World Lens:

Haiti’s devastated by the collapse of a school; a South African legend passes; and Beyoncé hits the stage of the World Music Awards. See pics.

Another school falls down in Haiti. Days after a school collapsed in the nation, killing more than 90 people, another school, this time in Haiti’s capital, collapsed Wednesday, reports CNN. The minor collapse affected only a portion of the building and injured nine children. The students are from the Grace Divine and Secondary School in Port-au-Prince, and lives were lost in the collapse, according to Haiti’s head of operations for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent. Children who were jumping and dancing during a musical caused the collapse, she said. But this building, like the school building that collapsed last week, suffered from faulty construction, says a local journalist. “This is the same kind of problem of construction as in the school last week. It’s weak construction. It’s not solid,” said Clarens Renois. The scale of damage in this latest collapse doesn’t come close to Friday’s tragedy. Haitian President Rene Preval has called for an investigation into last week’s collapse that killed 93 people and injured 150.

Sudan’s government announces ceasefire in Darfur. Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, has announced a ceasefire in the Darfur region, the BBC reports. “I hereby announce our immediate unconditional ceasefire between the armed forces and the warring factions, provided that an effective monitoring mechanism is put into action and observed by all involved parties,” he said. He made the announcement after he got the final recommendations of the Sudan People’s Initiative (SPI). But members of a prominent rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), said they wouldn’t agree to the ceasefire, Reuters reported. A Sudanese official, Jalal al-Dugair, said the government will create contracts with the rebel groups to encourage them to abide by the ceasefire agreement. Bashir has been criticized worldwide for not doing enough to stop violence against Black Africans in the region, and he’s even wanted by an international court for allegedly facilitating war crimes in the nation. The government hopes that the call for ceasefire will take some of the pressure off of him and show the court, as well as the world, that he is doing something to stop war crimes, reports the news service.  However, declared ceasefires, in the past, have not gone according to plan. Although, this agreement, according to a government official, addresses all rebel concerns and will be aided by the United Nations. About 300,000 people have died since the violence, between ethnic rebels and militias suspected to be linked to the government, started in 2003. Another 2.5 million people have been made homeless.

Fighting flares up again in Congo. Despite rebels declaring a ceasefire in the nation last week, fighting has flared up again in the Democratic Republic of Congo, reports the BBC. It was the government that first broke the ceasefire, according to rebel leader Gen. Laurent Nkunda. When rebels took over the town of Kiwanja from a militia, they forced thousands of residents out of the area so they could search the town. Fighting in the nation has forced at least 250,000 to leave their homes. But in the city of Goma (where many citizens have fled to) the ceasefire looks like its working for now. And United Nation’s troops want to make sure it stays that way. In fact, the peacekeeping troops were ordered to fire on any other armed groups who try to come into the city. Fighting in the city would worsen the humanitarian crisis in the nation. In Kiwanja and surrounding areas, refugee camps have been wiped out and violence has resulted in charity workers not being able to distribute aid. Earlier this week, hungry refugees in the nation were angered when a U.N. humanitarian convoy delivered only soap, medical supplies and water containers, instead of food, to a camp in Kibati, home to tens of thousands of refugees. The U.N. contends that providing supplies to looted hospitals, along with soap and water containers to control the spread of disease, is a priority, reports The Associated Press. When thousands waited for energy biscuits, but were given tokens, to exchange for food later it didn’t make the situation any better. “We really need to rethink humanitarian aid. If you can’t help people, don’t create false hopes,” said Onesphore Sematumba, who is from the Pole Institute, a Congo think tank. To that issue, the U.N. insists that they had to use the tokens to help control and ration out food aid.

World Lens: From the coasts of Africa to India to Europe, the world is in an Obama frenzy. Plus, a Voodoo ceremony in Haiti and journalists protest in Sudan. See pictures.

U.S. is ready to airlift peacekeepers to Darfur

. The U.S. is ready to airlift as many as 4,000 peacekeepers, including Ethiopians and Egyptians who make up the U.N.-African Union mission to Darfur, the U.S. envoy for Africa said Monday.  The mission started deploying in Darfur in January but remains at less than half of the 26,000 authorized to go there. The mission has also complained of Sudanese government stonewalling and transport problems. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer, who arrived in Khartoum from a trip to Congo Monday, said the Sudanese government has made “important progress” recently in speeding up the deployment of the peacekeepers, The Associated Press reports. “There has been important progress,” Frazer said. “But we are looking to get at least 3,000 to 4,000 (peacekeepers) in Darfur. We certainly have offered the U.N. to help do airlift if they need to bring in both troops and to move equipment.” Sudanese Foreign Minister Deng Alor said the United States’ offer to help ferry more troops and equipment into Darfur was first made in September, during Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha’s visit to New York to attend the U.N. General Assembly. After Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir was accused of genocide in Darfur in July, Sudanese authorities eased some procedures including issuing visas for promised troops. The move was an apparent response to Western demands for cooperation with the international community. Al-Bashir has dismissed the charges brought against him by the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court. He says his country won’t recognize the tribunal, but his government is also lobbying supporters and others to freeze the international prosecution.

