The Sudanese government signed a framework cease-fire agreement Thursday with a rebel group from the country’s war-torn Darfur region, according to state-run media.

The agreement was signed in Doha, Qatar, by Sudanese official Ghazi Salahuddin and Al-Tigani Sessi of the Movement for Liberation and Justice, according to SUNA, a Sudanese state-run news agency.

The Movement for Liberation and Justice is an umbrella group comprised of 10 rebel groups that united last month, according to the Sudan Tribune.

Thursday’s signing comes less than a month after the Sudanese government signed a framework peace agreement with the rebel Justice and Equality Movement.

The framework agreement is considered the first step toward the achievement of a lasting peace accord in Darfur.

The signing Thursday, which took place at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Doha, according to the Qatar news agency, was attended by Sudan’s vice president, Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, and a number of other high-ranking officials from other countries, including Chad and Eritrea, according to SUNA.

Qatar has been mediating talks between the two sides in the Darfur conflict, which erupted in 2003 after rebels began an uprising against the Khartoum government.

The government launched a brutal counter-insurgency campaign, aided by government-backed Arab militias that went from village to village in Darfur, killing, torturing and raping residents, according to the United Nations, Western governments and human rights organizations.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is under pressure to end the fighting, particularly after the International Criminal Court charged him with genocide last year in connection with the government’s campaign of violence in Darfur.

In the past seven years, more than 300,000 people have been killed through direct combat, disease or malnutrition, according to the United Nations.

An additional 2.7 million people fled their homes because of fighting among rebels, government forces and allied militias.

ustin, Texas (CNN) — If you spend any time on the Internet, you’ve no doubt seen “David After Dentist,” the YouTube video of a woozy 7-year-old boy in the back seat of a car, struggling to understand the effects of anesthesia.

The viral clip has been viewed almost 54 million times and gave rise to the catchphrase, “Is this real life?” It was the second most-watched video of 2009, according to YouTube, trailing only Susan Boyle’s appearance on “Britain’s Got Talent.”

It’s also been an unexpected bonanza for the boy’s Orlando, Florida-area family, who, despite some criticism that they exploited their child by posting his image online, has turned the one-minute, 59-second home video into a lucrative sideline.

“We embraced it,” said the boy’s father, David DeVore, who shot the famous clip on a Flip camera from the car’s front seat. “We said we will make a family adventure out of this and see what happens. Nothing has happened that we felt uncomfortable doing.”

He would not say exactly how much the family has earned from the video but said it’s in the “low six figures.”

DeVore gave a presentation this week at the South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, Texas, where he explained what the family’s life has been like in the 13 months since the video went viral.

“Well, I’m David DeVore, also known as David’s dad, or the idiot that posted a video of his son on YouTube,” he told the audience as he began his talk. DeVore then played a video greeting from David, who is now 9 years old and looks noticeably older than he does in the famous video, which was shot in May 2008.

Chicago, Illinois (CNN) — A Chicago man charged in two international terror plots, including the 2008 Mumbai, India, attacks, pleaded guilty Thursday to a dozen counts against him, and now will not face a trial.

David Headley, 49, pleaded guilty in a federal court in Chicago to a dozen federal terrorism charges. Authorities said he scouted out targets for the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008 that killed more than 160 people, and planned an attack on a Danish newspaper that published cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

Headley, who was born in Washington, has agreed to cooperate with the government and testify before a grand jury.

He could have faced the death penalty if convicted, but in exchange for his guilty plea and cooperation, the government has taken execution off the table.

However, he will not be sentenced until after the conclusion of his cooperation, the Justice Department said. According to sentencing guidelines included in the plea agreement released Thursday, Headley is expected to serve a life sentence in prison.

He has been cooperating with the government since he was arrested October 3 in Chicago, authorities said, although he originally pleaded not guilty to the charges last year.

