Since 2001, Congress and the Bush administration have undertaken an unrealistic and impractical effort to undermine the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the expense of other U.S. foreign policy objectives. The Bush administration has insisted that member countries of the ICC sign Bilateral Immunity Agreements (BIAs) with the United States, in clear violation of their treaty obligations. For its part, Congress has withheld military and economic aid to countries that refuse to sign BIAs. This policy has damaged the image of our nation abroad, weakened bilateral relations, and compromised top-tier foreign policy goals.


1) A Superpower, A Super Partner. In an interconnected world, coercion and threats make nations weaker - not stronger. We should work with others to advance the human rights- and justice-oriented mission of the ICC, not force our friends to undermine it.

2) Cutting Off Our Nose to Spite Our Face. The withheld aid funds are intended to support counterterrorism, security and economic development - all key U.S. goals. Plus, our allies are increasingly seeing other powers, like China and Venezuela, as more reliable partners than the United States.

3) When Are We Going to Learn? For five years, the ICC has forged a consistent record of impartial, justice-oriented activities in the name of some of the world's most vulnerable people. Civil society and military leaders agree that the current ideologically-driven policy of the U.S. has been a disaster, and it's time for our country to correct its course.


Learn more about the issue :

http://www.globalsolutions.org/issues/international_criminal_court

The new president of Nigeria, Umaru Yar'Adua, has publicly declared his assets, in an effort to combat official corruption, his spokesman says.
Correspondents say it is the first time in Nigeria's history that a sitting president has done this.

Public officials have to declare their assets to authorities by law, but are not compelled to make them public.

According to Mr Yar'Adua, he is worth about $5m (£2.5m).

Transparency International, which monitors corruption in different countries, says Nigeria is seen as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.

Chemistry teacher

"President Yar'Adua intends to work with the leadership of the National Assembly to see what can be done to make assets declaration an effective weapon in the fight against corruption and abuse of office," AP news agency quotes presidential spokesman Olusegun Adeniyi as saying.

YAR'ADUA'S ASSETS
House given by brother: $940,000
Inheritance from brother: $820,000
Two farms: $196,000
Savings, salaries, campaign funds: $40,000
Furniture: $23,500
Cars: 31
No assets outside Nigeria
Source: Presidential statement

Mr Adeniyi says much of his wealth was inherited from his late brother Gen Shehu Yar'Adua, who was second-in-command when former President Olusegun Obasanjo was military ruler from 1976 to 1979.

He says he has some $40,000 from his salaries, savings and campaign donations.

He is a former university chemistry teacher and state governor.

Meanwhile, attempts by Mr Yar'Adua to form a government including opposition parties have received a setback.

Probe demanded

A large faction of the Action Congress (AC), led by former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, pulled out of talks with him on Thursday.

The AC wants the government to investigate the workings of the state-owned electricity and petroleum companies, as well as a review of how state assets were privatised.

Mr Yar'Adua is reported to have been willing to consider this, but only if the AC withdrew all its legal challenges to his election in April, something they refused to do.

International observers described the polls as "not credible".

Earlier, Mr Yar'Adua reached an agreement with the largest opposition party, the ANPP.

It is not yet clear how many ministerial posts the ANPP has been offered and party leader Muhammadu Buhari condemned the decision to join the government.

A month after taking power, the president has not yet appointed the members of his government.


source ----http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6252442.stm

CNN) -- Yanar Mohammed left the comfort of her Toronto, Canada, home to return to Iraq and fight for a cause she says is overlooked in her native country -- women's rights.

"The upper hand was given to the Islamists and to the tribals," Mohammed said of the formation of Iraq's young democracy. "Nobody listened to us," she said in a recent CNN interview. "To the tribals, to the Islamists, but never to women."

In 2003, Mohammed founded the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq, in order to give voice to and seek protection for those women in Iraq who are in need.

"Nobody has the right to tell us that we are second-rate citizens," Mohammed said.

