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Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Dec 9, 2009 / 12:08 am (CNA).- In what the local vicar general called acts of “barbarism,” a priest and a nun have been killed in two separate attacks in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Fr. Father Daniel Cizimya Nakamaga, 51, was shot in the head early Sunday when gunmen broke into the presbytery of Kabare, several miles outside the eastern city of Bukavu.Two days later attackers struck a Trappist monastery just north of Bukavu, killing Sr. Denise Kahambu.A third person died when police trying to catch the killers fired upon a car containing...

(CNN) -- Rape has turned into a weapon of war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with the number of attacks on women having grown threefold over the past few years, human rights activists said in October. Anneke van Woudenberg, senior researcher with Human Rights Watch, told Christiane Amanpour that 200,000 women and girls have been raped in Eastern Congo since 1998, and the condition of women has become more dire as the Congolese army has pressed a military campaign against armed groups in the countryside. "Rape is being used as a weapon of war in eastern Congo. So we...

Alarmed by the sharp spike in sexual violence against women, the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday urged governments and the United Nations itself to crack down on the soldiers and civilians who rape and torture with impunity. "As I have said many times over many years, the role and rights of women in todays world is a critical core concern of foreign policy," said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who convened the council after meeting victims of sexual torture on her recent visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Protecting vulnerable women and girls, she told the council,...

Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo, 41, is taking legal action claiming Hergé's controversial Tintin In The Congo is propaganda for colonialism and amounts to "racism and xenophobia". "Tintin's little (black) helper is seen as stupid and without qualities. It makes people think that blacks have not evolved," he said. Mr Mbutu Mondondo launched a case in Belgium two years ago for symbolic damages of one euro from Tintin's Belgian publishers Moulinsart, and demanded the book be withdrawn from the market.

Congo is demanding 3038 billion norwegian kroner (500 billion US dollars) in compensation for an alleged Norwegian plot involving the Norwegian king and the Ugandans against the state of Congo.

A close aide to Hillary Clinton has dismissed as "psychobabble" the fuss over the US secretary of state's barbed response to a questioner asking for her famous husband's opinion instead of her own. Clinton ignored questions about the episode as she wound down a marathon African trip on Thursday. Clinton had reacted strongly earlier this week when a Congolese student in Kinshasa asked her for the opinion of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, about an international economic issue. "Wait. You want me to tell you what my husband thinks?" a wide-eyed Clinton asked on Tuesday in response. "My husband...

Hillary Clinton lost her cool during a Q&A when a student asked her what her husband thought about an international financial matter. US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, jokes with patients and staff of the Heal Africa clinic in Goma, Congo Tuesday Aug. 11, 2009. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, left, waves at people as housing project manger Patricia Matolengwe, right, looks on during a visit at a housing project in Khayelitsha, on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa, Saturday, Aug. 8, 2009. On a mission to improve ties with Africa's most prosperous nation, U.S. Secretary...

<p>WASHINGTON – The State Department struggled Tuesday to explain Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's face-off with a Congolese student and suggested that the questioner's nervousness sparked the outburst with the mention of her husband's name.</p>

In Congo, Hillary Clinton Suggests Government Ownership of Industry Would be a Good Thing Wednesday, August 12, 2009 By Adam Brickley (CNSNews.com) - In a television interview Monday in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested that it would be a good thing for the government to take an ownership interest in industry.

<p>KINSHASA, Congo -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's temper flared on Monday when a Congolese university student asked her for her husband's thinking on an international financial matter.</p> <p>A week after former President Bill Clinton traveled to North Korea to secure the release of two detained American journalists and stole the limelight from the start of his wife's first trip to Africa, Clinton was clearly displeased by the question at town hall forum in Kinshasa.</p>

It was around 11 p.m. when armed men burst into Kazungu Ziwa’s hut, put a machete to his throat and yanked down his pants. Mr. Ziwa is a tiny man, about four feet, six inches tall. He tried to fight back, but said he was quickly beaten down.“Then they raped me,” he said. “It was horrible, physically. I was dizzy. My thoughts just left me.” For years, the thickly forested hills and clear, deep lakes of eastern Congo have been a reservoir of atrocities. Now, it seems, there is another growing problem: men raping men. -- Aid workers struggle to...

