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/ 3 November 2006
Militants in Nigeria are planning a major new wave of attacks and kidnappings in the next few days that could include up to 20 simultaneous bombings across the country’s oil-rich delta region, United States diplomats warned on Friday. The warning came in an e-mailed statement sent from the US consulate in Nigeria’s main city, Lagos.
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/ 22 October 2006
Militants in Nigeria have freed seven foreign oil workers seized during an attack earlier this month on an ExxonMobil compound, a spokesperson for the company said. The seven were taken hostage on October 3 during a raid on a residential compound housing ExxonMobil employees in the southern Niger Delta town of Eket.
Nigerian leader Olusegun Obasanjo once had a notice posted at the gate of his farm and presidential retreat: ”No dogs and journalists allowed.” Obasanjo saw it as a joking reference to what he considered unfair criticism from the press. The sign is gone, but tensions between the president and the press linger.
At the Costain livestock market in Nigeria’s biggest city of Lagos, chicken buyers are again waiting while boys in their early teens slaughter, clean and cut up birds for them to take home. The sight had all but disappeared in the first shock that followed the discovery of Africa’s first cases of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.
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/ 13 February 2006
Samples taken from a Nigerian family suspected of contracting a fatal bird flu strain have been sent abroad so experts can determine whether the virus has jumped to humans in Africa for the first time. Two children were reported ill near a farm in the northern town of Jaji, where the deadly H5N1 bird flu strain was detected on a poultry farm on Wednesday.
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/ 23 January 2006
Militants holding four foreign hostages in Nigeria claimed on Sunday they would release the captives soon, according to a statement purportedly from the militant group. The hostages were seized near a Shell oil field on January 11 by a group that also claimed responsibility for other oil industry attacks that have cut Nigerian production by almost 10%.
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/ 22 January 2006
The leader of Nigerian militants who captured four foreign oil workers said on Saturday he would not talk with negotiators sent by the government and reiterated threats to launch new attacks on oil installations. The workers were seized on January 11 near a Shell oil field by militants behind attacks on Nigerian oil installations.
Nigerian police say they have scored results in a crackdown launched by President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government in the past three years on internet and e-mail fraud — which has grown to the point that it is associated with Nigeria all over the world. But new scammers are evolving fresh ruses to trap victims and evade detection.
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/ 13 December 2004
Ceasefire violations are on the rise in Sudan’s bloodied Darfur region and the fighting is poisoning peace talks where government and rebel negotiators met on Monday for the first time, officials said. ”We can’t have meaningful negotiations in this situation,” said Assane Ba, a spokesperson for the African Union mediating the talks.
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/ 1 November 2004
Widening the growing global Anglican rift over homosexuality, Anglican bishops in Africa said on Monday they would stop theological training of African clergy in Western institutions. Bishops also were studying creation of a separate, ”African” theology rejecting gay clergy and same-sex marriages, they said.