{jcomments on}OMAR, AGNEWS, BXL, le 20 avril 2010 – Xinhua- April 20, 2010–African countries have seen progress in cutting malaria, but major efforts are still needed to reach global targets, particularly with the investment in malaria control, warns a United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report launched Monday on the progress seen in the deadly disease.
RWANDA
Jay Shree Tea to acquire tea estates in Africa
Tue, Apr 20, 2010 / Source : Reuters
The BK Birla group-controlled Jay Shree Tea & Industries Ltd is close to acquiring tea estates in Uganda and Rwanda, a report said.
The Economic Times reported on Tuesday citing its managing director this would be the company’s first overseas acquisition in the tea space and would lift production from 23.5 million kilogrammes to nearly 29 million kgs in the year 2010-11.
“This time, the acquisition of tea estates in Uganda and Rwanda is surely going to happen. We will acquire two tea estates in Rwanda and one in Uganda. The three estates together produce 5 million kgs of tea,” the paper quoted DP Maheshwari as saying.
The company has called a board meeting on April 28 to approve the overseas acquisition and pave the way for signing agreements with Ugandan and Rwandan partners, the report said.
UGANDA
TANZANIA:
Tanzania: Country Challenged to Emulate Chinese Economic Strategies
Finnigan Wa Simbeye/Tanzania Daily News (Dar es Salaam) /allafrica.com/20 April 2010
Dar Es Salaam — FAILURE by Tanzania to emulate Chinese economic growth even after decades of strong bilateral ties between the two countries remains a puzzle even to the highly educated class.
Tanzania and China have related cordially since the old days of their founders—Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere and Mao Tse Tung.
But, while the Chinese government managed to rescue its people out of poverty, Tanzanians remain trapped in the chains of deprivations, almost half a century after independence.
University of Dar es Salaam’s environmental expert George Jambia is among those wondering why Tanzania has failed to successfully fight poverty as her counterpart China did.
“The Chinese managed to take out of poverty 600 million people in the past decade of economic success why have we failed to rescue 100 million people when we export commodities to China,” wondered Dr Jambia during a China-Africa forum in Dar es Salaam last week.
China’s bilateral trade with Tanzania has been increasing over the years from 10 million US dollars (13bn/-) in 2000 to 106 million US dollars (about 138bn/-) last year. The Asian nation’s gross investment on the continent has also increased significantly from US$ 50 million to US$ 1bn over the same period.
Despite its years of historic relations dating back to Cold War days between 1945 and 1990, Tanzania’s tilting towards the West after the Russian Perestroika, has alienated itself from benefitting from the Chinese who have turned their socialist ideology into a successful market economy.
Statistics show that currently bilateral trade between Tanzania and China is not flourishing as with other countries such as Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo and Ghana.
Bilateral trade between Beijing and Tanzania grew by over 33 per cent to US$ 1.06 billion in 2008 and grants covering various sectors including agriculture, infrastructure and environmental protection were worth US$ 22 million.
But the despite such engagement which remains strong at government level, the private sector has been adopting a backward approach of wait and see. As former Tanzanian High Commissioner to South Africa, Ami Mpungwe pointed out that, “It’s time we changed the mind set and seized the Chinese growth opportunity.”
Ambassador Mpungwe who retired from the diplomatic corps over a decade ago and went into private business, argued that most Tanzanians still see a successful private business as an illegitimate venture.
Former Ugandan Ambassador to Beijing and one of the founder members of China-Africa Forum said China is a rising economic power house whose economy depends on Africa’s resources to succeed further.
“China is changing from a global military power to an economic powerhouse which we can’t ignore,” said Ambassador Phillip Idro who teamed up with former Tanzanian Ambassador to China Charles Sanga to initiate China-Africa Forum in 1990s.
Today bilateral trade between China and Sub Sahara Africa is US$ 106bn which covers 48 countries with a population of over 600 million people compared to South Korea which has a population of slightly above 20 million people and bilateral trade with China is US$ 160bn.
Director of Asia Business Centre at University of Pretoria in South Africa, Dr. Martyn Davies urged African countries to align themselves with Chinese economic success story.
Dr Davies said China which badly needs African resources to feed its rapidly growing economy needs oil, minerals, timber and other resources from Africa while the continent needs both Chinese investments in infrastructure and market for goods.
“Last year, China’s Export and Import Bank allocated US$ 40 billion for Africa which is available to finance infrastructure development,” Dr. Davies said pointing out that Western countries and institutions such as World Bank, International Monetary Fund are trying to block the continent’s shift to look East after years of exploitation by the former.
With a gross domestic product of over US$ 4 trillion and a population of over 1.3 billion people China’s economic prowess and annual growth seems to be unstoppable and analysts argue that its time that SSA should align its economies with Beijing.
CONGO RDC :
KENYA :
With Flights Grounded, Kenya’s Produce Wilts
www.nytimes.com/By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN/April 20, 2010
NAIROBI, Kenya — When Kenneth Maundu, general manager for Sunripe produce exporters, first heard about a volcano erupting in Iceland, he was excited. “I thought, ‘Oh, wow, a volcano,’ ” he said.
And then reality hit him in the face like a hurled tomato.
Because Kenya’s gourmet vegetable and cut-flower industry exports mainly to Europe, and because the cloud of volcanic ash has grounded flights to much of northern Europe since Thursday, its horticultural business has been waylaid as never before.
On Monday, Mr. Maundu stared at the towering wreckage: eight-feet-tall heaps of perfectly good carrots, onions, baby sweet corn and deliciously green sugar snap peas being dumped into the back of a pickup truck.
“Cow food,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s about all we can do with it now.”
If farmers in Africa’s Great Rift Valley ever doubted that they were intricately tied into the global economy, they know now that they are. Because of a volcanic eruption more than 5,000 miles away, Kenyan horticulture, which as the top foreign exchange earner is a critical piece of the national economy, is losing $3 million a day and shedding jobs.
The pickers are not picking. The washers are not washing. Temporary workers have been told to go home because refrigerated warehouses at the airport are stuffed with ripening fruit, vegetables and flowers, and there is no room for more until planes can take away the produce. Already, millions of roses, lilies and carnations have wilted.
“Volcano, volcano, volcano,” grumbled Ronald Osotsi, whose $90-a-month job scrubbing baby courgettes, which are zucchinis, and French beans is now endangered. “That’s all anyone is talking about.” He sat on a log outside a vegetable processing plant in Nairobi, next to other glum-faced workers eating a cheap lunch of fried bread and beans.
Election-driven riots, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and stunningly bad harvests have all left their mark on Kenya’s agriculture industry, which is based in the Rift Valley, Kenya’s breadbasket and the cradle of mankind.
But industry insiders say they have never suffered like this.
“It’s a terrible nightmare,” said Stephen Mbithi, the chief executive officer of the Fresh Produce Exporters Association of Kenya. He rattled off some figures: Two million pounds of fresh produce is normally shipped out of Kenya every night. Eighty-two percent of that goes to Europe, and more than a third goes solely to Britain, whose airports have been among those shut down by the volcano’s eruption. Five thousand Kenyan field hands have been laid off in the past few days, and others may be jobless soon. The only way to alleviate this would be to restore the air bridge to Europe, which would necessitate the equivalent of 10 Boeing 747s of cargo space — per night.
“There is no diversionary market,” Mr. Mbithi said. “Flowers and courgettes are not something the average Kenyan buys.”
Thus, the trash heap of greens. At Sunripe, one of the most profitable sides of the business is prepackaging veggies for supermarkets in Europe. Most of the peppers, corn, carrots, broccoli and beans are grown in the Rift Valley, trucked to Nairobi, and then washed, chopped and shrink-wrapped. There are even some packages labeled “stir fry,” which few Kenyans have ever heard about.
The vegetables are marked with the names of some of England’s biggest supermarkets. (They requested not to be mentioned in this article.) But those supermarkets are very particular about their brands and do not allow Sunripe to give away excess produce with their labels on it.
