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  • France & EU to Boost Forces in Central African Republic

    France & EU to Boost Forces in Central African Republic

    {{European peace-keeping forces in the Central African Republic will increase sharply after first Paris and then Brussels announced on Friday that they would boost troops to the strife-torn country.}}

    In the afternoon, France announced it would deploy 400 more soldiers and gendarmes, bringing its total forces in its former colony to 2,000.

    The French decision followed a meeting of the national Defence Council at the Elysée Palace. French forces are working alongside nearly 6,000 African peacekeepers in an attempt to halt sectarian violence in CAR.

    In the announcement, France had urged other countries to show “increased solidarity” and had called on the European Union to accelerate its deployment of a promised 500 peace-keepers in the country.

    Later on Friday, the EU responded. Catherine Ashton, its head of Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, said the EU would send around 1,000 troops to CAR to help restore order.

    “We have more than 500 troops [already promised],” Ashton said, adding that the EU was “looking at double that number”.

    It was not clear whether that number included the extra French forces. Ashton has in recent weeks avoided specifying which countries would be contributing troops.

    Major EU powers such as Britain and Germany have refused to commit soldiers, and diplomats say efforts are focusing on smaller countries.

    Diplomatic sources said on Friday that besides France, five other EU countries had proposed a “substantial” contribution to the mission.

    Poland could provide 140 soldiers while Estonia, Latvia, Romania and Portugal could each offer 30 to 50, the sources said.

    {france24}

  • Rwanda’s first Live Action Movie

    Rwanda’s first Live Action Movie

    {{Dennise Mutesi ({picture above}) will be working with film director Gilbert Ndahayo in Live Action Short Film “The Girl In The Ditch”. }}

    “This happens to be the second time, I am going to work with Gilbert Ndahayo. He is an amazing director and a very sensible man… in my opinion”, says an excited Mutesi.

    Gilbert is back: on set (picture below) with Cinematographer Meddy Saleh.

    After seven years in America, Gilbert Ndahayo, also known as Rwandan Filmmaker is getting ready to return on the continent to direct his first Live Action Short Film “The Girl In The Ditch”.

    The 17 min narrative film, which production starts February 22, brings on the screen an action heroin Nadine, played by Dennis Mutesi.

    “The Girl In The Ditch” is a film about Nadine who witnesses the murder of his parents at the age of nine. But that was twenty years ago. Today, she lives a happy life and enjoys the company of Alice, her sidekick and a distant relative.

    Gilbert Ndahayo encourages fellow African filmmakers to conquer their fear and let only stories dictate the style. “Once you do that, you can tell any story you want and build your own audience,” says the filmmaker.

    For whatever reasons, whether it is based on luck of infrastructure, whether it is based on cinematic skills; the African filmmakers have to grow from the clichés of stories that do not appeal to the rest of the world. One way to do this is to embrace action films.

    The Live Action in “The Girl In The Ditch” surrounds Nadine’s encounter with Rutaro, a businessman, who apparently she knows before the murder of her parents. As the true story explodes, Nadine (Mutesi) and her sidekick have to decide what to do with Rutaro, who is questioning his past.

    While Gilbert Ndahayo went into film school in New York, Dennise Mutesi opened a Jewelry in Rwanda. In “The Girl In The Ditch”, they will come out of hiding to produce the first Live Action Short Film ever made by Rwandans.

  • Wanted LRA Commander May be Dead

    Wanted LRA Commander May be Dead

    {{The wanted deputy of Uganda’s murderous Lord’s Resistance Army rebels, Okot Odhiambo (pictured above), may have been killed in recent fighting, the Ugandan defence minister told media on Friday.}}

    Odhiambo was indicted by the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2005 along with LRA chief Joseph Kony and fellow rebel Dominic Ongwen on charges of butchering and kidnapping civilians.

    “There are pointers from defectors that Okot Odhiambo may be dead,” Defence Minister Crispus Kiyonga told reporters Friday.

    “Our forces are verifying these reports to check if indeed he died in the battles we have had with them and a position will be communicated,” Kiyonga said.

    According to the ICC warrant, former LRA members describe Odhiambo as a “ruthless killer” and “the one who killed the most”.

    Odhiambo is widely suspected to have directed the killing of some 300 civilians during a February 2004 attack on the Barlonyo internally displaced persons camp in northern Uganda, one of the single largest massacres in the LRA’s brutal history.

    After Odhiambo reportedly ordered the rebels to “kill every living thing”, witnesses say camp residents were burnt alive in their homes, hacked to death with machetes, stabbed, bludgeoned and shot as they tried to escape.

    NV

  • Brahimi ‘Apologises’ For Lack of Syria Talks Progress

    Brahimi ‘Apologises’ For Lack of Syria Talks Progress

    {{UN-Arab League mediator Lakhdar Brahimi (photo) ended the second round of direct talks held in Geneva between the Syrian government and opposition Saturday without finding a way of breaking the impasse or setting a date for a third round.}}

    Saturday’s talks, which lasted less than half an hour, left the future of the negotiating process in doubt.

