US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton set off Tuesday on a six-nation, 11-day trip to Africa due to focus on regional peace and security, as well as spurring economic growth. The US top diplomat, whose tour will take in the world's newest nation South Sudan and Ebola-hit Uganda , departed Tuesday from Andrews Air Force base heading first to Senegal where she will meet President Macky Sall. Sall's coalition won a landslide majority in legislative polls earlier this month, scooping up 119 of 150 seats in the national assembly. Clinton will "deliver a speech applauding the resilience of Senegal's democratic institutions and highlighting America's approach to partnership," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement. A likely highlight of the trip, which will also include stops in Kenya , Malawi and South Africa, will be a meeting with 94-year-old former South African president and democracy icon, Nelson Mandela. Earlier this month, Clinton...

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. UPI/Kevin Dietsch License photo WASHINGTON, July 31 (UPI) -- Meetings between U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and South Sudanese leaders will focus on peace talks with Sudan, the State Department said. Clinton left Tuesday for an 11-day tour of African nations, starting with a visit to Senegal. "Next, Secretary Clinton travels to South Sudan where she meets with President (Salva) Kiir to reaffirm U.S. support and to encourage progress in negotiations with Sudan to reach agreement on issues related to security, oil and citizenship," the State Department said. The U.N. Security Council set a Thursday deadline for both sides to find a way to settle outstanding issues. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said in a statement that Washington "strongly condemns" military action by Khartoum against South Sudanese border states. South Sudan, meanwhile, is commended for pulling its forces out of disputed border a...

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is set to be at this year's Pacific Island Forum and will make her first ever visit to the Cook Islands. Forum officials have confirmed to Newstalk ZB that an advance team is scoping out Rarotonga, ahead of the forum at the end of August. Hillary Clinton has never been to the Cook Islands and as the US are post-forum dialogue partners, this is being seen as the best time for her to visit. An official says things can change, and issues are being looked at such as finding appropriate accommodation for Mrs Clinton and her delegation. But it is believed to be more likely than not that she will attend the post-forum dialogue - a sign of America's increasing interest in the Pacific region.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will visit troubled South Sudan on an 11-day Africa trip starting this week aimed at spurring economic growth, peace and security, according to a US official. Clinton heads first on Tuesday to Senegal before traveling on to the world's newest nation on a trip which will also take in Uganda, Kenya, Malawi and South Africa , State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said. In Senegal, the US top diplomat will meet with President Macky Sall , whose coalition won a landslide majority in legislative polls earlier this month, scooping up 119 of 150 seats in the national assembly. Clinton will "deliver a speech applauding the resilience of Senegal's democratic institutions and highlighting America's approach to partnership," Nuland said in a statement. Next Clinton will add another country to her globe-trotting tally of 102 nations visited as secretary of state by visiting South Sudan, which this month marked the first anniversa...

"There's a philosophy of saying and doing anything it takes." That was David Axelrod's critique of Hillary Clinton 's presidential campaign back in 2008, when he accused Bill Clinton of "doing slash and burn stuff" to win the nomination. Now, four years later, it takes Bill Clinton to make the case for re-electing President Obama . Democrats will announce today that Clinton will give a prime-time address at this year's convention in Charlotte, formally nominating Obama for a second term in office and offering a clear contrast between his candidate and Republican Mitt Romney . The formal nomination is an insider's curiosity, a stark reversal from 2008, when Clinton's anger over the primaries was still palpable (And a nice parallel with 2008, when it was Hillary Clinton who moved that Obama 's nomination be recorded as unanimous). But the speech he will give is the truly important signal, another twist in the complicated and decidedly a...

Hillary Clinton has arrived in Israel for a 24-hour visit at the tail end of an eight-nation tour spanning Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Clinton arrived on a flight from Egypt shortly after 11.30 pm local time (0630 AEST) for her first visit to the Jewish state in nearly two years, according to an AFP correspondent travelling with the delegation. With her are US Middle East envoy David Hale and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, who represents Washington at talks between world powers and Iran. The 24-hour visit comes at the tail end of an eight-nation tour spanning Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Clinton has scheduled meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Shimon Peres, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Defence Minister Ehud Barak. She will also meet Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad, a senior official said. Earlier this month, she held talks in Paris with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas. Talks with the Israelis...

