Uganda

Bomb blasts ripped through two separate bars packed with soccer fans watching the World Cup final in the Ugandan capital Kampala late Sunday, killing dozens of people, including an American, police said Monday. The deadliest attack occurred at a rugby club as people watched the game between Spain and the Netherlands on a large-screen TV outdoors. The second blast took place at an Ethiopian restaurant, where at least three Americans were wounded. "At this moment we can confirm that one American has been killed," U.S. Embassy public affairs officer Joan Lockard said.

Ayeet Timothy Odeke, basketball coach at Nkumba University in Kampala, gets the look - the same one Bill Walton might have given John Wooden years ago - when he instructs his players on the proper way to put on their socks and lace up their shoes at the start of each season. "If you didn't get the words, the face would talk to you," Odeke explained. "Are you mad? Are you crazy?" It was 10 years ago, at a basketball clinic in Uganda, when Odeke was exposed to certain Wooden life lessons for the first time: Don't mistake activity with achievement.

It took 12 years for Ojwang Santino to feel safe enough to begin rebuilding his home. Each morning before the sun gets too hot, he makes the trek to his ancestral land to smooth new mud walls and work on the thatched roof. But now he doesn't know whether he'll have the courage to move in. He's afraid the Lord's Resistance Army will come back. Santino, a father and grandfather, is one of the 1.

A bit over an hour into the five-hour drive across the ferrous red plateau, heading toward Uganda's capital, Kampala, suddenly, there's the Nile, a boiling, roiling cataract at this time of year, rain-swollen and rabid below the bridge that vaults over it. Naturally, I take out my iPhone and begin snapping pics. On the other side of the bridge, three soldiers standing in the road, rifles slung over their shoulders, direct my driver, Godfrey, to pull over. "You were photographing the bridge," one of them says.

The streets of Mogadishu echo with the footsteps of Shabab fighters, the rattle of their rifles and their recitations of a medieval version of Islamic law that espouses public beheadings and the stoning of adulterers. The militant group has loomed as a dangerous and fanatical curiosity contained from the outside world by war and the cruel designs of a failed state. But Shabab expanded its battlefield by hundreds of miles Sunday when it reached across porous borders and claimed responsibility for twin bombings that killed 76 people in Uganda.

Making a quick trip to California after Tuesday night's debate in Nevada, Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann sought to broaden the conversation to national security - chiding President Obama for “leading from behind” and accusing him of overstretching the nation's military resources. Lamenting the fact that Republican candidates have spent very little time debating foreign policy, Bachmann told a group of "tea party" activists in Pasadena on Wednesday that the president was wrong to send armed advisors to Uganda and several surrounding countries to target the militia known as the Lord's Resistance Army, which has killed thousands of people over the last two decades.

President Clinton has nominated E. Michael Southwick, a career Foreign Service diplomat, to be the U.S. ambassador to Uganda, the White House announced. Southwick, 49, is deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya.

President Yoweri Museveni has lifted censorship imposed by the previous military regime and encouraged the nation's press to expose government corruption, Ugandan officials said Wednesday. Information Minister Abu Mayanja told a meeting of newspaper editors that Museveni believes a free press can serve as a watchdog against human rights abuses. Museveni's National Resistance Army seized power in Uganda on Jan. 25, ousting Gen.

A plan by women's rights groups to stage the graphic theater work "The Vagina Monologues" to raise money for war-affected African women failed when the government banned the performance as contrary to Ugandan values. Several groups had planned to present American playwright Eve Ensler's performance over the weekend to help women affected by an 18-year insurgency in northern Uganda, as well as domestic and sexual abuse in this poor central African country.

— In simultaneous bombings bearing the hallmarks of international terrorists, two explosions ripped through crowds watching the World Cup final in two places in Uganda's capital late Sunday, killing 64 people, police said. One American was slain and several were wounded. The deadliest attack occurred at a rugby club as people watched the game between Spain and the Netherlands on a large-screen TV outdoors. The second blast took place at an Ethiopian restaurant, where at least three Americans were wounded.

