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/ 3 September 2007
Rebels in Ethiopia’s volatile east declared a unilateral ceasefire so the United Nations can investigate their claims of human rights abuses in the region. The Ogaden National Liberation Front rebels, ethnic Somalis who have been fighting the government for more than a decade, said they will only defend themselves if attacked.
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/ 3 September 2007
There has been a ”marked reduction” in human rights violations, road ambushes and illegal firearms in Uganda’s north-east over the past six months, the United Nations said on Monday. In a report, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said the Ugandan national army had made important advances between April and August.
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/ 3 September 2007
It is, quite simply, Russia’s most breathtakingly beautiful city. However, St Petersburg, Russia’s second city and former imperial capital, is in danger of being chucked off Unesco’s list of world heritage sites because of plans to build a 300m high skyscraper in its historic centre.
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/ 3 September 2007
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon headed for Sudan on Monday to lay the groundwork for a solution to the festering Darfur conflict through talks and deployment of thousands of peacekeepers. Ban will seek commitment to his plan from Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and visit a refugee camp in the western Sudanese Darfur region.
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/ 3 September 2007
Sydney’s brothels are preparing for a boom as thousands of delegates and journalists descend on the city for a major Asia-Pacific summit this week. A former tax office auditor turned legal brothel industry lobbyist, Chris Seage, wrote that Sydney’s brothels had been fielding phone calls from overseas for the past two weeks.
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/ 3 September 2007
United States President George Bush hopes to spur momentum for a world trade pact and a global target on climate change at this week’s Asia-Pacific summit but the Iraq debate at home looms as a distraction. Bush will meet in Sydney with the leaders of Australia, China, Japan, Russia and other members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) forum.
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/ 3 September 2007
Tank traps, landmines and checkpoint barriers flank the North Korean road to Panmunjom, the last frontier of the Cold War. For more than half a century, this small village in the demilitarised zone that divides the Korean peninsula has been frozen in suspended conflict.
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/ 3 September 2007
Peace accords that were to put an end to the conflicts that killed millions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DCR) are collapsing after a powerful renegade Tutsi general declared war on the government. The United Nations has started airlifting thousands of government troops into the eastern Kivu region, which has endured two foreign invasions and more than a decade of civil war.
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/ 2 September 2007
On Saturday, Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi celebrated the 38th anniversary of the military coup in which he ousted the British-backed King Idris. The 65-year-old is no longer a pariah. Libya is certainly changing, yet a week here makes clear that change is far more limited than many seem to think.
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/ 1 September 2007
South Korea paid Afghanistan’s Taliban more than -million to release 19 missionaries they were holding hostage, a senior insurgent leader said on Saturday, vowing to use the funds to buy arms and mount suicide attacks. The freed hostages flew out of Afghanistan on Friday to Dubai en route for South Korea.
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/ 1 September 2007
Malnutrition is on the rise in Darfur as a surge in violence prevents aid workers from reaching more people in need, a senior United Nations official said. Eighteen spot surveys in three Darfur provinces indicated the emergency threshold of 15% of the population suffering from malnutrition had increased to more than 17% in some areas.
The leaders of France and Britain on Friday revived the spectre of sanctions against Khartoum if progress is not made on a Darfur ceasefire and upcoming political talks. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a joint editorial in the Times in London that sanctions could be used to bring peace to Darfur.
Nineteen newly freed South Korean hostages were set to fly out of the Afghan capital on Friday after a six-week kidnap drama, sources close to the arrangements said, after a deal critics fear could spur more abductions. Taliban insurgents freed the remaining seven South Korean Christian volunteers late on Thursday.
Renegade troops killed several regular army troops and wounded 30 others in five hours of heavy fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) eastern Nord-Kivu province early on Thursday, military and United Nations officials said. Soldiers serving General Laurent Nkunda attacked an army post, killed an undisclosed number and wounded 30 at Katale.
Mustapha Sesay and Femi Rashid, former foes in Sierra Leone’s civil war, spar with good humoured jibes as they work together in a motorcycle taxi association that brings together ex-combatants. ”I shoot you like a chicken,” laughs ex-rebel child soldier Sesay. ”You don’t know how to fight,” retorts Rashid, once a traditional Kamajor hunter who battled the rebels.
