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Israeli diamond merchants active in West Africa, responding to the report in Haaretz on Monday that defense officials are worried Hezbollah terrorists will target Israeli communities there, said the Lebanese movement enjoyed the strong support of locals. "The big problem for Israelis in West Africa is that there are countries whose diamond industry is controled by Lebanese locals, a majority of whom openly support Hezbollah," a source in the Israeli diamond business said Monday. "In effect, these are countries which are known as Hezbollah states," he added. Israeli companies that deal in diamonds, agriculture, communications and security operate mainly in...

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...

"Homosexuality in my context would constitute a scandal and undermine the mission of the Church in Africa," says Primate By David W. Virtue www.virtueonline.org 4/24/2007 The Archbishop of West Africa, The Most Rev. Dr. Justice O. Akrofi, says that for him to have taken Holy Communion with Mrs. Katharine Jefferts Schori when the Primates met in Tanzania, would have constituted a scandal and undermined the mission of the Church in Africa. The African Primate was responding to the Rt. Rev. Robert Ihloff, Bishop of Maryland's rescinding of an invitation to preach during Holy Week in his diocese. Ihloff said that...

Dogs are scarce in Abuja because many now eat dog meat openly The famous reverse news headline "Man bites dog!" is old news to some restaurants in Nigeria's capital, Abuja."Welcome to animal kingdom where man pikin dey show dog pepper," says Chibuzo Eze in Pidgin English, meaning: Welcome to place where the son of man is giving dogs a hard time. Mr Eze then hungrily gets back to tugging his chunk of dog meat. He is standing under a mango tree in "South Africa", the name of an open-air restaurant hidden behind the living quarters of a Western construction...

Some of the artefacts confiscated may be up to one million years old French customs officials say they have seized more than 650 ancient artefacts smuggled from Mali in one of the largest such finds at a Paris airport. Described as an "archaeological treasure", the objects were thought to be on their way to private US buyers. Experts say most of the items are from the Neolithic period, but some may be up to one million years old. The artefacts are thought to have been taken from archaeological sites on the edge of the Sahara desert. The 669 items...

Bird Flu Could Reach Americas in 6 Months By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 27 minutes ago The virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu could reach the Americas in six to 12 months or even sooner as infected wild birds migrate toward the Arctic and Alaska, the U.N. bird flu chief said. Migratory patterns will probably take birds carrying the virus from West Africa to the Arctic and Alaska this spring, Dr. David Nabarro said Wednesday. Some infected birds will then likely move south in the fall on a migratory route to the Americas. "I think it's...

Stalin's mutant ape army Evil science ... Josef Stalin       By JEROME STARKEY SOVIET dictator Josef Stalin ordered his scientists to cross humans with APES to create an invincible breed of Red Army soldiers, secret documents show.  Archive papers say the Kremlin chief demanded his Planet of the Apes warriors be “resilient and resistant to hunger”.He said they should be of “immense strength but with an underdeveloped brain”. He also wanted them to work on railway construction.Labs and ape skeletons have been found in the Black Sea town of Suchumi in Georgia by workmen building a kids’ playground.It...

As new elections approach in Liberia, signaling the end of a two-year transition period, many in the war-crippled country have begun questioning the legitimacy of the interim government's business dealings. Among them is a new land lease with the United States-based Firestone rubber company, one of Liberia's most important foreign investors. A tanker truck barrels down a hill on its way to the main factory on Firestone's rubber plantation in Harbel, Liberia. Nearby, a work crew uses steaming asphalt to patch potholes in the road. The Harbel plantation has some of the only paved roads left in the country. Earlier...

A cholera epidemic is spreading rapidly across West Africa, killing nearly 500 people and infecting thousands of others, United Nations officials warn. The head of the UN humanitarian co-ordination office in the region said the outbreak needed a rapid response. "It's not business as usual. We have a crisis that needs immediate attention," said Herve Ludovic de Lys. With heavy rains across the region, cholera is likely to spread to Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad, the UN warns. Guinea-Bissau is the worst hit country, with 9,047 infections and 172 deaths reported between June and August by the health authorities. The country...

