{jcomments on}OMAR, AGNEWS, BXL, le 14 avril 2010 – ZimOnline- April 14, 2010–Zimbabwe’s MDC party on Tuesday said its leader and the country’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was not planning to travel to Europe next week to call for lifting of sanctions against President Robert Mugabe and his inner circle.

RWANDA

UGANDA

Key Senate Committee Urges Uganda To Dump Anti-Gay Bill
By Carlos Santoscoy /www.ontopmag.com/Published: April 14, 2010

A key Senate committee approved a resolution Tuesday urging Ugandan lawmakers to dump a controversial anti-gay bill.

Tomeika Bowden, a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer, confirmed to On Top Magazine that members had voted the resolution out of committee, but would not comment on when the full Senate would vote on the bill.

The resolution, authored by Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, calls on members of the Parliament of Uganda to reject MP David Bahati’s bill that includes a death penalty provision for people who repeatedly engage in gay sex and those who are HIV-positive. The bill also bans the “promotion of homosexuality,” which would effectively outlaw political organizations, broadcasters and publishers that advocate on behalf of gay rights.

The bill’s tangled language could allow straight folks to be put to death, as well. The death penalty provision applies to anyone who is found guilty of “aggravated homosexuality,” a term used to describe a repeat offender. Those offenses include failing to report to officials knowledge of a person who is gay. Therefore, a person does not need to engage in gay sex to bring the death penalty to bear.

Since its February introduction, the resolution had attracted 22 co-sponsors, including Republican Senators Bob Casey, Jr. of Pennsylvania, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Susan Collins of Maine.

A similar House resolution, also introduced in February, has yet to be heard in the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The committee is chaired by California Representative Howard L. Berman, the resolution’s primary sponsor.

Both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama criticized the proposal at the National Prayer Breakfast in February. Obama described the measure as “odious.”

In addition to urging the Uganda Parliament to reject the anti-gay bill, the resolution also “urges all countries around the world to reject and repeal similar laws that criminalize homosexuality, and encourages the United States Department of State to closely monitor human rights abuses that occur because of sexual orientation.”

Invisible children movement raises money at University event
.By Savannah Abbott/www.kansan.com/Wednesday, April 14, 2010

A few years ago, Pepito, a teenager from Uganda, was trying to raise enough money to go to high school.
When Pepito was three, his father was killed by the Lord’s Resistance Army, a militant group based in northern Uganda. His sister was abducted, and later killed. That same year, Pepito said, his mother abandoned him. From then on, Pepito lived on his own, trying to raise enough money to feed himself and make it through school, which is not free in Uganda.

He tried working in construction or as a security guard, but both jobs were extremely dangerous.

Now, Pepito is touring the United States, asking young people to help raise money for kids like him — kids who can barely afford to live, let alone pay for high school.

Pepito is a part of the Legacy Tour, the Invisible Children movement’s latest program. As part of the Legacy Tour, the group is asking students to fund scholarships for kids in Uganda. The Legacy Tour came to the University Tuesday, and showed a screening of its film “GO” to about 60 students. Because of the war in northern Uganda, the living conditions and educational opportunities for these kids have drastically changed.

“I’ve grown up in the warzone, I’ve seen what war looks like,” Pepito said. “I’ve known what war looks like from the time of birth.”

Invisible Children is dedicated to using media to influence the war in Uganda. During its tour of the nation the Invisible Children group has shown its films to thousands of young people.

The scholarship fund commits a young person to pay $35 dollars a month. This money pays for a Ugandan student’s entire education, from secondary to university level. It also provides students with a mentor, a role model and a guide for life. There are currently 800 Ugandan students receiving scholarships to attend school at the secondary and university levels.

Okot Geoffrey Howard, a program manager of the Invisible Children Scholarship Program who lived in Uganda, is Pepito’s mentor. Pepito has aspirations to be a lawyer and Howard is determined to help him reach that goal.

“My biggest task is to continue mentoring him to be whatever he wants to be,” Howard said. “My experience was often far worse than Pepito’s, but I’m so glad I’m here as his role model.”

When he was six years old, Howard said, he was forced to walk barefoot to escape abduction and to survive. Abducted children were forced to join the Lord’s Resistance Army, Howard said.

“When I go to sleep in my bedroom, I sleep with my lights on,” Howard said. “When I go to sleep with them off, I see a lot of the sad memories from when I was young.”

KUganda, an on-campus group that works directly with the Invisible Children movement, hosted Tuesday’s event.

Alex Linderer, a sophomore from Lenexa, and is co-vice-president of KUganda, said that the Invisible Children movement was important because of the role it played in Uganda.

“It provides jobs for Northern Ugandans and builds schools for its children to learn and to grow into leaders,” Linderer said. “Americans aren’t going to rebuild northern Uganda, northern Ugandans are.”