WASHINGTON Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recognized on Wednesday the crucial role of diaspora communities in national and global development efforts, emphasizing their potential to solve problems in their home countries and spur U.S. economic growth. By tapping into the experiences, the energy, the expertise of diaspora communities, we can reverse the so-called brain drain that slows progress in so many countries around the world, and instead offer the benefits of the brain gain, she said at the opening ceremony of the second annual Global Diaspora Forum. Speaking to about 500 diaspora community leaders, advocates and senior U.S. officials, Clinton cited the support of Syrian Americans and organizations as an example of how the Syrian diaspora serves as a link between the international community and opposition activists to address the ongoing civil uprising in Syria. I want to recognize the work of Syrian diaspora organizations to shine a light on what is happening in Syria and t...

Strategists say Clinton is the best ambassador for promoting foreign achievements back home. | AP Photo Close Mitt Romney is headed to Israel on Sunday but Hillary Clinton got there first. Thats a common pattern as the Republican candidate tries to refocus the presidential campaign around foreign policy with his weeklong overseas trip: The international record that the secretary of state has built for President Barack Obama , and her travel schedule along the way, help him block and parry the Romney attacks. Continue Reading Of course, there are limitations. As secretary of state, Clinton is barred from taking an active political role in the campaign. And the two days she spent in Jerusalem this month on her most recent trip havent erased any of the complaints about Obamas failure to make his own trip there since taking office. ( PHOTOS: Hillary Clinton's world travels, 2009-2012 ) Democratic and many independent voters still have an unmatched, visceral connection to her unlike...

Most Read Stories: Magic formula for shooting winning basketball shots revealed Move your mum-in-law next door for healthier babies World's rich have hidden USD 21 trillion in offshore accounts: Report Strange cults are back in the news (The Funny Side) Fifty Shades' sex toy sales up by 400 pc Artificial light at night can cause depression Breastfeeding may help mums stay slim Table manners soon to be history Just closing eyes for few mins may help us retain new information Five friends are all you need in life New Delhi/Washington, July 26 US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has congratulated Pranab Mukherjee on his swearing-in as the 13th President of India. "I want to congratulate President Mukherjee on his swearing-in as the 13th President of India. President Mukherjee has been a strong partner to America and the American people, working throughout his career to deepen our cooperation on a wide range of issues," Clinton said in a statement.! "I look forw...

WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today congratulated Pranab Mukherjee on being sworn in as the 13th President of India saying he has been a strong partner to American and the American people. "I want to congratulate President Mukherjee on his swearing-in as the 13th President of India. President Mukherjee has been a strong partner to America and the American people, working throughout his career to deepen our cooperation on a wide range of issues," Clinton said in a statement. "I look forward to continuing to work with the government and people of India. Together we will build on our shared democratic values, strengthen this relationship even more and create a brighter future for both our people," said Clinton, who maintained a close relationship with Mukherjee. In the last three and half years, Clinton met Mukherjee almost every time the Indian leader visited Washington.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and two panels of media figures, academics and senior government officials at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum suggested Tuesday that potential developments in technology and social media could help prevent genocide in the 21st century. The event came as a new poll the museum commissioned found that 94 percent of Americans think genocide is a concern and could occur today. "The United States and our partners must act before the wood is stacked or the match is struck, because when the fire is at full blaze, our options for responding are considerably costlier and more difficult," Clinton said in her keynote speech during a museum symposium about preventing genocide. The symposium's two panels, moderated by CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer and Dana Priest of The Washington Post, discussed the ways the United States could use technology to find and respond to atrocities. But in the high-profile use of social media during the Arab Spring, individua...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Syrian rebels will eventually control swathes of territory but Syrian President Bashar al-Assad still has time to negotiate an exit, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday. Speaking as if a rebel military victory was inevitable, though other U.S. officials say the 17-month armed conflict may drag on, Clinton for the first time said the opposition would ultimately be able to provide "safe haven" inside Syria . Suggesting the U.S. focus has moved to how to grapple with an eventual collapse of Assad 's rule, Clinton stressed it was time to look at "day-after issues" such as how to govern a post-Assad Syria and how to avert a bloodbath of sectarian reprisals. The last week appears to have been the bloodiest in the conflict in which the Alawite minority that has ruled the Sunni majority country for four decades has sought to crush the rebels' uprising against Assad. "We have to work closely with the opposition becau...

