Uganda

ENTEBBE, Uganda - An outbreak of hemorrhagic fever that has killed dozens of people in northern Uganda has been identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta as the Ebola virus, a CDC official in Uganda said late yesterday. "It's estimated that there are 40 deaths, and two of those have been nursing students," said Dr. Jonathan Mermin, the CDC's team leader in Uganda. The disease is highly infectious and has a mortality rate of about 90 percent when it initially enters the human population, Mermin said.

KAMPALA, Uganda -- President Yoweri Museveni, already East Africa's longest-serving leader, won re-election yesterday to another five-year term at Uganda's helm. But his chief opponent disputed the official tally and called on supporters to reject it. Museveni, who has led Uganda since 1986, received 59 percent of the vote, compared with 37 percent for opposition leader Kizza Besigye of the Forum for Democratic Change, according to figures released by Uganda's Electoral Commission. The remainder of the votes were divided among three other presidential candidates.

KIGALI, Rwanda -- Bread loaves, foam mattresses and plastic water jugs are stuffed in the aisle and under the seats. Dance music squeals from a single speaker as the bus rumbles through Uganda toward the border.Many of the 56 passengers have been waiting three decades to return to Rwanda.In the early 1960s, tens of thousands of Tutsis fled north into Uganda to escape Hutu killers. Since last month, hundreds a day have been going back. Many were born in Uganda and only know Rwanda from their parents' romantic tales.

NGAMBA ISLAND, Uganda -- The produce starts flying every afternoon at 2:30, just after the 41 chimpanzees emerge from the forest. No one calls them. They know they have a standing reservation at this salad bar bombardment. Passion fruit, carrots, watermelon slices, red tomatoes, unripe oranges, bananas - it all rains down on the assembled apes screaming with hungry excitement or as a show of dominance or to fend off attacks from those of higher rank. The more adept make over-the-shoulder catches.

JINJA, Uganda -- Bujagali Falls, roaring and frothing just downstream from where Lake Victoria flows into the Nile River, has long been treasured as a resting place of ancestral spirits, a thrilling rapids for whitewater rafters and a spectacular feature of the natural landscape. It will be a memory. Construction began last week on a $772 million hydroelectric dam that will turn the falls into a reservoir. The project, financed by the World Bank, is intended to reduce the acute power shortages that have badly hampered this East African country's development.

A visit to disease-ravaged Uganda. A drama about the European slave trade, told from the perspective of the Africans who did the trading. A comedy touching on the role of women in Senegalese society. And a documentary about how Jamaica is suffering under the practices of the World Bank. The African Diaspora II: More New Black Cinema from Africa and Beyond, a four-film series opening tonight at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, is more than just a look at films by or about Africans. It is, says organizer Gabe Wardell, an attempt to expose Baltimore film audiences to works that might otherwise pass them by, as well as to remind them that Afrocentric cinema encompasses a wide variety of viewpoints.

Ciera and Tiera Bennett entered what was like a time machine yesterday when they stepped into a University of Maryland Medical Center room to meet another pair of twins who were joined by the chest at birth and separated by surgeons. The two 16-year-old high school sophomores from East Baltimore said gazing upon 7-month-old Christine and Loice Onziga was like seeing themselves when they were babies. The Onziga twins, from Leiko, Uganda, were separated April 19 using surgical techniques similar to those used on the Bennetts.

An expert medical panel has found no evidence that flaws in a Johns Hopkins study in Uganda aimed at preventing the spread of HIV from mother to baby were serious enough to cast doubt on the results, panel members said yesterday. The group, convened last year by the government's Institute of Medicine to answer criticisms that the study was riddled with errors, concluded that the experiment was scientifically and ethically sound. "It is my feeling that this was a very solid trial with very clean and convincing results that I feel were presented in a very fair and balanced way," Stephen W. Lagakos, a Harvard biostatistician and panel member, said at a briefing yesterday.

GULU, Uganda -- As an 11-year-old, Alfred Odida did awful things. He killed people with machetes, he abused the dead. He says he had no choice. The rebels who abducted him forced the young boy to commit atrocities, as they have thousands of children during northern Uganda's long civil war. Now 18 and safe, he sat with a psychiatrist recently to discuss his lingering mental trauma, such as the haunting visions he has of victims coming back for revenge....

In the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, in Uganda, you wake up fast when there's a 400-pound gorilla standing outside your tent. "Ruth!" I called in something of a whisper-yell to the woman in the tent next to mine. "Ruth! Wake up! There's a gorilla out here!" The male -- silverback -- mountain gorilla was only about 20 feet away, but I inched my way out into the cool mist of the morning. The stench of gorillas cut through the crisp air. The silverback noticed me, looked right at me, even, but kept to his business, eating a breakfast of tree leaves.