International Donors Promise $324 Million to Haiti
Foreign countries and lending institutions pledged to give Haiti $324 million as part of a two-year aid package set to stimulate the nation’s struggling economy, reports Agence France Presse. About 70 percent of the country’s population is unemployed and currently ranks as the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. The Haitian government, along with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), organized the conference, where the nation’s officials also presented their plans for the money. The plan “could generate as many as 150,000 jobs over the next two years” with infrastructure and energy projects that will make the nation more agriculturally self-sufficient, said the statement. About 20 countries and institutions came to the conference. Among the major contributors were the United States, which pledged $57 million aid money for Haiti; France, which will give $40 million this year; and the World Bank, which is set to give Haiti an extra $20 million this year and is looking to cancel out the nation’s debt. A breakdown of each nation’s contributions was not provided. The aid pledged, according to the IDB, is on top of what donors worldwide are providing the country. “This fresh assistance complements the financing previously committed by international community partners, who are currently supporting projects totaling three billion dollars in Haiti,” the group said in a statement. Haiti saw a very difficult 2008, suffering four back-to-back tropical storms, food protests and school collapses.
China Names First Black Olympic Athlete

Ding Hui, a 19-year-old volleyball player, has become the first Black athlete to be asked to play for China in the Olympics, reports London’s Daily Telegraph newspaper. The athlete was named one of 18 men on the national team’s training squad and would make his Olympic debut in London’s 2012 games. Click for more.

China will send ships to African waters to fight pirates. China will send ships to the waters near the Horn of Africa to monitor an area that has been prone to many pirate attacks, reports CNN. China hasn’t sent ships that far away from the country in centuries, but the recent surge of pirate attacks on China’s ships has pushed them into action. No word yet on how many ships the country plans to deploy, but officials did reveal that the operation would last three months. The waters have gone unmonitored, but the United Nation’s Security Council recently passed a resolution that would let an international coalition to go after pirates onto land (although China, a member of the council, hasn’t committed any forces yet). Just this year, almost 100 ships have been attacked by pirates in the waters near Somalia, with 40 of them being hijacked successfully, reports the news service. Pirates battled with crew members of a Chinese ship for four hours Wednesday before coalition helicopters and ships kept the attackers at bay.
Rwandan genocide mastermind is sentenced. The man behind the mass genocide in Rwanda during the ’90s has been given a life sentence by a United Nations tribunal, reports the BBC. Theoneste Bagosora and two co-defendants were found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Bagosora and former military commanders Anatole Nsegiyumya and Alloys Ntbakuze were found to have led a committee that planned the killing of ethnic Tutsis. More than 800,000 people were killed during in the nation’s genocide. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the sentences, a result of the first convictions of anyone involved with the genocide, a “major step in the fight against impunity.” The court rejected the argument from the defense that the mass killings were not organized and, therefore, could not be considered genocide, reports the BBC. Bagosora will appeal the verdict, according to his lawyer.  The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) is based in Tanzania.

Family members continue search for survivors in Haiti. Days after a deadly school collapse in Haiti, the search for survivors continues. Family members of the students and teachers believed to be still under rubble brought shovels and hammers to the site Sunday to dig through the ruin, reports CNN. However, because of safety concerns surrounding the possibility of falling concrete, police had to intervene and keep them away. The school, College La Promesse Evangelique in Petionville, collapsed Friday morning during a school celebration reportedly killing at least 84 people and injuring 150. When the school collapsed, students (from 10 to 20 years old) were either playing outside or inside the building. It isn’t known exactly how many people remain trapped in the debris. At the time the three-story building collapsed, there were 700 people on school grounds, according to a Haitian official. However, a United Nations spokesman believes there were only 250 people inside the school when it collapsed, which would drop the number of people missing. Rescue workers were able to pull out several children alive from the wreckage on Saturday but also found the bodies of 20 students and their teachers. No one has been found alive since then. Some are still keeping hope alive, though. “Throughout history, there’re been people found … 48, 72 hours later – still alive, in good shape,” Michael Istvan, from the U.S. Agency for International Development (a group who is in Haiti helping with rescue efforts) told CNN. As worried parents, holding pictures of their children watched anxiously, rescue crews (from the U.S. and France) continue their effort, sending down cameras into the rubble to look for signs of life and using cranes to lift concrete. Haitian authorities questioned the school’s owner, Fortin Augustin, Sunday, according to Haiti’s Civil Protection Bureau. Augustin has not been charged with a crime. Haiti’s president, Rene Preval, called the building’s structure “really weak” and ordered that construction guidelines be reviewed.