Historically, Iraqi women have enjoyed more freedoms than the women of neighboring countries, according to Human Rights Watch. Under Saddam Hussein's secular Baathist party, citizens were declared equal before the law regardless of sex, blood, language, social origin, or religion, and they were allowed to vote and run for office, the HRW said.

Even after Hussein rolled back women's rights to curry favor with tribal and religious leaders after the first Gulf War, women were spared the level of violence they endure now, according to Amnesty International.

According to a United Nations report, the kidnapping, rape and murder of women is on the rise. Honor killings, or the killing of a woman who brought perceived dishonor to her family, is up also. Women -- Muslims and non-Muslims alike -- are warned to adhere to the strict dress code, the United Nations said.

"You go to the Baghdad morgue, and you find a big number of women who are headless; they have been beheaded, they have been tortured and killed, and this is usually the case in honor killing," Mohammed said. "Nobody can speak about democracy if women are being killed for honor." She added that the current laws in Iraq do not punish the men who carry out honor killings.

And so, Mohammed and her organization are fighting not for equity in wages or reproductive rights, but for freedoms that women in other nations take for granted: The right to not be bought and sold, to not be raped and to not be murdered, to not to have to wear a veil.

"We see over the television hundreds of officials who say that they have given freedoms to women," Mohammed said. "But you look at the streets -- every single woman is veiled, she is veiled in white, in black, in colors; she cannot move freely she cannot go to her education, cannot go to work."

Mohammed said the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq has been able to prevent the honor killing of more than 30 women and has helped usher some women out of Iraq.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/06/26/pysk.mohammed/index.html

But she says that Iraq's current laws hinder their efforts.

"Our only hope is to create a youth movement ... to change the world to a better one," she said.

"For though we walk in the flesh we do not war after the flesh for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ" ---(2 corinthians 10:3-5).

From the above bible verse mentioned three vital things, they are "stronghold, imaginations, and thoughts". When a thought is unchecked will authomaticaly become an imagination. And when we say "imagination" we can break down the word and say "image" A thought is going to produce an image. Just like saying a word "cat", surely you don't see the letter c-a-t, rather you see your Chihuahua or whatever kind of cat you have. That is what you see. you see a picture.
Likewise when you hear a devilish thought "sickness" you see a picture maybe you see a funeral. Maybe you see a hospital bed. maybe you see yourself dying and falling apart. When the devil speaks a thought into your mind it creates a picture. When that thought is meditated on, over time it creates a vivid picture, and that imagination becomes a stronghold.

What is a stronghold?
A stronghold is something that has a "strong" "hold" over you. So it starts as a thought, then it grows into an image, and that's when it becomes a stronghold.
So if we want to tear dwon strongholds, we've got to deal with our imagination or our image. And if we want to deal with the images we have to deal with our thought life.

People can portray a godly life on the outside, we have to deal with our thought life on the inside, because that's who we really are. That's what really going to manifest in our lives and that is why our thoughts must be on what God thinks about us. We have got to develop the right image or imagination on the inside. We must understand the image of who we really are onthe inside and then meditate on that image. That image will give us a "stronghold" over whatever the devil is trying to do in our life, rather than it having a strong hold over us.

What explains the appeal of development ideology despite its dismal track record? Ideologies usually arise in response to tragic situations in which people are hungry for clear and comprehensive solutions. The inequality of the Industrial Revolution bred Marxism, and the backwardness of Russia its Leninist offshoot. Germany’s defeat and demoralization in World War I birthed Nazism. Economic hardship accompanied by threats to identity led to both Christian and Islamic fundamentalism. Similarly, development ideology appeals to those who want a definitive, complete answer to the tragedy of world poverty and inequality. It answers the question, “What is to be done?” to borrow the title of Lenin’s 1902 tract. It stresses collective social outcomes that must be remedied by collective, top-down action by the intelligentsia, the revolutionary vanguard, the development expert. As Sachs explains, “I have … gradually come to understand through my scientific research and on the ground advisory work the awesome power in our generation’s hands to end the massive suffering of the extreme poor … although introductory economics textbooks preach individualism and decentralized markets, our safety and prosperity depend at least as much on collective decisions.”

