{jcomments on}OMAR, AGNEWS, BXL, le 04 février 2010 – www1.voanews.com- February 04, 2010–The leader of Rwanda’s opposition United Democratic Forces says she will officially present a letter to President Paul Kagame Thursday to demand protection ahead of the scheduled August general election.

RWANDA

Rwanda Opposition Candidate Demands Protection Ahead of Election
The leader of Rwanda’s opposition United Democratic Forces says she will officially present a letter to President Paul Kagame Thursday to demand protection ahead of the scheduled August general election.
www1.voanews.com/ 04 February 2010

Peter Clottey | Washington, DC

The leader of Rwanda’s opposition United Democratic Forces says she will officially present a letter to President Paul Kagame Thursday to demand protection ahead of the scheduled August general election. Victoire Ingabire said an unidentified youth group attacked her and her aide at Kinyinya sector, a suburb of the capital, Kigali.

“Today, I received a call from the mayor of the sector where I live, Kinyinya, and he told me that I have to return my ID. And when I arrived in his office, there were younger people who began to batter us, me and one of my colleagues. And they took my bag. (Then,) I went back quickly to my car, but my colleague stayed back and they battered him. And after (that, I) took him to hospital,” she said.

Rwanda’s media reports that other opposition groups have condemned the attack and accused President Kagame’s ruling Patriotic Front Party (RPF) of complicity – – a charge RPF denies.

Ingabire said the police failed to stop the attack, but the police deny Ingabire’s account.

“When they battered us, the police were there and they didn’t do anything. They watched us (as) the young people battered us,” she contended.

Several opposition party groups have vowed to defeat the ruling party in the upcoming election after visiting Ingabire’s injured aide at the hospital.

Ingabire said the ruling party wants to undermine her campaign ahead of the vote.

“We see that the government of General Kagame does not accept all political activities in our country. You know that I have been back to the country now three weeks ago, and they are doing everything to prevent (me) from participating in the election. They know that the population needs the change and they know that the population wants (me) to participate in the election, and they want me as the leader of them. This is why they (will) do everything that people will be afraid to come to me,” Ingabire said.

Ingabire recently came under fire for reportedly making pronouncements that genocide survivor groups (members of IBUKA) considered insulting.

IBUKA then called on the government to prosecute Ingabire, saying her pronouncement belittles the 1994 genocide in which hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were killed in a 100-day massacre.

Some political analysts say the latest attack against Ingabire could have resulted from her recent controversial remarks.

UGANDA

Uganda Approves Tullow’s Takeover Of Heritage Oil Interests
By Nicholas Bariyo, contributing to Dow Jones Newswires/www.foxbusiness.com/Thursday, February 04, 2010

Dow Jones Newswires KAMPALA, Uganda (Dow Jones)-The Ugandan government has approved UK-based Tullow Oil PLC’s (TLW.LN) takeover of the interests of Heritage Oil PLC (HOIL.LN) in two oil blocks in the Lake Albert basin for up to $1.5 billion, government and company officials told Dow Jones Newswires Thursday.

The decision to approve the sale was communicated to cabinet late Wednesday and Tullow and Heritage are now required to follow the government’s conditions, such as paying capital gains taxes, cross-listing on the local stock market as well as early commercialization of Uganda’s oil reserves, according to Peter Lokeris, Uganda’s junior energy and minerals development minister.

“The government approved the deal because there was an existing agreement between Tullow and Heritage that if one wanted to dispose of its stake, the other partner had the first option to buy,” he said.

The decision ends Italy-based Eni Spa’s attempts to take over the stakes, officials added.

A company executive told Dow Jones Newswires separately the Ugandan president had earlier pledged to respect the sanctity of Tullow’s contract and the preemption right in its agreement with Heritage.

Tullow Oil’s Uganda office couldn’t comment immediately.

National Prayer Breakfast Draws Controversy
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN /www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04

For more than 50 years, the National Prayer Breakfast has served as a prime networking event in Washington, bringing together the president, members of Congress, foreign diplomats and thousands of religious, business and military leaders for scrambled eggs and supplication.
Usually, the annual event passes with little notice. But this year, an ethics group in Washington has asked President Obama and Congressional leaders to stay away from the breakfast, on Thursday. Religious and gay rights groups have organized competing prayer events in 17 cities, and protesters are picketing in Washington and Boston.

The objections are focused on the sponsor of the breakfast, a secretive evangelical Christian network called The Fellowship, also known as The Family, and accusations that it has ties to legislation in Uganda that calls for the imprisonment and execution of homosexuals.

The Family has always stayed intentionally in the background, according to those who have written about it. In the last year, however, it was identified as the sponsor of a residence on Capitol Hill that has served as a dormitory and meeting place for a cluster of politicians who ran into ethics problems, including Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, and Gov. Mark Sanford, Republican of South Carolina, both of whom have admitted to adultery.

More recently, it became public that the Family also has close ties to the Ugandan politician who has sponsored the proposed anti-gay legislation.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog group, sent a letter this week to the president and Congressional leaders urging them to skip the prayer breakfast. They have also called on C-Span not to televise it this year.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of the ethics group, said: “It is a combination of the intolerance of the organization’s views, and the secrecy surrounding the organization. It doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be allowed to hold their breakfast; of course they should. The question is, Should American officials be lending legitimacy to it, giving their imprimatur by showing up.”

The Family has no identifiable Internet site, no office number and no official spokesman. J. Robert Hunter, a member who has spoken publicly about the group, said that it was unfair to blame the Family for the anti-gay legislation introduced by David Bahati. Mr. Hunter said that about 30 Family members, all Americans, active in Africa recently conveyed their dismay about the legislation to Ugandan politicians, including Mr. Bahati.

Mr. Hunter said the recent controversies had prompted a debate within the group about its lack of transparency. “I and quite a few others are saying we should be much more open,” he said.

Jeff Sharlet, author of “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power” (Harper Perennial, 2009) said in a telephone interview, “Here’s an organization that, in the past, has not acknowledged its own existence.”

“It’s not a sinister plot. This is their theological stance,” said Mr. Sharlet, who infiltrated the group to do research for his book. “Their leader, Doug Coe, says that the more invisible you can make your organization, the more influence it will have.”

A White House official said that Mr. Obama, like each president since Dwight D. Eisenhower, planned to attend the breakfast. Michelle Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and other cabinet members will also attend. The president will deliver remarks about “the importance of an openness to compromise,” the official said.

The official also said that the president and the State Department had spoken out strongly against the legislation in Uganda.

The breakfast, which usually features a prominent keynote speaker (past ones have included Bono, Mother Teresa and former Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain), is only the most visible in several days of gatherings where the Family’s networking takes place in smaller groups. There are separate meetings for African politicians, military leaders, business people and media professionals, to name a few.

Many states also have prayer breakfasts this week, which may appear to be government-sponsored but are also mostly affiliated with the Family.

Liberal members of the clergy and gay rights leaders organized the alternative events in haste this year, calling theirs the American Prayer Hour. The will convene at places like Calvary Baptist Church in Washington; Glendale City Seventh-day Adventist Church in California; the bishop’s chapel of the Episcopal Diocese of Western New York, in Rochester; and Covenant Community Church in Center Point, Ala.

Wayne Besen, executive director of Truth Wins Out, a gay rights group, said he initiated the prayer-hour idea because many religious Americans who attend the breakfasts have no idea about the connection to the Family and the anti-gay legislation.

“They have symbolically taken the mantle of religion,” Mr. Besen said, “and I think it’s time to take it back. And the American Prayer Hour is a step in that direction.”

The dividing lines of Uganda’s anti-gay row
Thursday, 4 February 2010 / news.bbc.co.uk

Newsnight’s Tim Whewell has travelled to Uganda where an attempt to punish some forms of homosexuality with the death penalty has caused outrage across the world.

The Bill proposes that the penalty for gay sex should be life imprisonment and that “serial offenders” and “aggravated homosexuality” should face the death penalty.

Some American religious leaders are calling on President Obama to condemn the Bill, brought by Ugandan evangelicals.

UK criticises Uganda’s Aids Bill
www.monitor.co.ug/By Evelyn Lirri /Thursday, February 4 2010

The UK ambassador to Uganda on Tuesday added his voice to growing international criticism on some sections of the proposed HIV Prevention and Control Bill 2009.

Mr Martin Shearman said it could block an effective response to the fight against disease. He cautioned that while there are some positive aspects of the Bill such as prohibition of discrimination against people living with HIV/Aids, the Bill attempts to create a disease-specific offence which targets persons who have tested positive.

“This reinforces the risk of stigmatisation of persons with HIV/Aids which would be counter-productive in the fight against HIV/Aids,” Mr Shearman said at the 20th anniversary of the Medical Research Centre/Uganda Virus Research Institute unit in Entebbe.
He added: “It is important that everybody regardless of background, status or sexual orientation should have equal access to service and treatment without discrimination,” His comments come close on the heels of similar concerns raised by the United Nations Aids agency (UNAids).

The Bill, among other things, will compel HIV-positive people to reveal their status to their partners and also allows medical personnel to reveal one’s status to their partners.

The Bill criminalises and imposes a maximum penalty of death on intentional transmission of the virus. But the government has defended the proposed law, saying it is an effective way of containing malicious or deliberate infection of people. Mr Shearman said his government is committed to providing support through innovative research to reduce the spread of HIV/Aids in Uganda and across the globe.

