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A recent Chinese-African cotton agreement could usher in a new era for the African cotton industry -- but not in the short-term, say industry experts. Under the agreement, signed in December with four key cotton-producing African countries -- Benin, Mali, Chad and Burkina Faso (known as the C4) - China stated it would provide machinery, expertise and materials in a bid to increase and improve the quality of local production. At the signing ceremony in Geneva, Chinese commerce minister Chen Deming suggested this was a step towards outsourcing production to Africa. "In [the] longer term, we may relocate some of...

SNIPPET - quote: Dissemination *_is_* collection I always get a kick out of people who tell me I give away intelligence for free. What I do is watch how information moves. Keep in mind that the subject covered on this site are pretty darn esoteric by most standards. What kind of people, for example, even know who Oussama Salhab is? Answers include: Oussama Salhab, his family, friends, associates in and out of Hizballah, people he does business with, spies of various nations, etc. Yep. The barn is free, and so is the food.

Drug Enforcement Administration agents have raided an Oklahoma car dealership that the government suspects may be one of about 30 such businesses in the U.S. involved in funding the terrorist group Hezbollah. DEA agents say the car lot of Ace Auto Leasing in Tulsa is part of a huge network that is selling cars and drugs -- and then using the money to support terrorism against the U.S., myfoxphoenix.com reports. During Friday's raid, agents could be seen carryout out filing cabinets and other items. They also questioned employees and took inventory. "They're making big time money and it's going right...

Pope Benedict XVI Vatican City, Nov 18, 2011 / 01:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze says Pope Benedict’s upcoming visit to Benin will leave behind a positive and lasting legacy for all Africans. “Catholics, other Christians in Africa and, indeed, those who are not Christian are all concerned in this visit,” the cardinal told Vatican Radio on Nov. 17.Cardinal Arinze, 79, will accompany Pope Benedict on his three day visit to the small West African state which starts tomorrow. The Cardinal served as Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship until 2008 when he retired. The primary...

An oil tanker seized by pirates off the coast of the Niger Delta last week has been released, officials in Nigeria say. The vessel -- the MT Halifax -- was attacked near the oil city of Port Harcourt. The crew of 25, mainly Filipinos, were said to be safe and accounted for. The area has seen an increase in the number of hijackings of tankers as pirates target oil shipments moving out of Nigeria. In most cases the cargo of fuel is taken off before the ship and crew are released unharmed - unlike in Somalia where crews and their...

NEW YORK (AFP) – A dual US-Lebanese citizen has been extradited from Paraguay and charged with supporting Lebanon's Hezbollah militant force, US officials said Friday. Moussa Ali Hamdan, 38, appeared in court in Philadelphia following his extradition and has been charged with providing "material support to Hezbollah, a designated foreign terrorist organization," the federal prosecutor's office in Pennsylvania said in a statement. Hamdan was arrested by Paraguayan authorities June 15 on suspicion of supporting terrorism and was subsequently handed over to US custody. He is accused in the United States on 28 counts including conspiring to supply Hezbollah with proceeds...

Recent events in Tunisia, Lebanon and Egypt spell a dangerous new trend in the region. There have been major developments in Tunisia, Lebanon and Egypt, each of which is of tremendous importance. In Tunisia, a popular uprising fueled by unemployment, economic suffering and long-term discontent has overthrown the dictator, but not necessarily the dictatorship. In 55 years of independence, the country has been governed by two dictators, the current one being Zine al-Abedin Ben Ali, who has been president for 23 years and was a key power in the regime even before that. Is this going to spread? Does it...

(kreuz.net, Benin) Bishop Pascal N’Koué (51) of Natitingou in Benin has led his old Mass already since October 2003 in his Diocese. That can be read in his report on the third anniversary of the historical Motu Proprio 'Summorum Pontificum'.

COTONOU, Benin (AP) -- More than a hundred thousand people in the tiny West African nation of Benin have lost their savings in a Ponzi scheme run by a now-defunct company that appeared to be publicly endorsed by the country's president. The government said in a statement last month that more than 130,000 people gave their savings to Investment Consultancy and Computering Services. Together they lost more than $130 million, the statement said. The corporation was registered as a nonprofit computer service company and was operating illegally as a banking institution. ICC was forced to close July 1, and more...

