DAKAR, Nov 17, 2007 (AFP) - The speaker of parliament, former prime minister Macky Sall, has been sacked as number two in the ruling party and faces losing his job within a year, a party spokesman said Saturday.

Spokesman Babacar Gaye said the Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS) leadership, meeting Friday under the chairmanship of President Abdoulaye Wade, had decided to suppress the post of deputy national secretary, held by Sall.

Wade is also the national secretary of the PDS.

DAKAR, Oct 19, 2007 (AFP) - Senegal's leading singer Youssou Ndour on Friday voiced his profound shock at the murder of reggae star Lucky Dube in Johannesburg and warned of the dangers facing artists in South Africa.

'What has just happened is terrible,' Ndour said on his privately owned RFM radio, condemning 'this appalling act'.

Dube, who recorded more than 20 albums in a career spanning two decades, was gunned down Thursday night in front of his children during an attempted car-jacking outside relative's home in the suburb of Rosettenville.

SAINT LOUIS, Senegal, Oct 17, 2007 (AFP) - Senegalese police on Wednesday arrested 15 clandestine immigrants headed for Europe and two people traffickers after the canoe they were aboard ran aground.

A police officer in the town of Saint Louis told AFP: 'We arrested 17 people and an inquiry is now underway.'

He said the police had been alerted by locals who saw a group of wet and tired people on a beach near the town.

Unconfirmed reports from witnesses said two more illegal immigrants died during the journey and were buried on the beach.

BANJUL, Oct 17, 2007 (AFP) - At least 35 Senegalese are missing and feared dead after their boat capsized late last week off Gambia's shores, new figures released by rescue officials showed Wednesday.

Scores of Senegalese set sail from the western Gambian seaside village of Tanji towards the Senegalese town of Bassoul, when the boat sank overnight last Thursday due to bad weather conditions, Abdoulie Camara, a senior Gambian rescuer told AFP.

THIAROYE, Senegal, Oct 17, 2007 (AFP) - Fisherman Ameth Niang once considered following the dangerous path of many of his countrymen, aboard a rickety boat bound for Europe.

Although he bailed out from the overloaded vessel at the last minute Niang, in his early 20s, still dreams of leaving his native Senegal one day -- and shrugs at a new campaign designed to scare off boatloads of would-be African migrants trying to illegally enter Europe.

DUBAI, Oct 14, 2007 (AFP) - A New York anti-AIDS campaigner said on Sunday he plans to make a second attempt to row across the Atlantic starting on World AIDS Day on December 1 to raise global awareness about the killer disease.

'I have so far collected close to 10,000 dollars in America' of the 100,000 dollars needed for the 12,900-kilometre (8,000-mile) voyage from Senegal's Goree Island to New York, Victor Mooney, 42, said in the United Arab Emirates.

His first attempt to complete the feat in May 2006 failed when his hand-made boat sank.

DAKAR, Oct 12, 2007 (AFP) - International press body IFJ on Thursday called on Senegalese authorities to release Moussa Gueye, editor of private newspaper L'Exclusif, who was detained after the publication of articles that allegedly offended the president.

The International Federation of Journalists said Gueye went to an appointment, scheduled on the telephone by an unknown person, on late Monday. He was arrested on arrival by members of the Division of Criminal Investigations (DIC).

DAKAR, Oct 11, 2007 (AFP) - The publisher of a Senegalese private daily, L'Exclusif, remained behind bars Thursday without charge four days after his arrest, potentially for an alleged state security offence, his lawyer said.

Moussa Gueye 'is in police custody since Monday' lawyer Sheik Faye told AFP.

The lawyer had expected to have access to Gueye by the expiration of the maximum 48-hour delay allowed within the law, but said he had failed.

DAKAR, Oct 10, 2007 (AFP) - A Brazilian privately owned budget airline BRA is next month to launch a direct flight between Brazil and Senegal, the first between the two countries, a diplomat said Wednesday.