So, on Monday, a man in a Sunripe lab coat and mesh hair net stood at the back of the pickup truck in the company’s loading bay tearing open plastic bags of perfectly edible vegetables, each worth a couple of dollars, and shaking out the contents. Sunripe does give away unpackaged food, and two nuns from an orphanage stood nearby, waiting for some French beans.
Upstairs, Tiku Shah, whose family owns Sunripe, shouted into his cellphone. “Give us half the plane, you take half, we take half!” he said to someone.
“Arusha and Dar are also packed,” he followed up, referring to two Tanzanian cities whose warehouses were full.
Before he hung up, he said, “I’m waiting for Raila to call.”
Raila Odinga is Kenya’s prime minister, and exporters are hoping that the Kenyan government will help defray the costs of organizing special cargo flights to ship out produce.
No one here knows when the flight chaos will end. Countless tourists are also stranded in Kenya, although many of them on spotless white-sand beaches.
By Monday afternoon, a few tons of vegetables had been flown to Spain, where airports had reopened. From there, the produce will be trucked the rest of the way to northern Europe.
“The cost is doubling,” Mr. Shah said. “But we don’t have a choice. If we don’t have product on the shelves, our customers will look for alternatives.”
Among them, he said, Guatemala was a rising threat, along with North Africa.
Kenyan exports stranded at airports
Tuesday, April 20, 2010 /Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands reports
Kenya’s exports have been badly hit by the cloud of ash hanging over northern Europe.
The country’s fruit, vegetable, and flower industries, which were beginning to grow after post-election violence in 2007 and the worldwide economic downturn, are heavily reliant on exports to Europe.
But with most airports shut a massive, rotting, backlog is starting to build up and that could have a devastating impact on already impoverished communities.
European flight paralysis exacts high price on the Kenyan flower trade
The industry is losing about $2m a day and thousands of casual labourers have been laid off
Nick Wadhams in Naivasha, Kenya /The Guardian/ Tuesday 20 April 2010
Patrick Basubeni picked up the discarded yellow rose and squeezed it.
“You see, it’s not succulent. It feels dehydrated,” he said. “It might not go the whole way. If it makes it there, it will wilt.”
Stepping on a carpet of dirty, wilted petals, Basubeni pointed out other varieties that will never see the inside of a British supermarket – Tropicana, its yellow petals fringed with red; the pristine white Akito; and Valentino, the classic, unmistakable red rose.
“We deal in the number of days the flowers are supposed to survive in the vase,” said Basubeni, the packhouse supervisor at Oserian Flowers, a vast floral factory perched on the shores of Kenya’s Lake Naivasha. For a rose, that’s seven days. “If we took these to the supermarket they will not survive in the vase for more than three.”
Oserian produces 1m flowers each day, mostly for supermarkets across Europe. With the ash cloud all but paralysing cargo flights out of Kenya, the company trucked flowers back from Nairobi airport on Monday and threw them away.
Workers in a giant cooled packhouse popped open boxes full of roses and stripped out the plastic sheets, cardboard lining and packets of flower food to be used again to meet British demand.
“The British, they want flowers every day, even just for their houses, not necessarily for special occasions,” said Samson Lukoba, Oserian’s legal and ethical trading manager. The flowers, most still looking fresh, ended up in piles 10ft high in the corner of a field the size of a football pitch, their fragrant scent blending with the sour smell of rotting compost.
The ash cloud over Europe stopped most flights out of Kenya last Wednesday night. Now the horticulture industry is losing about $2m a day from the disruption and thousands of casual labourers – some of whom make a few dollars a day – have been laid off.
Some farmers hope the worst may be over. Two cargo flights left Kenya early on Monday after a number of airports in southern Europe opened up, and a KLM cargo flight left in the afternoon.
“I don’t think that four days is going to bankrupt the Kenyan flower industry,” said Peter Szapary, owner of Wildfire Flowers in Naivasha. “But if it goes on for two weeks then it will be a problem for us.”
Oserian managed to fly 40 tonnes of flowers to Spain on Sunday morning. tTrucks were making the 30-hour trip to the UK and the Netherlands to deliver them to supermarkets and the Dutch flower auction.
The company is paying 60%-70% more in freight charges and does not yet know how much it has lost from the disruption. What it does know is that 3m flowers so far have been disposed of.
“There’s a whole lot of work that’s gone into these flowers,” Lukoba said as he watched a tractor unload roses on to the compost pile. “It’s a big waste.”
ANGOLA :
SOUTH AFRICA:
Detours for Perishable Goods
By JOHN W. MILLER /.online.wsj.com/APRIL 20, 2010
Traders of goods transported by plane, a niche market including green beans, microchips and roses, are scrambling to reorganize supply chains to cope with Europe’s flight ban. They are booking trucks, trains and barges between northern Europe and airports that remain open further south, an extra step that will delay shipments and could raise prices of products from salmon to flowers.
African farmers, European fresh-produce importers and flower traders from Kenya to the Netherlands are those most threatened by the shutdown in air traffic that began Thursday. Most pharmaceutical and technology firms said they had built up large enough inventories not to have to worry for now. Most importantly, their goods aren’t perishable, and so can be stocked for long periods without damage.
The uncertainty illustrates of the vulnerability of air-freight transport and those who depend on it. Air-freight volumes have grown in recent years as passenger airlines have increased the space they make available in cargo holds. Recent numbers are unavailable, but total tonnage of air freight shipped into and out of the 16 euro-zone countries increased to 9.8 million tons in 2008 from 3.1 million tons in 2000, according to Eurostat, the EU’s statistical agency. By comparison, trade involving trucks amounted to more than 500 million tons in 2008.
Less than 3% in value of all merchandise traded across oceans travels by air. Most fish, fruit and vegetables, including staples such as bananas and oranges, still move inside refrigerated container ships. The Port of Rotterdam handles more goods tonnage in one day than Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam does in a year.
“Fewer than 1% of our products are air freighted,” said a spokesman for U.K. supermarket giant Tesco PLC, echoing other U.K.-based supermarkets. “Those that are include products such as orchids, chilies and some exotic fruit.”
For companies whose goods aren’t perishable, such as pharmaceutical and technology firms, the flight ban isn’t an immediate concern.Sanofi-Aventis SA, the large French drug company, said it mostly uses ships and trucks to transport its medicines. Less than 1% of its global drug volume is delivered by air, Bernard Amoury, vice president of supply chain, said in a phone interview. The company’s warehouses world-wide usually have one to two months’ of supply for each drug, he said.
Most electronic products from Asia are shipped by sea, but mobile handsets and chips are shipped by air. Taiwan’s Nanya Technology Corp., a maker of dynamic random access memory chips widely used in PCs, said its shipments haven’t yet been impacted because the company has a facility in the Netherlands from which it can supply to European customers.
However, Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s biggest memory-chip maker and the world’s second-largest supplier of cellphones by volume behind Nokia Corp., said the company can manage with inventories on hand only until Wednesday. “But as mobile handsets and semiconductors account for a bigger flight portion to Europe, if this volcano problem lasts longer than expected, it would have a direct impact on Samsung’s chip and cellphone exports,” said spokesman James Chung.
The effect on Africa’s burgeoning farm-export sector could be devastating. Vegpro Ltd, a Nairobi-based flower and vegetable producer that flies almost all its production to Europe, says it has closed shop since Thursday. “We usually ship 50 tons a day but since Thursday, it’s been harvest and dump, harvest and dump,” says general manager Angus Douglas-Hamilton. Several thousand of the company’s 7,000 employees have been told to stay home, he says.
Mr. Douglas-Hamilton has been busy organizing flights to southern Europe and trucks from Spain and Italy to customers in the U.K., France and elsewhere. “We’ve never seen anything like this,” he says.
