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/ 27 November 2006
Standard Bank on Monday floated 20% of shares in its Ugandan affiliate in the country’s largest initial public offering to private investors. Spokesperson Daniel Nsibambi said 1,02-billion shares in Stanbic Ugandan were being offered on the Uganda Securities Exchange in a move expected to raise 71-billion Ugandan shillings (R278-million).
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/ 22 November 2006
Destruction of wetlands around Lake Victoria, a source of drinking water to millions, is fast removing a buffer that stops it being poisoned by sewage and industrial waste, a Ugandan wetlands expert said on Wednesday. ”The worst case scenario is the lake is going to die, even with its huge size,” said Paul Mafabi, head of the government’s wetlands programme.
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/ 16 November 2006
In 2003, Corporal James Omedio and Private Abdullah Muhammad stood before a public firing squad in Uganda for killing Irish Catholic priest Declan O’Toole; his driver, Patrick Longoli; and his cook, Fidel Longole. They were executed after they were found guilty by a field court martial, following a trial that lasted two hours and 36 minutes.
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/ 14 November 2006
United Nations humanitarian chief Jan Egeland appealed to Uganda’s government and Lord’s Resistance Army rebels on Tuesday not to let a fragile peace process fail and to end civilian suffering caused by 20 years of war. Both sides signed a new truce this month, raising hopes for an end to the brutal war in northern Uganda that has killed tens of thousands.
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/ 6 November 2006
The Ugandan army said on Monday it had killed 12 people in weekend bombing raids against tribal warriors accused of shooting at a military helicopter over the country’s restive north-east Karamoja region. But sources in the area said the death toll was much higher and spoke of residents reporting as many as 500 people killed.
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/ 13 October 2006
Ugandan rebels have violated a truce with the government by leaving an agreed assembly point, the head of an independent monitoring team said on Friday, in a blow to efforts to end one of Africa’s longest conflicts. ”We did not find them there … Because they were supposed to be there, it is automatically a violation,” Major General Wilson Deng Kuoirot told the media.
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/ 14 September 2006
In 1999, an HIV-infected 30-year-old man named Fred Mwanga shocked the country when he raped a three-month-old baby in a Kampala suburb. Even more upsetting, Mwanga’s action was not an isolated incident. The rate of HIV-infected adults sexually abusing the nation’s most vulnerable citizens is rising. As these ill men prey on the minors, they spread the deadly HIV virus.
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/ 12 September 2006
Uganda on Tuesday extended a September 12 deadline for the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army to agree to a peace deal or lose an amnesty offer for war-crimes charges its leaders face. Just hours before its expiration, Kampala said it would fix a new deadline — yet to be announce.
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/ 7 September 2006
No Ugandan rebels have arrived yet at remote camps in south Sudan where they are supposed to assemble under the terms of a landmark truce that began last week, Ugandan negotiators said on Thursday. According to the deal that came into effect on August 29, Lord’s Resistance Army fighters were given three weeks to gather at the two locations.
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/ 6 September 2006
Ugandan rebels hidden in the Democratic Republic of Congo will not surrender unless the International Criminal Court (ICC) scraps arrest warrants for them, the deputy commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) said late on Tuesday. Vincent Otti said his fighters would stay in the bush as long as the warrants stayed in place.
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/ 5 September 2006
Uganda’s rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) on Tuesday decried a government move to bring mutilated war victims to peace talks in southern Sudan, suggesting it is a propaganda stunt. LRA spokesperson Obonyo Olweny said there is no point in having disfigured people at the peace talks in the southern Sudanese capital of Juba.
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/ 1 September 2006
Uganda’s government prepared to deliver to a -million recovery plan to leaders of the war-ravaged north on Friday as peace talks raised hopes of an end to one of Africa’s longest insurgencies. About 1,7-million northerners are living in squalid camps having fled from two-decades of conflict between the military and cult-like rebels from the Lord’s Resistance Army.
Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony has accused government troops of violating a truce in his first comments since the start of an agreement seen as a major breakthrough in ending his 20-year insurgency. The military denied it and said it was ”religiously” observing the deal struck on Saturday that gives Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army guerrillas three weeks to assemble at camps in south Sudan.
Uganda’s army by Wednesday had not chosen the safe routes northern rebels are supposed to take from the bush to camps in southern Sudan as part of a truce that may mark the end of one of Africa’s longest wars. The delay in announcing the routes should not deter Lord’s Resistance Army guerrillas in the north from setting off on foot, a government spokesperson said.
A truce that could spell the end of one of Africa’s longest and most brutal wars came into effect on Tuesday, Uganda’s military said. Under the pact signed on Saturday at peace talks in southern Sudan, the fugitive rebels from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) have three weeks to assemble at two south Sudanese camps.
