Reuters - France and Britain launched a European Union initiative on Friday to secure peace in east Congo and the EU may fly in food for tens of thousands of civilians fleeing attacks by rebels and soldiers.
Written from Reuters.
AP - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is urging the factions fighting in eastern Congo to meet at a neutral site and begin talks on restoring peace to the conflict-wracked region, a senior U.N. official said Friday.
Written from AP.
Reuters - Senior U.S. and North Korean diplomats will meet in New York next week, the State Department said on Friday, as the Bush administration seeks to advance an arms-for-disarmament deal with the poor, isolated state.
Written from Reuters.
AN update on the Barack Obama infomercial. It got huge ratings (33.5 million) and was more popular than the final game of the baseball World Series or last season’s finale of American Idol. It played on seven terrestrial and cable networks.
It was well received by most pundits. As expected, it was well produced, if overbearingly sentimental at times. But hey, this is America. Thinking about this further, perhaps the most important thing was the money ($4 million). Should one …
Written from Reuters.
AP - Four Mexican military officers and one soldier are under investigation for alleged links to one of the country’s most powerful drug cartels, Mexico’s Defense Department said Friday.
Written from AP.
AP - Rebuilding Afghanistan will be difficult, and proper scrutiny of the $32 billion and counting being invested in reconstruction by the U.S. will require additional staff and funding, according to the new inspector general in charge of the audits.
Written from AP.
AFP - West African rebels threatened Friday to kill 10 oil workers, including six Frenchmen, taken hostage in a pre-dawn pirate attack on an industry support vessel working off the coast of Cameroon.
Written from AFP.
David Cameron is weighing up what to do if the Chancellor and PM produce an emergency tax cut this autumn, I am told. George Osborne’s advice is to oppose it on the grounds that Brown and Darling would be doing it with borrowed money and that it will probably be a 10p tax style con.
Surely the Conservative leadership has learnt by now the perils of viewing such matters too often as simply a matter of tactics? (And yes, I know they will argue that this is not the case and that they …
Written from Reuters.
AP - They amassed some of the world’s biggest fortunes in the wild privatizations of Russia’s post-Soviet chaos and the oil boom that followed. Now some of Russia’s richest men are facing the choice of losing some of their empires or pleading at the Kremlin’s doors for a bailout.
Written from AP.
AFP - A US diplomat involved in the six-party negotiations for North Korea’s nuclear disarmament will meet delegates from Pyongyang who are due in New York next week, the State Department said Friday.
Written from AFP.