BANGKOK, Thailand - A Russian dubbed the "Merchant of Death" for allegedly supplying weapons to Africa's bloody conflicts over power and diamonds was arrested Thursday in Thailand on suspicion of conspiring to smuggle guns to Colombia's leftist rebels. Viktor Bout, 41, whose dealings reportedly inspired a 2005 movie about the illicit arms trade, was arrested at U.S. request in his hotel room in Bangkok, said police Lt. Gen. Pongpat Chayapan. Bout had eluded arrest for years and was finally seized after a four-month sting organized by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. In New York, federal authorities unsealed a criminal complaint...

The Russian parliament and media refer to him merely as a “Russian businessman.” But to much of the rest of the world, Viktor Bout is known as the “Merchant of Death,” the most notorious member of the dark fraternity of global weapons traffickers who arm terrorist organizations, as well as the tyrannical regimes and brutal warlords and militias responsible for horrendous genocidal slaughters over the past two decades. Since his March 2008 arrest in Bangkok, Thailand, in an elaborate U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration sting, Viktor Bout has been in Bangkok’s Klong Prem Special Prison awaiting trial. The U.S. Department of...

Political Science 101 May 18, 2009 — Ideally, science should be non-partisan and stay out of politics.  That ideal is not always met, as the following recent stories illustrate. The intellectual president:  New Scientist published a commentary, “Hail to the intellectual president,” by Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science.  Opening line: “If you liked George W. Bush, it wasn’t because of his brain.”  Ronald Reagan, John McCain and Sarah Palin were other targets labeled anti-intellectual in the article, along with McCarthy and Eisenhower.  Obama, by contrast, is “the intellectual president,” in his opinion.  “With the coming of...

Note: The following text is a quote: YOU ARE HERE: Home > Reports > Consular Affairs Bulletins > Report Warden Message: Republic of Congo Rockets Fired; Electrical Storm CONSULAR AFFAIRS BULLETINS Sub-Saharan Africa - Congo (Republic) 14 Apr 2009 Printer Friendly Email Article RELATED REPORTS 26 Mar 2009 WARDEN MESSAGE: CONGO INCREASES SECURITY PRESENCE FOR FRENCH VISIT 19 Mar 2009 WARDEN MESSAGE: FUNERAL PROCESSION, LARGE CROWDS EXPECTED 21 Jan 2009 WARDEN MESSAGE: CHADIAN NATIONAL AIRLINE, AIR TOUMAI, PROHIBITED FOR U.S. EMBASSY EMPLOYEES 14 Jan 2009 REPUBLIC OF CONGO 2009 CRIME & SAFETY REPORT U.S. Embassy Brazzaville issued the following Warden...

Debra Haffner delights in the reactions she gets when strangers ask her what she does for a living. "I'm a minister and a sexologist," she says. They blink their eyes and try to reconcile what seems to them to be two opposing forces. Religion in the U.S., after all, seems to have quite a reputation for trying to stifle the joy of sex. So how could she joyfully live in these two worlds of church and sexuality? "Our sexuality and our spirituality are intimately connected," Haffner told a crowd at the First Unitarian Society in Madison earlier this month. At...

Monster Fish of the Congo

Growing numbers of children in the Democratic Republic of Congo are being labeled as witches, and others face abduction by armed groups for use as soldiers, a United Nations watchdog said Friday. The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child called on Congolese authorities to better protect young people in their country, including those left orphaned by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. "Children, contrary to being treated primarily as victims, have been arrested, detained and tried in military courts for military offences and other crimes allegedly committed while they were in armed forces or groups," it said. Street children in the...

KINSHASA, Congo – More than 1,500 Rwandan troops crossed the border into eastern Congo on Tuesday to join Congolese forces in an effort to oust Hutu rebels who participated in Rwanda's genocide and have long been at the heart of the region's conflict, officials said.

UN appalled by Ugandan rebel militia’s trail of devastation in DR Congo 16 January 2009 – The Ugandan rebel militia terrorizing villagers in north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has killed over 500 people and forced some 115,000 to flee their homes since September, the United Nations refugee agency reported today, adding it was “shocked” by the state of survivors remaining in the area. The attacks have prompted condemnation from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Security Council, which today voiced its grave concern at the scale of the atrocities and emphasized that those responsible must be brought to justice....