State Minister for Health James Kakooza said the Bill is still subject to changes and all views of different people would be considered.
The Vice President, Prof. Gilbert Bukenya, said the HIV/Aids epidemic has challenged the medical world over the last two decades and thus proven prevention methods should be encouraged. “The ABC-Abstain, Be faithful and use a Condom strategy has saved many lives. I have reinforced this strategy before and so let Uganda not divert from the ABC strategy until we find another strategy,” said Prof. Bukenya. He added that the Aids research agenda should focus on prevention and care. The institute has been undertaking research in HIV/Aids including the first ever HIV vaccine trial in Africa in 1999.

TANZANIA:

CONGO RDC :

KENYA :

Judge to decide whether Obama’s aunt can stay in U.S.
February 4, 2010/CNN

(CNN) — A federal immigration judge will decide Thursday whether President Obama’s aunt, who has been in the United States illegally for years, will be allowed to stay.

Zeituni Onyango, 57, applied for political asylum in 2002, citing violence in her native Kenya. She is the half-sister of the president’s late father.

She was a legal resident of the United States at the time and had received a Social Security card a year earlier.

However, Onyango’s asylum request was turned down in 2004. She appealed and was ordered to leave. She has lived in the United States illegally since.

Her immigration status came to light in the final days of the 2008 presidential race.

On Thursday, Judge Leonard Shapiro will hear Onyango’s asylum request again in Boston, Massachusetts.

Obama has not weighed in on the case, with the White House saying “the president believes that the case should run its ordinary course.”

ANGOLA :

U.S. Report Details Money Laundering
February 4, 2010/dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com

A suitcase containing $1 million in shrink-wrapped bills, hand-carried into New York by the former president of Gabon for his daughter to buy a Manhattan apartment. Purchases of a stretch Hummer H2 armored limousine and C-130 Hercules military transport planes for a civil war in Angola. And a shell company named Sweet Pink used to funnel millions of dollars into the United States from Equatorial Guinea.

These and other deals and money transfers took place in recent years because of inadequate controls on money laundering at large American banks and unregulated American lawyers, real estate agents and lobbyists, according to a Senate report released late Wednesday, Lynnley Browning reports in The New York Times.
The 325-page report by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which will conduct a hearing on Thursday, sheds new light on how banks like Citigroup, Wachovia and Bank of America unwittingly shifted hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of African politicians, their relatives and associates.

The banks ended up closing or restricting the accounts and cooperated with the subcommittee, offering comments on individual transactions.

In all cases, the Senate report says, the banks ignored controls intended to prevent money laundering and related screens on PEP, meaning politically exposed persons — high-risk clients from corrupt countries.

The report recommends strengthening regulations against money laundering at banks and revoking exemptions for lawyers and other third parties from restrictions on money laundering in the USA Patriot Act. It recommends that Congress pass laws requiring people who form corporations to disclose the true owners.

The report, brimming with bank statements and internal e-mail messages, contains four case studies.

“Together, these four case histories demonstrate the need for the United States to strengthen its PEP controls to prevent corrupt foreign officials, their relatives and close associates from using U.S. professionals and financial institutions to conceal, protect and utilize their ill-gotten gains,” it says.

The report details how Teodoro Nguema Obiang, the son of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the president of Equatorial Guinea, used lawyers, bankers, real estate agents and escrow agents, all Americans, from 2004 through 2008 to move more than $110 million into the United States, including $100 million through Wachovia and Citibank.

Mr. Obiang, the subject of a criminal investigation into charges of money laundering, bribery and extortion, also employed Sidley Austin Brown & Wood, a law firm now known as Sidley Austin, to help him buy a $38.5 million Gulfstream G-5 jet in 2005, the report says.

Janet Zagorin, a spokeswoman for the firm, did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

The report says two American lawyers, Michael Berger and George Nagler, helped Mr. Obiang circumvent controls at the banks by setting up accounts for shell companies with names like Beautiful Vision, Unlimited Horizon and Sweet Pink, named on honor of the rapper Eve, Mr. Obiang’s girlfriend at the time.

Mr. Obiang, Equatorial Guinea’s minister of agriculture and forestry, used the accounts to pay his personal expenses, including chefs and butlers for his home in Malibu, Calif., and bills at Ferrari of Beverly Hills and Dolce & Gabbana, receipts cited in the report show. He also arranged for Mr. Berger to be invited to the 2007 “Kandy Halloween Bash” at the Playboy Mansion, the report says.

It says Mr. Obiang hired two American real estate agents to help him buy the $30 million home in Malibu, with suspect money transferred from Equatorial Guinea.

The report also details how in recent years an American lobbyist, Jeffrey Birrell, helped the former president of Gabon, Omar Bongo, buy six armored vehicles, including the Hummer, and obtain United States government permission to buy six C-130 military cargo aircraft to support his government, all suspect transactions. The purchases were routed through accounts set up at HSBC, Commerce Bank and JPMorgan Chase, the report says.

Another case study details how Jennifer Douglas Abubakar, an American and the fourth wife of the former vice president of Nigeria, helped her husband bring more than $40 million in suspect money into the United States. It says some of the money was then funneled through offshore accounts.

The report also details how Pierre Falcone, a native Algerian and known arms dealer now imprisoned in France, used nearly 30 bank accounts at Bank of America’s Scottsdale, Ariz., branch to funnel millions of dollars in suspect money through the United States over 18 years.

Bernie Becker contributed reporting.

Angolan president reshuffles govt after new charter
Thu Feb 4, 2010/Reuters

LUANDA (Reuters) – Angola’s president on Wednesday appointed the country’s first vice-president and new ministers for finance, mining and public works in a major cabinet reshuffle following the approval of a new constitution.

The charter, approved for a second time by parliament on Wednesday, replaces the prime minister with a vice-president and allows President Jose Eduardo dos Santos to extend his 30-year rule over one of Africa’s top oil producers without a direct ballot.

In the widely expected shake-up, dos Santos named Fernando Dias dos Santos, the head of the national assembly and a former prime minister, as vice-president, according to a statement on government-run news agency Angop.

The move is likely to raise speculation Dias dos Santos, also known as Nando, is being groomed for the presidency. However, although elections are expected in 2012 the ruling MPLA party has already named President dos Santos as its candidate.

“Nando has been the president’s right-hand man for decades but nobody knows if he will be the successor,” said Alcides Sakala, spokesman for the main opposition UNITA party.

“The truth is President dos Santos wants to remain in power. That’s why he changed the constitution in this way.”

Although Angola’s parliament backed the new constitution last month, the constitutional court asked it to review the document and make some changes. Parliament approved the changes on Wednesday.

One change is that the president and the vice president will need to be the first and second name on the winning party’s list in a parliamentary election, instead of being appointed by the party after the election.

In the reshuffle, presidential advisers Carlos Feijo and Manuel Helder Vieira Dias, also known as Kopelipa, became ministers of state while also continuing to serve as heads of the president’s civil and military staff respectively.

Some senior ministers have been reassigned, although public works minister Higinio Carneiro, a long-term dos Santos ally, lost his position.

Finance Minister Eduardo Severim de Morais, whose ministry is being investigated for the illegal transfer of millions of dollars abroad, also lost his job, to be replaced by former deputy planning minister Carlos Alberto Lopes.

Influential Economy Minister Manuel Nunes Junior, Oil Minister Jose Botelho de Vasconcelos and Foreign Minister Assuncao dos Anjos all kept their portfolios. Prime Minister Paulo Kassoma will become parliament’s new speaker.

Dos Santos has promised the new government will crack down on corruption and implement measures to improve the lives of ordinary Angolans, mostly through investment in agriculture, health and education.

The anti-corruption move should be welcomed by investors in a country where an estimated two-thirds of its 16.5 million people live on less than $2 a day despite Angola vying with Nigeria as Africa’s top oil producer.

Angola ranks as the world’s 18th most corrupt nation, according to watchdog Transparency International.

Angola is also a big diamond miner and was once a major food exporter but a 27-year civil war that took place after the nation’s 1975 independence from Portugal led to a mass exodus of farmers and it now imports almost all of its food.

SOUTH AFRICA:

South Africa: Zuma Acknowledges Paternity
www.nytimes.com/By BARRY BEARAK/February 4, 2010

President Jacob Zuma admitted Wednesday that he was the father of a girl born last October. Mr. Zuma, a polygamist, has three wives, but this baby was born out of wedlock, and allegations that the president had fathered a 20th child have preoccupied the news media in South Africa since the story broke on Sunday. The country has one of the world’s worst H.I.V. infection rates, and Mr. Zuma was criticized for undermining his own government’s campaign against unprotected sex and multiple partners. In a statement, Mr. Zuma said he remained dedicated to the H.I.V. and AIDS campaign and sharply criticized the news media for revealing the names of his new daughter and her mother.

Anglo, Gold Fields, Jasco, Sasol: South African Equity Preview
By Janice Kew and Garth Theunissen/ Bloomberg/ Feb. 4

Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) — The following is a list of companies whose shares may have unusual price changes in South Africa. Stock symbols are in parentheses after company names and prices are from the last close.

South Africa’s FTSE/JSE Africa All Share Index climbed for a second day, gaining 114.21, or 0.4 percent, to 26,926.46.

Anglo American Plc (AGL SJ): Copper fell by less than 0.1 percent to $6,871.50 a metric ton on the London Metal Exchange, paring some of yesterday’s 2.7 percent gain. Shares of Anglo, the diversified mining company that makes up almost 11 percent of South Africa’s benchmark stock index, rose 83 cents, or 0.3 percent, to 292.50 rand. Larger rival BHP Billiton Plc (BIL SJ) gained 95 cents, or 0.4 percent, to 231.60 rand.

Gold Fields Ltd. (GFI SJ): Africa’s second-largest gold producer reports second-quarter earnings. On Jan. 7, Gold Fields reduced its estimate for so-called attributable output in the second quarter by 25,000 ounces to 900,000 ounces. The stock fell 1.85 rand, or 2 percent, to 89 rand.

