A newly formed unit of the Libyan Army has carried out nonviolent raids on rogue militia positions in and around Tripoli as part of a government ultimatum issued over the weekend. Armed groups must either align themselves with the country’s military or disperse, a government spokesman said Tuesday. The “National Mobile Force” is evicting militias after handing them a deadline to withdraw from military compounds, public buildings and property belonging to members of the former regime, according to prime minister spokesman Mohammed Al-Akkari. Two hardline Islamist armed groups have conceded to disperse, including Ansar al Sharia. Some members of the group have been detained for an attsck on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi on September 11, when U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed. Militias and other unauthorized armed groups have been a growing concern in post-revolution Libya. Militia members a...

Sixty years ago, Ethiopia was at war. Not in Africa, but thousands of miles away in Korea. This is the story of one Ethiopian officer who won a US gallantry award. In 1951, the Ethiopian Emperor, Haile Selassie, decided to send thousands of troops to fight as part of the American-led UN force supporting South Korea against the communist North and its ally, China. They were called the Kagnew battalions and were drawn from Haile Selassie’s Imperial Bodyguard - Ethiopia’s elite troops. Capt Mamo Habtewold, now 81 years old, was then a young lieutenant in the 3rd Kagnew Battalion. He clearly remembers a send-off from the Emperor himself, as he was about to leave for the other side of the world. “Always when a battalion went to Korea, he came himself and made a speech and he gave each battalion a flag - and he ordered us to bring that flag back from Korea,” Mamo recalls. When Ethiopia had been invaded by Italy in 1935 Haile S...

[dropcap]A[/dropcap] couple who had sex outside marriage has been stoned to death at the weekend by Islamists in the town of Aguelhok in northern Mali, officials say. The man and woman were buried up to their necks, then pelted with stones until they died. The northern half of Mali has been overrun by rebels - Tuareg and Islamist - following a coup in Mali’s capital. Aguelhok in the region of Kidal was one of the first to be captured by Tuareg separatist rebels. The Islamists in Aguelhok stoned the couple to death in front of about 200 people, officials said. “I was there. The Islamists took the unmarried couple to the centre of Aguelhok. The couple was placed in two holes and the Islamists stoned them to death,” a local government official told the AFP news agency. “The woman fainted after the first few blows,” he said, adding that the man had shouted out once and then fallen silent. ‘Invaders’ A Tuareg rebelli...

[dropcap]For[/dropcap] over the two decades, sectarian Somali leaders and their international patrons dominated political transitions in the country. The end results of these affairs have been perpetual political instability, endless violence and the misery for the population without any one being held accountable. Another transition is looming and the UN which is midwifing the process is enabling several Somali actors to gerrymander the process in order to predetermine the outcome to their advantage. The question that most Somalis are asking is: why is the UN’s Special Representative (SR) who dominates the process allowing sectarian agendas to control the transition and reproduce the mess? This essay attempts to map this odious affair as it unfolds in Mogadishu. It demonstrates how the UN and its corrupt Somali partners are working the system to fabricate an outcome that will reproduce incompetence potentially stoking violence b...

[dropcap]The[/dropcap] Ugandan president has called on people to limit physical contact with each other, after a victim of a deadly outbreak of the Ebola virus was reported in Kampala, the country’s capital, for the first time. “The Ministry of Health are tracing all the people who have had contact with the victims,” Yoweri Museveni said in a state broadcast on Monday, adding that 14 people had died in total since Ebola broke out in western Uganda three weeks ago. Two cases have been reported in the capital since the outbreak began, he said, and one victim is reported to have died in Kampala’s Mulago Hospital. He called on people not to shake hands, to avoid the spread of the killer virus. “Ebola spreads by contact when you contact each other physically... avoid shaking of hands that can cause contact through sweat, which can cause problems,” Museveni said. “Do not take on burying somebody who has died from symptom...