DAKAR

Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade has sacked two key leftist ministers, distancing himself further from the coalition that brought him to power in 2000 after spending decades in opposition in the West African state. State radio announced late on Wednesday that the ministers will be replaced by members of Wade’s ruling Senegal Democratic Party.

The recent seizure of a huge collection of stolen West African art is a bright spot in the sad story of antiquities protection on the world’s poorest continent, which has robbed Africans of chapters of their history. French customs agents searching for drugs intercepted a shipment from the desert state of Niger bound for Belgium in early January.

France’s Stephane Peterhansel wrapped up his second successive Dakar Rally title on Sunday while compatriot Cyril Despres made it a double French celebration by taking the motorcycle honours in the gruelling event. Peterhansel has now added his two car wins to his six motorcycle crowns.

”I was pregnant and running away. Three government soldiers caught me and raped me. They beat me and my unborn baby died.” More than a year after the curtain fell on Liberia’s 14-year conflict, no one has been prosecuted for the many wartime cases of rape and sexual abuse, said Amnesty International, calling on the government to swiftly bring criminals to justice and provide more help for the victims.

The coming year puts peace deals to the test in Africa’s longest and deadliest wars — as entrenched enemies from Sudan to the Democratic Republic of Congo face tension-raising deadlines to put peace pledges into practice. Perversely, the peace accords of 2004, 2003 and 2002 make 2005 a year of enhanced risk as well as enhanced hope.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame has threatened to renew the invasion threat that ignited Central Africa’s deadliest conflict, the 1998-2002 Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) war, saying the continuing presence of Rwandan Hutu rebels in the neighbouring DRC means that ”the war is already on”.

A total of 199 people have been diagnosed with cholera — a deadly but preventable disease that is generally contracted from polluted water supplies — and two have died in the West African state of Senegal, health officials said on Friday. Forty-eight new cases were reported between Thursday and Friday.

Two people have died of cholera in the West African nation of Senegal’s capital, while 82 others have contracted the waterborne disease, the health minister said on Tuesday. In comments broadcast on state radio, Issa Mbaye Samb called on Dakar residents to observe basic hygienic practices.

African Nobel Prize laureates and heads of state gathered on Wednesday in the Senegalese capital for an African Union-sponsored conference on peace and the continent’s renaissance. Former South African president FW de Klerk, who earned the peace prize in 1993 with icon Nelson Mandela for their efforts to end apartheid in South Africa, and Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1986, were on hand for a gala evening in their honour.

A brilliant blue wave breaks, perfectly curled by a steady offshore breeze. Like their baggy-shorted brethren the world over, surfers spring upright on their boards, then drop down into a plunging, right-breaking barrel. But at this beach, mosques in pastel colors crumble on the shores, haggard cattle munch the weeds, and the drinks are sweet tea, cooked over open fires in dented aluminum pots on the sand.

With paper bills so rancid even lepers hate to touch them, French-speaking West Africa gets down to serious money-laundering on Wednesday: a massive, eight-country campaign to retire more than one billion dollars’ worth of decaying currency seen as much as vectors of disease as units of exchange.

About -million is needed to fight the swarms of locusts that are marauding through West Africa, the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, said on Wednesday. ”Our first request [in early July] was for nine million dollars, but as the funds did not arrive, the scale of the problem now calls for -million,” he said during a visit to the Senegalese capital.

A series of witnesses place six top al-Qaeda fugitives in Africa buying up diamonds before the September 11 attacks on the United States, according to a confidential report by United Nations-backed prosecutors. The first-person witness accounts detailed by the prosecutors add to long-standing claims that al-Qaeda laundered millions of dollars in terror funds through African diamonds before launching its deadliest offensive.

The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday it has received less than half the money required to feed 27 000 refugees from the Central African Republic in Chad and warned it will stop assisting them at the end of July unless it receives fresh funds urgently.

Swarms of locusts have arrived in northeast Senegal, sources reported on Wednesday, invading earlier than in previous years and threatening crops during the growing season. On Monday Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade wrote to the Group of Eight industrialised countries, calling on them to declare war on the locusts.

Frenchman Serge Girard set off on Thursday from Africa’s westernmost point on an 8 800-kilometre run that will bring him several steps closer to achieving his bold and a ”little crazy” ambition: he wants to run across the world’s continents.

Embattled Liberian President Charles Taylor said he was offended he had to learn of US President George Bush’s demands that he step down through television reports, instead of directly from the White House.

US President George Bush launched a five-nation tour of Africa on Tuesday, with his deliberations over whether to send troops to Liberia overshadowing his drive to combat Aids, poverty and terrorism.

Joy erupted in the battle-scarred streets of Monrovia yesterday after a ceasefire between Liberia’s besieged government and two rebel groups brought hope of an end to 14 years of war.

Careless overloading appears the prime cause in Africa’s deadliest ferry disaster, military investigators said on Wednesday — describing the MS Joola tumbling over when passengers rushed to take cover from a sudden gale.

Screaming for help and gasping for air, countless victims of Africa’s deadliest ferry disaster survived for hours in the overturned MS Joola, rescue divers said Monday — describing scenes of horror in air pockets that had kept the vessel afloat.

Idrissa Seck, one of President Abdoulaye Wade’s closest aides, was named Senegal’s new prime minister on Monday after the government was sacked in the wake of a ferry disaster that cost 1 200 lives.

Rescuers continued to search on Saturday for almost 700 people missing and feared drowned after a passenger ferry capsized and sank in stormy seas off the coast of the west African nation of Senegal, as hopes were fading that any more survivors would be found.

One hundred and fifty more bodies have been found around the wreck of a ferry that sank off west Africa with almost 800 people aboard, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade said Saturday.

Senegal abandoned recovery of victims from the MS Joola on Tuesday, with only 80 of 970-plus identified – saying its next step might be to sink the doomed ferry together with its dead to the Atlantic Ocean floor.