20100527
all africa

he following is full text of remarks by U.S. President Barack Obama and Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf before their bilateral meeting at the White House's Oval Office in Washington, DC.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, I want to officially welcome President Sirleaf to the Oval Office. I have been an extraordinary admirer of her work for many years now. I fondly recall the speech that she delivered in a joint session of Congress when I was still in the Senate.

20100526
all africa

Cairo is one of Africa's most populous and soccer-obssessed cities. Famed for its heavy traffic and notorious driving, it must be hell for fans of capital-based rivals Al-Alhy and Zamalek on match days. How do they enjoy their passion in increasing traffic?

20100526
press tv

Somalia's Finance Minister Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden has formally tendered his resignation in order to run for the post of Parliament speaker.

20100526
Aljazeera

A prominent Ethiopian opposition leader has called for a re-run of national elections held last Sunday, alleging the vote was flawed.

Hailu Shawel, a leader of the All Ethiopians Unity Party and a prospective parliamentarian, has written a letter to the national election board asking for a repeat of the vote which saw a massive victory for the ruling party.

20100524
AFRICA NEWS

At least thirteen people were killed and over thirty-five were wounded after residents clashed with Ethiopia soldiers in the northern Somali town of Buhoodle.

A local resident told AfricaNews that angry residents clashed with Ethiopia’s force that had entered in Buhoodle district two weeks ago.

20100524
AFRICA GOOD NEWS

Chadian director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun's "A Screaming Man" took the jury prize at the Cannes film festival Sunday.
Palme d'Or Award Ceremony: 63rd Cannes Film Festival

The movie was the first made south of the Sahara to be selected in 13 years to compete for the Palme d'Or top prize at Cannes.

20100524
AFRICA GOOD NEWS

Fifty-five countries on Saturday pledged their support to Somalia's fragile transitional federal government as the only barrier to chaos in the war-ravaged Horn of Africa nation.
French Foreign Affairs Minister Kouchner and U.N. Secretary-General Ban applaud as they stand with Somalia's President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed in Istanbul

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon opened an international conference in Istanbul with an appeal for global support for Somalia's government as it sought to strengthen its military resources and reconstruct the country.

20100524
AFRICA GOOD NEWS

Cash transfers by text message is a boom market in south and east Africa, with companies looking at introducing more sophisticated products in order to get an advance on the competition.

MTN Uganda, the country's largest mobile phone provider, said Monday that nearly 900,000 people were using its text message money transfer since the service was introduced 15 months ago.

20100524
AFRICA GOOD NEWS

A new collaboration between Norway and South Africa will collect oceanic data to help better understand and cope with the effects of climate change across Africa.

The Nansen-Tutu Centre for Marine Environmental Research was launched 20 May in Cape Town, South Africa. It will gather information on the three oceans surrounding southern Africa - the South Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean.

20100524
AFRICA GOOD NEWS

Conservationists flew the first five of 32 critically endangered East African black rhinos from South Africa back to their habitat in Tanzania's Serengeti park on Friday.
The rhinos had been bred from a group that was rescued from the Serengeti in the 1960s and relocated to South Africa to prevent the total extinction of their sub-species at the hands of poachers.

20100523
ALL AFRICA

A prominent member of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party from Plateau state, Ambassador Yahaya Kwande has said that it would be 'very unfair to the north' for the party to jettison the zoning formula it adopted in 1999, saying that that would be unacceptable to the north.

In an interview with Vanguard in Abuja, Ambassador Kwande who is a member of the Party's Board of Trustees said the party should follow through on its agreement on zoning that would see the north producing the presidential candidate in 2011 after which the South East would produce the president of the country in 2015.

20100523
ALL AFRICA

Abuja — The race for who succeeds the National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Prince Vincent Ogbulafor, who resigned on May 13, at the weekend, narrowed down to four key contenders.

The top contenders judging by the array of forces massed behind them are Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo, former national secretary of the party, Fidelis Ozichukwu, former national vice chairman of the party (South-east), , Senator Anyim Pius Anyim, former senate president and Major-Gen. Ike Nwachukwu, a former minister of external affairs.

20100523
ALL AFRICA

Maputo — A journalist appeared before a court in the northern Mozambican city of Nampula on Thursday, accused of libeling parliamentarian Lucia Afate, who is also the Nampula political delegate of the country's main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo.

The journalist, Jose Vasco da Gama, had written an article in the weekly paper "Magazine Independente" (MI) on 25 May 2009, claiming that Afate had married Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama at a Moslem ceremony in the Nampula district of Mossuril.

20100523
ALL AFRICA

Harare — PRIME Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has written a strongly worded letter to President Robert Mugabe warning him that he risks plunging the country into a constitutional crisis following his unilateral appointment of three High Court judges last week.

Sources said Tsvangirai's letter was delivered on Friday, a day after Mugabe appointed controversial former Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) chairman, George Chiweshe, the Judge President of the High Court.(20100522)

20100523
ALL AFRICA

Addis Ababa — Before tens of millions of registered voters are expected to cast their votes today, Sunday, May 23, 2010, Election Day, Merga Bekana, chairman of the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) took time to answer questions from Addis Fortune about the preparedness of the board for the voting process and answered questions about the recent changes made to the rules governing acceptable marks on voting cards.

20100523
ALL AFRICA

Addis Ababa — Before Election Day, Addis Fortune sat down with Thijs Berman, chief of the EU Election Observation Mission to Ethiopia, and interviewed him about the how the election campaigns, the electoral board, and his team’s mission were going as well as what he expected for today, Sunday, May 23, Election Day.

20100523
ALL AFRICA

Nairobi — Countries have paid too little attention to the importance of biodiversity, and as result, species and ecosystems are in sharp decline and the public does not understand the concept.

That was the reason the first International Day of Biodiversity was established 18 years ago on May 22, and there is still a long way to go, according to Angela Cropper, deputy secretary general of the U.N. Environment Programme.

20100523
ALL AFRICA

Addis Ababa — Ethiopians voted on Sunday in national elections that are expected to return long-serving Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to power in the first ballot since a disputed poll in 2005 turned violent.

20100523

ADWA, Ethiopia (Reuters) - Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said on Sunday he expects to win a national election thanks to his party's record on economic development and rejected opposition complaints of intimidation.

20100523

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Somalia's business community pledged to join forces in search of lasting peace for the Horn of Africa nation, investing $1 billion in electricity and gas industries in five years, a company official said on Sunday.