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/ 16 November 2007
Pakistan freed opposition leader Benazir Bhutto from house arrest early on Friday, hours after a caretaker prime minister was appointed in a first step towards a national election. Jail officials left the residence in the eastern city of Lahore where Bhutto has been held to prevent her from leading a pro-democracy rally.
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/ 15 November 2007
The Algerian army is ”on the road to victory” over the Maghreb branch of the al-Qaeda network, responsible for suicide attacks in the North African country, according to a French anti-terrorism expert. The Maghreb branch has introduced suicide bomb attacks that have targeted government and army positions in Algeria.
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/ 15 November 2007
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is expected to appoint a caretaker government on Thursday to oversee elections he has promised for January but which the opposition say will be a sham under emergency rule. ”We don’t expect fair and free elections under General Musharraf and his mini martial law,” said Farhatullah Babar, an opposition spokesperson.
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/ 14 November 2007
Pakistani opposition parties tried to forge a united front on Wednesday against military President Pervez Musharraf who insisted a state of emergency was necessary for fair elections. United States ally Musharraf, who took power in a 1999 coup, declared emergency rule in nuclear-armed Pakistan on November 3.
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/ 14 November 2007
Togo’s Prime Minister, Yawovi Agboyibo, on Tuesday said he had tendered his resignation to President Faure Gnassingbe ahead of the formation of a new, post-elections government. ”I was appointed for a specific mission, to conduct the organisation of the parliamentary polls with the Independent National Electoral Commission,” he said.
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/ 14 November 2007
Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto is trying to forge an alliance with Islamists and other opposition parties to launch a campaign to force military president Pervez Musharraf from power. Musharraf plunged the nuclear-armed country into crisis on November 3 when he declared emergency rule.
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/ 13 November 2007
Thousands of refugees poured out of camps in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s violent North Kivu province on Tuesday after the army said Tutsi-dominated insurgents attacked its positions. Army troops repelled the dawn raid on their positions near Mugunga camp, killing 27 fighters loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda.
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/ 13 November 2007
Detained Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto called on Tuesday for military leader Pervez Musharraf to step down as president, isolating him in the run-up to a general election. Britain stepped up pressure on Musharraf, who imposed emergency rule on November 3, backing a 10-day Commonwealth ultimatum for him to end the emergency.
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/ 13 November 2007
Thousands of refugees fled camps in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s violent Nord-Kivu province on Tuesday after the army said Tutsi-dominated insurgents attacked its positions nearby. ”There’s a massive movement of displaced towards Goma,” said the director of the World Food Programme in Goma.
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/ 13 November 2007
The numbers of women seeking treatment for rape in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has risen as a conflict that has already left four million dead over the past decade has reignited. Human rights groups describe gang rapes as commonplace and often accompanied by ”barbaric” acts of torture.
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/ 11 November 2007
Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf said on Sunday a general election will be held by January 9 — but under a state of emergency he imposed eight days ago. Musharraf, under pressure to put Pakistan back on a path to democracy, said the National Assembly and provincial assemblies will be dissolved in coming days.
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/ 10 November 2007
Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto described Pakistan on Saturday as a pressure cooker about to explode, as President Pervez Musharraf’s government tightened screws on media by ordering out three British journalists. Having invoked emergency powers a week ago, Musharraf has sacked most of the country’s judges and ordered police to round up most of the opposition leadership.
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/ 10 November 2007
The enthusiasm that came with the storming to office of Guinea’s latest prime minister has waned and there are doubts over his capability to lift the country out of misery, a global think tank said on Friday. Lansana Kouyate, an ex-United Nations diplomat, was early this year named Prime Minister by ailing President Lansana Conte.
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/ 10 November 2007
Comic-book hero Captain America may not be back from the dead, but he is back — sort of. After Marvel Comics unexpectedly killed off the champion of liberty and the American way earlier this year, he appears in a comic made exclusively for United States soldiers. He is seen on a videotape made before his death.
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/ 9 November 2007
Mona Miller’s life will change this weekend. For the first time, she will have a real roof, solid walls and glass windows. Lights will come on at the flick of a switch, water will flow from the tap and she will enjoy the dignity of a toilet. Miller will move into her first proper home thanks to a building blitz by nearly 1Â 400 Irish volunteers.
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/ 6 November 2007
Blocked by the government and facing harsh curbs, Pakistan’s private television channels have turned to the internet to reach viewers starved of news about the state of emergency. Authorities took cable broadcasters off the air on Saturday evening when they first started to report that President Pervez Musharraf was about to impose an emergency.
