KHARTOUM (AFP) –
The Sudanese government dismissed the International Criminal Court’s decision on Monday to add genocide to the charges against Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir as a a political ploy as rebels hailed it as a “victory” for the people of Darfur.

“The adding of the genocide accusation confirms that the ICC is a political court,” Information Minister and government spokesman Kamal Obeid said in a statement to the official Suna news agency.

“The ICC decision is of no concern to us — us the Sudanese government. We focus on development,” Obeid said, according to the statement provided to AFP.

His comments come hours after the ICC added genocide to the list of charges against Beshir, who is already wanted since March 2009 by the court for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the vast Darfur region of western Sudan.

“There are reasonable grounds to believe that (Beshir) acted with specific intent to destroy in part the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups,” said a new warrant which listed three genocide charges.

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Broadway’s Ruth Williamson stars as Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly!, the Jerry Herman-Michael Stewart musical about living life to the fullest, July 9-Aug. 1 in Santa Ana, CA.
Calvin Remsberg directs a cast that includes David Allen Jones as Horace Vandergelder, Bryan Feldman as Cornelius Hackl, Taylor Simmons as Barnaby Tucker, Viva Weber as Irene Malloy and Hannah Simmons as Minnie Fay. The revival is produced by 3-D Theatricals.

Williamson’s Broadway credits include revivals of Guys and Dolls, The Music Man, La Cage aux Folles, Little Me, plus Epic Proportions, Smile and Irving Berlin’s White Christmas. She was a Drama Desk nominee for The Green Heart Off-Broadway.

The production team for Hello, Dolly!, the 1964 musical based on Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker, at the OC Pavilion, includes producer/artistic director TJ Dawson, choreographer Kami Seymour, musical director/conductor Jerry Sternbach, production stage manager Nicole Wessel, assistant stage manager Jenny Jacobs, lighting designer Jared Sayeg, sound designer Julie Ferrin, set designer John Iacovelli, production supervisor Gina Farina, costume designer/coordinator Sharell Martin and production assistant Kiana St. Laurent.

The company also includes Garrett Deagon as Ambrose Kemper, Dani Kerry as Ermengarde, Clare Solly as Ernestina, Jay Wallace as Rudy, John N. Butz as Judge, Sheila Karls as Mrs. Rose, and ensemble members Paul Romero Jr., Ami Russ, Archer Altstaetter, Brittany Hammond, Jenny Rose Hobbs, Dennis Bendersky, Jenn Aedo, Jenna Wright, Karlee Ferreira, Kevin Ling, Maggie Howell, Michael Milligan, Nathan Wise, Neil Starkenberg, Shannon McFarland,
Stephanie Draude and Zsolt Banki.

The OC Pavilion is at 801 N. Main Street in Santa Ana, CA. For more information, call (714) 550-0880 or visit www.ocpavilion.com.

Broadway’s Ruth Williamson will star as Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly!, the Jerry Herman-Michael Stewart musical about living life to the fullest, July 9-Aug. 1 in Santa Ana, CA.
Calvin Remsberg directs a cast that includes David Allen Jones as Horace Vandergelder, Bryan Feldman as Cornelius Hackl, Taylor Simmons as Barnaby Tucker, Viva Weber as Irene Malloy and Hannah Simmons as Minnie Fay. The revival is produced by 3-D Theatricals.

Williamson’s Broadway credits include revivals of Guys and Dolls, The Music Man, La Cage aux Folles, Little Me, plus Epic Proportions, Smile and Irving Berlin’s White Christmas. She was a Drama Desk nominee for The Green Heart Off-Broadway.

The production team for Hello, Dolly!, the 1964 musical based on Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker, at the OC Pavilion, includes producer/artistic director TJ Dawson, choreographer Kami Seymour, musical director/conductor Jerry Sternbach, production stage manager Nicole Wessel, assistant stage manager Jenny Jacobs, lighting designer Jared Sayeg, sound designer Julie Ferrin, set designer John Iacovelli, production supervisor Gina Farina, costume designer/coordinator Sharell Martin and production assistant Kiana St. Laurent.

