Congo

A genetic analysis of a biopsy sample recently discovered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has led researchers to conclude that the virus that causes AIDS has existed in human populations for more than a century, according to a study released Wednesday. The study, led by evolutionary biologist Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona in Tucson, puts the date of origin at around 1900, which is 30 years earlier than previous analyses.

In a UCLA classroom one day not long ago, Alain Mabanckou was teaching a course in post-colonial African fiction, which he instructs in his French mother tongue, one of several languages he speaks. With his easygoing yet focused manner, soccer player's graceful body language and a way funkier fashion sense than the average college don, the 46-year-old Mabanckou kept his students' attention, framing moral quandaries for them to consider and regaling them with technical explanations of an African army's " technique de la terre brulee" (scorched earth policy)

Embedded in the financial reform President Obama signed into law last week was a truly historic regulatory provision — one that doesn't pertain to Wall Street but to the Democratic Republic of Congo. In an effort to choke off funding for the armed thugs and rebel militias that have killed more than 5 million people and turned Congo into the rape capital of the world, the new law will require thousands of U.S. companies to disclose whether their products contain minerals from rebel-controlled mines.

Nobody ever made a viral video about Thomas Lubanga. Unlike Joseph Kony, a similarly despicable African warlord who also recruited child soldiers to carry out a campaign of rape, murder and mutilation and is now the subject of the fastest-spreading video in Internet history, Lubanga's dirty work went largely unnoticed in the West. Also unlike the still-at-large Kony, Lubanga is about to face justice for his crimes. Lubanga, the head of a rebel militia that fought a devastating ethnic war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, on Wednesday had the distinction of being the first person convicted by the International Criminal Court, a decade-old institution that has been in equal measures an inspiration and a disappointment for human rights advocates.

Nobody ever made a viral video about Thomas Lubanga. Unlike Joseph Kony, a similarly despicable African warlord who also recruited child soldiers to carry out a campaign of rape, murder and mutilation and is now the subject of the fastest-spreading video in Internet history, Lubanga's dirty work went largely unnoticed in the West. Also unlike the still-at-large Kony, Lubanga is about to face justice for his crimes. Lubanga, the head of a rebel militia that fought a devastating ethnic war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, on Wednesday had the distinction of being the first person convicted by the International Criminal Court, a decade-old institution that has been in equal measures an inspiration and a disappointment for human rights advocates.

Thomas Lubanga, a Congolese militia leader facing charges of recruiting child soldiers to rape and kill, on Monday became the first defendant to go on trial at the International Criminal Court at The Hague. The court is the world's first permanent venue to prosecute war crimes, genocide and other major crimes against humanity. Cases such as these have mostly been tried at temporary courts, from Nuremberg, Germany, to more recent U.N.

For most of her recent African tour, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sounded much like any visiting foreign official, male or female. Except in Congo. When Clinton ignored security advice and flew to Goma, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, her focus on the region's rape crisis resonated with some of the continent's most powerless people: women. It wasn't just that she was the first top-level American official to go to the epicenter of one of the world's deadliest wars, nor even the U.S. aid money she promised.

Uganda and Zimbabwe have begun their pledged troop withdrawals from Congo, a rare concrete step toward ending Central Africa's four-year, six-nation war, the United Nations confirmed Wednesday. Both nations--enemies in the Congo war--have pulled out hundreds of troops in recent days, U.N. mission spokesman Hamadoun Toure said here in the Congolese capital. "We hope all the parties will do the same.

The head of Congo's atomic energy commission has been arrested on suspicion of illegally selling uranium found in the nation, officials said Wednesday. Fortunat Lumu and one of his aides were arrested Tuesday, Atty. Gen. Tshimanga Mukendi said. He declined to give details.

The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to extend for a year the peacekeeping mission in Congo in hopes of overseeing the withdrawal of foreign forces and disarming combatants. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan can decide at any time over the next year to increase the number of peacekeepers to their authorized strength of 5,537 troops and military observers, up from 2,366, the resolution said.

