Media News

Chad
The UN refugee agency reports a Chadian colleague working in eastern Chad, Michel Mitna, was killed in an ambush during the weekend. The UNHCR says dozens of humanitarian aid workers have been killed in eastern Chad this year. Mitna was the head of the Chadian government’s refugee body known as CNAR, located in Guereda in eastern Chad. The UNHCR says he was attacked Oct. 24 by armed bandits and killed, his driver was wounded and the unidentified bandits managed to escape. UN refugee spokesman Andrej Mahecic says Mitna worked daily with the UNHCR to protect and assist refugees and internally displaced people in this volatile region. (VOA)

Congo (DRC)
UN agencies are preparing to airlift tents and an emergency response team to help thousands of Angolans expelled from the Congo (DRC) as each country continues to drive out its neighbors nationals. According to the Angolan Ministry of Social Affairs and Reintegration, the number of Angolans expelled from DRC has risen to 60,000, including an undetermined but perhaps significant numbers of refugees, double the previous estimate, OCHA said. The number of Congolese expelled from Angola has subsided in Kasai and Bandundu provinces, but remains high in Bas-Congo, growing from 2,000 in July to 18,000 in September. The daily rate of Congolese has decreased from 500 to 150, the vast majority of them irregular migrants. (UN News Service)

Guinea
The killing of more than 150 people at an opposition rally by Guinean security forces on September 28 was premeditated, Human Rights Watch said on Oct. 27. The bloody crackdown has drawn broad international condemnation of the country’s ruling military junta led by Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, with the European Union on Tuesday saying it would impose an arms embargo. Human Rights Watch said Camara and some of his closest military associates in the National Campaign for Democracy and Development (CNDD) junta should face criminal prosecution for the incident, characterized by rapes and brutal beatings. (Reuters)

Ivory Coast
A UN panel of experts has demanded that Burkina Faso investigate weapons transfers to the rebel-controlled northern part of the neighboring West African state of Ivory Coast. In a report to the Security Council obtained by Reuters, the panel also called on the Ivorian government to grant its members access to “all sites and military installations” where arms might be stored. It urged the New Force rebels in the north to do the same. The Security Council is expected later this week to renew for another year an arms embargo and other UN sanctions on the Ivory Coast, first imposed in 2004 over violations of a 2003 ceasefire between the government and the rebels. (Reuters)

Kenya
Kenya’s foreign minister has denounced the US government’s decision to revoke the visa of a top Kenyan official it accuses of blocking reforms. On Oct. 26, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson told reporters in Nairobi that the US had revoked the visa of an unnamed “senior government official of influence.” On Oct. 28, Kenyan Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula said that Kenya has options in diplomacy and may take reciprocal actions. The US has put increasing pressure on Kenya to follow through on political reforms agreed to after last year’s post-election violence, in which some 1,300 people were killed. (VOA)

Madagascar
Madagascars ousted President Marc Ravalomanana said he wants a neutral government to prepare for elections next year and wont accept coup leader Andry Rajoelina as leader of a transitional administration. Ravalomanana, who lives in exile in South Africa, said in an interview in Johannesburg that hes ready to attend crisis talks next week in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, to discuss the political impasse, adding the meeting should focus on the appointment of transitional leaders. The main task of this transitional government is to prepare the elections, because this is the only way to restore democracy and constitutional order, he said. (Bloomberg)

Mauritania
Local emergency control operations in Mauritania have successfully contained a massive outbreak of desert locusts which were threatening to spread north to other countries in West Africa and devastating farmers livelihoods, the FAO reported. The food agency said that as long as the area avoids being hit by heavy rains the infestations should be eliminated by early December. The current situation appears to be under control, said FAO locust expert Keith Cressman. FAO is monitoring the situation extremely closely and will continue to keep countries, the donor community and other stakeholders informed of any significant developments as they arise, Cressman said. (UN News Service)

Mozambique
Mozambicans voted in presidential, parliamentary and provincial elections on Oct. 28, with President Armando Guebuza expected to retain power and move to attract more foreign investors. The millionaire businessman and his ruling Frelimo party are unlikely to face any serious challenge from the opposition in a country with tourist potential and untapped mineral and energy resources that have started to draw foreign companies and investors, particularly from neighboring South Africa. (Reuters)

Nigeria
A top Nigerian politician from the ruling party has been sentenced to two-and-half years for corruption. Olabode George was accused of inflating contracts and abusing public funds worth USD 500 million when he ran the Nigerian ports authority. The BBC’s Caroline Duffield in Lagos says George was seen as one of the untouchables among the Nigerian elite. George was found guilty on 35 counts of 68 separate offences, all of them relating to abuse of public funds. The five others, who worked with him in the Nigerian Ports Authority, were also found guilty on numerous charges. Charges include conspiracy, disobedience of lawful orders, inflation of contracts and an offense known as “contract splitting.” (BBC)

