obama settled on retired Air Force Gen. J. Scott Gration, a close personal friend with long experience on African issues, to be special envoy to Sudan, a senior administration official told The Associated Press.

Apart from the Arab League, the African Union has also expressed support for al-Bashir, although both have criticized his decision to expel foreign aid workers. The AU in January announced that its own high-level panel would investigate Darfur atrocities.

That panel was launched Wednesday in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, led by former South African president Thabo Mbeki. However, it doesn’t have any judicial powers and its mandate remains unclear.

Sudan’s Ambassador to the African Union, Mohieldin Salim, said his government believes the panel would “do everything good for Africa and for Sudan without any interference from outsiders.”

The Obama administration will endorse a U.N. declaration calling for the worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality that then-President George W. Bush had refused to sign, The Associated Press has learned.

U.S. officials said Tuesday they had notified the declaration’s French sponsors that the administration wants to be added as a supporter. The Bush administration was criticized in December when it was the only western government that refused to sign on.

The move was made after an interagency review of the Bush administration’s position on the nonbinding document, which was signed by all 27 European Union members as well as Japan, Australia, Mexico and three dozen other countries, the officials said.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Congress was still being notified of the decision. They said the administration had decided to sign the declaration to demonstrate that the United States supports human rights for all.

“The United States is an outspoken defender of human rights and critic of human rights abuses around the world,” said one official.

“As such, we join with the other supporters of this statement and we will continue to remind countries of the importance of respecting the human rights of all people in all appropriate international fora,” the official said.

The official added that the United States was concerned about “violence and human rights abuses against gay, lesbian, transsexual and bisexual individuals” and was also “troubled by the criminalization of sexual orientation in many countries.”

“In the words of the United States Supreme Court, the right to be free from criminalization on the basis of sexual orientation ‘has been accepted as an integral part of human freedom’,” the official said.

Gay rights and other groups had criticized the Bush administration when it refused to sign the declaration when it was presented at the United Nations on Dec. 19. U.S. officials said then that the U.S. opposed discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation but that parts of the declaration raised legal questions that needed further review.

According to negotiators, the Bush team had concerns that those parts could commit the federal government on matters that fall under state jurisdiction. In some states, landlords and private employers are allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation; on the federal level, gays are not allowed to serve openly in the military.

It was not immediately clear on Tuesday how the Obama administration had come to a different conclusion.

When it was voted on in December, 66 of the U.N.’s 192 member countries signed the declaration _ which backers called a historic step to push the General Assembly to deal more forthrightly with anti-gay discrimination.

But 70 U.N. members outlaw homosexuality _ and in several, homosexual acts can be punished by execution. More than 50 nations, including members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, opposed the declaration.

Some Islamic countries said at the time that protecting sexual orientation could lead to “the social normalization and possibly the legalization of deplorable acts” such as pedophilia and incest. The declaration was also opposed by the Vatican.

The Obama administration on Friday made an emergency contribution of more than $20 million for urgent relief efforts in the Gaza Strip, a day after the United Nations launched a flash appeal for $613 million to help Palestinians recover from Israel’s three-week military operation there.

The State Department said President Barack Obama had authorized the use of $20.3 million from the U.S. Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance Fund for humanitarian assistance to the 1.4 million Palestinians in Gaza.

The money will go to U.N. agencies and the International Committee of the Red Cross, which are distributing emergency food assistance, providing medical care and temporary shelter, creating temporary employment and restoring access to electricity and potable water, the department said in a statement.

The Israeli offensive killed nearly 1,300 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, and caused an estimated $2 billion in damage, Palestinian officials say. The assault was launched to halt years of Hamas rocket fire on southern Israel.

Israel shelled the United Nations headquarters in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, engulfing the compound and a warehouse in fire and destroying thousands of pounds of food and humanitarian supplies intended for Palestinian refugees.

U.N. workers and Palestinian firefighters, some wearing bulletproof jackets, struggled to douse the flames and pull bags of food aid from the debris after the Israeli attack, which was another blow to efforts to ease the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. Dense smoke billowed from the compound.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is in the region to end the devastating offensive against Gaza’s Hamas rulers, demanded a “full explanation” and said the Israeli defense minister told him there had been a “grave mistake.”

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the military fired artillery shells at the U.N. compound after Hamas militants opened fire from the location. Three people were wounded.

“It is absolutely true that we were attacked from that place, but the consequences are very sad and we apologize for it,” he said. “I don’t think it should have happened and I’m very sorry.”

A senior Israeli military officer had also said Israeli troops shelled the compound after coming under fire from Palestinian militants there — an account dismissed by a U.N. official there at the time as “nonsense.”

Even as a top Israeli envoy went to Egypt to discuss a cease-fire proposal, the military pushed farther into Gaza in an apparent effort to step up pressure on Hamas. Ground forces thrust deep into a crowded neighborhood for the first time, sending terrified residents fleeing for cover. Shells also struck a hospital, five high-rise apartment buildings and a building housing media outlets in Gaza City, injuring several journalists.

