Morocco to launch new high-speed railway Morocco will start building a high-speed railway linking Tangier to its commercial capital Casablanca, the Transport Ministry said on Monday. “The work to build the high-speed train line between Tangier and Casablanca will be launched this year and the line service would begin in December 2015,” it said. The train project is part of a huge railway upgrade scheme stretching over six years and beginning this year, the ministry said. Petroceltic gas in Algeria Oil and gas company Petroceltic International has reported a successful test at well INW-2 on the Isarene Block in Algeria. The well tested at 16.7m standard cubic feet of gas per day. CEO Brian O'Cathain said, ‘This is the highest gas flow rate recorded from a single Devonian zone in the Illizi basin to date. “We are pleased that this well has demonstrated a commercial flow rate on the structure.” Tunisia attracts medical tourists In a survey published in the French edition of the January-February issue, “African Business†reports that 250,000 foreign patients came to Tunisia in 2009 for treatment, including from Libya, Algeria and sub-Saharan Africa. The survey writes that 70 percent (about 4 million people each year) of Libyans came for medical care. Patients from sub-Saharan Africa, who represent 12 percent of medical tourists in Tunisia come from Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal, Mali and Burundi. Tutu calls for Libya to release activist Desmond Tutu, the Nobel peace prize winner and former Archbishop of Cape Town, has called on Muammar Gaddafi's regime to “urgently clarify the fate and whereabouts of Jaballa Matar, a prominent political dissident”. In a statement to be issued on Monday, Tutu notes that it is almost 20 years since Matar was abducted from Cairo and sent back to Libya. Smuggled letters, written between 1992 and 1995, have revealed that Matar was being held in Abu Salim, a political prison in Tripoli. A Human Rights Watch Report released last year claimed Matar had been seen in a Tripoli high-security prison in 2002, giving free speech activists fresh hope that he may still be alive. Half of South Sudan short of food Almost half the population of south Sudan is facing food shortages because of conflict and drought, a fourfold rise in the numbers needing aid since last year, officials said Tuesday. “Internal conflict and incursions from the (Ugandan rebel) Lord's Resistance Army together with drought have made almost half the population of the south short of food,” southern Sudan Agriculture and Forestry Minister Samson Kwaje said in a statement. Syria, Hezbollah on alert for Israeli attack Syria and Hezbullah terrorists in Lebanon have raised their preparedness for an Israeli attack, according to the London-based Arabic newspaper Ash-Sharq il-Awsat. The newspaper says Hezbullah is worried by the concentration of Israeli troops along the Lebanese border ahead of maneuvers, even if Deputy Secretary-General Naim Kassam stressed that it was impossible to say for sure that the attack would be soon BM
