2006 Ivory Coast toxic waste dump tonnes' of hydrogen sulfide. Trafigura, following an investigative report by the BBC's "Newsnight" program, announced on 2009 that they would sue the BBC for libel. The scope of the dumping and the related illnesses were slow to emerge. While the first cargo was offloaded in August 2006, the dumping continued for almost three weeks before the population knew what was happening. But as early as 19 August, residents near the landfill at knew that trucks were dumping toxic liquid into the landfill and blocked the entrance of one of the trucks to the dump, which had been freshly painted with
History of Ivory Coast of the old Federation of French West Africa except Guinea, which had voted against association. On 11 July 1960 France agreed to Ivory Coast becoming fully independent. Ivory Coast became independent on 7 August 1960, and permitted its community membership to lapse. It established the commercial city Abidjan as its capital. Ivory Coast's contemporary political history is closely associated with the career of Félix Houphouët-Boigny, President of the republic and leader of the "Parti Démocratique de la Ivory Coast" (PDCI) until his death on December 7, 1993. He was one of the founders of the "Rassemblement Démocratique Africain" (RDA), the