FREEING THE POOR

Few realize that Americans in 1776 had the same income level as the average African today. Yet, like all the present-day developed nations, the United States was lucky enough to escape poverty before there were Developmentalists. In the words of former IMF First Deputy Managing Director Anne Krueger, development in the rich nations “just happened.” George Washington did not have to deal with aid partners, getting structurally adjusted by them, or preparing poverty-reduction strategy papers for them. Abraham Lincoln did not celebrate a government of the donors, by the donors, and for the donors. Today’s developed nations were free to experiment with their own pragmatic paths toward more government accountability and freer markets. Individualism and decentralized markets were good enough to give rise to penicillin, air conditioning, high-yield corn, and the automobile—not to mention better living standards, lower mortality, and the iPod.

The opposite of ideology is freedom, the ability of societies to be unchained from foreign control. The only “answer” to poverty reduction is freedom from being told the answer. Free societies and individuals are not guaranteed to succeed. They will make bad choices. But at least they bear the cost of those mistakes, and learn from them. That stands in stark contrast to accountability-free Developmentalism. This process of learning from mistakes is what produced the repositories of common sense that make up mainstream economics. The opposite of Development ideology is not anything goes, but the pragmatic use of time-tested economic ideas—the benefits of specialization, comparative advantage, gains from trade, market-clearing prices, trade-offs, budget constraints—by individuals, firms, governments, and societies as they find their own success.

History proves just how much good can come from individuals who both bear the costs and reap the benefits of their own choices when they are free to make them. That includes local politicians, activists, and businesspeople who are groping their way toward greater freedom, contrary to the Developmentalists who oxymoronically impose freedom of choice on other people. Those who best understood the lessons of the 20th century were not the ideologues asking, “What is to be done?” They were those asking, “How can people be more free to find their own solutions?”

The ideology of Development should be packed up in crates and sent off to the Museum of Dead Ideologies, just down the hall from Communism, Socialism, and Fascism. It’s time to recognize that the attempt to impose a rigid development ideology on the world’s poor has failed miserably. Fortunately, many poor societies are forging their own path toward greater freedom and prosperity anyway. That is how true revolutions happen.

www.foreignpolicy.com

By William Easterly, professor of economics at New York University.

The failed ideologies of the last century have come to an end. But a new one has risen to take their place. It is the ideology of Development—and it promises a solution to all the world’s ills. But like Communism, Fascism, and the others before it, Developmentalism is a dangerous and deadly failure.

A dark ideological specter is haunting the world. It is almost as deadly as the tired ideologies of the last century — communism, fascism, and socialism — that failed so miserably. It feeds some of the most dangerous trends of our time, including religious fundamentalism. It is the half-century-old ideology of Developmentalism. And it is thriving.

Like all ideologies, Development promises a comprehensive final answer to all of society’s problems, from poverty and illiteracy to violence and despotic rulers. It shares the common ideological characteristic of suggesting there is only one correct answer, and it tolerates little dissent. It deduces this unique answer for everyone from a general theory that purports to apply to everyone, everywhere. There’s no need to involve local actors who reap its costs and benefits. Development even has its own intelligentsia, made up of experts at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and United Nations.

The power of Developmentalism is disheartening, because the failure of all the previous ideologies might have laid the groundwork for the opposite of ideology—the freedom of individuals and societies to choose their destinies. Yet, since the fall of communism, the West has managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and with disastrous results. Development ideology is sparking a dangerous counterreaction. The “one correct answer” came to mean “free markets,” and, for the poor world, it was defined as doing whatever the IMF and the World Bank tell you to do. But the reaction in Africa, Central Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Russia has been to fight against free markets. So, one of the best economic ideas of our time, the genius of free markets, was presented in one of the worst possible ways, with unelected outsiders imposing rigid doctrines on the xenophobic unwilling.

