After countless speeches, meetings and behind-the-scenes  discussions, the war in Syria remained the unsolved problem that loomed over  this year’s gathering of world leaders at the United Nations.

As the week-long meeting of the U.N. General Assembly ended  Monday, there were no breakthroughs on a civil war that has vexed diplomats,  paralyzed the Security Council and raised new questions about the relevance of  the United Nations.

Anyone willing to look closely, however, might spot a few  signs of movement. The new international envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, said  he saw an “opening” for a solution and was working on a new approach after  visiting Syria. The Emir of Qatar and other leaders in the region called for  some kind of Arab-led intervention. But details were hard to come by.

Talk about Syria, however, was heard everywhere.

Over seven days of speeches, Syria was discussed by one  country after another, from Albania: Syrians “are suffering a primitive  bloodshed by a regime that has irreversibly lost its legitimacy to lead;” to  Zambia: “Humanity has again been embarrassed by this unnecessary carnage.”

Dozens of nations excoriated the regime of President Bashar  Assad for its role in a conflict that has killed at least 30,000 Syrians,  according to activists.

Even the world’s top diplomat joined in. After  Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met with Syria’s foreign minister Monday, the U.N.  chief’s press office issued a blunt statement.

“The Secretary-General raised in the strongest terms the  continued killings, massive destruction, human rights abuses, and aerial and  artillery attacks committed by the government,” it said. “He stressed that it  was the Syrian people who were being killed every day, and appealed to the  government of Syria to show compassion to its own people.”

Ban again went after Syria in a meeting later Monday on the  threat of chemical weapons, alluding to the widely held belief that the Assad  regime has stockpiles of them. Ban warned that the “use of such weapons would be  an outrageous crime with dire consequences.”

Assad had a few defenders, like Iran, Cuba and, most  notably, Russia. Moscow, Syria’s biggest protector, has joined with China to  block three attempts by the U.S. and European Union nations to pass Security  Council resolutions aimed at pressuring the Assad regime into negotiating a  peace deal. The last threatened sanctions.

As the General Assembly wound down Monday, Syria got its  chance to defend itself.

Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem described a vast global  conspiracy bent on bringing down his government.

The media was provoking extremists, al-Moallem said, and  inventing a refugee crisis — 300,000 Syrians have fled, according to the  U.N.

The Americans, Europeans and fellow Arabs were all to blame  for meddling in Syrian affairs by calling on Assad to step down. Neighbors like  Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey were arming and financing “terrorists” who were  trying to overthrow Assad, he said.

“This terrorism which is externally supported is  accompanied by unprecedented media provocation based on igniting religious  extremism sponsored by well-known states in the region,” the minister said.

After mentioning “terrorist” or “terrorism” 24 times in his  speech, al-Moallem then said the government was ready to negotiate with the  opposition and “work together to stop the shedding of Syrian blood.”

“Propaganda” was the swift response from the chief  opposition group, the Syrian National Council, which released a statement saying  the latest offer of peace talks came from a “brutal and delusional Syrian  regime” that “continues to pay lip service to diplomacy.”

Members of the opposition acknowledged that neighboring  Arab countries are supporting the rebels but said the Assad regime has only  itself to blame after its bloody response to protests that began peacefully 18  months ago.

“It is the regime’s mindless, brutal and criminal military crackdown that pushed the Syrian people to ask for help from the international community, from NATO and from the devil himself if necessary to protect them,” Haitham Manna, a Paris-based Syrian dissident and senior member of the National Coordination Body opposition group, told The Associated Press.

The entire week at the U.N., which included a high-level  meeting of foreign ministers on Syria, amounted to little more than  “handwringing,” said Andrew Tabler, a senior fellow and Syria expert at the  Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Time would have been better spent planning for a transition  if and when Assad finally falls, he said.

“It’s those who are taking the shots against the Assad  regime that will be calling them after Assad is gone,” he said. “How will the  U.N. deal with that?”

Information available to 247ureports.com indicates that the Mobile police [MOPOL] officer arrested and detained for the murder of an Okada man, Umar Danmichika, on the hot afternoon of Wednesday September 26, 2012 at the Kaduna Stadium roundabout – has yet to be presented to the Courts for arraignment.

According to an official of the Kaduna State government, the MOPOL officer remains in the custody of the police in Kaduna pending the completion of an ongoing investigation. He assured that once the investigation is completed, the MOPOL officer will be presented to the courts for further legal actions.

The police commissioner of Kaduna State had pledged justice will be served. In his words, “We are doing something about the police man that killed the okada man. The culprit will be charged to court for murder. The law must take its full course; I have already briefed the Inspector General of police who have given me the mandate to go ahead with full investigation into the matter. We don’t train officers to kill innocent people in the society and take the law into their hands. We however appeal to law abiding citizens of the state to go about their normal activities as we are on top of the matter”.

It is recalled on the day of the incident eyewitness on the ground indicated that the murdered Okada rider, Umar Danmichika, had parked his motorcycle briefly to collect money from a customer when he was shot in the head in close range by a police officer in a moving vehicle.

Other witnesses indicated that the deceased had just finished eating from a local restaurant, and had yet to pay for his food when he saw a passenger, and rushed to drop the passenger before coming to effect payment, but unfortunately could not come back. In his words, “wallahi, he was deliberately shot because the boy was not on the road, he was just by the road side parked and sitting on the motorcycle, so how could he have committed any offence that will warrant him be killed like that. Infact he died instantly”.

