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/ 25 January 2008
Ethnic fighting killed at least 12 people in Kenya’s Rift Valley and forced thousands from their homes on Friday. The violence, and a denial by opposition leader Raila Odinga that he would agree to serve as prime minister under President Mwai Kibaki, followed the first meeting between the two rivals since a disputed December 27 election triggered a political crisis.
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/ 25 January 2008
Islamist insurgents briefly seized control of Somalia’s biggest military airfield on Friday and looted weapons, witnesses and an Islamist commander said. Muktar Ali Robow, leader of the al-Shabab rebel militia, told a local radio station his forces also captured government troops during the raid on Baledogle, about 100km west of the capital, Mogadishu.
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/ 25 January 2008
A new flare-up of violence shook Kenya on Friday and fresh political recriminations dulled hopes a meeting between the president and opposition leader could resolve a month-long crisis. The local Red Cross said clashes related to a disputed December 27 poll had engulfed areas around the town of Nakuru.
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/ 24 January 2008
The two rivals in Kenya’s political crisis met on Thursday for the first time since a disputed election and pledged to seek an end to weeks of unrest that have killed nearly 700 people. President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga shook hands and smiled after the closed-door talks, brokered by former United Nations boss Kofi Annan.
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/ 24 January 2008
South Africa will have a second opportunity this year to head the United Nations Security Council, the Department of Foreign Affairs said on Thursday. South Africa, a non-permanent member of the 15-nation Security Council, will take over the presidency of the UN-decision making body in April again.
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/ 24 January 2008
A multi-disciplinary team of international counter-terrorism experts will visit South Africa later this year, the Department of Foreign Affairs said on Thursday. The United Nations Security Council’s counter-terrorism executive directorate will assess South Africa’s counter-terrorism efforts during a visit this year.
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/ 24 January 2008
Climate change is occurring far more rapidly than even the worst predictions of the United Nations Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Al Gore said on Thursday. Recent evidence shows "the climate crisis is significantly worse and unfolding more rapidly than … projections had warned us", he said.
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/ 24 January 2008
Canada on Wednesday bowed out of the United Nations 2009 conference on racism in Durban, saying it would likely ”degenerate into … expressions of intolerance and anti-Semitism”. Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity Jason Kenney said that, to his knowledge, Canada was the first country to announce it would not take part.
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/ 24 January 2008
Kenya’s opposition on Wednesday called off mass rallies scheduled for Thursday to protest disputed presidential polls. This was at the request of former United Nations chief Kofi Annan, who is in Kenya to mediate the crisis. Annan was in Nairobi in the latest attempt to mediate the turmoil sparked by the disputed re-election of President Mwai Kibaki last month.
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/ 23 January 2008
Rebels in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) loyal to renegade general Laurent Nkunda signed a peace pact on Wednesday with the government and Mai Mai militia to end fighting in the east of the country. Nkunda’s representative, Kambasu Ngeve, signed the document at a ceremony in the eastern town of Goma, which was attended by President Joseph Kabila.
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/ 23 January 2008
Police fired tear gas to disperse anti-government youths throwing rocks and taunting them at a memorial service on Wednesday organised by the opposition for people killed in an election protest crackdown. The latest trouble came as former United Nations chief Kofi Annan was to begin talks with President Mwai Kibaki and opposition challenger Raila Odinga.
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/ 23 January 2008
The annual Davos gathering of the world’s political and business elite opened on Wednesday with the fragile state of the world economy and stock-market turmoil casting a pall over the glitzy get-together. In recent years the annual meeting in the Swiss ski resort has been held against a backdrop of bumper corporate profits, strong economic growth and tame inflation.
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/ 23 January 2008
With most formal banks inaccessible to many Africans, the service of cellphone banking is expanding to the poor on the continent. Mary Kimani examines how financial institutions are extending their services through the ubiquitous usage of cellphones in rural areas.
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/ 22 January 2008
World powers said they would have to overcome key differences on Tuesday to agree on a new sanctions resolution against Iran that aims to ratchet up pressure on Tehran to curb sensitive nuclear work. The West has been engaged in a diplomatic showdown with Iran over its nuclear programme since 2002.
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/ 22 January 2008
The World Bank and African Development Bank, acting over the turmoil in Kenya, said on Tuesday they may have to adjust lending programmes if unrest persists following a disputed poll. ”We wish to continue working with the people of Kenya … but it is difficult to do so effectively in an environment of instability,” they said.
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/ 22 January 2008
United Nations peacekeepers monitoring the disputed border between Ethiopia and Eritrea may have to halt operations within weeks because Eritrea has cut diesel fuel supplies, said UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. The fuel stoppage is linked to the border dispute that brought the two impoverished Horn of Africa countries.