The backlash has been so severe that other failed ideologies are gaining new adherents throughout these regions. In Nicaragua, for instance, IMF and World Bank structural adjustments failed so conspicuously that the pitiful Sandinista regime of the 1980s now looks good by comparison. Its leader, Daniel Ortega, is back in power. The IMF’s actions during the Argentine financial crisis of 2001 now reverberate a half decade later with Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s illiberal leader, being welcomed with open arms in Buenos Aires. The heavy-handed directives of the World Bank and IMF in Bolivia provided the soil from which that country’s neosocialist president, Evo Morales, sprung. The disappointing payoff following eight structural adjustment loans to Zimbabwe and $8 billion in foreign aid during the 1980s and 1990s helped Robert Mugabe launch a vicious counterattack on democracy. The IMF-World Bank-Jeffrey Sachs application of “shock therapy” to the former Soviet Union has created a lasting nostalgia for communism. In the Middle East, $154 billion in foreign aid between 1980 and 2001, 45 structural adjustment loans, and “expert” advice produced zero per capita GDP growth that helped create a breeding ground for Islamic fundamentalism.

This blowback against “globalization from above” has spread to every corner of the Earth. It now threatens to kill sensible, moderate steps toward the freer movement of goods, ideas, capital, and people.

DEVELOPMENT’S POLITBURO

The ideology of Development is not only about having experts design your free market for you; it is about having the experts design a comprehensive, technical plan to solve all the problems of the poor. These experts see poverty as a purely technological problem, to be solved by engineering and the natural sciences, ignoring messy social sciences such as economics, politics, and sociology.

Sachs, Columbia University’s celebrity economist, is one of its main proprietors. He is now recycling his theories of overnight shock therapy, which failed so miserably in Russia, into promises of overnight global poverty reduction. “Africa’s problems,” he has said, “are … solvable with practical and proven technologies.” His own plan features hundreds of expert interventions to solve every last problem of the poor—from green manure, breast-feeding education, and bicycles to solar-energy systems, school uniforms for aids orphans, and windmills. Not to mention such critical interventions as “counseling and information services for men to address their reproductive health needs.” All this will be done, Sachs says, by “a united and effective United Nations country team, which coordinates in one place the work of the U.N. specialized agencies, the IMF, and the World Bank.”

So the admirable concern of rich countries for the tragedies of world poverty is thus channeled into fattening the international aid bureaucracy, the self-appointed priesthood of Development. Like other ideologies, this thinking favors collective goals such as national poverty reduction, national economic growth, and the global Millennium Development Goals, over the aspirations of individuals. Bureaucrats who write poverty-reduction frameworks outrank individuals who actually reduce poverty by, say, starting a business. Just as Marxists favored world revolution and socialist internationalism, Development stresses world goals over the autonomy of societies to choose their own path. It favors doctrinaire abstractions such as “market-friendly policies,” “good investment climate,” and “pro-poor globalization” over the freedom of individuals.

Development also shares another Marxist trait: It aspires to be scientific. Finding the one correct solution to poverty is seen as a scientific problem to be solved by the experts. They are always sure they know the answer, vehemently reject disagreement, and then later change their answers. In psychiatry, this is known as Borderline Personality Disorder. For the Development Experts, it’s a way of life. The answer at first was aid-financed investment and industrialization in poor countries, then it was market-oriented government policy reform, then it was fixing institutional problems such as corruption, then it was globalization, then it was the Poverty Reduction Strategy to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

One reason the answers keep changing is because, in reality, high-growth countries follow a bewildering variety of paths to development, and the countries with high growth rates are constantly changing from decade to decade. Who could be more different than successful developers such as China and Chile, Botswana and Singapore, Taiwan and Turkey, or Hong Kong and Vietnam? What about the many countries who tried to emulate these rising stars and failed? What about the former stars who have fallen on hard times, like the Ivory Coast, which was one of the fastest developers of the 1960s and 1970s, only to become mired in a civil war? What about Mexico, which saw rapid growth until 1980 and has had slow growth ever since, despite embracing the experts’ reforms?

