Word: thursdaying
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...heart of the international flap are six French nationals working for child relief NGO Zoe's Ark, who were arrested last Thursday as they prepared to spirit 103 Darfur orphans away from the Chadian city of Abéché on a chartered plane. According to press comments by Zoe's Ark colleagues in France, the unauthorized attempt to hustle the children out of the region flouted administrative procedure to obtain permission. Such time-consuming steps, they say, clashed with the greater humanitarian urgency of getting the orphans to care and safety in France. But Chadian authorities swooped...
...French lawyer for Zoe's called the entire matter politically motivated. But that position became harder to defend in the face of claims by another French relief organization that most of the 103 children were neither orphans - nor even Sudanese for the most part. Those allegations were reinforced on Thursday when two U.N. agencies said they?d managed to confirm 91 of the children had at least one parent, and most came from Chad. French media reports, meanwhile, quoted residents of Chadian villages claiming they'd seen some of the 103 children lured from their homes into trucks by visiting...
...French Foreign Ministry had aired similar and repeated public misgivings over the Zoe's Ark mission after it began last May. Meanwhile, testimony gathered in France since Thursday's detentions led French legal authorities to open an investigation on the NGO on suspicions of "intermediary activity in unauthorized adoptions". Zoe's Ark officials have responded with repeated statements that their operation did not involve adoption. They've similarly explained that while their care in Chadian camps allowed most of the children to recover from the near fatal conditions they were found in, their continuously fragile physical and mental health requires...
...seriously damaged in a district that employed about 70% of Fallujah's workforce. To fully revive the city, the area has to return to its old industrious self. But doing that may allow al-Qaeda to slip back in. Marine officials say the bomb-laden vest they found Thursday looked new enough to indicate that that's just what al-Qaeda is trying...
...Arroyo painted the pardon, announced Thursday evening, as both an act of mercy and an attempt to bridge the country's deep political fissures. Speaking to a business conference in Manila, she called Estrada's trial and imprisonment "a cause of distraction, recrimination and intrigue." Pardoning Estrada, she added, will promote national reconciliation...