Politics
Madagascar rivals agree power-sharing deal
Madagascar’s feuding leaders said on Sunday they had agreed a power-sharing deal and would hold elections on the giant Indian Ocean island within 15 months. A communique issued after talks in Mozambique’s capital said a national unity government would be set up comprised of a prime minister, three deputy first ministers and 28 members.
New Hope for Nuclear Disarmament
(OneWorld.net) – Marking the 64th anniversary of the U.S. nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that killed over 100,000 civilians, a disarmament group celebrated a day of peace last week. The annual Sadako Peace Day ceremony was inspired by a young girl who died from leukemia as a result of the atomic bomb that hit Hiroshima in 1945.
Worldwide protest at Myanmar sentence
The opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been sentenced to further 18 months home imprisonment which would prevent her from participating in Myanmar’s elections in May 2010. Ms Suu Ky won the Peace Nobel Price in 1991. In 1990 she had won the right to be Prime Minister when her coalition won 59% of the votes but a military junta prevented her from assuming office.
Overhaul of Fatah’s Central Committee opens a new chance for Peace with Israel
In the first poll in 20 years, though Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’s continues in office, an important overhaul of Fatah’s Central Committee changed 14 of the 18 members with younger representatives. Fatah’s position has rejected violence and proclaims “two states for two people”. Their main condition is the removal of all Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Call for an Arctic Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone
The Copenhaguen conference calls for Arctic nuclear-weapon-free zone to be demilitarized as Antarctica. It was attended by parliamentarians, academics, scientists, indigenous representatives and activists from Arctic countries and from established nuclear-weapon-free zones. Participants are flying to Thule military base, Greenland – site of B52 nuclear bomber crash in 1968.
Coup Government in Honduras to Accept OAS Delegation
Honduras’s de facto rulers said Sunday they had resolved a disagreement with the Organization of American States over a visit to the Central American country to discuss its political crisis. The government running Honduras since a coup in June had told OAS chief Jose Miguel Insulza to stay away but now has changed its mind, and allows him to come with a delegation.
Obama meets with neighbouring leaders
United States President Barack Obama will hold a press conference with the leaders of Mexico and Canada at 1730 UTC. President Obama arrived in Mexico’s second-largest city, Guadalajara, on Sunday evening for a day and a half of talks with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon. In the agenda: Flu, drugs, NAFTA and the Honduras’s crisis.
Hiroshima remembered in Budapest – demands for disarmament
In Budapest, a joint delegation from the Humanist Movement, Greenpeace Hungary, and ATTAC Hungary visited the embassies of countries with nuclear weapons. Later that day, 150 people staged a die-in demonstration in front of the Hungarian parliament building, to commemorate the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks.
Zelaya: “I continue to stick with my mandate, fighting to oust the power-grabbers using all peaceful weapons”
While post-ouster Toll hits Five people dead, Honduran General General Romeo Vasquez, denies Coup, and pressure from the United Nations, the OAS, Central American presidents, increases. In an interview with CNN, President Zelaya said that with a tighter pressure from the United States, the coup could no be maintained any longer.
Zelaya Takes Case to International Criminal Court
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.