■ Following a meeting of the African Union Peace and Security Council and coming after a similar appeal from the Arab League, the African Union has called on the UN Security Council to suspend the war crimes indictment of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. The UN may suspend the International Criminal Court's action for a period of one year, which is renewable.
■ Over 9 million Ethiopians face dire food shortages and $222 million in emergency aid is needed to avoid a major crisis, the World Food Programme said Tuesday. Rising food prices combined with drought and a lack of supply are worsening the grinding poverty in which most Ethiopians live.
■ World Trade Organisation (WTO) director general Pascal Lamy said on Wednesday that only "modest" progress had been made in the past two days of crucial trade talks aimed at concluding a global trade accord. "Progress has been modest until now," Lamy told a meeting of the WTO's 153 member states, his spokesperson Keith Rockwell told reporters. Lamy had called for a meeting of ministers from 35 key nations this week in a bid to nail down a global trade accord that has been elusive for the past seven years. As negotiations have been slow-moving, the process has been delayed.
■ One of Jamaica's human rights groups yesterday described the Government's new anti-crime plan as reactive, saying it neglects how to ensure that criminals are caught. "All of these legislation kick in after the person has been caught," said Yvonne McCalla Sobers, convenor of Families Against State Terrorism, adding that the problem was with "catching the people". But McCalla Sobers said she felt more comfortable with the Government's proposal to detain criminal suspects for 72 hours instead of the 28 days that was being considered.
■ This week's topics are "Access to Information and Knowledge Sharing", "Health Informatics" and "eHealth Capacity Building". The eHealth world is exploring and experimenting, if not yet expanding, ways by which increased access to connectivity will make it possible to scale up Internet-enabled pilot projects that for example, give health workers online data via hand-held devices. Monday's keynote speaker highlighted the challenges in sub Saharan Africa, where shortages of trained health professionals are severe and where health outcomes fall far short of the United Nations "Millennium Development Goals" for reducing poverty and improving health by 2015. The crisis is compounded by the lack of health care educators.
■ Kenya's government is distributing seeds to grow traditional crops that perform well in dry climates, in the face of calamities - drought, high food prices, and bloody political conflict - that will require the country to import as many as 3 million bags of corn. The government hopes to double its $2 million plus investment by spring 2009.
■ Oil prices were about $130 per barrel Monday, more than $18 below the early July record. Fluctuations may owe to talks with Iran that appeared to be progressing but now may be stalled. In addition, news of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico has caused fuel prices to rise.
■ Islamic insurgents in Somalia appear to be ratcheting up a campaign of violence that has killed 20 aid workers since January by targeting them specifically. UN officials warn that a deliberate terror campaign could escalate food crisis conditions into a full-blown famine.
■ Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai have agreed to begin two weeks of intensive talks, during which the two will ostensibly discuss their respective interests: Mugabe seeks to legitimize the controversial ballot results that returned him to power, whereas Tsvangirai insists that any deal must remove Mugabe from the presidency.
■ Domestic politics in both Thailand and Cambodia exacerbate a border dispute over the Preah Vihear temple, which was designated as a world heritage site for Cambodia by UNESCO. Opponents of both Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who seeks re-election, and Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, have used the issue to fuel nationalist rhetoric.
■ Efforts to clear out tens of thousands of land mines in Afghanistan have made substantial progress, according to officials with the United Nations Mine Action Center for Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of Afghans have died or been maimed by land mines in the past two decades.
■ At least 70 Kenyan students have been charged following ongoing unrest at boarding schools across the country. The students complain of poor quality food and harsh rules at the boarding schools. According to reports, about 200 students were arrested during three months of protests that led to millions of dollars worth of damaged property. In the most recent episode, a student in Nairobi died when a dormitory was set on fire. Some politicians, parents and teachers are calling for corporal punishment – currently banned in all learning institutions - as a way to repress the rebellion.
