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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/ 22 September 2007
Aid agencies have appealed for millions of dollars to help more than one million Africans affected by deadly floods that have swept across the continent. The floods have killed at least 200 people and displaced hundreds of thousands in 17 countries since the summer, including Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Uganda and Kenya.
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/ 19 September 2007
Tiny fish swim beside the dugout canoes that residents use to escape their flooded homes, riding the water gushing through the streets of Soroti, an eastern Uganda town. Across Africa, torrential downpours and flash floods have submerged whole towns and washed away bridges, farms and schools.
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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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/ 12 September 2007
Uganda on Tuesday for the first time closed a camp housing people displaced by civil war in the north, a symbolic step in the country’s drive to restore stability after two decades of conflict. The deserted Otwal camp — which was home to 18 000 people — was closed by demolishing huts and planting trees.
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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.
Uganda’s oldest captive chimpanzee turned 43 on Wednesday with a banana cake and ”regular love and grooming” from his female companions, his keepers said. Zakayo, who was taken into captivity after being attacked by poachers, was presented with a specially baked banana cake.
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.
Ugandan police are holding a Ghanaian preacher over a stage magic device they fear may dupe people into believing they have experienced miracles. Customs officials seized the Electric Touch device — which magicians use to give small electric shocks to volunteers — from ”Prophet” Obiri Yeboah at the airport last week.
The Ugandan army said on Thursday it killed eight armed Kenyan bandits and lost one of its own soldiers in a gun battle on the two countries’ border. Army spokesperson Major Felix Kulayigye said Pokot cattle raiders from western Kenya crossed the border and launched two attacks on Ugandan army positions on Tuesday, killing an officer.
Surging demand for African coffee is a unique opportunity for producers, but they must not let quality slip or assume processing is the best way to capitalise on it, a coffee official said on Thursday. East African Fine Coffees Association director Philip Gitao told Reuters Africa’s market has come of age.
An anti-gay Ugandan Cabinet minister vowed on Friday to continue to fight homosexuality in his country despite his claim that he receives daily hate mail from gay people around the world. ”The mail is from outside not from Uganda and I receive these mails every day,” Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo said.
As the miracle-healer descended from the sky in an immaculate white helicopter, his disciples cheered with joy: ”Hallelujah! Praise Jesus.” Gospel songs thundered through the speakers as televangelist Benny Hinn landed outside Uganda’s national stadium last month, before addressing 40Â 000 enraptured faithful.
Rwanda and Burundi officially joined the East African Community (EAC) on Monday, signing accession treaties that will expand the regional economic bloc to five nations and boost trade. Officials said their entry into the EAC, alongside Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, would be effective from July 1.
Nine years ago, Santonino Otok fled his home in the green fields of northern Uganda for a refugee camp, fearing attack by marauding rebels. Now he is back under his old mango tree. ”My parents are buried here and my parents’ parents, so it’s a blessing to return,” said a beaming Otok (66), surveying the birthplace he thought he might never see again.
Government plans to convert thousands of hectares of rainforest on an island on Uganda’s Lake Victoria into a palm-oil plantation have been shelved, officials said on on Saturday. The environment minister said the Kenyan company that applied for the licence backed off, fearing negative publicity about the project.
Poking out of northern Uganda’s tangled bush and tall elephant grass, a crucifix of two welded metal poles painted white marks a mass grave. On the stone slab below it, an epitaph in the local Acholi language: ”Here lie 28 people who were killed on August 19th 1986.” It does not say how.
Pasca Lakob doesn’t see much point in punishing the Ugandan guerrilla leader whose fighters murdered many of her family and friends. ”His atrocities are so evil, there’s no punishment that could fit the crime. They might as well pardon him,” she said of Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony.
Young Ugandans living with HIV prefer to date partners who are not HIV-positive. This was revealed in a study among adolescents.
Some members of the Asian community in Uganda’s capital kept their children home from school, failed to report to work and left their shops shuttered on Friday, a day after a protest ignited racial violence. The demonstration in Kampala on Thursday was against a company’s plans to cut part of a prized rainforest.
Uganda’s Constitutional Court on Thursday scrapped a law against adultery because it found it discriminated against women, in a victory for female activists after a year-long battle. In the same ruling, the court also voided parts of succession law that gave more rights to men on the death of their wives than to widows.
At a rally denouncing a government raid on Uganda’s High Court, a lawyer beaten by security men during the invasion held aloft his bloodstained shirt as colleagues shook their heads in disgust and anger. Kiyimba Mutale suffered head wounds during an hours-long siege at the court on March 1 aimed at re-arresting bailed treason suspects.