FRICA
CONGO: WORST CRISIS NOW Eastern Congo is suffering the world's worst current human crisis, with a death toll outstripping that in the Darfur region of Sudan, the top relief official of the United Nations, Jan Egeland, said in Geneva, adding, "It is beyond belief that the world is not paying more attention." With thousands dying each month, he said the toll amounted to "one tsunami every six months, year in and year out, for the last six years." He said the problems arose because of the complexity and variety of the fighting groups there, which include regular soldiers, militias and criminal groups. (Reuters)
 | |
 |
SUDAN: U.N. RELOCATES THREATENED STAFF The United Nations withdrew its staff from a portion of the troubled western region of Darfur, citing threats to attack aid convoys from militias aligned with the government. Radhia Achouri, a spokeswoman for the United Nations mission in Sudan, said that "credible, serious threats" of attacks led the organization to withdraw about 30 employees, most of them Sudanese workers, from isolated areas of West Darfur near the border with Chad to a regional capital. She said that local government officials had recently begun seizing vehicles of pro-government Arab militants and that attacks on aid workers were planned as retribution. Lydia Polgreen (NYT)
KENYA: POLICE BATTLE PROTESTERS The police used rubber bullets and water cannons to disperse hundreds of protesters demanding a referendum on a proposed new constitution. During his 2002 campaign, President Mwai Kibaki promised swift enactment of a new constitution that would limit the powers of the presidency. Infighting within his administration has bogged down any reform. Marc Lacey (NYT)
MALAWI: JOURNALISTS IN GHOSTS DISPUTE FREED The police freed two reporters a day after they were arrested for reports that President Bingu wa Mutharika had left his new palace because it is haunted. (Reuters)
AMERICAS
GUATEMALA: PROTESTERS AND POLICE CLASH Protesters clashed with riot police who fired tear gas in the highland town of Santa Cruz del Quiché, in the eighth day of protests around the country over a free-trade deal with the United States. President Óscar Berger signed the accord into law on Tuesday, as a teacher was killed and several people seriously injured when hundreds of police officers and soldiers tried to disperse a protest in the Huehuetenango region, near Mexico. Witnesses said the security forces used live ammunition. (Reuters)
NICARAGUA: HEALTH EMERGENCY DECLARED Nicaragua declared a national health emergency after an epidemic of viral diarrhea killed 41 people and sickened 41,000. Most of those affected are children living in the capital, Managua, and northern parts of the country, according to health officials. (Agence France-Presse)
EUROPE
SWITZERLAND: WOMAN ARRESTED IN BANKER'S KILLING A French woman has been arrested and charged with the killing of the French banker Édouard Stern, who was shot in his luxury Geneva apartment earlier this month. In a statement, the judge investigating the death, Michel Graber, identified the woman only as someone "with whom he had intimate relations for several years." He said that the woman had confessed to having shot Mr. Stern, 50, once the heir to one of France's oldest banking families, and that the motive might have been personal or financial, since she and Mr. Stern were known to be in a legal dispute over money. The judge confirmed details of the shooting that were disclosed earlier in Swiss newspapers, saying that Mr. Stern had been found "clad in a latex body suit, and was struck by four bullets from a handgun, two of them in the head, in the course of an encounter of a sexual nature." John Tagliabue (NYT)