West Africa

, a nonprofit group based in New York. SAD FATE : Obstetrical fistula is a condition found in young women who have experienced a prolonged, obstructed labor without any medical assistance.

West Africa's regional bloc said Thursday it soon will deploy forces to Mali, a plan already rejected by the country's ruling junta that put down a countercoup this week in the country's capital. Kadre Desire Ouedraogo, the president of the commission of the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, said the group intended to send forces immediately but still needed to consult with its partners about financing the deployment. The announcement came late Thursday after hours of meetings in the Senegalese capital that were aimed at resolving the political impasses in Mali and...

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — West Africa’s cocoa industry is still trafficking children and using forced child labor despite nearly a decade of efforts to eliminate the practices, according to an independent audit published by Tulane University. A US-sponsored solution called the Harkin-Engel Protocol was signed in 2001 by cocoa industry members to identify and eliminate cocoa grown using forced child labor. A child-labor-free certification process was supposed to cover 50 percent of cocoa growing regions in West Africa by 2005 and 100 percent by the end of 2010.

West Africa's regional bloc will be sending at least 3,000 troops to Mali to retrain and re-equip the country's military following last month's coup, officials said late Thursday. Kadre Desire Ouedraogo, the president of the commission of the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, said the group had authorized the immediate deployment of a standby force to Mali. Mutinous soldiers overthrew the country's democratically elected president last month. The junta has since handed over power to an interim civilian government as part of a deal brokered by ECOWAS.

The following was submitted by the Medford Public Library: "Ten Hills Farm" tells the story of five generations of slave owners in colonial New England. Settled in 1630 by John Winthrop, Ten Hills Farm was a six-hundred-acre estate in the area of the Royall House in Medford. Each successive owner of Ten Hills Farm, from John Winthrop to John Usher to Isaac Royall, would depend upon slavery's profits until the 1780s, when Massachusetts abolished the practice.    We have selected two titles for children.

NEW YORK — US prosecutors in a series of court cases say they are beginning to unravel the latest innovation in drug smuggling: South American gangs that are buying old jets and other planes, filling them with cocaine, and flying them more than 3,000 miles across the ocean to Africa. At least three gangs have struck deals to fly drugs to West Africa and from there to Europe, according to US indictments. “The sky’s the limit,’’ one Sierra Leone trafficker boasted to a Drug Enforcement Administration informant, according to court documents.

A U.N. food agency is forecasting improved prospects for world cereals production in the 2011-2012 seasons. But the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization says that despite expected production gains, especially for wheat and rice, there is uncertainty about the improvement's impact on food security because of the global economic slump and increased risks for recession. Thursday's FAO report also cited concern over the effect of irregular rains in West Africa in the 2011 cropping season and of severe monsoons on crop prospects in Far East Asia.

A South African arms company has unveiled what it calls the first all-African military plane. Johannesburg-based Paramount Group boss Ivor Ichikowitz, showing reporters the AHRLAC on Tuesday, says the lightweight aircraft can be used for peacekeeping missions and reconnaissance and is armed to defend itself. Ichikowitz says it's the first such aircraft to be designed and built entirely by African companies. He says he's received an order from a country he would not name for 50 of the planes, each costing about $10 million.

KAMPALA, Uganda — The World Health Organization yesterday announced a mass polio vaccination campaign in Africa, the same day Ugandan health officials announced an outbreak of the highly infectious disease. WHO officials in Geneva said the 15-country campaign would start as early as next week in Angola and Congo, neighboring central African nations that together have more than 50 cases. The bulk of the volunteer-staffed campaign will focus on West Africa, where Nigeria, the most populous nation in sub-Saharan Africa, has never managed to eradicate the disease.

WASHINGTON - Almost two centuries before there was a man named Obama in the White House, there was a man named Obama shackled within a slave ship. There is no proof that the unidentified Obama has ties to President Obama. All they share is a name. But that is exactly the commonality that Emory University researchers hope to build upon as they delve into the origins of Africans who were taken up and sold. They have built an online database around those names, and welcome input from people who may share a name in the database or have such names as part of their...