Jasco Electronics Holdings Ltd. (JSC SJ): The company with stakes in telecommunications businesses reports first-half earnings. Jasco said on Jan. 26 that earnings per share in the six months through Dec. 31 were as much as 35 percent lower compared with a year ago. Jasco’s stock rose 9 cents, or 5.4 percent, to 1.75 rand.

Sasol Ltd. (SOL SJ): Oil was little changed at $76.95 a barrel in electronic trading in New York. Stock of Sasol, the world’s biggest maker of motor fuel from coal, fell 2.99 rand, or 1 percent, to 292.99 rand.

Telemasters Holdings Ltd. (TLM SJ): The seller of phone services said it posted a profit of 3.18 million rand ($421,975) in the three months through December, little changed from the same period a year earlier. The stock was unchanged at 2 rand.

Shares or American depositary receipts of the following South African companies closed as follows:

Anglo American Plc (AAUKY US) fell 3.2 percent to $19.08. AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. (AU US) slid 1.6 percent to $36.86. BHP Billiton Ltd. (BBL US) dropped 2.6 percent to $61.31. DRDGold Ltd. (DROOY US) fell 1.5 percent to $5.83. Gold Fields Ltd. (GFI US) slid 1.6 percent to $11.94. Harmony Gold Mining Co. (HMY US) fell 1.1 percent to $9.90. Impala Platinum Holdings Co. (IMPUY US) gained 0.8 percent to $26.85. Sappi Ltd. (SPP US) slumped 4.7 percent to $4.24. Sasol Ltd. (SSL US) fell 1.3 percent to $38.74. Telkom South Africa Ltd. (TLKGY US) advanced 1.8 percent to $18.23.

South Africa rules out mines nationalisation
By Richard Lapper in Cape Town /www.ft.com/ February 4 2010

South Africa’s minerals minister yesterday slapped down radicals in the ruling African National Congress who have called for nationalisation of the mines.

A state takeover of South Africa’s strategic industry would not occur “in my lifetime”, said Susan Shabangu. In a clear and seemingly decisive statement on a critical policy debate, she took direct issue with the party’s radical and politically powerful youth league, which has been vociferously pressing the ruling party on the issue.

The youth league, an important backer of President Jacob Zuma’s election campaign last year, has repeatedly called for nationalisation of the mines, prompting friction with senior leaders who favour a more pragmatic policy. The uncertainty has raised some concerns in business over the direction of policy.

However, the minister told the country’s annual mining exhibition, that it was strictly off the agenda.

For an organisation prone to play down internal disputes, she used unusually strong language. “Nationalisation is not a government policy. . . [and] this is not the route we are taking. . . but if [Julius] Malema [the leader of the youth league] wants to flex his muscles, why should we stop him.”

The league accused Ms Shabangu of being disingenuous. “In our internal discussion with Minister Shabangu, she said that she does not disagree with the ANC Youth League, but because she is now trying to impress imperialists, she changes her tone,” it said in a statement.

Ms Shabangu, however, did outline a potentially more active role for the government in promoting a rationalisation of the country’s fragmented mining industry. The South African state already owned significant stakes in the mining sector , she said, both directly in government-owned companies such as Alexkor, and indirectly through the holdings of the government’s industrial development corporation and public investment corporation. “The state has been involved for a long time. We exist. We compete. We are there,” she said. However, state involvement could not “be any old how. It has to be strategic and in the national interest”.

She suggested that its strategic interest was particularly important in sectors such as coal and uranium. She also promised to halve the time taken to process applications for prospecting and mining rights.

This is certain to be welcomed by the private sector, which argues that political confusion and weak infrastructure have undermined the country’s ability to benefit from the bull market in commodities.

“This was a breath of fresh air,” said Peter Leon, head of natural resources and regulatory at Webber Wentzel, a Johannesburg-based law firm.

Yar’ Adua: Nigeria mocked in South Africa
By Obinna Ezeobi and John Alechenu/ www.punchng.com/ Thursday, 4 Feb 2010

The refusal of President Umaru Yar’Adua to hand over power to Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan has turned Nigeria into a laughing stock at an international conference in Cape Town, South Africa.

One of the speakers at the Mining Indaba Conference and a global economist, Dr. David Hale, told participants on Tuesday that Yar’Adua was very ill and might pass on within six months.

He was not done with the comment as he went on to add that Nigeria would prepare for another election in six months after the expected passage of the President.

He said, “In Nigeria, the President has been in Saudi Arabia for nearly three months for medical treatment and he refused to hand over to the vice-president, even though the people are calling for it.

“He is suffering from acute heart problems and should be dead in six months. So, in Nigeria, there should be a new election in six months after the death of the President.”

The remarks by Hale, who is the Chairman of David Hale Global Economics, surprisingly elicited loud laughter from the participants and protests from members of the Nigerian team at the event.

Delivering the keynote address titled “Global Outlook,” Hale also said that Nigeria, which needed at least 20,000 megawatts for stable electricity supply, however, regretted that the nation was only able to generate 2,000MW.

In a country by country analysis, the respected economist said that Nigeria’s poor power supply made it a difficult environment to invest in.

Hale, whose clients include investment management firms, major hedge funds and multinational companies, is based in Chicago, United States.

He is a member of the National Association of Business Economists and the New York Society of Security Analysts.

The participants comprised mining executives from across the world, investors, analysts, financiers, journalists, policy makers, etcetera.

Speaking at the Nigerian Day at the Indaba Conference, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Solid Minerals, Senator George Sekibo, described Hale’s comments as unfortunate and highly condemnable.

Sekibo said that Nigeria would make its displeasure on Hale’s comments known to the organisers of conference and demand an apology .

According to him, the Nigerian government will be advised to also take up the matter diplomatically when the delegation returns home.

Sekibo said, “It is important for participants at the conference to note that Nigeria has taken giant strides in mining, especially in the last few years; that is in addition to providing the much needed infrastructure for investors’ participation.

“We assure you that Nigeria is stable. There is not going to be any war anywhere, there is not going to be any division anywhere.

“Mr. President is not feeling very well now, every person can have such a situation. And I believe he will come out of it. Nigeria will still stand as a very strong country.”

Another member of the Nigerian team, Alhalji Suleiman Kassim, also condemned the claim by Hale that Nigeria’s total electricity output was only 2000MW.

Kassim, who is the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development, explained that Nigeria was generating over 3000MW and was hoping to increase it to 6000MW.

He maintained that since Indaba was a professional conference for stakeholders in the mining industry to relate, it should not be exploited by “uninformed political commentators” to deride a sovereign nation.

Meanwhile, the Special Adviser to the President on National Assembly Matters, Senator Mohammed Abba-Aji, is to appear before the Senate on Thursday (today).

The Peoples Democratic Party caucus in the Senate is also scheduled to meet at the official residence of the President of the Senate, Mr. David Mark.

Mark, who announced this during plenary on Wednesday, did not give reasons for Abba-Aji’s invitation.

It was, however, gathered that it was a fallout of the closed- door session which the Senate held with the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Alhaji Yayale Ahmed, on January 21, 2010 over the President’s health.

Abba-Aji is expected to, among other things, answer questions as to whether or not the President asked him to transmit a letter to the National Assembly on his behalf.

A national newspaper (not THE PUNCH) had reported that the President wrote a letter to the National Assembly in line with the provisions of Section 145 of the 1999 Constitution before he travelled to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

The newspaper report said the Presidential aide did not transmit the letter for unknown reasons.

AFRICA / AU :

Gates Foundation ramps up tobacco control efforts in Africa
seattletimes.nwsource.com/Posted by Kristi Heim/February 4, 2010

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is stepping up the fight against tobacco with a $7 million grant to the American Cancer Society announced today. That follows a $10 million grant to the World Health Organization in December.

Both are aimed at curbing the tobacco industry’s inroads in Africa, where cancer is emerging as a serious public health threat in addition to diseases such as malaria, AIDS and TB.

The $7 million, five-year grant to the American Cancer Society (ACS), which has taken on a more global role recently, will go toward managing a health coalition called the African Tobacco Control Consortium.

Consortium members include the ACS, Africa Tobacco Control Regional Initiative, Africa Tobacco Control Alliance, Framework Convention Alliance, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease.

The consortium will work in 46 countries of sub-Saharan Africa to reduce tobacco use by
helping implement policies such as advertising bans, tobacco tax increases, graphic
warning labels and promoting smoke free environments, in line with the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the world’s first public health treaty;

The World Health Organization started a new tobacco control effort in Africa with the help of a $10 million grant from the Gates Foundation late last year. Its goal is to prevent tobacco use from becoming as prevalent in Africa as it is in other parts of the world.

If tobacco use continues to grow at its current rate, it will kill more than 8 million people a year in 20 years, and more than 80 percent of them will be in developing countries, WHO predicts.

“Tobacco breeds poverty, killing people in their most productive years,” said Dr. Ala Alwan, WHO assistant director-general for noncommunicable diseases and mental health. It consumes family and health-care budgets, and where resources are already scarce, “money spent on tobacco products is money not spent on such essentials as education, food and medicine.”

Carter G. Woodson & African-American History Month
By Abayomi Azikiwe /www.workers.org/Editor, Pan-African News Wire /Published Feb 4, 2010

February 2010 represents the 84th anniversary of the founding of Negro History Week, now known as African-American History Month. This month of commemoration was initiated by historian Dr. Carter G. Woodson, who worked tirelessly for many years to popularize the dissemination and study of the history of African people in the United States and throughout the world.

