Associated Reporters Abroad (ARA) - Professional freelance journalists reporting for media outlets worldwide

CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- Everyone who walked into the Cape Town salon where stylist Marlene Solomon was busy trimming hair has the same question:

"Did you hear, did you hear?"

And though common reaction was "shocked," many locals expressed difficulty reconciling the conflicting images of Oscar Pistorius, who became an icon for overcoming physical challenges, with past disputes that made him seem like a sore loser.

Read more at USA Today

The end of a week of bloody chaos in northern Africa brought with it few certainties. Yet, through the miasma of Mauritanian news agencies and Algerian state television, you can discern several clear facts.

Firstly: The number of dead hostages at that now infamous gas plant in Algeria just kept rising.

Read more at New Matilda

BAMAKO, Mali -- In the dusty, noisy streets of the Malian capital, symbols of former colonial ruler France, once eagerly torn down, have been popping up everywhere since French fighters began bombing Islamist-held areas a week ago.

"I decided to hang a French flag next to the Malian flag to show I'm in favor of the military intervention by France," said Abdourahamane Abidine, 50, a local tailor, sitting on a sofa in his downtown shop. "It's a way to support the French troops."

Read more at USA Today

   
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) — Authorities in Ghana on Thursday arrested Charles Ble Goude, the former leader of an ultranationalist youth movement in Ivory Coast wanted in connection with violence linked to its disputed presidential election two years ago, officials said.

Ble Goude, who has been hiding for the last 20 months, has been implicated by Human Rights Watch in grave crimes as the West African nation was roiled by bloodshed over a months-long election dispute between allies of former President Laurent Gbagbo and the current President Alassane Ouattara. Ble Goude, 40, has denied playing any role in the violence that left at least 3,000 dead.
Read more at The Big Story

 

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — A new report from U.N. experts accuses exiled allies of Ivory Coast's former president of trying to recruit Islamist rebels who took control of the northern half of neighboring Mali in a campaign to destabilize the volatile West African region, a U.N. diplomat and a Western official familiar with the document said Monday.

The experts also accuse supporters of ex-President Laurent Gbagbo of trying to recruit Mali's military junta, which controls the other half of the country, to the destabilization campaign – and of trying to seize power from Ivory Coast's current President Alassane Ouattara, the two officials said.

Read more at The Huffington Post

SAN PEDRO, Ivory Coast (AP) — The soldiers lined up the detainees in a row on the grass in the middle of the night and beat them with sticks. Other times, soldiers struck the prisoners with belts and rifles so hard the welts lasted for weeks.

Cedric Bao, a 33-year-old who was held for two weeks in August on suspicion of hiding weapons, said soldiers also attached wires to detainees and administered electrical shocks as they writhed on the ground.

Read more at The Associated Press

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — Ivory Coast prosecutors are pursuing genocide charges against eight top allies of former President Laurent Gbagbo in a move analysts called an apparent attempt to demonize the old regime and demonstrate that local courts can try the most serious cases stemming from post-election violence that ended last year.

At least 3,000 people died in violence that erupted after Mr. Gbagbo tried to cling to power despite having lost the November 2010 election to current President Alassane Ouattara. The Gbagbo allies charged with genocide include former first lady Simone Gbagbo, former Cabinet ministers and the feared former head of the regime's Republican Guard.

Read more at The Washington Times

ABIDJAN - It was long past midnight when a truck belonging to the Republican Forces of Ivory Coast (FRCI) pulled up to a small, open-air restaurant in Duékoué, a town of 75,000 in the country’s west. The crowd that night in March was mostly young men, many of them drinking and dancing to club tracks played by a local disc jockey. Not long after the soldiers’ arrival, 16 of the men, including the DJ, were rounded up for arrest. Although no reason was given, the men went willingly, even helping to push the truck when it would not start on its own.

Read more at The World Policy Journal

LONDON — Vast distances, high costs and unstable incomes. Those are just some of the challenges faced by millions of Africa’s poorest trying to access financial services in rural communities in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Until recently, commercial banks across the continent hadn’t bothered to reach out to impoverished Africans in rural areas because they saw little profit potential. Instead, they focused on wealthier clients with larger transactions, which had a better chance of surpassing the cost of the bank infrastructure and staff.

Read more at Global Post

SAKRE, Ivory Coast - Issa Gnonkonte woke up early one Wednesday in April in this village near the Liberian border to find 15 men at his front door armed with machetes and Kalashnikov rifles.

Along with the 10 other people in the house, Gnonkonte, 32, was taken outside and stripped naked while the attackers began to loot.

