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MALAWI Anyone who swims in Lake Malawi risks getting a parasitic infection known as bilharzia or schistosomiasis, US doctors warned on Friday. Lake Malawi may be promoted to tourists as a safe freshwater lake but in fact there is a good chance of infection, Dr Martin Cetron and colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta said in a report in the Lancet medical journal. They studied nearly 1,000 foreigners living in Malawi and found more than 300 had evidence of infection in their blood. The more often they had visited resorts at the lake, the more likely they were to be infected, Cetron's group found.

ZAIRE UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali on 8 November endorsed a French call for a multinational force to be sent to eastern Zaire to bring humanitarian aid to about one million refugees fleeing the fighting. The Security Council was to meet late the same day to discuss a French resolution which would establish a force commanded and funded by the countries which volunteer to join it. In Washington, US officials said the Clinton Administration has serious reservations about the French plan. A high-level inter-agency meeting was set for late on 8 November to discuss a formal US response. Dr Boutros-Ghali, in a letter to the council, said a humanitarian crisis in eastern Zaire cannot be averted "without the deployment, at least for a short period, of an international military force." He identified three options: a "well-equipped and well-supported" multinational force sanctioned by the council but commanded by the nations contributing to it; a force raised and commanded by the United Nations; and an African peacekeeping mission.

SOUTH AFRICA On November 8 Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) leader Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi called for a more balanced view of the role his party and the ruling African National Congress (ANC) played in South Africa's history. "It takes two to tango, even in the tragic violence. Why are the atrocities of the ANC during that conflict overlooked?" said Chief Buthelezi in response to criticism by anti-apartheid activists that his party was sympathetic to the country's former white regime. He was in New Zealand to attend a meeting of Christians from around the world.

Harare, ZIMBABWE November 8. Zimbabwean trade unions, churches and human rights groups called for mass demonstrations to press President Robert Mugabe's embattled government to resolve a costly strike by doctors and nurses. But the government vowed it would maintain a tough stance against the strikers, saying they were guilty of crippling the southern African country's public health system. Spokesmen for the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), the Zimbabwe Human Rights Organisation (Zimrights), the Public Service Association (PSA) union and the Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC) said their organisations agreed on November 7 to organise demonstrations over the strike. "We as ZCTU are deeply concerned about the impact on the health sector and therefore call upon any concerned to join us in expressing our national outrage over the lack of sensitivity on the part of government on this matter," ZCTU secretary-general Morgan Tsvangirayi told reporters.

Banjul, GAMBIA November 8 - Unidentified gunmen attacked a Gambian military camp, leaving at least two people dead and several injured, officials said. The pre-dawn attack took place 150 kilometres (about 95 miles) east of Banjul on the road leading from the Senegalese capital, Dakar, to the Senegalese province of Casamance, passing through Gambia. Officials said they did not know how many gunmen attacked, their nationality or their motive.

Port Harcourt, NIGERIA November 7 - A year after the execution of writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight of his companions little has changed in southern Nigeria, where oil companies continue to rule the roost. In the absence of any local government, companies like Shell and Elf build and maintain the roads, distribute water, electrify the villages and provide schools and clinics for the thousands of people living in their concessions. The oil they extract accounts for 90 percent of the revenue of the Nigerian state, but the government seems to have relinquished any control over their activities. Saro-Wiwa and eight other members of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) were hanged on November 10 last year after being tried for the May 1944 murder of four prominent Ogoni traditional chiefs.

Lagos, NIGERIA Fifteen persons died and 17 were injured when a generator blew up at a wedding ceremony near Abuja, the Nigerian capital, the official News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported on November 7. Ten of the victims died instantly in Nitse village while the other five died at the government hospital in nearby Gwagwalada, NAN said. The explosion happened when the generator stopped functioning and somebody went there with a naked flame to find out what the problem was, witnesses told NAN. One of the injured was the bride Mrs. Arufa Ibrahim, who described the accident as an "act of God", the agency said.

Algiers, ALGERIA A mayor and his deputy and three other staff were killed on November 7 in a bomb blast at Beni Ouarsous, near Tlemcen, in western Algeria, the security services said. The five were on a visit to a building site in the town where a medical centre is being constructed when the bomb went off. News of the blast came after 32 people were massacred in a mountain hamlet late November 5, in one of the bloodiest attacks on civilians in Algeria since Islamic extremists took up arms in 1992. It also comes amid fears of further violence ahead of a constitutional referendum on November 28.

