Sudan

Qatar's leader embraced Sudan's president in a red-carpet welcome as he arrived to attend an Arab summit in an act of defiance against an international warrant for his arrest on charges of war crimes in Darfur. For host Qatar, a key U.S. ally, the Arab League meeting starting today also showcases its desire to stake out a prominent role in regional affairs. Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir had promised to attend the 22-nation gathering after assurances from members that they would not enforce the International Criminal Court's arrest order issued March 4. Only Jordan and two other tiny Arab League members, the Comoros and Djibouti, are party to the ICC charter, and they can take no action on Qatari soil.

This post has been updated. See the note below for details. A United Nations helicopter was shot down after being targeted by South Sudanese armed forces, killing all four crew members on board, U.N. deputy spokesman Eduardo del Buey said Friday. The MI-8 helicopter, which was not carrying passengers, crashed in the eastern state of Jonglei, the U.N. peacekeeping mission in South Sudan said in a brief statement . South Sudanese armed forces informed the U.N. peacekeeping mission that they had shot at a helicopter near the settlement of Likuangole on Friday, the same area where the crash occurred, Del Buey said.

Alepho Deng missed the 10:52 p.m. bus. He sighed and sat down on the damp bench. The storefronts of east San Diego's Euclid Street were shrouded in winter fog. A Mexican ballad played from somewhere. He shivered and pulled up the hood of his black parka. Two Latinos wandered out of a Mexican cafe and headed toward him on wobbly legs. They whispered, then their laughter echoed across the deserted street.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Sudan on Wednesday accused Israel of launching an airstrike that caused a large explosion at a munitions factory, killing two people, in a residential area of the capital, Khartoum. Sudan Information Minister Ahmed Belal Osman said that four planes bombed the Yarmouk complex housing a military arms factory in the south of the capital and that an analysis of rocket debris from the explosion confirmed Israel was behind the attack. "We think Israel did the bombing," Belal said.

The Times' welcome reporting from Sudan (July 13) mirrors earlier coverage in 1984 when a killer drought and famine complicated by civil and tribal conflicts racked eight East African countries. At that time, more than $400 million was raised from private sources as a horrified world responded. By the early '90s "compassion fatigue" had set in and there was a feeble response to similar reporting from Somalia and later from Rwanda. As a relief agency that responded to those crises and more, we and our colleagues have a very simple measure of the public pulse: How many phone calls or letters and how much money comes in to relief agencies working to stem the tide in Sudan and elsewhere?

Ask a Sudanese citizen what troubles him these days and he might not even mention Darfur or the International Criminal Court arrest warrant against the president. To many here, it's the economy that is keeping them up nights. Sudan's once-hard-charging economy, a source of national pride over the last five years, is in danger of grinding to a halt because of plummeting oil prices. With the nation's oil-dependent budget in tatters, government employees are facing pay cuts.

A Sudanese official said Thursday that hundreds of people were killed early this year when foreign warplanes bombed three convoys smuggling African migrants through Sudan along with weapons that apparently were destined for the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hinted at his air force's possible involvement in the attacks. They came after Israel ended a 22-day assault on Gaza without fully achieving one of its aims: to choke off Hamas' weapons supply.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Sudan on Wednesday accused Israel of launching an airstrike that caused a large explosion at a munitions factory, killing two people, in a residential area of the capital, Khartoum. Sudan Information Minister Ahmed Belal Osman said that four planes bombed the Yarmouk complex housing a military arms factory in the south of the capital and that an analysis of rocket debris from the explosion confirmed Israel was behind the attack. "We think Israel did the bombing," Belal said.

The Sudanese government is allowing four aid organizations expelled from the country after its president was accused of war crimes to return under slightly different names, the U.N. humanitarian chief said Thursday.

After years of worldwide outrage over suffering in Darfur, the Obama administration will soon launch a new policy that could soften some longtime U.S. sanctions against the Sudanese government implicated in the large-scale killings and displacement of African tribespeople. White House officials say that specific conditions would have to be met before sanctions would be lifted, and that Sudan could face even tougher sanctions if its leaders act in bad faith.

CAIRO - Anti-American violence erupted across the Muslim world for a third day, with enraged protesters scaling the walls of U.S. embassies in Sudan and Tunisia and hard-pressed police waging street battles with demonstrators in several Middle East capitals. Protesters tore down the flag at the U.S. Embassy in Tunis, the Tunisian capital, and set a nearby American school afire. In Khartoum, Sudan's capital, demonstrators breached an embassy wall and raised a black flag of militant Islam as police struggled to push them back.

