"Kenya to start construction of new port" Associated Press, March 03, 2012
NAIROBI - East African heads of state, including South Sudan president Salva Kiir, attended a ceremony yesterday to mark the beginning of construction for a controversial new port in Kenya’s eastern coastal region of Lamu.
Villagers fear the port may ruin idyllic beaches that draw Hollywood stars to the nearby island of Lamu. But Kenya hopes the port will make the country a regional telecommunications and transportation hub.
Kiir said the port will be a terminal for an alternative oil pipeline through Kenya, freeing South Sudan from its dependence on the infrastructure of Sudan, its former ruler in the north. South Sudan seceded from Sudan in July.
Oh, NOW the WHOLE BUSH DIPLOMATIC SUCCESS on the U.N. VOTE for SOUTHERN SECESSION makes SENSE! That and the fact that South Sudan is the regions arms smuggling hub for western intelligence agencies.
Landlocked South Sudan stopped pumping oil through Sudan in January, accusing the government in Sudan’s capital Khartoum of stealing hundred millions of dollars of oil revenue.
Sudan responded Wednesday by bombing two oil wells in the south, Kiir said.
Kiir said the port is strategically and economically important for the region. Construction will be done in phases and will cost Kenya about $24.5 billion, according to Kenyan government estimates.
The port is part of a wider project to improve infrastructure in the region. It is designed to include a highway, a railway line, and a petroleum pipeline crossing over three countries. Kiir said the improved transport links and pipeline could create a backbone for South Sudan’s infrastructure and allow his country to end its reliance on oil.
A lobby group called Save Lamu has objected to the construction, saying not enough has been done to study the impact of the port on the environment and the nearby island of Lamu, listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. The group said in a statement Thursday that the communities in Lamu have not been consulted and land ownership was not being respected by the government.
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So the threats worked?
"Kenyans face trials over election deaths" Associated Press, January 24, 2012
THE HAGUE - International Criminal Court judges yesterday ordered four prominent Kenyans, including two potential presidential candidates, to stand trial for allegedly orchestrating a deadly wave of violence after their country’s disputed 2007 presidential election.
Among the four suspects sent for trial were Uhuru Kenyatta, deputy prime minister and finance minister, and the former education minister, William Ruto - both of whom are planning to run for the presidency this year.
Kenyatta, 50, is the son of Kenya’s founding president, Jomo Kenyatta, and the country’s richest citizen with a personal fortune of half a billion dollars. Ruto is a former ally of Prime Minister Raila Odinga, but the two had a falling out - partly over Ruto’s insistence on making his own presidential bid this year.
In a majority decision by the three-judge panel, Ruto was ordered to stand trial with radio broadcaster Joshua Arap Sang for crimes against humanity allegedly targeting supporters of the 2007 victor, President Mwai Kibaki.
In a separate case, Kenyatta will stand trial alongside Francis Muthaura, cabinet secretary, for alleged crimes against humanity directed at Odinga supporters.
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Also see:
"Holiday terrorist attacks thwarted
NAIROBI - Kenyan authorities said yesterday that they had thwarted attempted attacks by an Al Qaeda-linked Somali militant group over Christmas and the New Year, as Britain warned its citizens over looming terrorist threats in Kenya. Colonel Cyrus Oguna, a military spokesman, said officials received intelligence from credible sources that the Somali militant group Al Shabab was planning an attack over Christmas and New Year. He said Kenyan troops in Somalia made preemptive strikes on different targets in Somalia based on that information."
So which "Al-CIA-Duh actors" did they get to fill those roles?
Related: Kenya Comes to Somalia's Rescue
Somali troops seize final pockets of capital
4 die in plane crash near US base in Africa
"1 in 4 children malnourished, global report says" February 15, 2012|Jason Straziuso, Associated Press
Five children around the world die every minute because of chronic malnutrition, according to a report released Wednesday that also said that almost half a billion children risk are at risk of permanent damage over the next 15 years.
Not that I want them to starve; however, I notice the elite buffet lines are always well-stocked and their bellies full.
A report from Save the Children said the deaths of 2 million children each year could be prevented if malnutrition were better addressed. The report called chronic malnutrition a largely hidden crisis that affects one in four children globally....
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"Cameroon sends troops after poachers" Associated Press, March 03, 2012
DOUALA, Cameroon - Cameroon has launched a military offensive to flush out elephant poachers from a remote national park in the country’s northeast near the border with Chad.
Defense Minister Alain Mebe Ngo’o announced the operation on state TV late Thursday, saying that the country needed to take action against the poachers believed to be from Sudan.
They are going quite a way, but those Sudanese sure are bad people.
Also see: Poachers kill 200 African elephants
In just eight weeks, the World Wildlife Fund estimates that the poachers have decimated the elephant population, killing between 200 and 300 of the roughly 400 elephants in the Bouba N’Djida National Park.
The wildlife group said in a statement released yesterday that the military operation was launched Wednesday night after a high-level meeting between the minister of defense and the minister in charge of wildlife. The group cited unnamed sources confirming that more than 100 Cameroonian soldiers entered the park on Thursday to secure the area from poachers.
