Africa News

HARARE (AFP) - Zimbabwe's ailing public health system will receive a 180 million US dollar boost to fight HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria from the Global Fund, state media reported Wednesday.

KINSHASA/PARIS (Reuters) - The Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday accused Canada of holding up progress toward rescheduling its foreign debt but Ottawa said it was now prepared to provide the needed financing assurances.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Visitors to South Africa's premier holiday destination who are worried about becoming victims of the country's high crime rate could find themselves instead robbed by a more furry kind of felon: baboons.

LOS ANGELES - Shareholders at American Funds have rejected a measure that seeks to screen out investments possibly linked to genocide in international hot spots like Sudan's Darfur region.

THE HAGUE (AFP) - Two Congolese militiamen pleaded not guilty on Tuesday as they were accused in The Hague of plotting to wipe out a village where their forces killed civilians, raped women and enslaved child soldiers.

EL-FASHER, Sudan (AFP) - Three weeks have passed without news of two kidnapped civilians working for the joint United Nations African Union Mission in Darfur, a UNAMID spokesman said on Tuesday.

TRIPOLI (AFP) - Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi on Tuesday held talks with visiting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the Middle East peace process and other "international issues," news agency Jana said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama honored a group of women Monday who have confronted Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and said they had defied a dictator.

ABUJA (AFP) - Nigeria's 2010 budget will be based on an oil price of 57 dollars per barrel and oil production of 2.088 million barrels per day, President Umaru Yar'Adua said in a budget statement Tuesday to parliament.

ABUJA, Nigeria - Authorities say an Australian woman who fell in love online was duped out of nearly $50,000 by a Nigerian man who said he was her "Mr. Right."

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Two Congolese militia leaders commanded forces that raped, killed and looted civilians in an attack that killed 200 people during the Congo war, a war crimes prosecutor said on Tuesday.

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has accepted an Arab League request to calm tension between Egypt and Algeria sparked by their soccer World Cup play-off matches, Libyan state media reported Tuesday.

PARIS - France's foreign minister has praised the courage of a journalist who has led a fight against a law in Sudan allowing for women to be flogged for wearing pants.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Khartoum's U.N. envoy, rejecting a bleak U.N. assessment of the situation in Sudan's conflict-torn western Darfur region, said on Monday it was time for international peacekeepers to prepare to leave.

LIBREVILLE (AFP) - Two French aid workers were kidnapped overnight by a gang of armed men in the northeast of Central African Republic, close to the border with Sudan, a Bangui diplomat in Sudan said Monday.

ABUJA (AFP) - Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua is due to travel to Saudi Arabia late Monday for a medical check-up, his office said.

DUBLIN (AFP) - World champions South Africa on Monday put off naming the team to play Six Nations Grand Slam holders Ireland this Saturday in Dublin because of an injury crisis which forced them to cancel training.

BRASILIA (AFP) - Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday began a controversial visit to Brazil, the key leg of a tour to sympathetic Latin American and African countries he sees backing Tehran's vision of "a new world order."

ASABA, Nigeria (AFP) - A judge failed to turn up to preside over a high-profile Nigerian corruption trial on Monday, causing the second postponement in the case in a month.

KHARTOUM (AFP) - Sudan's National Electoral Commission said on Sunday it is giving people another week to register to vote in the country's first elections in 24 years, scheduled for April.

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudan on Sunday announced a six-day delay to long-awaited elections to make up for hold-ups in registering millions of voters in the oil-producing country.

ALGIERS (AFP) - An Algiers court on Sunday cleared two men held at Guantanamo Bay for seven years, according to a legal source.

BANJUL (AFP) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Gambia on Sunday for a 24-hour working visit aimed at fostering relations between the Islamic republic and the West African nation.

ALGIERS (Reuters) - Two men who had been held for seven years in the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay on suspicion of belonging to an extremist group were acquitted in an Algerian court on Sunday, state media reported.

CENTURION, South Africa (AFP) - Paul Collingwood, making a record 171st one-day appearance for England, hit a century, took two wickets and held a superb catch as England gained a comfortable seven-wicket win over South Africa in the second one-international at SuperSport Park on Sunday.

CAIRO (Reuters) - Israel's president said on Sunday expanding Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank was a "marginal" issue blocking resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians.

ALGIERS, Algeria - An Algerian court on Sunday acquitted two former detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who were returned home to face charges of links to terrorism, their defense lawyer said.

MONROVIA, Liberia - Hundreds of people jammed into a Monrovia church to mourn a Liberian United Nations worker killed in an October attack by Taliban gunmen in Afghanistan's capital.

UDINE, Italy (AFP) - South Africa coach Peter de Villiers and captain John Smit agreed that the world champions were back on track following their 32-10 win over Italy here.