Sky-rocketing food prices in Egypt since the start of the year are being matched by a rumbling wave of popular discontent and unprecedented strikes and demonstrations. Textile workers, teachers, doctors and accountants have all threatened strikes under the united banner of ”Stop the expensive life” while doctors went ahead last week with a one-hour work stoppage.
The Mozambican government has made an urgent appeal to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to help more than 60 000 people left destitute when Cyclone Jokwe hit northern and central parts of the country. The WFP said in a statement it would begin distributing food to needy communities early next week.
Hundreds of Serbs in north Kosovo clashed with United Nations police and Nato peacekeepers on Monday in the worst violence since the Albanian majority declared independence last month. Riots erupted in the town of Mitrovica after several hundred UN special police backed by French Nato peacekeepers stormed a UN court in the town and arrested dozens of Serbs.
Conservatives won a majority in Iran’s parliamentary vote, state television said on Sunday, but the new assembly may still give President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a tougher time ahead of next year’s presidential election. Western powers embroiled in a deepening stand-off with Tehran over its disputed nuclear plans condemned Friday’s election as unfair.
A South African woman has accused Indian peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo of raping her while on leave, a media report said on Tuesday. SA police detained three Indian army officers working with United Nations peacekeeping forces in the Central African nation on March 12.
A grouping of the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters on Sunday backed United Nations-led efforts to forge a global pact to fight climate change but disagreed on a sectoral approach to curb emissions from industry. G20 nations held three days of talks near Tokyo to discuss ways to tackle rapidly rising emissions.
Rioting erupted in a province neighbouring Tibet on Sunday, two days after ugly street protests by Tibetans against Chinese rule in Lhasa that the contested region’s government-in-exile said had killed 80 people. A police officer said that about 200 Tibetan protesters had hurled petrol bombs and burnt down a police station.
China flooded the streets of Lhasa with riot police on Saturday as the international community urged an end to the bloodshed in Tibet that has already claimed at least 10 — possibly dozens more — lives. Thousands of protesters smashed government offices in Xiahe after marching through the streets chanting support for the Dalai Lama.
South Africa’s once notorious Robben Island penal colony risks ghost-town status as its last residents trickle off in search of creature comforts on the mainland. The population of penguins, seals and feral cats far outnumbers the 112 human inhabitants of the present day heritage site — mostly former prison warders and their families.
Sierra Leone’s military chiefs are working on means to downsize from its current 10 000 soldiers to 8 500, Defence Minister Palo Conteh said on Friday, according to a state radio report. ”We cannot allow a large army …We have to downsize to a lean army that can react quickly to a given situation,” he said.
Iran began counting votes on Saturday that are likely to keep conservatives in control of Parliament after many opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were blocked from standing in the election. The United States, at loggerheads with Iran over its nuclear programme, said any result was ”cooked”.
Former Liberian President Charles Taylor ordered his militias to eat the flesh of captured enemies and United Nations soldiers, a former close aide testified on Thursday at Taylor’s war crimes trial. ”He [Taylor] said we should eat them. Even the UN white people — he said we could use them as pork to eat,” said Joseph ”ZigZag” Marzah.
Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders may soon erase the most potent symbol of the island’s division, by reopening a bullet-pocked crossing between the two sides closed for nearly half a century. Hopes of ending decades of estrangement were revived after last month’s election of Cyprus President Demetris Christofias.
Islamist insurgents cut off the heads of three Somali soldiers south of the capital on Thursday and the United Nations special envoy said he would try to set up peace talks between the opposition and government. It was the first case of beheadings since the government and its Ethiopian military allies ousted the Islamists from power in late 2006.
United Nations peacekeeping troops are heading for ”Iraq-style disaster” in Darfur as long as talks between the government and rebel groups remain stalled and the United States maintains its hostile stance, Sudanese officials and regional experts warned on Wednesday.
A witness calling himself Charles Taylor’s death squad commander told a court on Wednesday he killed men, women and babies on the former Liberian leader’s orders and supplied arms to rebels in Sierra Leone. Taylor, once one of Africa’s most feared warlords, faces charges of rape, murder, mutilation and recruitment of child soldiers.