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – War crimes prosecutors accused former Congolese vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba on Monday of using systematic rape to terrorize civilians suspected of supporting rebels during a bloody power struggle in neighboring Central African Republic.

Braving bitter cold, tens of thousands marched in London last weekend to protest against Israel’s attack on Gaza. Brought together by the Stop the War Coalition, the demonstrators wanted an immediate ceasefire. There were anti-Israel protests elsewhere in the world. Given the media coverage, the Israel-Palestine conflict and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan might seem to be the most devastating conflicts in the world today. This coalition judiciously chooses the wars it opposes. It was formed on 21 September 2001 to oppose the US-led military response following the attacks in the US 10 days earlier. Not surprisingly, the coalition...

Rebels from the Lord’s Resistance Army have murdered about 500 people in a series of massacres in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The gunmen, who terrorised Northern Uganda for more than 20 years, have a turned a remote area of north-eastern Congo into their new killing ground. An offensive mounted by Uganda’s army appears to have scattered the insurgents, who are now carrying out brutal revenge attacks on innocent villagers. Scores of people were hacked and burned to death in a massacre inside a church on Boxing Day. Since then, mass killings have taken place in the towns of Duru,...

Uganda's army has accused the Lord's Resistance Army rebels of hacking to death 45 civilians in a Catholic church in the Democratic Republic of Congo.Capt Chris Magezi said the scene was "horrendous... dead bodies of mostly women and children cut in pieces". The attack happened on 26 December. A rebel spokesman has denied responsibility for the killings, which follow a collapse in the peace process. The UN says at least 189 people were killed in several attacks last week. Some reports say more than 100 people were killed in the church alone. The armies of Uganda, South Sudan and DR...

A deadly Ebola outbreak in the central Democratic Republic of Congo has killed nine and infected 21, the UN-sponsored radio Okapi quoted the health minister as saying Thursday.

A continent that withstood European colonialism welcomes Chinese conquest. By Peter Hitchens It is the optimism of Africa that is so heartbreaking. In the alleyways of townships where human waste dribbles among the potholes, in mud villages where tiny homes cluster round anthills, the same scene replays. Out of dim hovels come scrubbed children in dazzlingly clean uniforms, hurrying to disciplined schools where they hope to better themselves. On Sundays, platoons of beautifully dressed, joyous women make their way proudly to full churches, carrying themselves like royalty. In the great cities, a thousand tiny businesses compete good-naturedly for scanty trade....

General Laurent Nkunda is a contradiction. An urbane jungle-dweller; an evangelical Christian warlord; a cerebral military strategist who unleashes awful brutality; a tribal protector and father of six who recruits children into his ranks; a patriot who wages war and steals the resources of the Democratic Republic of Congo. As ever, General Nkunda, 41, has been justifying his assaults by saying that he must protect minority ethnic Tutsis. This week his 4,000 well-trained, disciplined troops marched from their mountain strongholds past the volcanoes and villages of North Kivu before stopping a few miles from Goma, a dusty provincial town bloated...

BRITISH troops may be sent to the Democratic Republic of Congo as thousands of refugees try to return to their homes in the war-torn east of the country. More than 220,000 civilians have been forced to flee North Kivu province in the past two months, and last week rebel troops broke United Nations peacekeeping lines and marched towards the Rwandan border. As Foreign Secretary David Miliband flew to the Congolese capital of Kinshasa yesterday, Foreign Office minister Lord Mark Malloch-Brown warned British troops could be called in to support UN peacekeepers. The UN, which has its largest force – 17,000...

CONGOLESE government soldiers swept through the besieged strategic town of Goma yesterday, looting shops and killing the citizens they were meant to protect. Frightened people who crouched in their homes and improvised refugee camps had been expecting the violence to come from the rebel Tutsi guerrilla army, which shelled Goma overnight and halted its advance about ten miles to the north and east of the town. Instead, the bloodletting came from the retreating Congolese government army, whose angry fighters, many of them drunk, looted homes and shops as panic gripped the town on the northern shore of Lake Kivu. One...

