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CAIRO (Reuters) - The further integration of Arabic language capabilities in internet and other technological architecture will grant millions access to the digital world, Microsoft and Google executives said.

As devices and applications become more ubiquitous in less developed countries, their content will grow and an embryonic e-economy should flourish, they said.

"(Microsoft CEO) Steve Ballmer and I a few years ago talked and believed Arabic would be an increasingly important language," said Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer. "And yet, because of the way the internet was evolving, it wasn't a language that was getting a lot of use."

But while Arab world internet use since 2000 has grown faster than anywhere else and access costs have shrunk, content still punches below its weight and ad spending remains tiny.

Arabic content is less than 1 percent of world totals though speakers constituting 5 percent of the global population.

The Arabic portal of online encyclopedia Wikipedia carries less words than its Catalan site, Google's regional marketing manager Wael Ghonim said.

"There is a lot of Arabic content but it is not well structured," he said. "We want more structured content. We want more of the professional, niche sites, more businesses."

"One of our biggest missions is to enable Arabic users to find the right tools to enrich Arabic content," Ghonim said. "It would be great to see more e-commerce in the region, more publishers, more news sites. We are committed to help them."

Asked how Google could aid such regional growth, Ghonim said: "We have a very ambitious plan in the next few months, we are working on many initiatives." He did not elaborate.

Regional spending on online advertising was around $90 million in 2009, up from $66.5 million in 2008 and $38 million in 2007 but still miniscule compared to Britain's $5.3 billion.

Ghonim said Arabic speakers have historically engaged in poorly organized and difficult to archive forums, citing a message board used by 400,000 teachers in Saudi Arabia.

Both Google and Microsoft place Arabic in their top ten languages in need of prioritized attention.

Microsoft's Mundie was visiting the Cairo Microsoft Innovation Center, a regional hub launched in 2006 that released Windows extension Maren, which converts Arabic written in Roman characters into Arabic script. It is Microsoft's second most popular service by page views after Internet Explorer 8.

ARABIC WEB ADDRESSES, MOBILE ACCESS

Egypt and Saudi Arabia registered the first domain names written in the right-to-left Arabic script late last year, after global internet regulator ICANN voted to allow non-Latin script to be used in web addresses in November.

In Egypt, internet access is becoming cheaper and use of internet on mobile devices is blossoming. Egypt plans a $1 billion upgrade to its broadband capacity over four years to quadruple penetration to 20 percent.

"The next few million Egyptian internet users will be people who don't really speak English," Ghonim said.

Such users will likely not foray deeply into the internet's marketplace initially, but will no longer be hindering from creating part of the fabric of the web by language constraints.

"Think of the guy running a very small one-stop shop in (Nile delta industrial city) Mahalla," Ghonim said. "You should facilitate for him a complete experience in Arabic, from the way he registers his domain to finding a hosting company to communicating to his customers."

Mundie said the Arab world was well-placed to skip PC-dominated use and go straight to mobile internet.

"The arrival of a very low cost form of computing coupled to the mobile network creates an alternative entry point into the world of computing and internet usage," he added.

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Campaign posters endorsing Nigeria's Acting President Goodluck Jonathan for the 2011 presidential election have gone up at strategic points in the capital city Abuja, residents said on Saturday.

Jonathan, who was voted into office by parliament in February after President Umaru Yar'Adua left the country to be treated for a heart ailment, is yet to make known his plan for next year's polls.

"Support a visionary in 2011" and "Goodluck is the positive hope for Nigeria," are the inscriptions on the posters, sponsored by an unknown group calling itself the "Northern Youth Movement for Positive Change".

Officials in Jonathan's office said that they were not aware of the posters, seen by an AFP reporter.

Jonathan was Yar'Adua's deputy from May 2007 until he took power.

A former governor of southern Bayelsa State, he is the first person originating from the oil-rich Niger Delta to have risen to the position of Nigerian president.

However his ruling Peoples Democratic Party said recently that the party's flagbearer for the 2011 poll will be a northerner.

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Deadly clashes erupted between Chadian troops and rebels on Chad's side of the border with Sudan on Saturday, the rebels' leader said.

