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/ 11 September 2007
Norway will reduce its direct aid to Ethiopia by about one-third after Addis Ababa expelled six Norwegian diplomats, Development Aid Minister Erik Solheim said on Tuesday, though he said it was for purely logistical reasons. ”We want to have a good relationship with Ethiopia,” Solheim told foreign correspondents in Oslo.
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/ 11 September 2007
Ongoing violence in Sudan’s Darfur region threatens to undermine planned peace talks between Khartoum and rebel groups, a British minister said as he flew into the war-torn area on Tuesday. British Foreign Office Minister for Africa Mark Malloch Brown made the remarks a day after rebels said government aircraft had bombed a rebel-held Darfur town.
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/ 11 September 2007
Parts of a global nuclear-smuggling ring initiated by the disgraced father of Pakistan’s atom bomb may remain active and nations must do more to crack down on the network, South Africa said on Tuesday. The plea followed last week’s conviction by a South African court of a German engineer for his part in the network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan.
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/ 11 September 2007
An outbreak of Ebola haemorrhagic fever, a deadly disease for which there is no treatment, has been confirmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday. Samples from five people have tested positive for the Ebola virus in the southern province of Kasai Occidental.
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/ 10 September 2007
Sudanese government aircraft bombed a rebel-held town in Darfur on Monday, insurgent groups said, hours after the government said it was investigating a rebel raid on one of its bases last month. Reports of the attack came seven weeks before rebel groups and the Khartoum government are set to meet for peace talks.
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/ 10 September 2007
At least 26 people, many of them civilians, were killed on Monday in two simultaneous suicide attacks in Afghanistan’s southern province of Helmand, a provincial police official said. About 45 people were also wounded in the twin blasts that targeted a group of police in a shopping area of the Girishk district of the province.
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/ 10 September 2007
Despite daunting challenges posed by global warming, water, energy, unemployment and terrorism, the world faces a brighter future with fewer wars, higher life expectancy and improved literacy, according to the 2007 <i>State of the Future</i> report released on Monday. It noted that the number of African conflicts fell from a peak of 16 in 2002 to five in 2005.
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/ 10 September 2007
Uganda’s army denied a report on Monday that its troops were massing on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), despite a deal on the weekend meant to reduce tensions. United Nations-sponsored Radio Okapi in eastern DRC quoted military sources as saying Ugandan soldiers had set up camp at several points along the tense frontier.
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/ 9 September 2007
Sierra Leone counted votes on Sunday from a tense presidential run-off which went peacefully despite fears of violence, but both sides accused the other of fraud and intimidation. Saturday’s presidential run-off vote will pick a successor to President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, who is standing down after two terms.
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/ 9 September 2007
Al-Qaeda’s north Africa wing said it was behind two suicide attacks that killed at least 57 people in Algeria in the past two days, according to a statement posted on the internet on Saturday. It said the al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb was behind Saturday’s suicide truck bombing at a coast guard barracks east of Algiers and an attack in the town of Batna less than 48 hours earlier.
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/ 9 September 2007
It began with bread. And that is how it ended. Shortly after 4pm, on a sun-filled autumn day, the voices of Luciano Pavarotti and his father, the baker Fernando, ”who had a voice perhaps more beautiful than mine” filled the 12th century cathedral of Modena as they sang together Cesar Franck’s hymn, Panis Angelicus (Bread of Angels).
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/ 8 September 2007
Voting began calmly in Sierra Leone on Saturday despite a turbulent campaign for a presidential runoff vote meant to consolidate peace after a civil war. Rival groups of former combatants have clashed with guns and machetes in the former British colony since the first round on August 11 in which opposition candidate Ernest Bai Koroma of the All People’s Congress led with 44%.
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/ 8 September 2007
Fresh clashes have erupted between a renegade general and government troops in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The United Nations said violence in the region was hampering efforts to deliver food to tens of thousands of displaced
civilians.
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/ 8 September 2007
Asia-Pacific nations, including China and the United States, will accept for the first time global goals to reduce emissions, according to a draft statement prepared for an Apec summit on Saturday. The declaration reaffirmed the United Nations climate convention as the primary vehicle for fighting global warming.
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/ 7 September 2007
Chad will back United Nations moves to end the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region by allowing international peacekeepers on its own soil and supporting peace talks, President Idriss Itno Déby said on Friday. Déby made the commitment to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who was in Chad on a regional tour to canvass support for the UN’s peacekeeping initiative for Darfur.