Brazilian Ambassador Katia Godinho Gilaberte said starting November 8, there will be a weekly direct flight every Thursday between Dakar and Recife, a northeastern Brazilian city.

A second weekly flight is in the pipeline in coming months.

DAKAR, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - A United Arab Emirates ports management giant on Monday signed a 25-year concession to run Senegal's main port, after it beat Bollore, a leading French conglomerate operating here for more than 80 years.

Dubai Ports World (DP World) will, starting January 2008, run the Dakar container terminal and also construct and equip the west Africa's nation's future port, an extension of the current one.

DAKAR, Oct 4, 2007 (AFP) - Senegal's main donors on Thursday pledged to extend four billion dollars in financial aid to the west African country over a three year period until 2010, the World Bank said.

'Senegal's partners committed themselves to provide 3.945 million dollars in financial assistance between 2007 and 2010,' said a World Bank statement released at the end of a two day meeting in Paris of the donors' advisors.

DAKAR, Oct 3, 2007 (AFP) - Senegal's revamped senate on Wednesday chose the former speaker of parliament and current mayor of the capital city Pape Diop as its president.

Diop, 53, who stood unopposed, was elected by 99 of the 100 senators who make up the country's upper chamber.

As the head of the senate, he becomes the country's second most powerful personality after President Abdoulaye Wade, and can act as president in the event that the head of state is incapacitated.

BANJUL, Oct 2, 2007 (AFP) - A court in Gambia has charged eight members of the recalcitrant faction of a Senegalese ex-rebel movement with spying and conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism, a judiciary official said on Tuesday.

According to a court document obtained by AFP Tuesday, the eight, whose date of arrest has not been specified, 'conspired to carry out acts of terrorism against' Senegal while on Gambian territory between 2004 and 2006.

DAKAR, Oct 1, 2007 (AFP) - Several African heads of states will next month relaunch an initiative designed to attract foreign investors to the continent, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade announced Monday.

The New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) will be relaunched at a summit in Senegal.

'A meeting will take place on November 22 and will have as its aim the turn-around and re-orientation of Nepad,' said Wade, who help set up the programme.

DAKAR, Oct 1, 2007 (AFP) - Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade on Monday urged African leaders to work together to help solve the crisis in Zimbabwe, and not to leave the matter to the South African leader Thabo Mbeki alone.

'We should have an official position about Zimbabwe, but there is no official position and this country is getting worse and worse,' Wade told reporters.

Mbeki was tasked by the Southern African regional bloc in March to broker talks between the rival political groups in Zimbabwe.

DAKAR, Oct 1, 2007 (AFP) - Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade on Monday warned that he could pull out his troops from the African Union peacekeeping troops after a attack killed 10 soldiers, one of them a Senegalese.

'Perhaps they were armed, (and) there was an ambush. But if they died because they did not have weapons to defend themselves I (will) withdraw all the Senegalese soldiers,' Wade told a news conference.

DAKAR, Oct 1, 2007 (AFP) - Senegal President Abdoulaye Wade spoke out Monday against French moves to carry out DNA testing of would-be immigrants wanting to join their families.

The French National Assembly last month passed a bill that would tighten the rules for immigrants, including the introduction of voluntary DNA tests to prove family ties.

'We are against these DNA tests. It is not to question science but with all the uncertainties that scientific judgments pose ... then, frankly, I do not see what DNA tests can do,' he told a news conference.

DAKAR, Oct 1, 2007 (AFP) - Senegal on Monday called for the urgent deployment of a robust peacekeeping force in Sudan's Darfur region following a weekend attack that killed 10 African Union troops, one of them a Senegalese.

The government in Dakar 'strongly condemns the unjustified and criminal attacks ... (and) insistently urges the international community to rapidly deploy the hybrid' United Nations-African Union (UN-AU) force.