Four scholarships were raised for Ugandan students Tuesday night. Invisible Children representative Adam Palumbo said that the tour had raised more than 1600 secondary level scholarships and more than 50 university level scholarships for Ugandan students.

“I don’t think the benefits of somebody’s efforts can ever be truly measured,” Linderer said. “But I know that if everything I’ve done, if everything the people in KUganda or Invisible Children have ever done, has helped even one child in northern Uganda have a better life, it has been worth it.”

— Edited by Kate Larrabee

TANZANIA:

CONGO RDC :

US reaffirms readiness to help Angolan returnees from DR Congo
Source: Xinhua/world.globaltimes.cn/April 14 2010

US Ambassador to Angola Dan Mozena on Tuesday said his country is ready to assist the Angolan government in helping returnees from neighbouring the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) to integrate into local societies in Angola’s northern Uige province.
The ambassador made the remarks at a hand-over ceremony goods, equipment and seeds estimated at 50,000 US dollars in Luanda to assist some 4,000 Angolan returnees or some 800 families to rebuild their lives in Uige province.
The US aid enhanced the intervening capacity of the Angolan government in the refugee issue between Angola and DR Congo, the director for cooperation in the ministry of social welfare and reintegration, Alexandre Diogo, said at the ceremony.
Addressing the press at the hand over ceremony, Diogo said the donation will contribute to the efforts made to address the needs of the disadvantaged.
Ties between Angola and DR Congo soured in recent years due to historical reasons but the two countries have reportedly agreed to stop expelling refugees from both sides.

KENYA :

COPS PROBE NEW LEAD IN 1988 JULIE MURDER
By Matt Blake /www.mirror.co.uk/ 14/04/2010

A new probe into the murder of British tourist Julie Ward in Kenya has been launched – 22 years after she was killed.

Six British detectives and a forensic officer have flown there to follow up new leads in the case, which could include new DNA evidence.

Julie, 28, vanished on a photographic tour of the Masai Mara game reserve in 1988. Her burnt and mutilated body was found a week later. Kenyan authorities first said Julie, of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, had been attacked by wild animals – but later accepted she was murdered. Two park rangers were cleared of her murder in 1992 and the reserve’s head warden was acquitted in 1999. Kenya reopened the case in 2005.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: “Our officers continue to work closely with, and receive positive co-operation from, Kenyan authorities.”

Julie’s father John – who had accused Kenya and some British authorities of obstructing the initial investigation – said: “We’ve got the right people in place in London and in Kenya, and the two together provide a formidable force to go forward. If this can be solved, this is the time.”

A report by Jon Stoddart – now chief constable of Durham – into the original probe criticised Scotland Yard as well as “brazen, deceitful” Kenyan police.

ANGOLA :

SOUTH AFRICA:

South Africa Deploying Police & Soldiers In Agricultural Areas To Protect White Farmers
By Robert Weller Cape Town : South Africa/ www.allvoices.com/ Apr 14, 2010

Government reacting to threats against white farmers to protect food supply

In the wake of publicized attacks on white farmers, South Africa’s government plans to deploy police and soldiers in agricultural areas.

Its neighbor to the north, Zimbabwe has allowed most farmers to be driven off their land, a key factor in the collapse of President Robert MugabePresident Robert Mugabe’s economy.

Julius MalemaJulius Malema, the leader of the ruling African National Congress’s Youth League, had been stirring up resentment of white farmers in South Africa, singing a song calling for their murder. Two such recent killings were attributed, at least in part, to incitement by Malema.

One of those killed was the aging white supremacist leader EugeneEugene Terreblanche. Though he was hardly a popular national figure, when two employees hacked him to death while he was sleeping, it brought South Africa to possibly its most fragile point since the end of white-minority rule in 1994.

Although there would never be a good time for such tension, the country is preparing to host the World Cup.

Still, President Jacob ZumaJacob Zuma was slow to call Malema on the carpet; he had once said Malema might one day make a fine president.

Ultimately, Zuma and the ANC virtually made Malema a pariah, giving a list of reasons. His decision to side with Mugabe in his dispute with the Zimbawe opposition, Malema forcing a BBC journalist to leave a news conference, and his continued flouting of court orders to stop singing the song calling for the killings of farmers.

On Tuesday, Agriculture Minister Tina Joemart-Petterson condemned violence against farmers, the South African Press Association reported. South Africa is one of the few African nations that feeds itself. Combined with its mineral riches, it maintained its strong economy after the transition to black rule.

“The government condemns, in all its manifestations, the violence aimed at farmers and farmworkers,” Joemat-Pettersson told MPs in the National Assembly.

“In this regard, under the leadership of the minister of police, we have deployed soldiers to patrol our borders, especially to curb and arrest activities around stock theft and illegal cross-border movement of agricultural commodities.