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received a relatively warm reception yesterday at the 19th International AIDS Conference in Washington DC as she supported the reproductive rights of women with HIV, unveiled a $37m programme to help injecting drug users and gay men in parts of the world where HIV is running out of control in those populations, supported the provision of generic drugs and promised an extra $80 million to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission in Africa. At first interrupted by demostrators from Mdecins sans Frontires and other groups protesting US support for restrictive trade agreements, Clinton brushed off the protests, joking that, "If it's an international AIDS conference, there has to be a demo". She said she supported the provision of generic drugs (at least outside the US) and that PEPFAR had saved $380 million last year alone by switching to generics. She said that ending the HIV epidemic was a possibility but needed a coordinated and strate...

Hillary Clinton told the International Aids conference yesterday that the United States remains determined to eradicate Aids around the world amid warnings that the progress made so far could be reversed if donor nations pinch pennies in times of economic slowdown. "I want to be absolutely clear the United States is committed and will remain committed to creating an Aids-free generation, we will not back down," the US Secretary of State told delegates at the start of the five-day meeting. Aware of the concern that money, especially from national budgets, for research and treatment around the world is at risk of drying up, she added: "We will fight for the resources necessary to achieve this historic milestone." "Obviously when there are constrained resources there is some impact on your ability to implement [programmes]," Anthony Fauci, the head of Aids research at the National Institutes of Health, told reporters. One solution, he said, was to "bring...

United States secretary of state Hillary Clinton has told the world's biggest AIDS conference in Washington that the fight to stop children being born with the disease can be won. It is the first time in 12 years that the US has hosted the International AIDS Conference, which has a program as thick as a phone book. The 20,000 delegates have a lot to talk about. Ms Clinton, one of the key speakers, told those gathered how moved she was when she and her husband saw the AIDS memorial quilt displayed in Washington in 1996. Each panel represents a victim of the epidemic. "When we saw how enormous the quilt was covering acres of ground, stretching from the Capitol building to the Washington Monument, it was devastating," she said. "And in the months and years that followed, the quilt kept growing. In fact, back in 1996 was the last time it could be displayed all at once - it just got too big. Too many people kept dying." Ms Clinton says the US will keep pushing for an...

Washington , July 24 ( IANS ) US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has touted the US efforts to fight AIDS amid charges that Washington is lagging behind on combating the pandemic. According to the UNAIDS, there are as many as 34 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS and as many as 2.5 million new diagnoses each year, Xinhua reported. "So many of the people around the world have not been satisfied that we've done enough," said Clinton while addressing a crowd of thousands at the International AIDS Conference in Washington D.C. "But I am here" to fight for "a generation that is free of AIDS," she said. Indeed, the US has been charged with falling behind in progress on cutting the number of new HIV infections , as the rate has remained stable at around 50,000 new cases per year since the 1990s. While other countries -- including many southern African countries -- have significantly cut the rate over the same time period, said Clinton The US ai...

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vowed Monday that the United States will step up the fight against HIV, insisting it was working towards the goal of achieving an AIDS-free generation. Amid worrying research showing that resistance to AIDS drugs is growing in parts of Africa, Clinton unveiled more than $150 million in new funding to battle the pandemic. "The United States is committed and will remain committed to achieving an AIDS-free generation. We will not back off, we will not back down," Clinton told participants at the International AIDS Conference in Washington. "We will fight for the resources necessary to achieve this historic milestone," she added, dismissing criticism that the United States was not serious in its bid to fight the 30-year pandemic. Some 1.5 million people died from the disease last year, and some 34 million people globally are living with HIV, according to the latest UNAIDS report. However, about one in five people are not aware of th...

Credit: MarkPenn.com By all accounts Microsoft is struggling. Its true that Bing is growing , but only slightly, while partner Yahoo continues to lose search share (to Bing) keeping the Search Alliance in the doldrums. Microsoft also recently took $6+ billion write-down on its 2007 aQuantive acquisition, resulting in a loss for its most recent fiscal quarter . Its core Office and Windows franchises are still healthy but their future is cloudy as PC sales continue to slow. Microsofts Windows Phones and mobile efforts more broadly have not borne fruit. Its novel Surface tablets have yet to reveal pricing and wont be out until the fourth quarter. They could re-insert Microsoft into the mobile conversation but we wont know that until Q1 of 2013 at the very earliest. Microsoft is also increasingly dismissed in high-profile articles such as in the August issue of Vanity Fair magazine that blames CEO Steve Ballmer for a lost decade. Against that daunting backdrop Microsoft has hired politic...