Officials of the zone 5 police command Benin Edo State have arrested the head of a Christian gospel church in the state over an alleged involvement in human trafficking . The suspect Bishop Nosayaba Agbonavbare of the Messiah Gospel Church of Cherubim and Seraphim was arrested by the police weekend for alleged role in human tarfficking and prostitution of young girls in Italy and other European countries. But the suspect while speaking with journalists in Benin denied his involvement in the crime and attributed his fate to what he called a frame up by some aggrieved members of the church...

Enjoy your visit to Sanity Island The President, First Lady and their party are on a five-country African visit, until Feb. 21, 2008. Click on the banner below for further background and details. Press Briefing by Ambassador Jendayi Frazer (aboard Air Force One) Excerpt: I think that it's important to know that our -- that we have a major initiative that's intended to build the capacity of Africans, themselves, to respond to conflict. That's the Global Peace Operations Initiative. It's called GPOI. And that was an initiative that the President pushed the administration to develop. It started in 2005....

On February 3, 2006, it was reported that 15 of Belgium's Pandur armored personnel carriers were stolen, together with radio equipment and field kitchens. The equipment was meant for a Beninese battalion that is part of the UN force in the Congo.Thanks to some help from DID's Benelux reader David Vandenberghe, DID can bring you the details. In December a ship under the flag of Saint Kitts & Nevis (VRT's report was incorrect) left the Belgian port of Zeebrugge for Congo, chartered by Geodis under the auspices of the UN. The cargo ship never made it to its destination. Four...

The devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in the United States has given added urgency to Benin's plans to protect its coastline against erosion. The quick advance of the Atlantic Ocean is visible in the small West African nation. The fury of the sea waves have eaten up many homes, hundreds of beach residents have been forced to pack up and go, and experts are warning of catastrophe if vigorous action is not taken immediately. One great danger is that the country's main city, Cotonou, with a population of more than 500,000, lies below sea level - like New Orleans in...

COTONOU, Benin (Reuters) - When she was 8, Rachelle Akawe's aunt sent her from Benin to work as a domestic servant in Niger. After 10 years, Akawe finally returned home, her childhood gone and her dreams in tatters. "I wanted to be a lawyer. Now at 26, I am learning to read and write," she said. "When you are a child slave, you do not have a choice ... you always feel abandoned ... you have no future. It stays with you for the rest of your life." Akawe's tale is unfortunately common in Benin, a tiny West African nation...

Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly. -------- snip! ---------- Wilson's assertions -- both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information -- were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report. ...

Utman & Kokuo Chambers Solicitors & Advocates. 06 BP 1409 Akpakpa Dodomey, Cotonou - Benin Republic. Tel/Fax:+229-601-480. Dear [Tolerance Sucks Rocks], I am Barrister John Kokuo, an attorney at law. First I must solicit your confidence in this transaction.Though I know that a transaction of this magnitude will make any one apprehensive and worried, but I am assuring you that all will be well at the end of the day. A deceased client of mine, Mr Will Petrie, hereinafter, referred to as my clientele,who was a contractor with Emelite gold mining company here in Benin, a national of your country,...

Benin official offers apology for nation's role in slavery MOBILE, Ala. (AP) -- An official of the Republic of Benin has offered an apology to students at a Mobile school for his country's participation in the slave trade. In 1859, Benin, on Africa's west coast, sold 116 slaves to a Mobile sailor aboard a ship called the Clotilde - the last slave ship to arrive in America. Slavery was still legal in the United States at that time, but importing slaves was not. Simon Pierre Adovelande apologized Tuesday to the students at the Mobile County Training School. Thirty of...

How the French Plunder Africa France's unchallenged political, economic, and military domination of its former sub-Saharan African colonies is rooted in a currency, the CFA franc. Created in 1948 to help France control the destiny of its colonies, fourteen countries--Benin, Burkina-Faso, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Bissau Guinea, and Chad--maintained the franc zone even after they gained independence decades ago. In exchange for France guaranteeing the CFA franc's convertibility, these countries agreed to deposit 65% of their foreign exchange reserves in a special account within the French Treasury and granted to...