    “I apologise that these two rounds have not come out with very much,” Brahimi said.
    Brahimi also told a press conference that he had proposed an agenda for another round of talks that would first focus on ending the violence in Syria and then examine how to create a transitional governing body.

    “Unfortunately, the government has refused,” he told reporters, saying he would now seek consultations with the United States and Russia, the main sponsors of the peace conference, and the United Nations to see how to proceed.

    Brahimi stated that the regime’s refusal had raised the “suspicion of the opposition that the government doesn’t want to discuss a transitional governing body at all.”

    The latest round of talks aimed at finding some way out of Syria’s civil war lasted for a sixth consecutive day at U.N. European headquarters in Geneva, while the violence kept escalating back home for Syrians.

    {{Future of talks ‘not clear’}}

    “Everybody needs to go back to their base and we will contact each other to determine the coming date. It is not clear,” Brahimi said.

    Despite the hostility between the two delegations that has produced little more than public displays of acrimony and sparring before the TV cameras, the opposition said it continued to hold out hope for a political solution.

    Anas al-Abdeh, a member of the opposition negotiating team, said his side accepted the agenda but the government’s unwillingness to go along with it has put the prospects of a third session of talks within the “Geneva 2” negotiating round in doubt.

    The first peace conference, dubbed “Geneva 1,” produced a roadmap for peace in June 2012 that was not followed.

    france24

  • Egypt Tourist Bus Blast Kills Three

    Egypt Tourist Bus Blast Kills Three

    Three people have been killed in a blast on a tourist bus in the Sinai peninsula, Egyptian police say.

    The blast took place after the bus entered Egypt from Israel.

    Israeli police said they heard an explosion from the Egyptian side of the Taba border crossing.

    Egypt has been rocked by violence since the army overthrew President Mohammed Morsi in July. Militants in the Sinai have stepped up attacks since then, killing many people.

    Mt Morsi appeared in court on Sunday to face charges of espionage and conspiring to commit acts of terror.

    The Islamist former leader is facing four separate trials, three of which have now opened.

    BBC

  • Plane Missing in Western Nepal

    Plane Missing in Western Nepal

    {{A plane with 18 people on board has gone missing in western Nepal.}}

    Contact with the Nepal Airlines plane was lost a few minutes after it took off from the town of Pokhara, bound for Jumla, around 360km (220 miles) west of the capital Kathmandu, officials said.

    Fifteen passengers – reportedly including a child- and three crew members were on board the aircraft.

    Critics say that many passenger aircraft in Nepal are often poorly maintained.

    The Twin Otter plane went missing shortly after it took off at 12:40 local time (06:55 GMT), Nepal Airlines spokesman Ram Hari Sharma told reporters.

    One of the passengers is believed to be a foreign national.

    {{Poor record}}

    In December the EU put all of Nepal’s airlines on a blacklist, citing safety fears.

    In September 2012, a plane operated by Nepal’s Sita Air crashed near Kathmandu airport, killing 19 people.

    In May of that year 15 people died when an Agni Air plane carrying Indian pilgrims to a Hindu religious site in northern Nepal crashed at a high-altitude airport.

    Since 1949 – the year the first aircraft landed in Nepal – there have been more than 70 different crashes involving planes and helicopters, in which more than 650 people have been killed.

    BBC

  • Equatorial Guinea Relocates Capital to Bata from Malabo

    Equatorial Guinea Relocates Capital to Bata from Malabo

    {{Authorities in Equatorial Guinea are tentatively relocating the country’s political capital from Malabo, situated on the island of Bioko, to Bata on the continental shelf.}}

    The relocation to Bata, the economic capital, will be effective from the end of February and will last for six months, during which the country will host three continental conferences.

    African leaders are expected to attend the three meetings, which include a mini-summit of heads of state and government, a NEPAD meeting and the African Peer Review Mechanism.

    Equatorial Guinea’s minister for Information and Government spokesman Teobaldo Nchaso Matomba, said in statement on Wednesday that as of end of February, all official transactions would take place in Bata.

    The relocation will help to improve infrastructure development in the economic capital and the move was also mainly in fulfilment of government’s decentralisation policy.

    This is the second time that the authorities of Equatorial Guinea are relocating the capital to Bata.

    In February 2009, a tentative relocation was undertaken following an armed attack on the presidential palace by alleged fighters of Nigeria’s Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND).

    Equatorial Guinea is one of Africa’s top oil producing countries, but with a chequered political history, characterised by rampant corruption and autocratic leadership dating back to over 30 years.