DAKAR, Sept 28, 2007 (AFP) - Twenty-three African countries ended a meeting with UN experts on counter-terrorism on Thursday resolving to cooperate more closely to better tackle terrorism.

The countries from central and western Africa, many post-conflict and still security fragile, urged each other to be party, without delay, to relevant international conventions on counter-terrorism.

DAKAR, Sept 27, 2007 (AFP) - A court in Senegal Thursday jailed for a month each two male organisers of a lewd dance party found to be offensive to public morals in this predominantly Muslim west African nation.

The three female dancers were freed pending sentencing to be handed down in eight months and were put under surveillance.

The nighclub owner, the cameramen who shot the video of the dance and the master of ceremonies at the event were however acquitted.

The charges arose from a video of the dance session at a private party in a Dakar nightclub in 2005.

DAKAR, Sept 27, 2007 (AFP) - Police in Senegal have arrested 18 would-be illegal immigrants who were about to set sail for the Spanish islands of the Canaries.

'We arrested Sunday night 18 people in Mbour (about 100 kilometres / 60 miles south of the capital. There was a trafficker and the clients,' police spokesman Alioune Ndiaye told AFP.

Police swooped in on the group after it had been alerted of their eminent departure. They are due to appear before a court on Thursday.

DAKAR, Sept 27, 2007 (AFP) - Senegal has taken back some 18,000 clandestine migrants sent back from Europe over the past year, a senior official said Wednesday.

The head of the country's national security agency, Leopold Diouf, said a total of 18,009 clandestine migrants to Europe had been repatriated to Senegal since an accord with the EU was signed last year, Senegalese national television station RTS reported.

MBAO, Senegal, Sept 26, 2007 (AFP) - Hundreds of Senegalese Muslims and Christians huddled together in pain and anger on Wednesday to mark the fifth anniversary of Africa's worst ferry disaster which claimed nearly 2,000 lives.

In front of a row of white tombs at a cemetery on the outskirts of the capital Dakar, an old man sporting an African gown recited the Koran under a blazing sun while a few metres away, a young Catholic woman fingered a rosary, meditating in silence.

DAKAR, Sept 25, 2007 (AFP) - Prosecutors demanded jail terms of between three months and one year for eight people who went on trial Monday on charges of lewd dancing authorities say was offensive to public morals.

The private station Radio Futurs Media reported that at the closed hearing the state prosecutor requested jail terms of six months for the three dancers, including Ndeye Gueye, an icon of Senegalese dance regularly invited by singers to perform for their music videos or concerts.

DAKAR, Sept 24, 2007 (AFP) - Australia's Mining Deposits Limited on Monday signed an agreement with Senegal to begin mining zircon, a mineral used in jewellery, from the sands of coast north of the capital Dakar, national media reported.

Signed by MDL Managing Director Jeffrey Wayne William and Senegalese Mining and Industry Minister Madicke Niang, the agreement allows the exploitation of deposits that 'represent seven percent of world production' of zircon beginning in 2009, the Senegalese news agency APS reported.

DAKAR, Sept 21, 2007 (AFP) - President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal on Friday named 65 new senators, more than half of them women for this predominantly conservative Muslim country in west Africa.

Wade, who names two thirds of the revamped parliament, released a list of 65 senators, 36 of them women.

Added to four from the 35 elected members, there are now 40 women in the 100-strong chamber, more than double the previous one which had only 18.

DAKAR, Sept 20, 2007 (AFP) - West African salsa king Labah Sosseh, by his own reckoning the father of 27 children, died in a Dakar clinic Thursday at the age of 64, friends and fellow-musicians said.

Born in Senegal on March 12, 1943, Sosseh began his career in neighbouring Gambia at the age of 20 with an outfit called the African Jazz Band, then went to Ivory Coast where he formed the Super International Band of Abidjan.

DAKAR, Sept 19, 2007 (AFP) - Six people accused of involvement in an event alleged to have included obscene dancing have been charged and jailed in Senegal, judicial sources said Wednesday.