Zuma and the ruling party faced a difficult task in dealing with Malema. Many black South Africans have been disappointed that eliminating the apartheid regime did not improve their financial position more dramatically. On the other hand, to keep the economy strong, in the hopes that it ultimately would benefit the black majority more, it remains crucial to avoid white flight.

South Africa to Follow Poland in Weakening Currency, BNP Says
April 14, 2010/By Garth Theunissen/Bloomberg

April 14 (Bloomberg) — South Africa is likely to follow Poland’s lead in buying foreign currency to weaken its exchange rate as the rand’s 29 percent rally against the dollar since 2008 hampers the economy’s recovery, BNP Paribas SA said.

The rand has surged the most among 10 currencies in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, returning more than six times the Polish zloty’s 4.2 percent advance since 2008. The gains are pushing the rand toward a key level of 7 per dollar, which it last breached in January 2008.

“We are very, very close to the point at which the South African Reserve Bank will begin to intervene in the market to limit the strength of the rand,” Bartosz Pawlowski, an emerging-markets strategist at BNP, said in an interview in Johannesburg. “If it gets to about 7 to the dollar we think they’ll start to intervene more aggressively.”

The National Bank of Poland bought foreign currency to lower the zloty for the first time since 1998 last week and said it may do so again. While South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan and central bank Governor Gill Marcus have said they’re concerned by the rand’s strength, the country’s net reserves were unchanged last month, suggesting the central bank hasn’t boosted foreign currency purchases.

The Reserve Bank faces calls to weaken the rand from exporters and labor groups who say the currency’s strength is stalling a recovery from the country’s first recession in 17 years. The number of South Africans claiming unemployment benefits surged an annual 71 percent in the year through February as factories and mines cut jobs, Labor Minister Membathisi Mdladlana said yesterday.

Carry Trade

As well as buying foreign currency, policy makers should consider lowering the benchmark interest rate further to deter “speculative” capital inflows that have fueled rand gains, Pawlowski said. The central bank unexpectedly cut South Africa’s main rate by 50 basis points on March 25 to 6.5 percent, the lowest in at least 12 years. Even so, the rand remains an attractive purchase for so-called carry trades given benchmark deposit returns of 0.1 percent in Japan and 0.25 percent in the U.S., Pawlowski said.

The rand declined 0.4 percent yesterday to 7.2923 per dollar. A depreciation to 8 or 8.50 per dollar would be “preferable for the economy without damaging the inflation outlook,” according to Pawlowski.

Poland’s intervention triggered the biggest decline in the zloty in two months on April 9. The central bank probably bought between 50 million euros ($67 million) and 70 million euros, said Robert Narkowicz, a trader at PKO Bank Polski in Warsaw.

The zloty lost 0.2 percent to 3.8751 per euro yesterday in Warsaw. A zloty rate of about 3.80 per euro “is okay” but a level of between 4 and 4.20 to the euro would enable faster economic growth without impacting negatively on inflation, he said.

–Editors: Ana Monteiro, Gavin Serkin.

The Bank Loan That Could Break South Africa’s Back
by Patrick Bond/ mrzine.monthlyreview.org/14042010

Just how dangerous is the World Bank and its neo-conservative president, Robert Zoellick, to South Africa and the global climate?

Notwithstanding South Africa’s existing $75 billion foreign debt, last Thursday the bank added a $3.75bn loan to Eskom for the primary purpose of building the world’s fourth-largest coal-fired power plant, at Medupi, which will spew 25 million tons of the climate pollutant carbon dioxide each year.

SA Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan repeatedly said that this is the bank’s “first” post-apartheid loan, yet its 1999 and 2008 Country Assistance Strategy documents show conclusively that Medupi is the 15th credit since 1994.

Gordhan also claimed the loan will now help South Africa “build a relationship” with the bank. He forgets the bank co-authored the 1996 Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) programme, which led us to overtake Brazil as the world’s most unequal major country, as black incomes fell below 1994 levels and white incomes grew by 24 percent, according to official statistics.

Gordhan neglects that the World Bank itself regularly brags about its “knowledge bank” role here. In 1999, for example, after economist John Roome suggested to then water minister Kader Asmal that the government impose “a credible threat of cutting service” to people who cannot afford water, the Bank’s Country Assistance Strategy reported that its “market-related pricing” advice was “instrumental in facilitating a radical revision in South Africa’s approach.” As a result, the cholera epidemic the following year — catalyzed by water disconnections — killed hundreds.

Similar misery will follow the Eskom loan. Medupi will be built in a water-scarce area where communities are already confronting extreme mining pollution. Forty new Limpopo and Mpumalanga coal mines will be opened to provide inputs to Medupi and its successor Kusile.