Her 17-day European trip was described in the media as a triumph, but for Suu Kyi and her supporters its political dimension was equally important. In addition to receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo and an honorary doctorate at Oxford, Suu Kyi gave a historic address to a joint session of the British Parliament and had one-on-one talks with both British Prime Minister David Cameron and newly-elected French President Franois Hollande. At every step she repeated her new mantra: yes to investments in Burma, but only ones that are democracy friendly and human rights friendly. After the reforms enacted by President Thein Sein, Burma is badly in need of an economic lift, to persuade ordinary Burmese that their lives are changing for the better. But at the same time, Suu Kyi is desperate to get the message across that, if Burma is to evolve into a functioning democracy, foreign companies must avoid further enriching the corrupt generals and their business cronies who still control the cou...

Posted: Saturday, July 21, 2012 5:00 pm | Updated: 2:04 pm, Fri Jul 20, 2012. Hillary Rodham Clinton has a reputation as being one tough lady. That doesnt mean she doesnt possess compassion, which she has except for protecting the unborn. The Associated Press told it all in its lead paragraph: If diplomatic achievements were measured by the number of countries visited, Hillary Rodham Clinton would be the most accomplished secretary of state in history. The former first lady earlier this week completed what is called an epic 13-day journey of 27,000 miles about 2,000 miles more than the circumference of the Earth through and over Europe to Asia and then doubling back to the Middle East. One Clinton staffer called that kind of trip absurd. Nine countries were visited. Wonder what the cost was for a trip like that? Was it necessary? What was accomplished? Did the trip position the United States in better standing with the leaders of the countries visited? Were any fires put out? There...

Political operative Mark Penn helped Bill and Hillary Clinton; Tony Blair; and Bill Gates. Can he do as much to help Microsoft? On the surface, it looked like another routine personnel move with a new corporate suit moving into the executive suite, but Microsoft's decision this week to hire former Clinton political operative Mark Penn as a vice president in charge of "strategic and special projects" -- whatever that means -- may turn out to be one of the more profound decisions the company takes this year. Will get to why in a moment. First, the context. Mark Penn (Credit: Burston-Marsteller) Penn's hiring doesn't come out of the blue. He's joining a company at a critical point in its evolution (Dare I say transformation?). For some time now, Microsoft, a company with historical roots in the enterprise, has tried assiduously to keep pace with the accelerating shift in computing toward more mobile -- and consumer-facing -- technologies. This began a few years ...

Egypt focus as Clinton visits Israel JERUSALEM, Jul 16 (Reuters) US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, arriving in Jerusalem from newly Islamist-controlled Egypt, told a wary Israel today to treat the Arab Spring as an opportunity as well as a source of uncertainty convulsing the Middle East. It was Clinton's first visit to the Jewish state since US-brokered peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis broke down in 2010 over Israel's refusal to halt the building of settlements on land where Palestinians hope to found a state. Since then, popular revolts across the Arab world have swept away the rulers of Tunisia, Libya, Yemen and Israel's biggest neighbour Egypt, and unleashed a violent conflict in Syria. Israel is particularly worried about the rise of Islamists in place of ousted Arab autocrats, especially Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, who had guaranteed his country's 1979 treaty with Israel, the first between Israel and an Arab country. Clinton met Israeli leaders in...

By Jen Doll | The Atlantic Wire 3 hrs ago A recent feature in People magazine with Anthony Weiner , his wife Huma Abedin , and their baby Jordan had a lot of people (including the New York Post ) wondering if this meant that Weiner was spurring up public goodwill for a comeback . Now it turns out that the effort may not have been about Weiner at all...maybe this was about Huma Abedin, and her boss, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. RELATED: The New York Times New DC Chief; Bon Jovi's 9/11 Tribute According to a Daily News piece in which Ian Bishop and Kenneth Lovett cite unnamed sourcesclose to Bill and Hillary Clinton , this was "a Clinton-crafted effort meant to help her get a job," given that Hillary plans to leave her current post as Secretary of State next year and Abedin is her deputy chief of staff. But the ties go deeper than that: Bill Clinton officiated at Abedin's wedding to Weiner, and Abedin and Hillary have been working together since 1996, wh...