Regional war fear as 50000 homeless in Congo in two days Times Online - 29 Oct, 2008 Congolese government forces are fleeing the eastern capital of Goma as Rwandan-backed rebels press towards the town, threatening a lethal confrontation with United Nations peacekeepers and the prospect of all out regional war. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article5039595.ece

GOMA, Congo – Thousands of protesters attacked the United Nations' eastern Congo headquarters on Monday, expressing anger that a U.N. peacekeeping force has been unable to protect them from a rebel attack that has forced tens of thousands to flee. Protesters lobbied stones and rocks over the wall surrounding the U.N. offices in the provincial capital of Goma. U.N. spokeswoman Sylvie van den Wildenberg said cars were being damaged and windows were being shattered.

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Poachers in Congo have killed a fifth of the elephants in Africa's oldest national park this year as China buys more ivory, the park's director said on Friday. Rwandan rebels have killed seven Savannah elephants in the past 10 days alone in the Virunga National Park, along Congo's eastern border with Rwanda and Uganda, Emmanuel de Merode told Reuters

JOHANNESBURG (Business Day) -- Although Metorex did not have a piece of paper confirming there was no problem with its mining titles, it hoped the fact that it had built mines in Congo would prevent it from losing what had been granted, he said... ...The government’s recent contract with China to provide infrastructure investment in return for resources concessions should not provoke feelings of insecurity among other investors, she said.

NAIROBI // Clashes in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo last week between government forces and a rebel militia threatened to plunge the region back into all-out war. The violence also threatened vulnerable wildlife including the rare mountain gorilla. Fighting erupted yesterday when rebels from the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) clashed with the Congolese army near the Ugandan border. The two sides exchanged machine gun and mortar fire. At least 18 rebel soldiers were wounded while 50 government troops were injured, news agencies reported. The fighting is the worst since a peace deal was signed in...

The new census tallied more than 125,000 western gorillas in two adjacent areas in the northern part of the country, covering an area of 18,000 square miles (47,000 square kilometers). Previous estimates from the 1980s placed the entire population of western lowland gorillas, which occur in seven Central African nations, at fewer than 100,000. Since then, however, scientists had believed that this number had dwindled by at least half, due to hunting and disease... The new census was the result of intensive fieldwork carried out by the Bronx Zoo-based WCS and the Government of Republic of Congo. The researchers combed...

<p>Wildlife researchers said Tuesday that they've discovered 125,000 western lowland gorillas deep in the forests of the Republic of Congo, calling it a major increase in the animal's estimated population.</p> <p>The Wildlife Conservation Society, based at New York's Bronx Zoo, and the Republic of Congo said their census counted the newly discovered gorillas in two areas of the northern part of the country covering 18,000 square miles. Previous estimates, dating to the 1980s, put the number of western lowland gorillas at less than 100,000.</p>

Russian Mogul's Planes Took al-Qaida, Taliban Gold To Sudan9-3-2 Planes owned by Russian businessman Viktor Bout have been used to fly al-Qaida and Taliban gold to Sudan in recent weeks, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. Several shipments of gold were delivered by boat from Karachi, Pakistan, to either Iran or the United Arab Emirates, the newspaper said, citing unidentified European intelligence officials. From there, the gold was flown on charted planes to the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, where al-Qaida has broad business contacts, the paper said. European officials believe the gold was transported by Air Bas, an airline set up...

The entire world may not have sat up and taken notice in the last week, and that is probably just fine with China, which has just made a major move into central Africa. With its agreement to lend $5 billion to Congo, what might have often looked like a grab-bag approach to the African continent by a country with only sporadic involvement there has finally taken on a distinct outline. .............................................. It must be said that China has chosen a daunting proving ground for its long-held ideas about engagement with the developing world, which could be summed up as "it's...

Internal U.N. documents show investigators "ignored, minimized or shelved" numerous charges of gold smuggling and arms trading by its peacekeepers in Congo, an international rights organization said Friday. Allegations of such misconduct by peacekeepers in the war-ravaged Central African country first surfaced more than a year ago. The United Nations launched investigations and has since said it found no evidence of arms transfers. It did establish that some Pakistani troops serving as U.N. peacekeepers had provided support and security to foreign businessmen involved in gold smuggling and that some Indian military personnel bought counterfeit gold. But New York-based Human Rights...

