Politics

Somalia's parliament overwhelmingly voted Monday to keep Nur Hassan Hussein as their prime minister, blocking President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed's attempt at dismissing the prime minister and his "corrupt, inefficient" government. President Yusuf announced his motion to dismiss Hussein on Sunday, saying his government was "unable to perform its duties" in matters such as dealing with the Islamic militants who have taken over most of the country. The latest dispute between the two involved efforts to reconcile with the Alliance for the Re-liberati

Ksenia Sukhinova of Russia, won the Miss World 2008 crown on Saturday, outshining 108 other international competitors. She was crowned by her predecessor Miss World 2007, Zhang Zilin of the People's Republic of China. She pledged to "help people" and said, "I think I can help people and I want to help people and today if I walk away with this crown I will do that." Sukhinova, 5' 10", said that her immediate ambitions included meeting Russia's president Dmitry Medvedev. She is a student of Tyumen State Oil and Gas University, she is enrolled i

An Iraqi journalist for an Egyptian Newspaper named Muntazer al-Zaidi was tackled by authorities after he threw his shoes at United States president George W. Bush during a press conference on Sunday in Baghdad. Bush had made a surprise last visit to Iraq to sign a new security pact brokered by Iraq and the U.S. Before throwing his shoes at Bush, the reporter, Muntader al-Zaidi of Al-Baghdadia, a local television station, stood up and said, "This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, dog!" The words were followed by the reporter's two shoe

Taiwan's former President, Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), has been conditionally released on bail, some ten hours after he was indicted for corruption. Speaking to media at the Taipei District Court, he said: "I want to thank my lawyers, members of the Democratic Progressive Party and my supporters who have given me huge encouragement. I am grateful to those who cared for, supported and looked after me so I could get through the hardest and loneliest 32 days of my life in prison." He earns the historical distinction of being the first ex-president of th

Robert Mugabe, the President of the African country of Zimbabwe, denied reports that the country is suffering from a cholera outbreak, saying that doctors have curbed the epidemic. "I am happy to say our doctors are being assisted by others and the WHO [World Health Organisation] have now arrested cholera," he said in a nationally televised address on Thursday, in response to recent calls for Mugabe to step down from office. The Save the Children organisation said, on the other hand, that "if anything is certain in the chaos of Zimbabwe today,

According to reports, Barack Obama, the President-elect of the United States, will nominate Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, to be his Secretary of Energy. Chu has been the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California for the past four years. He shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1997 with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William Daniel Phillips for developing ways to cool and trap atoms with a laser light. In the past, Chu was the head of an electronics lab at the Bell Labs in New Jersey. He has also worked on

Voters in the small Channel Island of Sark, a Crown dependency of the British Crown, have voted in their first democratic election, bringing an end to almost 4½ centuries of feudal rule. Voting in the election opened at 10:00 local time (UTC) today, and closed at 18:00. The result is expected to be announced at 22:00. 57 candidates were competing for the votes of the 474 residents eligible to participate in the election, to win 28 seats. Roger Olsen, the first person to vote in the election, commented on the transition to democracy. "Sark h

Formula One looks set to enter an era of standardised engines. The FIA is meeting with teams in Monte Carlo and is expected to approve the use by some teams of a standardised power unit provided by Cosworth, an automotive engineering company, from 2010 onwards. The move to a standard engine, which is common in lower tiers of open wheeled racing such as GP2, was pushed for by FIA President Max Mosley earlier this year as he aims to reduce team costs. This would not see the exclusion of manufacturer made engines, as at this time participation in

Ghana's electoral commission announced on Wednesday that a run-off election must be held for the Ghanaian presidency. The commission said that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) candidate Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo won 49.13% of the vote, slightly more than the other main candidate, John Atta Mills of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), who obtained 47.92%. However, neither candidate reached the 50% mark needed to declare an outright winner. Six other candidates were also present on the ballot, stealing enough votes to prevent either candidate

In the Quebec general election held in the Canadian province of Quebec on December 8, 2008, premier Jean Charest was elected for his third mandate, and formed a majority government of Quebec. This is the first time since the 1950's, Maurice Duplessis and the Union Nationale that a party and/or leader has been elected to a third consecutive mandate, and the first for the Liberals since the 1920's and Premier Taschereau. The ruling Liberals have won a slim majority, taking 66 of the provincial legislature's 125 seats, while the separatist Parti

The United States Supreme Court on Monday denied "without opinion" an emergency appeal or certiorari case filed by applicant retired attorney Leo Donofrio, an East Brunswick, New Jersey voter who raised the legal issue on whether president-elect Barack Obama was a "natural born" American at the time of the election. He alleged that Obama had dual nationality at birth, because of his Kansas-born mother and his Kenyan-born father, who was a British subject at the time. Obama's birth certificate states he was born in Hawaii in August 1961, two ye

The Democratic governor of Illinois in the United States, Rod Blagojevich, 51, along with his chief of staff John Harris, 46, were arrested Tuesday morning by the FBI on federal corruption charges. The Chicago Tribune reports that federal agents raided Blagojevich's home this morning and took him into federal custody. The arrest comes after a three-year investigation into Blagojevich's "pay-to-play politics." Specifically, the Department of Justice alleged that Blagojevich attempted to sell the Senate seat previously held by President-elect B