Ivory Coast

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - At least 60 people died and about 200 were injured Tuesday in a stampede that followed a fireworks display at a football stadium in the Ivory Coast capital, Abidjan, according to emergency officials. Most of the dead and injured were children and teenagers. The stampede happened in the early hours of the morning as crowds were leaving the Felix Houphouet Boigny Stadium after a New Year's Eve fireworks display ended about 2 a.m. It is not known what triggered the stampede, officials said.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - At least 60 people died and about 200 were injured Tuesday in a stampede that followed a fireworks display at a football stadium in the Ivory Coast capital, Abidjan, according to emergency officials. Most of the dead and injured were children and teenagers. The stampede happened in the early hours of the morning as crowds were leaving the Felix Houphouet Boigny Stadium after a New Year's Eve fireworks display ended about 2 a.m. It is not known what triggered the stampede, officials said.

World Cup 2010: IVORY COAST FIFA ranking: 25 Overall World Cup record: 1-2-0 Coach: Sven-Goran Eriksson Best performance: First round, 2006 Overview: The Elephants will use the memory of their single-goal losses to Argentina and the Netherlands in 2006 to spur them in 2010, when they again are in a first-round "group of death" along with powers Brazil and Portugal. Chelsea striker Didier Drogba is Africa's top player and one of the world's most dangerous forwards, but the late switch in bringing Eriksson aboard as coach might backfire, especially since he wasn't the country's or the players' first choice.

SAO PAULO - Melanito Biyouha tries to remember the languages she's heard today at her restaurant in Sao Paulo's African corner. "English, Bassa, Wolof, Swahili, umm … Lingala," she said. "And of course Portuguese, both with Angolan, Mozambican and Brazilian accents. " She speaks Portuguese with a Cameroonian accent, she said. Almost 500 years since slavery set Brazil on the path to establishing the largest African-heritage population outside Africa, Biyouha's restaurant has become a home base for the first significant voluntary influx of Africans into the country.

Nestle, the world's largest food company, said it would do more to eradicate child labor and other worker violations in its Ivory Coast cocoa supply chain after an outside report pointed out a range of problems. The West African country provides 10% of Nestle's cocoa, which is used to make chocolate products such as Kit Kat candies, according to an investigation by the Fair Labor Assn. But the company's worker code is often flouted there, causing children to work under dangerous farm conditions instead of going to school, according to a Friday report from the association.

President Reagan named career diplomat Dennis Kux to become ambassador to the Ivory Coast on Friday.

Re "French Soldiers Fire on Protesters in Ivory Coast, Reportedly Killing 5," Nov. 10: Maybe I missed the news, but did France obtain international consensus, as well as United Nations authorization, to use force in the Ivory Coast insurrection? Paul Nisenbaum Los Angeles

Ivory Coast's election standoff tilted dangerously toward renewed civil war Thursday with reports of heavy gunfire in the commercial capital as security forces clashed with supporters of an opposition leader. At least 20 people were killed in the violence, government officials told state television. There were reports of fighting in Abidjan near the hotel that serves as headquarters for Alassane Ouattara, the opposition leader seen by the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and others as the rightful winner of last month's presidential election.

Ivory Coast's defeated president, Laurent Gbagbo, staged a last stand in the commercial capital of Abidjan on Friday as his rival's forces attacked his home, the presidential palace and two military bases. With most of the top military commanders having deserted him, many observers said it was a matter of hours — days at most — before Gbagbo fell. His whereabouts were unknown. Witnesses reported heavy fighting in Gbagbo's upscale residential neighborhood of Cocody as the Republican Guard and loyal fighters battled to repel his rival's forces.

A sweaty afternoon torpor falls on the vast hotel lobby, as if someone had pumped a mist of sleeping gas through the air conditioning. Men slump beneath garish lime jungle murals, mouths hanging open. Outside, a cooling breeze blows off the lagoon, drifting over palm trees, thatched gazebos, tennis courts (unused), a pool complex with extravagant fountains and sprays (none working). A large black lizard with a bright orange head does push-ups. The waiter at the lobby cafe stares slack-jawed at a stack of dirty dishes and plates, and is rarely seen waiting.

Nestle, the world's largest food company, said it would do more to eradicate child labor and other worker violations in its Ivory Coast cocoa supply chain after an outside report pointed out a range of problems. The West African country provides 10% of Nestle's cocoa, which is used to make chocolate products such as Kit Kat candies, according to an investigation by the Fair Labor Assn. But the company's worker code is often flouted there, causing children to work under dangerous farm conditions instead of going to school, according to a Friday report from the association.