The experts in Developmentalism’s Politburo don’t bother themselves with such questions. All the previous answers were right; they were just missing one more “necessary condition” that the experts have only just now added to the list. Like all ideologies, Development is at the same time too rigid to predict what will work in the messy real world and yet flexible enough to forever escape falsification by real-world events. The high church of Development, the World Bank, has guaranteed it can never be wrong by making statements such as, “different policies can yield the same result, and the same policy can yield different results, depending on country institutional contexts and underlying growth strategies.” Of course, you still need experts to figure out the contexts and strategies.

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE

Perhaps more hypocritical yet is Development’s simple theory of historical inevitability. Poor societies are not just poor, the experts tell us, they are “developing” until they reach the final stage of history, or “development,” in which poverty will soon end. Under this historiography, an end to starvation, tyranny, and war are thrown in like a free toaster on an infomercial. The experts judge all societies on a straight line, per capita income, with the superior countries showing the inferior countries the image of their own future. And the experts heap scorn on those who resist the inevitabilities on the path to development.

One of today’s leading Developmentalists, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, can hardly conceal his mockery of those who resist the march of history, or “the flattening of the world.” “When you are Mexico,” Friedman has written, “and your claim to fame is that you are a low-wage manufacturing country, and some of your people are importing statuettes of your own patron saint from China, because China can make them and ship them all the way across the Pacific more cheaply than you can produce them … you have got a problem. [T]he only way for Mexico to thrive is with a strategy of reform … the more Mexico just sits there, the more it is going to get run over.” Friedman seems blissfully unaware that poor Mexico, so far from God yet so close to American pundits, has already tried much harder than China to implement the experts’ “strategy of reform.”

The self-confidence of Developmentalists like Friedman is so strong that they impose themselves even on those who accept their strategies. This year, for instance, Ghana celebrated its 50th anniversary as the first black African nation to gain independence. Official international aid donors to Ghana told its allegedly independent government, in the words of the World Bank: “We Partners are here giving you our pledge to give our best to make lives easier for you in running your country.” Among the things they will do to make your life easier is to run your country for you.

Unfortunately, Development ideology has a dismal record of helping any country actually develop. The regions where the ideology has been most influential, Latin America and Africa, have done the worst. Luckless Latins and Africans are left chasing yesterday’s formulas for success while those who ignored the Developmentalists found homegrown paths to success. The nations that have been the most successful in the past 40 years did so in such a variety of different ways that it would be hard to argue that they discovered the “correct answer” from development ideology. In fact, they often conspicuously violated whatever it was the experts said at the time. The East Asian tigers, for instance, chose outward orientation on their own in the 1960s, when the experts’ conventional wisdom was industrialization for the home market. The rapid growth of China over the past quarter century came when it was hardly a poster child for either the 1980s Washington Consensus or the 1990s institutionalism of democracy and cracking down on corruption.

The clock is ticking for Ban Ki-moon, and he knows it. Even walking on the United Nations’ dull linoleum floors, he moves like a man in a hurry, leaving his aides scrambling behind.

Ban is the UN’s newest secretary-general, and he has joked that the job is “Mission: Impossible.” But unlike in the movies, Ban, 63, has only one chance to get it right. Today, the UN is beset by scandal and infighting among its 192 member nations. Its ability to promote peace, prevent war, protect human rights and halt the spread of nuclear weapons—even its very relevance—will likely be decided on Ban’s watch. And in the U.S., patience with the UN is running out.

