The New People Online

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Protesters demanding the departure of Senegal's aging president on Sunday seized control of a three-block stretch in the heart of the capital, erecting barricades and lobbing rocks at police just days before a contentious presidential poll.

It marks the fifth day of violent protests ahead of the country's crucial vote. President Abdoulaye Wade, 85, is insisting on running again, despite the deepening unrest and calls from both France and the United States to hand power to the next generation.

New York, February 15, 2012-A Liberian police officer roughed up a journalist trying to cover allegations of harassment of motorists by police on Sunday, according to news reports. Edwin Genoway, a journalist for the daily New Dawn newspaper, was assaulted and threatened by a police officer while reporting on alleged police harassment at ELWA Junction in Paynesville, a suburb of Monrovia, the capital, according to news reports. Motorists had told the journalist that police were seizing drivers' keys and demanding money from them, New Dawn reported.

BRUSSELS, Kingdom of Belgium, February 10, 2012/ -- The Secretary General of the African Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) (http://www.acp.int) H. E Dr Mohamed Ibn Chambas presented a list of key priorities for the organization, setting the tone in the lead up to the ACP Heads of State Summit to be held this December in Equatorial Guinea.

Speaking to journalists today, Dr Chambas declared 2012 to be a “year of restoration”, underlining plans to enhance the ACP as a “forward-looking international organization.”

As a prelude to the presidential election in Sierra Leone, scheduled in November, a matter relating to money sent to Conakry by President Ernest Bai Koromah, is being divisive within the Sierra Leone community in Guinea, Conakryinfos has learned from sources close to this community.

Fresh clashes erupted in Senegal Wednesday as the opposition mulled a new strategy to force octogenarian leader Abdoulaye Wade to scrap his controversial ambitions for a third term in office.

Pressure mounted on Wade with former colonial ruler France demanding a "generational change" and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressing concern as police on Wednesday used tear gas and rubber bullets on student protestors.

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, January 31, 2012/ -- Recent Nobel Prize laureate, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, today assumed the chair of the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA) (http://www.alma2015.org) from President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete of the United Republic of Tanzania. President Armando Guebuza of Mozambique was elected Deputy Chair of ALMA. ALMA is an alliance of 41 African heads of state and government working to end malaria-related deaths on the continent.

A television reporter covering the aftermath of coordinated terrorist attacks in northern Nigeria was gunned down last week, according to local journalists and news reports.

Sources close to former global nuclear watchdog and Nobel peace prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei confirmed that he will be withdrawing from Egypt's presidential elections, NBC News reported.

El Baradei expressed his disappointment with the way the military has been leading the post-revolution transition to democratic rule. He was a favorite among liberals and secularists. He is widely respected and had a strong following.

SOUTH-WEST

As the nationwide strike declared by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) took off Monday, members of civil society organisations, politicians, political activists, actors and musicians have said the much canvassed revolution had finally commenced.

It was successful in Lagos State as the massive protest rally held at Gani Fawehinmi Park, Ojota, featured 76-year-old politician and political activist, Dr. Tunji Braithwaite, who said the current event in Nigeria showed that the appointed time to rescue the soul of Nigeria from those who held it captive had finally come.

SIRTE, Libya (Reuters) - God has finally delivered vengeance for the innocent people of Sierra Leone who died at the hands of Ghadaffi's stooges in the Sierra Leone rebel war. Ghadaffi who sponsored the RUF in Sierra Leone's rebel war has also succumed to a rebel war in his own country. Muammar Gaddafi called the rebels who rose up against his 42-years of one-man rule "rats," but in the end it was he who was captured cowering in a drainage pipe full of rubbish and filth.

"He called us rats, but look where we found him," said Ahmed Al Sahati, a 27-year-old government fighter, standing next to two stinking drainage pipes under a six-lane highway.