Free Republic

The United Nations has described the situation in Darfur as the world's gravest humanitarian crisis. In 2004, then-secretary of state Colin Powell called it genocide. On Tuesday, a US Congressional delegation that had visited Sudan told UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, "The issue of Darfur challenges the conscience of our country." So what is being done about it? Darfur is a province in the southwest of Sudan, an Arab country. The area had a population of about 6 million - about 2 million have fled to neighboring Chad, while about 400,000 were killed by the Sudanese military and the Janjaweed militias...

Violent protests against corruption and nepotism in Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority, and the threatened resignation of his prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, have forced Mr Arafat to back off from putting a relative in charge of Gaza’s security forces... Arafat is feeling the wrath of his own people, who have become increasingly frustrated at the corruption, nepotism and sheer uselessness of his crumbling regime.... Arafat has for months been resisting pressure from America, Egypt, the United Nations and other powers to merge and revamp the PA’s 12 overlapping, ineffectual and mutually hostile security forces, and to put them under the...

* US bombing continues * Taliban get 300 reinforcements * Hekmatyar’s aide held in Kabul QALAT: Afghan and US troops overran three suspected Taliban positions in the mountains of southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, while American bombing echoed through the rugged region, officials said. Afghan forces supported by US troops and aircraft have been engaged for the past week in a major operation against suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda bases in the mountains of Dai Chopan district of Zabul province, 300 kilometres southwest of Kabul. General Haji Saifullah Khan, the main Afghan commander in Dai Chopan, said US warplanes and helicopter...