Liberia says may prosecute man who flew to U.S. with Ebola

#GNN Health Africa: Liberia could prosecute a national who flew to the United States and was diagnosed with the Ebola for making a false statement on travel documents, the head of the West African nation's airport authority said on Thursday.

Binyah Kesselly said the Liberian patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, was asked in a questionnaire as he left Monrovia airport if he had come in contact with any Ebola victim or was showing symptoms of the disease and he had replied 'no'.

"I raised the question with the justice minister if we can prosecute people for knowingly making false declaration on forms where you willingly, knowingly and mortally put people's lives at risk ... She is of the opinion that we can," said Kesselly.

"We hope he has a speedy recovery. We wait his arrival in Liberia: we will be open to prosecution. Knowingly making a false declaration is not a joke," Kesselly said.

The Liberian government said Duncan failed to declare that he helped neighbor Marthalene Williams after she fell critically ill on Sept. 15. Duncan tried to arrange for a car to take her to a hospital, but failed.

"He took her on a wheelbarrow and sought help from a friend and called his office for assistance to take her to a health facility," Information Minister Lewis Brown told the news conference. "But we know that she passed away in the wheelbarrow while en route to the health center."

Duncan fell sick a few days after arriving in the United States and sought treatment at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital last week but was sent home even though he told a nurse he had recently arrived from West Africa.

By Sunday, he needed an ambulance to return to the same hospital, where he was admitted and tested positive for Ebola.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf told Canadian Broadcasting Corp. on Thursday that she was angry with Duncan for what he had done, especially given how much the United States was doing to help tackle the crisis.

"The fact that he knew (he might be a carrier) and he left the country is unpardonable, quite frankly."

Sirleaf said she wanted Duncan to be sent back to Liberia once he had been treated "and then we will have to deal with him". She did not give details.

He was the second Liberian to carry Ebola to another country by air travel after Patrick Sawyer took the virus to Nigeria in July. Eight people died from that outbreak in Africa's most populous nation.

However, Kesselly said that while Sawyer was already showing signs of Ebola when he left Liberia -- and knew therefore that he was placing other travelers at risk -- Duncan had no symptoms when he boarded his flight.

(GNN)(Reuters)(AIP)(GA)(Additional reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Editing by Daniel Flynn adn Andrew Heavens)

French troops edge closer to Libya border to cut off Islamists

#GNN PARIS: France is setting up a base in northern Niger as part of an operation aimed at stopping al Qaeda-linked militants from crisscrossing the Sahel-Sahara region between southern Libya and Mauritania, officials said.

Paris, which has led efforts to push back Islamists in the region since intervening in its former colony Mali last year, redeployed troops across West Africa earlier this year to form a counter-terrorism force.

Under the new plan, about 3,000 French troops are now operating out of Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad -- countries straddling the vast arid Sahel band -- with the aim of stamping out Islamist fighters across the region. Another 1,000 soldiers are providing logistical support in Gabon and Senegal.

"A base is being set up in northern Niger with the throbbing headache of Libya in mind," a French diplomat said.

Neither France nor Niger has said where the base will be but military sources in Niger said it was likely to be around Madama, a remote desert outpost in the northeast, where Niger already has some troops based.

French officials have repeated for several months they are concerned by events in Libya, warning that the political void in the north is creating favourable conditions for Islamist groups to regroup in the barren south of the country.

Diplomatic sources estimate about 300 fighters linked to al Qaeda's North African arm AQIM, including a splinter group formed by veteran Islamist commander Mokhtar Belmokhtar, are operating in southern Libya, a key point on smuggling and trafficking routes across the region.

French and American drones are already operating out of Niger's capital Niamey.

Echoing the French push to get assets closer to Libya, U.S. officials said last month that the United States was preparing to possibly redeploy its drones to Agadez, some 750 km (460 miles) to the northeast.

Three years after they launched air strikes to help topple Muammar Gaddafi, Western powers including France have ruled out military intervention in Libya, fearing that it could further destabilise the situation given that countries across the region are backing different political and armed groups in Libya.

However, with France particularly exposed in the Sahel-Sahara region and its forces now engaged in a support role against Islamic State militants in Iraq, Paris is stepping up efforts to squeeze militants in the area.

FRONTLINE
The murder of a French citizen last week in neighbouring Algeria by former AQIM militants who pledged allegiance to Islamic State also appears to have toughened Paris' resolve.

"The approach to (fighting terrorism) is global," Army spokesman Gilles Jaron said on Thursday. "We are on the frontline in the Sahel-Sahara region and supporting in Iraq."

The French operation, dubbed Barkhane after the name of a kind of sand dune formed by desert winds, has set up its headquarters in the Chadian capital N'Djamena, but also placed an outpost in northern Chad about 200 km from the Libyan border.

Jaron said the new Niger base was still being finalised, but would have capacity for as many as 200 soldiers with aerial support. "The aim is to bring together areas that interest us. The transit points which terrorists are likely to use," he said.