When Michel Kouakou arrived in New York City in 2004, the Ivory Coast immigrant took a job at Whole Foods to pay the rent while pursuing his dream of finding success in the dance world. "But I was very clear with the store manager. I told him I'm a dancer and that this is temporary, that my first love is art," he says. Kouakou, in fact, soon quit his day job. Having left his country in 1999 for a nomadic existence in Europe and Asia, he had already cultivated a reputation as a virtuosic dancer and risk-taking choreographer, equally fluent in the tribal dances he learned in his youth and the aesthetics of cutting-edge European contemporary dance.

Ivory Coast's longtime leader Laurent Gbagbo, who refused to relinquish power despite his defeat in a presidential election in November and a bloody battle with opposition forces, was seized from his compound in Abidjan on Monday and placed in the custody of United Nations peacekeeping forces, officials said. The former president was shown on television being led into a room wearing an unbuttoned shirt and sleeveless white undershirt. Looking tired and wary, Gbagbo wiped his face with a towel before changing into a green-and-yellow shirt.

Ivory Coast's new leader took charge of a divided country Tuesday, facing continued fighting in some neighborhoods of its commercial capital and a growing humanitarian crisis. President Alassane Ouattara confronts the challenge of convincing skeptical opponents, including the 46% of the electorate who voted last fall for his rival, that he's not a stooge of France or the West and is strong enough to unite his African nation's disparate political forces. Nearly 2 million people were displaced by weeks of fighting when his rival, former President Laurent Gbagbo, refused to step down.

United Nations and French helicopters in Ivory Coast on Sunday attacked the home and presidential palace of the country's longtime leader, who has refused to step down since an election in November in which the U.N. says he was defeated. The attacks on Laurent Gbagbo's residence and the presidential palace mark the United Nations' second military intervention, after similar assaults a week earlier. The U.N. said Friday that forces loyal to Gbagbo used a cease-fire Tuesday as a ploy to consolidate and gain ground in Abidjan.

During the decadelong rule of Laurent Gbagbo, his subjects in Ivory Coast learned to pay attention not to his words but to his deeds. His favorite theme was national pride, the belief that Ivorians stood out among their West African neighbors and controlled their own destiny. But behind the positive rhetoric was a dark and sometimes threatening brand of patriotism that raised an unspoken question: Who truly belongs in Ivory Coast? The last decade has been marked by boiling nationalism and xenophobic violence, with killings and harassment of northerners and Ivorians of foreign descent.

Ivory Coast state television disappeared from the airwaves outside the nation's largest city on Thursday, a blow to the incumbent president's attempts to cling to power in the bloody aftermath of an election most of the world says he lost. Also Thursday, the United Nations recognized incumbent Laurent Gbagbo's challenger, Alassane Ouattara, as the winner of the Nov. 28 runoff vote. The 192-nation U.N. General Assembly rescinded the credentials of Ivory Coast's ambassador, Ilahiri Djedje, a Gbagbo supporter, and accepted those of Ouattara's choice, veteran diplomat Youssouf Bamba.

Ivory Coast's highest electoral authority Friday overturned presidential election results that gave former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara a victory over President Laurent Gbagbo, a move that could spark violence in the troubled West African country. The country's Constitutional Council declared Gbagbo the winner in Sunday's runoff vote after annulling results in several districts in Ouattara's northern strongholds. Council head Paul Yao N'Dre, an ally of the president's, said Friday that Gbagbo had won 51% of the vote to Ouattara's 49%. A day earlier, the country's electoral commission had declared Ouattara the winner with 54% of the vote compared to Gbagbo's 46%. However, the council has the power to rule on election disputes.

A U.N. team in Ivory Coast has discovered about 100 additional bodies in the western part of the country, after forces loyal to the internationally recognized new president swept through last month in an effort to wrest control from the previous leader. The discovery brings the total of confirmed deaths in the region to 344. Some of the dead had been burned alive. Others had been thrown down a well. Western Ivory Coast has been one of the most violent areas in the battle for control between Laurent Gbagbo, the incumbent who has refused to cede power, and Alassane Ouattara, whose November election was recognized by the United Nations.

Embattled Ivory Coast leader Laurent Gbagbo on Thursday remained trapped in his presidential residence in Abidjan under the protection of 200 heavily armed loyalists, while many other residents of the country's commercial capital struggled to find food. Fighting between Gbagbo supporters and opposition forces continued in some neighborhoods and pro-Gbagbo militias still dominated parts of the city. Residents who have been trapped inside for a week by the battle — many without food, cooking gas or electricity — were unable to get help Thursday, said a resident in the vicinity of Gbagbo's house, reached by phone.