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/ 24 October 2007
Africa’s cellphone connections rose by 15-million subscribers or 6,6% in the third quarter of 2007, according to figures from an industry trade body seen by Reuters on Wednesday. The GSM Association said subscribers to GSM and CDMA technologies totalled 241,2-million in the third quarter.
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/ 24 October 2007
A series of bodies found dumped in secluded bushland on the edge of Kenya’s capital Nairobi has terrified locals and brought accusations of police executions in their war on the notorious Mungiki criminal gang. Locals say more than a dozen corpses have turned up in recent weeks, thrown by the roadside or left in scrub.
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/ 23 October 2007
An international rights group has lambasted the Somali government for ”systematic harassment” of reporters, closure of media outlets and failure to investigate the killing of eight journalists this year. Few foreign correspondents go into Somalia these days, leaving local reporters to face the risks.
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/ 22 October 2007
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki dissolved Parliament on Monday, starting the countdown to what could be the closest election in East Africa’s biggest economy. ”I hereby dissolve the ninth Parliament of the Republic of Kenya,” Kibaki said in a televised speech.
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/ 22 October 2007
Somali pirates have seized a cargo ship off the East African coast, the head of a local seafarers’ association said on Monday. Gunmen attacked the vessel last Wednesday, said Andrew Mwangura, the programme coordinator of the East Africa Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, but due to chaotic communications with Somalia the incident had taken several days to confirm.
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/ 18 October 2007
A convoy of shiny, 4×4 vehicles roars into the main street of a small town, kicking up dust and scattering people in their way. As traffic grinds to a halt, corpulent politicians emerge from their cars to wave at crowds of mainly young men, some still fingering the small amounts of money and food they have been given to come to the rally.
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/ 17 October 2007
Piracy off Somalia is on the rise because an Islamic group that had cracked down on pirates was ousted, an official who tracks piracy cases off Africa’s side of the Indian Ocean said. Earlier, an international watchdog reported maritime pirate attacks worldwide had shot up 14% in the first nine months of 2007.
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/ 16 October 2007
A South African-led consortium will invest -million (R178-million) in the 106-year-old Kenya-Uganda Railway by June next year to revitalise operations on the decrepit track. The Kenyan and Ugandan governments handed over the money-losing colonial-era railway to Rift Valley Railways Consortium under a 25-year concession last year.
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/ 14 October 2007
Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) on Saturday said floods that have wreaked havoc across Africa killed 5 000 wildebeest, and not tens of thousands, blaming tourists for exaggerating the toll. Patrick Omondi, KWS head of species conservation and management, said the wildebeest drowning is a natural-selection phenomenon.
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/ 12 October 2007
The United States should reconsider funding anti-HIV/Aids strategies in Uganda, where recipients of such money violate the rights of homosexuals, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said. The watchdog group, in a letter to US officials on Thursday, said Ugandan officials and the media have intensified attacks on the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
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/ 12 October 2007
"Our crops have been destroyed by the water and houses have collapsed," says Egoliam of his village’s ordeal in Amuria, Uganda. The heaviest rains in 35 years have caused the worst floods on the continent in decades. Flood waters have destroyed vital infrastructure and left more than one million people needing emergency help.
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/ 10 October 2007
About 15 000 wildebeest have drowned in the Mara River during their annual migration between Tanzania and Kenya, shocking tourists and baffling conservationists, officials said on Wednesday. The mass death of the animals was the first of its kind in recent memory, officials said.
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/ 10 October 2007
Conventional food aid is not enough to solve Africa’s malnutrition crisis, especially in nations wracked by conflict, an international health agency said on Wednesday. In a continent where thousands of young children suffer from acute malnutrition, the use of nutrient-dense ready-to-use foods needs urgent expansion, Médécins Sans Frontières (MSF) said.
The Somali government has ordered all media organisations to register with the Information Ministry in order to operate in the country, an official said on Friday. ”They must come to my office anytime to register in order to operate. That is what the law says,” Information Minister Madobe Nurrow Mohamed said in the capital, Mogadishu.
The United States House of Representatives has passed a Bill that would force Ethiopia, one of Washington’s strongest military partners in Africa, to make democratic reforms or else lose security aid. The Bill would deny US entry visas to Ethiopian government officials involved in what it calls human rights violations .
Two dozen foreign embassies in Kenya on Monday called for ”zero tolerance” on campaign violence as elections loom in the East African nation where national votes seldom pass without bloodshed. With campaigns just beginning to roll ahead of an expected December presidential poll, one rally has already been ambushed by men armed with bows-and-arrows.
