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/ 26 December 2007
Few diseases inspire as much panic as an outbreak of Ebola fever. In Uganda — where 100 000 people die of malaria each year — an epidemic of a new Ebola strain has killed just 36 people and infected 135 others, but is causing widespread terror. However, experts say much of the panic is overblown.
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/ 21 December 2007
Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni on Friday revived a controversial plan to hand over a swathe of rainforest to a local company to be destroyed and replaced with a sugarcane plantation. Museveni called those who oppose his plan to give 7 100 hectares to the Mehta group’s sugar estate ”criminals and charlatans”.
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/ 19 December 2007
Local authorities have arrested at least 100 Ugandans for failing to build toilets in their homes in the midst of a cholera epidemic that has killed eight people and infected 164, state media reported on Wednesday. ”We cannot watch as people die [of cholera],” said north-western Bulisa district administrator Norbert Turyahikayo.
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/ 19 December 2007
Uganda’s government is to buy a ,2-million Gulfstream jet for President Yoweri Museveni, media reported on Wednesday, and critics questioned whether the poor East African country could afford it. A committee of lawmakers endorsed the proposal, moving it closer to parliamentary approval.
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/ 7 December 2007
Uganda now has more than 100 suspected cases of the lethal Ebola virus and 350 more people are being closely monitored because they were in contact with those infected, the Health Ministry said on Friday. Twenty-two people have so far died of the fever.
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/ 6 December 2007
A new strain of the deadly Ebola virus is thought to have infected 93 people and killed at least 22 in Uganda, including a doctor and three other medical staff looking after patients, a health official said on Thursday. Dr Sam Zaramba, the government’s director of health services, said the doctor had died after looking after a patient in an isolation ward.
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/ 2 December 2007
Several dozen medics and support staff have fled western Uganda after their co-workers became infected with the Ebola virus in an outbreak that has already killed 18 people, officials said on Saturday. Ugandan officials appealed for help in dealing with the outbreak of Ebola, a contagious disease that kills up to 90% of those infected.
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/ 30 November 2007
Courts in Uganda’s war-ravaged north are tacitly condoning rape and other sexual abuses against women and girls, even protecting rapists from prosecution, rights group Amnesty International said on Friday. Sexual abuses against women have become commonplace in northern Uganda during two decades of war.
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/ 23 November 2007
The Commonwealth’s biennial summit opened on Friday in Uganda with leaders focusing on climate change, a day after Pakistan, which is still under emergency rule, was suspended from the organisation. The loose federation of mostly former British colonies includes some of the world’s major polluters.
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/ 23 November 2007
The 53-nation Commonwealth suspended Pakistan’s membership on Thursday, after President Pervez Musharraf failed to meet a deadline to lift emergency rule and resign as army chief. The Commonwealth had given Musharraf until Thursday to lift the state of emergency he imposed on November 3.
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/ 22 November 2007
The second-in-command of Uganda’s notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) guerrillas was killed by firing squad on October 2 ”together with many others”, on orders of the elusive rebel leader Joseph Kony, a government newspaper, the New Vision, reported on Thursday.
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/ 22 November 2007
Commonwealth leaders are aiming to reach a decision by the end of the weekend on whether to make former Belgian colony Rwanda a new member, the head of the 53-nation grouping said on Thursday. Commonwealth heads of government are meeting in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, from Friday.
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/ 22 November 2007
Uganda’s Health Ministry on Thursday announced it had contained a mysterious fever that killed 14 people and infected 33 others in the past three weeks. Director of medical services Sam Zaramba said no new cases had been reported in the past two days and those infected were responding to treatment.
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/ 21 November 2007
The leader of Zimbabwe’s opposition said on Wednesday that talks with his government over electoral reform have made progress, but added that ensuring implementation will be crucial. He also said the Movement for Democratic Change might shun next year’s election unless it is sure President Robert Mugabe will not rig it.
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/ 20 November 2007
Uganda will be seeking to impress the world when it hosts the Commonwealth summit this week and convey a new image of a country best known for its history of brutal regimes and civil strife. Potholes — which had become a byword for Kampala — have been hastily filled, street lighting upgraded and roads lined with trees for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).
