Rabat, Morocco - Increasing voices in Morocco want the country to demand damages from Spain for the use of chemical weapons during the 1920-26 Rif war, press reports said Thursday.

Colonial powers Spain and France put down a rebellion in the northern mountainous Rif region, which was part of the Spanish protectorate at the time.

Rabat, Morocco  - "This is our love story," two gay men, whose faces were not visible, said on the cover of the Moroccan weekly al-Michaal, which published a story on their wedding.

The simple prayer ceremony had no legal value, but the report by the small publication nevertheless apparently annoyed the authorities. It followed several similar ones, including a series of interviews by the daily Assabah with Samir Bargachi, a Moroccan living in Spain who heads Kifkif, the first association of Moroccan-born homosexuals.

Rabat, Morocco  - Morocco

Rabat, Morocco  - West and central Africa have rapidly growing aviation markets, but the local airlines are having a hard time defending their turf against foreign competition.

Many African airlines "have very short life spans," Jacques Courbin, president of the African air traffic control agency Asecna, told the magazine Jeune Afrique.

Rabat, Morocco - The Moroccan national airline Royal Air Maroc (RAM) has set a deadline for Senegal to prepare plans for the transfer of Air Senegal International
(ASI) to the Senegalese state, RAM said in a communique that was made public on Friday.

RAM holds 51 per cent and Senegal 49 per cent of ASI, the main Senegalese airline, which was created in 2000 with a capital of 10 million euros (13 million dollars).

Senegal's then Air Transport Minister Farba Senghor said in 2007 that Dakar would nationalize the carrier and inject up to 36 million euros into it to solve its financial problems.

Rabat, Morocco - Flooding sparked by heavy rains has killed 24 people and left hundreds homeless this month in northern and central Morocco, the Interior Ministry announced Monday.

More than 4,500 people have been evacuated from their homes, according to the ministry, which attributed the deaths mainly to collapsing buildings and rivers bursting their banks.

The worst hit regions included Sidi Slimane, 100 kilometres north of the capital Rabat.

Flooding continued Monday near the Mediterranean port of Saidia, where emergency workers were erecting dykes and digging canals in attempts to channel floodwater towards the sea.