Carter G. Woodson
Woodson originally came from New Canton, Virginia, where he was born on Dec. 19, 1875. Born into a poor Southern family and having to work in the coal mines of Kentucky, he was unable to enroll in high school until he was 20 years old.

He later attended the University of Chicago and Harvard University, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in 1912, the second African American to receive this degree after W.E.B. DuBois in 1896.

W.E.B. DuBois, Carter G. Woodson and other African-American historians took on the challenge of refuting the racist propaganda disguised as history, which sought to provide the ideological justification for the mass enslavement of African people and the continuation of Jim Crow laws and racist terror.

Before DuBois and Woodson

One of the major contributions of historians such as DuBois and Woodson is that they scientifically challenged and debunked the myths of the “Southern slave-owning aristocracy” and “Black docility.” These views could no longer stand up to the research presented in the narratives the African-American historians developed.

What is often deemphasized in the historical remembrance of African slavery in U.S. society is the high level of resistance by the captives to the plantations owners, overseers and the legal codes that reinforced this system of exploitation. Notions and theories of African slave resistance were largely absent from the scholarly treatment of this long episode in the history of North America until relatively recent times. One of the early 20th-century historians, Ulrich B. Phillips, did much to advance the racist views of Southern former-slave-owning families and their communities.

W.E.B. DuBois
In Phillips’ book entitled “American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime,” published originally in 1918, he contends that the overwhelming tendency among Southern slave holders was a liberalized form of administrative control, which resembles a patriarchal or paternalistic model of slave management.

As a result of the biased views held by Phillips and other white historians, their flawed emphasis and interpretation of data lead the reader to no particular insights or conclusions related to the African slave as a conscious human being within the production process taking place within Southern society as a whole.

All of the viewpoints presented by observers of the slave system in Phillips’ work reinforce the idea of the inferiority of African peoples and the supposed moral fortitude of the Southern slave owners. These views of the slave-master relationship contend that is is the natural order of things between Africans and Europeans.

The birth of African-American Studies

However, new schools of thought arose during the early 20th century to counteract the apologists for the antebellum slave system and the rebel confederacy during the Civil War. DuBois declared in 1909 that the cultural presence of the ancestral origins of the slaves played a significant role in shaping the character of American life: “The mystic spell of Africa is and ever was over all America. It has guided her hardest work, inspired her finest literature, and sung her sweetest songs. Her greatest destiny — unsensed and despised though it be — is to give back to the first of continents the gifts which Africa of old gave to America’s fathers’ fathers.”

According to Jacqueline Goggin in her political biography, “Carter G. Woodson: A Life in Black History”: “In 1915 he founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History to encourage scholars to engage in the intensive study of the past as it related to Africans and their descendants through the world. Prior to this work, the field had been largely neglected or distorted in the hands of historians who accepted the traditionally biased picture of Blacks in American and world affairs.”

In 1916 Woodson founded the “Journal of Negro History,” which remained an important scholarly publication under his direction for more than 30 years. His academic work led him to Howard University and West Virginia State College as a professor and administrator.

Over the years he authored numerous important books, including “The Negro in Our History” (1922), “The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861” (1915) and “A Century of Negro Migration” (1918). In 1933, during the Great Depression, he published his best known work, “The Mis-Education of the Negro,” where he attacked the white capitalist influence over schooling designed for African Americans during the early 20th century.

In this book there is a chapter entitled “Political Education Neglected,” where Woodson writes: “Even the few Negroes who are elected to office are often similarly uninformed and show a lack of vision. They have given little attention to the weighty problems of the nation; and in the legislative bodies to which they are elected, they restrict themselves as a rule to matters of special concern to the Negroes themselves, such as lynching, segregation and disenfranchisement, which they have well learned by experience.”

Woodson then goes on to point out that the contributions of African-American elected officials during Reconstruction were broader: “This indicates a step backwards, for the Negroes who sat in Congress and in the State Legislatures during the Reconstruction worked for the enactment of measures of concern to all elements of the population regardless of color. Historians have not yet forgotten what those Negroes statesmen did in advocating public education, internal improvements, labor arbitration, the tariff, and the merchant marine.”

Woodson’s legacy and the African-American struggle

Woodson died in 1950 at the age of 75. He did not live to see the emergence of the mass civil rights and Black power struggles starting in the mid-1950s and extending through the early 1970s. He was unable to witness the emergence of a militant student movement in 1960 that led to the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the later Black Panther Party.

It was during these times that the movement demanding the implementation of African-American Studies programs in K-12 education and in institutions of higher learning emerged. Tremendous protests were carried out at numerous schools, colleges and universities that won concessions introducing course work that recognized the contributions and essential role of African Americans in U.S. and world affairs.

The work of Woodson, DuBois and other African-American scholars provided the intellectual basis for the advancement of ethnic and multicultural studies. Every major school district and institution of higher learning has seen intense debate and struggle over the character of the academic curriculum and the admission and status of African Americans and other oppressed people of color in the United States.

Despite these gains of the adoption of African-American and multicultural studies programs and curriculums, as well as admission of people of color to historically white institutions, the current economic crisis has witnessed the wholesale attack on such gains made during the civil rights and Black power era. Today school districts and colleges are cutting back and laying off educational workers who gained their positions as a result of the mass movements o
ver the last five decades.

These attacks on higher education and their disproportionate impact on African Americans and other oppressed people must be taken up in the current student movement against the major downsizing taking place in all areas of education in the U.S. With the upcoming March 4 National Day of Action to Defend Education, students and educational workers must demand the continuation, restoration and full funding of all academic programs that serve the oppressed and exploited groups who have traditionally been excluded from positions of power and influence in the country.

These major cutbacks in education funding must be rejected, and students and workers should demand that money be taken away from the banks and the Pentagon and given to the people to ensure quality education for all. The interests of youth and workers must supersede those of the corporations and the military.

Gold Fields Q2 adj EPS up, sees Q3 output down
Thu Feb 4, 2010/Reuters

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Gold Fields, the world’s No.4 gold producer, reported a rise in second-quarter adjusted earnings per share, but expects output for the next three months to drop due to a slower ramp up after Christmas.

Gold Fields said on Thursday adjusted EPS for the quarter to end-December rose to 145 cents from 89 cents the previous quarter.

The miner, which has operations in Africa, South America and Australia, said attributable gold production stood at 900,000 ounces, down from 906,000 ounces the previous three months, and is expected to drop further in the upcoming quarter.

“In the March 2010 quarter attributable gold production is estimated at 850,000 attributable equivalent ounces, with a decrease in production at the South Africa region due to the slow start-up after the Christmas break,” Gold Fields said in a statement, but added production in other regions would rise.

Gold Fields said total cash costs during the quarter were up 5 percent to $613 per ounce due to a stronger rand, and are expected to rise to $650 per ounce in the quarter to end-March, assuming a rand/dollar exchange rate of 7.45 rand.

South African gold producers sell their gold in dollars and pay costs in rand. Spot gold traded at $1,107.10 per ounce at 0624 GMT on Thursday.

The company declared an interim dividend of 50 cents per share.

Africa must act – wa Mutharika
04 February, 2010 /BOPA
ADDIS ABABA – Africa needs a robust programme to eliminate hunger within the next five years as well as to develop transport and communication infrastructure in order to connect all regions in efforts to integrate the continent, says new African Union (AU) chairman and Malawian President Mr Bingu wa Mutharika.

Speaking at the closing ceremony of the AU summit in Ethiopia, Mr wa Mutharika said Africa should also take urgent steps to develop energy generating capacity in order to make electricity affordable to industries and the people.

The Malawian president also urged African nations to act collectively and individually in finding solutions to the remaining political crisis in the continent.

He said there had been positive political developments in Mauritania, Guinea and Guinea Bissau to restore democracy and hope to citizens He however noted that more effort needed to be made to address political challenges in Madagascar, Somalia and Darfur and to ensure that peace returned to those countries in the shortest time possible.

Africa must declare war on the unconstitutional change of governments and resolve to take strong and necessary punitive action on all authors of coup de tat and those that provided them with the means to unseat duly elected governments, said Mr wa Mutharika.

He said the AU budget for this year will be used to support programmes and activities implemented by the various AU sectors. He urged all AU member countries to pay their contributions, adding that the money was not even enough to meet all requirements and that there was a need to identify alternative sources.

The AU chairman applauded the decision of the continental body to launch a fund for African women, saying it demonstrated a shared commitment to promote the socio-economic status of women on the continent. The decision, he said, was a practical step to elevate the quest for pronounced action in addressing the needs of women in the continent.

Groups Welcome Appeal of Genocide Charges against Sudan’s Bashir
Howard Lesser/ www1.voanews.com/04 February 2010

Reactions to Wednesday’s International Criminal Court (ICC) appeal of genocide charges against Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir range from a broadside against the U.S. government by Sudan’s foreign ministry, to measured comments from members of the American anti-genocide community.

In Khartoum, foreign ministry spokesman Ambassador Mu’awiya Uthman Khalid blamed Washington for slowing the peace process by sending “negative signals at all times.” He singled out the Save Darfur alliance of American anti-genocide organizations, which he accused of directly hampering the peace process.
In Washington, the president of the largest organization in the alliance, Jerry Fowler of the Save Darfur Coalition, said that Wednesday’s ruling rectifies legal errors that will provide hope to Darfur victims and rebel groups, but will not likely alter the pace of current peace talks in Doha, Qatar or influence the conduct of April presidential elections in Sudan.