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/ 7 September 2007
Renegade Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) General Laurent Nkunda said on Friday the Congolese army had attacked his position, breaking a fragile ceasefire negotiated by United Nations mediators in eastern DRC. ”I have told Monuc [the United Nations mission in DRC] that we were attacked this morning [Friday],” Nkunda said.
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/ 6 September 2007
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) army and a renegade general have agreed to a United Nations-brokered ceasefire to halt more than a week of clashes in the east, the UN mission in DRC (Monuc) said on Thursday. ”A ceasefire has been facilitated by Monuc between [General Laurent] Nkunda and the government troops,” said Sylvie Van Den Wildenberg.
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/ 6 September 2007
A dissident Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) general called for African mediation to broker a ceasefire in eastern DRC as fighting between his forces and government troops neared the provincial capital on Thursday. New clashes broke out before dawn around Karuba, a village about 30km west of Goma, the capital of troubled North Kivu province.
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/ 6 September 2007
Sudan and Darfur rebels will hold talks on October 27 in Libya to push for peace ahead of the expected deployment of a 26 000-strong peace force in Darfur, a United Nations-Sudanese government statement said on Thursday. The statement said the UN ”expresses the hope that parties will cooperate fully” with UN and African Union mediators.
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/ 6 September 2007
The United Nations fears that the refugee crisis in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) could worsen after the escalation of the conflict between government troops and soldiers loyal to a dissident general. Speaking to the BBC on Thursday, UN emergency relief coordinator John Holmes said that the crisis could aggravate the situation throughout the country.
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/ 6 September 2007
Sudan has developed unmanned surveillance planes, is developing missiles, and is now ”self-sufficient” in conventional weapons, a Sudanese state news agency reported. The rare public announcement on Sudan’s military capability gave no details on how far missile development had progressed or where the surveillance drones might be used.
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/ 5 September 2007
Sierra Leone media authorities are trying to tone down party political broadcasts alleging executions and machete attacks to try to defuse tensions ahead of a presidential run-off vote on Saturday. The poll, the culmination of the first elections since United Nations peacekeepers left, pits opposition leader Ernest Bai Koroma against Vice-President Solomon Berewa.
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/ 5 September 2007
The boom in cellphones in developing countries has pushed the number of telephone subscribers in the world to four billion, four times the number a decade ago, the United Nations telecommunications agency said on Tuesday. The increase has been especially strong in developing countries such as Brazil, China and India.
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/ 5 September 2007
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arrived in the Darfur region of western Sudan on Wednesday, promising to step up pressure for a political solution to the festering conflict. Ban told journalists he would push for progress in peace talks between the Sudanese government and rebel groups.
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/ 5 September 2007
Seven developing countries in Africa and Asia will be the first to take part in a new global health campaign aimed at directing aid more effectively at the basic needs of poor countries. Health ministers from Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Zambia, Cambodia and Nepal will take part in the launch of the initiative at British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s office later on Wednesday.
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/ 4 September 2007
The United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday that tens of thousands of Congolese refugees crossed into Uganda on Monday following renewed fighting between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) army and renegade troops in the north-east of the vast country.
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/ 4 September 2007
Somali opposition leaders, including several senior Islamists, are to meet in Eritrea from Thursday to try to unite against the Ethiopian-backed government at talks intended to a rival a Mogadishu peace conference. Many Somali dissidents have already made their home in Eritrea, which has been accused by the United States and United Nations of sending arms to insurgents.
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/ 4 September 2007
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon flew in to south Sudan’s capital, Juba, on Tuesday to try to speed implementation of the 2005 peace deal that ended Africa’s longest civil war. Aides said Ban would try to resolve sticking points in the roll-out of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
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/ 4 September 2007
At least 60 renegade soldiers have been killed by the regular army in a fresh attack in the restive east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), government forces said on Tuesday. The army said it used a helicopter gunship to attack rebel soldiers loyal to cashiered general Laurent Nkunda.
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/ 4 September 2007
Peace talks between the Sudanese government and Darfur’s rebel groups could begin next month, according to senior United Nations officials. The UN Security Council agreed in July almost to triple the number of foreign troops and police in Darfur with the aim of protecting the millions of displaced people.
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/ 3 September 2007
United Nations agencies urged governments in Southern Africa on Monday to draw up legislation to combat frightening levels of human trafficking, saying action was vital ahead of the 2010 Soccer World Cup. Specific legislation to tackle the issue was needed to help law enforcement agencies get to grips with the situation.
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/ 3 September 2007
Fighting between the regular army and renegade troops resumed on Monday after a weekend lull in an escalating battle for control of territory in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), United Nations observers said. ”We’re extremely alarmed by renewed clashes reported from the Ngungu zone,” said a spokesperson for the UN.