Sudanese authorities have found a body that they believe is that of a French European Union soldier missing after a clash near the Chadian border on Monday, a spokesperson for the EU military force in Chad said. ”The arrangements for the formal identification and recovery of the remains are being organised,” Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Poulain said on Wednesday.
More than one million people in eastern Ethiopia’s drought-hit Somali region face critical water shortages, the United Nations said on Wednesday. ”A joint multi-sectoral Drought Emergency Response Plan … has been released by the regional government. The plan indicates that more than one million people are currently facing critical water shortage,” the UN said.
Sudan vowed on Wednesday to continue its search for a French special forces soldier missing in war-torn Darfur for two days after his European Union peacekeeping patrol strayed across the border from Chad. The commando went missing on Monday when at least one vehicle taking part in the EU’s mission to Chad crossed into Sudan.
Letting celebrities get away with drug crimes is sending out the wrong message to impressionable young people, a United Nations report warned on Wednesday. The UN drug control agency has for the first time highlighted the damaging influence drug-using celebrities — such as Amy Winehouse, Pete Doherty and Kate Moss in Britain — have on fans.
The United Nations said on Wednesday it had launched a flash appeal for ,4-million to assist cyclone-stricken areas in the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar. ”This appeal is a tool aimed at outlining a coordinated response in the coming three months,” local UN humanitarian coordinator Jean-Marie Stratigos said.
Clashes between separatists and police sent to impose order in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s western Bas-Congo flared again on Tuesday, the official death toll rising to 22. Police began battling members of the Bundu dia Kongo movement in the town of Luozi, 200km west of Kinshasa on Friday.
The Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, on Tuesday called on Israel to stop its ”aggression” to create the right climate for negotiations as the United States sought to salvage a stalled peace effort. Abbas said ”peace and negotiations are our strategic choice” but fell short of announcing a resumption of peace talks.
Colombia said on Tuesday that Farc rebels had been planning to make a ”dirty bomb” with radioactive material, threatening the entire Latin American region. The charges by Vice-President Francisco Santos marked a dramatic turn in a regional crisis that has seen Venezuela and Ecuador cut diplomatic ties with Colombia.
China will raise its heavily scrutinised defence spending by nearly a fifth this year, a top official said on Tuesday, warning self-ruled Taiwan that Beijing would ”tolerate no division”. Jiang Enzhu, spokesperson for China’s National People’s Congress, or Parliament, stressed that China adhered to a path of peaceful development.
Congolese rebels loyal to renegade Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda have said they will return to a ceasefire commission monitoring a rocky January peace deal. The United Nations and Western governments brokered the January deal in the hope of establishing a lasting peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s turbulent east.
South Africa was not swayed by any major power to vote in favour of a new United Nations Security Council resolution imposing further sanctions on Iran for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment, the Department of Foreign Affairs said on Tuesday. The resolution was approved on Monday by a vote of 14-0, with Indonesia abstaining.
United States actress Drew Barrymore donated -million of her own money on Monday to the World Food Programme (WFP) that the United Nations agency said would be used to feed thousands of schoolchildren in Kenya. Barrymore (33) a WFP ambassador against hunger, announced her pledge on the Oprah Winfrey Show.
Malawi lawmakers on Tuesday began examining draft legislation aimed at ridding the HIV/Aids-plagued country of quacks claiming to cure the pandemic through such remedies as sex with virgins, health authorities said. "When it passes into law, all traditional healers claiming to cure Aids will be dealt with," Mary Shaba, head of HIV/Aids issues for Malawi’s Health Ministry, said.
Kenyan rivals were on Tuesday to push ahead with talks on a new deal to share power and tackle root causes of the strife, a day after more than a dozen people were killed in the volatile Rift Valley. The negotiations are focusing on reforms to address historical injustices that entail electoral, institutional, constitutional and judicial issues.
The United Nations in Sudan accused a rebel group on Monday of blocking access to a mountainous area in Darfur where 20 000 people are trapped after fighting between the government and rebels. Ameerah Haq, the UN humanitarian chief for Sudan, said an assessment mission to the Jabel Moun area was denied access by the Justice and Equality Movement.
Fresh attacks claimed at least 15 lives in Kenya’s Rift Valley region overnight, police said on Monday, while rival political leaders worked out details for reform under last week’s power-sharing accord. ”A total of 15 people died: six burned in their houses, six hacked with machetes and three shot dead,” a police commander said after the attack.
