President Michael Lomax wants Congress to guarantee education for all

The United Negro College Fund wants America to guarantee that students of color – poor and otherwise – get an opportunity to  students get an opportunity to go to college and graduate.  On Tuesday, one of the nation’s oldest minority education advocacy groups issued “The ABC Agenda for Higher Education,” which calls for increased access and affordability. “If ever there was a time to push for what our students and colleges need, this is it,” said UNCF President Michael L. Lomax.  Find out more about the plan at BET.com/News.

U.N., Afghan observers say scores of women and children were killed

New evidence appears to back up claims by the United Nations and Afghanis who contend that a U.S. raid killed some 90 civilians, including scores of women and children in the western Afghanistan village of Azizabad . The Associated Press reported Monday that it had obtained two grainy videos – apparently taken by cell phones – of the grisly scene. According to AP, the video shows “bodies lying side-by-side on the mosque floor, covered by floral-patterned blankets and Black-and-White checkered shawls. One young boy lay curled in a fetal position; others looked as though they were asleep. One child had half its head blown off. Turbaned men walked around, gently lifting the blankets covering the faces of the dead. At least two elderly men were among the dead. There appeared to be several dozen bodies lying on the mosque floor, though a precise count was difficult because of the poor quality of the images.” While the videos are not definitive proof that 60 children were killed in the raid, they do seem to contradict the Pentagon’s assertion that 35 militants and only seven civilians were killed in Azizabad.

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.

Republicans said they will not support it until an energy bill has been passed

The move to seek justice for Civil Rights Era lynching victims came to a screeching halt Monday as Republican members of the U.S. Senate said they will not support any legislation until they can get a vote on an energy bill. The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act would give the U.S. Justice Department $10 million per year to prosecute those responsible for killing Blacks and supporters of civil rights initiatives. In addition, the bill called for $3.5 to aid local law-enforcement agencies involved in the investigations. The bill was among about three dozen pieces of legislation aimed at helping mentally ill people, homeless youths, stroke victims and child-porn prosecutors. Leading the charge against the measure was Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, who consistently fights new spending measures. He was joined by 39 colleagues. The 52 votes in favor were eight short of the number needed to force a final vote on the bill bundle. Democrats argue that the Republicans want to keep the money on hand for the war in Iraq. “History will tell whether this is a setback or a setup for ultimate victory of the Till bill,” Alvin Sykes of Kansas City, president of the Emmett Till Justice Campaign and drafter of the bill, told The Clarion Ledger newspaper in Mississippi. “Every justice-seeking American should be calling and e-mailing their U.S. senators, strongly urging the passage of the bill.” The “Till bill” is named after Emmett Till, the Black teen from Chicago who was kidnapped and brutally beaten before being shot to death by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi in 1955. Why do you think the bill didn’t pass?

U.N. will remove staff from Darfur
The UN-African Union mission (UNAMID) announced it will be removing staff from the Sudan, reports the BBC. There are 9,600 uniformed peacekeepers and around 1,300 civilians involved with the mission in Darfur. No word yet on how many will be removed; however a UNAMID commander said that despite the withdrawal, the peacekeepers would still be looking to keep up their presence in the region. “We will continue to protect the U.N. personnel and U.N. facilities that are here, and we will continue to help the humanitarian organizations to continue to do their job of rendering humanitarian services to the people in Darfur,” Gen. Martin Luther Agwai said. The process will begin today, according to a Sudanese official, who added, “This is a unilateral decision which the Sudanese government was not involved in.” This announcement comes not too long after an International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor announced he was looking to arrest Sudan’s president on war crimes charges. The U.N. officially has nothing to do with the ICC, but with the troop withdrawal, it may be preparing itself for a potential increase in problems within the region, reports the BBC. Earlier this month, an attack on UNAMID peacekeepers by a militia in Darfur left seven dead and 22 injured.

Drug plane with a fake Red Cross logo seized in Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone police seized a plane loaded with an estimated $54 million worth of cocaine at an airport not far from the capital Sunday. The small white plane, which reportedly had a fake Red Cross symbol on it, landed in Freetown’s Lungi airport, without being authorized, a police spokesman told BBC. “When police searched the aircraft, some 600kg (1,320 lbs.) of cocaine was discovered along with gallons of fuel and several AK47 and AK48 rifles … with 339 rounds of cartridges,” the spokesman told Agence France-Presse. Eight foreigners have been arrested in connection with the incident. The pilots of the plane fled in a vehicle that drove up to the fence by the runway, and airport security did not try to stop them, reports the BBC. After setting up roadblocks, though, the police later arrested seven foreigners – three Colombians, two Mexicans a Venezuelan and a U.S. citizen, not too far from the airport. On Monday, another suspect, a Cuban-American, was arrested. Sierra Leone citizens also have been questioned by police. “It’s drawn attention to the fact that we have to do more. There must be many more flights like this. It’s something that governments can lose control over,” said Michael Schulenburg, who heads the U.N. mission in Sierra Leone. The group warned last month that smugglers are seeking new ways of getting drugs from South America to Europe.