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/ 9 November 2007
Mozambique is among Southern and East African countries that will benefit from new, -million energy projects. The United Nations Environment Programme said in a press release issued on Thursday that the projects will use tea and sugar residues to generate energy.
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/ 9 November 2007
Corpses were scattered on Mogadishu streets on Friday after overnight fighting between Somali insurgents and Ethiopian troops that killed 12 people. The bodies of the dead could be seen in the city’s northern Sqa Holaha neighbourhood, where insurgents dragged dead Ethiopians through the streets on Thursday.
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/ 8 November 2007
Chad will investigate reports that at least 74 Chadian children were flown to France more than a month-and-a-half ago without their parents’ knowledge, a senior judicial official said on Thursday. A network of local human rights groups wrote to the public prosecutor’s department with details about the 74 children.
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/ 8 November 2007
The United States and French presidents forged a common front against Iran’s nuclear ambitions on Wednesday, signalling a further warming of once-chilly relations between Washington and Paris. US President George Bush and French President Nicolas Sarkozy agreed to keep the pressure on Tehran, which has defied demands to halt uranium enrichment.
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/ 8 November 2007
Ending imports of fresh food from Africa under the pretext of combating climate change risks destroying entire communities that have become dependent on the trade, Ghana’s High Commissioner to Britain said on Wednesday. Food miles — the distance food travels from producer to consumer — have become a highly divisive issue.
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/ 7 November 2007
Iran has achieved a landmark in its controversial uranium-enrichment programme, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday, suggesting that the country now has 3 000 centrifuges fully operating. ”We have now reached 3 000 machines,” Ahmadinejad told thousands of Iranians gathered in Birjand, eastern Iran.
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/ 7 November 2007
In certain parts of Africa, female genital mutilation (FGM) has been linked to religion, with Muslim communities mistakenly believing that the practice is a religious requirement. But in Côte d’Ivoire, religion is also being put at the service of fighting FGM — sometimes referred to as female circumcision.
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/ 7 November 2007
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said on Tuesday he was committed to the north-south peace deal that ended Africa’s longest civil war and there would be no return to hostilities after a crisis threatened the pact. ”I would like to assure you there will be no return to war whatsoever,” he said at a state banquet with South African President Thabo Mbeki.
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/ 7 November 2007
Two of Africa’s most respected elder statesmen, Botswana’s former president Ketumile Masire and Mozambican ex-leader Joaquim Chissano, believe the continent is finally shedding its reputation as a theatre of conflict and corrupt governance.
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/ 6 November 2007
Sudan has asked South Africa to mediate on Darfur, Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said on Tuesday as attempts to end a conflict that has killed more than 200 000 and forced 2,5-million from their homes appeared to founder. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir met President Thabo Mbeki on Tuesday.
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/ 6 November 2007
A Kenyan judge has ordered an investigation of a United States children’s charity accused in a civil suit of exploiting and trafficking children, a court official said on Tuesday. The court on Monday extended an order first issued on October 9 barring Kids Alive Kenya from operating in the country until the suit filed against it has been resolved.
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/ 6 November 2007
The United Nations has bailed out Sierra Leone’s national amputees’ football team with a cash boost that paves way for their participation in the World Cup tournament kicking off at the weekend in Turkey. Team secretary Kemoh Sheriff said the donation shows that ”we are not forgotten”.
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/ 5 November 2007
Pakistani police used tear gas and batons to crush protests by lawyers against President Pervez Musharraf on Monday, despite world outrage at the imposition of a state of emergency. The White House said it was ”deeply disturbed” by the crisis, urging Musharraf, a key ally in the fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, to quit his military post.
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/ 5 November 2007
The French opposition on Monday dismissed President Nicolas Sarkozy’s trip to Chad to bring seven Europeans home as a ”Zorro act” as questions mounted over a charity accused of trying to abduct 103 children. Three French journalists and four Spanish air hostesses came back on Sarkozy’s presidential jet.
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/ 5 November 2007
Police in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) North Kivu province opened fire on refugees during a violent protest over food distributions on Monday, killing a child and wounding 11 civilians. Villagers driven from their homes three weeks ago by fighting between government soldiers and rebels had erected barricades in the town of Kiwanja.
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/ 5 November 2007
Horn of Africa enemies Ethiopia and Eritrea may return to war over their disputed border in a matter of weeks if there is no major international push to halt them. A war on the boundary killed 70 000 people from 1998 to 2000 and brought untold hardship to two of the world’s poorest nations.