Kenya exports 82% of its flowers and produce to the EU, said Stephen Mbithi, chief executive of the Fresh Produce Exporters Association of Kenya. Since Thursday, the flowers and vegetables have been piling up in stores at about 1,000 metric tons per day, with a value of about $3 million per day, said Mr. Mbithi. Over the weekend, growers laid off 5,000 temporary workers who had been hired to help harvest the products. Those flowers and vegetables have been left in the fields and won’t be fresh enough to ship, Mr. Mbithi said.
On Monday, two cargo flights were able to land in southern Spain, where Mr. Mbithi said the flowers and produce would be trucked into northern Europe. Another landed in Amsterdam, allowing Kenyan companies to unload at least some of their wares and stave off some losses. With about seven or eight flights, Mr. Mbithi said business could get back to normal—as long as the ash doesn’t drift into Spanish airspace.
U.K.-based Blue Skies Holdings Ltd., which imports fresh fruit from Africa and Brazil to U.K. supermarkets said Saturday that it had temporarily closed its factories in Ghana, Egypt, South Africa and Brazil due to the volcanic ash cloud. Chairman and founder Anthony Pile estimated that the company would incur losses of £100,000 ($153,544) per day. “The situation is putting immense pressure on the people we employ and the farmers we source from,” Mr. Pile said. “We have no guarantee of when we will be able to export again, which is a very difficult and frightening position to be in.”
Exports of flowers to Europe from South Africa have been halted, said Rene Schoenmaker, chairman of the Flower Growers Association. The country exports about 400 million rand ($53.8 million) in proteas, fynbos and other flowers each year, about 75% of which is to Europe and primarily to the Netherlands.
On the receiving end, companies are also making preparations. Hellmann Worldwide Logisitics GmbH, which specialized in perishable products, says it has been setting up a new supply chain for its products, such as fish from Sri Lanka. “If we don’t act, it’s a matter of time before there are shortfalls,” says Ralf Heske, regional director for Europe and Africa.
In Europe, “it’ll be a problem for niche markets, like out-of-season or exotic fruits,” says Vincent Omer-Decugis, managing director of Paris-based SIM Group, which imports between 5% and 10% of its annual trade in mangos, beans and other products valued at a total of $80 million, by air. “The biggest consequence will be for the farmers that supply us.”
.The flight ban is helping some countries export more to the U.S. because Americans can’t get key European exports.
“In the last 24 hours we’ve had a flurry of activity from the east coast of North America in particular looking for New Zealand orchids because they simply can’t get any from Holland,” said Greg Keymer, managing director of New Zealand’s Eastern and Global Flower Exporters, in an interview on Radio New Zealand.
European exporters are affected, too. Oslo-based Marine Harvest, the world’s biggest salmon producer, with $2.4 billion in revenue per year, exports 13% of its production by air. Since Thursday, it’s been trucking its salmon to Frankfurt and then flying it to Miami and Asia. However, it’s been unable to meet all customer requests. “We’ve started holding back on harvests to avoid a sudden oversupply when the flight ban is lifted,” says spokesman Jorgen Christiansen.
“The cost is not very much extra, but it’s a lot of hassle.”Trucking and logistics companies are gearing up to handle the extra capacity. DHL said it was “increasing its trucking capacity to minimize delays for shipments within Europe. A three- to five-day delay is expected for shipments moving between Europe and the rest of the world.” A spokesman for Willi Betz, the German trucking firm, said there had been no immediate impact on trucking prices.
—Paul Sonne, Sarah Childress, Jeanne Whalen contributed to this article.
AFRICA / AU :
Africa sees progress in reducing malaria, says new UNICEF report
April 20, 2010 /english.peopledaily.com.cn/Source:Xinhua
African countries have seen progress in cutting malaria, but major efforts are still needed to reach global targets, particularly with the investment in malaria control, warns a United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report launched Monday on the progress seen in the deadly disease.
Ahead of World Malaria Day, which is April 25, UNICEF released a joint report with the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership, which charts the progress in “counting malaria out” in the report titled, The World Malaria Day 2010: Africa update.
As the 2010 deadline approaches for the UN secretary-general’s call to meet universal coverage for anti-malarial intervention, in addition to the UN sponsored “decade to roll back malaria” in sight, the report points out that increased, sustained investment is crucial in achieving this goal.
The report highlighted that out of the nearly 350 million insecticides treated nets for universal coverage, nearly 200 million have been received in African countries between 2007 and 2009.
It noted that countries have adopted more effective treatment strategies in malaria control — but with a pricey cost in treatment.
Approximately with one-third of the global investment that is needed, country-specific programs are able to save a child’s life every three minutes, according to RBM Partnership.
“But more remains to be done as children and pregnant women are still dying of this preventable and treatable disease, especially in Africa,” said UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman in a UNICEF and RBM press release Monday.
The proportion of African children receiving the Artemisinin- based combination therapy (ATC) treatment remains “low” according to the report with the data on the use of diagnostics largely unavailable.
The report also notes that with the total annual global funding reaching 2 billion U.S. dollars by the end of 2009, malaria funding still is short of the estimated 6 billion U.S. dollars that is annually required by the Global Malaria Action Plan (GMAP) to guarantee universal coverage of malaria control interventions.
The report is a second in a series of RBM Progress & Impact report which highlights malaria progress in Africa.
Founded by UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), RBM Partnership is a global framework for coordinated action against malaria that promotes high-level political commitment.
Newcrest may lift $9.2b Lihir bid
April 20, 2010/.www.smh.com.au/Reuters
Australia’s Newcrest Mining is ready to alter its spurned $9.2 billion bid for local rival Lihir Gold, as it attempts to assemble the world’s fourth-largest gold producer.
Newcrest said it was ready to offer Lihir shareholders a flexible mix of cash and shares under its bid, which would create a business producing 3 per cent of the world’s gold supply and overtaking South Africa’s AngloGold by market value.
Newcrest and Lihir are Australia’s biggest and second-biggest gold producers, respectively. They have spent billions of dollars to pay out loss-making gold hedges, which soured when gold prices took off, exposing themselves fully to market bullion prices.
Lihir shares were up 2 cents, or 0.5 per cent, to $3.98, in recent trading. Newcrest shares were down 2 cents, or 0.1 per cent, to $33.98
Gold soared to record high levels above $US1,200 an ounce in early December and now fetch around $US1,130.
A takeover of Lihir by Newcrest would also allow the latter to retain more of its so-called “gold investment premium” because its copper production would account for a much smaller share of the merged company’s overall output.
Income streams from gold typically attract an investment premium over other commodities and miners go to great lengths to preserve that image.
Lihir had previously rejected Newcrest’s offer as too cheap and hired Macquarie Capital Advisers and Greenhill Caliburn to advise on other options.
Most of world’s largest gold producers, including Barrick Gold, Newmont Mining Corp and GoldCorp, are viewed as potential white knights, but rival bidders have yet to emerge.
Lihir’s main asset is its mine on Lihir island in Papua New Guinea, the world’s fourth-largest gold deposit with reserves of 38.8 million ounces.
Newcrest mines gold and copper in Australia and Africa and expects to yield close to 2 million ounces this year.
Newcrest said it had also written to Lihir’s chairman requesting access to the target firm’s data room.
UN /ONU :
African Maternal Mortality Defies Global Trend
Peter Heinlein /www1.voanews.com/ 20 April 2010
| Addis Ababa
African experts on maternal mortality are meeting in Addis Ababa this week amid encouraging news of a worldwide decrease in the number of women dying from pregnancy and childbirth. But Africa still lags behind other parts of the world in making childbirth safe.
The overall picture is hopeful. A study published this month in the Lancet medical journal shows a significant drop worldwide in the number of mothers dying during pregnancy or childbirth.
But while the overall news may be positive, conditions in Africa remain at emergency levels.
The Lancet study says in 2008, six countries accounted for nearly half of all maternal mortality cases. Three of them, Ethiopia, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo, are in Africa.
Opening a continental meeting of experts, Ethiopia Minister of State for Health, Kebede Worku, pointed to alarming numbers.