More worryingly, power-plant construction plans include a pay-off of $135 million profit for the ANC, whose investment arm owns a quarter of Hitachi, which received a $5 billion Eskom contract. So blatant is the conflict of interest that the government’s public protector last month judged Valli Moosa — then chair of Eskom and an ANC finance committee member — to have acted “improperly.” Official embarrassment is acute, especially since the Bank issued a major report, Quiet Corruption, just weeks ago. This is a prime case.

The potential sale of the ANC’s share in Hitachi within the next six weeks (announced and then retracted) doesn’t really mitigate matters, given Medupi’s huge cost escalations (from $5.5 billion to $18 billion) and the increased value of Hitachi’s shares thanks to the improper, corrupt contract.

Five dozen SA civic, environmental, church, academic, and labor organizations began a campaign against the World Bank loan in February. They are concerned not only that catastrophic climate change will be hastened, along with privatization of electricity generation, but worse, Medupi’s main beneficiary will be the world’s largest metals and mining corporations, which already receive the world’s cheapest electricity thanks to multi-decade deals cut in the last years of apartheid. In early April, a small modification was made to one sweetheart Special Pricing Agreement — but it was to BHP Billiton’s “advantage,” the Melbourne-based company reported.

Medupi’s vast costs will mainly be passed on to people who cannot afford to pay the loan, through a 127 percent electricity price increase over four years. Protests against service delivery deficits make South Africa among the world’s most dissent-rich countries and COSATU is threatening a national strike against Eskom that may well last into the World Cup, which starts on June 11.

South African civic groups and their 140 international allies now say they will start financial punishment of the institution, harking back to the World Bank bonds boycott launched by the late poet-activist Dennis Brutus exactly a decade ago.

In response to Brutus’s call, the city of San Francisco and other municipalities pledged not to buy Bank bonds. Scores of major financial institutions and endowment funds followed suit, including the world’s largest pension fund, TIAA-CREF, whose annual meetings Brutus visited on three occasions.

With the focus now broadening to include climate, San Francisco supervisor Ross Mirkarimi reacted angrily to the Eskom financing: “The loan provides sobering proof that the World Bank’s recent talk about its commitment to climate finance was nothing but a bunch of hot air. We will renew our commitment to keep our clean money from being tarnished by investment in the bank’s coal-dirtied bonds.”

To understand why the bank took this huge risk — with major shareholders like the US and European countries abstaining from voting — requires insights into its leader, Zoellick. A major player in the “war on terror,” Zoellick served as number two at George W Bush’s State Department and then in 2007 replaced World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, who was fired by the bank board for arranging a plush State Department job for his girlfriend.

Like Wolfowitz, Zoellick was at the outset a proud member of the neo-conservative think tank, the Project for a New American Century, and as early as January 1998 went on record arguing that Iraq should be illegally overthrown. In the same period, Zoellick also worked for Fannie Mae, Enron, and Alliance Capital, all of which effectively went bankrupt.

From 2001-05, Zoellick was the US trade minister, and his bumbling at the 2003 Cancun ministerial summit confirmed the World Trade Organization’s subsequent demise. And just prior to becoming World Bank president, Zoellick was a top executive at Goldman Sachs, widely blamed for amplifying the 2008-09 global financial crisis.

Zoellick’s efforts promoting the bank as lead climate financier at the December 2009 UN Copenhagen climate summit were equally unsuccessful, and the bank’s backing of carbon markets has now widely been decried as a lost cause.

Zoellick has broken many things in his career, and having now granted Eskom the $3.75 billion loan, he can add to his belt some new notches: the budgets of poor and working South Africans who will suffer the demise of their electricity budget, local ecology, national democracy, and the climate.
Patrick Bond directs the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society in Durban: .

AFRICA / AU :

Five pirate suspects to face charges in U.S.
From Mike Mount, CNN Senior Pentagon Producer /April 14, 2010

Washington (CNN) — Five suspected Somali pirates accused of attacking a U.S. Navy ship could be sent to the United States to face criminal proceedings, according to U.S. military officials.

This is only the second time U.S. authorities have brought pirate suspects from Somalia to the United States to possibly face trial.

The five are being held aboard the USS Nicholas — the guided-missile frigate they are accused of attacking — off the Horn of Africa and will be transferred to Department of Justice authority in the coming days, officials said.

Although the United States worked with Kenya to create a system to try pirate suspects in that country, the Kenyan government told Washington that its court system is overburdened and cannot accept more cases.

The suspects are expected to be moved to the U.S. base in Djibouti and then flown to Norfolk, Virginia, according to the officials.

The Department of Justice has enough evidence on the five to prosecute them, according to military officials. The expectation is they will be tried in federal court.

They will be moved to Norfolk because the Nicholas is based in the southern Virginia port city, and Norfolk jurisdiction follows the ship wherever it goes, according to the officials.