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/ 11 November 2007
Uganda hopes that recent oil discoveries will lift it out of poverty, but the conflict-scarred east African country is taking a cautious approach towards its new status as an oil-producing nation. Oil found in the west on the banks of Lake Albert is propelling the country into a new phase of its economic history.
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/ 9 November 2007
Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony has arrested his deputy on suspicion of spying but denies executing him, a top peace mediator said on Friday. Norbert Mao, a top regional politician, said he had just spoken to the fugitive head of the Lord’s Resistance Army by satellite phone at an undisclosed location.
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/ 18 October 2007
War-ravaged northern Uganda is to be reconstructed at a cost of -million, according to the government. The rehabilitation, announced by President Yoweri Museveni on October 16, is intended to restore stability to the region after 20 years of warfare pitting the Ugandan government against the Lord’s Resistance Army.
A Ugandan man tasked with guarding a Marburg virus-infected mine crept into the underground cove only to be infected with the Ebola-like disease, health officials said on Tuesday. The mine was closed when the epidemic struck the western area situated in a forest reserve, killing one person.
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/ 28 September 2007
Hundreds of thousands of people awaited desperately needed relief supplies and faced the threat of epidemics on Friday as the death toll climbed in Africa’s worst floods in three decades. At least 300 have died in the flooding since heavy rains began sweeping across the continent two months ago.
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/ 24 September 2007
Herdsmen who had been encroaching on a Ugandan game reserve that the queen of England is due to visit in November have started relocating after an ultimatum, wildlife officials said on Monday. The chief warden of Uganda’s second-largest natural park said that some of the Basongora tribesmen started moving out on Sunday.
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/ 17 September 2007
Ministers from Africa’s Great Lakes region made little headway in two days of talks on security overshadowed by growing violence and mutual mistrust. Foreign and defence ministers from Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) appealed for United Nations peacekeepers to intensify efforts to stamp out militias plaguing eastern DRC.
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/ 16 September 2007
Torrential downpours and flash floods across Africa have submerged whole towns and washed away bridges, farms and schools. This summer’s rains have killed more than 150 people, displaced hundreds of thousands and prompted the United Nations to warn of a rising risk of disease outbreaks.
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/ 11 September 2007
The Ugandan army tortured and unlawfully killed civilians while carrying out a disarmament programme in the country’s troubled Karamoja region, an international human rights group said on Tuesday. According to a report, Ugandan soldiers opened fire on children, among other charges.
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/ 10 September 2007
Uganda’s army denied a report on Monday that its troops were massing on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), despite a deal on the weekend meant to reduce tensions. United Nations-sponsored Radio Okapi in eastern DRC quoted military sources as saying Ugandan soldiers had set up camp at several points along the tense frontier.
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/ 4 September 2007
The United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday that tens of thousands of Congolese refugees crossed into Uganda on Monday following renewed fighting between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) army and renegade troops in the north-east of the vast country.
Heavy rains continued to wreak havoc in East and Central Africa on Saturday as floods that have already displaced hundreds of thousands heightened fears of food shortages and disease outbreaks across the region. In Uganda, high waters submerged entire villages and destroyed many farms in the east of the country.
An enraged man in a western Ugandan district took a machete and hacked to death his wife and six children before hanging himself, the government press reported on Saturday. Abdallah Byekwaso cut his children aged two to 13 beyond recognition and beheaded one of his sons.
Record high oil prices have so far had a muted effect on sub-Saharan Africa, with exporters reaping rewards and importers less badly hit than many had feared. A combination of demand, refinery bottlenecks and political fears drove crude oil to a record high of more than ,50 last week. While the poorest are paying the price, the impact has not been the disaster some forecast.
Conservationists in Uganda have asked the government to intervene to prevent further killing of animals by herdsmen living in the country’s second-largest game park. The Basongora cattle herders are believed to have poisoned 80% of hyenas in the area and at least 15 lions.
Uganda’s lions appear to have become the main casualties in a dispute between landless herdsmen and the authorities managing one of the country’s biggest reserves. And with Britain’s queen due later this year to visit the park that was named after her, the pressure is on to find a solution.
Uganda’s flower industry needs government incentives and preferential European Union access to succeed, say members of the East African nation’s floricultural sector. Uganda is Africa’s fifth-largest flower exporter, dealing solely in roses and chrysanthemum cuttings.