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The city of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with a population of about 10 million people, suffers from choking traffic, and the local police has decided to engage the help of two robocops. Well, they are technically stationary, but they're helping to keep pedestrians in the country's capital safer. The eight-foot tall, aluminum and steel robots are installed at two, high-traffic intersections to regulate traffic flow. Costing US$15,000 (S$18,960), the solar-powered bots were installed in June last year and were engineered by a team of local engineers to withstand the country's sweltering heat. Their arms act as traffic signals, while their chests display whether it is safe for walkers to cross the street. A speaker also says whether it is safe to cross. Surveillance cameras are also mounted in the shoulders in case anyone attempts to disobey traffic rules. While giant, humanoid traffic signal robots sound like something more likely to come out of Japan than the Democratic Republic of Congo, they merge the functions of human traffic officers and signal lights which means more cops patrolling the streets. Watch the robots in action below and see the public's reaction to the new additions to the police force. These may well be the closest to real-life Transformers as of now. Don't you think so? http://dai.ly/x1f88kv

Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital Tue Apr 22, 2008 1:21pm EDT By Joe Bavier KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft. Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur. Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings. Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure. "You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We've had a number of attempted lynchings. ... You see them covered in marks after being beaten," Kinshasa's police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters on Tuesday. Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have since been released. "I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke," Oleko said. "But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, 'How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it'," he said. Some Kinshasa residents accuse a separatist sect from nearby Bas-Congo province of being behind the witchcraft in revenge for a recent government crackdown on its members. "It's real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny," said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station. (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: africa.reuters.com/ ) (Editing by Nick Tattersall and Mary Gabriel) http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL2290323220080422

As deadly as AIDS, there is an outbreak of the disease in Democratic Republic of Congo. So far 166 dead had been recorded. No known cure for such disease. This report came from CNA new as attach: GENEVA : The World Health Organisation (WHO) has confirmed a major outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and said 166 deaths there since April could be linked to the disease. The outbreak of the highly-contagious Ebola haemorrhagic fever, in the Western Kasai province, was confirmed by specialist laboratories in the US and Gabon, the WHO said in a statement on its website. Speaking to journalists in Geneva Tuesday, a WHO spokesman stressed that another illness other than Ebola could yet be responsible for some of the deaths, possibly the Shigella infectious disease. Of five samples sent to one laboratory, all showed signs of Ebola. Ebola causes the patient to bleed under the skin and in severe cases, from the mouth, ears and eyes. The virus, which has no known cure, is highly infectious for those who come into contact with a victim's body fluids. Ebola had previously killed some 450 people in the DRC since 1976, and 1,200 people across the whole of Africa in the same period. - AFP/de If I am not mistaken, AIDS also orginated from Africa.