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/ 31 January 2008
Kenya’s police said the fatal shooting of a legislator by a policeman on Thursday was a ”crime of passion” and had already led to one arrest. But the head of the Orange Democratic Movement, Raila Odinga, called the death of David Kimutai Too in the Rift Valley town of Eldoret a politically-motivated ”execution”.
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/ 31 January 2008
African Union heads of state were set on Thursday to begin a three-day summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, focused on the deadly crisis in Kenya and the challenges facing the body’s peacekeeping missions. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was expected to address the organisation and call for a peaceful resolution of the post-poll dispute in Kenya.
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/ 30 January 2008
Kenya on Wednesday pledged tougher action to rein in post-election violence that threatens to spiral out of control, in the East African nation’s darkest moment since independence in 1963. Protests over President Mwai Kibaki’s disputed re-election in the December 27 vote have degenerated into cycles of killing between rival tribes.
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/ 30 January 2008
Al-Qaeda’s North Africa wing said it was behind a blast at a police station in Algeria which authorities said killed two people. Al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb said a suicide bomber drove a truck packed explosives that detonated at the police station in a town east of Algiers on Tuesday.
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/ 30 January 2008
People in drought-affected regions of central and southern Somalia need urgent help after losing most of their livestock, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Information, Ahmed Abdisalam, said on Wednesday. He said the worst-affected regions are Hiiraan, Galgadud, Mudug and parts of Bay and Bakol and Gedo.
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/ 30 January 2008
There is clear evidence of ”ethnic cleansing” in Kenya’s Rift Valley since a disputed election, but it does not amount to genocide, said the top United States diplomat for Africa. ”The cycle of retaliation has gone too far and has become more dangerous,” said US Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer.
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/ 29 January 2008
The African Union starts a heads-of-state summit in Addis Ababa on Thursday seeking to bolster the body’s capacity to solve conflicts such as the crises in Darfur and Somalia. Since its inception in 2002, the pan-African body has lacked the funds and political drive to take effective action on the continent’s flashpoints.
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/ 29 January 2008
South Africa believes that no political ambition could justify the current cycle of violence in Kenya, Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad said on Tuesday. Speaking at the Union Buildings, Pahad called on Kenyan political parties to rise above ”narrow political interests” and settle the conflict through dialogue.
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/ 29 January 2008
The Presidency on Tuesday denied that anti-apartheid activist John Minto had been nominated for a prestigious national order, which Minto said he would decline on the grounds that the situation in South Africa was worse than under white rule. Minto published a letter to President Thabo Mbeki on his website.
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/ 29 January 2008
Any attempt to use the Beijing Olympics to discredit China or force it to change policy is doomed to failure, the leading communist party newspaper said on Tuesday. The counter-attack comes amid a rough week for the Olympic organisers, who have had to admit concealed fatalities on the construction site.
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/ 29 January 2008
Former United Nations chief Kofi Annan brought together Kenya’s political rivals on Tuesday in a push to mediate an end to the post-election crisis and stop spreading tribal bloodshed. About a dozen people were killed in the country on Tuesday, bringing the toll to more than 850.
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/ 29 January 2008
The mandate of about 1 000 South African soldiers deployed in Burundi under an African Union mandate is to be extended as efforts to get the last remaining rebel group to re-join the peace process gain momentum, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad said on Tuesday.
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/ 29 January 2008
A car-bomb attack on a police station killed two people and wounded 23 in a town east of Algiers on Tuesday, the second such bombing in the Opec member in a month. Some residents said the blast in Thenia appeared to be a suicide attack, the tactic used in a twin bombing in the capital on December 11.
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/ 29 January 2008
United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon kicked off a landmark trip to Rwanda on Tuesday with a visit to the genocide memorial, amid simmering resentment over the world body’s failure to prevent the 1994 massacres. Ban paid homage to the victims of the massacres, which left about 800 000 people dead, mainly from the Tutsi minority of President Paul Kagame.
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/ 29 January 2008
Kenyan security forces struggled on Tuesday to contain escalating violence as the post-election unrest claimed its first victim among the country’s politicians. Heavily armed Kenyan army soldiers patrolled the volatile Rift Valley capital, Nakuru, on Tuesday while paramilitary police guarded the town of Naivasha, the new epicentre of tribal fighting.
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/ 28 January 2008
Congolese Tutsi rebels and Mai Mai militia clashed on Monday in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), breaking a ceasefire signed last week aimed at ending a long-running conflict, the two factions said. Tutsi fighters loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda and Pareco Mai Mai militia blamed each other for the fighting.
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/ 28 January 2008
Sudan will seek to head the African Union during the continental body’s upcoming summit at its headquarters in Addis Ababa, a Sudanese official said. Sudan’s two previous bids for the AU’s rotating presidency have been unsuccessful due to reservations over Khartoum’s rights record in the western region of Darfur.
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/ 28 January 2008
Protests erupted in western Kenya and machete-wielding mobs faced off in the Rift Valley on Monday after scores died in ethnic violence, complicating mediation efforts by former United Nations boss Kofi Annan. In the normally peaceful Rift Valley town of Nakuru, a mortuary worker said on Monday that 64 corpses were lying in the morgue.
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/ 28 January 2008
Kenyans in the Rift Valley town of Naivasha were braced for fresh violence on Monday after a spate of ethnic killings. At least 19 people were killed here on Sunday in battles between members of President Mwai Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe and Luos and Kalenjins who backed his rival Raila Odinga.
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/ 28 January 2008
Dozens of policemen in riot gear at Egyptian checkpoints set up in the pouring rain just a few kilometres from the border with Gaza on Sunday failed to halt the flow of Palestinians into Egypt five days after the border was breached. Taiser Shuber had spent two days in Sheikh Zuwayed, a town about 19km into northern Sinai, where he savoured his first trip outside the Palestinian territories.
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/ 27 January 2008
‘We’re running out of oil!” We’ve been hearing this warning at least since the 1970s oil shocks, but recently it has been proclaimed with increasing insistence. The idea goes back to 1956, when Shell geologist M King Hubbert declared that the world had enough oil for only about 50 more years, writes Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero.
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/ 27 January 2008
Sudan summoned the top United States diplomat in Khartoum saying he had interfered in the internal affairs of the country and rejected US criticism of the appointment of Musa Hilal to a central government post. US Charge D’Affaires Alberto Fernandez told Reuters that Khartoum’s lack of implementation of internal peace accords had created an environment of distrust.
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/ 26 January 2008
Gunfire rang out in Nakuru, Kenya, on Saturday and armed gangs manned roadblocks in the Rift Valley town where ethnic clashes have killed at least 25 people in 24 hours, witnesses said. Paramilitary police patrolled the provincial capital, which had previously been spared post-election violence that has killed around 700 people.
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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.