“One-million maternal / newborn deaths occur annually with African women having a one-in-16 chance of dying from complications of pregnancy,” Worku said. “Africa contributes about 47 percent of global maternal mortality. Sub-Saharan African countries have the highest rates; 34 percent of all maternal deaths in Africa are due to unsafe abortions,” said Worku.
The authors of the Lancet study say it is based on more sophisticated statistical methods than previous reports, and includes three times more data. But many attending the Addis Ababa conference say they believe the Lancet study paints too rosy a picture of Africa.
U.N. Population Fund representative Etta Tadesse is among the skeptics. She says existing programs are good as far as they go, but are too small to meet the challenge.
“It is not a total failure. Things are working, but it is not at par with the challenges. Women still die every day, as you and I speak now, so we still have a long way to go,” she said.
Despite the grim outlook, a few family planning experts see bright spots on the horizon. Grethe Peterson, of Marie Stopes International, points to Ethiopia as an example of a country where relaxing abortion laws has reduced the maternal mortality rate.
“In May, 2005, the government Ethiopia liberalized the abortion law, which under some circumstances made it possible to get access to safe abortions. Every year until then, one-third of all maternal deaths were because of unsafe abortions. That meant more than 7,000 women died every year from an unsafe abortion,” said Paterson.
Petersen says the number of deaths has been coming down, despite the difficulty of getting the word out to Ethiopia’s rural population about the change in the law.
Experts attending the continental meeting say much more work is needed to determine whether the tide is indeed turning in the fight against maternal mortality. But the Lancet study is seen as a first sign of hope against a problem that in Africa has long been seen as intractable.
Cohn: Why trade Kandahar for Kinshasa?
Tue Apr 20 2010/www.thestar.com/By Martin Regg Cohn
Deputy Editorial Page Editor Michaëlle Jean’s African trip this week may be providing cover for what military planners call a probing operation.
The Governor General’s presumed mission: soften up any opposition to a Canadian deployment in the Democratic Republic of Congo during her African tour this week.
Her target audience, however, is not so much Congo as it is Canada, where her visit is being closely scrutinized to see if she is tipping Ottawa’s hand about an expanded peacekeeping mission. Canada’s military and political circles are abuzz about what to do with our battle-hardened soldiers, who by next year will be all kitted up with nowhere to go. With a rapidly approaching mid-2011 deadline set by Parliament to start pulling out of Afghanistan, an exit strategy is slowly firming up while a redeployment strategy would move some of those troops to Congo.
For politicians mindful of eroding public support, there may be good reasons for cutting our losses in Afghanistan. Canadians have lost their stomach for the mission. It hasn’t gone according to plan, President Hamid Karzai comes across as a crook and the Taliban refuse to die.
We are not just weary of the fight, but leery of the moral ambiguities: our wavering Afghan allies, the widespread torture, and the loss of 142 soldiers so far. But why hopscotch from Afghanistan’s minefields to Congo’s killing fields where similar moral quagmires await us?
UN peacekeepers are backing the Congolese army as it tries to wipe out rebels guilty of atrocities in a region where 5 million people have died during a decade of fighting. But the army is also guilty of torture and atrocities. The government of President Joseph Kabila is racked by endemic corruption and political treachery. And Kabila wants the UN force to leave later this year.
Before we rush to Congo’s rescue, we need to discuss what we’re getting into — and what we’re leaving behind in Afghanistan.
Canadians always imagine the grass is greener in another battlefield. When we first prepared for the Kandahar deployment, critics on the left clamoured that we were more urgently needed in Darfur — despite Sudan’s vocal opposition at the time, which would have made us sitting ducks. Now, the same NDP that led the charge to leave Afghanistan is predictably enthusiastic about a Canadian commitment to Congo — presumably until we get there.
Canada has an enduring attachment to Pearsonian peacekeeping, imagining that we are only meant to do good — without ever getting our hands dirty. Yet our nostalgia for the early UN missions belies the nebulous mandates of recent peacekeeping missions in Rwanda and the Balkans, where troops stood by helplessly because they lacked the firepower or the authority to act.
Congo is now the UN’s biggest peacekeeping operation, with more than 22,000 troops from neighbouring African nations. Yet it remains a disorganized force that can’t stop the slaughter. Peacekeepers were warned last year by UN legal advisers not to participate in Congolese army operations against rebels if they anticipated human rights abuses, which is precisely what happened.
The fledgling Congo mission would surely benefit from having Canada’s outgoing army commander, Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, helm the force, as Ottawa is quietly proposing. But if that opens the floodgates to a larger deployment, Canadians need to ask some hard questions.
After years of lonely slogging in Afghanistan without sufficient Western backup, why leave at the very time that American and British soldiers are finally providing a critical mass — and then jump to an under-resourced Congo mission? If our politicians lack the courage to convince Canadians that our help is needed in Afghanistan, how are they going to persuade people that Congo is worth fighting and dying for?
Canada can’t be everywhere. Despite our fondness for the moral certainties of peacekeeping, we must be mindful of our national interests.
We have deep entanglements in Afghanistan, and heavy obligations to nearby Haiti in its hour of need. Before we rush in to save Congo, we have unfinished business to take care of, and old promises to keep.
We seem to be rushing to pack up in Afghanistan because public support has collapsed; yet despite the Governor General’s trip to Congo this week, do Canadians really have the appetite for casualties in Congo, and a willingness to dance with its dictator? From Kandahar to Kinshasa, and from Karzai to Kabila, it sounds like a hopscotch strategy from benighted Afghanistan to Africa’s heart of darkness.
Martin Regg Cohn writes Tuesday.
USA :
Roll Back Malaria partnership launches Africa Update at UNICEF House event
By Nina Martinek/www.unicef.org/20 April 2010
NEW YORK, USA, 19 April 2010 – UNICEF and the Roll Back Malaria partnership today launched the World Malaria Day 2010 Africa Update, a report highlighting progress towards curbing the deadly mosquito-borne disease in Africa.
Efforts to fight malaria on the continent are accelerating, the report says, but more work and funding are needed.
The launch event, held at UNICEF headquarters, began with introductory remarks by UN Deputy Secretary-General Dr. Asha-Rose Migiro. “I am confident that we’ll be able to eradicate malaria, but we must not be complacent in our efforts,” she said.
An unacceptable burden
Every 30 seconds, a child dies from malaria. In Africa, the disease causes about one in six childhood deaths, taking the lives of more than 750,000 children a year and placing an unacceptable burden on health and economic development.
Malaria is so deadly it can kill within hours. But it is curable – and preventable, through the consistent use of bed nets.
“We are at a critical juncture in the fight against malaria,” said Her Royal Highness Princess Astrid of Belgium, Roll Back Malaria Special Representative. “We must examine the progress and achievements, and use this evidence to gain malaria control and universal coverage of insecticide-treated bed nets.”
Health and development goals
Panellists at today’s event included representatives from UNICEF; the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; the USAID-US President’s Malaria Initiative; the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Malaria Programme; and the World Bank Booster Programme for Malaria.
The participants discussed what needs to be done to achieve the malaria-prevention targets outlined by the Roll Back Malaria partnership and specified in the Millennium Development Goals.
Achieving and sustaining malaria control is central to meeting many of the MDGs in the worst-affected countries across Africa. One of the eight MDGs specifically relates to malaria, while six of the goals can only be reached with effective malaria control in place.
Funding challenges
Malaria control interventions have scaled up in recent years, and global funding increased to $1.7 billion in 2009. Contributions come from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, along with more recent commitments from the World Bank, the US President’s Malaria Initiative and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, among other bilateral donors.
However, available funds are still far short of the estimated $6 billion needed worldwide for effective malaria control in 2010.
Since 2000, bed net coverage has increased ten-fold in 11 African countries. Nine others have achieved five-fold increases. And innovative programmes are under way. Zambia and Senegal, for example, recently adopted routine antenatal care visits providing appropriate anti-malarial drugs to mothers – another preventive measure to curb the spread of disease.