Uganda’s rebel Lord’s Resistance Army on Monday ordered its forces to prepare for an imminent truce with the government under which they will move to neutral camps in southern Sudan. In recorded government-authorised messages broadcast over radio stations in war-ravaged northern Uganda, LRA commanders called on their fighters to come out of the bush.
Uganda has agreed to a conditional cessation of hostilities with rebels to end a brutal 19-year insurgency in the north of the country. The deal is dependent on the Lord’s Resistance Army sending its fighters to assembly points in southern Sudan and northern Uganda where they could be monitored.
The Ugandan army announced on Wednesday it had killed at least eight Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels in the past week despite peace talks aimed at ending nearly 19 years of insurgency in the region. Army spokesperson Lieutenant Chris Magezi said the rebel fighters were slain during ambushes in the war-ravaged northern Gulu, Pader and Amur districts.
A top Ugandan official said on Friday that the government is committed to peace talks to end a brutal 19-year insurgency, even if the leaders of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army refuse to come out of hiding to attend. LRA leader Joseph Kony and his deputy, Vincent Otti, are under indictment by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
A fire at a Ugandan primary school killed six boys trapped in a dormitory, officials said on Tuesday. A charcoal stove placed by a wall started the blaze late on Monday. Fire then spread through a building of the army school in Jinja, about 80km east of the capital Kampala.
Thirty people were killed and four others seriously injured when a passenger minibus collided with a fuel tanker in central Uganda, police said on Monday. Police said 27 people on the bus died instantly, while three others suffocated as they scooped fuel that spilled from the Rwanda-bound tanker after the accident on Sunday.
Ugandan government officials met overnight with the elusive Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony ahead of the resumption of peace talks aimed at ending a 19-year-old insurgency, officials said on Monday. The spokesperson for the Ugandan delegation said Walter Ochora, a district commissioner for northern Uganda’s Gulu District, met the rebel supremo in Nabanga.
Uganda said on Sunday it might still attack Lord’s Resistance Army rebels camped in the Democratic Republic of Congo if peace talks hosted by neighbouring southern Sudan fail to end fighting in one of Africa’s longest wars. Kinshasa and the United Nations have refused repeated requests from Uganda to be allowed to send its troops into the DRC to hunt down the rebels themselves.
Uganda said on Thursday it will organise a trip next week for relatives of Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels, including LRA supremo Joseph Kony’s mother, to visit their kin at a jungle hideout. ”This is a confidence-building measure,” Ugandan delegation spokesperson Paddy Ankunda said from the southern Sudanese capital of Juba.
The widespread adoption of male circumcision throughout Africa could avert up to 5,7-million HIV infections by 2026. According to a scientific study published in Public Library of Science Medicine, male circumcision could avert two million new infections and 300 000 deaths over the next 10 years.
A senior Ugandan official on Wednesday urged the International Criminal Court (ICC) to quash its war-crimes indictments against the leaders of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army, in a bid to encourage the rebels into peace talks with the government in Kampala. The peace talks had been due to start in southern Sudan on Wednesday.
Uganda added more than a month to a deadline for thrashing out a peace deal with northern rebels on Monday, boosting landmark talks this week that will aim to end one of Africa’s most neglected wars. Tentative discussions between Ugandan officials and representatives of the Lord’s Resistance Army are due to begin on Wednesday in Juba, in neighbouring southern Sudan.
Uganda will enter talks with leaders of the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army guerrillas without preconditions if they give up arms and denounce war, a government spokesperson said on Tuesday. The government will also be willing to pardon rebel commander Joseph Kony and his four commanders who are wanted for trial by the United Nation’s International Criminal Court.
The move by the United States to sign free-trade agreements with the Andean countries of Peru, Colombia and Ecuador will harm thousands of small farmers, Oxfam has warned. The agreements will block access to affordable medicines and favour foreign investors, says Oxfam in a new report.
President Yoweri Museveni’s brother was sworn in on Friday as Uganda’s Finance Minister, prompting complaints about the man’s history of financial scandal. Salim Saleh was among 69 new ministers appointed by Museveni, who was re-elected in February for a third term as head of this east African nation.
Uganda is among six African countries that have met the 2001 United Nations Declaration of Commitment on HIV/Aids and reduced HIV prevalence among young people by 25%, according to the 2006 report on the global Aids epidemic by the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/Aids.
Ugandan troops have killed a gunman who shot dead at least 10 civilians this week in a bloody rampage at a camp for war-displaced people in northern Uganda, the military said on Thursday. Soldiers had been looking for the man, a militia member responsible for guarding the Ogwete camp for internally displaced people, since he fled the area after Monday’s killing spree.