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/ 5 November 2007
Pakistan police used tear gas and batons on Monday against lawyers protesting at President Pervez Musharraf’s imposition of emergency rule and detentions mounted, prompting Washington to postpone defence talks. Musharraf cited spiralling militancy and hostile judges to justify Saturday’s action, and slapped reporting curbs on the media.
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/ 5 November 2007
Centre-leftist Alvaro Colom won Guatemala’s presidential election on Sunday, denying power to a retired general who had sought to unleash the army to fight a violent crime wave. Colom, a soft-spoken textile businessman, had an unassailable lead of 5,4 percentage points over General Otto Perez Molina.
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/ 5 November 2007
Police in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) North Kivu province opened fire on refugees during a violent protest over food distributions on Monday, killing a child and wounding 11 civilians. Villagers driven from their homes three weeks ago by fighting between government soldiers and rebels had erected barricades in the town of Kiwanja.
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/ 5 November 2007
Thousands more people were plucked from rooftops in southern Mexico on Sunday even as floods that have left 800 000 people homeless in Tabasco state began to recede, authorities said. The army evacuated 5 000 people in a four-hour operation with 14 helicopters, police official Daniel Montiel said.
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/ 5 November 2007
The United States and Britain are on Monday expected to demand that Pakistan’s President, Pervez Musharraf, honour pledges to hold elections in the next two months and step down as the army chief, or face a cut in Western support. The diplomatic showdown will come in the form of a meeting in Islamabad between the Pakistani leader and a group of ambassadors.
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/ 4 November 2007
Police detained Pakistani opposition figures and lawyers on Sunday as military ruler President Pervez Musharraf tried to stifle the outcry over the imposition of emergency powers. The United States and other Western allies condemned General Musharraf’s decision to announce emergency rule on Saturday.
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/ 4 November 2007
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has imposed a state of emergency in a bid to end an eight-month crisis over his rule stoked by challenges from a hostile judiciary, Islamist militants and political rivals. General Musharraf said he decided to act on Saturday in response to a rise in extremism and what he called the paralysis of government by judicial interference.
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/ 2 November 2007
Rescuers worked on Friday on rescuing hundreds of thousands of people trapped by the worst floods ever recorded in Mexico’s southern state of Tabasco, with more than one million residents affected. The oil-rich state the size of Belgium is now 80% underwater, officials said, adding that they expect more rain in the next days.
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/ 1 November 2007
A suicide bomber rammed an air force bus in Pakistan on Thursday killing eight people while troops killed up to 70 militants in the north-west, as rumours swirled that President Pervez Musharraf could invoke emergency rule. Nearly 800 people have been killed in militant-linked violence and there have been more than 22 suicide attacks in the last four months.
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/ 1 November 2007
Turkey on Thursday stepped up pressure on northern Iraq, imposing economic sanctions over the safe haven Kurdish rebels enjoy, as Washington said it was supplying Ankara with intelligence on the separatists’ positions. "We have prepared a list of economic measures targeting the financial resources of the terrorist organisation," Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said.
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/ 31 October 2007
The Turkish army on Wednesday said it killed 15 Kurdish separatists near the Iraqi border, as ministers discussed possible economic sanctions against Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish government. The latest fighting took place in the Cudi Mountains in Sirnak province, where helicopters and artillery have been pounding Kurdish rebels since Monday.
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/ 31 October 2007
A suicide bomber on a motorcycle rammed a Pakistan Air Force bus — killing at least eight people and wounding 40 — near the central city of Sargodha on Thursday, the military said. The security situation in Pakistan has deteriorated sharply in the past few months at a time of political uncertainty.
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/ 31 October 2007
Buddhist monks in Burma staged a protest march on Wednesday, their first since soldiers crushed a pro-democracy uprising a month ago, as United Nations special envoy Ibrahim Gambari prepared for a return visit. Gambari, who first visited shortly after the army crackdown, would arrive on November 3.
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/ 30 October 2007
The Turkish army pounded Kurdish rebels near the Iraqi border on Tuesday as Ankara warned that ties with Washington would suffer as long as the separatists enjoyed sanctuary in northern Iraq. Cobra helicopters fired missiles at rebel positions on the Cudi Mountains, which border Iraq, where fighting continued for a second day.
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/ 30 October 2007
A suicide attack killed at least seven people, including the bomber, less than a kilometre from Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf’s army residence in Rawalpindi on Tuesday. The attacker blew himself up next to a police checkpoint metres away from the gates to the residence of one of Musharraf’s most senior officers, General Tariq Majid.
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/ 30 October 2007
A suicide attack killed at least seven people, including the bomber, less than a kilometre from Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf’s army headquarters in Rawalpindi on Tuesday, police said. Three police officers and three passers-by were among those killed, while 11 people were wounded in the blast.