Coverage in other countries remains low. In Nigeria, only 8 per cent of households own bed nets, though the government plans to distribute some 60 million nets by the end of 2010 in an unprecedented distribution effort to achieve universal coverage.
Prevention and treatment
Malaria is controlled in two ways: by preventing the infection and by promptly treating it when it does occur.
Regular use of treated bed nets continues to be a highly effective prevention tool, reducing overall child mortality by as much as 20 per cent. But correct diagnosis and treatment of malaria necessitates decent, accessible health systems.
As UNICEF Director of Programmes Dr. Nicholas Alipui put at today’s event: “Curative services require stronger and more robust heath systems. We need to complement what we are doing with a massive information campaign to raise health literacy in communities and within households.”
WHO recently revaluated the diagnostic guidelines for malaria to allow for more accurate diagnosis of infection.
Looming threat
Even with better health services, drug resistance is a possible threat to the control of malaria.
“Malaria is an ancient parasite that has outwitted us before, and we need to stay a step ahead and invest in drugs of tomorrow,” said Dr. Robert Newman, Director of the WHO Global Malaria Programme. “We need to invest in systems to prepare for drug resistance. Investing in routine efficacy testing is vital.”
In closing remarks, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Malaria, Ray Chambers, applauded the widespread and growing awareness of the need for malaria control. US President Obama will tweet about the disease on 23 April, World Malaria Day 2010, he said.
CANADA :
Daniel Tseghay: Canada must put fighting malaria at top of G8 agenda
www.straight.com/By Daniel Tseghay/ April 20, 20100
April 25 marks World Malaria Day, reminding us of one of the deadliest diseases in the world. Caused by mosquito bites transmitting any one of the plasmodium family of parasites, malaria infects about 300 million people every year and kills somewhere between 1.5 million and 2.7 million of them. And these are only the more conservative or optimistic numbers. The Kenya Medical Research Institute, for instance, believes there are 515 million cases of the most harmful form of malaria, Plasmodium falciparum, alone.
Once you’re bitten, the parasite courses through your bloodstream, making its way to your liver, where it festers and multiplies while you feel not a thing. Whether it’s a few days, weeks, or months, the symptoms will arrive, flu-like in nature, producing fevers, some muscle aches, the sweats, fatigue, headaches, and vomiting. Unlike the flu, however, if it goes untreated, there is a significant chance it will kill you.
Well, not you, if you happen to live in Canada or the United States, or any other country that largely eradicated the disease about half a century ago. Malaria has pretty much cordoned itself off to the global south and to the people who are least able to protect themselves. In Africa, for instance, the heat makes it the perfect climate for the mosquitoes to live and thrive, and the cases of malaria are nearly 100 percent of the time caused by the deadliest form, P. falciparum. As a result, 30 of the 35 most affected countries are on the African continent.
Though malaria is an ongoing problem, the world community this year has a special opportunity to significantly reduce the number of people infected by this preventable disease. This summer, the G8 summit will take place in Canada and, running up to it, a number of important preliminary meetings across the country will help set the agenda.
Immediately following World Malaria Day, for instance, G8 development ministers will meet in Halifax, from April 26 to the 28, to discuss aid funding and, in particular, Canada’s highly touted initiative to improve maternal and child health in the global south.
What better place to begin than with a serious commitment to fighting malaria? In Africa, for instance, about one in five deaths among children under the age of five can be chalked up to malaria. If infected in the middle of pregnancy, a woman can face severe anemia and other life-threatening illnesses, with low birth weight in the infant, if the mother hasn’t succumbed to the disease, as a likely consequence. And, to make matters worse, the temperature increases caused by climate change will, researchers believe, mean people will face deadly mosquitoes for greater parts of the year, and locales normally outside the reach of the heat-loving insects will be inundated for the first time.
As host of the G8 summit, and in light of its stated commitment to maternal and child health, the Canadian government must lead the call to make malaria in the global south as much a thing of the past as it now is in the global north. We should spend more to invest in insecticide-treated mosquito nets, for they can save about one in five children who would otherwise have been killed by malaria. We can spend more on administering intermittent preventive treatments to pregnant women, whether or not they have any of the symptoms, to completely forestall what may have befallen the expecting mother and her baby. And Canada can call for an increase in the investment of the very effective artemisinin-based combination therapies, or ACTs—an antimalarial treatment that is not made useless by the increasingly resistant malaria parasite.
These are all attainable goals whose costs are nowhere near their effectiveness. Whether or not Stephen Harper and the Canadian government will call for such investments is anybody’s guess. We can only say that doing so would make sense when maternal and child health is the key part of the agenda. And that for so many people to die of a preventable disease is a shame which must speak to our deepest sense of right and wrong.
Daniel Tseghay is a Toronto-based journalist.
Immigrants more likely to develop diabetes, study shows
Newcomers from South Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America have higher risk of the disease
André Picard /Public Health Reporter — Globe and Mail Update / Apr. 20, 2010
.Newcomers to Canada have a significantly higher risk than long-term residents of developing diabetes, new research shows.
This reflects the reality that in the developing world, where most immigrants and refugees to Canada originate, rates of Type 2 diabetes are soaring.
The data provide an opportunity to intervene early and prevent the devastating impact of the disease, said Marisa Creatore, an epidemiologist at the Centre for Research on Inner City Health of St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.
“We know which groups of immigrants are at high risk, so we can use this data to target them and nip the problem in the bud,” she said. “Ultimately, diabetes is preventable.”
The research, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, examined diabetes rates among 1.1 million immigrants to Ontario.
Diabetes rates were highest among immigrants from South Asia – four times that of long-term residents for men and 3.2 times higher for women.
Immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean, and those from Africa, also had rates of diabetes more than double those in the general population.
Immigrants from East Asia and Eastern Europe had about the same rates as long-term residents.
The study also shows that immigrants tend to develop diabetes – a chronic, degenerative disease if untreated – about a decade earlier than long-term residents, which suggests treatment costs are likely much higher.
About 250,000 immigrants and refugees settle in Canada each year, with the majority coming from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, regions where diabetes is rising rapidly.
There is a genetic component to diabetes (with risk lowest in those of European descent, who make up the majority of Canada’s population), but lifestyle and socio-economic factors also play a large part in developing the disease.
Ms. Creatore, who is also a PhD candidate at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, noted that the longer immigrants live in Canada, the higher their rates of diabetes.
“The risk increases over time, which points to acculturation, to lifestyle changes that contribute to risk,” she said.
While overall diabetes rates tend to be higher in men than women, the new research shows this is not true among immigrants. In fact, their pattern of disease is similar to that of aboriginals, with women at higher risk.
About 2.5 million Canadians have diabetes, a disease characterized by high levels of blood glucose that can cause circulatory, heart and kidney problems and is the leading cause of amputations and blindness.
There are three distinct forms: Gestational diabetes is a temporary condition that occurs during pregnancy; Type 1 diabetes, usually diagnosed in children, occurs when the pancreas is unable to produce insulin; Type 2 diabetes occurs when the pancreas doesn’t produce enough insulin or the body doesn’t effectively use the insulin it produces.
About 90 per cent of diabetics have Type 2, which is usually a consequence of obesity, inactivity, poor diet and aging.
AUSTRALIA :
EUROPE :
New Ash Cloud Jeopardizes E.U. Plan to Open Skies
By MARK McDONALD, STEVEN ERLANGER and NICOLA CLARK/www.nytimes.com/April 20, 2010
European transport ministers announced a plan to begin easing the six-day ban on aviation traffic around the Continent, but a new ash cloud spreading south from the erupting volcano in Iceland on Tuesday raised fresh concerns about arrangements to restore anything resembling normal schedules.
Airports in Germany, France, the Netherlands and Britain were due to open Tuesday morning. But British authorities said that only Scottish airports would offer limited service. Initially, airport operators further south in Britain had said they hoped to follow suit later in the day.
But another eruption of the volcano in Iceland sent a new ash cloud spreading toward Britain, the British air traffic control agency said early Tuesday.
