More than 180 000 people have died from hunger and disease during the last 18 months of the Darfur conflict, the United Nations said on Tuesday, as negotiations continued at its New York headquarters to break the deadlock on a new security council resolution to impose sanctions on the Sudanese government.
"British Prime Minister Tony Blair has declared that the two issues at the centre of the G8 Summit this July will be African poverty and global climate change. These may seem to be distinct issues. In fact, they are linked. A trip I took to a village in the Tigre region in northern Ethiopia shows why," writes Jeffrey Sachs of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.
Many local net users still don’t get the idea that the internet is a big, free supermarket of goodies. Naturally, local business is hoping that this simple fact isn’t found out, and that people will continue handing over large amounts of money for things they can find and download for free, if they take the time to look. Here’s a guide on how to get hold of anything and everything — but were too afraid to ask …
When Senegalese superstar Youssou N’Dour rolled into this dusty village and bellowed ”How many people want a bed net?”, hundreds of hands shot up into the air. Amid the din of drums and the cries of excitement, Jeffrey Sachs, a special adviser to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan who was also on the scene, said: ”I want Guereo to be the first village in Africa where everyone sleeps under bed nets.”
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President Robert Mugabe’s government said on Tuesday that it will not let Zimbabwe’s main trade union federation monitor crucial elections this month, charging that it is an agent of former colonial ruler Britain and that it has ”biased and preconceived ideas about the outcome of the elections”.
The trade union Solidarity is to join an investigation into the latest accident at Sasol’s Secunda plant on Tuesday, which left a man dead. The man died on Tuesday morning in an accident on the second day of a commission of inquiry into the September blast that left 10 dead and 360 injured.
Two journalists in Malawi were arrested on Tuesday and charged with publishing false information for reporting that President Bingu wa Mutharika had moved out of a newly built palace because he believes it is haunted. Mutharika angrily denied the reports when he returned on Saturday from a trip to Belgium, saying: ”I have never feared ghosts in my life.”
A ”super cyclone” packing winds of more than 300kph was bearing down on Australia’s remote north-west coast on Tuesday after already striking the country twice in the east and north. Cyclone Ingrid was upgraded to a category five — the highest level — early on Tuesday over the Timor Sea.
Assailants armed with guns and swords shot and hacked to death 22 people, mainly women and children, from a rival clan in northeastern Kenya on Tuesday, officials said. Security forces later killed 12 suspects during an operation to restore order in Mandera, a district troubled by clashes between the Garre and Murule clans.
Officials and religious leaders are disputing claims by a Cambodian man that his cow is possessed by a magic healing spirit that emigrated from Thailand. The animal’s owner claimed on Monday that excrement and urine from his cow could miraculously cure diseases since it became possessed by a heavenly entity last week.