According to the wildlife group, the heavily armed poachers entered Cameroon illegally via the border with Chad in order to harvest ivory.
The government has been under pressure to take action from environmental groups and the European Union since graphic images of the slaughtered elephants were published.
“This is their wake-up call,’’ said Basile Yapo Monssan, the World Wildlife Fund country director.
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"Sudanese army says it killed rebel leader" December 26, 2011|By Mohamed Osman
KHARTOUM, Sudan - The Sudanese army said yesterday that it had killed the leader of the main Darfur rebel group in fighting last week, declaring his death a key victory against a powerful rebel force that once threatened Sudan’s capital.
Khalil Ibrahim led the Darfur-based Justice and Equality Movement, or JEM, the most organized and effective military force in Darfur, the western region torn by conflict since 2003. The group did not join a peace deal signed last year in Doha, Qatar, between other Darfur rebel groups and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s government in Khartoum.
The military said he was wounded Thursday during a military offensive in North Kordofan state, which borders Darfur. The government said he died of his wounds Saturday and that rebels quickly buried him. The government did not say how it confirmed his death.
JEM representatives could not immediately be reached for comment. If Ibrahim’s death is confirmed by the group, it would be a serious blow to JEM, which has on several occasions threatened to bring down Bashir’s regime in Khartoum by advancing toward the capital.
Sudanese Information Minister Abdullah Massar said Ibrahim’s death sends a message to rebel groups “to listen to the voice of wisdom and join the peace process.’’
“Our doors are open and the Doha agreement is open,’’ Massar said yesterday.
Darfur has been in turmoil since 2003, when ethnic African rebels accusing the Arab-dominated Sudanese government of discrimination took up arms against it. The Khartoum government is accused of retaliating by unleashing Arab militias on civilians - a charge the government denies.
The conflict has tapered off since 2009, but the UN estimates 300,000 people died and 2.7 million have been displaced. The International Criminal Court in the Hague has issued an international arrest warrant for Bashir for his alleged role in crimes against humanity in Darfur....
When Bliar and Bush get one let me know.
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"Sudan police raid university dorm, arrest hundreds" Associated Press, February 18, 2012
CAIRO - Sudanese police raided student dormitories at Khartoum’s main university yesterday, beating and arresting hundreds of students in the latest crackdown on youth protesters, activists said.
The youth activist group Change Now said the National Intelligence Security Services stormed the dormitories before dawn at the University of Khartoum and detained more than 350 students.
All of those arrested were later released, the President of the Sudanese Student Union, Mohammed Salah, was quoted as saying by the official SUNA news agency.
Students at the university began protesting in late December to demand compensation for people displaced by construction of a dam near the city of Dammir, 175 miles northeast of the capital. They also have been calling for the right to form a student union and for an end to police violence.
Change Now said that the students arrested yesterday “were brutally beaten and their properties destroyed.’’
I'll bet American Occupiers can relate.
“Terrorization and intimidation of the students in the dorms further complicates their reasons for protesting from the onset,’’ the group said.
Opposition lawmaker Mariam al-Sadeq al-Mahadi, a member of the Umma Party, called the raid “an attack on freedom of expression.’’
“What happened is part of a crippled and failing dictatorship,’’ she said. “We now have an illegitimate regime that has completely failed to rule because it does not provide services for people nor does it respect people’s rights.’’
That feel familiar, Americans?
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"120,000 in South Sudan need aid, UN says" Associated Press, January 21, 2012
JUBA, South Sudan - More than 120,000 people need humanitarian aid because of a wave of ethnic clashes in a remote and volatile region of South Sudan, the United Nations said yesterday, underscoring the challenges the world’s newest nation faces six months after independence....
Just get that pipeline built.
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Related: 57 killed in revenge attack as South Sudan violence continues
"Congo presidential coalition leads race" January 28, 2012
KINSHASA, Congo - Two months after voters went to polls in a chaotic election, the electoral commission announced yesterday that parties supporting Congo’s president won two-thirds of legislative seats.
The commission also indefinitely postponed provincial elections that were scheduled for March.
Electoral officials said they also want to annul results of the legislative elections in seven of Congo’s 169 voting districts and prosecute a dozen candidates accused of introducing irregularities and violence.
Local and international observers have already said the Nov. 28 elections for the president and 500 national assembly seats were too flawed to be legitimate.
It was only the second democratic election Congo has ever held, with the stability of the mineral-rich African nation at stake.
Critics say any election results are unreliable because millions of voters were unable to cast ballots, hundreds of thousands of ballots have been tampered with, and 1.3 million completed ballots went missing.
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Also see: Congo Casts Ballots
What you couldn't see unless you purchased a printed paper:
"ACTIVIST DETAINED -- Police in Uganda arrested opposition leader Kizza Besigye (front left) yesterday before the start of a rally against government corruption and economic hardships in Uganda's capital Kampala. Police fired tear gas before placing Besigye and several allies into police vans and taking them away (Boston Globe January 20 2012)."
But Uganda an ally so no big deal.