A human rights group wants Nigeria to stop executing people immediately, because hundreds on death row might actually be innocent, reports the BBC. According to a report by Amnesty International, many of Nigerian prisoners on death row did not have a fair trial; in addition, many confessions came after officials tortured the suspects, and they were able to use that confession alone to sentence people to death, which is against the law. “The judicial system is riddled with flaws that can have devastating consequences,” Aster va Kregten, a spokesman for the rights group said. “It is truly horrifying to think of how many innocent people may have been executed and may still be executed,” he said in a statement. A staggering 80 percent of prisoners say they’ve been beaten, threatened or tortured while they have been in police custody, says the report. Nigeria’s State prosecutor, Williams Ashu, says the report brought important issues to light. “We’re working on trying to resolve the problem,” he told the BBC. He also suggested the nation’s prison workers are not as well trained as they can be. “The work they are doing is very hard work that some of them are not adequately trained for it,” Ashu said. Many prisoners also said that when the police arrested them, they asked for money to let them go, says the report.

Could there be another Darfur war in Sudan? Disputes in another region of Sudan could grow into another war as big as the one in Darfur, a group warns. “South Kordofan is a Sudan in miniature, with heavily armed African and Arab tribes living side by side,” a spokesman from the International Crisis Group told the BBC. The international community, as well as the country’s political parties, need to intervene in the crisis before elections next year. Southern Kordofan borders Darfur and was contested during the north-south war. While the Sudanese government and rebels signed a peace agreement saying they will share power and oil profits, leaders of the two factions (President Omar al-Bashir’s NCP and an ex-rebel) have been “dangerously engaged in ethnic polarization” ahead of next year’s elections, says the report. “There is frustration everywhere; there is frustration among the Arabs; there is frustration among the Nuba tribes; and with all this frustration, there is no adequate responses to it - they can all converge and [be] expressed through violence,” a spokesman told the BBC. If they want to calm the situation in the region, they still have time if they act now, says the group. The conflict in the western Sudan region of Darfur, where government-backed militias known as Janjaweed killed hundreds of thousands of people and made millions homeless, started more than five years ago.

World Lens: Colin Powell comes out for Africa, Dominican model hits the runway, Obama fever heats up the Caribbean. See pics.

HIV vaccine is needed, says a South African minister. An HIV vaccine is needed, says South Africa’s new Health Minister Barbara Hogan, reports the BBC. She also said that HIV caused AIDS without a doubt, and that anti-retroviral drugs were the best way to treat the illness. Hogan’s words are music to the ears of the country’s AIDS activists who spent years battling the ideas of the former health minister, Manto Tshabala-Msimang. Tshabala-Msimang (or Dr. Beetroot as some called her) refused to believe that conventional medicine was the best treatment for HIV and further stated that healthy eating alone could treat the disease better. While Hogan did not directly criticize Tshabala-Msimang, she indicated the country, which has about 5.5 million people living with HIV, was losing the battle against AIDS. “It was imperative to get ahead of the curve of this epidemic 10 years ago,” she said to an international AIDS vaccine conference in Cape Town. “We all have lost ground. It’s even more imperative now that we make HIV prevention work. We desperately need an effective HIV vaccine,” she said. Malegapuru Makgoba, who head the University of KwaZulu-Natal, was happy that the nation’s academics could now “state that HIV causes AIDS without getting threats.”

Sudan’s government investigates militia leader. The Sudanese government recently finished investigating one of the nation’s notorious militia leaders who is accused of committing war crimes in Darfur, reports Reuters. The government often had been criticized for not going after such militia heads. Ali Kushayb, along with two others, was arrested for violence in the troubled Darfur region. “The investigations were about killing and looting. The investigations have taken place. There were investigations about Kushayb and two other people,” Sudan’s Justice Undersecretary Abdel Daim Zumrawi said. “The prosecutors have collected all the evidence against them. I am not sure whether it will be placed before a court … Kushayb has been under arrest for a long time.” The government had often been criticized for not going after such militia heads. And the investigation, which began earlier this year, happened after an International Criminal Court prosecutor asked authorities to issue an arrest warrant for Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. The prosecutor accused him of leading genocide in the region. The ICC had also issued warrants for Kushayb and Ahmed Haroun, Sudan’s minister for humanitarian affairs, accusing the two of committing war crimes. The country, though, has refused to turn them in. Since it started in 2003, the conflict in Darfur has killed an estimated 200,000 people and made 2.5 million homeless.

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.