"There was ground fighting this morning in Tissi. Things are calm now and we are awaiting their aircraft," said Popular Front for National Renaissance (PFNR) chief Adoum Yacoub of the likelihood of an air raid.

"There were casualties on both sides," Yacoub told AFP in Khartoum by satellite telephone without elaborating on the number of casualties.

The PFNR is the only Chadian rebel movement currently operating inside the country, with others grouped across the border in Sudan.

At the beginning of April, Chadian mediator Abderaman Moussa met rebel representatives in Sudan, and it was agreed to meet again in the first half of May.

"We were not associated with those discussions," Yacoub said on Saturday.

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Angelina Teny, the defeated candidate for the governorship of oil-rich Unity state in south Sudan who had two of her supporters shot dead, on Saturday accused her victorious rival of cheating.

On Friday incumbent governor Taban Deng, the official candidate of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), announced that he had retained his post in this month's elections.

The announcement triggered protests in which two Teny supporters were shot dead by security forces in the Unity state capital of Bentiu.

According to the election commission, Deng garnered 137,362 votes against 63,561 for Teny. An earlier partial count had showed Teny with a lead of 24,000 votes.

Teny, in an interview with AFP in Bentiu, accused Deng of altering "all the results, not just those of the governorship poll," based not on political considerations but on "how he feels about the person."

"It's a very sad day for democracy. I'm just wondering when you want to set up a democratic system, is this the best kind of foundation to put in place?" she asked.

"The situation that has been created by this unfortunate announcement -- because we do not accept these results -- is a matter that I think will have grave repercussions, not just for now but for the future of this place."

The decision by Teny, herself a senior SPLM member, to stand as an independent against Deng caused a stir within the former rebel movement and could further heighten tensions in the sensitive state.

But Teny, the wife of south Sudan's vice president Riek Machar, was quick to reiterate a call for her supporters to remain calm after Friday's protests.

"There is no point in losing life. That stage in our war is over. There is no point in telling people to come out if they are going to get shot," she said.

"The preparations in this state for the last five days have been like a preparation for war, with heavy presence of the army and the heavy-handed way people are being dealt with."

On Wednesday one of her campaign aides in Bentiu was "arrested and tortured and taken all over the place," Teny said, adding that the aide was eventually released.

Unity state, straddling the border between north and south Sudan, is one of the main oil-producing regions in a country whose crude output is around 480,000 barrels per day.

"This is a state that is very strategic, bordering on the northern states. It's also an oil-producing state and it borders two other southern states where there are conflicts (Lakes and Warrab). It's the last place where we need this kind of tension," Teny said.

Some 16 million registered voters across Sudan voted between April 11 and 15 for president, legislative and local representatives in the country's first multi-party election since 1986.

President Omar al-Beshir, who came to power in a military coup in 1989 backed by Islamists, is widely expected to be re-elected.

A referendum on southern independence is due to take place next January.

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KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Hard-pressed Sudanese election officials told staff to save time and stop entering results into a safeguard computer system, leaving vote counting open to fraud and error, international sources said Saturday.

Sudan is days late in announcing the results of its first open elections in 24 years, a complex process already marred by boycotts and opposition accusations of vote rigging.

The elections, set up under a 2005 peace deal that ended more than two decades of north-south civil war, were designed to help transform the oil-producing nation into a democracy ahead of a key 2011 southern referendum on secession.

Sudan's National Elections Commission (NEC) told state polling committees to stop collecting data on computers and start sending in voting figures collated on paper, said the three sources, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"The concern is that any way of tracking what's going on and any control mechanisms are out of the window. They could write down anything on a bit of paper," said one elections observer.

Sudan finished a five-day voting period last week and the final results of presidential, legislative and gubernatorial ballots were due Tuesday.

Early results suggest a big win for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's dominant National Congress Party in the north and former rebels Sudan People's Liberation Movement in the south.

NEC member al-Hadi Mohamed Ahmed denied it would make any difference to the result, "We are working by Internet, fax... anything -- this is Sudan after all," he said. "Some states don't even have electricity."

Mohamed Jaweesh, NEC head of IT, said staff shortages were among the problems delaying data input.

"They were supposed to concurrently send the manually tabulated results and input into the system," he told Reuters. "But now they will not wait for the system."