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/ 22 January 2008
The United Nations World Food Programme has begun flying in food and shelter to thousands of victims of heavy flooding in Mozambique, the agency said on Tuesday. More than two tonnes of mosquito nets, tents and plastic sheeting were flown in by helicopter on Monday to the Mutarara region, while the first deliveries of food were expected to be made on Tuesday.
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/ 22 January 2008
Former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan was due to arrive in Kenya on Tuesday to try to mediate in a post-poll crisis that has torn the country in two and triggered weeks of violence that has killed hundreds. A hotly disputed election returned President Mwai Kibaki to power last month amid cries from opposition leader Raila Odinga that he rigged it.
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/ 22 January 2008
The West must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the ”imminent” spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, according to a radical manifesto for a new Nato by five of the West’s most senior military officers and strategists.
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/ 22 January 2008
Kenya opposition leader Raila Odinga vowed on Monday to step up his challenge against President Mwai Kibaki as political unrest re-opened ethnic conflicts across the country. The tribes that voted for Kibaki in the December 27 election disputed by Odinga were being increasingly targeted by rival groups with long-running grievances.
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/ 21 January 2008
Gaza endured a fourth day of hardship on Monday as Israel vowed to maintain a punishing blockade in response to rocket fire from the Hamas-run territory, despite increasing international concern over a developing humanitarian crisis. The European Union slammed what it termed the ”collective punishment” of impoverished Gaza’s 1,5-million residents.
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/ 21 January 2008
Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) government and warring rebel and militia factions will sign a deal on Tuesday to end fighting in the country’s conflict-torn east, government officials and diplomats said on Monday. The agreement, which will include a ceasefire, was announced following more than two weeks of talks.
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/ 21 January 2008
A conference aimed at ending conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was prolonged on Monday as rival sides sought agreement, organisers said. The gathering at a university in Goma, the main town of Nord-Kivu province near some of the conflict zones, was due to end on Monday, but its president said another day would be needed.
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/ 21 January 2008
Burma is going ”downhill on all fronts”, a senior United States diplomat said during a visit to Vietnam on Monday, urging regional neighbours to pressure the junta running the country. ”The regime in Burma is absolutely refusing to take any positive steps at all,” said US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Scot Marciel.
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/ 21 January 2008
The Kenyan government condemned as ”illegal sabotage” on Monday a plan by the opposition to widen its protests against President Mwai Kibaki’s re-election to a boycott of companies linked to his allies. After a bloody weekend that added to the death toll of around 650 since the December 27 vote, the Orange Democratic Movement vowed to continue street rallies.
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/ 20 January 2008
A year on since a shipwreck off the English south coast, locals are still revelling in their wild days of frenzied pillaging. But they are keeping mum on who grabbed the best plunder. The carcass of the MSC Napoli cargo ship is still visible through the sea fog off the coast of Branscombe, a picturesque village on the Devon coastline.
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/ 20 January 2008
Kenya’s opposition party, determined to bring down the government of President Mwai Kibaki, has called for another day of ”peaceful rallies” across Kenya in defiance of a ban and despite the deaths of more than 20 people in this week’s demonstrations.
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/ 19 January 2008
The United Nations envoy to Sudan, Jan Eliasson, said on Friday that fresh fighting in the war-torn region of Darfur has set back hopes for a speedy resumption of peace talks. ”The current atmosphere is not the best,” Eliasson told reporters in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, where he met Sudan’s First Vice-President, Salva Kiir.
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/ 19 January 2008
Moin al-Wadia lay on his hospital bed beneath a window on Friday, soaking up the last of the day’s winter sunshine. Around him sat his family, with boxes of sweet pastries and bouquets of flowers, as they tried to explain the growing anger and frustration of the people of Gaza.
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/ 18 January 2008
Former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan will go to Kenya on Tuesday to help mediate in the country’s violent political crisis, the UN said on Friday. A statement said that Annan, who had called off a planned trip last Tuesday after contracting flu, ”is making a good recovery”.
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/ 18 January 2008
Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk has called on the United States to assume a ”fair share of responsibility” in reducing world greenhouse-gas emissions. He was delivering a speech in Cape Town at a climate-change round-table discussion.
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/ 18 January 2008
Israel closed border crossings with the Gaza Strip and destroyed the Hamas-run Interior Ministry on Friday in what witnesses said was an air strike, stepping up what it says is a campaign to halt Palestinian rocket attacks. One woman was killed and at least 30 others nearby were wounded in a large explosion, medical officials said.