At a news conference at UNHQ/NY on Tuesday, UNSG BAN Ki-Moon announced that he will travel week to Sudan, Chad and Libya. He said he wants to see at first hand the suffering that the proposed 26,000-person strong UN peacekeeping operation approved last month by the UN Security Council will try to alleviate, as well [...]
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Filed under: BAN Ki-Moon, Sudan - Darfur
They may be meeting now, following the establishment of Palestinian government which has excluded Hamas, but two sides are still operating on vastly different levels, however. The Israelis seem to believe they are working on a set of principles to be adopted at a big peace conference in the U.S. in November, while Abbas is [...]
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Filed under: Israel, Palestine & Palestinians, Quartet
With some U.S. news media breathlessly anticipating “the next war”, Iran has done a smart thing. It has blinked, or maybe “winked” (I do not mean to suggest here, however, that this might be a trick), and promised to reveal information of a formerly-secret programmes, including something called the “Green Salt Project”, according to the [...]
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Filed under: International Atomic Energy Agency - IAEA, Iran, UN Security Council
The AP’s tireless Edith Lederer reports today that “The Security Council gave the European Union and the UN the green light Monday to prepare for a military and police deployment to help protect civilians in Chad and the Central African Republic caught in the spillover of the Darfur conflict. A council statement expressed readiness to [...]
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Filed under: Sudan - Darfur, UN Peacekeeping, UN Security Council
In a country that opened a new international airport (Ben Gurion) almost two years ago without proper working sewage infrastructure — and it is still not installed — it has to be said that environmental awareness is not a top priority. No time, say some. Security is more important, say others. Well, I’m sorry, but [...]
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Filed under: Environment, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians, Register of damages due to The Wall, UN Peacekeeping
It’s just used personal belongings, meaning old furniture, clothes, hundreds of books, bed, linens, towels, kitchen equipment — and family photos! Family photos are taxable in Israel! So, the customs bill just presented to me today for my sea shipment to Jerusalem totals 6072 New Israeli Shekels (NIS), or the equivalent of $1,500 U.S. UPDATE: [...]
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Filed under: Israel
Not only do we get to see Vladimir Putin’s nice chest — come on, this guy reportedly works out three hours per day – but now we learn that ten people have just been arrested for the murder last October of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who has been previously mentioned in this blog for her [...]
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Filed under: Journalism and Journalists, Russia
Ramzy Baroud, who is the editor-in-chief of PalestineChronicle.com, wrote recently in counterpunch.com that “$80 million seems too cheap a price for selling out one’s own people”. In his article, sarcastically entitled “A Palestinian Miracle at the UN?”, Baroud stated that: “For the first time, and after days of intense lobbying, a Palestinian delegation recently killed [...]
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Filed under: Gaza, UN Security Council
The Agence France Presse (AFP) reported late last night that a one-year-old Palestinian baby boy with a heart condition died just after crossing into Israel from the Gaza Strip to receive medical treatment. While Israeli authorities denied that the boy and his father were delayed at the crossing, the director of the Palestinian ambulance service, [...]
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Filed under: Gaza, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians
This statement on the renewal of the UN Peacekeeping mandate in Lebanon was issued on Sunday by the spokesperson for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “The decision by the UN Security Council to renew the mandate of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) reflects the determination of the international community to complete [...]
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Filed under: Israel, Lebanon