The accused -- three women and three men -- were brought before a judge on Tuesday, who charged them with violating public decency and an 'attack against morals' in connection with an event two years ago.

Ndeye Gueye, an icon of Senegalese dance regularly invited by singers to perform for their music videos or concerts, was among those charged.

DAKAR, Sept 19, 2007 (AFP) - Senegal, a predominantly conservative Muslim west African country, has launched a scheme to encourage women taxi-drivers, local dailies said on Wednesday.

Ten women were handed their brand new cars on Tuesday by the country's First Lady Vivian Wade, to become the first of a planned 2,000 female taxi drivers to be plying Senegal's roads by next year.

Dubbed 'Taxi Sister,' the project is the brainchild of the country's President Abdoulaye Wade.

MADRID, Sept 18, 2007 (AFP) - The Spanish government said Tuesday it would launch an advertising campaign in Senegal designed to encourage would-be immigrants to stay put and not make the hazardous trip to Spain.

'We want to send out a clear message: Clandestine immigration only puts your own life at risk. It's pointless and should be rejected by Spaniards and Senegalese alike,' immigration secretary Consuelo Rumi said.

DAKAR, Sept 14, 2007 (AFP) - Senegal on Friday asked for Russian support in its bid to gain a permanent seat on the UN Security Council for Africa, the country's foreign minister said.

Senegalese Foreign Minister Sheikh Tidiane Gadio made the request in Dakar to his visiting Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

Gadio told journalists because talks on proposed UN reforms may take decades, Africa should not continue to be excluded in the meantime.

SAINT-LOUIS, Senegal, Aug 29, 2007 (AFP) - An Irish teenager who 'mooned' the home of a local governor in Senegal was on Wednesday sentenced to a suspended jail sentence of four months and a fine, his lawyer told AFP.

Patrick Devine, 19, was working for a teaching project in Saint-Louis when he was arrested on July 27 for 'removing his underwear before the main door of the home of the governor' in Saint-Louis, a northern coastal city.

DAKAR, Aug 28, 2007 (AFP) - The ruling Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS) has won 34 of the 35 elected seats in a vote for a new upper house of parliament where the president will name two-thirds of members, judges ruled Tuesday.

The constitutional court upheld the result of an August 19 vote when about 12,000 lawmakers, local and municipal councillors picked their members of the 100-strong senate, a new one that has led to controversy about its composition.

DAKAR, Aug 27, 2007 (AFP) - Iran, OPEC's number two crude producer, has pledged to supply oil to Senegal for a year and plans to pick up more than a 34-percent stake in Senegal's oil refining firm, the energy ministry said Monday.

The agreement was inked between the two nations during a working visit to Tehran by Senegal's Energy Minister Samuel Sarr, a source in his ministry told AFP.

It envisages the 'supply of Iranian crude oil for a year to the African Refining Company (SAR),' in which the state holds a majority share, the source said.

SAINT-LOUIS, Senegal, Aug 15, 2007 (AFP) - An Irish teenager who faces time behind bars in Senegal after he allegedly 'mooned' the home of a local governor has been released from custody pending trial, his lawyer said Saturday.

Patrick Devine, 19, was working for a teaching project in Saint-Louis when he was arrested on July 27 for 'removing his underwear before the main door of the home of the governor' in Saint-Louis, a northern coastal city.

DAKAR, Aug 23, 2007 (AFP) - Senegal's movie business, home of some of the continent's first black filmmakers, is in the throes of crisis with cinema theaters downing shutters as cheap and mostly pirated DVDs flood the markets.

Many cinema halls have been turned into warehouses for anything from motor spare parts to cheap, imported Chinese trinkets hawked daily on the streets in Dakar.

Others are rented on Sundays by pentecostal churches led mainly by Nigerian nationals trying to make inroads in this predominantly Muslim country.