Bullets also entered another building housing The Associated Press offices, entering a room where two staffers were working but wounding no one. The Foreign Press Association, representing journalists covering Israel and the Palestinian territories, demanded a halt to attacks on press buildings.

The army had collected the locations of media organizations at the outset of fighting to avoid such attacks.

Israel launched its war on Dec. 27 in an effort to stop militant rocket fire from Gaza that has terrorized hundreds of thousands of Israelis. Some 1,100 Palestinians have been killed, roughly half of them civilians, according to U.N. and Palestinian medical officials. Gaza health official Dr. Moaiya Hassanain said at least 50 people were killed throughout Gaza on Thursday.

Thirteen Israelis also have been killed since the campaign began. Israel says it will press ahead until Hamas halts the rocket fire and stops smuggling weapons into Gaza from neighboring Egypt.

Israeli police said 20 rockets hit southern Israel on Thursday, injuring 10 people. Five of the wounded were in a car that was struck in the city of Beersheba.

The U.N. compound struck Thursday houses the U.N. Works and Relief Agency, which distributes food aid to hundreds of thousands of destitute Gazans in the tiny seaside territory of 1.4 million people.

“I conveyed my strong protest and outrage to the defense minister and foreign minister and demanded a full explanation,” said Ban, who arrived in Israel on Thursday morning from Egypt.

It had only that morning become a makeshift shelter for 700 Gaza City residents seeking sanctuary from relentless Israeli shelling, U.N. officials in Gaza said.

John Ging, director of UNRWA operations in Gaza, said the attack at the compound caused a “massive explosion” that wounded three people.

A senior Israeli military officer said troops opened fire after militants inside the compound shot anti-tank weapons and machine guns. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity pending a formal army announcement later in the day.

Ging, who was in the compound at the time, dismissed the Israeli account as “nonsense.”

Israeli shells first hit the courtyard filled with refugees, then struck garages and the U.N.’s main warehouse, sending thousands of tons of food aid up in flames, Ging said. Later, fuel supplies went up in flames, sending a thick black plume of smoke into the air.

“It’s a total disaster for us,” Ging said, adding that the U.N. had warned the Israeli military that the compound was in peril from shelling that had begun overnight. U.N. officials say they have provided Israel with GPS coordinates of all U.N. installations in Gaza to prevent such attacks.

The refugees were moved to a school away from the immediate fighting, he said.

Separately, Israel shells landed next to a U.N. school in another Gaza City neighborhood, wounding 14 people who had sought sanctuary there, medics and firefighters said.

The United Nations halted aid deliveries to the besieged Gaza Strip on Thursday, citing Israeli attacks on its staff and installations hours after it said tank fire killed one of its drivers as he went to pick up a shipment.

The United Nations has already demanded an investigation into Israel’s shelling of a U.N. school in Gaza that killed nearly 40 people earlier this week. Israel and residents said militants were operating in the area at the time.

For a second straight day, Israel suspended its Gaza military operation for three hours to allow in humanitarian supplies. Shortly before the pause took effect, however, the U.N. said one of its aid trucks came under Israeli fire, killing the driver.

U.N. spokesman Adnan Abu Hasna said the U.N. coordinated the delivery with Israel, and the vehicle was marked with a U.N. flag and insignia when it was shot in northern Gaza. The Israeli army said it was investigating.

“The U.N. is suspending its aid operations in Gaza until we can get safety and security guarantees for our staff,” spokesman Chris Gunness said. “We’ve been coordinating with them (Israeli forces) and yet our staff continue to be hit and killed.”

The U.N. provides food aid to around 750,000 Gaza residents, and runs dozens of schools and clinics throughout the territory. They have some 9,000 locally-employed staffers inside Gaza, and a small team of international staffers who work there.

As Israel pushed forward with the bloody offensive in the Gaza Strip, militants in Lebanon fired at least three rockets into Israel early Thursday, threatening to open a new front for the Jewish state. Israel responded with mortar shells.

The rockets from Lebanon raised the specter of renewed hostilities on Israel’s northern frontier, just 2 1/2 years after Israel battled the Hezbollah guerrilla group to a 34-day stalemate. War broke out between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006 as Israel battled Palestinian militants in Gaza, on Israel’s southern borders.

No group claimed responsibility. Lebanon’s government condemned the attack, and Hezbollah _ which now plays an integral role in Lebanon’s government _ denied any responsibility for the rocket fire, which lightly injured two Israelis.

In other Gaza violence, Israel killed at least 11 people, including three who were fleeing their homes, raising the death toll from its 13-day offensive to 699 Palestinians, according to Palestinian medical officials. Eleven Israelis have died since the offensive began Dec. 27.

The offensive is meant to halt years of Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel, but with roughly half the dead believed to be civilians, international efforts to broker a cease-fire have been gaining steam.