BAMAKO, Mali - West Africa's regional bloc announced Thursday that it is closing all land borders with Mali and freezing the nation's bank account in an effort to force from power the mutinous soldiers who seized control in a coup last week. The financial sanctions are among the harshest imposed in recent years on a nation in West Africa and are likely to strangle impoverished Mali, which imports nearly all of its gasoline from neighboring Ivory Coast. Kadre Desire Ouedraogo, the president of the commission of the Economic Community of West African States, told reporters in...

WASHINGTON - Marie Davis Gadsden, a top administrator of education and philanthropic foundations who became the first black woman to chair the board of the relief group Oxfam America, died March 14 in Washington. She was 92. She died of complications from Alzheimer's disease, said her niece Laura Vault. Dr. Gadsden, the daughter of a physician and a teacher, grew up in segregated Georgia and won scholarships to finance her college and postgraduate education on her way to a doctorate in English from the University of Wisconsin in 1954.

The following was submitted by the Medford Public Library: "Ten Hills Farm" tells the story of five generations of slave owners in colonial New England. Settled in 1630 by John Winthrop, Ten Hills Farm was a six-hundred-acre estate in the area of the Royall House in Medford. Each successive owner of Ten Hills Farm, from John Winthrop to John Usher to Isaac Royall, would depend upon slavery's profits until the 1780s, when Massachusetts abolished the practice.    We have selected two titles for children.

BISSAU, Guinea-Bissau - President Malam Bacai Sanha, who was elected in this tiny, coup-prone nation on Africa's western coast about two years ago after the previous leader was assassinated, died yesterday in Paris after a lengthy hospitalization. No immediate cause was given but the 64-year-old president was known to have diabetes and had undergone medical treatment in both France and in Senegal during his time in office. National radio announced his death yesterday afternoon.

WASHINGTON - Almost two centuries before there was a man named Obama in the White House, there was a man named Obama shackled within a slave ship. There is no proof that the unidentified Obama has ties to President Obama. All they share is a name. But that is exactly the commonality that Emory University researchers hope to build upon as they delve into the origins of Africans who were taken up and sold. They have built an online database around those names, and welcome input from people who may share a name in the database or have such names as part of their family...

WHILE THE purpose of the International Criminal Court is to discourage violence around the world by holding perpetrators accountable, it's been accused of disproportionately targeting African nations. For that reason, it's all the more praiseworthy that Fatou Bensouda has just been named the new chief prosecutor. She is only the second leader of the tribunal, which investigates human rights abuses and atrocities. Both her biography — she's from Gambia in West Africa — and her qualifications make her the right person for the job. Bensouda began her career as a lawyer...

GENEVA - At least 50 peacekeepers have received punishments ranging from reduction in military rank to eight months imprisonment for committing sexual abuses on United Nations missions since 2007, the UN said yesterday. The data were released after media organizations asked what measures countries were taking against peacekeepers accused of rape and other abuses in conflict areas such as Congo. The United Nations can investigate allegations of misconduct, but prosecution is handled by governments contributing personnel to missions.

WHILE THE purpose of the International Criminal Court is to discourage violence around the world by holding perpetrators accountable, it's been accused of disproportionately targeting African nations. For that reason, it's all the more praiseworthy that Fatou Bensouda has just been named the new chief prosecutor. She is only the second leader of the tribunal, which investigates human rights abuses and atrocities. Both her biography — she's from Gambia in West Africa — and her qualifications make her the right person for the job. Bensouda began her career as a lawyer who quickly rose to...

A U.N. food agency is forecasting improved prospects for world cereals production in the 2011-2012 seasons. But the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization says that despite expected production gains, especially for wheat and rice, there is uncertainty about the improvement's impact on food security because of the global economic slump and increased risks for recession. Thursday's FAO report also cited concern over the effect of irregular rains in West Africa in the 2011 cropping season and of severe monsoons on crop prospects in Far East Asia.