Authorities said Headley attended training camps in Pakistan operated by Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and received instructions in 2005 from three members of the group to travel to India to conduct surveillance. He traveled to India five times leading up to the Mumbai attacks, and took video of places including the the Taj Mahal Hotel, the Oberoi Hotel, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus train station and the Chabad House, the plea agreement said.

The two luxury hotels, the train station and the Chabad House, a Jewish center, were among the places attacked with guns and grenades during the three days in November 2008. The United States blames Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, which the U.S. considers a foreign terrorist organization, for the attacks.

Six Americans were killed in the attacks.

Read more about David Coleman Headley

Headley also admitted that in early November 2008, a Lashkar-e-Tayyiba member in Karachi, Pakistan, instructed him to scout the Copenhagen and Aarhus offices in Denmark of the Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten newspaper in preparation for an attack. The newspaper had published controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad.

The alleged plan against the Danish newspaper was never carried out.

According to the plea agreement, Headley also took surveillance outside the newspaper’s offices, and went inside, on the pretext that he was seeking to place an advertisement in the paper.

The plea agreement also says that Headley met in Pakistan with Ilyas Kashmiri, an alleged leader of Harakat-ul Jihad Islami, a group the U.S. Justice Department said has “trained terrorists [and] executed attacks in the state of Jammu and Kashmir under Indian control.” Kashmiri also is alleged to have links with al Qaeda.

Kashmiri told Headley he had a European contact who could provide Headley with money, weapons and manpower for the attack on the newspaper, the plea agreement says. He also told Headley that the attack should be a suicide attack, it says.

“Among other details, Kashmiri stated that the attackers should behead captives and throw their heads out of the newspaper building in order to heighten the response from Danish authorities,” the plea agreement says.

Kashmiri said the “elders,” which Headley understood to be al Qaeda leadership, “wanted the attack to happen as soon as possible,” the plea agreement says.

An indictment released in January said that the plan was put on hold because of pressure after the Mumbai attack.

Kashmiri and Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed, or Abdur Rehman, a retired major in the Pakistani military, have also been indicted in the plot against the Danish newspaper. Chicago resident Tahawwur Rana, a Candian citizen, was indicted on three counts alleging material support of the Denmark and India plots and support of Lashkar. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges, according to media reports.

Neither Syed nor Kashmiri are in U.S. custody.

In response to Headley’s guilty plea, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Americans face “real threats from homegrown and international terrorists, and we will continue working to disrupt, dismantle and defeat terrorism at home and abroad to ensure the safety and security of the American people.”

CNN

Oprah Winfrey must defend a defamation case filed against her by the former headmistress of her girls’ school in South Africa, a US judge has ruled.

Judge Eduardo Robreno refused to dismiss the legal action on Monday, saying Nomvuho Mzamane had enough evidence to pursue her claim.

The star allegedly made remarks about Mzamane in 2007, after sex abuse complaints arose at the school.

The trial is now set for 29 March in Philadelphia.

Disadvantaged children

The abuse emerged in 2007, when one girl at complained she had been fondled while others reported being sworn at, grabbed by the neck, beaten or thrown against a wall.

A former matron at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy was later charged with abusing six students.

Mzamane claims that Winfrey made statements to the press and parents at the time, suggesting she was not trustworthy.

Winfrey’s lawyers argued that the remarks reflected her opinions, but the judge ruled they were potentially defamatory as they ascribed “conduct which would render her [Mzamane] unfit for her profession as an educator”.

Winfrey’s lawyer, William Hangley, declined to comment on the decision and Mzamane’s lawyer was not available for comment.

The school was opened in Johannesburg in 2007 at a cost of $40m (£26.3m).

Winfrey pledged to build the academy after a meeting with former South African President Nelson Mandela in 2002, and personally interviewed many of the South African girls from low-income families who applied for the initial 150 places at the school.

The US talk-show host has said she was herself abused as a child and has campaigned against abuse in the US.

She described the abuse charges at her school as one of the most devastating experiences in her life.

BBC