“This demonstrates the dynamic and rapidly changing conditions in which we are working,” the National Air Traffic Service said, adding that some airspace over England could perhaps open Tuesday afternoon “although not as far south as the main London airports” of Heathrow and Gatwick.
British Airways said it would not operate any European flights on Tuesday. The carrier said it was still planning intercontinental flights starting at 4 p.m. local time “subject to the full and permanent opening of airspace.”
The air traffic agency said it would make a further announcement at 9 a.m. Tuesday, London time.
News reports said limited flights resumed on Tuesday at Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris, and Switzerland reopened its airspace. Poland had reopened four airports on Monday but closed them again on Tuesday, while Hungary introduced a partial flight ban and Ireland said its airspace would be closed at least until midday because of the new ash cloud heading south, Reuters reported.
Several airports in southern Europe — notably Madrid, Athens and Rome — continued to serve as impromptu hubs for the rest of the Continent on Tuesday, but the new uncertainty over weather conditions was confounding plans for any quick return to normalcy after a six-day disruption of flights that has stranded tens of thousands of travelers and cost airlines hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Australian carrier Qantas said Tuesday it was canceling all its flights between Asia and Europe through Thursday.
Like most other global airlines, Qantas was hoping to add extra flights and larger planes to help stranded travelers, but the carrier said plans could not move ahead “until we have confirmation on airspace availability from European authorities.”
The agreement on a plan by the transport ministers came only after a barrage of criticism that the European Union had failed a fresh test of leadership.
The region is grappling with a new blow to its ability to act decisively during an emergency. That is a problem that has plagued it repeatedly as it has struggled to manage swine flu, the financial crisis and the problem of Greek debt.
Most noisily, the head of the International Air Transport Association said before the announcement to partially lift the aviation ban that “the decision Europe has made is with no risk assessment, no consultation, no coordination, no leadership.” The industry group’s director general and chief executive, Giovanni Bisignani, went farther, saying that the crisis is a “European embarrassment” and “a European mess.”
Jean Quatremer, the European Union correspondent for the French newspaper Libération, said the situation seemed “inexplicable to outsiders, that the Europe Union should regulate the size of peas but not the E.U. airspace.”
Under Monday’s agreement, the aviation authorities would carve airspace above the Continent into three zones: one closest to the volcano that would completely restrict air traffic; another zone that would set up partial restrictions on flights; and a third zone, free of ash, where flights could resume completely.
Even before the new eruption, it was unclear precisely what portions of airspace would be reopened as of Tuesday at 8 a.m. Paris time, when the agreement was due to take effect, but the European Union’s transport commissioner, Siim Kallas, called the deal “good news for Europe’s stranded passengers.”
The no-fly zone would cover one-third of the airspace until now designated as contaminated, said Bo Redeborn, the director of network design of Eurocontrol, which coordinates regional air traffic management. The authorities said they would perform test flights and monitor air conditions every six hours.
Even before European officials made their announcement, several countries had said on Monday that they would be easing or lifting flight bans as the volcanic eruptions weakened, spewing less ash.
The German carrier Lufthansa said that it had received permission from Germany’s civil aviation authority to fly 50 aircraft into Germany carrying about 15,000 stranded passengers from Asia, Africa, and North and South America.
The scattered approach added to concerns that the region has no effective, collective mechanism for dealing with aviation problems.
European airspace is coordinated by Eurocontrol, an intergovernmental agency, not by the European Union, and each European government controls its own airspace, in part because of military and defense requirements.
But the real question, Mr. Quatremer said, is whether the European Union is competent or not, “and at what point should the E.U. activate itself?”
Fabrice Pothier, the director of Carnegie Europe, the Brussels center for the Carnegie Endowment, said that the ash problem grew slowly and was not at the start thought to have the potential to be so long-lasting.
But, he said, politicians have the duty to give their citizens the confidence that crises are being managed for the collective good.
The technicians at Eurocontrol reacted quickly, Mr. Pothier said, but not the politicians. “The problem for Europe is that we have no political early-warning system, to say we have to come together politically. Technicians are fine, but on big issues you need leaders to make ultimate decisions, and that’s where we’re always a bit short, a bit late.”
David Henderson, of the Association of European Airlines, said that governments were slow to coordinate and make decisions to close airspace based on the dimensions of the ash cloud, rather than trying to measure its density. “There’s no transparency, and we don’t know what’s governing the decisions,” he said.
Other analysts pointed to a general European obsession with safety, which is called “the precautionary principle.” Essentially, European governments and their constituents believe that if the safety of something is not proven, it should not be allowed.
“Europe is the victim of the precautionary principle,” Mr. Pothier said, of “an uncoordinated overreaction to possible risk.” That led to a huge oversupply in swine flu vaccine, for instance, and, as Mr. Quatremer noted, the European aversion to genetically modified grain.
“It’s the same principle for the ash cloud,” he said. “We fear everything and want maximum safety for our citizens,” just like the way in the United States, he said, the society will go to extremes to protect citizens from terrorism. “No one can argue with security,” he said.
For Kenneth J. Button, a professor at George Mason University’s School of Public Policy and a transportation economist, the airline association’s criticism is expected as it continues to push for a “Single European Sky” program, as it has done for years.
“The E.U. has no legal responsibility at all; the responsibility is with the countries,” Mr. Button said. “Everyone is being extremely cautious, because no country wants to be responsib
le for a crash,” and the government, not the airline, would be blamed for a crash.
Mark McDonald reported from Hong Kong, and Steven Erlanger and Nicola Clark from Paris. Alan Cowell, James Kanter, Nadim Audi, Scott Sayare and Bettina Wassener contributed reporting.
Mission impossible: Escape from Europe
By GEORGE JAHN (AP)/20042010
VIENNA — Stranded travelers are piling into buses, trains and high-priced taxis in a frantic scramble to accomplish an increasingly tricky mission: Escape from Europe.
Spain was becoming a dream destination not for its beaches and monuments but simply by virtue of the fact it’s one of the few European countries unaffected by the ash cloud drifting across the continent from an Icelandic volcano.
Monstrous lines filled the departure terminals at Madrid’s Bajaras Airport as people sought a chance to flee — and tempers were fraying.
“I am on the standby list and I am homeless right now,” said Roberta Marder, 73, from Tulsa, Oklahoma. “I am here fighting in the line and trying to get a ticket.”
Many people arrived with stories of grueling road trips to get to Madrid.
Doug Hahn, 36, from Portland, Oregon, was settling into his seat Thursday on a New York-bound plane in Amsterdam when the flight was canceled. He and three other stranded travelers rented a car and drove to Madrid — a 16-hour road journey.
The price? Six hundred euros ($808), split three ways — a “good deal” for Hahn, who said the car company initially wanted 1,600 euros ($2,155) for the one-way rental. He managed to get a ticket for a Miami flight later in the day.
On Monday, Spain offered to let Britain and other European countries use its airports as stopovers to get tens of thousands of passengers stranded by the volcanic ash traveling again.
With flying conditions uncertain, only a fraction of the continent’s airports were operating. Eurocontrol, the continental air authority said airlines in Europe were expected to fly only between 8,000 and 9,000 of their 28,000 scheduled flights on Monday — mostly from southern Europe.
A German rental agency on Sunday was asking more than 1,000 euros — close to $1,400 — for a car one-way from Belgrade, Serbia, to Munich, while another firm demanded 1,850 euros ($2,500) for a Madrid to Brussels rental. In Stockholm, Magnus Klintback, a spokesman for the Swedish firm Taxi Kurir, said about 50 clients had willingly paid prices of up to 34,000 kronor — nearly $5,000 — to different European destinations from which they had a chance to fly home.
Legions of other travelers were simply stranded.
At Frankfurt Airport, one of continental Europe’s biggest hubs, airport spokesman Uwe Witzel said that almost 500 passengers — most of them from Africa or Asia with no visas for the EU — were spending their fourth day in the transit area.
Witzel said the stranded were being provided with three meals a day, showers and fresh clothing as needed.
