Latest North Africa News
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Nigeria Akwa Ibom Orders Closure of Illegal Motor-Parks
Uyo - The Akwa Ibom Government has directed operators of commercial vehicles and tricycles to relocate to government- owned motor-parks across Uyo so as to check criminal activities. The Commissioner for Transport, Mr Bassey Abia gave the directive while interacting with newsmen in Uyo on Thursday. Abia said that the relocation should be carried out immediately. "A tax force committee ...
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Armed Tuareg and Arab groups clash in northern Mali
Tuareg separatists and local Arab-led gunmen, only days after the African country won a $4.2 billion aid pledge to help it recover from a conflict with Islamists affiliated ...
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Liberia Liberias Legislative Branch Urged to Summon EPS Boss Over Terrorists Journalists
The Plenary of Liberia's House of Representatives have been asked to invite the Director of the Executive Protection Service (EPS) to answer to questions of terroristic threat against Journalists. Two separate communications were written by Representatives Munah Pelham Youngblood (CDC-District #9 Montserrado County) and Richmond Anderson (LP-District #12 Montserrado County). Defending ...
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Morocco to harness the wind in energy hunt
TARFAYA, Morocco (AFP) - Morocco is ploughing ahead with a programme to boost wind energy production, particularly in the southern Tarfaya region, where Africa's largest wind farm is set to open in 2014.The kingdom, which has no hydrocarbon reserves of its own, hopes to cover 42 percent of its energy needs with renewable sources by 2020, and has launched a plan to produce 4,000 ...
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Liberia Woman Faints - During Police Sand Mining Raid
A woman who claimed to be owner of molded blocks Thursday fainted in the hands of residents of the 11TH Street Community after police confiscated several pieces of her blocks in a sand mining raid instituted by the Ministry of Lands and Mining. "Please don't carry my blocks. I have documents to prove that I molded these blocks from river sand," the weeping woman said as she ...
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Nigeria Rebels Could Face War Crimes Charges for Population Cleansing - UN Rights Office
Members of Boko Haram and other extremist groups in Nigeria could face war crimes charges for deliberate acts leading to ethnic and religious cleansing, the top United Nations human rights official said today. In a press briefing in Geneva, the spokesperson for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Rupert Colville, reiterated calls on Boko Haram and other extremist ...
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NYT Morgue overflowing as Nigerias dirty war rages
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — A fresh load of battered corpses arrived, 29 of them in a routine delivery by the Nigerian military to the hospital morgue here. Unexpectedly, three bodies started moving. "They were not properly shot," recalled a security official here. "I had to call the J.T.F." -- the military's joint task force -- "and they gunned them ...
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Tunisia Setting Election Date Helps Ease Tensions - Bouchamaoui
Tunis - Chairwoman of the Tunisian Industry, Trade and Handicrafts Union (UTICA) Wided Bouchamaoui underlined on Thursday that it is necessary to set the schedule of the next elections and complete the drafting and the promulgation of the Constitution to ease tensions in the country. During the inaugural session of the second round of the National Dialogue Conference organised by the Tunisian ...
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Census finds Christianity in Britain losing ground
Almost 10 percent of young people in the United Kingdom now identify themselves as Muslim and fewer than half as Christian, 2011 Census figures show. The new analysis of the 2011 data released Friday shows Christianity has been losing ground even faster than thought among those born in the country, The Daily Telegraph reported. A report last year said the Census found 4.1 million Christians, ...
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France to buy American drones for Mali operation
War Two of America's medium-altitude Reaper drones will be sold to France as backup for the country's operations against Islamist rebels in Mali. The news comes from the 'Air et Cosmos' specialist magazine, which reported online that a deal had been reached between France and the United States for the sale of two non-armed MQ-9 units. The French air force had already ...
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Hollande holds talks with Annan on Mali
French President Francois Hollande received Thursday former Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan at the Elysee Palace, to share views on the situation in Mali and the UN's peacekeeping mission in the West African country. The meeting came just "a few days after the UN Security Council's unanimous adoption of the resolution 2100" which authorized the creation of ...
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Liberias Johnson-Sirleaf defends governance record
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf on Friday defended her government's record on good governance and transparency, following an independent audit that cast doubt on her anti-corruption ...
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South Sudan The Army Accused of Looting and Attacking its Own People
South Sudan is not quite two years old. The world’s newest country was created in July 2011, after decades of fighting a civil war against the north. But it is now facing its own internal rebellion. The army there is being accused of terrorizing its own people in the eastern state of Jonglei. Caelin Briggs is with Refugees International in Juba, the capital of South Sudan. She’s ...
