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/ 24 October 2007
Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden called for a holy war against a proposed peacekeeping force in Sudan’s war-torn region of Darfur in a message that appeared on jihadi websites on Tuesday. The audio recording was accompanied by a still picture and excerpts were aired by pan-Arab satellite news channel al-Jazeera on Monday.
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/ 24 October 2007
Australia slapped financial sanctions on Burma’s generals and their families on Wednesday as supporters of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi marked her 12 years in captivity with protests in 12 cities. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the measures would hit 418 people, including leader Senior General Than Shwe.
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/ 23 October 2007
A prominent Darfur rebel figure and five other smaller factions will not attend peace talks due to start this weekend in Libya, leaders said on Tuesday, casting doubt on prospects for peace. Ahmed Abdel Shafie told reporters that African Union and United Nations mediators had not heeded rebel requests for a delay to allow them to form a united position.
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/ 23 October 2007
A commander of Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has surrendered in northern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and is in the custody of Congolese authorities, the United Nations said on Tuesday. Opiyo Makasi, reported to be the rebel group’s operations and logistics commander, gave himself up along with his wife.
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/ 23 October 2007
Sudan will announce another ceasefire in its four-and-a-half year conflict with rebel groups in Darfur at the weekend, it emerged on Monday. The announcement will come at the opening of Darfur peace talks, which are to take place in the Libyan city of Sitre.
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/ 23 October 2007
Recent conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) Nord-Kivu province has been accompanied by an upsurge in brutal rape and often barbaric mutilations of women and girls, medical workers report. "For the whole of Nord-Kivu we normally treat 250 rape cases each month," said Jane Coyne, mission chief for Médécins Sans Frontières.
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/ 23 October 2007
Somali authorities on Tuesday released the local head of the World Food Programme, who was seized nearly a week ago when government forces stormed a United Nations compound in Mogadishu. "He is safely back in the office. He was brought by some government officers as well as local UN staffers," a UN official said in Mogadishu.
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/ 22 October 2007
Former Mozambique president Joachim Chissano won a new -million prize for African leadership on Monday and was hailed as ”a powerful voice for Africa on the international stage”. Former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan chaired the committee that selected the inaugural award by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation.
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/ 22 October 2007
Three Sudanese soldiers were killed when government forces attacked a refugee camp in Darfur, the second assault reported on a shelter for displaced people in less than a week, the United Nations said on Monday. The fighting was the latest in a series of clashes just days before planned peace talks.
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/ 22 October 2007
Africa has a larger urban population than North America, reveals an international development study released on Monday. The 2007 edition of the International Institute for Environment and Development’s urban-change analysis found that 25 of the world’s fastest growing large cities were in Africa.
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/ 22 October 2007
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) army said on Monday it had resumed control of an eastern town seized by rebel forces over the weekend and the heavy fighting between the two sides had ended. Forces loyal to renegade general Laurent Nkunda confirmed the clashes in the eastern Nord-Kivu region were over, and said they were waiting to hear about possible talks.
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/ 22 October 2007
Somali pirates have seized a cargo ship off the East African coast, the head of a local seafarers’ association said on Monday. Gunmen attacked the vessel last Wednesday, said Andrew Mwangura, the programme coordinator of the East Africa Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, but due to chaotic communications with Somalia the incident had taken several days to confirm.
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/ 21 October 2007
Democratic Republic of Congo’s army on Sunday gave pro-government militia fighters 48 hours to disarm or face military action as thousands more people fled renewed fighting in the eastern province of North Kivu. Explosions and gunfire rang out before dawn in the hills around Rugari, a town of tin-roofed houses near the Rwandan and Ugandan borders.
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/ 21 October 2007
Ethiopia’s Ogaden National Liberation Front rebels said they killed 140 government soldiers in a weekend assault targeting a senior official, a statement Ethiopia immediately denounced as false. Both sides routinely claim to inflict large numbers of casualties on the other, but the reports are difficult to independently verify.
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/ 21 October 2007
Around 50 people have been killed in three days of tribal clashes in the western Sudanese region of Kordofan, government officials were quoted as saying on Sunday. Dozens were wounded in the fighting sparked by the killing of one person in a land dispute.
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/ 19 October 2007
Government-backed militias have attacked a refugee camp over the past three days, killing six people and injuring 14 during their search for rebels from Sudan’s Darfur region, witnesses said on Friday. The United Nations confirmed there had been shooting in the Kalma camp outside Nyala, capital of South Darfur, over the past two days.
