I think that’s the main reason his aides wanted to have a minimum amount of information provided.”The government has already been criticised for waiting more than 22 hours before announcing Mr Obuchi’s illness. Mr Aoki has insisted he was waiting for the results of tests before making an announcement, but there is suspicion that he was buying time to consult officials of Mr Obuchi’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).However, the latest revelations suggest an even more alarming scenario: that Mr Obuchi’s personal security was compromised to conceal he had been taken to hospital. Yesterday, the Prime Minister’s office and the Tokyo police were unable to say whether any bodyguards had accompanied him to the infirmary.Mr Obuchi first complained of illness in the first few minutes of Sunday, and his personal doctor, Hidehiko Hisaoka of Juntendo Hospital, was called to his official residence. Mr Obuchi was conscious at the time and Dr Hisaoka drove to the hospital in his minivan, arriving at about 1am.Mr Aoki says he saw the Prime Minister at 7pm on Sunday and was asked by him to take over as acting Prime Minster, which he did the following day. By the official account, Mr Obuchi’s condition worsened half an hour later, and within two hours he had fallen into a coma from which he has not emerged.

But the only witness to this exchange was Mr Obuchi’s wife, who has not spoken to reporters since her husband’s illness.Mr Obuchi’s condition was described yesterday as “stable but still critical” but, by last night, he had already been consigned to political history. Yoshiro Mori, 62, was comfortably elected as the new Prime Minister by the LDP-led coalition, which has a majority in both houses of parliament. Shortly after his election, Mr Mori said: “I will follow Prime Minister Obuchi’s path. That is why I reappointed all the cabinet ministers to their posts.”.

Arrest warrants have been issued for six top leaders of the doomsday cult blamed in the deaths of at least 924 followers, the country’s head prosecutor said. Arrest warrants have been issued for six top leaders of the doomsday cult blamed in the deaths of at least 924 followers, the country’s head prosecutor said.
The six – including Joseph Kibwetere, Credonia Mwerinde and Dominic Kataruioabo, the cult’s most prominent figures – have been charged with 10 counts of murder, said Richard Buteera, director of public prosecutions.They face death by hanging if arrested and convicted.Authorities have yet to detain any of the six, or even determine if they survived the explosive March 17 church fire that killed 530 followers and alerted authorities to the destruction of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God.Subsequent searches of sect compounds turned up 394 bodies piled in mass graves and thrown into a pit latrine.Only one sect follower is known to have survived the church fire, a 17-year-old boy who slipped out that morning to eat at his father’s.Buteera said authorities’ case consisted only of details previously disclosed, but said, “We now have enough information to take this action.”There was no immediate explanation why authorities brought only 10 charges against the top cult figures, or whose deaths those charges represented.Three of the charged were the most best-known figures of the sect.Kibwetere, a 64-year-old excommunicated Roman Catholic, was known as “The Prophet” to his followers.Mwerinde, however, was suspected to be the true mastermind of the cult. Known as “The Programmer,” the 48-year-old ex-bar worker wielded clout in part by claiming to have direct contact with God and the Virgin Mary.Kataribabo, 32, was an excommunicated Roman Catholic priest. Some locals believe he died in the gasoline-fueled fire at the locked church at Kanungu.Prosecutors identified the other three charged only as Joseph Kasapurari, John Kamagara and a suspect with the last name of Komuhangi. No details were immediately available on any role they had in the killing.No sightings of the cult leaders have been reported since the church fire – and investigators have given no sign of having clues as to their whereabouts.The search for bodies itself has been suspended for lack of proper equipment, such as rubber gloves for the inmates put to work exhuming the mass graves.Prosecutors said they expect further arrest warrants, but would not elaborate.Police already have in custody a regional official accused of squelching reports of the sect’s activities. He has not been charged.Earlier Thursday, The Associated Press obtained documents showing that top authorities in Kampala sent local police a “very urgent” warning in January that the sect was reported to be kidnapping children and burying those who died in mass graves.Local police dismissed the kidnap warning as “a little bit unfounded” and rejected the mass grave claim entirely.. The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, urged governments yesterday to act immediately to help 15 million people threatened by the worst famine in the Horn of Africa since 1984.

