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/ 26 February 2008
World economic growth could miss the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) forecast of 4,1% this year if United States and European banks disclose more major losses on the subprime market, the head of the IMF said on Monday. Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned that emerging economies would not escape the effects of the slowdown in rich countries.
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/ 25 February 2008
Rapid economic growth rates in Africa are at risk from a global downturn, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) told West African leaders on Monday. The IMF has cut its 2008 global growth projection to 4,1%, down from 4,9% last year, blaming the weak outlook in the United States and Europe.
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/ 22 February 2008
Violence in eastern Chad is preventing aid workers from reaching thousands of refugees who fled Sudanese government attacks in Darfur last week. Beatrice Godefroy, head of the Swiss branch of Médecins Sans Frontières in Chad, said that up to 8 000 refugees had poured across the border from Darfur last week.
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/ 6 February 2008
Hungry for oil and minerals, India and China have become Africa’s new colonialists, exploiting the world’s poorest continent in the same way as its old European masters, financier George Soros said on Tuesday. ”They are in the process of repeating the mistakes that the colonial powers have made,” said Soros.
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/ 1 February 2008
Unidentified gunmen opened fire on the Israeli embassy in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott early on Friday, police said. The attackers exchanged fire with guards at the embassy. A nearby bar in the centre of Nouakchott was also hit before the assailants fled.
The crowd of African women are tired and angry after hours waiting in the hot sun, but the officials will not vaccinate their children until the president inaugurates the campaign on state television. When he finally does so, half a day has been lost from the five-day vaccination scheme. It is a small reminder that, for healthcare in Africa, politics can be as decisive as poverty.
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/ 25 October 2007
France is trying to shed its reputation as ”Africa’s policeman” but, despite efforts to involve European partners in peacekeeping missions, there are no signs it will hang up its baton just yet. France won backing last month for an European Union force to be deployed soon in east Chad and Central African Republic, where it already has troops stationed.
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/ 27 September 2007
Militants are exploiting weak law enforcement in West Africa to raise funds from rackets ranging from people smuggling to drug trafficking and even fake Viagra, experts said. In the past two years, South American cartels have switched their trafficking routes into Europe to funnel drugs via lawless swathes of war-scarred West Africa.
Sierra Leoneans queued in ramshackle cities and jungle villages on Saturday to vote in their first elections since United Nations peacekeepers left two years ago, a test of the nation’s recovery from a 1991 to 2002 civil war. Torrential rains cleared overnight in the capital, Freetown, and hundreds of people lined up around the block at several polling stations.
Sierra Leone holds presidential and parliamentary polls on Saturday, the first since United Nations peacekeepers left two years ago and a watershed in its recovery from an 11-year civil war fuelled by blood diamonds. The war spawned images of drug-crazed child soldiers who hacked off people’s limbs.