infiltrators' on fourth day of action Around 10,000 African refugees have taken their protest to the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem on the fourth consecutive day of demonstrations and strikes against harsh detention laws, and to demand the authorities consider their asylum claims. The speaker of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, refused to allow entry to a delegation to attend a meeting with politicians...
s newest country on the brink of collapse, the wisdom of separating north and south Sudan is in question The father of South Sudanese resistance, the late Dr John Garang , never quite ruled out the possibility of seceding from the north to create a new, independent state. But nor did he advocate it. For him, secession was a last resort, an option to be taken only if everything else had failed. "If...
s children, aged seven and five, had lived most of their lives in Israel and speak Hebrew rather than Arabic. Three days later Sudan's National Intelligence and Security Service visited Tuto's home in Khartoum. He was out at the time and the officials took his mother into custody for days, questioning her about her son's whereabouts. Fearing for his life, Tuto and his family went into hiding. "In Sudan,...
s position with regards to the current situation in South Sudan is very clear," Wang told reporters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where direct talks aimed at a ceasefire finally got under way on Monday. "First, we call for an immediate cessation of hostilities and violence." China would do what it could to help restore stability in South Sudan and urged international powers to back the Ethiopian-led mediation...
s capital, Juba, as peace talks between rebels and the government to hammer out a ceasefire deal faced further delay in neighbouring Ethiopia. The gunfire, which lasted about an hour, came from the direction of the military headquarters of the SPLA government forces in the north of the city. It was not clear who was involved. Three weeks of fighting, which began in Juba but spread beyond, often along...
The US ambassador, Susan Page, is remaining in the capital Juba, but the military evacuated approximately 20 diplomats, staff and their families Paul Lewis Spencer Ackerman ...
s warring factions held preliminary meetings on Friday before the official start of talks in neighbouring Ethiopia, mediators said. Dina Mufti, with Ethiopia's foreign ministry, said the introductory meetings were necessary to bridge the groups' differences ahead of direct talks expected to start on Saturday. The meetings are being held at Addis Ababa's Sheraton hotel. Both sides, meanwhile, continue...
Photographs from the Guardian Eyewitness series ...
s youngest state is heading towards civil war, but there's little that outsiders can do When South Sudan celebrated its independence from the Republic of the Sudan in 2011 many analysts feared for the future. The conflict now raging in the world's youngest state has serious regional and international implications. For the US, South Sudan's independence was seen as one of the few visible successes of...
Civilians were evacuated on UN and US civilian helicopters the State Department said as fears grew of an all-out ethnic civil war ...
sprinkled all over town' Three US military aircraft attempting to evacuate American citizens from a remote region of South Sudan came under fire as gun battles raged between the country's military and rebel militia. Four US service personnel were wounded in the attack. The aircraft were hit on Saturday while preparing to land in Bor, the capital of Jonglei state – scene of some of the nation's worst...
s newest country and described it as a failed state before it was born on 9 July 2011. Some had an optimistic vision for this country not only because of its enormous natural resources but also because of the determination of its people. Now it appears, though, that the former group were correct and South Sudan may be heading towards a catastrophe. This month fighting erupted in the capital, Juba ,...
As we're opening our Christmas presents and eating our Christmas dinner, spare a thought for the less fortunate people. As the popular song goes: Thank God it's them instead of you. Do they know it's Christmas time?...
time. Then I know the child has received pentavalent 1 and is due for the second vaccine." Tissi, on the border with Sudan's South Darfur and the CAR, lies in scrubland 800km from N'Djamena. So distant is it from the Chadian capital that the currency in use is Sudanese. Armed incursions from Darfur are frequent across the porous border, endangering humanitarian convoys on the 11-hour drive from the...
broken down' in Wales and new Japanese secrets bill could stifle whistleblowers South Sudan: government has stopped paying public sector workers Many civil servants' salaries have not been paid for two months because the South Sudanese government is struggling to repay $5bn it borrowed during the long oil production shutdown. Finance minister Aggrey Tisa Sabuni said that these loans had caught up with...
s 4,250-mile length, an omission Levison Wood intends to rectify and hopes he can do it in a year. Setting off from dense forest in the highlands of Rwanda on 1 December, Wood, 31, a former parachute regiment captain from Putney, south London, will work his way through up to seven countries – depending which side of the river he takes – some of which have been riven by civil unrest and war. Wood will...
Fears of spreading disease in two Sudanese states as warring parties fail to agree on window for vaccination programme ...
focused' consultations, which listed protection of civilians among the fragile state's priorities South Sudan is poised to become the latest "fragile state" to sign a new deal compact with aid donors, setting out benchmarks for peace and statebuilding. Western aid officials say they have been impressed by the level of consultations from the South Sudanese government since the broad agreement on a compact...
s most-watched television network – Blue Nile – will shortly broadcast the country's first Apprentice-style reality show, a format that programmers hope will shake up Sudanese television and indirectly boost Sudan's tanking economy. And Mahdi, a former finance minister, is being courted as one of the show's judges. Mashrouy – Arabic for "my project" – will present 12 young Sudanese entrepreneurs pitching...
Is a country's presence online based on its population size and access to the internet? Researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute mapped how much was written about each African country on the online reference site Wikipedia George Arnett ...