Daily News Channel
The Somali militants who kidnapped two French advisers plan to try the pair as soon as possible, a Somali journalist told CNN on Saturday. A spokesman from Al Shebaab — the al Qaeda-linked group leading an Islamist insurgency in Somalia — told the journalist the advisers were acting against Islam, will be tried under sharia, or Islamic, law, and then be punished accordingly.
Ricardo Martinelli, a multimillionaire owner of a supermarket chain, was inaugurated Wednesday as president of Panama. National Assembly President Jose Luis Varela performed the swearing-in and placed the presidential sash on Martinelli, a pro-business conservative who in May defeated a candidate from the ruling center-left party. The citizens of Panama “want things to be done differently,” Varela said at the inauguration
The president of the U.N. General Assembly scheduled a noon session Monday to discuss the situation in Honduras, following a military-led coup that ousted the sitting president. Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann called the Honduran military’s intervention a “criminal action” and U.N.
He’s a key Iranian politician whose name is on the lips of opponents, supporters and experts alike in the bloody aftermath of the Iran’s presidential elections. But despite the chaos that’s plagued the Islamic Republic for the past two weeks — even resulting in the brief detention of his daughter — former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has remained silent and largely unseen. The last time the world saw Iran’s assembled leadership was June 19, when Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei endorsed the victory of hard-line incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the hotly contested June 12 election at Friday prayers.
They may wear a uniform, or ordinary street clothes. Their numbers are unclear.
Move Along, There’s Nothing to See Here, June 16, 9:12 p.m. IRT The Financial Times reports that “Iran on Tuesday banned journalists working for foreign media from leaving their offices to cover protests in the capital.” Wire services also announced that due to the ban on their photographers covering the demonstrations, they were forced to relay only images from official Iranian sources.
With an apparent political coup in Iran by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his supporters over the weekend, the ruling mullahs have dispensed with all democratic pretense and joined the ranks of traditional dictators in the Middle East. (CNN) — With an apparent political coup in Iran by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his supporters over the weekend, the ruling mullahs have dispensed with all democratic pretense and joined the ranks of traditional dictators in the Middle East. The hardliners in Tehran, led by the Revolutionary Guards and ultra-conservatives, have won the first round against reformist conservatives but at an extravagant cost — loss of public support.
Members of the international community have reacted to the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran and the oppostion protests which have accompanied the result. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement Saturday: “We are monitoring the situation as it unfolds in Iran but we, like the rest of the world, are waiting and watching to see what the Iranian people decide
As Gabon begins a month of mourning and condolences pour in for President Omar Bongo, the world’s longest serving President, who died on Monday at 73 in his 42nd year in power, it’s worth remembering that Bongo was precisely the kind of leader Gabon, and Africa, could have done without. Gabon has a tiny population and vast oil reserves, and after four decades of exporting hundreds of billions of dollars of crude, the biggest testament to the corruption and ineptitude of Bongo’s rule is that he somehow contrived not to turn his country into an African Kuwait. A third of all Gabonese still live on less than $2 a day, and as the oil fields begin to dry up, Bongo’s subjects are facing up to the reality that he sacrificed the country’s future to fund his own fantastically opulent lifestyle.
Two high-profile political officials linked to Guinea-Bissau’s recently assassinated president were killed Friday, according to a statement from the West African country’s interim army chief. The killings raised fears that a military coup may be under way