One observer said the software had a number of "red flags" built in that would show up obviously wrong or suspicious figures, for example a voter turnout of more than 100 percent.

"My understanding is that in various places, almost every result was going into quarantine because there was a query on it for some reason or another," the observer said.

A second international source close to the voting system said the computer system had already shown up discrepancies.

"Abandoning the automated system makes the entire results process extremely vulnerable to manipulation," the source said, adding the NEC had been advised against the move.

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JOS, Nigeria (Reuters) - The Nigerian military fired in the air to contain violence in the central city of Jos on Saturday, after the killing of a Muslim man triggered a rampage by an angry mob, an army spokesman and witnesses said.

Four others died in the unrest, underscoring continued tensions in the region at the crossroads between Nigeria's Muslim north and Christian south. Sectarian clashes have killed hundreds of people this year.

A mob began rioting after the body of a Muslim man, who had apparently been strangled, was dumped in a sack on a main street, according to the military taskforce (STF) set up to police Jos and the surrounding area after clashes in January.

"When the Muslims discovered the body, they took to the streets and barricaded roads, stabbing passers-by indiscriminately," STF spokesman Donald Oji said, adding that three of those attacked had later died in hospital.

A fifth body was later discovered by soldiers on the other side of the city, he said.

Fierce competition for control of fertile farmlands between Christian and animist indigenous groups and Muslim settlers from the north have repeatedly sparked violence in central Nigeria's "Middle Belt" over the past decade.

Security forces say they have the situation under control, maintaining a night curfew in Jos. But killings have continued, raising fears of a repeat of clashes between Muslim and Christian mobs which killed hundreds in January and March.

Sporadic violence killed at last nine people last week, seven of them discovered in shallow graves around 30 km (20 miles) south of Jos. Residents said they were killed after stopping at a roadblock set up by a local gang.

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Two German hostages were freed on Saturday in Nigeria's oil-rich southern delta, a volatile region where kidnappings often occur.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in a statement the kidnappers released the two men somewhere near Port Harcourt, the main city tucked among the creeks and rivers of the Niger Delta. Westerwelle said the men were in good condition and remained in Nigeria.

The minister did not say whether his government or the men's employers paid a ransom for their release.

"I thank the crisis committee and the German and Nigerian authorities involved for their untiring work, which made a fast and happy end possible," Westerwelle said.

Unidentified gunmen kidnapped the two men as they visited a beach April 18 along the Imo River in Abia state. The men had started walking back to their car where their driver waited when gunmen seized them.

The two Germans apparently traveled to the area, long known for its instability, without any guards. Typically, foreign oil workers and other expatriates living in the region travel with private security guards or in police escorts.

Militants in the delta have targeted oil workers for kidnapping in the past during their campaign to bring more oil money to a region that suffered environmental damage and economic neglect over 50 years of production. However, criminal gangs increasingly target wealthy Nigerians and politicians for kidnappings, as well as foreigners who stumble into their path.

Attacks in the region have sharply increased global oil prices in the past and could in the future, as Nigeria exported almost 1 million barrels of crude a day to U.S. in January alone, more than Saudi Arabia.

A peace deal with the government that halted fighting for several months now appears to be faltering, especially after militants detonated two car bombs March 15 during a newspaper-sponsored discussion about the amnesty program.

DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Tanzania's parliament has passed a new mining law that increases the rate of royalty paid on minerals like gold from 3 percent to 4 percent and requires the government to own a stake in future mining projects.

Tanzania is Africa's third largest gold producer, but also has reserves of uranium, nickel and coal. Gold exports alone earned it $1.076 billion in 2009, up from $932.4 million the previous year.

The Mining Act 2010 passed late on Friday also requires mining companies to list on the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange.

As part of the new legislation, Tanzania will not issue new gemstone mining licences to foreign companies. Current agreements with foreign mining companies remain unchanged.

"This bill makes comprehensive provision for prospecting for minerals, mining, processing and dealing in minerals, for the granting, renewal and termination of mineral rights, for payment of royalties, fees and other charges and for any other relevant matters," said part of the legislation.

"The bill is a response to challenges faced and experience gained during 12 years of the implementation of the Mining Act ... that was enacted in the year 1998."