A Justice Department spokesman declined comment.

The five, believed to all be from Somalia, have been held on the USS Nicholas after the ship was fired upon April 1.

The Navy ship reported taking fire from a possible pirate skiff west of the Seychelles, a group of islands off the east coast of Africa, according to a U.S. Navy statement.

The Nicholas quickly returned fire and began pursuing the skiff, which was eventually disabled. A boarding team from the Nicholas captured and detained three people, the statement said.

Two more suspects were captured on a confiscated “mother ship,” the statement said.

The Navy is holding 21 pirate suspects on three ships off the coast of Africa, including the five who will be sent back to the United States, according to Navy officials.

Ten are expected to be turned over to Oman because they had attacked an Omani-flagged ship. The United States assisted in that ship’s rescue, according to Pentagon officials.

The remaining six suspects could also be sent back to the United states if the federal government finds enough evidence to prosecute them, the officials said.

The last time a pirate suspect was brought to the United States was April 2009, after a dramatic and deadly end to the hijacking of the U.S.-flagged cargo ship Maersk Alabama.

Two of the three pirates holding the captain of the Alabama on a small lifeboat were killed by Navy SEAL snipers.

The third suspect, Abduhl Wal-i-Musi, was taken into custody and turned over to the Department of Justice. He is now in New York awaiting trial.

UN condemns civilian deaths in Somali clash
Wed Apr 14, 2010/By Jeremy Clarke/Reuters

NAIROBI (Reuters) – The United Nations on Tuesday urged Somali troops, African Union peacekeepers and Islamist militants not to indiscriminately shell densely populated areas of the capital Mogadishu.

Thousands of civilians have been killed in fighting between the Western-backed Somali government and Islamist rebels in the last several years in the Horn of Africa nation, which has been mired in civil war since the ousting of a dictator in 1991.

The death toll from the latest bout of violence on Monday rose to at least 26, a rights group said, with scores wounded.

“These are clear violations of the law of war,” Mark Bowden, the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, said.

“I am deeply disturbed by the plight of civilians in Mogadishu, who are caught amidst the warring parties,” he said.

Monday’s fighting saw shelling by insurgents, triggering return volleys of artillery from the A.U.-backed Somali forces. A school, a crowded market, a U.N. compound as well as residential areas were hit, the United Nations said.

Al Shabaab rebels, who profess loyalty to al Qaeda, have been fighting Somalia’s government since 2007 and Western powers say the anarchic nation is a breeding ground for extremism.

The U.N. World Health Organisation (WHO) said that medics in Mogadishu’s hospitals were being overwhelmed by casualties.

“STRETCHED TO LIMIT”

“In March 2010 alone, at least 900 conflict-related injuries and 30 deaths were reported at Mogadishu’s three main hospitals,” WHO spokesman Paul Garwood told reporters in Geneva.

The United Nations estimates some 100,000 people have been displaced from Mogadishu since the beginning of the year.

Children aged under 5 accounted for 10 percent of reported injuries which included shrapnel and gunshot wounds, fractures and crush injuries, he said.

Garwood told Reuters: “Health care workers are struggling to cope, they are overwhelmed with the huge increase in wounded. It is stretching an already weak health care system to the limit.”

Only 250 qualified doctors, 860 nurses and 116 midwives work today in Somalia, home to the lowest number of health workers of any country in the Horn of Africa or Middle East, WHO said.

Somalia had 300 doctors as recently as 2006, but some have fled the country, part of a “brain drain”, while others have been victims of violence, including some killed by a blast at a graduation ceremony last December, Garwood said.

Spiked Anti-rape Condom Could Debut Soon in South Africa
By DAVID DISALVO/ trueslant.com/Apr. 14 2010

Radio Netherlands Worldwide reports that the first anti-rape condom, called Rape-aXe, could make its debut in South Africa just prior to the start of the World Cup.

South African doctor Sonnet Ehlers developed the condom five years ago and says it’s now ready for widespread use, though it has never been tested. She wants to give away 30,000 of them.

Here’s how it works: A woman inserts the condom herself, and when her attacker penetrates, his penis is impaled by tiny spikes. The spikes don’t draw blood but do cause incredible pain if the man tries to take off the condom. The condom can only be removed in a hospital, where the rapist can immediately be arrested.

South Africa is the perfect testing ground for Rape-aXe, considering that one out of every four South African men say they have raped a woman. Half of those men also admit to multiple rapes, and many say they’ve participated in gang rapes. (BBC News, June 2009)

The obvious problem with the condom is that the rapist could become even more violent once he realizes that he can’t remove it without ripping the skin off his penis. On the other hand, he might panic and try to pull it off anyway, in which case he’d effectively neuter himself–probably the best outcome anyone could hope for.