Angry Sierra Leoneans jeer Sankoh's body August 02, 2003, 09:27 PM Hundreds of angry Sierra Leoneans turned out in the capital Freetown today to jeer the body of former rebel leader Foday Sankoh, a man reviled for launching one of Africa's most horrific wars. "Take his body to hell or give it to us, the crowd, to burn his body to ashes," shouted Dowu Johnson, a woman in the crowd. The former warlord, who had been indicted for war crimes by a UN-backed court investigating atrocities during the West African nation's decade-long civil war, died in hospital on Tuesday. His...

The World Health Organization (WHO) says a cholera outbreak in Guinea-Bissau has claimed more than 90 lives over the past month. More than 5,600 cases of cholera have been recorded in seven of Guinea-Bissau's nine provinces, and new cases are reported each day. A journalist in the capital, Bissau, Alain Mballow, says, the cholera outbreak was announced in July, but authorities took little notice of it because the country was caught up in elections. Cholera causes severe diarrhea, and if not treated, death from acute dehydration. Although the disease can be easily treated, Mr. Mballow says the stocks of cholera...

Most of the drugs coming via West Africa are destined for Europe South American drug cartels have started to use West Africa as a hub for smuggling operations, UN experts say. The head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in West and Central Africa told the BBC that some 40 tonnes of cocaine had recently been seized in the region. Antonio Mazzitelli said lax policing in some West African nations was the main attraction for traffickers. He said cartels mostly targeted Europe, but some drugs were being turned into crack for local consumption. "It is a trend that...

<p>Idrissa Seck was seen as favourite to succeed President Wade Senegal's former Prime Minister Idrissa Seck has been charged with undermining state security in a case which raises many questions about the independence of the judiciary in what is seen as one of Africa's model democracies.</p>

Civil society groups in Senegal are denouncing the arrest of a former prime minister, accused of threatening the security of the state. The West African nation has long been seen as a model of democracy in a region of instability, but some now fear democratic values are being undermined by political infighting. Senegal's former prime minister, Idrissa Seck, was arrested Friday on suspicion of embezzling more than $45 million from a building project in the city of Thies, where he is the mayor. Mr. Seck has denied the charge. But the state prosecutor, Saturday, released a statement saying information had...

In 2001, two American congressmen set up legislation pushing for a cocoa certification program designed to protect the thousands of children working in the sector. Four-years later, little has changed for the working children of Ivory Coast. Joe Bavier visited a plantation near Agboville in southeast Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa exporter and has this report for VOA. At the end of a trail head leading through dense forest to a 30-hectare cocoa plantation, a half-dozen shirtless young men and adolescents take a break from work. During the July lull in the cocoa-growing season, they had been 'cleaning', hacking...

Conakry - Inhabitants of the Guinean capital Conakry were in shock on Sunday after two attacks on rice stocks, one of which involved overnight break-ins at the central food market. On Saturday, two trucks carrying a total of some 60 tons of rice were stopped by groups of young men in a southern suburb of Conakry and emptied of their contents, with the looters making off before police arrived. Several stores owned by traders in the central Madina market were then broken into and robbed in the early hours of Sunday, with the attackers taking away several tons of rice...

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...

Washington, DC, May. 13 (UPI) -- Seven men alleged to be members of a militant Islamist group were charged earlier this week by a court in Mauritania for plotting acts of terror in a region that U.S. military officials have called the new front in the global war on terror. But as Washington decides whether it will beef up its counter-terrorism efforts in West Africa, some experts contend a heavy-handed strategy that that empowers authoritarian regimes could backfire.

Wed 13 Apr 2005 9:47am (UK) Naval Security Reviewed over Ship Intruder By Ben Mitchell, PA A review of security at a major UK naval base has been carried out after an alleged intruder was found on board a visiting US aircraft carrier, the Royal Navy said today. The alleged trespasser was discovered on board the USS Harry S Truman, anchored off Stokes Bay, Gosport, Hants, on Saturday night during a week-long visit to Portsmouth Naval Base. A navy spokesman said the man had allegedly passed through both Royal Navy security and US Navy security to get on board passenger...

NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania (AP) -- Mauritania's Cabinet ministers have given themselves a 600 percent salary increase, a Finance Ministry official said Thursday. The reported reason: to tackle corruption in the impoverished West African country. Since March 1, the 26 ministers have been taking home the equivalent of US$3,333 instead of US$526 per month, a senior official said on condition of anonymity.

