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Former President Bill Clinton has made a surprise visit to North Korea to try to win the release of two jailed US journalists that were be put on trial on charges of illegal entry and hostile acts. The two reporters, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, were detained along the Chinese border on March 17. The reporters work for Al Gore’s Current TV.

A group of high-ranking Latin American diplomats are planning to head to Honduras to pressure the coup-installed leaders to restore ousted President Manuel Zelaya. The trip is being organized by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias and the Organization of American States. On Monday, Cesar Caceres, a spokesperson for the coup government, rejected calls for Zelaya’s return.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has begun a seven-nation, eleven-day trip to Africa. Her trip begins in Kenya, where she is expected to meet with Somalia’s President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed. Somalia at present is at war, since January 2009 when the southern half of the country fell into the hands of radical Islamist rebels.

The United Nations nuclear watchdog’s board has approved an almost €25 million increase in the agency’s 2010 budget.
The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will receive over €318 million in its regular budget next year, with the biggest funding boost going to work in nuclear security and safety, technical cooperation, nuclear power and nuclear applications.

A torch to be lit from the Hiroshima Flame on August 5 will be carried on a march around the world to promote the abolition of nuclear weapons – ending up at the United Nations in May 2010 for a major inter-governmental conference on nuclear non-proliferation.
It will remain alight until all nuclear weapons are eliminated.

After two Zelaya supporters died in Honduras, ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya vowed on Saturday to return to power through peaceful means and said he would take his case to the International Criminal Court. He declared that it was in the convenience of the United States to withhold a common vision of democracy, and not support the coup d’état.

The World March for Peace and Nonviolence commemorates Hiroshima Day, August 6, in New York City by launching roving celebrity billboards throughout Manhattan featuring the faces of presidents, Hollywood actors, Nobel Laureates and many others who endorse the March and feel deep worry for the nuclear threat. All will converge in Times Square for a closing ceremony.

The abrahamic Occident expanded three times: islam 622-1492 from Iberia to the Philippines; christianity from 1492 on all five continents; and judaism from 1948 in the Middle East. They left and leave behind enormous clashes of civilizations in their wake, many extinguished. South America is building on an incredible rich history and wisdom like Bolivia’s Morales is now doing.

In 1969, Yoko Ono and John Lennon staged a Bed-In for Peace during their honeymoon to protest the Vietnam War. 40 years later, the organizers of the World March for Peace and Nonviolence will re-enact the Bed-In near the famous “Strawberry Fields” to warn how nuclear weapons pose the most dangerous threat to humanity and demand they be abolished.

Before travelling to attend ceremonies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I dwelled on what would be the priorities for pacifists today. To find answers, I asked myself what would be the most brutal violence against human beings? The image of the detonation of a nuclear bomb over a population living in any city around the world.