Cotonou - The voice and data recorders from a Boeing 727 that crashed in the west African state of Benin on Christmas Day have been sent to France for examination, police sources said Tuesday. A Boeing 727 operated by Union des Transports Africains (UTA), which is registered in Guinea, crashed into the sea on takeoff from Cotonou, the main city in Benin, killing 139 of the 161 people on board. Most of the passengers were Lebanese expatriates returning home for the holidays. A police source in Cotonou told journalists that the black boxes were sent at the weekend to Paris...

DAKAR, Senegal -- American authorities are investigating whether a Boeing 727 shattered in a deadly crash Dec. 25 off West Africa was the same jet that vanished in Angola in 2003, setting off a worldwide search, a U.S. State Department spokesman said Friday. Also, a Canadian humanitarian pilot said he saw a 727 with the missing Angola jet's tail number at an airport in Guinea in June, a month after the jet's disappearance. The plane's old tail number was not fully covered, and the plane was reregistered in Guinea and flown by Lebanese-owned Union des Transports Africains, pilot Bob Strothers...

Was Plane That Vanished From Angola the Same One That Crashed off Benin on Christmas Day? ELLEN KNICKMEYER Associated Press Writ By Nafi Diouf and Published: Jan 2, 2004 DAKAR, Senegal (AP) - American authorities are investigating whether a Boeing 727 shattered in a deadly Christmas Day crash off West Africa was the same jet that vanished in Angola last year, setting off a worldwide search, a U.S. State Department spokesman said Friday. Also, a Canadian humanitarian-flight pilot told The Associated Press he saw a 727 with the missing Angola jet's tail number at Guinea's airport in June - a...

By NAFI DIOUF and ELLEN KNICKMEYER, Associated Press Writers DAKAR, Senegal - American authorities are investigating whether a Boeing 727 shattered in a deadly Christmas Day crash off West Africa was the same jet that vanished in Angola last year, setting off a worldwide search, a U.S. State Department spokesman said Friday. AP Photo   Also, a Canadian humanitarian-flight pilot told The Associated Press he saw a 727 with the missing Angola jet's tail number at Guinea's airport in June — a month after the jet's disappearance. The plane's old tail number was not fully covered, and the plane was...

The doomed UTA Flight 141 may have been a Boeing 727 that was stolen from Luanda airport in Angola in May, or a U.S.-registered aircraft that had undergone an exterior makeover at Beirut International Airport, where its technical worthiness had been questioned. According to Wednesday's edition of An Nahar, neither of these theories has yet been proven, leaving officials scrambling to distance themselves from Lebanon's worst civil aviation catastrophe, even though it did not occur on its soil. As more intrigues unfolded in the case of the Christmas Day crash of the Beirut-bound flight from Benin, the last batch of...

15 UN peacekeepers among dead By DULUE MBACHU Benin plane crash toll rises to 128 Lebanese passenger Nabil Hashim laughs with his brother Ali, Saturday in a hospital in Beirut, Lebanon. Hashim is one of the more than 20 people who survived Thursday's plane crash into the sea near Benin; 161 people were on board. (AP/Mahmoud Tawil) COTONOU, Benin (AP) - Fifteen army officers from Bangladesh returning from UN peacekeeping duty in West Africa were among at least 138 people killed when a jet clipped a building and crashed into the sea shortly after takeoff on Christmas Day, officials said...

<p>COTONOU, Benin - A jetliner clipped a building during takeoff and crashed into the sea off the West African nation of Benin on Thursday, killing at least 82 people, mostly Lebanese on their way home for the holidays, the transport minister said.</p>

At least 90 people were killed when a Boeing 727 crowded with Lebanese families heading for holiday visits in Beirut crashed into the sea after take off from the tiny west African state of Benin, officials said. The aircraft, operated by Lebanese-owned Union Transport Africaines (UTA), carried 156 passengers and seven crew as it tried to take off from Cotonou airport shortly after its scheduled 2:55 pm (1355 GMT) departure time, a government official said.