Plane crash in Guatemala kills 10. A Guatemalan plane carrying 14 people crashed Sunday, killing 10 people, reports CNN. Eight Americans are among the dead.  About 45 minutes after the Cessna Caravan 208 took off, the pilot started making calls about engine failure, according to the country’s director of civil aeronautics. But the air-traffic tower lost contact with the plane at 9:45 a.m. and it crashed in Zacapa, killing the pilot, co-pilot and the Americans on board. The other four passengers were taken to a hospital after the crash. “It seems like the pilot tried her best to make a safe landing in an open field but was not successful. On impact, the aircraft was split into pieces,” a Zacapa firefighter told reporters at the scene.  

Civilians killed by Sudan’s government forces, witnesses say. Sudanese forces attacked a refugee camp in Darfur, killing at least 32 civilians early Monday, witnesses say. The witness accounts of the attack are chilling. More than 50 vehicles “packed with armed men wearing police and security forces’ uniforms … hit us with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns,” resident of the refugee camp, Mandela Abdullah Mohammed, told The Associated Press. He also said the victims included many women and children. One rebel group spokesman from the Sudan Liberation Army claimed an even higher death toll - 45 people dead and 135 people wounded - due to the Sudanese soldiers “storming” the camp and attacking. “The government sent a strong military force and attacked the camp with the intentions of killing civilians,” another spokesman for the group told AP.  A Sudanese military spokesman, though, insists they had good reason to fire on the camp. “They were surprised by heavy gunfire from within the camp. There was an exchange of fire and a number of victims,” the spokesman, Sawarmy Khaled, said.  But the United Nations say they received reports about Sudanese police surrounding and attacking the camp in southern Darfur, which resulted in “injuries and deaths of civilians.” The United Nations would not give an estimate on the death toll, but a coordinator for nearby clinic run by Doctors Without Borders says that at least 65 people were admitted for treatment for gunshot wounds. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is facing genocide charges brought on by the International Criminal Court for allegedly supporting attacks against the nation’s ethnic Africans. Since fighting started in Darfur in 2003, about 300,000 people have died and more than 2.5 million have been made homeless.

Men on top of camels attack Sudanese civilians. In Sudan’s Darfur region, men riding camels launched an attack on civilians, killing six people, reports BBC. Twenty-eight people were wounded as a result of the attack, according to the United Nations. The civilian convoy was traveling between Nyala and Fasher. The international charity, UNAMID, took victims of the attack to the hospital by helicopter. The attackers are reportedly a part of the infamous Janjaweed militia, who have been connected to many atrocious war crimes in the country since the violence began in 2003. Contrary to several reports, the Sudanese government denies any connection to the Janjaweed, who are accused of trying to exterminate the Black Africans in the nation. Overall, 300,000 people have died and 2.5 million more have been made homeless since the Darfur conflict.

Keeping Kenyan girls in school helps reduce HIV.

Reducing the school dropout rate for girls in Kenya and providing adequate HIV/AIDS and sex education could reduce HIV incidence in the country, experts said recently. “Young people do not have the information they need, and the dropout rate, particularly for girls, is still too high,” Rosemarie Muganda-Onyando, executive director of the Centre for the Study of Adolescence in Nairobi, Kenya, told IRIN News. “Dropping out of school ensures a life of poverty for these girls, and many of them also wind up HIV-positive because the male-female power dynamics become even more slanted against them.” In 2003, Kenya introduced no-cost primary school education, but an estimated 1 million school-age children still are not attending school. In addition, up to 13,000 Kenyan girls drop out of school annually as a result of pregnancy, and about 17 percent of girls have had sex before age 15. HIV prevalence among Kenyan women between ages 15 and 24 is about 5 percent, compared with 1 percent for their male counterparts, IRIN News reports. According to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey of 2004, educated girls were less likely to marry early and more likely to practice family planning. In addition, their children had a higher survival rate. UNICEF also found that uneducated girls are more likely to contract HIV, compared with girls who have had some schooling.

The U.N. extended its Darfur peacekeeping mission. The Security Council on Thursday extended by one year the mandate of the joint United Nations-African Union (AU) peacekeeping mission in the strife-torn western Sudanese region of Darfur. With 14 votes in favor and an abstention by the United States, a resolution was adopted to extend the mission known as UNAMID – which was authorized by the Council exactly one year ago – for another 12 months to 31 July 2009. The current mandate expired Thursday night. “The United States abstained because language added to the resolution would send the wrong signal to Sudanese President [Omar al-] Bashir” and undermine efforts to bring him to justice, U.S. Ambassador Alejandro D. Wolff told the 15-member panel after the vote. Earlier this month, Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced that he is seeking an arrest warrant for Mr. Bashir for “criminal responsibility in relation to 10 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.” Since taking over from an AU peace-monitoring mission at the start of this year, UNAMID has just under 10,000 uniformed personnel in place, far short of the approximately 26,000 troops and police officers expected when the force reaches full deployment. A report by a group of non-governmental organizations this week found that the peacekeeping mission faces critical shortages in troops, other personnel, helicopters, equipment and logistics. The report indicates that there are not enough troops, helicopters or other equipment for the force to be effective.

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. …”