"Eritrea bans US aid group"

UN reforms critical to poverty eradication in Africa, says UK agency
THE proposed reform of the United Nations has been described as critical to poverty eradication programme in Africa and other less developed parts of the world.

Zimbabwe won’t accept political loans
The Zimbabwe government had not requested South Africa to rescue Zimbabwe with a financial package, the Zimbabwean state newspaper the Herald on Friday quoted the country's Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Patrick Chinamasa, as saying.
Eritrea bans US aid group
Eritrea has ordered an American aid group operating in the country to halt its activities, saying it was "uncomfortable" with the group's continued presence.

Roots reggae and resistance from Jamaica to Brixton
The rerelease of a range of roots reggae albums exposes the music’s hidden political history.

Kiosk newsroom links South Sudan to the world
Starved of news for over two decades, southern Sudan was one of the few countries in the world without a newspaper until three years ago when the print media started developing.

Africa's cellphone boom creates a base for low-cost banking
The first bank-by-phone system is designed for poor South Africans, enabling saving and access to credit.

Remove chiefs? Not from typical Kenyan villages
What should a farmer do with a cow on heat in the absence of a chief? That was Internal Security minister John Michuki’s question on the value of chiefs targeted for redundancy.

Bad roads ‘hindering access to the Sudan’

Hundreds of firms vie for Nigerian oil
Representatives from hundreds of oil firms are in Nigeria's capital Lagos for an announcement on the winners of dozens of new oil-exploration licenses for plots across Africa's largest oil producer

WHO Aims to Rid Africa of Sleeping Sickness By 2015
The World Health Organization (WHO) has launched a strategy to eliminate most cases of sleeping sickness, a disease that threatens millions in Africa, by 2015. The five-point strategy plans to use a range of scientific approaches to reduce the number of people falling sick and dying from the disease.

South Africa transferred R50bn to poor
South Africa has since 1994 transferred R50bn to the poor - the majority of them women, says Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo Ngcuka. .

Globalisation Driving Inequality, UN Warns
Despite unprecedented economic growth in recent years, the rich have become richer and the poor even poorer, says a new U.N. report that also shows women facing more hardship than men in all walks of life.

Mbeki to fight anti-Zuma 'conspiracy'
President Thabo Mbeki has bluntly given his support to a Congress of South African Trade Union (Cosatu) campaign to protect former deputy president Jacob Zuma, and pledged on Friday to unite "the entirely of our movement in a determined offensive" to defeat any conspiracy to discredit him.

Shock And Awe In Utah
"The illusion of freedom [in America] will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater."

Libeling Venezuela
Another firestorm in the American media, another opportunity to narrow the parameters of debate. Over the last week it has been impossible to escape mainstream and (to a certain extent) alternative media coverage of popular evangelical leader Pat Robertson's remarks about assassinating Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Jamaica signs on to Venezuela's oil plan for Caribbean
Jamaica became the first Caribbean nation to finalize an agreement with Venezuela on a new plan for the South American nation to supply oil to countries throughout the region under below-market terms.

Privatizing the Truth; Bush's war on information
Bush's lying is not a matter of human frailty or corruption, but a statement of administration policy.

Pat and Hugo: The Real Story - Part 1- Rev. Robertson's Call to Assassinate Hugo Chavez

Venezuela curbs foreign preachers
President Chavez says the US is plotting to kill him
Venezuela's government has temporarily suspended permits for foreign missionaries after a US evangelist said Washington should assassinate President Hugo Chavez.

Chavez: If anything happens to me, blame Bush

The fire sermon: A spark is lit in the Texas scrub
In his inaugural speech last January, President George W. Bush repeatedly invoked images of unbridled, ravaging destruction as the emblem of his crusade for "freedom." Fire was his symbol, his word of power, his incantation of holy war. Mirroring the rhetoric of his fundamentalist enemies, Bush moved the conflict from the political to the spiritual, from the outer world to the inner soul, claiming that he had lit "a fire in the minds of men."

Venezuela opens fields to Chinese oil corporation
Venezuela and China signed a "preliminary agreement" for a joint company to drill for light and heavy crude in eastern Venezuela, reported the government owned Petroleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA.