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/ 17 September 2007
Greece’s conservatives on Monday faced the tough task of tackling reforms needed to catch up with euro zone countries after winning a second mandate with only a narrow majority in Sunday’s election. Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, praised by Brussels for his economic record, vowed to push on with reforms.
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/ 17 September 2007
A European Union court upheld most of a landmark 2004 European Commission antitrust decision against Microsoft on Monday in a crucial victory for the European competition regulator against the United States software giant. The EU’s Court of First Instance dismissed Microsoft’s appeal on all substantive points.
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/ 14 September 2007
A key European Union and Africa summit remains under a shadow cast by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, whose attendance is demanded by African leaders but could spark a boycott by Britain. The Europeans are tempted to try for a compromise ”Myanmar-style”, by proposing that Zimbabwe be represented at a lower level.
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/ 14 September 2007
Soldiers in the Central African Republic (CAR) have massacred hundreds of people and burned villages, forcing civilians to flee, during a counter-insurgency campaign, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Friday. The watchdog group blamed President Francois Bozize’s elite guard for atrocities carried out since mid-2005.
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/ 13 September 2007
The European Union (EU) executive plans to encourage legal migration into Europe to plug labour shortages caused by a declining, ageing population, EU officials said on Thursday. Prime Minister José Sócrates of Portugal, urged support for the proposal, saying it was crucial to meet labour shortages and curb illegal immigration and people trafficking.
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/ 13 September 2007
Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy were expected to form the perfect couple — a pair of like-minded conservative leaders who would work hand in hand to heal Europe after its Iraq divisions and failed constitution. From his first day in office the Frenchman’s bullish diplomacy has grated on his German partners.
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/ 12 September 2007
Foot-and-mouth disease has struck a new cattle farm in southern England, the government said on Wednesday, prompting the European Union to suspend a decision to lift its ban on British meat exports. The Agriculture Ministry said a surveillance zone of more than 10km had been placed around the farm in Egham, Surrey, about 50km from the scene of the last confirmed outbreak.
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/ 12 September 2007
Iran will not stop uranium enrichment, chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said on Wednesday, despite a call by the European Union and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to halt sensitive nuclear work. ”We heard about this EU demand and we said our view,” Larijani told a news conference.
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/ 12 September 2007
Britain found a suspected case of foot-and-mouth disease on a farm in southern England on Wednesday and immediately imposed an exclusion zone and had the herd in question culled. A statement on the Agriculture Ministry’s website said an exclusion zone had been placed around the suspect farm in Egham, Surrey, about 50km from the scene of the last outbreak in August.
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/ 12 September 2007
The United States launches a new military command for Africa in Germany next month, with small teams of key staff, but no troops, based on the continent, a senior US defence official said on Wednesday. The Africa Command will initially work from Stuttgart, and have a year to prepare six locations in as yet unidentified African countries.
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/ 11 September 2007
The United States trade deficit declined slightly in July as record exports of farm goods, autos and other products offset a big jump in foreign oil prices. The deficit with China hit the second-highest level yet, reflecting strong demand for Chinese-made goods despite a string of high-profile recalls.
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/ 11 September 2007
The European Union (EU) should invite Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe to a planned summit with Africa because barring him would jeopardise relations between Africa and Europe, the Commonwealth’s secretary general said. The EU and Africa want to hold their first summit in seven years early December in Portugal.
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/ 11 September 2007
Opposition leader Ernest Bai Koroma said he had won Sierra Leone’s presidential election but the ruling party accused him of trying to ”steal” the poll as more results were due on Tuesday from the tense weekend vote. Partial official results from just over a fifth of polling stations showed Koroma, of the All People’s Congress party, leading with 64%.
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/ 10 September 2007
Former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif was arrested and deported to Saudi Arabia on Monday within hours of arriving home from exile, vowing to end the rule of President Pervez Musharraf. While with the deportation Musharraf has fended off the immediate challenge from a rival, the president is likely to face a backlash from many Pakistanis.
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/ 8 September 2007
Britain has warned fellow European Union nations that Prime Minister Gordon Brown will not attend a planned Europe-Africa summit if Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe does, diplomatic sources said on Saturday. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband made London’s position clear on Friday during an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers
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/ 7 September 2007
Chad will back United Nations moves to end the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region by allowing international peacekeepers on its own soil and supporting peace talks, President Idriss Itno Déby said on Friday. Déby made the commitment to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who was in Chad on a regional tour to canvass support for the UN’s peacekeeping initiative for Darfur.
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/ 4 September 2007
Like many farmers, Martin Busin works from dawn till nightfall, but he still needs the help of his cafe-au-lait cow, Miss, to bring in tourists to keep afloat his smallholding in Italy’s mountainous Alto Adige region. With little farming land and over a million high-cost small farms, Italy started opening farms to tourists in the mid-1960s.
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/ 3 September 2007
The United States has agreed to lift sanctions against North Korea and remove it from its list of states that sponsor terrorism, the foreign ministry in Pyongyang announced on Monday. If confirmed, the move would represent the biggest step towards peace on the divided peninsular since the Korean War armistice in 1953.
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/ 3 September 2007
Bulgaria donated ,6-million in Soviet-era debt owned by Libya as its contribution to a deal that led to the release of six medics convicted of infecting Libyan children with HIV. The European Union newcomer signed on Monday an agreement to donate the debt, accumulated for arms and technical deliveries, to an international fund.
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/ 3 September 2007
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon headed for Sudan on Monday to lay the groundwork for a solution to the festering Darfur conflict through talks and deployment of thousands of peacekeepers. Ban will seek commitment to his plan from Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and visit a refugee camp in the western Sudanese Darfur region.
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/ 3 September 2007
Tank traps, landmines and checkpoint barriers flank the North Korean road to Panmunjom, the last frontier of the Cold War. For more than half a century, this small village in the demilitarised zone that divides the Korean peninsula has been frozen in suspended conflict.
Forest fires that have devastated southern Greece and claimed 63 lives in eight days died down on Friday, but emergency services feared a new heatwave could rekindle some blazes. ”Things are going well,” a fire-service spokesperson said, adding that the fires were no longer threatening populated areas.
The Democratic Republic of Congo’s Transport Ministry has grounded two private airlines after a weekend plane crash killed 13 people in the second disaster since June, officials said on Wednesday. The licence of the Great Lakes Business Company, owner of the cargo plane that crashed on Sunday at Kongolo in Katanga Province, was suspended.
Mankind is to blame for climate change but governments still have time to slow accelerating damage at moderate cost if they act quickly, a draft United Nations report shows. Underlining the need for speed, it says a European Union goal of holding temperature rises to a maximum two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times is almost out of reach.
Turkey’s foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, a practising Muslim and former Islamist, was on Tuesday sworn in as the 11th President of the staunchly secular republic in a move that will be seen as a defining moment for the country. The appointment of the 56-year-old marked a victory for the governing Muslim democrats.
Forest fires that have killed at least 63 people in Greece raged for a fifth day on Tuesday, although they were not threatening any villages, a firefighters’ spokesperson said. ”At the moment there is no threat to the villages, but the direction of the wind is impossible to predict,” the spokesperson said.
Percy Zvomuya reviews the 2007 EU Literary Award winner, Coconut by Kopano Matlwa (Jacana).
If China steps into America’s hegemonic shoes, how will it affect our continent, asks Kelly Rosenthal.