New Medievalism

Next target in AIDS fight: sugar daddies
The luring of teen women by older, wealthier men is a key factor in the spread of AIDS.

The consequences of the sugar-daddy phenomenon are significant - and mostly have to do with the limited view young women have of themselves, says Patience Namanyagulu, a university student and leader of "Go Getters," a program that persuades women to rebuff sugar daddies. "If we fail to see the potential in ourselves," she adds, "we face the consequences alone."

... Studies find older men represent a far-greater AIDS risk for young women. They're more likely to have HIV/AIDS than younger men, and, as sugar daddies, they often prevail over a woman on the issue of protection. "He will give you all the things you want, but you have to follow his rules," says Tirisa Bonareri, a grad student and member of the Go Getters club.

DRC war may cost Uganda billions
The International Court of Justice has ruled that Uganda must pay compensation to the Democratic Republic of Congo for looting during the 1998-2003 war.

A government spokesman said DR Congo will seek up to $10bn in compensation.

Shell considers Nigerian area pullout - source
LAGOS, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell is considering a total staff pullout from the west of Nigeria's delta region on Monday due to militant attacks, a senior industry source said, threatening more supply cuts from the leading OPEC oil exporter.

...Shell is the largest oil producer in Nigeria, widely known to be key to U.S. hopes of reducing dependence on supplies from the volatile Gulf. A major staff pullout is likely to trigger more output cuts in the country, already hit by the attacks.

UN says 8 peacekeepers killed in eastern Congo
GOMA, Congo (Reuters) - Eight Guatemalan special forces soldiers deployed as U.N. peacekeepers in eastern Congo were killed and five wounded in a battle with Ugandan rebels on Monday in the second deadliest attack on the U.N. force.

The force, known as MONUC, said 80 Guatemalans had been on a reconnaissance mission for the past 10 days in Congo's Garamba National Park, on the border with Sudan, looking for members of neighboring Uganda's rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).

S. Africa Race Policy May Have Cut HIV
By LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer

CHICAGO - A controversial policy in AIDS-ravaged South Africa that barred many blacks and even the country's president from donating blood led to a substantial drop in HIV-tainted blood supplies, a study found.
[..]
The policy barring many blacks from donating blood was in effect from 1999 to 2005. The research looked at nearly 900,000 blood donations collected from the policy's first year as it was phased in, and compared that with almost 800,000 donations collected from 2001-02, when the policy was in full swing.

HIV was detected in .17 percent of donations in the earlier period, but that dropped 50 percent to .08 percent in the second year, the researchers reported.

Darfur talks marred by fighting
Three members of a Darfur rebel group have been expelled from peace talks after attacking two delegates who had just switched sides.

... Correspondents say the pair were beaten after resigning from Jem to join a rival rebel faction.

Crew sought from crashed U.S. choppers near Djibouti
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Rescuers have located part of one of two U.S. Marine Corps helicopters that crashed off Djibouti, but 10 crew remain missing, a military spokeswoman said.

The cause of the crash was unclear and there was no indication of hostile fire, said Maj. Susan Romano of the Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa, a U.S.-led military force headquartered at Camp Lemonier, a former base of the French Foreign Legion in Djibouti.

Nine abducted in Niger delta
(CNN) -- A Nigerian group has claimed responsibility for the abduction of nine foreign workers during its attack on an oil facility Saturday.

Along with three Americans and a Briton, the group says it kidnapped two Thais, two Egyptians and a Filipino.

Ten crew died in US helicopter crash off Djibouti
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Ten out of a total of 12 crew members died when two U.S. Marine Corps helicopters crashed off the coast of Djibouti on Friday, the U.S. military in the Horn of Africa country said on Sunday.

... On Saturday, the military said all 12 crew had been accounted for, but declined to say whether the 10 who had been missing were dead or alive, pending notification of their families.

Congolese fleeing rape and bloodshed seek refuge on floating islands
KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) -- Thousands of civilians have taken refuge on floating islands in the lakes of Congo's Katanga province to escape rape and murder by government and militia fighters, a top U.N. humanitarian official said on Thursday.

Some 120,000 people have fled their homes in the remote Mitwaba area, where hundreds of women have been raped during fighting between the army and former pro-government militiamen that U.N. peacekeepers are unable to control, he added.

Released hostage expresses empathy toward kidnappers
WARRI, Nigeria (AP) -- ... Militants handed Macon Hawkins of Kosciusko, Texas, to surprised journalists visiting the fighters in the creeks and waterways of oil-rich southern Nigeria. The reporters took the calm but bedraggled oil industry worker to the Nigerian military.

... "I have no animosity toward them at all," he added. "I've seen their little villages. They're dirt poor, poor as field mice."

Old horrors, young victims (II)
by Anderson Cooper
I'm humbled by the sheer volume of responses to my blog post, partly because many of you were responding even before you'd seen the TV version of this story about the horrors inflicted on the children of Gulu in northern Uganda. I'm particularly touched by your humanity, in a world where inhumanity seems to be the order of the day.

Someone asked whether my heart bleeds every time I cover one human tragedy after another. The answer is yes. I lay awake many nights trying to find answers to seemingly intractable questions -- Why have we become so cruel to ourselves? What makes us revert to our basic "animal" instincts of killing our own without guilt or remorse? Why, in the 21st century, are so many of us living like our medieval ancestors?

Thousands flee militia fighting in Mogadishu
NAIROBI, 23 March (IRIN) - Thousands of people, especially women and children, were fleeing their homes in the Somali capital of Mogadishu on Thursday as fighting between rival militias entered a second day, witnesses said.