“We’ve set up an Internet lounge, we’ve hired people to entertain the kids and we’ve also arranged a spot outside the terminal building where people can go to get a breath of fresh air and some sun,” he said.
In Austria, authorities lifted flight bans early Monday, buoying travelers’ spirits. Officials said that approximately 65 flights had left by noon.
But most were within Europe. Austrian Airline officials said the only two transcontinental flights possible later in the day were to Beijing and Bangkok.
Attinchat Apirukkunwong won’t be on either.
“I am still patient now, but probably not for much longer,” said the Bangkok native, his face strained by the fatigues of a European vacation gone awry. He said he was hoping for a flight back home via a Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul.
For Greg Moncada, flying was a professional imperative — he had scheduled job interviews on the U.S. West Coast.
“I’m trying to get to Seattle,” said Moncada, high school principal at Vienna’s American International School. “I have to be there tomorrow.”
In Italy, many travelers to Milan’s Furniture Show, which ended Monday, were also stuck — and trying to make the best of it.
“I think the plan is to play while New York is asleep. We give them three hours of work, then we eat and drink into the evening,” said Jonathan Friedlander, U.S.-based marketing manager for an Italian furniture brand, referring to the time difference between the two continents. Friedlander was supposed to leave Sunday, but now is booked out with his colleagues on Friday.
Tongue firmly in cheek, Friedlander said there are so many design industry types from the United States stranded in Milan that they are toying with developing an iPhone ap called “Stuck in Milan.”
“It would tell everyone where everyone is. It can help with escape routes, say if people are renting cars to go to another city.”
The ash also caused diplomatic headaches.
President Barack Obama was forced to miss the Polish president’s weekend funeral, while U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called off a scheduled trip to Finland.
The no-fly zone that was most of Europe also forced the postponement of a visit to Russia by a team of U.S. officials who were to discuss Russian concerns about adoptions. U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the team had made it as far as Toronto before its flight to Moscow was canceled.
At the same time, senior European officials were unable to make it to a Sunday and Monday conference in Washington of major economies on climate change, Crowley said. Those who could not attend either participated by video link or were represented by lower-level officials.
Crowley said the U.S. State Department had instructed diplomats from U.S. embassies and consulates in Europe to check on “key airports” to see if there are any stranded American citizens who might need assistance. He could not say yet which airports were visited or if any Americans had requested help.
Iceland’s volcanic ash cloud also delayed bailout talks in Athens on Monday regarding Greece’s economy, leaving the country to watch its borrowing costs hit another record high. The crisis negotiations with the International Monetary Fund and the European Union will now start Wednesday and could be held by teleconference if planes remain grounded after that.
Stranded Europeans trying to get home were also affected.
At Incheon International Airport in South Korea, about 30 frustrated passengers blocked a Korean Air ticketing counter and demanded a meeting with company officials to arrange travel to anywhere in Europe after they heard an Air France jet flew from the airport to the French city of Bordeaux.
They held up a makeshift sign saying, “We want to come back home,” each word written on a separate piece of paper and held by an individual traveler.
“We need a flight, we need a time,” Thierry Loison, who has been stuck since Friday at Incheon on the way back to France after a vacation in Bali, told Korean Air officials. “We were like animals this morning.”
Passengers resting on blankets spread on the floor of a business center complained about the lack of hotel accommodations. They said they were only receiving a voucher for one meal a day at McDonald’s and that they were running out of money.
Chloe Paull, a teaching assistant at a secondary school in England on her way home after a trip to Japan during school break, was supposed to be back at work Monday. She has been stuck in South Korea since Saturday and said Air France is sending her back to Japan, where she’s booked onto a Wednesday flight back home.
“The problem is it might not be open so I can just be stuck in Japan, same as here” she said with a laugh.
Being stranded is becoming a financial burden,
she said.
“My job isn’t highly paid and I spent a lot of money in Japan,” she said. “It’s an expensive place.”
Associated Press writers throughout Europe, the United States and Asia contributed to this report.
CHINA :
China offers Africans new form of aid and development
By Therese Kennelly | IDS/Apr. 20, 2010
Though China continuously contends that it has no international friends, only interests, it seems Africa is quickly becoming more than a mere interest for China.
Since the first Chinese-African diplomatic contacts at the Bandung Conference in 1955, China has been showing interest and making major headway in development all around the continent. With the fastest growing and the second-largest current population as a continent, Africa deserves far more attention and respect from the global economic system. China has taken note of Africa’s ever-growing population, abundant natural resources and huge potential for growth and development.
China has come to the African continent in a peaceful manner and offered countries alternatives to the traditional power politics of Western aid in Africa.
“The Chinese bring what Africa needs: investment and money for governments and companies,” Rwandan president Paul Kagame said in an interview in October.
China offers real hope for African countries because it serves as a shining example of how hard work and rapid change can allow a third-world country to rise to the status of major world power. The West may seem to provide a lot of aid to Africa, but it is tied to many regulations and stipulations that end up taking back a large financial chunk. However, the Chinese give aid in a no-strings-attached form that helps the general population rather than elites.
China provides huge loans for developing infrastructure at nearly zero percent interest, builds the country’s much-needed infrastructure at a very cheap price that also gives jobs to Africans, allows the countries to repay the loans in natural resources and, most importantly, treats the African countries it works with as equals and shares mutual respect for them. It also provides cheap products, which gives Africans more purchasing power.
In Ghana, Chinese developers seem to be building new infrastructure all across the country. Road conditions in Accra are pretty subpar, with potholes often making roads nearly impassible, yet recently Chinese developers have come in, building or fixing the existing roads throughout the city.
Even remote rural areas, like Bui in the Brong Ahafo region on the border of Cote d’Ivoire, have been affected by Chinese development. In Bui, the Chinese are constructing a new dam that will help power Ghana and other places in West Africa.
Chinese development in Africa works to ensure its involvement in Africa is mutually beneficial. The Chinese competitively challenge Western bids for development projects and tied aid. Only time will tell whether China’s policies toward Africa will bring much-needed development or end up bringing more of the same empty promises and disappointment.
INDIA :
Kuwait’s Zain Restructures Management to Meet Operational Goals
April 20, 2010/By Fiona MacDonald/Bloomberg
April 20 (Bloomberg) — Zain, Kuwait’s biggest mobile- phone company that’s selling its Africa assets to India’s Bharti Airtel Ltd., is restructuring its management to meet “strategic operational goals.”
The changes affect executives across all departments, Zain said in an e-mailed statement today. It didn’t give further details on the changes.
Zain signed a deal on March 30 to sell most of its African operations to Bharti Airtel. Billionaire Sunil Mittal’s Bharti agreed to buy Zain’s African assets for $9 billion in cash and will assume $1.7 billion of its debt under the deal.
Hero Honda, Sonata, Tata Consultancy: India Equity Preview
By Anil Varma/Bloomberg/April 20
April 20 (Bloomberg) — The following companies may have unusual price changes in India trading. Stock symbols are in parentheses and share prices are from the last close.
The Bombay Stock Exchange’s Sensitive Index, or Sensex, fell 1.1 percent to 17,400.68. The S&P CNX Nifty Index on the National Stock Exchange declined 1.1 percent to 5,203.65. The BSE 200 Index retreated 1 percent to 2,190.57. SGX S&P CNX Nifty Index Futures for April delivery rose 0.1 percent to 5,211.5 at 10:24 a.m. Singapore time.
Power Producers: Goldman Sachs Group Inc. initiated coverage of Adani Power Ltd. (ADANI IN) and two other power producers. Adani Power was rated “buy,” JSW Energy Ltd. (JSW IN) was rated “neutral,” NHPC Ltd. (NHPC IN) received a “sell” recommendation and NTPC Ltd. (NATP IN) was upgraded to “neutral” from “sell” by Goldman Sachs analyst Durga Dath. Adani fell 2.2 percent to 115.5 rupees, JSW lost 1 percent to 118.9 rupees, NHPC retreated 0.5 percent to 30.55 rupees and NTPC declined 0.5 percent to 206.35 rupees.