There have been some successes in recent weeks. Two diplomatic sources said Abou Aassim El-Mouhajir, a spokesman for Belmokhtar's "Those Who Sign in Blood" brigade, was captured by French troops in August.

French media said he had been taken in Niger. Niger intelligence sources said French troops had passed through Madama around the time of the operation.

Jaron said four suspected militants were also captured on Sept. 24 near Gao in northern Mali, where France has handed the bulk of security control to U.N. MINUSMA peacekeeping forces.

At the same time there has been an increase in attacks on foreign troops in Mali, including the death of 10 Chadian soldiers in September.

The U.N.'s peacekeeping chief, Herve Ladsous, said last week that with many French troops leaving the north of Mali, U.N. forces were being targeted and finding it difficult to respond due to a lack of helicopters and special forces.

"It's a problem that is being resolved. We want the MINUSMA to be up to scratch so we can focus on our number one job: getting rid of AQIM," said a French defence ministry source.

(GNN)(Reuters)(AIP)(GA)(Additional reporting by David Lewis in Dakar and Abdoulaye Massalaki in Niamey; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Gunmen kill at least 29 in two attacks on Kenyan coast

(GNN) - Gunmen killed at least 29 people in raids on two separate areas on the Kenyan coast, the interior ministry said on Sunday.

The Somali Islamist militant group al Shabaab, which attacked the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi last September, said it had staged an attack on Saturday evening in the coastal area.Nine people lost their lives at the Hindi trading centre in Lamu county, near the scene of attacks in which 65 people were killed last month, Mwenda Njoka, the ministry's spokesman told Reuters.

Another 20 people were killed in another attack in the Gamba area of neighbouring Tana River county. Both counties are situated north of the port of Mombasa.

"There were two attacks in Lamu and Tana River last night. In Lamu we have nine people dead and in Tana River we have 20. The number could rise," Njoka said by telephone.

Officials said a group of 10-15 men struck at Hindi, situated 15 km (9 miles) from the town of Lamu, and close to the town of Mpeketoni, which was nearly destroyed in one of the attacks in June, at about 10 pm on Saturday.

"They went around shooting at people and villages indiscriminately," Abdallah Shahasi, the area chief, told Reuters.

Al Shabaab said it had broken into the police station at Gamba and freed suspects from the detention cells. A Kenyan police source corroborated that account. "They killed some of our colleagues and freed Muslim detainees. Some of those freed were linked to the Mpeketoni attacks two weeks ago. We still don't know how many detainees were freed until we verify with registers at the station," the police source who asked not to be named, told Reuters.

Miiri Njenga, the Lamu county commissioner, said the attackers targeted government offices and some properties were burnt down.

The Kenyan Red Cross said three people were taken to hospital with injuries, from both areas, adding another one was reported missing in Gamba.

The wave of gun and grenade attacks along the coast and in Nairobi has hurt the tourism business, a leading source of foreign exchange.(GNN)(Reuters)(AIP)

(Additional reporting by Feisal Omar in Mogadishu; Writing by Duncan Miriri; Editing by William Hardy)

Wooing the Zulu vote pays off for South Africa's ANC

(GNN) - If the African National Congress maintains its 65 percent majority in South Africa's May 7 election, it will be thanks in large part to rural ethnic Zulu voters such as Alfred Sabela.
"We have water and a tar road. Before, we fetched water from the river," said 43-year-old Sabela, standing by the makeshift shop from which he hawks carvings near iSimangaliso Wetland Park, a major tourist attraction in a once-neglected area.

The ANC's drive to develop this corner of KwaZulu-Natal province, 700 km (450 miles) southeast of Johannesburg, has paid dividends, notably by undermining the rival Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), once the regional political force.

The IFP's decline has accelerated under President Jacob Zuma, a 72-year-old Zulu with a rural upbringing and firm beliefs in traditional practices such as polygamy.

Zulus are South Africa's largest ethnic group, accounting for 28 percent of its 53 million people, and the ANC has worked hard to woo them away from the IFP, still headed by its 85-year-old founder, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, a senior Zulu royal figure.

In the polls that ended apartheid in 1994, the IFP took KwaZulu-Natal and won 10.5 percent nationwide. But 10 years later, it lost the province, and by 2009 its nationwide share of the vote had dropped to just 4.5 percent.

Recent polls in South Africa's Sunday Times newspaper now put the IFP's support at less than 3 percent, compared with more than 65 percent for the ANC, little-changed from its 2009 tally.

Taking votes from the IFP, which literally battled the ANC in apartheid's dying days, is a key reason why the ANC looks set to maintain its large majority even as its support in towns and cities declines as memories of white-minority rule fade.

"The ANC is continuing to grow in KwaZulu-Natal and so it can take some losses in urban areas," said Cape Town political analyst Nic Borain.

