Month: September 2013

Thousands of Sudanese protesters took to the streets of the capital Khartoum , chanting “freedom” and renewing calls for their longtime autocratic president to resign after dozens of protesters were killed in a week of demonstrations sparked by austerity measures.

The government, which has imposed a media blackout, moved to appease the rancor with cash, saying it would distribute cash to half a million families to offset higher fuel and food prices in a country where nearly half the population lives below the poverty line.

Syria will comply with a UN resolution to destroy its chemical arsenal, President Bashar al-Assad said today, as weapons experts prepared to head to Damascus to begin the task.

In the latest violence, an air raid hit a high school in the northern rebel-held city of Raqa killing 16 people, including 10 students, as troops battled rebels on several fronts, a watchdog said.

A team of around 20 inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is due in Damascus on Tuesday and will immediately meet regime officials, an OPCW official said.

Inspectors who will oversee Syria’s destruction of its chemical weapons said today their first priority is to help the country scrap its ability to manufacture such arms by a November 1 deadline, using every means possible.

The chemical weapons inspectors said that may include smashing mixing equipment with sledgehammers, blowing up delivery missiles, driving tanks over empty shells or filling them with concrete, and running machines without lubricant so they seize up and become inoperable.

Karen Wambui walked slowly through the Nairobi city morgue’s turquoise and yellow iron gates, still trying to process what she had seen inside.

She had just confirmed that the last body still there from the Westgate Mall attack nearly a week earlier was that of her son, Calan Munyaka.

Suicide bombings tore through a Shiite mosque south of Baghdad and the relatively safe Kurdish area in the north today as a wave of attacks killed at least 46 people across Iraq, officials said.

Iran sought today to calm hard-line worries over groundbreaking exchanges with Washington, saying a single phone conversation between the American and Iran presidents is not a sign that relations with will be quickly restored.

The comments by Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi appeared tailored to address Iranian factions, including the powerful Revolutionary Guard, that have grown uneasy over fast-paced outreach last week between the White House and President Hassan Rouhani, which was capped by a 15-minute call with President Barack Obama.