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/ 29 September 2007
The United States on Friday warned that Somali Islamist militants might kidnap Western tourists on vulnerable Kenyan beaches. In a message to US nationals in Kenya, the US embassy in Nairobi said it had received information that Islamic extremists from southern Somalia may be planning kidnapping operations across the border.
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/ 28 September 2007
Ugandan troops looted truckloads of valuable trees from south Sudan when they were pursuing Lord’s Resistance Army rebels who were hiding in the region, a research group said on Friday. The Swiss-based Small Arms Survey said the Uganda People’s Defence Forces cut teak trees in southern Sudan’s Equatoria region during Operation Iron Fist.
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/ 26 September 2007
Eritrea maintains its demand that Ethiopia implement a border ruling agreed under a pact to end their 1998 to 2000 war, a minister said on Wednesday after Ethiopia threatened to call off the peace agreement. In a letter to Eritrea’s Foreign Minister on Tuesday, Ethiopia accused Asmara of violating the deal on several fronts including coordinating ”terrorist activity”.
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/ 26 September 2007
Plans to send Turkana Boy — a unique hominid skeleton — and other prehistoric jewels from Kenyan museums for exhibition in the United States have sparked heated debate among Kenya’s scientific community. The trip will bring in a much-needed windfall to Kenya’s cash-strapped museums.
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/ 24 September 2007
Once known as East Africa’s green ”City in the Sun”, Nairobi is so choked with traffic that Kenya’s architects suggest moving to a new capital and angry business leaders say the booming economy is under threat. A combination of bad drivers, ramshackle vehicles, overloaded trucks, potholed roads and corrupt traffic police make one of Africa’s biggest cities resemble the dodgems on a good day.
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/ 21 September 2007
Floods are continuing to ravage an arc of African countries from the Sahel to the Horn of Africa, washing away homes and ruining crops, and have been reported as the worst in years in many states. Uganda is experiencing its worst floods in memory, with about 89 000 households ”severely affected”.
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/ 20 September 2007
Less than a week after Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki unveiled his new party and embarked on a rigorous re-election campaign, the National Security Intelligence Service has leaked a damaging report, suggesting the president is headed for a resounding defeat in six out of the country’s eight provinces in the national polls set for December.
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/ 19 September 2007
The female condom has failed to take off in Kenya, depriving women of one of the few means over which they have control of protecting themselves.
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/ 19 September 2007
Scores of African scientists will be trained to develop crops for Africa’s conditions under a programme launched on Wednesday which is also aimed at keeping their expertise at home. Most African crop scientists have been educated at European or United States universities, and many stay there after graduation.
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/ 17 September 2007
Fears mounted on Monday that downpours that have killed dozens in Africa, uprooted hundreds of thousands and devastated crops could continue past the end of the rainy season and hit areas that have so far escaped floods. Experts say the rising waters may hit as yet unaffected areas in the coming days.
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/ 17 September 2007
Democratic governments must condemn Eritrea for suppressing ”all freedoms”, Reporters sans Frontières said Monday, a day before the sixth anniversary of a crackdown that throttled free media. The Paris-based RSF called on foreign powers to summon Eritrean ambassadors in their countries to condemn the situation in the tiny Red Sea state.
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/ 17 September 2007
President Mwai Kibaki hit the campaign trail on Monday in the tribal heartland of his main opposition challengers just hours after announcing he would seek re-election in Kenya’s December poll. After keeping Kenyans guessing all year, Kibaki on Sunday launched a new coalition, the Party of National Unity.
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/ 13 September 2007
Ethiopian rebels on Thursday urged the world to bring an end to an army crackdown in the restive Ogaden region, warning that another ”African genocide” was unfolding. The Ogaden National Liberation Front said thousands of displaced civilians had fled to neighbouring Somalia without food and medicine over the past four months.
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/ 12 September 2007
African nations neighbouring the Indian Ocean on Wednesday warned of a possible tsunami after a huge earthquake struck off the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, officials said. Kenyan authorities advised residents along the coastal region to keep off the beaches and remain alert, warning that a tsunami was expected.
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/ 3 September 2007
Rebels in Ethiopia’s volatile east declared a unilateral ceasefire so the United Nations can investigate their claims of human rights abuses in the region. The Ogaden National Liberation Front rebels, ethnic Somalis who have been fighting the government for more than a decade, said they will only defend themselves if attacked.
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/ 2 September 2007
The son of former Kenyan president Daniel arap Moi has threatened to sue a British newspaper that claimed his father and associates stole a billion dollars during his rule, state media said on Saturday. The Guardian reported that Moi’s family and others got at least a billion dollars out of the country during his 24-year regime.