Later, the attackers — a mix of Ivorians and Liberians believed to have crossed the border from Liberia — threatened Gnonkonte and his relatives.

Read more at Toronto Star

DUEKOUE, Ivory Coast - On a Friday evening in April, two unmarked SUVs stopped Noel Glao near a hotel outside this town in western Ivory Coast where he was charging his cellphone. Nine men wearing national army uniforms got out and, without explanation, began beating the 35-year-old with their Kalashnikov rifles.

“There was blood everywhere. Noel was asking, ‘Why are you beating me? What have I done?’ The soldiers did not say anything,” recalled Glao’s cousin, Edouard Gnene, who was walking with Glao back to a camp for people displaced by the country’s post-election violence. “Every part of his body was beaten.”

Read more at The Star

 

MONROVIA, Liberia - Liberians in the capital of Monrovia expressed sorrow and anger over Thursday's war crimes conviction of their former president Charles Taylor, who is still considered by many Liberians to be a hero.

The Special Court for Sierra Leone in the Hague found Mr. Taylor guilty of aiding and abetting crimes including murder, terrorism, rape, sexual slavery, and mutilations committed by rebel forces during Sierra Leone's civil war. The 11-year conflict, which ended in 2002, killed more than 50,000, and left many traumatized and maimed.

Read more at The Christian Science Monitor

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania - Before class starts, the schoolyard at Gerezani Secondary School is typically noisy; but inside the classrooms, where only English is allowed, students are reluctant to speak.

It is not just shyness that keeps them quiet. Few of the children speak English with confidence, and many have problems understanding the teachers because the classes are held in what is to them a foreign language.

Like the majority of Tanzanians, these students were taught in the Kiswahili language throughout seven years of primary school.

Read more at The Washington Times

MONROVIA, Liberia - As judgment day nears in the trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor for war crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone, many Liberians are wondering whether he will ever face justice for brutality in his own country.

“There were more atrocities that occurred in Liberia under [his] leadership as compared to that in Sierra Leone,” said Nathan F. Gull, a 33-year-old businessman in Monrovia.

Mr. Taylor, a former rebel leader, is best known internationally for his bands of drugged-up child soldiers who terrorized Liberians throughout the 1990s until 2003.

Read more at The Washington Times

ACCRA - Sani Boubakar, 28, lost his right leg 10 years ago in an auto accident in his hometown of Doutchi, Niger. “On that day, I knew I would be disabled forever,” he said. He moped around his family’s home for two years until he discovered other young men missing legs but playing soccer in a new national team for the Amputee Football Federation of Africa.

Read more at The Washington Times

MONROVIA -At least two people were killed Monday at the headquarters of Liberia’s main opposition party when police used live ammunition to disperse demonstrators on the eve of a runoff presidential election. The race pits incumbent President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last month, against Winston Tubman of the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC).

Read more at The Washington Times

ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan — Turkmen's government has cracked down on websites that criticize the repressive regime, but the Internet’s potential to lure young people from traditional dating and marriage practices is the key concern for many parents and teachers.

Maral, 20, from the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat, met a man in a chat forum and soon after married him.

Read more at The Washington Times

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — The foiling of a terror plot by Islamic extremists in southern Kyrgyzstan over the weekend has underscored ethnic and regional tensions before presidential elections in Central Asia’s only parliamentary democracy.

The National Security Committee of Kyrgyzstan (GKNB) detained 11 members of the Islamic Jihad Union on Oct. 8 as part of a security operation in the southern province of Osh, according to GKNB leader Keneshbek Dushebayev.

Read more at The Washington Times

MONROVIA—Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has spoken out against critics who said she didn’t deserve to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

“I’ve been in this political struggle for three decades, and if the Nobel Peace Prize did their research, they concluded that I’ve been consistent in fighting for the rights of the individual, in fighting for democracy in this country,” she said in an interview at her Monrovia compound on Friday.

Read more at The Star

MONROVIA, Liberia — Fresh from being named a joint winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf dismissed critics who have called the prize undeserved and said she is ready to take on all challengers in Tuesday’s election.

In an interview in the capital, Monrovia, on Friday, Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa’s first elected female head of state, said she was “excited” and “humbled” by the Nobel announcement.

Read more at The Washington Times

MONROVIA - Fresh from being named a joint winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf dismissed critics who have called the prize undeserved and said she is ready to take on all challengers in Tuesday’s election. In an interview, Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa’s first elected female head of state, said she was “excited” and “humbled” by the Nobel announcement. “Once again, I’ll be that person trying to meet the aspirations and expectations of women, particularly in Africa,” she said.

Read more at The Washington Times