Author: John Heilprin
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Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan dies at age 80
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ACCRA, Ghana • Kofi Annan, a charismatic global diplomat and the first black African to become United Nations secretary-general who led the world body through one of its most turbulent periods, died early Saturday at age 80. Tributes flowed in from around the world after his foundation announced his death in the Swiss capital, Bern,…
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Survivors: Avalanche hit with no warning, no sound
CHAMONIX, France — A survivor of the French Alps avalanche that killed nine climbers said he and others were tossed around by a wave of snow that hit without a sound and trussed him up “like a sausage” in his climbing rope. Local officials insisted it would have been impossible to foresee Thursday’s deadly avalanche.…
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Eureka! Physicists celebrate evidence of particle
Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save GENEVA — To cheers and standing ovations, scientists at the world’s biggest atom smasher claimed the discovery of a new subatomic particle Wednesday, calling it “consistent” with the long-sought Higgs boson — popularly known as…
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Ozone layer faces record 40 percent loss over Arctic
GENEVA — The protective ozone layer in the Arctic that keeps out the sun’s most damaging rays — ultraviolet radiation — has thinned about 40 percent this winter, a record drop, the U.N. weather agency said Tuesday. The Arctic’s damaged stratospheric ozone layer isn’t the best known “ozone hole” — that would be Antarctica’s, which…
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U.N. says it’s still trying to get peacekeeping right
UNITED NATIONS — Ten years ago, veteran diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi oversaw a landmark report chronicling the U.N. peacekeeping’s failures to prevent 1990s atrocities in Rwanda and Srebrenica. On Tuesday, the former foreign minister of Algeria was back in the spotlight, taking another hard-nosed look at a system that has mushroomed to 124,000 personnel on four…
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U.N. agrees to pull peacekeeping force from Chad
UNITED NATIONS — Chad’s government succeeded Tuesday in forcing a 3,300-strong U.N. peacekeeping force operating in Chad and the Central African Republic to pull out by the end of this year. And with the U.N. Security Council’s unanimous vote to disband the peacekeeping force known as MINURCAT, another troubled African nation concerned with looming elections…
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Iran’s president seeks visa for U.N. nuclear summit
UNITED NATIONS — A nuclear conference at the United Nations next week could provide Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with an opportunity to lobby world leaders against a fourth round of U.N. sanctions on his nation. Ahmadinejad has applied for a U.S. visa to attend a conference to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty at U.N. headquarters…
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Multimillion-dollar U.N. corruption case uncovered
UNITED NATIONS — The deal looked simple enough: U.S. military equipment suppliers bribed an African defense minister’s salesmen to secure part of a $15 million gig to outfit a presidential guard. But the salesmen were actually FBI agents. And the operation resulted in what U.S. authorities in January called their biggest foreign bribery sting to…
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U.N. pulling some international staff from Pakistan
ISLAMABAD — The United Nations said Thursday it would relocate about a quarter of the U.N.’s international staff in Pakistan, a response to the increasingly volatile security situation in the country. At least 11 U.N. workers have been killed in Pakistan this year, and fears of attacks have increased over the past two and a…