By more than 2 to 1, Americans believe the UN is doing a poor job—the organization’s highest negative rating since Gallup began polling in 1953. The Bush Administration has been disdainful toward the international body, particularly over what it considers the UN’s unruly bureaucracy and wasteful spending practices, as well as its failure to take a tougher stance on Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

And there has been no love lost in the other direction either. Kofi Annan, Ban’s predecessor, was openly hostile to the U.S. by the end of his term. When he left as UN chief, he delivered a stinging rebuke to the U.S. on everything from human rights to its desire “to seek supremacy over all others.” Anti-American sentiment currently runs high throughout the UN—if not the world.

Even so, Americans are unwilling to give up on the UN—yet. Some 75% still believe it should play a “major” or “leading” role in world affairs, the Gallup poll found.

Ban, who spent 36 years as a South Korean diplomat, has chosen a risky course to revitalize the UN: closer ties with the U.S. “I’d like to see a stronger partnership between the United Nations and the United States,” he explains. “America is the sole superpower in the international community, exercising almost a decisive political and economic influence over the international community and also in the United Nations. I think the UN and the U.S. share goals, objectives and ideals.”

Ban’s pro-U.S. and pro-democratic stance dates back to his childhood during the Korean War. For nearly three years, his family hid in a remote mountain village to escape the savage fighting. After the armistice, Ban taught himself English, in part by watching swarms of American GIs. At 18, he won a Red Cross competition to visit the U.S., where he met President John F. Kennedy. It changed his life.

He credits JFK with his choice to become a diplomat. “I saw how he contributed to world peace and security,” Ban says. He admires Kennedy’s “decisiveness in making a decision when the chips were down.” Clearly, Ban hopes to do the same.

Yet, to make an impact, Ban has only his powers of persuasion. The UN depends on contributions from member states (the U.S. provides 22% of those funds), and even its 100,000-strong peacekeeping force is often a hodgepodge of poorly trained troops from developing nations. Ban has embraced the cause of human rights, but the UN’s 15-member Security Council can’t even pass resolutions condemning atrocities in despotic Burma and Zimbabwe, and it has failed to get enough peacekeepers into Sudan’s Darfur region to halt the genocide.

Internally, the organization is fighting itself. Newer, developing powers like China and India are tussling with established nations like Great Britain, France and, of course, the U.S. Earlier this year, a group of UN ambassadors rebelled over Ban’s first reform efforts. “All 192 member states come with their own national interests, unique experience and different agendas,” Ban explains. “ How to reconcile these differences of opinion is a huge task. I’m committed to playing a harmonizer role.”

Many observers don’t expect much. John Bolton, America’s UN representative in 2005-06, gives Ban an A+ for effort. Unlike past secretaries, he says, “Ban looks to the U.S. and China as the two most important of the permanent Security Council members.” But he adds, “I would never underestimate the inertia in the UN building.”

“Failure is inevitable,” says Sebastian Mallaby of the Council on Foreign Relations. “On every big issue, you have the problem of foot-dragging.”

Ban, of course, does not agree. Behind his tailored suits and monogrammed French-cuff shirts is a steely drive and determination—and a great faith in the power of diplomacy. Indeed, Ban considers it the very thing that saved his own country of South Korea. “As a matter of principle, all conflicts should be resolved through diplomatic means in a peaceful way,” he says. “Sometimes diplomacy has not worked, but still, this is the only way and the best way to address differences of opinion.”

Yet Ban is practicing what might be called “kimchee diplomacy,” after the fiery Korean pickled cabbage: He can be blunt, even a touch scathing. He chastised the Palestinian government for rocket attacks against Israel while also objecting to Israel’s separation wall. He pointedly told the Iranians to learn from North Korea’s pledge to dismantle its nuclear program.