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Militants Turn Nigeria into Christian Killing Field
Last year more Christians were killed in Nigeria than any other country. The onslaught of bombings gave Nigeria the sad distinction of being the nation with the highest Christian death toll. More than 900 Christians reportedly were killed in Nigeria in 2012, all victims of the Boko Haram group and other Islamic militants. "They are so radical they don't even spare Muslims. If Muslims ...
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Nigeria Police Repel Hoodlums Attack In Daura Katsina State
By SaharaReporters, New York There are conflicting reports emanating from Daura, Katsina State, about the overnight confrontation there between security forces and Boko Haram sect members, with the latest saying that, following an "exceptional display of courage and gallantry," repelled the armed militants, killing five of them. In an earlier report today, SaharaReporters learned ...
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Nigeria bombs Islamists U.S. sounds alarm
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Nigerian warplanes struck militant camps in the northeast on Friday in a major push against an Islamist insurgency, drawing a sharp warning from the United States to respect human rights and not harm ...
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Medical student brings healthcare to rural Ghana
Medical school graduates often have their pick of job opportunities in well-outfitted urban hospitals in Ghana. Meanwhile, the ratio of doctors serving the population of the rural Upper East region is just one for every 35,010 citizens. One student is defying trends of urban migration to bring much-needed care to these remote ...
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Mali Prospects for Improved Human Rights
Whether it concerns training the Malian Army in the laws of war (an aspect included in the European Union's training program to be extended to four battalions of the Army), or the fight against corruption (which played a significant role in giving rise to the current crisis and deprives the country of resources required for respecting social rights), or the setting up of a "truth, ...
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UN chief appoints head of peacekeeping mission in Mali
Albert Gerard Koenders of the Netherlands has been appointed to head the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission (MINUSMA) in Mali. Photo: UNOCI/K. ...
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Political change on Algeria horizon as old guard succumbs to old age
North Africa and the Sahel and is an important bulwark against terrorist groups linked to Al-Qaeda. Any further instability in North Africa, where Tunisia, Libya and Egypt are already struggling, could embolden the armed militants. So far Algeria has been buoyed by high oil prices and, with almost $200 billion in foreign reserves, it has spent lavishly to try to buy off the discontent. But ...
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Bahrain Takes Part in Donors’ Conference on Mali
Luxemburg, May 17. (BNA) -- The Kingdom of Bahrain took part in the international donor conference to aid development in Mali held recently in Belgium, Brussels. Bahraini Ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium and the European Union Ahmed Mohammed Al Dossary led the Kingdom's delegation to the conference. The conference, which followed another similar meeting held in Addis Ababa, ...
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Nigeria states of emergency | Editorial
Nigeria , has made little secret of the fact that it regards itself not only at war with the Nigerian state, and its security forces, but its people too. It has bombed churches, mosques, carried out assassinations, kidnapping, and mass assaults. On a single day in January last year, it killed 185 people across Kano. As the years have gone by, the ferocity, ambition and scale of its attacks have ...
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Tunisia hardline Islamists in standoff over Sunday gathering
But the group, under fugitive leader Saif-Allah Benahssine, has said it would defy the order and go ahead with its annual gathering on Sunday, which it expects to attract some 40,000 ...
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Official Nigeria military attacks suspected Islamic extremist camps in northeast killing 21
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria - Soldiers in Nigeria launched their first raid against suspected Islamic extremists in a campaign to take back control of the nation's northeast, killing at least 21 people, a security official said Friday. The fighting happened Thursday in the Sambisa Forest Reserve, just south of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, which soldiers previously targeted hunting for ...
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Ex-warlord Prince Johnson quits his own party in Liberia
MONROVIA, Liberia - Prince Johnson, a former warlord-turned-politician who is best known for having videotaped himself overseeing the torture of Liberia's ex-president, announced Friday he is quitting the political party he founded. For years since the end of Liberia's civil war, Johnson has tried to erase his violent past, first becoming an evangelical pastor, and later running for ...
Sudan Spotlight
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Sudan and the South
In January of 2011 the future of Sudan as a unified country will be decided. A referendum is due to be held in South Sudan that will decide whether the regional government of the area, which accounts for around a third of Sudan, should break away from the rest of the country and become a fully-independent nation.
South Sudan has a long history of being at odds with the rest of the country and this conflict of interests has been attributed in Western media to the fact that northern Sudan is primarily Muslim and Arab dominated, whereas South Sudan is made up of indigenous African cultures and ethnicities, this view has been reinforced by the ongoing violence in Darfur, a region of Sudan where a genocide is occurring and has led to President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan being charged with war crimes by the International Court at The Hague, a charge that the government in Khartoum categorically denies. Read more
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