Supreme Court Will Hear the Affirmative Action Cas...

 The US Supreme Court agreed to review an appeal from a white student who was denied admission to the University of Texas because of her race.  

According to sources, the court said Tuesday it will return to the issue of affirmative action in higher education for the first time since its 2003 decision endorsing the use of race as a factor in admissions. 

However, the new case will be argued in October, weeks before the presidential election, because the Supreme Court’s calendar is filled through spring. 

The Obama Administration will not take part in on the issue even if it could choose to do so. Justice Elena Kagan also announced that she disqualified herself from hearing the case, presumably because she had worked on it previously as solicitor general. 

Arguments in the case will be heard during the court’s next term, which starts in October.

West Softens Demands Ahead Of U.N. Vote On Syria

Russia and western countries are locked in diplomatic arm-wrestling over demands that Syria President Bashar al-Assad, hand over power to his deputy as part of a U.N.-backed Arab plan for a peaceful solution to the country's bloody crisis.

The latest draft of a resolution being submitted to the U.N. Security Council, and being discussed by ambassadors in New York late on Thursday, has dropped an explicit demand that Assad bows out but still fully supports the "political transition" sought by the Arab League. The change is triggering concerns that the resolution could be drastically watered down to secure agreement. 

Diplomatic sources said the main problem was Russian concern that the league plan constituted regime change by another name. "Moscow is looking to fudge this issue of political transition," said one western official. 

Language could be further softened during the negotiations, with Britain and other western countries signalling satisfaction with a Russian abstention. 

The draft U.N. resolution now looks unlikely to be put to a vote on Friday, pending a crucial meeting of Russia's national security council in Moscow. China is also being tougher than expected.

Talk of a political transition has also fueled renewed speculation ...

Fidel Castro Attacks ‘Idiocy And Ignorance&#...

Fidel Castro has lambasted the Republican presidential race as the greatest competition of "idiocy and ignorance" the world has ever seen, and also criticized the news media and foreign governments for seizing on the death of a Cuban prisoner to demand greater respect for human rights.

Castro's comments came in a long opinion piece carried by official media two days after a Republican debate in Florida presented mostly hardline stances on what to do about the Communist-run island. 

Cuba has become an important issue as the candidates court Florida's influential Cuban-American community in an effort to win the biggest electoral prize so far in the primary season. 

Castro said he had assumed the candidates would try to outdo each other on the issue of Cuba, but nonetheless he was appalled by the level of debate. 

"The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is – and I mean this seriously – the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been," he wrote.

Castro disputed accounts of the death of Wilman Villar Mendoza, a 31-year-old prisoner, saying he had not been a dissident and had not been ...

Russia helicopter unit withdrawn from UN mission i...

Russia ended its participation in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Sudan on Tuesday, January 24 with President Dmitry Medvedev ordering four military helicopters and 120 troops to leave the country by the middle of February.

The pilots and support staff deployed to Sudan in 2006.

“The Russian soldiers have done their duty and fulfilled honourably their mission of ensuring peace and security in the country,” Medvedev said in a presidential decree, M&C reported.

The main missions of the four Mi-8 helicopters had been to transport UN military observers, goods, and to participate in search and rescue operations.

Russia in mid-January ordered another four-ship helicopter squadron from southern Sudan when its planned six months deployment term came to an end.

Source: http://www.panarmenian.net

U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State to visit ...

U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Eric S. Rubin will visit Baku, Istanbul and Yerevan January 17-28. This will be his first visit to Armenia since assuming duties as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State with responsibility for issues related to Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, and the Southern Caucasus.

During his visit, he will meet with civil society representatives and government officials.

In Armenia, Mr. Rubin will discuss U.S.-Armenian bilateral relations, the upcoming parliamentary elections, as well as shared interests underlying cooperation in economic development and democratic reform, U.S. Embassy in Yerevan said.

Source : http://www.panarmenian.net

Two Newts Emerge In South Carolina To Take Down Mi...

There is nice Newt and there is nasty Newt and, in a frantic effort to stop Mitt Romney from clinching the Republican nomination, both versions are showing up in force in South Carolina.  

The convivial version of former House speaker Newt Gingrich is the candidate who shows up in person on the campaign trail. He is the congenial, smiling figure, with his shock of grey hair, who pitched up yesterday in Rock Hill in the state's north-west to meet and greet voters.

 This is the Gingrich who flaunts his learning by calling President Barack Obama a "Saul Alinsky radical", namedropping an obscure left-wing activist who died in 1972. This is the Gingrich who references his Catholic faith at any opportunity and who challenges Barack Obama to a debating contest with no moderator. "We have to have a leader who is prepared to go nose to tail and tell truth about the president," Gingrich told the 400-strong crowd in Rock Hill who hung on his every word. "(Obama) has done just about as much to wreck this country as any other president," he added.

 This Gingrich – the muscularly aggressive conservative intellectual who is ...