This Counterpunch story is from Nablus in the West Bank where Palestinians live in very real fear of Israeli oppression on a daily basis. This is a city filled with poverty, misery and hardship from Israeli violence and interference, with the most recent Israeli attacks starting in June. The writer describes several personal accounts of tragedy of Palestinians who've suffered family members killed, arrested on groundless reasons or who've broken down mentally and emotionally.

No improvement of any sort will happen anytime soon with the crisis in Darfur. Instead the situation there is bound to get worse and worse as the Sudanese government refuses to cooperate with the UN, even as Kofi Annan spoke out about possible catastrophe in Darfur.
This other BBC article highlights the problems with Darfur especially the political games that are being forced upon the UN.

However one good and sadly humorous piece of news reagarding the African Union (AU) force currently there: "However, Africa does not always follow the script. The African Union force apparently does not even have enough money to pull its troops out, so it might stay anyway and if a deal can be worked out, it might yet form part of a UN force."

The UN and world powers are heavily being pressured by advocacy groups and activists to send a force to Darfur right away, with their rationale being the terrible tragedy happening there warrants the violation of a state's sovereignty over its borders. However both logistically and politically it seems very unlikely for the West to actually do this, as the article mentions. Furthermore with the Iraq invasion and occupation, the US and Britain lost a lot of moral capital so that even oppressive governments like Sudan's can seem righteous in refusing the UN and the powers from sending in any troops.

Darfur

The situation is not very good at the moment in this region located in West Sudan. Actually the situation has not been good for a very long time but it's just there was a possibility of improvement with the UN Security Council voting to approve sending a peacekeeping force to that area to attempt to stop the violence. Unfortunately Sudan's government rejected the UN resolution, maintaining that this would violate its sovereignty.
AllAfrica.com has a good editorial here from the Lagos magazine This Day talking about the Darfur situation and strongly critical of the Sudanese government.

For those who want a quick summary of the Darfur conflict, here's a Q&A from the BBC.