Journey home for Nelson Mandela
Former president Nelson Mandela, accompanied by his wife Graca Machel, traveled home to Qunu in the Eastern Cape in an unscheduled visit with his extensive medical team. Sources close to the 92-year-old anti-apartheid icon said he had told his family: “I want to go home.” Staff at Mthatha Airport in...
(continue)Don’t give up, Suu Kyi tells HK crowd
Burmese freedom fighter Aung San Suu Kyi has told activists in Hong Kong and the mainland to remember their aims and not to give up. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was speaking via live video conferencing in her “first dialogue with an Asian university” since her release from house arrest...
(continue)Female Nobel laureates launch campaign against rape as a weapon of war
It is a crime that is perpetrated against the most vulnerable members of the world’s most broken societies – one that destroys the lives of its victims and rips apart the fabric of communities. Sexual assault is increasingly being used as a weapon of warfare, especially in clashes that are...
(continue)Ramos-Horta: The US should avoid being entangled in civil war in Libya
by Jose Ramos-Horta Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and President of Timor-Leste While I have welcomed the United Nations Security Council Res. 1973 on the imposition of a no-fly zone in Libya as a means to protect civilians, I have advised our friends to avoid being pulled into a complex political crisis...
(continue)Muhammed Yunus steps down from Grameen bank
The battle for control of the Grameen Bank, the pioneering Bangladeshi microfinance institution, has reached a new intensity after its government-appointed chairman unilaterally declared that its founder and managing director, the Nobel prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus had stepped down because he was too old. The bank, however, said Yunus remained...
(continue)Chinese veteran politicians call for reform
A group of 23 Communist Party elders in China has written a letter calling for an end to the country’s restrictions on freedom of speech. The letter says freedom of expression is promised in the Chinese constitution but not allowed in practice. They want people to be able to freely...
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