Senegal
President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal has admitted that his top aide gave an IMF representative to Senegal USD 200,000 in cash as a goodbye gift. But in a statement released Oct. 27, Wade said the gift to IMF country representative Alex Segura in September was not a bribe. Political analyst Abdou Lo said even though Senegalese are used to bigger presidential scandals, many were shocked by the amount of money given to an IMF representative. President Wade’s admission has prompted one opposition member of the national legislature, Imam Mbaye Niang to threaten a lawsuit against the president for “illegally spending the people’s money.” (VOA)

Sierra Leone
The UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) has upheld the convictions and sentences passed on three former rebels in the last judgment by the tribunal to be handed down in the West African nation. The three former leaders of the rebel RUF were convicted earlier this year for atrocities committed during the decade-long civil war. The charges include forced marriage as a crime against humanity and attacks against UN peacekeepers the first time that an international criminal tribunal has entered guilty verdicts for both charges. The Court dismissed all the appeals of the defendants, except one regarding a charge of collective punishment, which was overturned. (UN News Service)

Somalia
Somali pirates holding two Britons captive aboard a yacht off the coast of the Horn of Africa nation warned Britain not to try to rescue the couple. The pirates seized the vessel on Friday morning hundreds of miles out to sea near the Seychelles archipelago. They have taken it to the Somali coast with a view to demanding a ransom for their captives. “If warships surround us, we shall point our guns at the British tourists,” said a pirate called Hassan in the coastal town of Haradheere. Paul and Rachel Chandler, both in their 50s, left the Seychelles aboard their 38-foot yacht, Lynn Rival, on October 22 and were believed to be sailing toward the east African coast. (Reuters)

South Africa
Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan may struggle to rein in the budget deficit after pushing it to a record this year, as the government faces mounting pressure to boost job creation and cut poverty. The budget gap will surge to 7.6 percent of gross domestic product in the year through March 2010, the highest since at least 1961, Gordhan said in his first mid-term budget statement. The deficit, which was forecast at 3.8 percent of GDP in the February budget, will ease to 6.2 percent next year, the Treasury said. President Jacob Zuma is under pressure from labor unions to deliver on election promises to help find jobs for the one in four without work in South Africa, just as the first recession in 17 years cuts revenue. Total debt will almost double to 41 percent of GDP over the next three years. (Bloomberg)

Sudan
Sudan’s opposition parties walked out of parliament on Oct. 26 after President Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s party (NCP) refused to back down over its plans to allow the intelligence service wide powers. The powerful security forces were blamed by opponents for mass torture and murder during the north-south civil war. Sudan acknowledges some abuses by security forces but says it investigates cases of torture and killings. A 2005 peace deal to end the north-south conflict included a new democratic constitution limiting the powers of the security service to gathering intelligence. NCP tabled a National Security Forces law in parliament which would allow the intelligence service to retain widespread powers of arrest and search. (Reuters)

Tanzania
A new FAO scheme will help Tanzanian farmers expand their access to markets and ultimately bolster their food security. The nearly USD 3 million project, funded by Germany, aims to help the African nations agricultural sector shift from subsistence to commercial farming. Most of Tanzanias farmers are traditional smallholders and will receive technical assistance in farm management and marketing and will be encouraged to join producers groups. They will also be trained in business management and marketing. According to FAO, if greater priority is given to good practices in both production and marketing, decision-makers at all levels in Tanzania will be better able to ensure that agriculture will respond to consumers demands. (UN News Service)

Uganda
Police fired warning shots Oct. 28 near a crowd of protesters at a refugee settlement in southwestern Uganda. Many refugees in the camp of 60,000 people barricaded the roads beginning Oct. 27 to protest a disruption in food distribution and to show their anger at the half-rations they had been receiving since August. A refugee leader said two refugees were killed, but police said no one died. Serugendo Sekalinda, who said he represents other Congolese refugees in the Nakivale settlement, told CNN in a telephone interview that two Somalians were killed in the incident and one Congolese woman was injured. But Acting District Police Commander Angel Mwebembezi told CNN that no one was killed and there were no serious injuries, although police did fire warning shots into the air. (CNN)

Zimbabwe
Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC party hopes Zimbabwe’s neighbors will this week break a deadlock threatening its power-sharing deal with President Robert Mugabe, a top party official said Oct. 27. Tsvangirai and Mugabe formed a power-sharing government in February to try to end a decade-long crisis, but are still fighting a low-intensity political battle ahead of an expected democratic election in about two years. Their fragile coalition lurched into a crisis earlier this month when the MDC said it would stop attending cabinet meetings in protest against the arrest of one of its senior officials and Mugabe’s refusal fully to implement the power-sharing pact. (Reuters)

Compiled by developmentex.com