Almost 90% of all heroin will come from Afghanistan this year, according to a United Nations report. The ,8-billion trade accounts for 40% of the country’s economy, employs 10% of the population, and has fuelled the rise of drug lords who threaten to upend the fragile democratic transition. But tackling the trade is a priority for the newly inaugurated president, Hamid Karzai.
Deutsche Börse’s attempt to take over the London Stock Exchange (LSE) faced fresh difficulties on Thursday when German politicians and bankers demanded a Frankfurt head office for the combined entity. It emerged that the German government has raised objections about any offer to move the head office to London.
Less than a month after taking office, Guinea’s new Prime Minister has begun to woo western donors and opposition parties at home by pledging more transparency in government and the lifting of a ban on private radio stations. A fast depreciating Guinean franc has meant importing rice, now selling for per 50kg bag — more than many Guineans earn in a month.
She survived the tsunami, only to suffer the inhumanity of her rescuer. The young woman was accompanying her family on a pilgrimage when the tunami hit. The journey was to seek protection. Instead, she nearly drowned, and was then raped. ”He told me to grab his hand, that he will save me,” said the 18-year-old girl, who asked not to be named for fear of being ostracised by her village.
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Guinea-Bissau has been hit by an unseasonal invasion of desert locusts that threatens to damage the small West African country’s cashew-nut trees that are currently in flower. Exports of cashew nuts are the main source of foreign exchange for this former Portuguese colony.
An Israeli settler arrested at London’s Heathrow airport with a loaded handgun in his luggage was acquitted on Thursday of possessing a dangerous article. A jury at Isleworth Crown Court in west London accepted Benjamin Lehman’s claim that he had forgotten the gun was in his backpack.
West Africa’s central bank enrolled town criers, United Nations peacekeepers and even desert pilots as it pulled out all the stops for an unprecedented, 10-week campaign to swap old banknotes for new that ended last week. The Central Bank of the States of West Africa hailed the campaign as a triumph.
The sign on the toilet brush says it best: ”Do not use for personal hygiene.” That admonition was the winner of an anti-lawsuit group’s contest for the wackiest consumer warning label of the year. The contest’s goal is ”to reveal how lawsuits, and concern about lawsuits, have created a need for common-sense warnings on products”.
The African Union has agreed in principle to deploy a peace support mission in the troubled Horn of Africa state of Somalia, which is trying to emerge from 13 years of anarchy, the AU said in a statement on Thursday. The mission will be the first multinational force in Somalia since the end of a failed, United Nations-mandated intervention in 1995.