Thousands of people took the streets of Sudan's tense capital Sunday in a carefully choreographed protest against the expected request for an arrest warrant on war crimes charges for Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Monday.

Students and members of the ruling National Congress Party were bussed into central Khartoum, where they waved banners denouncing the I.C.C. and the United Nations. Sudan's government met in an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss how to respond to the announcement of a request for an arrest warrant for Mr. Bashir, who has ruled Sudan since taking power in a military coup nearly 20 years ago.

The news that the US has completely withdrawn from the Human Rights Council spread like wildfire Friday afternoon (June 6) through the corridors of the Palais des Nations in Geneva. There was general consternation amongst diplomats and NGOS. Reached by phone, the American mission in Geneva neither confirmed nor denied the report. Although unofficial, the news comes at a time of long opposition by the Bush administration to the reforms which created the Human Rights Council in June 2006. Washington announced from the beginning that the US would not be an active member but its observer status would mean that it could intervene during the sessions. To date even this has rarely happened.

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But Eric Sottas, director of the International Organisation against Torture sees it as a a political gesture. "The US has always clearly shown its opposition to the Council. This is a slightly more public way of putting pressure on it in order to raise the stakes. What is more the Bush dynasty is coming to the end of its mandate," he said. "It reminds me of the time when the Nixon administration, which backed Pinochet in Chile, chastized the UN for criticising the Chilean dictator. But when Carter was elected in 1977, the American government took the floor at the Human Rights Commission to ask forgiveness. After a presidency like that of Bush, you can expect some important changes in US policy on human right."

A_B_... is a geopolitical survey of the 192 member states of the United Nations with regard to the quantitative degree to which each contributes to peace and terror in the world. The project is a dual-sided poster where the A_ side displays measures of peace, while the B_ side, measures of terror. For each of the A_B_ measures, the graph is divided into 3 rings (3 separate indexes for peace and 3 separate indexes for terror) that are themselves individual quantitative measures obtained from researchers working in the field of geopolitics. The quantitative variation for the peace and terror measures is represented as variation in line thickness: thin line=low value, thick line=high value.

The U.N. war crimes tribunal cleared Kosovo's former prime minister on Thursday of persecuting Serbs in a 1998-99 separatist war, a move expected to fan tensions simmering over Kosovo's secession.

Ramush Haradinaj, a former commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) considered a hero by Kosovo Albanians, was acquitted of torture, murder, rape and deportation after judges found prosecutors had failed to prove a deliberate campaign to kill and expel Serb civilians from Kosovo.

"This is a verdict that strengthens Kosovo. We endured a difficult liberation struggle that cost many lives. Today we are a free and sovereign nation," Haradinaj said in a statement, adding he would dedicate his life to equal opportunities to all.

Kosovo's 90 percent Albanian majority declared independence from Serbia in February. The United Nations has run the province since 1999 when NATO drove out Serb forces to halt the ethnic cleansing of Albanians in a two-year war against KLA guerrillas.

U.S. envoy Jendayi Frazer said Wednesday the violence in Kenya's Rift Valley was "clear ethnic cleansing," aimed at chasing out President Mwai Kibaki's Kikuyu people.

Frazer said she did not consider the eruption of ethnic clashes in Kenya a genocide.

Because if it was considered genocide, they'd be obligate to intervene.

Myanmar's government ordered the expulsion of the United Nations' top diplomat in the country today, after his office issued a critical statement urging the ruling generals to heed the voices of protesters.

The diplomat, Charles Petrie, was handed a letter ordering his expulsion at the end of a meeting with government officials today in Naypyidaw, the country’s capital.

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On Oct. 24, Mr. Petrie's office issued a statement urging the government to listen to dissenting voices in Myanmar and warning of a "deteriorating humanitarian situation." It concluded with a reference to the protests, which erupted after a fuel price hike in August and developed into a wider movement calling for political change, before troops moved in to suppress them in late September.

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"Many of the issues that were raised over the last two months by monks and others were exactly the same issues that we were trying to raise for the last four to five years," he said.