Ban has big dreams. He hopes to be “the secretary-general who restored trust and helped the UN commit to lifting millions out of abject poverty.” Still, the question that follows Ban Ki-moon as he darts back down the hall is whether he is the secretary who can save the UN itself.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Does the UN Still Matter?
Yes:
1) The UN is the only forum for the world’s nations to come together, air views and deliver a swift and united condemnation of atrocities.
2) It provides humanitarian services and international peacekeeping operations.
3) It offers the best diplomatic means for solving vital security problems, like the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

No:
1) The UN is riddled with scandals, from the looting of billions from the Iraq Oil for Food program to rapes by peacekeepers.
2) It perpetuates human-rights double standards, criticizing democracies like Israel but sitting silently by as dictatorships like Zimbabwe kill tens of thousands.
3) Its resolutions have no teeth: Iran is just the latest to ignore UN mandates.

written By Lyric Wallwork Winik
Published: June 25, 2007

NB / Take the poll, visit
http://www.parade.com/opencms/opencms/articles/editions/2007/edition_06-24-2007/AUN-Story

Hamas releases an audio message purported to be from captured Israeli
soldier Gilad Shalit in which he says he needs medical help.

For more details: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news

Nato and US-led troops are failing to co-ordinate with their Afghan allies and thereby causing civilian deaths, President Hamid Karzai has said.
He criticised his Western allies' "extreme" use of force and said they should act as his government asked.

"Innocent people are becoming victims of reckless operations" because the troops had ignored Afghan advice for years, Mr Karzai told reporters.

He was speaking after a week in which up to 90 Afghan civilians were killed.

More civilians have been killed this year as a result of foreign military action than have been killed by insurgents, correspondents say.

for more info. visit http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6233082.stm

The spread of Aids is slowing down in some parts of Africa, a World Bank report has suggested.
Urban areas in Rwanda, Zambia and Ethiopia were singled out as places where infection rates were lowering.

The World Bank's Miriam Schneidman told the BBC that Rwanda had done an "exceptional job" in recognising the HIV problem and taking strong action.

Figures from the World Bank put the prevalence of Aids in Rwanda at about 3%, down from 11% seven years ago.
"The mobilisation of empowered 'grassroots' communities, along with delivering condoms and life-saving treatments, are beginning to slow the pace of the ... epidemic," the report said, without giving detailed statistics.

But it says southern Africa remains the epicentre of the epidemic.

In Francistown, a city in Botswana bordering Zimbabwe, 70% of women in their early 30s were found to be HIV-positive, according to a 2004 household survey.

Last year, the epidemic killed more than 2m people in Africa.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6751651.stm

Sudan's announcement that it will accept a large hybrid United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force for Darfur is a "milestone development," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday. The UN's top peacekeeping official, Jean-Marie Guehenno, also hailed the move as a "significant step forward," although officials said uncertainties remain and it may not be an easy task to find enough troops for the envisioned 23,000-strong force.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/africa/06/13/sudan.darfur.reut/index.html

But the fruit of the spirit is the Love, Joy ,Peace, Long-suffering, Kindness, Goodness,Faithfulness, Gentleness ,Self-control. Against such there is no law. Galatains 5:22-23.

Fact Sheet: Advancing Freedom and Democracy Around the World

Wednesday, June 6, 2007
President and Mrs. Bush participated in the first day of the G-8 Summit in Heiligendamm, Germany. The leaders of Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the United Kingdom also participated in the Summit along with the German host, Chancellor Merkel. The leaders discussed continued cooperation on a broad range of international economic, security, and political issues.

In the afternoon, President Bush participated in lunch with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In the evening, the President and Mrs. Bush attended a reception with G8 leaders and spouses, which was followed by entertainment and dinner.

"President Bush said, think that when people take an objective look at what's been accomplished here, people see that there's been major progress made on key issues. I come with a deep desire to make sure that those suffering from HIV/AIDS on the continent of Africa know that they'll get help from the G8. I come with a deep desire to work with people around the table to reduce malaria on the continent of Africa, and feed the hungry... Thank you for your leadership. ... and I'm looking forward to working with our fellow G8 members."