“For victims of attacks in Darfur, most of whom believe that they are victims of genocide, it gets a reconsideration of that particular charge. I think in the broader scheme of things, it underscores, though, that regardless of the ultimate outcome on this charge, President Bashir remains a fugitive internationally, and his ability to travel is very limited, and the prospects that he will ultimately face justice continue to be strong,” said Fowler.
Last March, Sudan’s President became the first sitting head of state to be indicted by the International Criminal Court. In their original ruling, the judges of the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber issued an arrest warrant against Mr. Bashir for a total of five counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but the panel threw out charges of genocide that had also been requested by Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo.

Justices said last year that there were insufficient grounds to charge the president with genocide. Save Darfur’s Jerry Fowler says that Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo advanced his appeal of that ruling on Wednesday by convincing the appeals panel that President Bashir should be held accountable for masterminding a campaign of rape, murder, and other crimes against civilians in Darfur.
“The statute of the International Criminal Court is pretty clear in saying that at the arrest warrant stage, you just have to establish a reasonable basis that the crime was committed. And the Pre-Trial Chamber kind of twisted that standard, and they basically insisted that the only reasonable inference from the evidence would be genocide, which made it that the Prosecutor had to show beyond a reasonable doubt. And I think what the Appeals Chamber did was put it back into perspective that at this stage, you have to establish a reasonable basis to believe that the crime was committed,” he explained.

If President Bashir goes on to face trial, Fowler suggests, that is when the standard of proving genocide charges beyond a reasonable doubt will apply. Moreno-Ocampo indicated after Wednesday’s ruling that he would seek permission to furnish additional evidence of what he calls Mr. Bashir’s “genocidal intention.”
The Prosecutor indicated that last year’s eviction of international humanitarian groups from Sudan following the issue of the arrest warrant could constitute part of his new submission.

African countries ranging from neighboring Uganda, to South Africa, Nigeria, and Ghana have told Sudan’s president that as nations abiding by governing ICC statutes, they would have to honor an international arrest warrant if he travels to their territories. Mr. Bashir is visiting Doha, Qatar this week to take part in peace talks between Sudanese government officials and members of selected Darfur rebel groups. Qatar and other countries visited by President Bashir during the past year are not parties to the ICC, and are not under legal obligations to arrest him.

Toward Monday’s close of the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, delegates drafted a resolution voicing the A.U.’s regret that the U.N. Security Council has not called on the Criminal Court to have all charges dropped against the Sudanese president. Since last year, the A.U. has rejected the Bashir indictments on grounds that they would upset peace efforts in Darfur and in southern Sudan. But Save Darfur’s Fowler says that the evidence does not bear out that argument.

“The experience of the last year and a half since the Prosecutor first requested the arrest warrant, which happened in July of 2008, is that it’s not affecting peace negotiations. They’re being driven by their own political dynamics, and in fact, peace negotiations picked up steam after the Prosecutor first requested the arrest warrants. So to that extent, they seem to have a positive impact,” he argued.

Following the March, 2009 ICC indictments, President Bashir’s eviction of dozens of humanitarian NGO’s alarmed western governments concerned about the violence in Darfur and the displaced civilians of southern Sudan. Fowler says that the Obama administration and other governments need to make it clear that the international community will not tolerate a similar expulsion in retaliation for the genocide charges being considered against Sudan’s president.

“I certainly hope that they don’t retaliate, and I think that it’s very important that the United States government and other governments make clear that a retaliation is unacceptable. For the danger that civilians were put into by the expulsions last year was averted only by the heroic efforts by the United Nations and by aid agencies that were left behind. And even now, the civilians are much more vulnerable than they were. So it’s very important that the United States and African governments and other governments make clear to President Bashir that further endangering civilians will not be tolerated,” he said.

The International Criminal Court at the Hague is an independent judicial institution with judges from all over the world. It operates by statute that is signed onto more than 110 countries, including 31 African countries.

AU chief and new UNAMID head discuss peace in Darfur
Thursday 4 February 2010 /www.sudantribune.com

February 3, 2010 (ADDIS ABABA) — The African Union Commission chief, Jean Ping discussed today with new head of the hybrid peacekeeping mission Ibrahim Gambari ways to achieve peace and stability in the restive region of Darfur.

On Wednesday, UNAMID newly appointed head was formally received at the AU Commission Head Quarters in Addis Ababa by the Chairperson of the Commission, who assured him of his “full confidence and support” to carry out his new and challenging assignment as the AU-UN Joint Special Representative in Darfur and Head of UNAMID.

“Professor Gambari pledged to “uphold, defend and promote the hybrid nature of the Mission as a symbol of the AU-UN strategic partnership in supporting peace in Africa,” said the UNAMID spokesperson Noureddine Mezni who is currently in the Ethiopian capital.

“He promised to do everything possible to make UNAMID a successful Mission in order to serve as a model for joint peacekeeping operations in Africa,” he further said.

Gambari told reporters last week in Khartoum he has to make peace first because there is no peace to keep. He pledged to contribute to the ongoing efforts to end the seven years conflict in western Sudan.

Both reiterated their commitment to work towards a lasting peace for Darfur and its people, Noureddine stressed.

Gambari pointed out that this meeting was very useful in adding momentum to the peace process in Sudan in this critical year which will witness the first general democratic elections in the country.

(ST)

Togo ban: AU sports ministers fault CAF
By Adekunle Salami/ www.punchng.com/Thursday, 4 Feb 2010

The sports ministers in the African Union have vowed to challenge the decision of the Confederation of Africa Football to ban Togo from taking part in the Africa Nations Cup in the next two editions.

President of the AU Sports Ministers, Sani Ndanusa of Nigeria, on Wednesday told our correspondent that the body would officially send a letter of protest to CAF.

He noted that the decision of CAF was not compassionate especially to a country that lost two of its representatives to the Nations Cup due to the attack on the team in Cabinda, a volatile city in Angola.

A rebel group unleashed terror on the Togolese team who were in a bus on their way to Luanda on the eve of the Nations Cup, killing the driver (an Angolan) and two members of the Togolese contingent.

The government of Togo withdrew the team from the competition because of the development and that irked CAF as the body termed it interference.

Ndanusa however said, ”CAF went too far and we are going to take a strong position on this unless the decision is reversed.

”The US can go to war with any country over the death of one of its citizens. The players were not in the best frame of mind and recalling them was just normal at least to honour those who died.

”CAF went too far with that decision and we are going to ensure the body allows Togo to take part in the next edition. We are working together in the AU to present a joint position.

The last meeting of the AU Sports Ministers was held last year in Abuja.

UN /ONU :

USA :

U.S. Census Bureau Black History Month Feature for Feb. 4
www.prnewswire.com/ Feb. 4

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Following is the daily Black History Month feature from the U.S. Census Bureau:

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090226/CENSUSLOGO)

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4: EDNA LEWIS

Profile America for the fourth day of Black History Month. Edna Lewis was a tiny woman who strode large on the stage of life and especially the culinary world. One of eight children born in the little hamlet of Freetown, Virginia, she learned true southern cooking from her Aunt Jenny, using a wood-fired stove. In 1948, when an African-American female chef was a rarity, she opened a restaurant in New York City. Lewis wrote several cookbooks, among them the classic “The Taste of Country Cooking.” In the U.S. today, there are 345,000 chefs and head cooks, 21 percent female, and just over 12 percent African-American. This special edition of Profile America for is a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau, conducting the 2010 Census beginning April 1st.

Sources: Statistical Abstract of the United States 2009, t. 596

Profile America is produced by the Public Information Office of the U.S. Census Bureau.

SOURCE U.S. Census Bureau

Malaria Vaccine Boosts Immune Response in Children, Study Shows
February 04, 2010/By Simeon Bennett/Bloomberg

Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) — An experimental malaria vaccine developed by GlaxoSmithKline Plc and the U.S. Army boosted the immune response of African children more than 100-fold, a study showed.

In an early-stage trial of the vaccine in 100 children ages 1 to 6 in Mali, those who received the shots gained the same level of protection normally seen in adults with lifelong exposure to the mosquito-borne disease, researchers from the University of Maryland wrote in the Feb. 4 online edition of the journal PLoS ONE, published by the Public Library of Science.

“These findings imply that we may have achieved our goal of using a vaccine to reproduce the natural protective immunity that normally takes years of intense exposure to malaria to develop,” said Christopher Plowe, who led the research, in a statement.

–Editors: Lena Lee, Jim McDonald.

Zuma fathers 20th child
BY AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE/Feb 4

JOHANNESBURG, Feb 4 – News that President Jacob Zuma, 67, has fathered his 20th child out of wedlock with the daughter of a World Cup organiser has sparked furious debate about the place of polygamy in modern South Africa.

“I couldn’t believe it when I heard it,” said Rose Masetla, 37, a domestic worker in Johannesburg’s upmarket Rosebank neighourhood. “I am disappointed and hurt, I mean he is the president.”

Zuma on Wednesday said he had taken responsibility for his actions, formally acknowledging his paternity of the child born in October to the 39-year-old daughter of his long-time friend Irvin Khoza, one of the top organisers of the World Cup.

Zuma last month married his third current wife under customary law, which allows men to have more than one spouse, and has defended his polygamy as part of his Zulu culture.

He insisted his newest daughter was also a private issue that would be settled in line with Zulu culture, and accused the media of seeking to make money by printing stories about his child.

“The matter is now between the two of us, and culturally, between the Zuma and Khoza families,” he said.

“The media is making money out of the matter,” he said. “The media is also in essence questioning the right of the child to exist and fundamentally, her right to life.”

But Zuma’s defence has sparked a debate over what exactly “culture” means, and how to judge what behaviour is acceptable in a nation with a dozen distinct ethnic groups.

Polygamy remains popular in rural KwaZulu-Natal province, Zuma’s birthplace.