... The fighting began on Wednesday morning. It sucked in forces of the Alliance for Peace and the Fight Against International Terrorism, which comprises several Mogadishu-based faction leaders on Raghe's sde. Other members of the alliance include Muhammad Qanyare Afrah, Muse Sudi Yalahow, Omar Finnish and Abdirashid Shire Ilqeyte.

Ex-Liberian President Charles Taylor disappears before charges
ABUJA, Nigeria Mar 28, 2006 (AP)— Former Liberian President Charles Taylor disappeared from his Nigerian haven, days after his hosts agreed to transfer him to a war crimes tribunal for complicity in the murder, rape and maiming of more than a half-million Africans, officials said Tuesday.

... Taylor vanished Monday night from his villa in the southern town of Calabar, the government said. A presidential spokeswoman said members of Taylor's Nigerian security detail had been arrested.

Charles Taylor arrested at Cameroon border
... The warlord was caught trying to slip across Nigeria's north-eastern border with Cameroon, a police spokesman told Reuters.

Mr Taylor was then escorted to a nearby military barracks, where a Reuters reporter saw him walk on to the runway surrounded by about 20 soldiers.

Taylor jailed in Freetown
Taylor, who had been on the run in Nigeria, arrived Wednesday from Liberia where he had been sent after Nigerian authorities caught him trying to flee into Cameroon.

A white UN helicopter brought Taylor to the the compound of the UN-supported war crimes tribunal in Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital.

Charles Taylor Pleads Not Guilty to War Crimes
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone, April 3 — In his first appearance before a special international tribunal, Charles G. Taylor, the former Liberian president, pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of war crimes, but not before refusing to recognize the court's jurisdiction and accusing it of attempting to meddle in the region's affairs.

... The former warlord betrayed no emotion as the nine-page indictment — detailing charges from terrorizing the civilian population to sexual violence to the recruitment of child soldiers — was read to him.

Chadian Rebels in Darfur Attack Chad Town
N'DJAMENA, Chad -- Chadian rebels based in the western Darfur region of Sudan launched their first attack deep inside Chad, reaching hundreds of miles into the country to attack government forces.

Police said Wednesday that rebels were 180 miles from the capital, N'djamena, and hoped to capture it. France, which supports the government of longtime Chadian president Idriss Deby, said it was adding 150 troops to its contingent of about 1,200. The troops are being dispatched from the central African country of Gabon, the French Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Chad warns it may stop sheltering Darfur refugees
N'DJAMENA (Reuters) - Chadian President Idriss Deby said on Friday if no international solution was found for the Darfur crisis by the end of June his country would no longer shelter refugees from that Sudanese region.

Chadian insurgents attacked the capital N'Djamena early on Thursday in the boldest assault yet by fighters who have vowed to end Deby's nearly 16-year rule and block a May 3 presidential election in which he is standing for re-election.

Chad Cuts Sudan Ties a Day After Attack
N'DJAMENA, Chad -- Chad broke off diplomatic relations with Sudan on Friday and threatened to expel 200,000 Sudanese refugees, blaming its neighbor for a rebel attack a Cabinet official said killed 350 in the capital.

President Idriss Deby said he would expel the refugees who fled Sudan's troubled Darfur region by June 30 if the U.N. and the African Union did not help stop what he said were Sudan's attempts to destabilize his government.

Chad demands $100 mln from U.S.-led oil consortium
N'DJAMENA, April 15 (Reuters) - Chad's oil minister said on Saturday he wanted a U.S.-led oil consortium to pay at least $100 million by Tuesday to circumvent a World Bank freeze on oil profits or else crude production would be halted.

The World Bank has frozen oil profits from a pipeline in Chad saved in a London escrow account in a dispute over how the revenues are spent. The savings include royalties from the pipeline's operator, Exxon Mobil <XOM.N>.

Central African Rep closes border with Sudan
BANGUI, April 14 (Reuters) - Central African Republic closed its border with Sudan on Friday in protest at what it called Khartoum's "aggression" following rebel attacks on its neighbour Chad, its foreign minister said.

Chadians flee as Darfur crisis spreads
The feared Arab Janjaweed militia, whose name is loosely derived from the Arabic for "devils on horseback", are blamed for a three-year campaign of rape, looting and murder in Sudan's Darfur region that has killed 250,000 people and forced more than 2 million from their homes.

Chadian President Idriss Deby accuses Sudan's government of exporting Darfur's ethnic strife across the border in a drive to spread Arab control and Islam into sub-Saharan Africa.

Militia attacks deeper and deeper into Chad in the last six months have forced more than 55,000 terrified locals from their homes and threatened camps housing more than 200,000 Darfur refugees, United Nations officials say.

Nigeria Blows Up
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo faced growing pressure on Thursday with militants in the oil-producing south killing two people in a car bomb attack and thousands of opposition supporters rallying against him in the capital.

Militants detonated the car bomb on Wednesday night in the southern city of Port Harcourt, extending a four-month campaign of sabotage and kidnapping that has already cut output from the world's eighth-largest oil exporter by a quarter.

Clooney, senators urge action on Darfur
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Oscar winner George Clooney Thursday joined two senators, Republican Sam Brownback of Kansas and Democrat Barack Obama, to appeal for greater action to address what is being described as genocide in Sudan's Darfur region.

... "It is the first genocide of the 21st century," Clooney told an audience at the National Press Club, and what the people in Darfur "need now is the American people and the world's population to help them."