Making a quick trip to California after Tuesday night's debate in Nevada, Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann sought to broaden the conversation to national security - chiding President Obama for “leading from behind” and accusing him of overstretching the nation's military resources. Lamenting the fact that Republican candidates have spent very little time debating foreign policy, Bachmann told a group of "tea party" activists in Pasadena on Wednesday that the president was wrong to send armed advisors to Uganda and several surrounding countries to target the militia known as the Lord's Resistance Army, which has killed thousands of people over the last two decades.

Weirdest Friday news dump ever. Very late in the day on Oct. 14, the Obama administration released a lot of politically problematic information, including the news that the deficit for 2011 hit $1.3 trillion (the second biggest ever, after 2009) and that it's abandoning the CLASS Act, one of the more expensive and unwieldy appendages of "Obamacare. " One other thing: The White House announced we're putting boots on the ground in sub-Saharan Africa. President Obama notified Congress that he's sending about 100 combat-equipped troops to advise African forces on how best to kill or capture (but hopefully kill)

President Obama is sending about 100 special forces troops to central Africa to help target the leadership of the Lord's Resistance Army, a notorious militia that has been raping and pillaging in the remote jungles of northern Uganda and neighboring countries for more than two decades. The first team of armed advisors arrived in Uganda on Wednesday. Over the next month, the remaining U.S. troops, most of them Army Green Berets, will be sent to Uganda and surrounding countries, including South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Congo.

The Nile River is the star of this six-day tour, but not the section most tourists visit. The Nile Spectacle trip from Premier Safaris starts at Lake Victoria and Jinja,Uganda, the source of the river, with stays at high-end safari lodges along the way. Participants enjoy a day of rafting before heading to Murchison Falls National Park for four days to further explore the river and its wildlife. Stops include Murchison Falls and the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary as well as safaris to watch elephant, buffalo, giraffes, birds and other animals in their native habitat.  When: Trip dates are open, based on travelers' requests.

A few years ago, director Marc Forster went to visit Sam Childers at his home in rural Central City, Pa., eager to learn about how a drug dealer became a preacher and then director of an orphanage in Africa. As a get-to-know-you activity, Childers took the Swiss filmmaker (who has a penchant for purple sneakers and pink-striped socks) into his backyard to shoot guns. When screenwriter Jason Keller first met the outsized Childers, who has fought alongside the Sudan People's Liberation Army, Childers challenged his credentials so strongly the scribe rose from the table in a huff.

With hunger in the Horn of Africa dramatically worsening, the United Nations on Wednesday added three more regions of Somalia to the list of areas it says are stricken by famine. More than 12 million people are facing starvation, with children particularly vulnerable. The U.N. last month declared that two regions of Somalia were suffering from famine, and it said Wednesday that the famine was likely to spread across most of Somalia in coming months, as well as parts of Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia.

Ugandan rebel leaders who have exploited thousands of kidnapped children as soldiers or sex slaves will be the target of the first investigation by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the chief prosecutor said. The world's only permanent war crimes tribunal won jurisdiction for its first case when Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni asked it to investigate possible crimes against humanity by the Lord's Resistance Army.

Thousands of civilians fleeing fighting in northeastern Congo streamed into Uganda on Thursday, most after walking several days. The U.N. refugee agency said 13,000 refugees had crossed the border near Ishasha in 48 hours -- 10,000 on Thursday alone. Most were from villages in the Rutshuru district of the Democratic Republic of Congo's North Kivu province. "The rebels attacked my village.

After intense international criticism, proponents of an anti-gay bill before Uganda's parliament have removed a punitive clause that called for hanging people who have consensual homosexual sex. However, they were expected to push ahead with the measure, which criminalizes the promotion of homosexuality. The bill was to be debated Wednesday, the last day of the current parliament, but was dropped from the agenda. There were reports it might be debated Friday in an special session.

"I am a gay Ugandan man," said David Kato, speaking in 2009 at a U.N.-sponsored meeting on a proposed "anti-homosexuality bill" that could impose life imprisonment for gay sexual activity, or even the death penalty in some cases. It was a stunning statement in Uganda, which is why Maria Burnett, Human Rights Watch's senior Africa researcher, remembers it so clearly. "It wasn't something you hear in public, especially where government officials are present. " Kato gave an analysis of the bill ?