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Int'l peace activists to set sail for besieged Gaza with medicines - People's Daily Online International activists will set sail again for the Gaza Strip next week in defiance of an Israeli blockade, the Free Gaza Movement announced Friday. Some 26 pro-Palestinian campaigners and crew members are scheduled to leave the Cypriot port of Larnaca on Oct. 28, with medicine for Palestinians in the besieged Gaza, according to a press release from the movement. "We sail to Gaza to show the people we love and care for them," said one of the activists, Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for her work for peace in Northern Ireland. "What less can we do whilst our governments remain silent and inactive in the face of such preventable suffering of the women and children of Gaza and Palestine?" she added. Also on board are Mustafa Barghouthi, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and Jamal Zahalka, a member of the Israeli Knesset. Isr...

Nation Institute Throughout the Paris negotiations, the North Vietnamese tied the prisoner issue tightly to the issue of reparations. They were adamant in refusing to deal with them separately. Finally, in a February 2, 1973, formal letter to Hanoi's premier, Pham Van Dong, Nixon pledged $3.25 billion in "postwar reconstruction" aid "without any political conditions." But he also attached to the letter a codicil that said the aid would be implemented by each party "in accordance with its own constitutional provisions." That meant Congress would have to approve the appropriation, and Nixon and Kissinger knew well that Congress was in no mood to do so. The North Vietnamese, whether or not they immediately understood the double-talk in the letter, remained skeptical about the reparations promise being honored - and it never was. Hanoi thus appears to have held back prisoners—just as it had done when the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and wi...

Al Jazeera English - Africa - Somalis agree Ethiopian deadline Ethiopian forces would withdraw from Somalia early next year under a deal signed by the Somali government and several opposition groups in Djibouti, a UN spokeswoman said. The accord, signed at UN-sponsored talks on Sunday, ressurrected a ceasefire deal agreed in July, but came as at least 13 people were killed in the Horn of Africa nation's ongoing violence. The government and the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS) agreed that Ethiopian troops would initially pull out of areas in the capital Mogadishu and the central town of Beledweyne on November 21. These areas would be left under the control of African Union troops (Amisom), Susannah Price, spokeswoman for the UN envoy to Somalia, said. "The second phase of Ethiopian troop withdrawal should be completed within 120 days," the agreement said, although Price was unable to say when exactly the countdown would begin. Ethiopian forces were deployed ...