President Bush Meets with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Heiligendamm, Germany

President Bush Meets with Japanese Prime Minister Abe in Heiligendamm, Germany


Thursday, June 7, 2007
President and Mrs. Bush continued their participation in the G-8 Summit in Heiligendamm, Germany. The leaders of Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the United Kingdom are also participating in the Summit along with the German host, Chancellor Merkel. In addition to G8 working sessions, the President met with United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair. He also met with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Mr Vladimir and Mr Bush just had a very constructive dialogue, particularly about missile defense. ... As a result of their discussions, both agreed to have a strategic dialogue, a opportunity to share ideas and concerns between State Department, Defense Department and military people. This will be a serious set of strategic discussions. This is a serious issue and want to make sure that both understand each other's positions very clearly. As a result of these conversations, and expect there to be better understanding of the technologies involved and the opportunities to work together."

President Bush Meets with Prime Minister Blair of the United Kingdom in Heiligendamm, Germany

President Bush Meets with President Vladimir Putin of Russia

G8 Summit 2007

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin (AP) -- No one was believed to have survived the crash of a small plane that was carrying a six-member organ transplant team and their cargo of donor organs, authorities said Tuesday.

Searchers found human remains during a search in Lake Michigan, about six miles northeast of Milwaukee, a Coast Guard official said Tuesday.

The team's lifesaving mission -- carrying unspecified organs from Milwaukee for transplant to a patient in Michigan -- was cut short Monday when the Cessna Citation went down in 57-degree water shortly after the pilot signaled an emergency.

Those on board were two surgeons and two donor specialists from the University of Michigan Health System and two pilots who regularly fly their transplant missions.

"The condition of the aircraft debris and human remains found indicate a high-speed impact," said Coast Guard Capt. Bruce Jones at a news conference. "We believe this to have been a non-survivable crash." (Watch Coast Guard found human remains during search )

Dr. Darrell A. Campbell, chief of staff of the University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers, said the thoughts of the university community were with the families of those involved.

"We take consolation in the fact that the team was on a mission to help another," he said.

The patient who was to have received the transplant organs was in critical condition, the university said. Jay Campbell, executive director of the Wisconsin Donor Network, declined to say which hospital the team was working with, citing privacy regulations.

The first human remains were found late Monday but hadn't been identified, Jones said. Divers stopped searching at nightfall, while crews of a Coast Guard boat and helicopter continued searching using night vision goggles

Only small parts of the plane had been found so far, Jones said.

Jones said they wouldn't speculate on the crash's cause. The National Transportation Board was expected to arrive later Tuesday.

The university identified those aboard the plane as: Dr. Martinus "Martin" Spoor, a cardiac surgeon who had been on the faculty since 2003; Dr. David Ashburn, a physician-in-training in pediatric cardiothoracic surgery; Richard Chenault II, a transplant donation specialist with the university transplant program; Richard Lapensee, a transplant donation specialist with the university transplant program; and pilots Dennis Hoyes and Bill Serra.

The plane took off from General Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee and was headed for Willow Run airport near Detroit, a 42-minute flight, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Tony Molinaro said.

Within five minutes of its takeoff, the pilot declared an emergency and requested a return to Mitchell, Molinaro said. But the plane dropped off radar screens just after the pilot made that request and the Coast Guard was contacted.

Light rain was falling at the airport with wind of 12 mph, gusting to 22 mph, according to J.J. Wood, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

The plane was leased by the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor, according to the university. It's owned by Toy Air and based at Willow Run Airport in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Jones estimated the plane was going 185 to 190 mph. He said people could survive for 16 hours in 57-degree water.

story can be find here / / http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/06/05/lake.plane.ap/index.html

Revelation is what we hear and revolution is what we see, i hear of revelation and i pray for positive revolution.