LONDON -- The Olympian without a country is not without a budget. Guor Marial shows up for an interview at the Olympic village dressed in jeans and a polo shirt purchased from Target. He trains in old gear from Iowa State University. He will run the marathon Sunday in shoes purchased online. "If you want the really good shoes, the ones you can use for the Olympics," he says, "I can get those for a hundred bucks. " The Olympian without a country is not without feelings. Guor Marial has painfully felt the differences while wandering through the first week of these Olympics without any national logo on his sweats, without teammates at his side during training, and without any real buddies except an advisor who serves as his coach, sports committee and roommate.

Actor George Clooney will have Santa Monica auction house Gooding & Co. auction his 2008 Tesla “Signature 100” Roadster to raise money for a nonprofit that uses satellites to monitor the tense border between South Sudan and Sudan for war crimes and other violence. The Roadster, the eighth built by the Palo Alto-based electric car company, has been driven 1,700 miles. It is expected to sell for $100,000 to $125,000. Clooney designated the Satellite Sentinel Project as the sale beneficiary.

From his days hiding in Ethiopian forests at his father's side to his current challenge of qualifying for the 2012 Olympics, nothing has come easily for middle-distance runner Charles Jock. But he prefers it that way. "I'm comfortable being uncomfortable, if that makes sense," said Jock, a recent UC Irvine graduate. Jock, the 800-meter NCAA champion, on Friday runs in the first round of 800-meter qualifying races at the U.S. Olympic trials in Eugene, Ore. The 22-year-old knows what it's like to be uncomfortable and how to adapt.

LONDON - Posthumus, the protagonist of Shakespeare's "Cymbeline," marched through the Herculean columns of the Globe theater, stopped abruptly at the front of the stage and looked up at an audience of hundreds - most of whom didn't speak a whisper of the language they were about to hear. His voice boomed, and he raised his arms and curled his hands into fists. "All these people have come from the newest country in the world," shouted actor Francis Paulino Lugali in Juba Arabic, "and this country is South Sudan!"

KHARTOUM, Sudan - It has come to this: The Sudanese government is sending out text messages to the population begging for donations to help the cash-strapped military. "Please help support the army," the messages plead. "If you want to contribute 10 Sudanese pounds, send number 10, and if you want to contribute 50 pounds, send the number 50. " This would not appear to an optimum moment to get into a war with its newest neighbor, South Sudan. But pride on both sides of their disputed border is undermining hope of peace, analysts warn, with neither side willing to reach a deal on the oil both depend on. South Sudan independence in July has cost Sudan three-quarters of its oil revenue, paralyzing the nation's economy.

Railways in Sudan were paralyzed Sunday by a strike by employees demanding back salary, a Khartoum newspaper reported. The newspaper Al Ayam said Sudan railways' 33,000 workers obeyed a call for a five-day strike Saturday and reported that it was 100% successful.

Re "Panel Frowns on Efforts to Buy Sudan Slaves' Freedom," May 28: The Times has circulated old, discredited allegations against the only program that has liberated black jihad-slaves in Sudan. The American Anti-Slavery Group has traveled to Sudan to investigate slavery and slave redemption. We have interviewed redeemed slaves, Arab slave retrievers, local chiefs and church leaders. Our investigations, together with those of other independent researchers, have confirmed that Christian Solidarity International is indeed liberating slaves whom the United Nations agencies and most of the human rights community have betrayed for nearly two decades.

KHARTOUM, Sudan - Sudan and its southern rival slid toward a ruinous war Thursday, with fighting continuing along their contested border and Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir threatening to teach the world's newest country "a final lesson by force. " A protracted war between Sudan and South Sudan, which separated peacefully in July, would almost certainly have a devastating civilian toll and seriously damage the oil sector on which both economies depend. But diplomacy has gotten nowhere, and civilians on both sides were urging their governments not to back down.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Sudan and South Sudan teetered dangerously on the edge of war Thursday after South Sudan refused to withdraw its troops from a disputed border area despite calls to do so by the United Nations and African Union. Sudan, furious about South Sudan's seizure a day earlier of its most important oil field in the town of Heglig, bombed a bridge outside the South Sudan oil town of Bentiu, killing one civilian and wounding four, officials said. The fighting between the two nations was the worst since South Sudan seceded from the north in July after a January 2011 independence referendum.