African Barrick Gold has four gold mines in Tanzania while Australia's third largest gold miner, Resolute Mining and South Africa's Anglogold Ashanti also have gold operations there.

British mining company African Eagle Ltd. is raising funds for its nickel project in Tanzania.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council has rescheduled for mid-May a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo called off last week amid travel chaos caused by ash from an Icelandic volcano, diplomats said on Friday.

The trip to discuss with Congo's government the future of the U.N. peacekeeping force in the central African country, originally set for April 17-20, will now take place May 14-16, a diplomat said following Security Council discussions.

Although the ash cloud was the official reason given for the postponement, several diplomats said last week that intensifying talks on a fourth round of sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program also played a role.

The United States is keen to get a sanctions resolution through the council by early May.

Council members plan to meet in Kinshasa with President Joseph Kabila, who has been pressing for a swift withdrawal of U.N. peacekeepers from Congo with the approach of the 50th anniversary of independence this year and elections in 2011.

Kabila wants the Congo peacekeeping mission, known as MONUC, to start withdrawing within months and the last blue helmet out in 2011.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has proposed a slower three-year phased withdrawal.

Japan's U.N. Ambassador Yukio Takasu said the council wants to visit Congo before MONUC's current mandate expires at the end of May.

Council members hope to press Kabila to allow a more gradual exit of MONUC, which diplomats and U.N. peacekeeping officials say is vital to maintaining peace in the country's turbulent east.

Since its establishment in 1999, MONUC has become the world body's largest force with 22,000 troops and police, and assumed many of the responsibilities of the Congolese state, which was torn apart by a 1998-2003 war that killed millions.

But local and Rwandan Hutu rebels still roam much of the two Kivu provinces in the east. Ugandan rebels continue to wage a campaign of terror in the remote northeast and a new rebellion has emerged in recent months in Equateur province.

JUBA, Sudan (Reuters) - At least two people were killed during a clash between security forces and supporters of an independent candidate in elections in south Sudan's oil-producing Unity state on Friday, the United Nations said.

The deaths were the first serious violence reported during the announcement of results in Sudan's complex presidential, legislative and gubernatorial ballots.

Sudan is in the closing stages of its first open polls in 24 years, a process already marred by delays, boycotts and opposition accusations of widespread vote rigging.

The elections, set up under a 2005 peace deal that ended more than two decades of north-south civil war, were designed to help transform Africa's largest nation into a democracy.

The violence erupted in the state capital Bentiu after a radio announcement said Angelina Teny had lost the race to become Unity governor to incumbent Taban Deng Gai, a member of Teny's campaign team told Reuters, asking not to be named.

"From what I understand there was some sort of a demonstration over a gubernatorial radio announcement," U.N. regional coordinator for southern Sudan David Gressly told Reuters.

"It's not clear how it happened but there seems to have been some shooting and two people were killed and four were wounded."

Gressly said it appeared security forces had tried to disperse the crowd. The dead and injured were all civilians, he added.

Teny, the wife of South Sudan's Vice President Riek Machar, told Reuters she had reports one of the injured people died later from their wounds.

Sudan's National Elections Commission (NEC) announced late on Friday that Gai, from the south's dominant Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), won the gubernatorial race with 137,636 votes, with Teny in second place with 63,500 votes.

Teny said that she would contest the outcome. During the election period she complained her agents had been harassed and arrested.

Teny was running as an independent after failing to get the SPLM nomination.

Southern officials told Reuters they were tightening security in two other southern states where independents ran against SPLM candidates.

Earlier on Friday, SPLM secretary general Pagan Amum told reporters the party won overwhelming victories at all levels of elections in the south.

The 2005 accord set up a semi-autonomous southern government and promised a referendum on southern secession in 2011.

Early results suggest Sudan's incumbent president Omar Hassan al-Bashir will keep the top job while his northern National Congress Party will retain control of the national assembly.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the head of Western Sahara's independence movement Polisario on Friday he was worried about alleged violations of human rights in the resource-rich territory.

After a meeting with Mohamed Abdelaziz, Secretary-General of the Polisario Front, the U.N. press office said in a statement that Ban had expressed his commitment to finding a solution to the 35-year-old conflict "that provides for the self determination for the people of Western Sahara."