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir was due to attend a rescheduled peace accord signing with Chad’s President Idriss Déby Itno on Thursday after failing to show up on Wednesday and telling mediators he had a headache. The mediators hope the non-aggression pact will end years of hostility between Sudan and Chad.
Zimbabwe’s crackdown on political dissent may need to be discussed by the United Nations Security Council, a prominent Southern African human rights activist declared this week. Opponents of President Robert Mugabe have reported large-scale harassment and intimidation in the tense period leading to elections due later this month.
South Africa on Wednesday rejected ”with contempt” claims by jailed British mercenary Simon Mann that it backed his plot to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea. ”South Africa is thrown in just out of the blue … he says he had a nod from us. I would like to know in what sense he had a nod,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad said.
As tropical cyclone Jokwe threatened the tourism districts of Vilankulo and Govuro on Wednesday, the government of Inhambane province advised business owners and residents to take precautions. The state broadcaster reported that the owners of tourism establishments near the coast were being encouraged to close their businesses.
The forlorn wrecks of cars and motorbikes dotting southern Sudan’s potholed dirt tracks and rare tarmacadam roads might signal chaos to some. But Zeru Woldemichael sees a business opportunity — in insurance. The Eritrean entrepreneur is hoping to snare a portion of the fledgling insurance market in this semi-autonomous region.
Sudan President Omar al-Bashir on Tuesday raised doubts over a peace deal that Senegal said the leaders of Sudan and Chad are to initial in Dakar on the eve of an Islamic summit. Bashir referred to a Saudi-brokered deal signed in Riyadh in May 2007, when the two leaders made a pilgrimage to Mecca and prayed together inside the Kaaba, the holiest Muslim shrine.
Escalating banditry has forced the World Food Programme (WFP) to halve food deliveries in Darfur, and without immediate cash the United Nations agency will ground its humanitarian flights at the end of the month. So far his year, hijackers have attacked five WFP passenger vehicles and 45 WFP-contracted trucks, the agency said in a statement.
Beijing Olympic organisers on Monday sought to play down security concerns looming over the Games, a day after authorities said two "terrorist" plots from its Muslim-majority north-west had been foiled. "We are confident that we will be able to have a safe Olympics," said Sun Weide, a spokesperson from Beijing’s Olympic Organising Committee.
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has admitted for the first time that famine exists in his country. ”There is hunger in the country and a shortage of food,” he was quoted as saying in the Sunday Mail. Observers say the admission is unprecedented as Mugabe has previously dismissed reports of famine as ”Western propaganda”.
Tropical cyclone Jokwe battered parts of Mozambique for a third day on Monday, killing at least eight people and destroying thousands of homes in the northern Nampula province, Radio Mozambique reported. Four districts were being lashed by heavy downpours and strong winds of up to 200km/h, said the broadcaster.
Burma opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was taken to a state guest house in the former capital on Monday for her second meeting in two days with visiting United Nations envoy Ibrahim Gambari. UN officials gave no details of Gambari’s planned discussions with the Nobel laureate.
In its half-century history, the European Union has absorbed wave upon wave of immigrants. Now, according to the EU’s two senior foreign policy officials, Europe needs to brace itself for a new wave of migration with a very different cause — global warming.
Tropical cyclone Jokwe lashed northern Mozambique on Sunday, killing at least one person and destroying over 500 homes, a meteorological official said. Mussa Mustafa, head of Mozambique’s National Meteorological Institute, said the cyclone, which swept through part of Madagascar last week, is expected to intensify by Monday.
Senegal wants the international community to guarantee a peace accord between Chad and Sudan to end years of conflict between the two feuding neighbours, President Abdoulaye Wade said. The Senegalese leader will host the signing of a peace pact on Wednesday between Chadian President Idriss Déby Itno and Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir
Suspected ”terrorists” killed in a raid in north-west China’s Muslim-dominated Xinjiang region earlier this year had been planning an attack on the Olympics, a top official said on Sunday. In separate comments, another high-level official from the same region said authorities had on Friday foiled a planned ”terrorist attack” on a passenger jet.
The average cocaine user in Britain probably does not spend too much time thinking about where their drug of choice comes from. If they did, they might reflect on how it travels from South America to the bars, clubs and kitchen tables of the United Kingdom.