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/ 19 October 2007
The Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) army says desertions have weakened rebel forces ahead of a planned offensive against them, but rebel general Laurent Nkunda remains defiant. On Thursday the army put on show what they said were 80 deserters wearing ragtag uniforms from Nkunda’s forces.
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/ 19 October 2007
Rwanda called on France on Friday to extradite a Rwandan wanted for his alleged role in the country’s 1994 genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Dominique Ntawukuriryayo, a former sub-prefect during the mass killings, was arrested by French police in Carcassonne, south-west France.
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/ 18 October 2007
Burma’s ruling junta on Thursday night announced the formation of a Constitution Drafting Commission, another step in the government’s ”road map” to democracy that is supposed to lead to free elections some time in the future. The move came after the junta brutally suppressed pro-democracy demonstrations last month.
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/ 18 October 2007
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Thursday transferred a militia chief to the International Criminal Court in The Hague to face war-crimes charges, including sexual enslavement and using child soldiers. Germain Katanga (29), who once led the Forces for Patriotic Resistance in Ituri, was flown out of Kinshasa early on Thursday.
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/ 18 October 2007
Earlier this year, Cape Town was debating a by-law that would make solar water heating compulsory for relatively costly new buildings, and certain renovations. But what of solar water heating for less expensive structures — especially homes being built under the country’s extensive low-cost housing programme?
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/ 18 October 2007
World trade talks appeared to be making progress on Wednesday as the leaders of Brazil, India and South Africa said they were committed to reaching a deal. The leaders said differences with rich countries were still blocking agreement in the Doha round, launched nearly six years ago to help developing countries grow out of poverty and boost the world economy by opening up global trade.
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/ 17 October 2007
South Africa must do more to raise awareness of HIV/Aids amid rising child deaths and over one million children orphaned by the disease, the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) said Wednesday. ”Each year, 100Â 000 children contract Aids in South Africa, and half of them die before the age of two,” Unicef’s representative in the country, Macharia Kamau, said.
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/ 17 October 2007
The United Nations World Food Programme on Wednesday condemned the killing of three of its truck drivers in the violence-stricken western Sudanese region of Darfur. Two of the men were killed on Tuesday in south Darfur as they were returning from delivering supplies near the scene of an attack on an African Union base.
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/ 17 October 2007
The Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) army has orders to forcibly disarm soldiers loyal to renegade general Laurent Nkunda, President Joseph Kabila said on Wednesday, but he declined to say when the offensive would begin. ”The armed forces … have received the green light to begin, or rather to prepare, the forced disarmament of Mr Nkunda,” Kabila said.
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/ 17 October 2007
Up to 60 Somali intelligence officers stormed a United Nations compound in Mogadishu on Wednesday and seized the World Food Programme’s local chief of operations at gunpoint. WFP said it was forced to suspend food distribution, which started on Monday, to more than 75 000 people in the capital Mogadishu.
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/ 17 October 2007
Britain plans to submit a claim to the United Nations to extend its Antarctic territory by a million square kilometres, the foreign office said on Wednesday. The claim is one of five territorial requests planned by the Britain ahead of a May 2009 deadline and covers a vast area of the seabed around British Antarctica.
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/ 17 October 2007
Burma’s ruling junta blamed Buddhist monks Wednesday for last month’s violent crackdown on pro-democracy protests, as it admitted nearly 3 000 people had been detained over the rallies. Troops and police quelled the protests in late September, leaving at least 13 dead and drawing international condemnation.
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/ 16 October 2007
Libya, Vietnam and Burkina Faso were on Tuesday elected to non-permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council for the years 2008/09. The three countries were unopposed and obtained the required two-thirds majority of votes in favour from the 192-member UN General Assembly.
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/ 16 October 2007
Leaders of South Africa, Brazil and India meet this week to bolster an alliance that is challenging the United States and Europe for access to resources in the developing world and influence on the global stage. The three leaders have joined forces to ease the reliance of Asia, Latin America and Africa on trade with northern-hemisphere economies.
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/ 16 October 2007
A ”perfect storm” of drought, conflict and rising costs has increased the ranks of the chronically hungry by millions of people, and forced aid workers to find and fund longer-term solutions to the food crisis. The United Nations says the number of hungry people worldwide rises by an average of four million each year.
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/ 16 October 2007
The United Nations made a last appeal on Monday for rebel Congolese soldiers to rejoin the national army. Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila had given renegade General Laurent Nkunda until Monday to send his fighters to army integration centres or see them forcibly disarmed.