NewsTrust - Africa - Most Recent Stories: News (Mainstream)

US NGOs concerned by Obama's Darfur envoy, policy

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Agence France-Presse - By Christophe Schmidt - Oct. 03 (News Report) - US non-governmental organizations are pressing President Barack Obama to launch a new peace initiative for Darfur, as they express concern about the approach being taken by US envoy Scott Gration.

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Sudan's simmering struggle

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Times - By Austin Bay - Oct. 03 (Special Report) - The "third civil war" would be as vicious as the last, but given current political conditions, it could rapidly expand beyond Sudan and become a regional war involving several other impoverished, fragile states in East Africa - a war of the poor creating greater poverty and anarchy.

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Life dries up in Kenya's Mau forest

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - By James Morgan - Sep. 29 (News Report) - High in the hills of Kenya's Mau forest, some 20,000 families are facing eviction from their farms - accused of contributing to an ecological disaster which has crippled the country.

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Darfur rebels accuse Sudan army of attacks

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Reuters - Sep. 18 (News Report) - Darfur rebels accused Sudanese government forces of attacking their positions on Thursday and Friday, weeks after a senior peacekeeper said the region was no longer in a state of war. The reports came after a period of relative calm in the region, where more than six years of fighting has driven an estimated 2.7 million from their homes. Commanders from an arm of the rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) told Reuters Sudan's army, backed up by allied militias, launched ground and air attacks on their positions in territory around the North Darfur area of Korma.

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Nile Delta: 'We are going underwater. The sea will conquer our lands'

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Jack Shenker - Aug. 21 (News Report) - "Egypt is a graveyard for occupiers," observes Ramadan el-Atr, a fruit farmer near the antiquated town of Rosetta, where authorities have contracted a Chinese company to build a huge wall of concrete blocks in the ocean to try to save any more land from melting away. "Just like the others, the sea will come and go – but we will always survive." Scientists aren't so sure.

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Cap-and-trade & Health Care & Insurance Reform I see these two issues as one and the same thing. The first one is to heal our planet, and the second is to heal our human bodies. Also, both issues have to deal with how the 'healing' is delievered and wh

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Foreign policy, EU news, climate, green technology, health. - Aug. 21 (Investigative Report) - Experts and politicians on whether health care reform will trump climate change.

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The Women’s Crusade

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, SHERYL WuDUNN - Aug. 19 (Special Report) - The liberation of women could help solve many of the world’s problems, from poverty to child mortality to terrorism.

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U.S. reshaping Darfur policy

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Peter Wallsten, Edmund Sanders - Aug. 04 (News Report) - The Obama administration is working on a new approach that may soften some sanctions against the Sudan government, which is implicated in the killing and displacement of tens of thousands.

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185 die in attack on refugee camp in southern Sudan

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - Aug. 04 (News) - Armed tribesmen attacked a fishing village in southeastern Sudan where hundreds of displaced people were camped near a river, killing at least 185, most of them women and children, in the worst violence in three months, a southern Sudanese official said Monday. A flare-up of tribal clashes in southern Sudan over cattle and territory has left more than 1,000 people dead this year. The violence is separate from the conflict between rebels and government forces in Darfur, in Sudan's west.

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African dream turns sour for orphan army

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Times - By Dan McDougall - Aug. 02 (News) - Nothing grows here in the shadows. There is only desolation in the tired soil at Paballo Marumo’s cracked and filthy feet. Her shoes, the thin plastic sandals worn by children across the townships of southern Africa, are gone. “Stolen!” she tells me in her language, Sesotho. At eight years old she sits hopelessly at the bottom of the rubbish dump hierarchy. “Gap! Gap! Gap!” comes the sudden cry from the 12-year-old leader of a destitute army of rag pickers patrolling the vast waste dump before us.

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Europe Eyes Africa for Solar Power

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Scientific American - By Paul Voosen - Jul. 24 (Special Report) - European government and industry have been eyeing tracts of sun-drenched, vacant land in North Africa and the Middle East for some time. And now, officials and business executives are beginning to sweat out the details that could see renewable power sprouting in the desert.

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BBC NEWS | Africa | Nigeria authorities welcome truce

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - Jul. 15 (News Report) - Officials in Nigeria welcome a 60-day truce declared by the main oil-rebel group, days after they carried out a deadly attack.

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Nigerian rebels threaten to end cease-fire - CNN.com

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

CNN - Jul. 15 (News Report) - Nigerian militants threatened to end their cease-fire not long after it began Wednesday because they claimed the government was threatening one of their camps. The militant group MEND said seven military joint task force gun boats with heavily armed troops were headed toward a camp near the border of the coastal states of Delta and Ondo.

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Obama praises democratic successes in Africa

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Christi Parsons, Edmund Sanders - Jul. 12 (News Report) - In a speech in Ghana, he calls on leaders across the continent to clean up their governments and protect women and children from violence. In an address broadcast widely across Africa, President Obama today praised the democratic successes of African nations and pledged to support democracy and fight corruption on the continent.