African youth are major drivers in bid to attain African Union vision – experts
Wednesday 14 April 2010 / press release /en.afrik.com

A three day meeting of experts of the African Union is underway in the resort town of Victoria Falls, in preparation for the Third Ordinary Session of the African Union Ministers in Charge of Youth (COMY III), to be held from 15- 16 April. The African Union Youth Charter identifies a youth as a ?person between the ages of 15 and 35?.
The experts meeting is an opportunity for the Member States delegates to consider, among other programs, the African Union Plan of Action (POA) to support the Decade for Youth development in Africa and the African Union proposal to establish and implement the African Union Youth Volunteers Corps. 2009 ? 2018 was declared as the Decade for Youth Development in Africa by the 12th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government in February 2009. The decade is an opportunity to sustain political commitment to youth development and empowerment.

Proposals made by the experts will be put forward for consideration and/ or adoption by the ministerial meeting. If the POA is adopted by the Ministers at the end of their meeting on Friday 16th April, the 53 Member States of the AU would then be expected to incorporate it into their own national plans and strategies. This will ensure that youth development across the continent is in line with the strategic objectives of the African Union, as defined by the Assembly of Heads of State and government, the highest decision making body on the continent.

In addition to discussing the documents being tabled by the AU, the ongoing experts meeting is also providing an opportunity for Member States to learn from each other and share experiences. It is serving as a forum to provide targets on youth development which will assist Member States to use research as the basis for youth development programming and planning, thereby ensuring that the same standards, targets and measurement of progress, more or less, are observed across the continent.

The Plan of Action being considered by the experts recognizes the critical role that can be played by the youth in achieving the AU vision of ?an Africa integrated, prosperous and peaceful, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in the global arena?. Vital statistics and information presented in the POA will enable the experts to make considered decisions, before they present their recommendations to the ministers.

Speakers at the opening session of the experts meeting today described the youth as the ?engine for Africa’s development?. This is borne out in the POA which clearly states that ?in 2025, the young people of today will be the main drivers of African economies?. This is so for a number of reasons: numerically the youth form a large part of Africa’s population i.e. 34.3% of the population of Sub Saharan Africa in 2007; the young people of today are the best educated in human history; and gender gaps are steadily closing. The social advantages provided by the youth include greater degree of mobility, versatility, dynamism and adaptability. Youth are also known to be more creative and innovative than adult populations, and take the lead in several areas of development, such as in community development, IT, HIV/AIDS, life skills, education and campaigns.

However, as the experts consider the action plan, they will also have to take into account the challenges that the youth face, and adopt an implementation plan designed to ensure coordinated youth development across Africa by 2018, when the Decade for Youth Development will officially come to an end.

One of these challenges is poverty. 72% of the youth population in Sub Saharan Africa lives on less that $2 a day, caused basically by poor education and lack of skills. Other challenges include exploitation of the youth as they migrate in search of better livelihoods; unemployment; HIV/AIDS; unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions; maternal mortality; different forms of abuse, exploitation by different regimes as perpetrators of violence or conflict; and exclusion from governance structures.

After considering the various opportunities offered by the youth population bulge and the challenges that constrain young people from effectively contributing to the AU vision as well as the proposals for action put forward by the AU, the experts will consider the proposed implementation matrix for the POA, whose timeline runs from 2010 until 2018.

During the experts meeting, the African Union is also putting forward, for consideration, its African Union Youth Volunteerism continental strategy (AUYVC). Youth volunteerism is defined as the services of skilled workers between the ages of 18- 35, supported to provide volunteer opportunities to build their capacity through public sector projects, organisations and/ or in a special service community activity.

The AU also took the opportunity to urge Member States attending the experts meeting to ensure that they ratify the African Youth Charter and that, beyond ratification, and more importantly, that they implement the provisions of the Charter. To date, 19 Members have ratified, 11 are still at the signing stage and 16 have not yet signed. AU Director for Human resources, Science and Technology Mrs. Vera Brenda Ngosi, said ?Ratification is one thing and its good but ratification without implementation of the ideals of the charter is like having a good strategy on paper but without action. It is like a nice dream that is never realized?.

Further discussions by the three day experts meeting will focus on preparations for the Mexico 2010 World Youth Conference and the necessity for Africa to prepare a common position on priorities for youth development for the African region.

Other speakers to address the opening session of the experts meeting today were Mr Itai Muguza, Director in the Ministry of Youth Development, Indigenisation and Empowerment in Zimbabwe and Mr. Magoot, the expert of the Ministry in harge of Youth in Libya who is also the outgoing Chair of COMY II.

Source: African Union Commission (AUC)

UN /ONU :

UN confirms peacekeepers kidnapped in Darfur
English.news.cn / (Xinhua)/2010-04-14

UNITED NATIONS, April 13 (Xinhua) — A United Nations spokesperson confirmed on Tuesday that four peacekeepers belonging to the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) have been kidnapped by unknown gunmen in the restive western Sudanese region of Darfur.

