Gabon Population

Guy Mallett was sunning himself on the beach last election day when some soldiers came along, demanding to know if he had voted. Mallett, an American working for a British bank here, said he had not, pointing out that he wasn't a citizen of Gabon. "Doesn't matter," one soldier told him. So Mallett dutifully got dressed and cast his vote. Gabon may be the only country where foreigners are encouraged to vote--several times if they don't mind.

Guy Mallett was sunning himself on the beach last election day when some soldiers came along, demanding to know if he had voted. Mallett, an American working for a British bank here, said he had not, pointing out that he wasn't a citizen of Gabon. "Doesn't matter," one soldier told him. So Mallett dutifully got dressed and cast his vote. Gabon may be the only country where foreigners are encouraged to vote--several times if they don't mind.

Logging in the tropical forests of West Africa may be causing devastating wars among the chimpanzees there, concludes a scientist who has studied the animals for eight years. When Lee White began studying the large mammals of Gabon's Lope Wildlife Reserve in 1989, he was relieved to see that logging wasn't a major problem.