FEWER RIOTS

As it enters its third decade in power, the ANC faces many challenges: 25 percent unemployment, a lack of strong economic growth, labor unrest and corruption scandals, most notably a $23 million state-funded "security upgrade" to Zuma's KwaZulu-Natal home that included a swimming pool and chicken run.

Public frustration has boiled over into almost daily riots in townships around major cities by youths demanding jobs and better public services.

But KwaZulu-Natal has been relatively unscathed - testimony to the ANC's efforts to "deliver" in the province.

According to MunicipalIQ, a think tank, only 6 percent of major "service delivery" protests over the past 10 years have been in KwaZulu-Natal even though it is the second most populous of South Africa's nine provinces.

"If you look at the developmental commitments to the provinces, it is clear to the naked eye that KwaZulu-Natal has been significantly favored," said Borain.

According to Statistics South Africa's Poverty & Inequality unit, there are big contrasts between former homelands - areas where blacks were forced to live under apartheid - in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, a traditional ANC stronghold.

Between 2001 and 2011, the number of brick houses in the old KwaZulu homeland more than doubled to 480,000, while in the Eastern Cape homeland areas the figure only rose a third.

In the north of KwaZulu-Natal, the transformation has been startling.

Under apartheid, the main infrastructure consisted of a dam to irrigate cotton - part of a strategy to blunt anti-apartheid sanctions - and a military road that snaked through uninhabited bush.

A paved road has now replaced the dirt track leading to the Mozambican border, while other new roads wind through once-remote villages and on to tourist resorts on the coast.

"MALARIA AND ROADS"

At the region's heart lies iSimangaliso Wetland Park, where big game has been reintroduced as part of a plan to create tourism jobs. The government has also all but eradicated malaria.

"In the 1990s, 40,000 people a year were getting malaria each year in this region. That is down 99 percent now," said iSimangaliso chief executive Andrew Zaloumis, one of the early architects of the development scheme.

"We asked at the time what were the blockages to investment, and it came down to malaria and roads," he told Reuters.

Mary Barnes, a 35-year-old Zulu who runs her own catering business, said the changes meant her vote was sewn up.

"I would vote for the present government. They might not be the best but they brought freedom. And they brought all of the infrastructure that is here," she told Reuters in her modest house, which has electricity and a large flat-screen TV.

IFP officials admit that much has been done but say the ANC has neglected education and been wasteful.

"We acknowledge the good things, but the ANC has only built 34 schools in KwaZulu-Natal. Children used to come to the province for school because of the quality of education under Prince Buthelezi," said IFP Secretary General Sibongile Nkomo.

Peace has also come to former ANC "no-go zones", such as the northern KwaZulu-Natal town of Pongola, where the local ANC chairman was assassinated two decades ago.

"It was dangerous to be ANC here before, but not any more," said Bongani Sbiya, 28, as he pinned an ANC poster on a telegraph pole. "You see this nice road here? It was built by the ANC."(Reuters)(GNN INT)

(Editing by Ed Cropley and Kevin Liffey)

China premier says Sino-Africa disputes just 'growing pains'

China's Premier Li Keqiang gestures as he speaks during a news conference, after the closing ceremony of the Chinese National People's Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People, in Beijing, March 13, 2014.

(GNN) - Disputes arising over China's investment projects in Africa are just "growing pains" in a burgeoning relationship that saw their trade top $200 billion last year, Premier Li Keqiang said on Sunday ahead of a tour of the continent.

Li, speaking before starting a May 4-11 trip to Ethiopia, Nigeria, Angola and Kenya, said Chinese firms in Africa needed to abide by local laws and regulations as well as also take responsibility to protect the interests of local communities.

He said the Chinese government was willing to sit down with African countries to resolve any issues that arose between the two sides, but said theses were "isolated" cases in a relationship based on equality and mutual benefit.

"I wish to assure our African friends in all seriousness that China will never pursue a colonialist path like some countries did, or allow colonialism, which belongs to the past, to reappear in Africa," the official news agency Xinhua quoted Li as saying.

Chinese enterprises have spent heavily on infrastructure, mining and energy projects in Africa as the country seeks to expand its access to supplies of vital commodities such as oil and copper.

But in some cases, Chinese firms have been accused of treating local staff unfairly. Oil workers at two China-invested projects in Chad and Niger went on strike in March in protest against unequal pay.

In 2009, China overtook the United States as Africa's biggest trading partner, and Xinhua said more than 2,500 Chinese firms operate on the continent.

Bilateral trade between China and African countries reached $210 billion in 2013, but Beijing has been accused of holding back the continent's economic development by focusing on the pursuit of raw materials rather than the creation of local jobs and markets.

Angola, on Li's itinerary this week, has become one of China's biggest oil suppliers, with crude deliveries rising 9.9 percent to 10.66 million tons in the first quarter of 2014, second only to Saudi Arabia.(Reuters)(GNN INT)

(Reporting by David Stanway; Editing by Richard Borsuk)