East African leaders on Monday called for a combined regional effort to combat a searing drought that has put millions of people on the verge of starvation. The outgoing Inter-Governmental Authority on Development chairperson, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, called for insurance for people affected by famine.
Nine million children in Africa will spend Mother’s Day this year with no one to cherish because they have lost their mothers to HIV/Aids, according to a British charity. The charity Save the Children says additional funds must be channelled towards millions more youngsters missing out on school in order to care for sick and dying parents.
Police in Zimbabwe’s second city of Bulawayo on Monday searched the offices of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), apparently looking for weapons, a party official said. ”They have started the search for arms of war at our offices,” said MDC spokesperson Maxwell Zimuto.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on Monday urged neighbouring states Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo to help decimate insurgents from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group that has waged a brutal war in the country’s northern region.
Falls in interconnect rates — the amount operators charge each other to use their networks — have not always led to reductions in the prices charged to customers, says international expert Robert Hall, author of a new report titled <i>Setting Interconnection Prices in Africa</i>.
At least six people were killed in clashes over the weekend in south-western Nigeria, police said on Monday, while several incidents of violence were also reported in the north in the run-up to the country’s controversial census. President Olusegun Obasanjo has called for a headcount in Africa’s most populous country.
The most powerful cyclone to hit Australia in decades smashed into the country’s north-east coast on Monday, leaving hundreds homeless and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. Packing winds up to 290kph Tropical Cyclone Larry tore roofs off houses, uprooted trees and terrified residents.
The producers of a Steven Spielberg TV western are being sued by an Apache couple because a stylist on the New Mexico film set cut their eight-year-old daughter’s hair in violation of tribal customs. The Mescalero Apache, who live in southern New Mexico, forbid the cutting of a girl’s hair until a coming-of-age ceremony at puberty.
The European Union will sign a deal on Monday with the United Nations granting â,¬64-million (-million) in urgent aid for the Palestinians, but much more in future funding is under threat after the formation of a government by Hamas, a group the Europeans consider a terrorist group.
Former Estonian president Lennart Meri, a leading political figure in the Baltic states after they won independence from Moscow in 1991, has died at the age of 76, the president’s office said. The former writer and filmmaker had undergone an operation in August last year for brain cancer.