The United Nations Security Council is expected to adopt a third round of sanctions against Iran for its nuclear programme on Monday, but diplomats said this might be the first round that is not approved unanimously. Tehran denies Western charges it seeks nuclear weapons and has ignored three previous Security Council resolutions.
Erai Maggi does not look like a villain who is destroying the planet; nor does he look like a hero who is saving the world’s poor. Wearing jeans and work boots, he can be found on a typical day driving a battered Fiat car on one of his farms south of the Amazon rainforest.
Israel was facing widespread international condemnation on Sunday for its onslaught in Gaza, as the United Nations and European Union demanded an end to a ”disproportionate” response to Palestinian rocket attacks, which were also denounced.
Zimbabwean orphans Evans (13) and Edmond Mahlangu (8) crossed a mountain range on foot to get to Mozambique where they are slowly recovering on life-saving Aids drugs in short supply back home. ”We walked for a day in the mountains. We had to keep quiet because of the guards,” recounted the boys’ 17-year-old sister, Emmaculate.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned Israel for using ”excessive” force in the Gaza Strip and demanded a halt to its offensive after troops killed 61 people on the bloodiest day for Palestinians since the 1980s. The 1,5-million Palestinians crammed into the blockaded, 45km sliver of coast, enjoyed a relative respite early on Sunday from Israeli air strikes and raids.
Israel killed 52 Palestinians on Saturday in its deadliest and deepest incursion into the Gaza Strip since pulling out in 2005, stoking fears of a broader conflict that could derail renewed United States-backed peace talks. At least 29 of the dead were civilians, among them women and children, said Palestinian doctors who were working round the clock.
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/ 29 February 2008
Buyers of minerals from rebel areas of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) should be punished under a United Nations arms embargo, a group of experts has told the Security Council. A five-year war in the country has left much of DRC’s eastern borderlands a volatile patchwork of rebel fiefdoms and militia-controlled zones.
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/ 29 February 2008
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband called Friday for Sudan to speed up the deployment of peacekeepers to Darfur and to end aerial bombing in the troubled region’s western districts. Miliband said the international community is united in the need for a hybrid United Nations-African Union force, but the effort is stalled by a lack of necessary support from Khartoum.
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/ 28 February 2008
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga signed a power-sharing agreement on Thursday intended to end a post-election crisis that left 1 000 people dead. Crowds of onlookers clapped as the two rivals inked a deal at a televised ceremony to set up a coalition government.
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/ 28 February 2008
Mediator Kofi Annan said Kenya’s government and opposition had reached agreement on a power-sharing deal at talks on Thursday to end the country’s deadly post-election crisis. ”We have come to an understanding on the coalition agreement,” Annan told reporters.
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/ 28 February 2008
South Africa said on Thursday that a report by the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency showed ”increasing confidence” that Iran did not intend to use its nuclear programme for military purposes. But it added that further oversight was needed to verify that Tehran was not building atomic weapons.
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/ 28 February 2008
Mediator Kofi Annan launched a new bid on Thursday for a political compromise to end Kenya’s post-election crisis, bringing the country’s feuding leaders to the same table for the first time in a month. The opposition had threatened to hold mass street protests on Thursday, but called them off after meeting Annan.
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/ 28 February 2008
African Union chief and Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete pushed ahead on Thursday with talks to end the Kenyan political crisis. Kikwete chaired talks between President Mwai Kibaki, opposition chief Raila Odinga and former United Nations secretary general and chief mediator Kofi Annan in a fresh bid to resolve the two-month crisis.
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/ 28 February 2008
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed on Thursday to make Hamas militants pay a heavy price for rocket attacks despite United States concerns about civilians in the Gaza Strip. As five more Palestinians were killed, Olmert held talks in Tokyo with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
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/ 28 February 2008
Legsaan Levember can only pray for better days as he huddles with 12 family members in a roadside tent, another victim of South Africa’s spiralling housing backlog. The family uses a plastic sheet to extend their tiny tent, which perches precariously on the slope of a small dune and is regularly blown away by Cape Town’s relentless south-easterly winds.
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/ 28 February 2008
Child rape has increased by 42% in Zimbabwe, the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) said on Wednesday, linking worsening child abuse and domestic violence to family tensions caused by the nation’s economic meltdown. Unicef launched a new ”Stand Up and Speak Out” campaign to fight what it called the ”staggering statistics on the unspeakable evils of child abuse”.