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/ 29 January 2012
The African Union’s new chairman faced tough challenges as UN chief Ban Ki-moon warned that the Sudan crisis threatened regional security.
Pope Benedict XVI gives mass at a stadium hosting tens of thousands in Benin, wrapping up a visit detailing his vision for his church’s future.
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/ 15 November 2011
Three popular African singers have released a CD in collaboration with Vatican Radio to mark the pope’s upcoming visit to Benin.
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/ 4 November 2011
Benin, Togo and Ghana begin a three-day meeting in Cotonou next week to hammer out ways to end a recent upsurge in piracy in the Gulf of Guinea.
A disjointed fight is being mounted against piracy off Nigeria’s coast as insurers say the threat has reached levels that rival lawless Somalia.
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/ 2 November 2010
floods in the West African nation of Benin have destroyed 55 000 homes, killed tens of thousands of livestock and created a new cholera risk.
Hundreds of thousands of people in Benin have been affected by the country’s worst flooding in nearly half a century.
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/ 22 October 2010
Flooding in the West African state of Benin has affected 680 000 people, UN officials said on Friday.
African farmers are already adapting to climate change, according to case studies in Bénin, Kenya and Malawi.
Local and municipal elections in Benin passed off without evidence of fraud but with some functional problems, the head of a regional observer team said on Wednesday. The leader of the monitors from the Economic Community of West African States singled out in particular the lack of ballot papers and other materials.
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/ 16 February 2008
President George Bush began a five-nation tour of Africa on Saturday that will highlight United States health, education and pro-democracy projects there and also seek to advance efforts to end Kenya’s post-election crisis. Bush, accompanied by his wife Laura, arrived in the small West African state of Benin.
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/ 14 November 2006
Benin is hoping that a five-year, multimillion-dollar grant from the United States under the auspices of the Millennium Challenge Account will finance development projects to reduce poverty, notably through resolving land ownership and credit problems. The government says these funds will allow it to meet enormous economic challenges.
At least 35 people were burned alive and dozens injured overnight in northern Benin when a fuel truck burst into flames while they were stealing petrol, official sources said on Thursday. ”We took 80 people into hospital, of whom 12 died. At the scene, 23 charred bodies have been counted,” Boniface Sambieni, director of the hospital in the nearby town of Tanguieta, told Agence France-Presse.
The impoverished West African nation of Benin was counting votes on Monday after the first round of its presidential election dragged on late into the night under the shadow of fraud claims. Polling, which had been due to end at 4pm on Sunday, was prolonged until past midnight in some areas because of logistical problems.
Unless a baby is born head first and face upwards, many communities in northern Benin believe the child is a witch or sorcerer. And tradition demands that the infant must be killed, sometimes by dashing its brains out against a tree trunk. If the parents are compassionate, the baby is simply abandoned to die in the bush.
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/ 20 January 2005
Border police in the West African country of Benin have rescued 14 boys and a girl who were being smuggled into neighbouring Nigeria for work, a police officer said on Thursday. The boys had been destined for labour in the Abeokuta quarries, just over the border, while the girl would have been employed as a domestic servant.
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/ 20 October 2004
The privatisation of state-owned enterprises is often fraught with difficulties — witness developments at Benin’s National Society for Agricultural Advancement (Sonapra), a cotton-processing firm. Privatisation of the debt-ridden Sonapra began over a year ago in June 2003, but has stalled several times — prompting unions and the media to allege that corruption has taken root in the process.
Benin customs police said on Thursday they have arrested four traffickers trying to smuggle 27 Beninese and Nigerian children out of the country on a minibus, first to Togo and then on to Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. The traffickers were stopped with the children aged between six and 12 at the Hillacondji customs post on the Togo border.
Border police in Benin have rescued 27 children from traffickers after they attempted to croos the border into neighbouring Togo. Four adults were arrested in what a police officer described as a new war against child smuggling. Most trafficked children are put to work in cocoa or sugar plantations.
After difficult negotiations that lasted for almost two years, Benin was finally granted a licence in January to export a variety of locally manufactured goods to the United States, tariff- and quota-free. But, laments Henri Gouthon, president of the National Council of Beninese Exporters, "Benin has nothing to export!"
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/ 26 December 2003
Christmas joy gave way to sorrow in the tiny West African state of Benin when a Boeing 727 loaded with Lebanese families en route to Beirut crashed into the sea upon take-off. Some government sources put the fatalities at 82. ”We have never had to live with such drama in our country,” a bystander said.
Chanting anti-American slogans, thousands in two west African countries marched Tuesday to protest the US and British-led war in Iraq.