But experts say that traditional polygamy doesn’t allow for extra-marital affairs, while many younger, urban South Africans — especially women — say having multiple spouses is no longer acceptable.

Nokuzola Mndende, director of Icamagu Institute which promotes African culture, said polygamy does not allow for sex outside of marriage.

“Polygamous marriage is like any other marriage, it doesn’t allow extra marital affairs. If a man wants to take another wife he has to follow certain procedures,” Mndende told AFP.

“An extra-marital affair is beyond race, religion or culture. It’s a weakness of men,” she added.

While South Africans widely accepted Zuma’s latest marriage, the report of his lovechild has sparked a public uproar.

Thato Radebe, a 20-year-old unemployed man, said Zuma should be recalled from office for “embarrassing us”.

“It will do the country a lot of good if he is fired. Tourists must be laughing at us now. How is America going to take him seriously and give him money if he is a womaniser? No one is going to trust him,” he said.

A survey last month by the TNS market research firm questioned 2,000 people in South African cities and found that 74 percent feel that it is a problem for a man to have more than one wife at a time.

Opposition parties have accused Zuma of compromising South Africa’s AIDS prevention efforts, which promote condom use and faithfulness to a single sexual partner.

Since Zuma took office in May, he has made repeated public statements about the need to fight the disease, although four years ago he admitted to having extra-marital sex without a condom, but said he had showered to prevent infection.

He argued Wednesday that it was “mischievous” to accuse him of undermining the AIDS campaign, vowing again to “intensify our efforts to promote prevention, treatment, research and the fight against the stigma attached to the epidemic.”

CANADA :

African American Astronauts Seek to Add New Chapter to Black History
Chris Simkins/www1.voanews.com/ 04 February 2010

| Washington
February is Black History Month in the United States and Canada, a national observance that pays tribute to people and events that shaped the history of African-Americans and Canadians. It’s also a time to educate people about the accomplishments of black people and their contributions to society. Last November, two African American astronauts soared into space while reaching new heights in the U.S. Space program.

Six astronauts rocketed toward orbit and the international space station. The mission had special meaning for Dr. Robert (Bobby) Satcher and Leland Melvin. They became the first African-American men to fly together on a shuttle mission.

Astronaut Bobby Satcher became the second African-American to space walk. He also made NASA history, becoming the first orthopedic surgeon in space, conducting a number of medical experiments. He says the future is bright for black astronauts.

“There is still a lot of firsts for us [black astronauts] to do and hopefully we will run out of those firsts pretty quickly because it is certainly my desire that one of the legacies that I would certainly like to leave behind is bringing in more African-American astronauts,” said Bobby Satcher.

Mission specialist Leland Melvin controlled the robotic arm that helped Satcher and his crew during the space walks. Melvin has been an astronaut for 10 years. He says he’s trying to be a role model to young African-Americans.

“So many kids got see two African-American men floating around in space.,” said Leland Melvin. “For a long time a lot of people were not given that opportunity. There were barriers. With dedication and perseverance anyone in this country can do anything they put their mind to and there are no limits.

In the early 1980s Ronald McNair helped to lift the racial barrier at NASA’s astronaut program. McNair and the crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger died when the orbiter exploded shortly after liftoff. Despite the dangers, and other people’s doubts, Melvin says he was determined to be an astronaut.

“I had family members, I had people in my community, that told me, ‘You can’t be an astronaut,” he said. “You don’t have this. You don’t have that.’ And I think we do a disservice to our kids when we tell them what they can’t do instead of telling them what they can do.”

“Why should you be an astronaut? I would say the main reason is if you want to go into outer space,” said Satcher.

Back from their recent mission, Satcher and Melvin are trying to encourage these black students to think about careers in the U.S. space program. Both astronauts stress the importance of education. Satcher has an extraordinary background, with advanced degrees in chemical engineering and medicine from some of the nation’s top universities. He tells these teenagers the key to being an astronaut is having a solid background in math and science.

“they are around the technology everyday, they just need to understand the technology,” said Melvin. “How to make it, how to build it and then they will become scientists and engineers.”

Since 1983 there have been 20 black astronauts in the U.S. space program. Both Melvin and Satcher say they hope there will be many more African-American space explorers inspired by what they’ve accomplished, not only in outer space but on Earth.

Africa: Continent Ripe for Citizen-Led Development Plan
John Githongo and Jamie Drummond/allafrica.com/4 February 2010

There have been real improvements in Africa over the past decade. Economic growth has been averaging about five per cent a year, 34 million more children are in school, malarial death rates have nearly been halved in a number of countries and more than three million people are on life-preserving AIDS medications.

Africa can build on this progress to achieve sustainable development by establishing a new citizens’ compact. This bottom-up approach would ensure that development is devolved, that citizens are connected with new technologies, that executive powers are diffused, that political parties are strengthened and that the integrity of leaders and governance institutions firmly take centre stage.

There are three urgent considerations for such a strategy.

First, African accountability efforts by civil society and think tanks must be expanded dramatically. Efforts such as Twaweza, an East African citizen accountability movement, can be scaled up across the continent and deliver great returns on investment by empowering citizens to demand their rights.

These efforts are easier with today’s technology, especially mobile telephony. From the student who can text a hotline when her teacher does not turn up to the anti-corruption monitor who pores over statistics from national budgets online, new technology is the tool of the activist.

Also, a new citizen strategy should not repeat past mistakes of lionizing specific political leaders – this makes it harder for Africans to hold them to account.

Second, experience shows that constant vigilance on transparency, especially with regard to national budgets, is critical. Thieves have more to hide. Regimes run by kleptocrats are more likely to fumble and fall, with wider security implications.

But it is not just African budgets that must be more transparent. One of the great scandals in development is the lack of good statistics to measure progress – this area needs much more investment. Another scandal is the hypocrisy of most high-profile global promises, such as the vague billions alluded to at the Copenhagen climate change summit.

Donors must be clearer about what is really new money. Canada’s effort to chart all existing G8 development promises and improve accountability is especially important. Companies doing business in Africa must also be more transparent, as must the international banking system, so bribery can be exposed and stolen funds tracked down and recovered.

Third, private investment can also drive the citizens’ strategy. Proliferating mobile telephony is allowing Africans to leap digitally from the developing into the developed world. Africa has tremendous renewable energy potential that is ripe for investment. African stocks have been doing well, although this has been barely noticed by investors abroad.

These measures can increase the effects of new investment to boost education, agriculture and health and fight infectious diseases and climate change. Without them, reversals may occur. With China offering fewer democratic options for development, it is no longer politically incorrect to ask whether democracy really suits Africa. Yet the situations in Kenya and Nigeria both show the challenges which arise in countries where growth takes place but most citizens are excluded.

The 2010 soccer World Cup in South Africa is an opportunity for a rising generation of African entrepreneurs to present a new image of their continent. This is a chance that must be seized, and we propose a new “Africa Rising” fund to capture the moment – campaigners who once rightly called for disinvestment to help end the injustice of apartheid can now call for new investment to help fight the injustice of poverty.

This year is the key moment to renew the right kind of international support for citizen-led development. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s call for greater accountability in G8 development promises and increased investments in child and maternal health are very welcome and we look forward to more details.

European leaders and U.S. President Barack Obama, who has called for a
new global plan to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, are already on board, and the forthcoming G8 and G20 meetings in Canada offer great potential to reinvigorate the global campaign against extreme poverty.

John Githongo is an anti-corruption campaigner and head of the Zinduko Trust and Twaweza in Kenya. Jamie Drummond is executive director of ONE, a global advocacy organisation campaigning for the achievement of the millennium development goals, especially in Africa.

AUSTRALIA :

EUROPE :

Limited impact of the Copenhagen Accord elicits dismay
by Vanya Walker-Leigh/www.maltabusinessweekly.com.mt/04 February 2010

By last Sunday, 55 developed and developing nations had announced greenhouse gas emission reductions in accordance with a deadline set by the Copenhagen Accord emerging from December’s UN climate change conference.

A senior EU climate change negotiator, speaking to this paper on condition of anonymity, said that “there is nothing new: many pledges are conditional. This is still not reassuring vis-à-vis reaching the two degrees Celsius target (global temperature increase above pre-industrial levels) agreed to in Copenhagen”.

Similar dismay at the limited impact of the Accord submissions has been expressed by the United Nations’ senior climate change adviser, Janosz Pastor, and leading environmental NGOs.

The two degrees target itself is now under attack by several leading scientists and research centres as well as by over 100 vulnerable developing nations, as being too weak to stave off catastrophic climate change.

Hastily negotiated by 26 heads of state or government during the final day of the 15th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC-COP 15) and based on a draft agreed by US President, Barack Obama, and China, South Africa, Brazil and India, the weakly-worded three-page Accord was stridently opposed by five developing countries in the closing plenary session. So it could not become an official decision of the conference, delegates merely “taking note” of its contents.

Subsequent speculation about the Accord’s legal nature and implications has been rife, in particular as to whether it would help or hinder negotiations leading up to the 16th conference in Mexico starting on 29 November.

Contrary to the designs of the Danish presidency to collapse talks into a “single track” leading to a Copenhagen agreement – an approach supported by most developed nations, not least the EU, but strongly opposed by developing nations – the COP 15 agreed to extend its two “negotiating tracks” for another year; one on the Kyoto Protocol and the other on further actions under the UNFCCC for action on mitigation, adaptation, finance and technology, framed by a “shared vision”.

Meeting in Delhi on 24 January, the major emitting developing nations – Brazil, South Africa, India and China – strongly supported the two-track approach “facilitated” by the Accord and announced their intention to financially assist vulnerable developing nations.