"The Secretary-General stated that he remains very concerned about alleged violations of human rights," the statement said. "(Ban) said that his personal envoy, Christopher Ross, and the (U.N.) Secretariat will continue to work to promote the human rights of Sahwaris."

Earlier this month the Polisario sent Ban a letter complaining about his latest report on Western Sahara to the U.N. Security Council, accusing him of inadequately addressing their concerns about human rights abuses by Morocco.

The conflict centers on a disputed territory slightly bigger than Britain with fewer than half a million people known as Sahrawis. The area is rich in phosphates -- used in making fertilizers -- and, potentially, offshore oil and gas.

Morocco annexed the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara in 1975 and is now offering it autonomy. But the Polisario Front, which fought a guerrilla war until 1991, demands a referendum with independence as one option.

Western Sahara is littered with landmines and the remnants of unexploded ordnance from the war.

Morocco and Polisario, which is backed by Algeria, put forward their latest proposals three years ago but formal negotiations broke down in acrimony after less than a year.

The two sides failed to make any progress in informal talks in Austria in August 2009 and in New York state in February 2010. Ban said in his report, published earlier this month, that Morocco-Polisario talks remained deadlocked.

Ban recommended to the U.N. Security Council that the U.N. Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara stay in place for another year, through April 30, 2011. The 233-strong mission includes military observers, troops and police.

KINSHASA, April 24 (Xinhua) -- The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) has rejected accusations by a human rights watch that its army was responsible for killing civilians in fighting rebels early in the month in the northwestern city of Mbandaka.

The African Association for the Defense of Human Rights (ASADHO) recently reported that DR Congo's Armed Forces (FARDC) and the rival Enyele militia were "responsible for the summary executions" of 49 civilians, the Congolese press reported on Friday.

Communication Minister Lambert Mende Omalanga dismissed the charges as "malicious" propaganda.

"The ASADHO report was drafted on the basis of a statement which was written from far away and they never took any minimal time to verify its authenticity, the credibility of the correspondent or even his intentions," he pointed out.

The minister also denied the allegations that there were confrontations between the FARDC and the Enyele insurgents around Wengji Secli, 24 km from Mbandaka, the capital of Equateur province.

Enyele insurgents who are now calling themselves "Nzombo ya Lombo" (village bandits) have fought with the Congolese national police and the FARDC since October 2009 in different localities of Equateur province.

On April 4, the insurgents launched an attack on Mbandaka and briefly occupied the city's airport before driven out by FARDC with the support of the UN mission in DR Congo.

NIAMEY, April 24 (Xinhua) -- Niger's National Transitional Council on Friday proposed holding the first round of presidential elections on Dec. 26, the first time an election date has ever been made public since the military coup in February.

The council made the proposal in its report to the government and the military junta, the Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy (CSRD), recommending a transition beginning from Feb. 18, 2010, when CSRD leader Salou Djibo toppled former president Mamadou Tandja in the coup.

According to the report, the proposal has taken into account the experiences of other transitional periods of 1996 (five months) and 1999 (nine months), the feasibility of launching an election process within 12 months and the eventual political interference in case of a long transition.

The proposed duration matched with a timetable which is specifically tailored with activities of organizing the next electoral cycle, the report said.

The National Transitional Council, among other things, proposed the forming of a National Independent Electoral Commission (CENI) on May 5, a referendum on a new constitution on Oct. 24 and its promulgation on Nov. 11.

The first round of presidential elections which will be coupled together with the legislative elections will be held on Dec. 26, and the second round which will be coupled with the municipal elections will be held on Jan. 26, 2011, marking the end of the transition.

The council also reported its activities including a clean-up drive in the management of public finances.

It said it would promote national reconciliation by organizing forums and a "Truth, Justice and Reconciliation commission."

To ensure the implementation of the timetable, the National Transitional Council recommended that CENI be provided with necessary means as soon as it is established.

ENTEBBE, April 23 (Xinhua) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived here on Friday to among others ask for Uganda' s support to lobby the United Nations Security Council not to impose sanctions on Tehran over its uranium enrichment program.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni welcomed Ahmadinejad at State House Entebbe, 40km south of the capital Kampala.

He was given a 21 gun salute and thereafter inspected a guard of honor before he proceeded for a State Banquet.