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Africans reflect on Obama's 'tough love' message

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - By Drew Hinshaw - Jul. 12 (News Report) - President Obama's international tour, which ended Sunday, raised a question that will rattle in the minds of Africans for some time: Do African leaders have more to fear from America's first black president than they have to gain? Mr. Obama, a popular hero to the continent, enjoys at least surface adoration of its leaders, too. Politicians in South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, and elsewhere have positioned themselves as allies, friends, and kindred spirits to the US president. Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, a vehemently anti-Western autocrat, even offered to meet with Obama.

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To Fix Health Care, Some Study Developing World

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Amy Dockser Marcus - Jul. 02 (News Report) - When doctors running the AIDS clinic at the University of Alabama at Birmingham wanted to increase the number of patients who showed up for treatment, they turned to an unusual place for help: southern Africa.

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Africa | Nigaz name sparks racism debate

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - Jul. 02 (News Report) - A marketing blunder in Nigeria has got online communities all of a twitter, after a joint oil and gas venture with Russia was named Nigaz.

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From bush to bike - a bamboo revolution

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - By Kieron Humphrey - Jul. 01 (News Report) - On the outskirts of Lusaka, Zambia, next year's crop of bicycles is being watered by Benjamin Banda. "We planted this bamboo last year," he says, "and now the stems are taller than me. When it's ready we'll cut it, cure it and then turn it into frames."

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Mugabe Continues to Haunt Zimbabwe’s Quest for Aid

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Karin Brulliard - Jun. 08 (News Report) - JOHANNESBURG -- Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is on his first official visit in Washington this week with a decidedly difficult sales pitch. He is expected to request funding for a nation that he recently said remains so unfree and unstable that it is ’not a country where I can be...

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Jacob’s Ladder

Tue, 19 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Douglas Foster - May. 19 (Special Report) - Jacob Zuma is a former goatherd, a master of traditional Zulu stick-fighting, a resistance hero, a one-time spymaster, a graceful dancer, and the father of some 20 children. He has been tried for rape and indicted for corruption, racketeering, and fraud. He has been called the next Mandela and the next Mugabe, a black Jesus and a crass rube. By the time you read this, he will almost certainly be the new president of South Africa. Here is the story of his sometimes troubling rise—and what it portends for the future of his country.

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Somali fighters capture key town

Sun, 17 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Aljazeera - May. 17 (News Report) - Somali fighters have captured a strategically important town near the capital, Mogadishu. Witnesses said there were two hours of heavy fighting on Sunday before members of the al-Shabab group took Jowhar. The clashes 90km north of Mogadishu come as human rights workers say at least 68 people have been killed in fighting in the capital during the past 48 hours. Al Jazeera's Mohammed Adow, reporting from neighbouring Djibouti, said: "We can confirm the town of Jowhar has been captured by al-Shabab.

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Shell Faces Trial Over Nigerian Crimes Against Humanity Claims

Thu, 07 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Bloomberg - By David Glovin - May. 07 (News Report) - Shell faces a trial May 26 in Manhattan federal court of a lawsuit by three alleged victims of attacks and relatives of seven activists killed from 1990 to 1995, including the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa. The plaintiffs claim Shell’s Nigerian unit assisted the government in the abuse and murder of opponents of the company’s operations in the Niger Delta.

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Land grab: The race for the world's farmland

Sun, 03 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Margareta Pagano - May. 03 (News Report) - In Africa they are calling it the land grab, or the new colonialism. Countries hungry to secure their food supplies – including Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, South Korea (the world's third biggest importer of corn) China, India, Libya and Egypt – are at the forefront of a frantic rush to gobble up farmland all around the world, but mainly cash-starved Africa. Over the past few months, Saudi Arabian investors have paid $100m for an Ethiopian farm where they hope to grow wheat and barley, adding to the millions of acres they already own in the war-ravaged country, as well as in neighbouring Sudan. The Saudis also have land in Indonesia and Thailand for growing rice. China owns vast tracts of overseas land, mainly in Algeria and Zimbabwe, and one estimate suggests that more than a million ethnic Chinese farm workers will be living on the continent this year. Kenya and Tanzania have leased land while the Ugandans have been big sellers, allocating two million acres of land to Egypt for wheat and corn.

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Giraffe numbers in Kenya's Masai Mara down 95%

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Xan Rice - Apr. 22 (News Report) - The main reason for the population decrease was the rapid expansion of human settlements on the land next to the reserve. The area was traditionally used by wild animals for seasonal grazing but is increasingly being turned over to livestock and crop production.

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Obama Team Mulls Aims Of Somali Extremists

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Greg Jaffe, Karen DeYoung - Apr. 11 (News Report) - Senior Obama administration officials are debating how to address a potential terrorist threat to U.S. interests from a Somali extremist group, with some in the military advocating strikes against its training camps. But many officials maintain that uncertainty about the intentions of the al-Shabab organization dictates a more patient, nonmilitary approach.

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