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Strong earthquake hits China. A powerful earthquake hit northwest China Monday, reports The Associated Press. The 6.5-magnitude quake hit a remote area in the nation’s Qinghai province, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Its epicenter was 35 miles east of the Da Qaidam district, and tremors from the quake were felt in Golmud (100 miles from the quake’s epicenter), which has a population of 270,000, is the second largest city in the province. A local official said authorities sent 180 people to investigate damage from the quake, but there have been no deaths yet reported.  The western part of the nation is no stranger to earthquakes; just in May, a 7.9-magnitude earthquake hit the region (the Sichuan province), killing 70,000 people and displacing 5 million.

Tight pants and miniskirts got women in Sudan arrested. Police in Sudan are getting some heat from the government after rounding up and arresting more than 30 women because they were wearing tight pants or mini skirts. Police, in the nation’s capital Juba, say they had a right to arrest the women because they’d previously put out an order banning “bad behavior and the importation of illicit cultures.” But one female government official, Gender Minister Mary Kinden, says they overstepped their boundaries as officers and had actually intruded on their human rights. “Girls were picked up from points like in the church and were hurled into police lorries and taken to the police station, some of them were beaten up, that is why the girls were very distressed,” Kimbo told the BBC. “I am against the police taking action single-handedly to round up everybody and start beating them because that is not their job.” The local mandate ordering punishment for “bad behavior” does not specifically elaborate on what would be considered “bad”; although police believe such behavior includes women wearing clothing they classify as inappropriate. The mandate does, however, give those found guilty a sentence of three months in prison. People found guilty a second time will also be fined $283. All of the women have since been freed.

South Africa will sell ivory to Asian nations. South Africa will sell 51 tons of ivory to China and Japan, despite some concerns from environmentalists, reports CNN.  African countries with a huge supply of elephant tusks would be allowed to make a one-off sale of ivory, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) said last year. But some were worried such a say would promote smuggling and thievery, reports CNN. Wildlife experts from South Africa made a visit to the two countries last month and decided they would not try to deal to the black market and met the strict conditions on trade involving endangered species.

Here’s this week’s photos of Black and Brown faces in the news worldwide.
World Lens: The Olympic opening ceremony is spectacular; U.S. basketball players soar in China; and fighting leads to destruction in Georgia. See these pictures and more here.

Southern African Countries Form Free Trade Zone. Fourteen Southern African countries will formally launch a free trade zone at a summit on Saturday, South Africa said on Tuesday. The hope is that they can boost the region’s trade and economic growth. The Free Trade Area (FTA) will exempt 85 percent of trade from tariffs, with full implementation expected by the year 2012. South African Trade and Industry Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa said while that was a realistic target, greater efforts were needed to develop and integrate the region. “The launch of the FTA is not an end in itself but a beginning of a process we need to embark on to build both productive and trade capacity, improve competitiveness of our industries…,” Mpahlwa said in a statement.The 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) needed to focus more on strengthening its agricultural industries and improving infrastructure.