While United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan was patently ignoring a President Robert Mugabe oppressed Zimbabwe, his son, Kojo was making money building the Zimbabwean capitol’s airport. Mugabe runs the ZANU-PF, a regime that Condoleeza Rice labels an outpost of tyranny. Why Kojo Annan’s business activities in Zimbabwe have not surfaced in the ongoing probe of the Oil-For-Food Program should surely raise concern about both the integrity and sincerity of the investigation. It’s a global village as far as Kojo’s business agenda is concerned. First came West Africa where Annan’s youngest son was working for the Swiss-based Cotecna with ties...

Chirac's Mbeki Barb Baffles Foreign Affairs Business Day (Johannesburg) NEWS February 4, 2005 Posted to the web February 4, 2005 By Hopewell Radebe Johannesburg French President Jacques Chirac's criticism of President Thabo Mbeki's peace efforts in west Africa has unleashed a storm, as the foreign affairs department urgently sought clarity on his comments. Chirac's statement in Dakar, Senegal, in which he said Mbeki failed to understand the "psychology and soul" of west Africa, has also set off a diplomatic row. Chirac also claimed Mbeki had not achieved much in the region. Mbeki is the African Union-appointed mediator in the conflict...

The scramble for Africa's oil and gas reserves continues. US, European and Asian companies have been flocking to the capitals of Algeria, Libya, Nigeria, Angola, Egypt and even Sudan in recent months. Yet the battle for energy resources on the African continent still appears to be in its early stages. Leading oil sector analysts have warned of growing conflict between Western and Asian countries as they seek to outbid each other for key hydrocarbon assets in Africa. These forecasts have been largely based on the expectation that China will become the major player in nontraditional oil and gas producing regions...

...Simmering tensions broke into the open Saturday when nine French peacekeeping soldiers were killed in an Ivorian government air raid. The French were enforcing a nearly two-year-old ceasefire between northern Muslim rebels and the Christian-dominated government in Abidjan, on the southern coast. President Laurent Gbagbo's spokesman called the bombing a "mistake," but it looked, and worked, like a tailor-made provocation. Paris had no choice but to retaliate so it attacked and destroyed the state's tiny air force. French troops "occupied," if we may use that word, the two biggest airports. As if on cue, Mr. Gbagbo's lieutenants incited anti-French sentiment...

China's need for oil has led it to West Africa's oil fields in the Gulf of Guinea, and to Central Africa, where oil production in several countries is also coming on line. Growing Chinese interest in the region has created a surge of oil-related investments, and has been welcomed by governments and some analysts. But it worries others. In China this month, Gabon's President Omar Bongo received military honors as he arrived for a state visit. Chinese President Hu Jintao said he hoped Mr. Bongo's ninth visit would be a success. Even though Mr. Bongo has been visiting China for...

"So even though everybody knew about this, the 9-11 Commission, in a single sentence, dismisses the al-Qaeda/West African diamonds link out of hand. The CIA went to some lengths to try and discredit this story, while at the same time the FBI was sending investigative teams to West Africa. The 9-11 Commission was relying on "intelligence documents" (which would, obviously, come largely from the CIA) which attempted to discredit the diamond link. Yet, available evidence existed and was well-documented which pointed to the diamond link and to the transfer of funds by known al-Qaeda operatives. All this smells of cover-up,...

Special Court Registrar, Robin Vincent has said that though a prepared cell awaits the arrival of former Liberian President, Charles Taylor to Freetown, the Court will not allow Taylor into its detention facility until it is proven that he was not brought in through illegitimate means. Speaking to journalists at UNMIL's Headquarters in Monrovia at the end of his two days visit to that country, Vincent said they have no plans to snatch Taylor from his hiding in Calabar, Nigeria. He however stressed that a Red Alert has been issued by Interpol to get Taylor and he encouraged the Nigerian...

NIAMEY, Niger (AP) -- Lawmakers in the West African nation of Niger, the world's number three producer of yellowcake uranium, voted Saturday to join an international treaty calling on signatories to ensure the protection of their nuclear materials. Niger's president has 15 days to reject the bill or sign it into law. The bill calls for adherence to the 1980 Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material. The treaty, adopted in Vienna, set technical standards for protecting plutonium and enriched uranium -- the material used in making nuclear bombs -- during transport. Niger signed the treaty in 1985, but...