Emergency workers struggled Monday to prevent fires from reaching a second munitions depot in the Republic of Congo's capital the day after devastating blasts at another ammunition storage site killed more than 200 people. The Mines Advisory Group, an international nongovernmental organization, warned that more people in Brazzaville were at risk of being killed in the coming days as munitions scattered by Sunday's blasts explode. The disaster underscored anew the dangerous practice in many developing countries of storing ordnance in heavily populated areas.

  After a tense wait, the official election commission announced Friday that incumbent Joseph Kabila had been elected for another five-year term as the Democratic Republic of Congo's president, a result many fear will trigger violent protest. Despite obvious flaws in the Nov. 28 vote and ensuing counting process, election observers and diplomats have taken a low-key approach for fear of unleashing an internal conflict. The country still is fragile after a five-year civil war that ended officially in 2003 and killed millions.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo's second stab at democracy since the end of a ruinous civil war, President Joseph Kabila is likely to cling to power. But Monday's election is already so flawed that the result will probably be contested, and the odds of violence or even a return to war are high, analysts and human rights activists warn. After the last poll in 2006, security forces killed hundreds of opposition protesters in the capital, Kinshasa. And that was when Kabila was still popular.

"They're a bunch of rockers. They love women. They love whiskey. They love weed. They play amazing music. " Renaud Barret could be talking about the Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin in their hedonistic prime. Or maybe N.W.A., when he adds that the musicians in question also had lives as "thugs" and "gangsters. " There is one other thing. "And oh yes, they're disabled. " Indeed they are, they being Staff Benda Bilili, which hails not from London or Compton, but from the Democratic Republic of the Congo capital Kinshasa.

A nonprofit group seeking to raise awareness of a deadly conflict in Africa apologized Thursday for pasting its campaign posters over one of Los Angeles' best known street murals. The group, Falling Whistles, admits it "screwed up" this week when it covered the mural, known as "Only Time Will Tell," at 2nd and Garey streets in the heart of the Arts District. The mural was a global effort by street artists from several nations, many of whom show their works in galleries and museums around the world.

Last summer, Christopher Ryan Smith emailed family and friends with exciting news: He was embarking on an African adventure. Over the next few months, his emails recounted the highlights. One day he was paragliding near Johannesburg. On another, he was sand boarding in "huge mines" in South Africa where the "sand was softer than snow powder. " In December, the 32-year-old Internet executive from Laguna Beach announced that he was going to Congo and Rwanda. Then, abruptly, all communication stopped.

Senior Congolese officials charged Tuesday that Rwandan troops had crossed into eastern Congo and were clashing with militias there. Residents fleeing the fighting reported that 15 villagers were dead and three villages were burned. United Nations officials said they were investigating the invasion charges, which came as Rwandan President Paul Kagame told his country's parliament that Rwandan troops "might" already be in Congo, pursuing Rwandan rebels based there.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo's second stab at democracy since the end of a ruinous civil war, President Joseph Kabila is likely to cling to power. But Monday's election is already so flawed that the result will probably be contested, and the odds of violence or even a return to war are high, analysts and human rights activists warn. After the last poll in 2006, security forces killed hundreds of opposition protesters in the capital, Kinshasa. And that was when Kabila was still popular.

Djo Tunda Wa Munga is pretty much the entire film industry in the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly called Zaire. In fact, his acclaimed gangster film, "Viva Riva!," which opens Friday at the Nuart, is the first feature film shot in the country in 25 years. And because there are no movie theaters in the country, Munga has made a deal with the French consulate in the capital of Kinshasa, formerly known as Leopoldville, to screen the film there in September. "When I was a kid, I used to go to the theaters," said Munga, 38, during a recent visit to L.A. "There were two theaters in my neighborhood in Kinshasa.

  At 14, Laba Kamana was captured by rebel soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo. For two years, she was raped nearly every day. She finally escaped into the Congolese jungle, one of the world's most dense, and discovered she was pregnant with the child of one of her captors. On Tuesday, the actor Ben Affleck used the nightmare of the young woman — now 22, studying law and advocating for women's rights — to argue at a congressional hearing that more needs to be done for the central African country whose vast mineral resources and dangerous geography have kept it mired in civil war. "If we continue to place Congo on the back burner of U.S. policy, it will come back to haunt us," Affleck told a subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.