The Nigerian film industry has overtaken Hollywood and closed the gap on India, the global leader in the number of movies produced each year, according to a new United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report released Tuesday.
Sudan and Chad have agreed to end hostilities and arrange a summit between their leaders in a move many believe is essential for peace-making efforts in Darfur. "Relations between Chad and Sudan should be normalised. If not, it will be difficult to find a solution to the Darfur crisis," former South African president Thabo Mbeki said on Saturday.
The Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague said on Monday that,there is sufficient evidence to let the charges of war crimes brought against former Liberian president Charles Taylor, stand. Taylor's defence had argued that chief prosecutor Stephen Rapp had insufficient evidence to lead to a conviction. The court said that there is sufficient evidence. Taylor's defence will start in several weeks. He is the first president of an African country to be charged with serious crimes under international law by an international criminal court.
Zimbabawe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai announced Friday that the unity government is broke and cannot meet the demands of unions for higher pay. In making this announcement, Tsvangirai said that the government will continue to pay workers $100 a month. Zimbabwe has appealed to Western donors, but governments like the U.S. and Britain would like to see more progress in implementing the power-sharing agreement.
South Africans are grappling with political independence for blacks who control less than 10% of the economy. That explains in part why voters chose to vote for "Lethu Mshini Wami" (Bring Me My Machine Gun.) To them; the struggle is far from over.
Fresh from his election victory in South Africa, President-elect, Jacob Zuma has turned his attention to selecting his cabinet. There is speculation that much respected Finance Minister, Trevor Manuel, will lead a powerful new government oversight body. Meanwhile, Zuma has said that there will be no surprises in the administration's program of action, after the Electoral Commission announced a landslide ANC victory, with the party winning 264 parliamentary seats.
A senior United Nations peacekeeping official today urged Member States to bolster the world body’s mission in the Central African Republic and Chad, known as MINURCAT, so that it can protect humanitarian operations from banditry, armed clashes and other threats.
Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday that should the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended the long-running north-south war in Sudan collapse, a humanitarian catastrophe could ensue. He urged the international community to remain focused on ensuring its implementation.
Plans are under way to release more child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a UN envoy said today at the end of a one-week visit, urging an end to ongoing violations against children in a humanitarian crisis engulfing the country’s east.
Monday, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), welcomed the release of nine men, who are members of the Senegalese AIDS awareness group. The men were imprisoned for their sexual orientation. In lauding the release of the men, UNAIDS underscored the importance of protecting the rights of men who have sex with men and the enforcement of anti-discrimination measures.
Neighboring nations Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have begun talks on the return home of their 150,000 nationals taking refuge in each other’s country, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Will South Africa go to dogs like Tanzania? Though he’s under poisonous cloud of suspicion, in South Africa, Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma is unstoppable as far as race to presidency is concerned. Many thinkers are worried. Zuma has openly showed how he anxiously wants to become South Africa’s President; he’s not laid down his plans for the nation!
Western media recently reported that at least 200 African immigrants died when their boat capsized as they were trying to make it to Lampedusa- Italy in their attempt to seek green pastures.The media did not tell us that another boat that was towed to safety was full of Palestinians, Indians and other non-African nationals!
The UN has said that over 54,000 people have been displaced by heavy floods to date, in Namibia. Since the beginning of 2009, torrential rains in the north-central and north-eastern regions of Namibia have swollen rivers to levels not recorded since 1963.
New fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) between militias has driven more than 30,000 people from their homes, the United Nations refugee agency said today. “The latest flare-up threatens to reverse the considerable progress made in the repatriation and resettlement of thousands of Congolese affected by previous conflicts in the area,” William Spindler, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said in Geneva.
The United Nations refugee agency expressed its shock at reports that hundreds of people are missing off the Libyan coast as they sought new lives in Europe, as the smuggling season gets under way in the Mediterranean.
A vast majority of the nearly 25,000 suspected meningitis cases and more than 15,000 deaths worldwide in the first three months of 2009 have occurred in the so-called “African meningitis belt,” hitting Nigeria and Niger the hardest, the United Nations health agency has reported.
The joint United Nations-African Union (AU) peacekeeping mission in Darfur, known as UNAMID, today helped airlift examination materials to remote secondary schools in the war-torn western region of Sudan.
A top United Nations humanitarian official today, urged the Government of Sudan to respect existing agreements and its own laws on the operation of relief groups in strife-torn Darfur, 13 of which have been ousted, resulting, he said, in “significant” threats to the dependent population.
The United Nations anti-crime agency and the African Union (AU) today launched a joint initiative to support an African plan to fight burgeoning traffic in illicit drugs and related criminal activity on the continent over the next five years.
On Wednesday March 3, 2009, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the President of Sudan, Africa’s largest country. This in itself is not amazing, given the zeal and selectivity with which the West has pursued and dragged Africans to court on various charges of genocide, recruiting child soldiers and rape, among others.
"..a ‘man-made’ disaster of cataclysmic proportions. It is continuing to decimate thousands while Mugabe’s bankrupt government watches haplessly. Whoever called the carnage ‘passive genocide” got it right!.."
On Saturday, Zimbabwe’s president seemed to be living up to the moniker. Robert Mugabe threw himself a A $250,000 party with 3,000 spectators celebrating his 85th year on this planet.
The murder of the president Joao Bernando Vieira and the Army chief on Monday raises questions about the nature of the instability in this African nation. The assassinations were committed gangland style – a bomb in a stairwell, and a rapid fire shootout – which is perhaps not so surprising in a country that has swiftly become a major transit hub for narcotics into Europe.
According to the UN Children's Fund, rape has been used as a weapon of war in DRC and an estimated 200,000 women and girls have been assaulted over the past 12 years. While sexual violence is rampant and prevalent throughout Congolese society, the area that has been most affected has been the eastern part of the country, particularly the Kivu region.
Halliburton, a major US engineering and military contractor has agreed to pay more than $500-million in penalties and fees to settle bribery allegations against one of its subsidiaries that operates in Nigeria. The alleged bribes took place over a decade, between 1994 and 2004.During part of that time, KBR’s parent company, Halliburton was headed by Dick Cheney, who stepped down as CEO in 2000 to become Vice President of the United States.
Despite of our political success and the increased number of mega black churches, millions of African Americans still live below the level of poverty, our teenage ladies are still having babies out of wedlock, our rap music still degrade our women, our homes are broken, our high school drop-out rate is enormous, our rate of imprisonment is staggering, our black on black crime is embarrassing, and our gang activity is increasing.
Wednesday’s swearing-in ceremony of Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, officiated by President Mugabe, put an end to 10 months of political stalemate, during which the country slid deeper into economic collapse, the inflation rate rose to nearly 300 million percent, unemployment rates rose to 90 percent, schools, hospitals and water systems ceased to function, and cholera in the capital city of Harare claimed the lives of over 3,400 people.
At the expiration of the February 14 deadline, the militants said fighters would attack facilities of oil companies in the region, naming Shell, Agip, Intel, the NLNG and ALSCON as the companies' installations would be targets.
In the wake of the global financial crisis, the heads of state of India, Brazil and South Africa gathered at New Delhi recently for the third IBSA summit.