Mercenary intrigue spotlights West Africa's oil curse -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Ed Stoddard JOHANNESBURG, March 11 (Reuters) - Oil should have brought wealth and development to bitterly poor West Africa, but instead it has fuelled wars, coup plots and even mercenary intrigue. Equatorial Guinea, an oil producer on the Atlantic coast, this week arrested what it called an advance party of 15 mercenaries, saying "enemy powers" and multinational companies had been plotting against the tiny state. Two thousand miles away, Zimbabwe threatened to execute some 60 suspected mercenaries who authorities said had been on their way to Equatorial Guinea to join the...

The chief prosecutor at the UN's new court for Sierra Leone has repeated claims that the Libyan leader is behind the past decade of war in West Africa. The accusation against Muammar Gaddafi was made by David Crane in an interview with the BBC. It comes at a time when Libya is trying to improve relations with the West. The Sierra Leone war crimes court officially opens its doors this week, in the wake of international courts for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. 'Potentially explosive' It has been known for some time that several West African rebel leaders were trained...

WASHINGTON: The famous African explorer Dr David Livingstone might have been impressed, even if the agenda was suspect. Pakistan’s disgraced nuclear proliferator-hero Abdul Qadeer Khan traversed the breadth of Africa in his hey day as a nuclear salesman , going to as romantic a getaway as Casablanca in Morocco and as remote an outpost as Timbuktu in Mali.   US officials might dearly like to get hold of Khan’s travel agent, or simply his itinerary, since he seems to have pretty much charted his own course during his profligate proliferating days. According to accounts now surfacing in the Pakistani media,...

A London accountant has described how Pakistan's disgraced nuclear hero Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan visited the West African state of Mali on three occasions between 1998 and 2000. Abdul Ma'bood Siddiqui accompanied A.Q. Khan on three mystery trips  between 1998 and 2000. Their final destination was Timbuktu, a remote outpost in the desert that has always been a magnet for explorers and adventurers from around the world. The mystery behind the visits has deepened following recent revelations that Khan is also the owner of a small hotel in the town that he has named after Hendrina, his Dutch-born wife and...

NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania — The United States is expanding anti-terror efforts to the remote reaches of West Africa's Sahara borders, dispatching U.S. troops and contractors to help seal the predominantly Islamic region to al-Qaida and its allies. American officials gave The Associated Press details of the anti-terror program, and Mauritania officials confirmed to AP a massive explosives theft that illustrates why the West is concerned about the region. A U.S. anti-terror team arrived Saturday in the arid, Arab-dominated Islamic republic of Mauritania, U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of State Pamela Bridgewater told reporters late Sunday during a visit here. The small team will...

West African states eye surging euro with fear for export revenues 11 January 2004 Anxious west African states are watching the surging euro closely, experts say, fearing declines in their revenues from key crop exports, such as cotton, cocoa and coffee. "The rise in the euro could frustrate exports of staple goods, which, at this time, unfortunately, are the main resources of our grouping," said Niger presidential adviser Pierre Huret on the sidelines of a day-long summit Saturday of the eight-member West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA). "Cocoa and cotton are facing a potentially devastating fall-off," he told In...

<p>BATAKAYE, Nigeria -- In this village of 3,000 people, 12 cars, one college graduate, and no telephones, the final push to erase polio from the earth hit a dead end.</p> <p>The poliomyelitis virus zigzagged down one alley to the next several months ago, almost surely carried along in a fetid ribbon of water polluted with human waste. Children drank from it, splashed in it, rubbed their dirty hands in it, and that was the virus's opportunity. It infected four of the village's youngest residents, who lost the use of one or two limbs.</p>

Polio Cases in West Africa May Thwart W.H.O. Plan By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN Published: January 11, 2004 Abdullahi Idris, 18, who suffers from polio, steered a hand-driven tricycle in Kano, Nigeria. Polio has spread to two more countries in West Africa, further jeopardizing the World Health Organization's goal of wiping out the crippling disease by next year, an official of the agency said Friday. The health organization has come tantalizingly close to reaching its goal, having reduced the number of new polio cases to the lowest level since it began its program in 1988 to eliminate the disease. The W.H.O....