The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, urged governments yesterday to act immediately to help 15 million people threatened by the worst famine in the Horn of Africa since 1984.
“We may be a bit late but it is not too late to save lives if we respond at this point,” Mr Annan said. “I urge those with the capacity to give, to give and to give generously so that we can save lives.”But as Europe scrambled to send 800,000 tons of relief aid to Ethiopia, where about 10 million people are at risk, some aid workers and UN experts warned that wars in the region were exacerbating the effects of the natural disaster.A total of 50,000 people have been killed in Ethiopia’s border war with Eritrea since May 1998. Both countries are estimated to be pouring hundreds of millions of pounds into hi-tech weaponry, and have funded their war effort by increasing their debt, a senior UN official said yesterday.Clare Short, the Secretary of State for International Development, has said that the two countries were “wasting valuable resources” on their war.Although there is no fighting at present, there are fears that it could erupt again at any moment in the absence of a signed peace agreement.As conflicts displace people from the front, so the slender resources of the regions to which they move are placed under pressure, as has happened in Sudan and Somalia.Environmental degradation has fuelled local conflicts in the Horn of Africa as nomadic tribesmen are forced by the lack of rainfall to move in search of new grazing land.The latest Ethiopian crisis has been triggered by the failure of the short rains, which normally occur between January and March. Ethiopia has seen hardly any rain in the past three years.Nigel Marsh, the Nairobi representative of World Vision, a relief agency, who has just visited Ethiopia, said that widespread malnutrition and livestock deaths were already rife in the east. “There is nothing to stop it spreading to the rest of the country within the next six months,” he said. “We’ve got to work quickly, otherwise we’ll see a repeat of 1984.”Mr Marsh said that while it could not be said that the war was a “primary cause” of the crisis, tens of thousands of people had fled the fighting in the north to seek refuge in the eastern regions, which were hit by the drought.The EU said the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea has hampered the relief effort, preventing aid agencies using the Eritrean port of Massawa to supply northern Ethiopia. But Ethiopia says access is “absolutely not a problem”.Charles Walker, an Oxfam spokesman, said that while the war was having a negative effect on Ethiopia’s ability to develop and deal with the crisis, “the world can’t use the war as reason for not acting decisively”.Ethiopia’s Foreign Minister, Seyoum Mesfin, has accused Western donor countries of waiting to see “skeletons on screens” before sending relief.Bob Geldof, who led the 1985 Live Aid famine appeal for Ethiopia, threw his weight into the debate, saying that the Eritrea-Ethiopia war was being used as an excuse to avoid delivering emergency aid.”From what I understand there is no fighting in the area,” he said.

“If they keep talking about that it’s a red herring.” He also expressed doubts about the European Union’s capacity for rapid reaction.While praising the United States for acting swiftly to help avert a famine, Mr Geldof accused the EU of being as complacent as it was in the 1980s, when an estimated 1 million people died of starvation in the region “They [the EU] are not in a position to organise They don’t move quickly. They tend to consult endlessly.”Mr Annan is sending the executive director of the World Food Programme, Catherine Bertini, on an assessment mission to the region next week. In addition to Eritrea and Ethiopia, she will travel to Djibouti and northern Kenya, which have been seen no rain since the end of last year.. Drive westwards for seven hours or so from Kampala, the capital of Uganda. About three-quarters of the way into your journey, the land begins to rise and fold. Savannah grass and low thorn trees give way to tall eucalyptus and flame trees, and among the ubiquitous banana plantations, tea estates begin to appear. Drive westwards for seven hours or so from Kampala, the capital of Uganda.