Darfur rebels accused the government of bombing South Darfur on Thursday, the latest attack in an aerial campaign that has driven thousands of people from their homes over the past month. ”There is aerial bombardment on a daily basis — bombing by MiG 29 and by Antonov,” Justice and Equality Movement commander Abel Aziz el-Nur Ashr Ashr said.
Camps teeming with frustrated refugees in Sudan’s Darfur region have become militarised and present a danger that cannot be ignored, a United Nations official was quoted as saying on Thursday. The UN’s emergency relief coordinator said the presence of weapons in the camps made for a potentially explosive situation.
The United Nations reported on Monday that there had been a ”frightening” explosion in opium production in Afghanistan with Helmand province, where Britain has 7 000 troops deployed, leading the way. A record crop means that the country now accounts for 93% of the world’s supply and the situation is getting worse daily despite billions being spent to eradicate the trade since 2001.
The Democratic Republic of Congo’s Transport Ministry has grounded two private airlines after a weekend plane crash killed 13 people in the second disaster since June, officials said on Wednesday. The licence of the Great Lakes Business Company, owner of the cargo plane that crashed on Sunday at Kongolo in Katanga Province, was suspended.
Mankind is to blame for climate change but governments still have time to slow accelerating damage at moderate cost if they act quickly, a draft United Nations report shows. Underlining the need for speed, it says a European Union goal of holding temperature rises to a maximum two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times is almost out of reach.
The worldwide illegal drugs trade has stopped growing for the first time since the mid-Nineteenth Century, although use and production of some drugs is rising fast in pockets, a senior United Nations official said on Wednesday. Methamphetamine abuse in East Asia and production of opium in Afghanistan are both growing at an alarming rate said Akira Fujino.
More than 100 000 people have been affected by floods in Ethiopia and 17 have died of waterborne disease, the United Nations said on Tuesday. ”Approximately 103 000 people have been affected by floods,” UN humanitarian agency Ocha said in a report following days of heavy rains.
Natural disasters are far more destructive than wars, and the damage will only worsen unless drastic change is taken to address global climate change, a former United Nations humanitarian chief said on Tuesday. "Already seven times more livelihoods are devastated by natural disasters than by war worldwide, and this is going to get worse," Jan Egeland said.
The United Kingdom’s drug policy in Afghanistan’s Helmand province lay in tatters on Monday as the United Nations declared a ”frightening” explosion in opium production across the country, led by Taliban-backed farmers in the volatile south. Opium production soared by 34% to 8 200 tonnes.
United States President George Bush finally lost his battle to hang on to the Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, on Monday after months of unremitting congressional pressure over a series of scandals that included the firing of nine state prosecutors, wire tapping and torture. Bush blamed the Democrats, accusing them of dragging a decent and talented man through the mud.
Photographs of soldiers’ garments show the contradictions of war, writes Tanya Farber.
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/ 31 January 2007
The UNHCR has launched a new policy to ensure that HIV-positive refugees around the world have access to life-prolonging ARV medication.
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/ 29 November 2001
The UN estimates that five million people became infected with HIV this year and that worldwide 40-million people are living with the virus.
Jaspreet Kindra The Black Economic Empowerment Commission’s final report, which was released last weekend, is intent on uplifting the majority of South Africans rather than building a black bourgeoisie. Commission chair Cyril Rama-phosa said a broader definition of black empowerment was accepted by the African National Congress’s economic transformation committee two weeks ago. The new […]
An audit report has found that the office wastes much-needed money and resources, and has little contact with its own hospitals and clinics Paul Kirk Following a series of exposes by the Mail & Guardian, auditors have recommended that the national office of the South African National Tuberculosis Association (Santa) be closed down. The audit […]
Andy Capostagno rugby There are a number of truisms that are regularly trotted out when the Super 12 is in progress. There is no such thing as an easy game, beware the team that can win away from home, it’s about peaking in May and not in March, don’t get carried away with home wins. […]