Also, the woman who sold the food to the deceased, Mrs Aderonke Taiwo told our correspondent that the deceased “is my regular customer, he bought 80 naira food, he has not paid me when he left to drop the passenger, but I knew he would have come back to pay me, until I heard that he was the one that was killed by the gun shots I heard shortly after he left my place. He is my very good customer and his death is very painful and unfortunate. In fact, God will punish the police man that killed that innocent boy for nothing”.

It remains uncertain when the MOPOL officer will be arraigned in court for murder.

HARARE — Zimbabwe’s High Court ruled Tuesday that President Robert Mugabe does not have to immediately call by-elections, which a superior court had ordered the goverment to do. The ruling follows Mugabe’s argument the county does not have enough money to run the polls.

The legal battle started after three former members of parliament said Mr. Mugabe was taking too long to call by-elections to fill seats which have fallen vacant since Zimbabwe held its last elections in 2008.

Last week, Mugabe said Zimbabwe cannot afford to hold the elections to fill about 200 vacant municipal and parliamentary seats.

The Supreme Court, which is Zimbabwe’s highest court of law, ruled that Mugabe’s reason for delaying the polls had no legal standing.

However, the High Court said Tuesday that the president has until March 31st to comply with the Supreme Court’s order.

Tawanda Zhuwarara, the lawyer for the three former MPs, is not happy with the ruling, and says he wants to appeal.

“Primarily because we believe that the High Court made a gross, gross error of law. Basically we are also of the view that no state can plead poverty and escape its obligations,” said Zhuwarara.

The judge who issued Tuesday’s ruling once headed a Mugabe-appointed electoral commission that withheld election results in 2008 for about a month.

That delay was one of several factors that cast doubt on those polls, along with a campaign of violence by Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party against supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

The parties later formed a unity government under intense pressure from regional leaders.

The scheduling of elections has become the latest of many issues dividing the coalition partners.

Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party have been pushing to hold general polls in hopes of winning a majority and establishing their own government.

The MDC insists that a new constitution be adopted before the elections take place, in hopes of making the polls free and fair.

As al-Qaida has fragmented, U.S. officials have turned their attention to loosely affiliated groups that present threats of their own. Officials tell The Washington Post that among the steps being considered are drone strikes aimed at terrorists based in North Africa.

During a “series of secret meetings in recent months,” the White House began to “consider for the first time whether to prepare for unilateral strikes” aimed at terrorist groups operating in North Africa, The Washington Post writes this morning.

As NPR’s Dina Temple-Raston has previously reported, while al-Qaida has “fragmented” in recent years because of U.S.-led efforts against the network responsible for the Sept. 11, 2011, attacks, U.S. officials’ attention has turned to “a loose affiliation of groups that present a diffuse and entirely different threat.” Those include “al-Qaida’s arm in Yemen or Islamic militias in Somalia such as al-Shabab … [and] in Nigeria, a local separatist group called Boko Haram.”

The Post adds today that according to “U.S. officials” involved in the discussions, there have been talks about terrorists in Mali and other parts of North Africa who have been linked to al-Qaida, have been “acquiring weapons from post-revolution Libya” and have been tied to last month’s attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that left Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead. The newspaper writes that:

“U.S. officials said the discussions have focused on ways to help regional militaries confront al-Qaida but have also explored the possibility of direct U.S. intervention if the terrorist group continues unchecked.

According to the Post, White House officials declined to comment on the record about the discussions.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan told five new Ambassadors today that Nigeria wants increased trade and economic activities with their countries.

President Jonathan received the Ambassadors, Mrs. L. Ann Scott of Jamaica, Mr. Hoand Ngoc Ho of Vietnam, Mr. Jean-Marie Mowelle of Congo, Mr. Zsolt Maris of Hungary and Mr. Rolf Kristian Ree of Norway, at different audiences in State House.

‘Nigerian citizens have been trading with the citizens of Congo, but this has been mostly informal. We should make this formal, so that our relationship will become even stronger’,he told Mr. Jean-Marie Mowelle of Congo.

President Jonathan told Mr. Hoand Ngoc Ho of Vietnam that Nigeria had set a target of 2015 for self-sufficiency in rice production, and urged him to work hard to increase the current $700m trade between the two countries.

The President said Nigeria had opened up its economy to private sector participation, and invited Norwegian businessmen to take advantage of the opportunities, adding that both countries are already cooperating at global for a such as the United Nations.

President Jonathan welcomed the interest shown by Hungary in Nigeria’s gas, and said he wanted Jamaica to become observers in the Africa-South America Summit, in order to further strengthen economic relations.

The new Ambassadors expressed appreciation to President Jonathan for receiving them, and promised to do their best to improve relations between the two countries during their tenures.

Information reaching 247ureports.com indicates that the Independent National Electoral Commission [INEC] has given its final approval for the United Peoples Party [UPP] to operate as a full-fledged political party. The authorization came today October 2, 2012 following a board meeting that ended at about 3pm.

The UPP will be the first political party registered under the watch of the INEC Chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega.

The founder of UPP, Chief Chekwas Okorie, was also the founder of the All Progressive Grand Alliance [APGA].

The new party, UPP is expected to be the new party for the south east and south south political region. The logo of the party is the head of a Tiger.