Russian troops have started leaving Georgia. Almost a week after their troops advanced deeper into Georgia’s South Ossetia region, Russia has started pulling back its forces from the city of Gori, according to Georgia’s Interior Ministry. This move allows for Georgian police to return to the city and attempt to regain control, reports CNN. Georgian police, and most of the citizens, left the city a few days after being heavily attacked by Russian troops. Russia says they entered into the area to guard abandoned military hardware. The fighting began last week when Georgian forces moved into the South Ossetia region (a region where many people support becoming a part of Russia) to attack rebels. Russia responded quickly, sending in tanks to the region. Russia’s latest move comes after negotiations with Georgia on Wednesday. When the police presence is fully established, all of the Russian troops with leave the city.

World Lens: Hurricane Dolly rips through parts of Mexico ; Singer Lenny Kravitz rocks Budapest ; and the U.S. Olympic basketball team trains in Beijing . See the pictures here.

Talks break down over agricultural imports
Hopes of saving a world trade deal were dashed when the World Trade Organization (WTO) talks collapsed last night in Geneva , dealing a major blow to the global economy and raising questions over the worth of the WTO. The meeting was the last chance to strike a deal on cutting tariffs and subsidies in agriculture and manufactured goods before the U.S. presidential election in November. Talks collapsed when the main protagonists – the United States and India , with the latter supported by China and Indonesia – failed to reach a compromise on a measure to shield developing countries against massive agricultural import increases. South Africa ’s chief trade negotiator, Xavier Carim, said essential gains would be lost, which could have grave implications for the trading system and the WTO. Multilateral trade talks are likely to go into hibernation indefinitely as elections in the United States throw negotiating mandates into disarray, while a slowdown in the global economy already has dampened the appetite for further trade reforms. Carim said WTO chief Pascal Lamy had done “as much as he could have on the main issues. In the end this broke down on issues in agriculture.” He said the round’s ultimate direction had veered off the developmental route promised at the start of the talks seven years ago in Doha , Qatar . “We cannot be under any illusion that what was on the table was a package for very modest reforms in agriculture. The price South Africa was being asked to pay until the point of the collapse was just exorbitant, and not worth the gains,” he said. Trade ministers of the Group of Seven (G-7) bloc, consisting of Australia , Brazil , China , the European Union (EU), India , Japan and the United States , yesterday mulled over a new compromise text Lamy put forward on Monday. But the talks failed to break an impasse on a clutch of key issues, notably what is called the special safeguard measure, a mechanism to allow developing countries to increase tariffs on farm produce in the event of import surges or price collapses.

The east African country asks the U.N. to suspend al-Bashir’s indictment.
South Africa , supported by China , is trying to persuade the United Nations Security Council to suspend the attempt to prosecute Sudan ’s President Omar al-Bashir for genocide and war crimes in Darfur . The United States , while opposing South Africa ’s current efforts, has hinted that it might support the move if the Sudanese government makes concessions to help bring peace to the region, reports AllAfrica.com. This plan has emerged from briefings in Pretoria and New York over the past two days, the news agency says. The prosecutor of the newly established International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno-Ocampo, asked the court two weeks ago to issue an arrest warrant for Bashir. The Security Council has the power, under the statute which established the court, to defer ICC investigations and prosecutions for a year at a time. South Africa ’s deputy foreign minister, Aziz Pahad, told a briefing on Sunday that he hoped the Security Council would “consider very seriously” the view of the African Union’s Peace and Security Council and the Arab League that the prosecution of Bashir would jeopardize peace efforts in Darfur . Pahad said the international community should deal with the issue “in a much better way that will not undermine the ICC and will enable us to deal with impunity in the broader context of reconciliation and finding solutions.” Speaking after Security Council consultations in New York on Monday, the U.S. representative at the U.N., Zalmay Khalilzad, said South Africa , supported by China and other countries, was trying to introduce the deferral of the prosecution into a resolution extending the mission of the U.N.-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID). The United States believed this was “unwarranted,” he said, and the Security Council was divided on the issue. However, he left open the possibility of a deferral in future, saying “the situation is such that to move forward at this point … is premature. We think that there is more work to be done. …”