Ferro Alloys Corp. Ltd. (FAC IN): ArcelorMittal (MT NA), the world’s largest steelmaker, is in talks to buy a stake in New Delhi-based Ferro Alloys Corp., the Business Standard reported, citing an unidentified person familiar with the development. Ferro Alloys Managing Director Monoj Saraf wasn’t immediately available at his office telephone for comment on the report. Ferro Alloys fell 4.5 percent to 23.45 rupees.
Hero Honda Motors Ltd. (HH IN): The nation’s biggest motorcycle maker yesterday said fourth-quarter net income surged 49 percent to 5.99 billion rupees ($134 million), topping the 5.5 billion rupees median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 22 analysts. The shares fell 1.4 percent to 1,896.4 rupees.
Indian Oil Corp. (IOCL IN): The nation’s second-biggest refiner expects to get compensated for selling kerosene and cooking gas at below cost by next month, the Mint newspaper reported, citing S.V. Narasimhan, the company’s finance director. The company expects to recover a “substantial” part of its 110 rupees ($2.5 billion) losses. Narasimhan couldn’t immediately be reached by phone at his office for comment on the report. Indian Oil fell 0.4 percent to 280.8 rupees.
Sonata Software Ltd. (SSOF IN): The software developer’s profit in the March quarter rose to 157.9 million rupees from 128.7 million rupees, it said in a statement to the Bombay Stock Exchange yesterday. The company will pay a dividend of 0.8 rupees per share, it said. Sonata slid 6.1 percent to 61.65 rupees.
Sesa Goa Ltd. (SESA IN): The country’s biggest iron-ore exporter said fourth-quarter profit rose to 12.2 billion rupees from 5.5 billion rupees a year earlier. The shares fell 2.6 percent to 459.35 rupees.
Shree Renuka Sugars Ltd. (SHRS IN): India’s biggest refiner is seeking to buy another 8 percent of Equipav SA Acucar e Alcool, the sugar and alcohol assets of Brazil’s Equipav Group, the Economic Times reported, citing unidentified people familiar with the development. Shree Renuka on Feb. 21 had agreed to buy a 51 percent stake in the Brazilian company. Shree Renuka Managing Director Narendra Murkumbi wasn’t immediately available to comment when called at his office. Shree Renuka fell 4.5 percent to 67.05 rupees.
Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. (TCS IN): The nation’s largest software-services provider reported yesterday the fastest profit growth in three years. Net income rose 47 percent to 19.3 billion rupees in the three months ended March 31, Mumbai-based Tata Consultancy said in a statement. That compared with the 18 billion rupee average of 26 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. The shares lost 0.4 percent to 811.95 rupees.
United Spirits Ltd. (UNSP IN): The country’s biggest liquor maker said it plans to expand into Southeast Asia and Africa by buying distilleries. The company, based in Bangalore, is looking at countries similar to its home market such as Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, Nigeria, Ghana and Congo and may either acquire facilities or appoint franchisees for its brands, Managing Director Vijay Rekhi said in an interview yesterday. The shares fell 1.4 percent to 1,215.45 rupees.
Reduce trust-deficit in climate talks: India
20 Apr 2010/Urmi A Goswami,ET Bureau/economictimes.indiatimes.com
NEW DELHI: Developing countries continued to thwart attempts by the rich industrialised nations to steer climate change negotiations. The United
States’ efforts to advance the Copenhagen Accord as the basis of all future climate negotiations suffered a setback. At the Major Economies Forum meeting in Washington, India made it clear that that the first order of business would be to reduce “the huge trust deficit that prevails in the climate change negotiating community”.
On the contentious issue of “monitoring, review and verification” (MRV), India deftly turned the tables on the developed countries, stating that it was not just developing countries whose climate change actions had to be brought under the ambit of MRV.
The two-day meeting organised by the US State Department was attended by representatives of the 17 major economies, accounting for the bulk of the emissions. Most of the European environment ministers as well as India’s environment minister Jairam Ramesh were unable to attend the weekend meeting because of the flight disruption due to ash from an Icelandic volcano. The meeting was instead attended by ambassadors and senior members of the respective missions. Besides the United States, MEF includes the European Union, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, China, India, Brazil, South Africa, South Korea.
The meeting was to discuss “issues for moving forward” after the Copenhagen climate conference. While the US wanted to make the Copenhagen Accord the basis of negotiations, the EU and Russia wanted to introduce the practice of issue-based discussions that would cut across the two tracks (Kyoto Protocol and Bali tracks) of the negotiations. At this meeting, India initiated the discussion on MRV. At the outset, Mr Ramesh, whose address was delivered in absentia, made it clear that the Copenhagen Accord could not “be a separate track for negotiations”.
The environment minister said, “I have repeatedly said that the areas of agreement reflected in the Accord must be used to bring consensus in the on-going two-track negotiating process which is the only process that has legitimacy.”
In the backdrop of the effort to deal with climate issues outside of the UNFCCC process, Mr Ramesh made it clear that India was committed to a multilateral negotiation. “The Gordian knot-cutting can well be plurilateral but ultimately negotiations must be multilateral and carried out in good faith,” Mr Ramesh said.
Given the trust deficit, India stressed that “some visible triggers” need to be “activated very soon”, this would “ensure that Cancun does not repeat Copenhagen”.
Among the triggers is the actual disbursement of the $10 b promised by the developed countries for vulnerable economies, small island states and LDCs, an agreement on REDD/REDD plus, which isnt limited to forest-basin countries and finalising the architecture of technology cooperation. Suggesting immediate action, Mr Ramesh said, “all these elements should be a part of a multilateral package in two tracks that should be delivered in Cancun.”
Reiterating India’s commitment to the two-track process, the environment minister said that “a balance in the outcomes on all elements of the LCA and KP tracks must be maintained with Annex I countries immediately taking on binding commitments for truly significant GHG reductions within their borders.”
Another intervention by India was on the issue of “equity” in the context of the carbon budget. Articulating the developing countries, India stressed that a global carbon budget should not jeopardise their development goals. Mr Ramesh said, “the global objective of restricting temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius by 2050 from mid-19th century levels must be firmly embedded in a demonstrably equitable access to atmospheric space with adequate finance and technology available to all developing countries.” India also raised the issue of the consequences of non-compliance and domestic accountability mechanism in the context of an “internationally legally-binding agreement”.
On the issue of MRV, India turned the tables on the developed countries stating that the Copenhagen Accord states industrialised countries too have to be brought under MRV for emission sreduction and financing. Also that the Conference of Parties develop appropriate guidelines. Making it clear that MRV was not an issue limited mitigation action by developing countries.
BRASIL:
Brazil’s president stresses importance of BRIC’s common strategy in G20
April 20, 2010 /english.peopledaily.com.cn/Source:Xinhua
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Monday that the countries of the BRIC group and South Africa must have a unique strategy at the next G20 meeting.
Lula said in his weekly radio show that in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and IBSA (India, Brazil and South Africa) meetings in Brasilia last week, the five countries defined a common strategy for the next G20 meeting in Canada, which is to take place in June.
According to Lula, at the G20, the BRIC and IBSA countries intend to discuss their participation in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, as well as financing and credit mechanisms.
“If you arrive at a meeting with a common intent, you are halfway done convincing other countries such as France, Argentina and Mexico to get on our side. I think there is a good chance for us to make a great advance for Brazil in the international area,” he said.
Lula considered last week’s BRIC and IBSA meetings “an extraordinary occurrence” for all countries involved, and stressed the importance of diversifying Brazil’s trade partners.
“The more partners you have, the more spread out you are, selling and buying, the less dependency and more chances you have to emerge well from the crisis, as we did,” he said.
Lula will travel to Russia next month with a group of businessmen in order to boost the countries’ trade.
EN BREF, CE 20 avril 2010 … AGNEWS / OMAR, BXL,20/04/2010
