City leaders approved a ban on plastic grocery bags after weeks of lobbying on both sides from environmentalists and a supermarket trade group. If Mayor Gavin Newsom signs the ban as expected, San Francisco would be the first U.S. city to adopt such a rule.
The law, approved 10-1, requires large markets and drug stores to [...]

As the search for the missing mother of four dead children entered a third day Wednesday, a portrait began to emerge of an immigrant family struggling to live the American dream.
Pedro Rodriguez and Deysi Benitez had faced language hurdles when they arrived in the far suburbs of Washington seven years ago. They worked menial jobs [...]

On March 6, the U.S. State Department released the 2006 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. The reports, presented to Congress, address internationally recognized individual, civil, political, and worker rights, as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
To read the portion of the report on the situation of Human Rights in Chad, click [...]

(Recasts with more documents from Sudan)
By Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS, March 12 (Reuters) – Sudan’s president wants to restrict U.N. movements in Darfur, limiting overflights or attack helicopters and barring international police from government controlled zones and other areas.
The United Nations on Monday distributed a translation of a 14-page annex to a letter from President Omar [...]

Recasts with more documents from Sudan)
By Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS, March 12 (Reuters) – Sudan’s president wants to restrict U.N. movements in Darfur, limiting overflights or attack helicopters and barring international police from government controlled zones and other areas.
The United Nations on Monday distributed a translation of a 14-page annex to a letter from President Omar [...]

By Richard Waddington
GENEVA, March 12 (Reuters) – A U.N. human rights mission accused Sudan’s government on Monday of orchestrating and taking part in gross violations in Darfur and called for urgent international action to protect civilians there.
The team, led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jody Williams, was dispatched by the United Nations Human Rights Council [...]

(Text by François-Xavier VERSCHAVE, president of Survie from 1995 to 2005)
This brief summary is based on an article published in a special dossier of the review Mouvements (“Movements”, May 2002), “De la Françafrique à la mafiafrique” (“From Françafrique to mafiafrique”). My main works on the subject are La Françafrique (Stock, 1999), Noir silence (“Black silence”) [...]

A new anti-malarial drug tailored for children will soon be available across Africa, potentially saving millions of lives, the nonprofit organization and the pharmaceuticals giant who worked to develop it have said.
The new medication, known as ASAQ, combines artesunate and amodiaquine, two of the most effective drugs known to treat malaria.
“This drug will save [...]

N’DJAMENA, March 4 (Reuters) – Chad’s new prime minister named former rebel leader Mahamat Nour Abdelkerim as his defence minister on Sunday, just two months after he signed a peace deal to end his uprising against President Idriss Deby.
Nour led the United Front for Democratic Change (FUC) which launched a raid on the Chadian [...]

Over the past 18 months, clashes have mainly been in the northwest of the Central African Republic
Rebel fighters in the Central African republic say they have attacked French army positions in the country after French Mirage jets killed three of their troops.
Ahmat Amadine, a spokesman for the Union of Democratic Forces Coalition, said rebels [...]