The UN on Friday extended by a week its deadline for seeking approval of a new human rights council opposed by the US but backed by rights groups and a vast majority of the 191 member-states.
Simultaneously, the Human Rights Commission, which the council is supposed to replace, agreed to postpone by a week the opening of its annual session that was to start tomorrow in Geneva.
The actions came after human rights organizations mounted a lobbying effort in support of the proposed council and the EU sent Washington a pledge that its members would keep objectionable candidates off the new panel.
The commission has long been an embarrassment to the UN because its members included some of the world's most notorious rights violators. The council was proposed a year ago by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan with terms that would bar membership to rights abusers, but in the version that emerged this month those guarantees were watered down.
The US was the only country to declare it would call for a vote and vote no.
John Bolton, the US ambassador, said the measure should be renegotiated, but Jan Eliasson of Sweden, the General Assembly president, said that reopening the delicately balanced text would expose it to a "Pandora's box" of amendments from opponents and doom the whole project.
Gerhard Pfanzelter, ambassador of Austria, which occupies the EU presidency, said the EU effort could calm US concerns because the number of countries joining the Europeans in pledging to ban abusers from membership could end up approaching the 96 needed to approve candidates for the panel.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
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IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the