Despite the heavy fighting, strides appeared to be made on the diplomatic front with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice saying the U.S. supported a deal being brokered by France and Egypt.

While the U.N. Security Council failed to reach agreement on a cease-fire resolution, Egypt’s U.N. Ambassador Maged Abdelaziz said representatives of Israel, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority agreed to meet separately with Egyptian officials in Cairo.

Israeli envoys traveled to Egypt on Thursday to discuss the proposal.

For Israel to accept a proposed cease-fire deal, “there has to be a total and complete cessation of all hostile fire from Gaza into Israel, and … we have to see an arms embargo on Hamas that will receive international support,” said government spokesman Mark Regev.

For its part, Hamas said it would not accept a truce deal unless it includes an end to the Israeli blockade of Gaza _ something Israel says it is not willing to do. Israel and Egypt have maintained a stiff economic embargo on Gaza since the Hamas takeover.

The Palestinian Authority controls the West Bank while Hamas rules Gaza _ two territories on opposite sides of Israel that are supposed to make up a future Palestinian state. Hamas took control of Gaza from forces loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in June 2007.

Within hours of Abdullahi Yusuf‘s resignation, mortars shells slammed into the pockmarked streets near the presidential palace in the capital, Mogadishu, where the government maintains only a token presence.

“Most of the country is not in our hands,” Yusuf said in a speech before parliament in Baidoa — one of the only towns controlled by Somalia’s government, which has been sidelined by Islamic insurgents with alleged ties to al-Qaida.

In the address broadcast nationwide on the radio, Yusuf said he could not unite Somalia’s bickering leadership and that the country was “paralyzed.”

“After seeing all these things, I have finally quit,” said Yusuf, who was president for four years. Meanwhile, troops from neighboring Ethiopia are scheduled to pull out this week, leaving a massive power vaccum after two years of propping up the weak Somali government.

The parliament speaker will stand as acting president until parliament elects a new leader within 30 days. There have been no announcements of who might be under consideration, but many believe Yusuf’s absence will allow moderate Islamist leaders into the government, which Yusuf had largely rejected.

Yusuf is the latest leader to have failed to pacify Somalia during two decades of turmoil. The Horn of African country has been beset by anarchy, violence and an insurgency that has killed thousands of civilians and sent hundreds of thousands fleeing for their lives.

There have been more than a dozen attempts to form an effective government since 1991. Meanwhile, all public institutions have crumbled and the once-beautiful seaside capital is now a gun-blasted shantytown.

The most aggressive Islamic insurgency group, al-Shabab, has made dramatic territory gains in recent months, and insurgents now control most of the country. In a statement Monday, al-Shabab said Yusuf was resigning “with shame.” The statement said it was too early to tell if Yusuf’s replacement would be an improvement.

The United States accuses al-Shabab of harboring the al-Qaida-linked terrorists who blew up the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Many of the insurgency’s senior figures are Islamic radicals; some are on the State Department’s list of wanted terrorists.

The U.N. envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, who has been trying to salvage an ineffective peace deal in the country, lauded Yusuf’s resignation and said “a new page of Somalia history is now open.”

The United Nations has brokered peace deals between the government and an opposition faction, but they have failed to quell the political and violent chaos. Al-Shabab has refused to participate in the talks.

Yusuf, who like many of Somalia’s leaders is a former warlord, has been accused of being an obstacle to peace. Earlier this month, he tried to fire his prime minister, but was rebuffed by parliament. Neighboring countries, including Kenya, have threatened to impose sanctions on Yusuf and his family.

“I am happy that the Somali president has resigned,” Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein said. “I wish him to become Somali elder and play a role in the common endeavor to restore peace and order in Somalia.”

Thousands of civilians have been killed or maimed by mortar shells, machine-gun crossfire and grenades in near-daily fighting in this arid country. The U.N. says Somalia has 300,000 acutely malnourished children, but attacks and kidnappings of aid workers have shut down many humanitarian projects.

The lawlessness also has allowed piracy to flourish off the coast.

Rights groups have accused all sides in the conflict — Islamic insurgents, the government and Ethiopian troops — of committing war crimes and other serious abuses for indiscriminately firing on civilian neighborhoods.

Ethiopia‘s planned withdrawal of troops would end their unpopular presence and leave the administration more vulnerable to insurgents. The Ethiopians entered Somalia two years ago with the tacit approval of the United States to drive out an earlier group of Islamic insurgents.

Somalia has been ravaged by violence and anarchy since warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on one another. The current transitional government was formed with U.N. help in 2004.

Yusuf, a former Somali army colonel in the 1960s, was jailed by Barre when he refused to cooperate in a coup d’etat in 1969. Although Yusuf is a member of one of Somalia’s four biggest clans, the Darod, he was unpopular in Mogadishu because of his ties to Ethiopia — one of Somalia’s traditional enemies.