Congo

For only the second time in the last 28 years, scientists have discovered a new species of monkey, according to a new report in this week's edition of the scientific journal PLoS ONE. The monkey species, called lesula by locals, lives deep in the remote Lomami forest of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The monkey's habitat is one of few remaining unexplored biological frontiers in the area. Though researchers were previously unfamiliar with the species -- which has an extremely human-like face surrounded by golden hair -- the daughter of a local school director in the area had taken one as a pet. That led to a first chance encounter between the scientists and the monkey in 2007 when a field team saw it tied to a post in the village where she lived.

Actors' Gang stalwart Brian T. Finney invites us to once again venture deep into the interior of the African Congo in his adaptation of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," now at the Ivy Substation. This stripped-down Actors' Gang production zooms in on Finney's intensely contained performance as Marlow, the seaman who tells the story of his obsessive pursuit of the mysterious Kurtz, an ivory trader who has come to symbolize, among other things, the insatiable greed of imperial conquest.

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.

The powerful things we expect from "War Witch" are as advertised, but what we don't expect is even better. Given that the subject matter is two violent years in the life of an African child soldier, it's not surprising that the film's events are disturbing and even horrific. But it's the unforeseen way they're told that makes "War Witch" potent enough to have been one of the five nominees for the foreign language Oscar and the big winner, including best picture, at Canada's recent film awards.

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.

In a bid to quell violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the United Nations Security Council imposed an arms embargo late Monday on two armed groups accused of rape and mass killings. The decision came just before Rwanda, which has been accused of backing the rebels, temporarily joined the powerful council. The country has fervently denied involvement in the Congo crisis, but U.N. experts and human rights groups say its fingerprints are evident in the recent bloodshed.

From a Honduras tycoon to the Benghazi attacks, here are five stories you shouldn't miss from this past week in global news: Panel faults security failures in Benghazi attacks In Honduras, a controversial tycoon responds to critics In Israel, Labor Party chief's shift to the right causes dissent U.S. under pressure over Rwanda involvement in Congo fighting Philippine Congress OKs bill to offer birth control to poor...

Reports of escalating clashes in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo raised renewed fears of outright war Monday, as rebels again neared the provincial capital of Goma. The M23 rebels had pledged to halt their push toward Goma in order to negotiate, but government officials shot down the idea of talks, saying they were useless because Rwanda was pulling the strings behind the scenes. New violence erupted on the outskirts of Goma only hours after rebels made their pledge, the Associated Press reported.

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.

More than 100 people have died in a remote part of Congo, including all those who attended the funerals of two village chiefs, in what health officials fear is an outbreak of hemorrhagic fever. People began dying of the suspected fever after the funerals in Mweka, a region of southeastern Congo where relatives usually wash the bodies of the deceased, said Jean-Constatin Kanow, chief medical inspector for the province.

GOMA, Congo - It's an ungainly beast of a machine: a wooden bicycle with handlebars like great bull's horns, two runtish wooden wheels, a chunky frame like a squashed triangle and no pedals. There's no seat either, just a kneepad fixed to the frame, made from a spongy Chinese flip-flop. The Congolese chikudu looks like it rolled right off the pages of a child's drawing book and onto the rutted roads of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Uzima Bahati, 18, was a child himself when he became a chikudu operator.

In a bid to quell violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the United Nations Security Council imposed an arms embargo late Monday on two armed groups accused of rape and mass killings. The decision came just before Rwanda, which has been accused of backing the rebels, temporarily joined the powerful council. The country has fervently denied involvement in the Congo crisis, but U.N. experts and human rights groups say its fingerprints are evident in the recent bloodshed.

From a Honduras tycoon to the Benghazi attacks, here are five stories you shouldn't miss from this past week in global news: Panel faults security failures in Benghazi attacks In Honduras, a controversial tycoon responds to critics In Israel, Labor Party chief's shift to the right causes dissent U.S. under pressure over Rwanda involvement in Congo fighting Philippine Congress OKs bill to offer birth control to poor...

KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo - On Nov. 19, armed men from a rebel group called the M23 were looking for a prominent civil society leader in a village outside Goma, a provincial capital in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. He'd been in hiding for several weeks after receiving text messages threatening him for his public denunciations of M23 abuses. When the rebels didn't find him, they shot his colleague, killing him. The next day, the M23 - fighters who had integrated into the Congolese army in 2009 but mutinied earlier this year - took control of Goma.

GOMA, Congo - These days, the U.N. force deployed to protect the city's population from rampant militias is not particularly popular. Residents complain that the peacekeepers last month should have prevented Rwanda-backed M23 rebels from taking over the largest city in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Some even assert that their country would be better off without the international force, known as MONUSCO, which at $1.4 billion a year is the U.N.'s most expensive peacekeeping mission, and the most controversial.

GOMA, Congo - It was not the bullet lodged in the officer's gut, or the botched operation he'd had in a field hospital, that made the case so difficult for doctors in a Goma hospital. It was trying to save the life of a Rwandan officer injured in the recent Congolese battle for the eastern city when Rwanda's government insisted it wasn't involved in the Goma fighting. Doctors were convinced the officer would die if he wasn't sent home to Rwanda, where he could get better medical care.

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.

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.

He's best known as an actor and a filmmaker, but Ben Affleck has a special interest in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and on Wednesday the “Argo” director testified before the House Armed Services Committee about what Affleck termed “the deadliest conflict since World War II.” The founder of the Eastern Congo Initiative , an advocacy and grant-making organization committed to peaceful solutions in the war-torn African nation, Affleck...

A rebel leader accused of leading a brutal attack on a Congolese village nearly a decade ago was acquitted Tuesday by the International Criminal Court, which said prosecutors failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mathieu Ngudjolo was responsible for the mass rapes and murders that devastated the town. The decision was widely seen as a setback for war crimes prosecutors who already face steep obstacles in persuading witnesses to come forward and testify. It is the second verdict ever handed down by the court, which earlier convicted former warlord Thomas Lubanga of using child soldiers in the same Congolese conflict.