The UN force’s mandate does not allow it to intervene in tribal conflicts.Lendu tribe members could not be reached for comment, but Sumaili Koloso, secretary general of the Congolese Rally for Democracy-Liberation Movement said the fighting was “a competition for leadership [rather] than an ethnic war”. He said fighting was taking place between his group and a militia formed by his former defence minister, Thomas Loubanga, a Hema.The Hema and Lendu communities have fought periodically for decades over tea and coffee farms and cattle. The use of primitive weapons kept casualty figures low in the past. But following the outbreak of Congo’s war in August 1998, the communities have been able to arm themselves with modern weapons.The civil war broke out when rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda sought to overthrow the late President Laurent Kabila.. Australia’s biggest phone company has come up with a novel excuse for abysmal mobile reception in the bush: the gum tree is to blame.

The thick trunks and dense forests acted as shields, it said, sucking in radio frequency emissions.The claims were greeted with scepticism by consumers, who find the signal disappears outside country towns, and conversations drop out with frustrating frequency.But scientists cautiously backed the theory, although they said there was no evidence showing gum trees as the sole cause of the disruptions. Professor Alan Young, a government telecoms expert, said: “The signal goes into the trunk and the leaves and it dissipates. But the tree also reflects the signal, so it tends to scatter in other directions instead of coming to you.”Roger Bamber, of Telstra, said: “The gum trees absorb the signal, so if you are maybe 60km [37 miles] from a base station and you’re relying on a very strong signal, it could be enough to cancel the signal.”The company says mobile reception should be good in one flat area near the Murray river in New South Wales and problems experienced there are caused by the thick covering of of red river gum trees that line the Murray.. A man arrested after a fatal stabbing in Sydney last week is being questioned about the case of Peter Falconio, the British backpacker who disappeared in the Australian Outback nearly a year ago. He appeared in court charged with murder after a 45-year-old man, named by local media as Michael Furlong, was stabbed in a Sydney street.Mr Falconio, 28, is believed to have been shot by a man who then tried to abduct Ms Lees on an isolated stretch of highway north of Alice Springs in July last year. His disappearance sparked one of Australia’s biggest manhunts, but Northern Territory police never found his body and have made no arrests.Ms Lees told police that she and her boyfriend, both from the Huddersfield area, were driving to Darwin when they were flagged down by the gunman. She said she was tied up and thrown into his pick-up truck but managed to struggle free and hid in bushland for six hours before stopping a lorry.Teresa Kuilboer, a Northern Territory police spokeswoman, described the Sydney murder suspect as “a person of interest, like hundreds of others”.Ms Lees, who returned to England last year, has criticised police for failing to make progress.

Her mother, Jennifer James, gave a cautious welcome to the latest development. “I’m not pinning my hopes on it until somebody’s charged,” she said. “It’s good to know they’re still on the case and trying every angle. I hope it can be solved soon because it’s just a nightmare.”. Helen Clark, once so unpopular New Zealand’s Labour Party nearly dumped her as leader, looks certain to be re-elected for a second term as Prime Minister after calling a snap general election yesterday. Ms Clark said governing had become difficult because of the break-up into two factions of Labour’s junior coalition partner, the left-wing Alliance.