London - The United Nations has covered up crimes by UN troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is a claim made by the BBC, which says that it has confidential sources within the UN. The BBC says that in 2007, the UN conducted an investigation into accusations that some of its Indian and Pakistani peacekeepers had smuggled gold and ivory and sold arms to Congolese militias. The UN concluded that a peacekeeper had smuggled gold but that there was no evidence of arms trading. But the BBC is now reporting that the UN employees who conducted the investigation...

The UN again commits human rights violations in the Congo; and ignores Zimbabwean atrocities. Every once in a while a story crosses the wires that just has to stir outrage. The latest comes from the United Nations and their peacekeeping mission in the Congo. The Congo as you know is a nation rife with violence. So the United Nations sends in peacekeepers from India and Pakistan. Guess what happens next? If you guessed the looting of the nation and the arming of one force against another, you’d be right.

Penis theft panic hits city.. Wed Apr 23, 2008 1:06pm EDT   5:13am EST   By Joe BavierKINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of...

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft. Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur. Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of...

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft. Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur. Rumours of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of...

GOMA, Congo (Reuters) - A Congolese airliner crashed into a market district in the eastern city of Goma on Tuesday, killing at least 33 people and injuring 80, the government said. The Hewa Bora Airways McDonnell Douglas DC-9 ploughed into a crowded neighbourhood of Goma, capital of Democratic Republic of Congo's eastern North Kivu Province, after bad weather forced the pilot to abort take-off. Government spokesman Esdras Kambale said in a broadcast on national television that 33 people were killed and 80 injured in the crash, but gave no further details. A local governor and the Congolese Red Cross had...

Excellent Video: Think of the Katangese as Israel, and Patrice Lumumba and the Central Congolese government as the PLO/PA/HAMAS. The UN, of course, plays the same role as ever...to bring about a world government dominated by socialists and communists. Description: UN troops wage an unprovoked war against anti-communist Katanga in 1960 and 1962. The last bastion of the free market in the Congo was decimated by UN forces in 1963 to bring it under Congolese communist control. If you don't want to watch the entire thing (an early 1960's documentary), fast forward to the end where Katanga's ill-fated and heroic...

KINSHASA, Congo -- A U.N.-backed body assigned to curb the sale of conflict diamonds suspended the Republic of Congo from the legitimate diamond trade on accusations the African nation sent millions of dollars in smuggled gems onto the world market. The suspension followed a May 31-June 4 mission to Republic of Congo that found the country was dealing in millions of carats of smuggled diamonds from other African countries. The West African country was sending the gems through the lesser diamond centers of Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates to avoid rigorous controls at the world's diamond hub, Antwerp, Belgium,...

DAKAR, Senegal - Some 45,000 people die each month in Congo as the world's deadliest humanitarian crisis has failed to improve despite five years of relative peace in the Central African nation, according to a report released Tuesday. An estimated 5.4 million Congolese died between 1998 and April 2007 because of conflict, most from the rampant disease and food shortages stemming from fighting, the report said. The study found that life is still alarmingly precarious for Congolese despite the end of the 1998-2002 conflict that pulled in armies from half a dozen surrounding countries, and the country's first free and...

Zimbabweans can expect to spend more time in the dark after the Mozambique power utility company...suspended supplies to Zimbabwe over an outstanding debt of US$26 million. This development was confirmed in a report in the state run Herald newspaper. Zimbabwe’s power imports have been falling for various reasons. South Africa’s Eskom has stopped supplies claiming "some operational hitches" at its power-generating plants. The Democratic Republic of Congo has also stopped power supplies to Zimbabwe because of ‘problems with it’s transmission network.’ Analysts say the real reason these countries have cut Zimbabwe off is because of unpaid debts. Critics say the...

GOMA, Congo, Jan 3 (Reuters) - Intense fighting between government and militia forces in eastern Congo has led to a surge in rape by fighters from all sides, women and doctors say. Renewed hostilities between the army and troops loyal to renegade Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda have stoked a volatile crucible of violence in Congo's North Kivu province, where traditional Mai Mai fighters and Rwandan Hutu militia also roam. "I was leaving the market and I ran into FDLR on the road. They robbed me of everything and then four men raped me," Francoise Mwamasirika, a 45-year-old mother said of...