Lagos, NIGERIA A Nigerian airliner carrying 141 people crashed into swamps east of Lagos after losing contact with air traffic controllers, and there were no signs of survivors, aviation officials said on November 8. About 24 hours after the Boeing 727 disappeared, wreckage was found the following evening in the village of Imota about 65 kilometres southeast of Lagos, said Aviation Minister Ita Udoh Umeh.

Monrovia, LIBERIA November 8 - After almost seven years of war, more than 150, OOO deaths and at least a dozen peace initiatives, Liberia's warlords have yet to show a true commitment to ending their conflict, west African foreign ministers were told here Friday. Promises made by faction leaders in a revised peace deal signed in Abuja in August "have yet to be realised," said Tom Ikimi, Nigeria's foreign minister and chairman of a ministerial committee of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which met here Friday. During the meeting it was pointed out that alleged ceasefire violations continued in southeast Liberia several months after warlords signed the Abuja accord. Presidential aspirant Charles Taylor, whose December 1989 rebellion ignited the civil war, and who leads Liberia's largest faction, was the only member of the ruling council of state not to attend the meeting.

PARIS Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko, convalescing in France after surgery, said on November 9 that he will go home "in several weeks" to tackle a revolt in east Zaire that threatens the lives of more than a million refugees. "Zaire needs me," he said as Africa's worst humanitarian disaster unfolded in his chaotic Central African nation. Mobutu, in his first newspaper interview since prostate surgery in Switzerland in August, also said he was willing to allow an international force to protect refugees from warfare. He said he accepted a de facto truce by Tutsi rebels. Asked when he would return home, he said: "In several weeks, at the end of my convalescence".

Nairobi, KENYA November 8 - Aid agencies used to begging rich countries for food, medicines and shelter say that for once they already have all they need to save a million refugees in Zaire. But none of it will help unless local or foreign politicians clear the way, and meanwhile the refugees are dying. A front line separates the missing people from the supplies that could save them and there are no signs that swift foreign intervention will change this . "The good thing, if one can say that, about emergencies in an area of emergencies is that we already have the supplies we need for immediate operations," said Brenda Barton of the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP). No huge aid airlift from Europe or other far-off places, as in 1994 when Rwanda's genocide triggered a mass exodus, is likely to be needed if intervention or a ceasefire opens routes to 1.2 million Rwandan and Burundian Hutu refugees. After wars in Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Burundi, East Africa has an aid infrastructure second to none. It even bolsters the economies of stabler countries such as Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania where much of the aid is stockpiled. Barton said the WFP had food to feed as many as 2.3 million people for two months in stores in neighbouring countries. Other aid agencies have plentiful stocks of other supplies. Under contingency plans, waiting desperately for a green light, aid would be trucked into Zaire over the border from well-stocked Rwanda and flown in by Hercules aircraft to Bukavu and Goma towns from the regional Kenyan hub, Nairobi. Maize flour, beans, oil and salt, water tanks and chlorine, plastic sheeting for shelter, blankets and medicines are top of the list for the refugees who have fled their camps.

Middelburg, SOUTH AFRICA A 35-year-old man was devoured by lions on a game farm near here when he wandered into the bush after a bout of drinking with his friends, police said on November 8. Mr Elphas Siwela was visiting friends on a game farm near South Africa's famed Kruger Park on November 3 at night when he was killed and eaten by a pride of five lions, a police spokesman told the SAPA news agency. The lions were later tracked down and shot, and fragments of Mr Siwela's clothing and human bone were found in their digestive tracts.

Maputo, MOZAMBIQUE Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano has sacked Interior Minister Colonel Manuel Antonio and his deputy Edmundo Alberto, the president's office announced on November 8. The head of state immediately named Mr Almerinho Manhenje, who holds the post of Minister of State for Defence and Security, as the new interior minister. He did not announce a replacement for the deputy minister. President Chissano appeared to have yielded to public pressure to dismiss Mr Antonio, accused of mismanaging the police force, resulting in a near collapse of law and order in post-war Mozambique. Antonio, an independence war veteran, also served as minister of the interior in the former administration.

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