East Africa dispatch -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Idyllic hub of war on terror The presence of US forces in Lamu demonstrates east Africa's strategic importance to George Bush's fight against terror, says Jeevan Vasagar Tuesday January 6, 2004 Lamu, the guidebooks say, is "Kenya's Kathmandu" - a hot, dusty cluster of islands hugging the Indian Ocean coast. The muezzin's call echoes across serried rooftops, fishermen heave dhows across the dunes, and backpackers come to chill out at the end of an African trek. However, combat trousers are not a fashion statement for Lamu's latest wave of western visitors. Military ranges at the Manda...

By J. Michael Waller © 2003 Insight/News World Communications Inc. It's one of the unsolved political mysteries of 2003: Exactly who drew up the plan for Democrats to abuse the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, or SCCI, as a stealth weapon to undermine and discredit President George W. Bush and the U.S. war effort in Iraq? The plot, authored by aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., vice chairman of the committee, has poisoned the working atmosphere of a crucial legislative panel in a time of war, Senate sources say. It centered on duping the panel's Republican chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts...

Police in Mali have rescued more than 100 children from suspected traffickers believed to be taking them to forced labour, officials in the west African state said yesterday.Police at the weekend stopped 112 minors aged between 10 and 18 as they travelled in buses in the Segou region, north-east of the capital. They arrested two suspected traffickers. Mohammed Attayer Maiga, of the ministry for women and children, said most of the youngsters had been from neighbouring Burkina Faso and were sent back after police checked their papers. He said such children were normally taken to work in rice fields, often...

Imam hails bin Laden as "great man" Thu 4 December, 2003 03:55 By Diadie Ba DAKAR (Reuters) - He's a minority voice in Senegal, but Imam Mamour Fall is not afraid to speak out for Osama bin Laden. Fall's support for America's enemy number one strikes an especially jarring note in Senegal, a relaxed mainly Muslim country on West Africa's coast where religion is confined to mosques and churches and doesn't stray into politics. "I know bin Laden. People want me to insult him and I will not do it. He is a great man, a great strategist, a great...

MONROVIA, Liberia - Rebels lifted their two-month siege of Liberia's starving capital Thursday, and dozens more U.S. troops came ashore, significantly increasing the American presence in support of West African peacekeepers. With a handshake between U.S. Ambassador John Blaney and rebel leaders on the middle of a front-line bridge, insurgents ended an offensive that had brought down President Charles Taylor, killed well over 1,000 civilians, and left hundreds of thousands more trapped and starving. Dancing, singing and cheering, tens of thousands of residents and refugees massed on both sides of the New Bridge as rebels withdrew. "Thank you! Thank you,...

Feb. 25, 2003 Nigeria reports unexplained loss of nuclear material Nigeria has asked the global nuclear agency's help tracking down radioactive material that it says disappeared from the West African nation's oil industry. "We have ... informed the International Atomic Energy Agency in case somebody stole it and wants to take it outside Nigeria," Shams Elegba, head of Nigeria's nuclear regulatory body, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. Elegba gave no further details of the missing material or the circumstances behind its loss. But he said his agency was working hard to recover it, and had asked the global energy...

The United Nations' world court has ruled in favor of Cameroon - awarding it sovereignty over the long disputed oil-rich Bakassi peninsula. In its ruling Thursday, the International Court of Justice agreed with Cameroon's argument that the area was part of its territory under an early 20th century treaty between German and British colonial powers in West Africa. The decision is a defeat for Nigeria which for years has fought Cameroon for control of the region. At stake are major oil reserves believed to lie in the border area, as well as rich fish stocks. Both nations have troops stationed...

In addition to building air bases in Qatar because of the Saudis' apparent public reluctance to allow us to use our own bases on their native sand, guess what the United States of America is doing? We are currently active in Angola, Nigeria and other nations in West Africa that love us. Is this not brilliant? We're going to cut the knees right out from under the Saudis, and you're going to see them come groveling back to us for protection. We're building oil pipelines and refineries to help West Africa tap the large deposits they're sitting on. The people...