“I can confirm this,” Martin Nesirky said. “UNAMID is working closely with officials for their safe return.”

An anonymous UNAMID source told Xinhua on Tuesday that the four South African peacekeepers, two male and two female, were stopped by some 10 gunmen when they were driving from their working site to their private accommodation near Nyala, the capital city of the South Darfur state, on Sunday.

The source quoted witnesses as saying that the four policemen were forced to step off their vehicle at gunpoint.

No armed group in Darfur has made contacts with the UNAMID to claim responsibility for the kidnapping, the source noted.
Editor: Mu Xuequan

sudan elections 2010:hopes and Obstacles
April 14, 2010/Wamith Al-Kassab (Iraq)/www.mideastyouth.com

Sudan is Africa’s largest country and has 41 million inhabitants. The country is deeply divided along ethnic and religious lines.
Throughout Africa’s longest civil war, lived from 1983 to 2005 between North and South Sudan. The conflict in Darfur has not yet been resolved. Also in eastern Sudan, there has sometimes been uneasy.
Keeping the weekend, the first free elections at the national level in 24 years. There shall be elected president, parliament and governors.
Opposition parties threaten boycott because they believe President Omar al-Bashir has provided to manipulate the election results to ensure re-election.

With different voting systems in different parts of the country, nearly 80 different parties to choose from and both ten and twelve different ballots to keep track of.
Sudanese President Hassan al-Bashir has run an unusually active campaigning the last time and has crossed their country in all directions to meet voters and promise that the election which begins Sunday, will be both free and fair.
Exemplary, is stamped the President himself set it several days before boxs opens.
Because, he says, the choice is a religious duty. Just like everything else his regime are doing and implementing. A religious duty.

The hope of President Bashir is that he will secure for himself and his regime more legitimacy through elections. Bashir, who came to power in a military coup in 1989 and is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Darfur. believe Bashir that a rolling owner can be a great message to send back to Criminal Court.

It is not good enough guarantee for those who sit outside the Sudan and can confirm that it spans the left, the country is now trying to wind up the first real election in a quarter century.
Or rather “choices”, for there should not only be elected president, but also national and regional leaders.
The report that the UN representative has given the UN Security Council in advance,
U.S. cautiously reluctant criticism her, not to destroy the crucial referendum on the future of southern Sudan next year.
But UN Ambassador Susan Rice has appealed to Sudan to postpone the election, now only partially will be watched by international observers. For in Darfur is the tension so great that the EU has found it irresponsible to be kept and therefore separated from their observers.
Several million internal refugees in Darfur are not even registered as voters and do something valresultat in the region virtually meaningless.

The conflict in Darfur has also made the SPLM, the main political group in southern Sudan, has decided to boycott all elections this week. Previously, both the SPLM and opposition Umma Party presidential candidates pulled their.

It is a complicated exercise Khartoum regime will have an inexperienced Chooser base to go ahead in Africa’s largest country.

In Darfur voters declared a military enemy of at least one of the rebel groups, and the nervousness of unrest and violence can be understood large.

But even if observers disappears and the main opposition candidates boycott election, the UN is still in place and provides votting assistance.

That Bashir wins, there is little doubt. He has control over the army and police, and he checks in practice the media.
But campaigning has given small glimpse of political debate and spelerom. The opposition has been given permission to speak on TV, and it has been light in the newspaper censorship.
But when it was attempted to allow demonstrators protest outside the offices of election , not the police managed to stay longer and struck with the arrests.


Monday was the second election day. Already around the clock 08.00 were people queuing outside election offices. It was in the Sudanese capital Khartoum. Many of them had ever tried to vote the day before. But they had not done it. Therefore, they were early. Sunday was the big delay in the election.

So far, there has been no serious violent incidents, according to police in Sudan. What many fear beforehand.

SPLM demands that the election will be extended. They believe it should be extended from three to seven days. Monday, they had still not received any reply.
In Southern Sudan opened many election offices late. Lists of those who could vote were switched. Elsewhere, they were completely gone.
– There were big problems at the opening of the election – In the south, many see the election exercise to folk vote next year.
The first election results are expected 18 April.

refrences
1. Norwegian people aid reports
2.BBC news
3. Los angles times

Dozens of countries unlikely to meet UN goals to reduce mother and child deaths
By Edith M. Lederer (CP)/The Canadian Press/14042010

Dozens of countries are unlikely to meet U.N. goals to significantly reduce the deaths of mothers and children by 2015 without a new approach to health care and an additional $20 billion annually, according to a study released Tuesday.

The study, conducted by the scientific-advocacy group Countdown to 2015, found progress lagged mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia where an estimated 82 per cent of maternal, newborn and child deaths take place.