Some submissions sent into the UNFCCC secretariat, notably those of China and India, did not mention the Accord – nor did the UNFCCC executive secretary, Yvo de Boer, in his comments reported in a press release issued on Monday. A majority of the 194 UNFCCC parties have yet to announce whether they will “associate with” (support) the Accord – although media reports indicate support from this week’s African Union summit.

In contrast, the US submission – conditional on legislation hoped to emerge from US Congress before the next UN conference and delivering a very low cut of about three per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 – strongly supported the Accord, while not mentioning the two-track process.

Any improvement in the current offers (not legally binding) by other emitting countries and the EU hinges on the uncertain prospects for US legislation, due to the recent loss of the Democrat Senate seat ensuring the Administration the majority it needs as well as the looming Congressional elections in the autumn.

Next Thursday’s European Council is expected to discuss latest climate change developments and review the Union’s position on key issues.

CHINA :

Eastern promise
February 04. 2010 / www.thenational.ae

The West bemoans China’s increasing presence in Africa, writes Howard W French, but Beijing’s engagement with the continent could be more productive and sincere than Europe’s ever was.

The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa
Deborah Brautigam
Oxford University Press
Dh112

For the better part of a decade, China’s profile has risen with extraordinary speed in Africa, with its trade, investment and aid primed to transform the world’s poorest continent on a scale that some say is unrivalled since most African nations declared their independence in the early 1960s. Chinese companies have left few corners of the continent untouched, breaking ground on dams and highways, railways and ports, hospitals and universities, new stadiums and airports.

This is not altruism at work. The Chinese are drawn to Africa for the same reason that powerful foreigners have come since the start of the European slave trade in the early 16th century: resource extraction. Alongside their big infrastructure projects in countries like Nigeria, Angola, Gabon and Congo, Chinese have muscled their way into lucrative markets for oil, iron ore, copper and cobalt, and many other commodities.

China’s successes have produced one of the most unbecoming spectacles in the recent history of international relations: cascading howls of moral outrage in the West over Beijing’s “economic conquest” of Africa. The bill of particulars in this indictment is long, but the common thread is a sense of western superiority about China’s record on issues ranging from democracy and human rights to the environment, transparency and corruption.

The West’s tone of high dudgeon leaves little room for irony – yet if ever there was a situation filled with irony, the West’s new-found scruples toward Africa would seem to fit the bill.

China, for its part, has responded to western indignation mostly with its own clumsy propaganda. But in Africa, at least, the Chinese don’t have to work hard to outshine the West – for reasons that Europeans and Americans now seem eager to forget.

To begin with, the scars inflicted by the West in Africa are legion. Not only do they still loom in living memory, many of them remain open and unhealed. When Guinea’s first leader, Sékou Touré, opted for independence from Paris in 1958, for example, France immediately cut off financial aid, withdrew its technicians from the country and carted away whatever it could to cripple the new African government. This included administrative records, telephones, typewriters, air-conditioners and, it is said, even copper wiring.

For a long time after this humiliation, Guinea mouldered in isolation and autarky and it has never really recovered from this false start as a nation. France may have granted the rest of its African colonies independence two years later, but it held them in a smothering paternalistic embrace that would gradually turn extraordinarily corrupt.

The point here is not to pick on France. The West’s record of awfulness in Africa is generalised. At the same time Paris was kicking the Guineans, Belgium was proclaiming its ambition to indefinitely hold onto Congo, a mineral-rich colony larger than all of Western Europe. In 1960, when the Congolese demanded and won independence, they inherited a country with only three African managers in its entire civil service. The new country began life with no military officers, a mere 30 university graduates and a single lawyer.

As if that were not challenge enough, from the start, Belgium conspired with the United States to undermine and quickly overthrow and assassinate Congo’s first leader, the democratically elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, replacing him Mobutu Sese Seko, a dictator who ran a regime of ruinous corruption for three decades.

One could go on and on in this vein, up to the present day, like the blind eye turned to some of the worst despotism in the world today in Equatorial Guinea, because of a similar thirst for its petroleum. Suffice to say that in most places, the Western record is appalling.

There are, however, more immediate reasons why the Chinese need no fancy public relations. The implicit signal they are sending to the continent is one of the most refreshing messages that Africans have received from any quarter in decades.

For China, Africa does not conjure the gut responses that have become common in the West of a dreary burden or a guilty memory. On the contrary, Chinese interest, from eager investment to booming trade, fairly exclaims “we see you not as some hopeless or repugnant cesspool, but as a huge and largely open frontier of opportunity.”

For China’s cash-rich and nimbly opportunistic corporate sector, in particular, what Africa represents can be summed up quite neatly: the future.

Deborah Brautigam, the author of The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa, understands all of this far better than most who have written on this subject. Her richly detailed book has many technical merits, but its greatest strength may in fact be her understanding of this psychological dynamic.

There is a central African proverb that says: “The hand that gives is the hand that commands.” China has come to pay cash on the barrel, eschewing most of the belittling rituals and hollow generosity of the aid game. Brautigam mounts a stout defence of this kind of growing engagement with Africa; so stout and systematic, in fact, that one can imagine many of its arguments being made by Chinese themselves.

But one would be wrong to hastily dismiss the author for what some will perceive as Chinese sympathies in this matter. The universe of third-party experts who are deeply familiar with both China and Africa is vanishingly small, and Brautigam is easily one of the best qualified members of this select tribe. Her observations about China and the continent come hard-earned. Some of the book’s best material draws on her experiences early in her academic career as a young researcher travelling in places like rural Sierra Leone in the early 1980s.

Her involvement with China coincidentally dates to the same period, when she travelled there as one of the first generation of foreign students after the country opened up to the outside world following Mao’s death and the end of the Cultural Revolution.

One of the main achievements of The Dragon’s Gift is shattering the many myths and misperceptions that have fuelled the almost-Victorian western depiction of a weak and defenceless Africa, seduced and ravaged by the Chinese interloper. And in this, the media, which are careless with their facts and quick to accentuate the negative, emerge as an ever-ready foil.

For starters, the Chinese haven’t just arrived in Africa. Beijing has been conscious of the continent as an important source of both political support and natural resources since it began mounting assistance projects there in the 1960s. Though much poorer then, China was already taking a long view of its prospects in Africa, forging relationships that have endured through investments large and small.

China makes no pretence that its aid to Africa is selfless or altruistic, and for Brautigam, this is exactly how things ought to be – especially for a country that still has hundreds of millions of its own poor. According to Brautigam, the roots of China’s African strategy lay in the country’s experience with Japan during the early years of China’s opening and reform era in the 1980s, when Japan allowed a capital-poor China to finance its imports of badly needed modern industrial equipment with oil and other natural resources, rather than cash.

Emulating Japan, China has gone on to
broadly apply this pattern in Africa, where in countries like Angola and Congo it has engineered huge and controversial resource for infrastructure deals.

Brautigam handily disproves, however, the commonplace assertion that China concentrates its energies disproportionately on the continent’s mineral storehouses, with findings that show Chinese aid and investment are present nearly everywhere in Africa. What is even more interesting is the way that she illustrates how tightly the two are bound together.

A central motif in the recent Western panic over China’s supposed takeover of Africa is the booming Chinese aid to the continent. By 2006, when China organised a grand summit, hosting leaders from all over the continent, it announced it would commit $20 billion over three years to support Chinese exports and business in Africa. By comparison, the World Bank’s commitments over the same period amounted to $17 billion. Headline writers everywhere rushed to the conclusion that China was outstripping the West as a source of aid.

Exhibiting a care for detail rare to this topic, Brautigam explains that the bulk of China’s development assistance in Africa has not taken the form of foreign aid: most often it is lending from the country’s Export-Import Bank and other official entities, for which Beijing expects a profitable return, even if a slim one.

China’s true aid, which is still relatively modest, is typically given as part of a package not just to obtain minerals, as the stereotype would have it, but to leverage open African economies to Chinese exports, to Chinese industry, and even, increasingly, to Chinese migration.

The shrillest notes of the alarmists – that China is pillaging the continent and undermining good government by showering no-strings packages on resource-rich countries while propping up their pariah regimes – merit much of the scorn the author accords them. It is equally clear there is upside potential to China’s massive push. Africa, for one, is desperately in need of infrastructure, and China is suddenly building more of it than anyone else. What is more, China is helping to integrate the continent into the global economy with a vigour that surpasses anything that Western-driven aid or extractive enclave industries like oil have managed to do before.

There remain, nonetheless, many reasons for concern. Resource-based investments that go straight through the president’s office in undemocratic countries rarely turn out well, and China has had nothing to say about democracy, and too little about transparency and accountability.

Where Brautigam sees a strong potential upside in a kind of trickle down industrialisation, through which China casts off undesired factories to Africa, because they are too polluting or not hi-tech enough, others warn of the makings of new environmental disasters and industrial dead-ends.

Where some may applaud the access to new capital from China, others worry reasonably that Beijing’s export financing amounts to a seductive new mercantilism that will dump cheap manufactures into African markets, dooming indigenous industry.

To its great credit, The Dragon’s Gift takes a well-informed look at much of this scepticism before the author delivers, time and again, her reassuring best guess that the Chinese impact will be, as the book’s name implies, a net positive.

Brautigam is at her best by far, though, with Chinese sources, Chinese explanations, and in the end, Chinese rationales, and it strikes this reader as odd that someone so acutely aware of the skewed presentations of the Western press could have come up substantially short on considered African voices and analysis.

The world is already long accustomed to the West knowing what’s best for Africa. Here, we are told why China’s approach is good for the continent. One still awaits, indeed yearns for a critical missing piece of this picture: how Africans see themselves fitting into our shifting global puzzle.