The company also includes Garrett Deagon as Ambrose Kemper, Dani Kerry as Ermengarde, Clare Solly as Ernestina, Jay Wallace as Rudy, Michael Hill as Judge, Sheila Karls as Mrs. Rose, and ensemble members Paul Romero Jr., Ami Russ, Archer Altstaetter, Brittany Hammond, Jenny Rose Hobbs, Dennis Bendersky, Jenn Aedo, Jenna Wright, Karlee Ferreira, Kevin Ling, Maggie Howell, Michael Milligan, Nathan Wise, Neil Starkenberg, Shannon McFarland,
Stephanie Draude and Zsolt Banki.

The OC Pavilion is at 801 N. Main Street in Santa Ana, CA. For more information, call (714) 550-0880 or visit www.ocpavilion.com.

KOLKATA, Jun 2 (IPS) – As India
mourns for the victims of one of its worst rail accidents that occurred
on Friday in eastern state West Bengal, the political class is divided
on whether
the Maoist rebels were behind the incident that left 148 civilians dead.

The
accident – coming barely two weeks after the Maoists blew up a bus at
Dantewada in central India’s Chhattisgarh, killing several common people
along with troopers recruited from among villagers – has triggered a
debate
on whether the Maoists are now choosing soft targets like civilians,
whose
cause they supposedly espouse at the point of gun.

After several decisive attacks that have killed scores of police and other security forces in the last six months, the leadership of India’s increasingly bold Maoist rebels have been caught off guard by what it says was an unauthorized act of terror by an allied group. Indian intelligence officials now believe that a tribal militia associated with the Maoists was behind the May 28 train derailment that killed 148 people. A spokesman for the insurgency, organized as the Communist Party of India (Maoist), told TIME that it was “an act of terrible indiscretion.”

The incident is one of the worst ever to strike the Indian railway system. The clips that fasten the railway track together were removed at a point about 150 km west of Kolkata in the Jhargram area of West Midnapore, a Maoist stronghold in the state of West Bengal. As the Mumbai-bound Gyaneshwari Express moved over the sabotaged track, it derailed. Almost immediately a transport train passing on the parallel track crashed into the derailed passenger train, leaving 148 people dead.(See pictures of the political emergence of modern India.)

Within hours, the state police chief blamed the attack on the Maoist guerrillas, who are waging an armed uprising against the Indian state in the name of the rural poor. The alleged act of sabotage also fell on the first day of a “black week” called by the Maoists to condemn what they describe as “atrocities against villages” and to stop the government’s armed offensive against them. West Midnapur has already been a theater of that conflict. Just a few kilometers away from the railway disaster, the Maoist guerrillas raided an Indian paramilitary camp in February, killing 24 policemen. (See the debate over India’s war with Maoist rebels.)

But now, intelligence officials in both Kolkata and New Delhi, working closely with investigators, tell TIME that they are in possession of “substantial evidence, including tapped telephone conversations” that links the attack not to the central Maoist organization but to two leaders of the People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCPA), a tribal militia formed in West Midnapore district protesting against alleged police atrocities. The group has been locked in an intense and often violent political fight against the state government over the acquisition of farmland for new industrial projects. Intelligence officials say that two leaders of the PCPA – Umakanto Mahto and Bapi Mahato – along with 15 to 20 other militia members carried out the attack.

This has put the Maoists on the defensive. The Maoists’ organization is separate from the PCPA, but they have used the group’s strong popular base among the tribal population to spread their area of influence in the region. Soon after the incident, the Maoists issued a statement denying involvement. “It is not the Maoist policy to attack civilians,” said a Maoist spokesperson who goes by the alias Akash, who spoke to TIME from an undisclosed location in eastern India. “Please read our party documents carefully. We are not behind the railway attack. And we will soon hold a public court to punish the guilty.” Another Maoist spokesperson from the region, Sunil, told TIME that they will “guard trains passing through the area” to prove their innocence.

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