James Mugume, the permanent secretary of ministry of foreign affairs Uganda told Xinhua that the two leaders might discuss Tehran's nuclear enrichment program.

"He (Ahmadinejad) might consult on nuclear enrichment program because this is the debate in the Security Council. We believe we can solve this issue peacefully," he said.

Uganda is a non permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.

The United States and its allies have been pushing for a fourth round of UN sanctions to restrict Iran's nuclear efforts, which they say are aimed at developing nuclear weapons.

Iran denies the accusation, saying its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes and is intended to generate electricity for its people.

Museveni has previously argued that developing countries have a right to acquire, develop and use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

Ahmadinejad's two-day state visit to Uganda is seen as the country's move to have talks with the 15 Security Council members in search for an agreement.

COLOMBO, April 22 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lanka's detained former Army Commander General Sarath Fonseka is to attend the openning session of the new parliament and debut as a legislator on Thursday, party officials said.

"We have been told that all arrangements have been made to bring General Fonseka to parliament. So he will be there," said Vijitha Herath, General Secretary of Fonseka's Democratic National Alliance (DNA) which won seven seats of the 225-member legislature in the April 8 election.

Fonseka was expected to be escorted to parliament by military officials for the inaugural session of the new parliament.

Fonseka was elected to be a Colombo district member of parliament.

Fonseka was defeated in the Jan. 26 presidential election and has been under military custody since Feb. 8.

He faced two court-martials on charges of indulging in politics while still in military service and impropriety in defence procurement.

He denies charges as political motivated.

LOME, April 21 (Xinhua) -- At least four were injured on Wednesday in clashes between opposition protesters and security forces, a government statement said.

The government was launching a probe to interrogate the perpetrators and would "bring them to justice," the statement said, adding that the opposition demonstration was "illegal."

Hundreds of supporters of opposition candidate Jean-Pierre Fabre gathered on Wednesday for a pray and then marched on the street to protest the re-election of incumbent President Faure Gnassingbe.

The protesters set tyres into fire, erected road blockades and threw stones at the security forces when the troops used tear gas to disperse them.

Fabre protested the March 4 election results, which put Gnassingbe in the lead with 60.88 percent of the total votes. Fabre got 33.93 percent of the votes.

Six candidates including a woman ran against Gnassingbe. Gnassingbe came to power in April 2005 after the fiercely contested election that was organized following the death of his father, General Gnassingbe Eyadema, who was in power for 38 years.

KHARTOUM, April 21 (Xinhua) -- Sudan's National Elections Commission (NEC) Wednesday said the final results of the elections are expected to be announced early next week.

"What we can confirm is that all the results of the elections in 15 northern states will be announced on Thursday, and until early next week we may announce the final results," NEC member al- Hady Mohamed Ahmed told reporters here Wednesday.

However, he failed to give a specific date of the final results, saying the results of the presidential elections would be announced when results of all the polling stations across the country are submitted to the NEC.

He ruled out any problems facing the ballots counting process, saying that "there are no problems generally, but there are some difficulties in southern Sudan due to the rain which hinders movement on roads."

The NEC Wednesday announced partial results of the elections at the levels of state governors and national and state legislative bodies, which reflected a clear lead of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP).

The general elections in Sudan, which were held from April 11 to 15, were the first multy-party elections in the African country for 24 years.

CAIRO, April 21 (Xinhua) -- An Egyptian court on Wednesday convicted 58 officials of involvement in a sunken ferryboat case, in which around 1,400 people died after the boat sank into the Red Sea off Saudi coast, state-run MENA news agency reported.

Egypt's Supreme Disciplinary Court ordered dismissing 11 employees of the Egyptian Authority for Maritime Navigation Safety and the Ministry of Transport of their jobs, sending 15 others to early retirement and suspending 21 for six months.

The court also ordered reducing one-month salary from three employees, fining six others five-fold their monthly salary whereas the last two were reprimanded.

The al-Salam 98 ferry sank in the Red Sea in February 2006, claiming the lives of around 1,400 people.

According to the verdict, the convicts have facilitated granting the owner company passenger safety certificates despite its lack of the "least maritime safety devices." They also issued certificates that allowed the owner company to overload the ferry.