    {wirestory}

  • France Warns of Prolonged C. Africa Crisis

    France Warns of Prolonged C. Africa Crisis

    {{France’s defence minister warned Saturday that ending sectarian strife in the Central African Republic could take longer than expected as peacekeepers went door-to-door in the capital Bangui seizing weapons from militia.}}

    A military operation “cannot run like clockwork,” said Jean-Yves Le Drian after France pledged to send 400 more troops to the war-torn country.

    “It has to be adapted, situations have to be taken into account and security needs met depending on events.”

    French President Francois Hollande said the operation would be brief when it began in early December.

    But Le Drian told French radio: “I think it will be longer than planned because the degree of hatred and violence is worse than we imagined.”

    The European Union and France pledged a sharp increase in the number of troops deployed in the Central African Republic on Friday, as concern mounted over a horrific spiral of violence across the country.

    France will eventually have 2,000 troops in the country.

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Saturday that Berlin wanted to bolster its military cooperation with France, particularly in conflict-wracked areas of Africa.

    “More convergence is possible”, notably in terms of working together in Mali or Central Africa, the Chancellor added.

    German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen has also said she expects to send a medical services Airbus to back up the French mission in the war-wracked Central African Republic.

    {{‘Detain big fish’}}

    International troops meanwhile went house-to-house for about four hours Saturday in Bangui’s Boy Rabe neighbourhood, the base of mostly Christian militias whose attacks have driven many minority Muslims from the city in recent weeks, sparking warnings of “ethnic cleansing”.

    Automatic weapons, grenades and a large amount of munitions were seized and “more than a dozen” people detained in the unprecedented operation that involved some 250 peacekeepers and police, according to an AFP correspondent on the scene.

    “All people who were found to have weapons in their homes have been identified and will be handed over to the police,” a peacekeeper from the African Union MISCA mission said.

    Among those detained was Lieutenant Herve Ganazoui, “in charge of ‘anti-balaka leadership’ operations”, Emotion Brice Namsi, a militia spokesman, told AFP.

    But despite surrounding the house of a senior militia leader, Patrice Edouard Ngaissona, the soldiers failed to capture the man who casts himself as the political coordinator of the fearsome “anti-balaka” militias.

    “They didn’t manage to take me, I was out,” Ngaissona said later.

    Bangui chief prosecutor Ghislain Grezenguet said Ngaissona was “the big fish who had to be detained”.

    Peacekeepers left the neighbourhood to jeers from residents.

    The so-called “anti-balaka” militias were formed in the country in response to killing and pillaging by the mainly Muslim Seleka rebels following their coup nearly a year ago in the majority Christian nation.

    In recent months, as international peacekeepers deployed to the former French colony have disarmed the Seleka, brutal attacks by the militias have sowed terror among the Muslim population, forcing many to flee the country.

    wirestory

  • ANC blames Malema for crisis

    ANC blames Malema for crisis

    {{The ANC’s national executive committee member and Minister of Police Nathi Mthethwa has slammed Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema and labelled him the “boy” who plunged the Limpopo government into a financial crisis.}}

    According to the Sunday Independent, Mthethwa had been addressing an ANC electoral conference in Limpopo on Friday night when, without actually mentioning Malema’s name, he made it clear that it was the former ANC Youth League leader who was to blame for the wholesale corruption that plunged the province into financial crisis in 2011.

    Interim chairperson of the ANC provincial task team Falaza Mdaka also lashed out at Malema saying that they had seen ANC leaders being insulted by those whose blood was black, green and gold, but the skin was that of “the red ants full of corruption and desire to nationalise the mines and state assets in order to create a safe haven to steal government money and rob the poor”.

    Limpopo was put under administration in 2011 after the provincial government landed up with over R2bn debt.

    {news24}

  • Kenyatta University to Host new Africa Centre

    Kenyatta University to Host new Africa Centre

    {{Kenyatta University (KU) has been selected to host the Africa Centre for Transformative and Inclusive Leadership (Actil).}}

    Actil’s vision is to raise a critical mass of transformational leaders in politics, business, government and society, raise a network of female and male policy makers that are committed to and applying approaches that promote gender equality and women’s empowerment in all spheres, create a formidable alliance of leaders in Africa who can transform politics, business and society for the benefit of all and prepare African leaders to influence development, political and economic discourse in the global level.

    The centre, a brainchild of the UN Women, a United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, will be officially inaugurated on February 19, 2014, at Kenyatta University.

    Announcing the selection of KU at a media briefing on Wednesday, in Nairobi, UN Women’s regional director Christine Musisi said that the centre’s programmes will go a long way in making a reality the narrative “Africa Arising.”

    Ms Musisi said that the centre was necessary for the creation of a group of leaders who will harness Africa’s potential when countries move from good leadership to transformative leadership by investing in its people, liberate itself from poverty, ignorance and strife, and take leadership in the global economy and global political discourse.

    The objective of the centre is therefore to train leaders to have a positive mindset; who are driven by purpose to live by transformational principles – integrity, stewardship, justice, work ethic and understand the value of charity.

    {nation}