Howard W French, who covered both Africa and China for the New York Times, is the author of A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa.

China-Africa economic co-op committee founded
(Xinhua)/ www.chinadaily.com.cn/ 2010-02-04

BEIJING: A gathering was held here Wednesday to mark the establishment of the China-Africa Economic and Technology Cooperation Committee (CAETCC) of China Economic and Social Council (CESC).

About 80 diplomats from over 40 African countries and near 100 Chinese officials attended the gathering.

Zhao Qizheng, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) said that China would like to share the development experience with the African countries, to overcome difficulties in the process of development and boost bilateral cooperation.

CAETCC official Wei Jianguo said, the committee would work to actively promote exchanges and cooperation between the Chinese business circle and African countries.

Ghanian Ambassador to China Helen Mamle Kofi said that China’s remarkable achievements in the process of globalization gave Africa an aspiring example to follow in terms of economic, financial, social, technological and cultural integration.

She said, there is also the need for the CAETCC to regularly send “credible, timely and comprehensive information” to the investment and business community and, together with African officials, to provide accurate information regarding their countries.

The CAETCC is a working platform created by the CESC in an effort to deepen bilateral relations between the CESC and the economic and social councils and similar institutions in Africa, promote China-Africa economic and technological cooperation and increase mutual understanding and friendship among people from both sides

Uganda backs Tullow in oil stakes battle
Thu Feb 4, 2010/By Elias Biryabarema/Reuters

KAMPALA (Reuters) – Uganda has approved Tullow Oil’s pre-emption right over the sale by Heritage Oil of a stake in their jointly held oil prospects, the state minister for minerals said on Thursday.

The decision paves the way for Tullow to develop the fields in the west of the African nation, probably partnering with China’s CNOOC, although France’s Total was also on a shortlist.

Minister Peter Lokeris told Reuters that senior Energy Ministry officials met President Yoweri Museveni on February 2 and backed Tullow’s position – effectively stopping Italy’s Eni SpA from buying Heritage’s stake in blocks 1 and 3A.

“We met and considered all the various aspects regarding this transaction, notably Tullow’s plans to farm-down once they acquire Heritage’s assets and contractual obligations involved in previous agreements, and agreed to approve Tullow’s pre-emption right,” Lokeris said by telephone.

“Cabinet will sit next week and finalise everything and make an announcement,” he told Reuters.

Jersey-based explorer Heritage agreed in December to sell its half-share in Blocks 1 and 3A to Eni for up to $1.5 billion. But Tullow, which owns the rest of the two oil blocks, exercised a pre-emption right.

Explorers discovered crude deposits in 2006 that they say could amount to billions of barrels of oil in the Albertine Graben, on Uganda’s western border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. Production is expected to start later this year.

INDIA :

Shoprite selling India hypermarket to Future-paper
Feb 4/ (Reuters)

MUMBAI, Feb 4 (Reuters) – Shoprite Holdings (SHPJ.J), Africa’s biggest grocer, is selling its sole hypermarket in India to the Future Group that runs India’s largest listed shopping chain, Pantaloon Retail (PART.BO), the Economic Times said.

Cyclical Consumer Goods

Citing two unidentified people familiar with the development, the newspaper said on Thursday the Indian group is buying the 6,500 square feet Shoprite outlet at a Mumbai mall along with its employees to set up a food store.

It did not give financial details but said the South African firm had called off its franchisee deal with Indian real estate developer Nirmal Lifestyle Group, which owns the mall where the hypermarket is located.

“We are currently in talks and I do not want to comment on anything further,” Kishore Biyani, the chief executive of Future Group, was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

Ram Harishankar, executive director of Shoprite Group in India, could not be reached for comment, the paper said, while Nirmal Lifestyle Managing Director Dharmesh Jain declined to speak on the development. (Reporting by Janaki Krishnan; Editing by Ranjit Gangadharan)

India asks G-77 to stay united over climate change talks
economictimes.indiatimes.com/ IANS/4 Feb 2010

UNITED NATIONS: India has asked the Group of 77 developing countries to stay united to see that climate change negotiations address “the glaring
injustice that those worst affected by climate change are the least responsible for it”.

“The G-77 must remain united as we strive to redress this injustice,” India’ s Permanent Representative to the UN, Hardeep Singh Puri, said Wednesday at a meeting here of the group on brainstorming on climate change issues.

“This injustice is acute to countries of Africa, to the LDCs (Least Developed Countries), and to the SIDS (Small Island Developing States) whose very survival as viable nation states is in jeopardy,” he said.

Like many other developing countries, India was among the worst affected by climate change, Puri said. “India, therefore, has a major interest in ensuring that climate change is addressed substantively and constructively.”

India was voluntarily and proactively undertaking numerous measures to address climate change, he said.

“However, there cannot be any renegotiation or dilution of the principles and provisions of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), in particular the principle of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.”

“Efforts to address climate change must be firmly embedded in a demonstrably equitable access to atmospheric space for every citizen of the globe, with adequate finance and technology available to all developing countries,” Puri said.

“It is imperative that the G-77 remains united in pursuing these common objectives,” he said, stressing “solidarity that has been the bedrock of this diverse Group must be maintained and strengthened”.

While acknowledging the Copenhagen Accord “was a high-level political understanding among the participants on some of the contentious issues”, Brazil, South Africa, India and China, or the BASIC countries, also hoped that it would facilitate the two-track negotiating process under the Bali Roadmap, Puri said.

Somali Pirates Hijack North Korean-flagged Ship
www.newstimeafrica.com/Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Somali pirates have once again struck, this time hijacking a North Korean cargo ship on Wednesday with an unknown number of crew on board, the European Union Naval Force said. The 4,800-ton ship is owned by Libya’s White Sea Shipping and it is not clear how many crew members were on board or where they came from. The attack comes two days after pirates released a Greek-owned vessel and its crew months after hijacking it off Somalia.

Commander Anders Kallin of the EU Naval Force said that MV Rim was seized outside the patrol base of the EU Naval Force. The Horn of Africa nation is the perfect breeding ground for pirate’s base because the U.N.-backed transitional federal government is too busy fighting two Islamist insurgent groups to patrol its shores or go after pirates on land. The presence of warships from the European Union, the United States, China, Japan, Russia, India and other nations has reduced the number of attacks on merchant and leisure ships in the Gulf of Aden.

As many as 30 ships are patrolling the gulf at any one given time, naval officials said, and patrol missions was not being reduced over the holidays. Due to the tight security conducted by the western naval forces the pirates have resulted to moving to the Eastern and southern coast as of Somalia where patrol are virtually non existence. The Gulf of Aden, off the northern coast of Somalia, has the highest risk of piracy in the world. About 25,000 ships use the channel south of Yemen, between the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea.

BRASIL:

Black History Month: Significant Moments in African-American History
synapse.ucsf.edu/2010/February/4

(Ed.’s note: February is Black History Month. For each of our issues in February, Synapse will publish “snapshots” of significant dates in African-American history.)
August 1619: the first Africans arrive in Virginia.

The first known Africans to arrive in the future United States were “20 and odd” men and women who arrived at Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. They were brought there by English pirates, who had seized the Africans from a Portuguese slave ship bound for Brazil.

The slave ship was seized off the coast of Mexico by two English pirate ships, the Treasurer and the White Lion. The pirates took some of the slaves and fled – both ships would arrive in the English colony of Jamestown within a few days of each other in the summer of 1619.

The Africans were originally from the kingdoms of Ndongo and Kongo, which comprise modern-day Angola. Both kingdoms were conquered by the Portuguese in the 1500s. The Kingdom of Ndongo had officially converted to Christianity in 1490, so it is likely that the Africans who landed in Virginia were Christians.

The English pirates traded the Africans as slaves for provisions from the white Virginians. Thus, these Africans were the first in the long line of African slaves in the United States. We do know that not all these Africans were enslaved for life – at least some of them were freed after a number of years as indentured servants.

Millions more Africans would be transported across the Atlantic as slaves, until Britain banned the slave trade in 1834. Some 30 years later, it would take the Civil War, the bloodiest conflict in American history, to end black slavery in the United States.

From passports to petals
By Ginny Smith / www.philly.com/ Thu, Feb. 4, 2010

Brazilian samba music, talking parrots, and sprays of exotic flowers and seed-covered African masks highlighted yesterday’s introduction of 2010’s newly renamed Philadelphia International Flower Show, themed “Passport to the World.”
The show, scheduled Feb. 28 to March 7 at the Convention Center, will showcase the flora, and sometimes fauna, of Brazil, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Africa.

An Explorer’s Garden will highlight plants that have been introduced or discovered over the years by members of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, which dates to 1827, and other adventurous Philadelphians.

Society president Jane G. Pepper also told the small gathering at World Cafe Live in University City that the show will have two new features this year: downloadable tickets from the website http://www.theflowershow.com/ and a free cell-phone tour similar to those available at the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s major shows.

Despite the economy, officials are hoping for a good turnout. The show traditionally brings in $1 million for the horticultural society’s urban greening programs, which are recognized as a national model.

Meryl Levitz, president of the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation, cited the annual event as a major moneymaker for the city. Showgoers pour $35 million annually into the city economy, she said.

One of the major beneficiaries of that largesse is the Reading Terminal Market, directly across the street from the Convention Center, which typically gets more than 230,000 additional visitors during the show’s eight-day run.

“The flower show is our Holy Grail, our World Series, our Super Bowl,” said Paul Steinke, the market’s general manager.

EN BREF, CE 04 février 2010 … AGNEWS / OMAR, BXL,04/02/2010