On March 11, the ferry owner was sentenced in absence to seven years behind bars while two senior officials of the company received three years each.

Four Saharan states open joint anti-Qaida military base in Algeria
English.news.cn 2010-04-21 23:51:29 FeedbackPrintRSS

ALGIERS, April 21 (Xinhua) -- Four Saharan countries are opening a joint command headquarters in southern Algeria in a bid to untie efforts against terrorism and a growing threat of al- Qaida's North Africa branch.

The command headquarters for Algeria, Mali, Mauritania and Niger is being officially inaugurated Wednesday in the town of Tamanrasset, in the Saharan desert about 2,000 km south of the Algerian capital Algiers, a statement by the Algerian Defense Ministry said.

The joint command aims to oversee the intelligence and military cooperation between the Saharan countries in operations against terrorism, kidnappings and trafficking, the statement said. However, it did not give details about the capabilities of the command or the powers it would have.

The announcement came eight days after a meeting that brought together top military officials from seven African Sahel-Sahara countries to discuss how to activate agreements they reached last month to confront the al-Qaida in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)'s threat.

The meeting had built up on a gathering of foreign ministers and representatives from the seven countries in the Algerian capital to explore means of joining hands in combating terrorism and transnational crimes in order to sustain stability and development.

Al-Qaida in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has been recently very active across the North African countries, kidnapping a number of foreigners, and carrying out many attacks on the security forces of Algeria, Mali and Mauritania. Transnational crimes including drug and arms smuggling were also rampant, threatening security and stability of the countries in the region.

The AQIM insurgents drew international focus when they kidnapped a number of Westerners last year and used them as a bargain tool to see their demands met. The group is believed to be holding two Spanish aid workers kidnapped in Mauritania last November. An Italian couple kidnapped in the same country a month later were last week freed in Mali.

They also killed a British national they kidnapped on the border between Niger and Mali and claimed responsibility for killing a U.S. aid worker in Nouakchott last June.

The militants also threatened to kill a French man they held hostage on Nov. 25 before letting him go last month only after the Malian government freed four al-Qaida militants whose release was set by their comrades as a condition in return for sparing the hostage's life.

The move angered Algeria and Mauritania which recalled their ambassadors in Bamako, capital city of Mali, in protest. Mali said the four suspects were sentenced to imprisonment terms that they had already spent in jail, opening the door for their release.

Algeria per se has faced an increasing threat by Islamist militants since 1990s, and security forces have recently stepped up military operations against pro-al-Qaida groups.
Editor: yan

MANILA, April 21 (Xinhua) -- Another batch of 21 Filipino sailors on board a Liberian vessel were snatched by heavily armed Somali pirates Wednesday morning.

The Philippine Embassy in Nairobi, in a report to the Home Office in Manila Wednesday, said the Panamanian-flagged, Liberian- owned bulk carrier Voc Daisy was seized by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden, 190 miles southeast of Salalah, Oman.

Philippine Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Esteban Conejos said the Philippine government coordinating with the vessel's local manning agency to determine the condition of the Filipino seafarers.

The European Union Naval Force said at the time of the attack, the ship was heading west from Ruwais, United Arab Emirates making its way to the eastern rendezvous point of the International Recommended Transit Corridor (IRTC), for onward transit through the Suez Canal.

"MV Voc Daisy was able to raise the alarm before the four armed pirates, carrying three AK47s and one RPG, stormed onboard and cut their lines of communication," an EUNAVFOR statement said
The EU NAVFOR, which is helping Philippine authorities in monitoring the situation, confirmed that all the Filipinos sailors are safe.

EU's naval force in Somalia escorts merchant vessels carrying humanitarian aid of the World Food Program and vessels of African Union Mission for Somalia, and protects vulnerable ships in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean and to deter and disrupt piracy.

The Philippines is the world's leading supplier of ship crew with over 350,000 sailors, or about a fifth of the world's seafarers, manning oil tankers, luxury liners, and passenger vessels worldwide, exposing them to piracy attacks.

Since late 2008, more than 200 Filipino seamen have been abducted by pirates off Somali waters.

As a policy, the Philippine government does not negotiate nor pay ransom to kidnappers, but gives ship owners the free hand in negotiating for the release of abducted Filipino sailors.