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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.
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/ 1 November 2007
Japan ordered its naval ships on Thursday to withdraw from a refuelling mission in support of United States-led operations in Afghanistan as a political deadlock kept the government from meeting a deadline to extend the activities. The Pentagon said that Japan’s withdrawal would not affect its patrolling of the Indian Ocean.
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/ 1 November 2007
Turkey on Thursday stepped up pressure on northern Iraq, imposing economic sanctions over the safe haven Kurdish rebels enjoy, as Washington said it was supplying Ankara with intelligence on the separatists’ positions. "We have prepared a list of economic measures targeting the financial resources of the terrorist organisation," Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said.
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/ 1 November 2007
Félicien Kabuga has a reward of several million dollars on his head, and tops the list of fugitives of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Yet, he’s managed to escape justice for years. The ICTR was set up in northern Tanzania by the United Nations in 1995 to bring high-level perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide to justice.
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/ 1 November 2007
A decision by the European Union to allow Robert Mugabe to a summit is a rare diplomatic coup for Zimbabwe’s leader whose relations with the West have plummeted almost as fast as his country’s economy. In power since the former British colony won independence in 1980, Mugabe has shown no sign of mellowing in his old age.
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/ 1 November 2007
Four years on, a Mozambique-South African gas pipeline is fuelling economic growth and regional cooperation in Southern Africa. It challenges Western assumptions of a natural-resources "curse" in Africa and offers evidence that the New Partnership for Africa’s Development is beginning to deliver on its promises.
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/ 31 October 2007
Delegates from dozens of nations gathered in India on Wednesday to open a World Toilet Summit aimed at finding low-cost methods to give billions of people access to sanitation. The four-day meeting and seventh such summit brought together 170 experts from more than 40 countries to swap ideas on improving basic sanitation.
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/ 31 October 2007
The Turkish army on Wednesday said it killed 15 Kurdish separatists near the Iraqi border, as ministers discussed possible economic sanctions against Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish government. The latest fighting took place in the Cudi Mountains in Sirnak province, where helicopters and artillery have been pounding Kurdish rebels since Monday.
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/ 31 October 2007
Chadians chanting ”No to the slave trade, no to child-trafficking” protested on Wednesday against a French group accused of trying to illegally fly children from the the country to Europe. Several hundred angry locals gathered outside the governor’s office in the town of Abeche, where nine French nationals and seven Spaniards were arrested last week.
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/ 31 October 2007
President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan has accused Gordon Brown of deliberately undermining the Darfur peace talks and has demanded a public apology after the British prime minister’s threat of new sanctions against Sudan if the talks fail.
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/ 31 October 2007
A bolstered United Nations-African Union force charged with bringing peace to Sudan’s ravaged Darfur region ”may be” operational by early next year, the head of the mission said on Wednesday. Rodolphe Adada made the announcement during the inauguration of the new force’s headquarters in Darfur’s main city of Al-Fasher.
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/ 31 October 2007
The scandal over a French group accused of trying to illegally fly African children from Chad to Europe will not affect the deployment of a European peace force in eastern Chad. France has troops stationed in Chad and will provide roughly half of a European Union peacekeeping force.
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/ 31 October 2007
Buddhist monks in Burma staged a protest march on Wednesday, their first since soldiers crushed a pro-democracy uprising a month ago, as United Nations special envoy Ibrahim Gambari prepared for a return visit. Gambari, who first visited shortly after the army crackdown, would arrive on November 3.
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/ 31 October 2007
Major powers plan to meet in London this week to discuss new sanctions on Iran amid a spat between Washington and the United Nations over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, United States officials said on Tuesday. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a speech on Tuesday that Iran would not retreat in the dispute.
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/ 30 October 2007
About 36 000 Somalis have fled Mogadishu after weekend fighting, the worst in months between Ethiopian troops backing the interim government and Islamist-led rebels, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday. Most of the displaced headed for the town of Afgooye, 30km to the west, which is already struggling to cope with 100 000 people.
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/ 30 October 2007
Darfur rebels boycotting peace talks in Libya said on Tuesday they would meet envoys from an African Union-United Nations mediation team but specified conditions that gave little hope they would change their positions. Mediators had hoped to unite the rival rebel factions before peace talks opened in Libya on October 27.
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/ 30 October 2007
Tropical Storm Noel — the 14th named storm of the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season — headed toward the Bahamas on Tuesday after causing flooding and mudslides that killed at least 20 people in the Dominican Republic and left another 20 missing, officials said.
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/ 30 October 2007
Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed called crisis talks on Tuesday to find a new prime minister as the country’s shaky government faced a mounting challenge from Islamist rebels.
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/ 30 October 2007
The United Nations Security Council renewed arms and diamond sanctions against Côte d’Ivoire on Monday in a bid to make the West African country stick to the terms of a peace process. A resolution passed by the council extended the sanctions for a further year but promised to review them during that period.
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/ 30 October 2007
The United Nations on Monday demanded that the Taliban stop killing aid workers and looting aid convoys so that emergency supplies can reach vulnerable Afghans. Tom Koenigs, head of the UN mission to Afghanistan, said 34 aid workers had been killed by the Taliban and criminal gangs and 76 abducted so far this year.
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/ 30 October 2007
African countries working jointly to construct an undersea telecoms cable should harmonise laws governing the sector if they are to land the much-awaited communications link, a senior United Nations official said on Monday. About 23 nations have long harboured a much-delayed plan to build the submarine cable to slash internet and calling costs.
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/ 29 October 2007
United Nations and African Union officials are to travel to Darfur this week to try to convince key rebel leaders to join peace talks aimed at resolving the crisis in the Sudanese region, the AU said on Monday. Noureddine Mezni, spokesperson for the AU, said the officials would travel to Darfur ”in the next few days”.
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/ 29 October 2007
Environment ministers from 38 African countries met in Abuja, Nigeria, on Monday to discuss climate change and prepare for the United Nations global climate conference to be held on the island of Bali, Indonesia, in December. The Bali meeting is expected to produce a new global climate deal to curb carbon emissions.