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/ 4 November 2007
French President Nicolas Sarkozy flew seven freed Europeans out of Chad on Sunday but 10 others remained in jail charged with child abduction and fraud. The three French journalists and four Spanish flight attendants were among 16 French and Spanish nationals arrested as they tried to fly 103 African children to Europe.
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/ 3 November 2007
Empty shelves in Caracas. Food riots in West Bengal and Mexico. Warnings of hunger in Jamaica, Nepal, the Philippines and sub-Saharan Africa. Soaring prices for basic foods are beginning to lead to political instability, with governments being forced to step in to artificially control the cost of bread, maize, rice and dairy products.
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/ 3 November 2007
The United Nations’s special envoy to Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, was expected in Rangoon on Saturday for talks with the country’s ruling generals amid a row over the threatened expulsion of another diplomat. Gambari’s visit comes amid conflicting signals from the junta over its willingness to reform, in the wake of street protests against the ruling regime.
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/ 2 November 2007
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe is ignoring approaches from former South African president Nelson Mandela to step down, reports said on Friday. The Zimbabwe Independent, quoting unnamed sources, also said that former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan had tried to meet with Mugabe to discuss his retirement.
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/ 2 November 2007
Aid workers are planning to travel to Chad’s western border with Sudan to try to determine the exact background of 103 children at the centre of a child abduction row, the United Nations Children’s Fund said on Friday. The group is aiming to meet village and community leaders around the Chadian towns of Adre and Tine.
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/ 2 November 2007
Six world powers meet on Friday to discuss imposing a third round of sanctions on Iran because of its refusal to stop enriching uranium, which they suspect could be used to build nuclear weapons. Talks among top officials from the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany were due to start in the morning and last several hours.
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/ 2 November 2007
Drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) and HIV have merged into a double-barrelled pandemic that is sweeping across sub-Saharan Africa and threatening global efforts to eradicate both diseases, according to a report released on Friday. Overburdened health systems are unable to cope with the epidemic and risk collapse, says the report.
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/ 2 November 2007
The sight of frightened, bewildered children torn from their homes by wars or poverty is one of the most recurring and haunting faces of Africa. But the case of 103 African children who were to be flown out of Chad to Europe by a French group has touched raw nerves on the continent, where trafficking of minors is still widespread.
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/ 2 November 2007
Battles broke out again in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, on Friday killing at least one, wounding four and stoking the nation’s humanitarian crisis after nearly 90 000 people fled days of fighting earlier this week. Ethiopian forces supporting Somalia’s interim government are trying to crush Islamist-led rebels.
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/ 2 November 2007
The United Nations launched a new website powered by Google and network equipment maker Cisco on Thursday that will show how and where the world is succeeding or failing in meeting the Millennium Development Goals on ending poverty.
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/ 2 November 2007
China warned on Thursday that unauthorised protests will not be tolerated during the Olympics next year, raising the prospect of detentions for civil rights campaigners and religious activists during the two-week event. The warning came as the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Olympic truce resolution for the 2008 Beijing Games.
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/ 1 November 2007
President Thabo Mbeki has ignored all written parliamentary questions addressed to him by the official opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Thursday. DA parliamentary leader Sandra Botha said Mbeki had not responded to all nine questions that the party had addressed to him this year.
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/ 1 November 2007
At least 887 Iraqis were killed in Iraq in October, ministry data showed on Thursday, slightly higher than September, which saw a total of 840 people killed across the nation. Data from Iraq’s interior, defence and health ministries showed that 758 civilians, 116 policemen and 13 soldiers were killed in attacks across Iraq in October.
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/ 1 November 2007
There is a settlement in Ethiopia where houses are in high demand, new restaurants and bars open often and nearly 700 people moved in last month alone. But Shimelba is a refugee camp, not a boom town, and its residents — exiles from neighbouring Eritrea whose ranks are swelling at an alarming rate — are uniformly miserable.
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/ 1 November 2007
Three days of fighting in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, displaced 88 000 people from their homes, adding to hundreds of thousands who fled violence earlier this year, the United Nations said on Thursday. In an unprecedented statement, 39 aid agencies also said they could not respond effectively to Somalia’s unfolding ”humanitarian catastrophe” due to insecurity.
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/ 1 November 2007
Most of the 103 African children who a French group had planned to fly out of Chad as orphans said they had families, which included at least one close relative, United Nations agencies said on Thursday. A joint report also said most of the 21 girls and 82 boys aged one to 10 years came from villages on the Chad-Sudan border.