The study was released on the eve of a press conference by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to kick off a new global initiative on reproductive, maternal and newborn health.

“This is a multi-layered problem that can be addressed with a combination of many, very simple interventions,” said Dr. Flavia Bustreo, director of The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, a group of more than 300 organizations, foundations, institutions and countries hosted by World Health Organization, working to achieve the U.N. goals.

What’s needed is “seamless” continuing care that includes family planning, breast feeding, hand washing, skilled attendants at delivery and childhood immunizations, Dr. Zulfiqar Bhutta of Pakistan’s Aga Khan University, who co-chairs of Countdown to 2015, said in a statement.

While countries have almost doubled their donations for maternal, newborn and child health in recent years, the study found there is a funding gap of about $20 billion per year between 2011 and 2015.

The U.N. Millennium Development Goals call for reducing the under-five mortality rate by two thirds and the maternal mortality ratio by three quarters by 2015.

According to UNICEF, 135 countries have child mortality rates of less than 40 per 1,000 live births or have a rate of reduction sufficient to meet the U.N. goal, but 39 show insufficient progress and 18 show no progress or a worsening of child mortality.

Countdown to 2015 estimated 350,000 to 500,000 women still die in childbirth every year.

If the funding gap was filled by 2015, the study found the lives of up to 1 million women, 4.5 million newborn babies and 6.5 million children aged 1 month to 5 years would be saved.

USA :

Obama freezes US property of Somali militants
(AFP)/14042010

WASHINGTON — US President Barack Obama Tuesday signed an executive order freezing the property in the United States of members of a group of radical Islamists “contributing to the conflict in Somalia.”

Obama said in his order he “declared a national emergency to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by that conflict.”

He said that the measure, which named 11 individuals and the Al-Qaeda-inspired hardline Shebab militia, was “not targeted at the entire country of Somalia, but rather is intended to target those who threaten peace and stability in Somalia.”

Somalia, a Horn of Africa nation, has been blighted by relentless civil war since the 1991 ouster of president Mohamed Siad Barre.

Most of the country is now controlled by the Shebab militia, which adheres to a conservative Wahhabi current of Islam.

Among those on the US blacklist is Sheikh Hassan Abdullah Hersi Al-Turki, the head of the Islamist group the Ras Kamoni, which is allied with the Shebab.

Obama’s order also freezes the assets of people deemed “to have obstructed the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Somalia” as well as those who have supplied arms, material or technical advice to the country.

In January the World Food Program, which provides aid to some 2.5 million people in Somalia, said it was suspending its food distribution in the southern part of the country, citing months of attacks and extortion by the Shebab.

Obama also added that “acts of piracy or armed robbery at sea off the coast of Somalia threaten the peace, security or stability” of the country.

The International Maritime Bureau said earlier this month that since January, Somali pirates had attacked 32 ships, seven of which were hijacked.

Alongside the European Union, the United States and other national navies deployed warships off the Somali coast in December 2008 to protect shipping and secure maritime routes in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.

Despite the international military presence, pirates have raked in huge ransoms.

Jonathan’s US Visit: The Challenges and Prospects
By Omololu Ogunmade/www.thisdayonline.com/04.14.2010

All things being equal, Acting President Goodluck Jonathan is expected to end his four-day visit to the United States today. The visit, according to reports, is historic because it is unusual for any American President to meet with any foreign official who’s not a substantial president of his country. Jonathan is currently leading Nigeria in acting capacity following the protracted illness of President Umaru Yar’Adua

The Acting President left the shores of Nigeria at the weekend to attend a summit which also offered him the opportunity to meet US President Barrack Obama. The meeting, according to reports, was considered crucial to the overall interest of both countries – Nigeria and the US. Although Nigeria is US largest business partner in the sub-Saharan Africa, the relationship between both countries had not been cordial since the advent of Yar’Adua on May 29, 2007. The highpoint of the perceived strained relationship was Yar’Adua’s cancellation of a proposed meeting with Obama in September last year.

Yar’Adua had been invited to attend the 2009 United Nations’ General Assembly meeting after which he would be opportuned to meet with the UN Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-Moon as well as Obama. While the US, the leadership of the UN as well as notable persons in Nigeria looked forward to the meeting with the Nigerian leader, Yar’Adua suddenly cancelled the appointment and instead headed for Saudi Arabia. There were insinuations that the perceived strained relationship between Nigeria and the US since 2007, threatened the latter’s business prospects in the country.

There were also insinuations that the US inability to court Yar’Adua fuelled its anger with Nigeria, which culminated in Nigeria being listed as a “country of interest” following the December 25, 2009 attempted terrorism by Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, a 25-year old Nigerian who attempted to bomb an American aircraft belonging to Delta Airline. It was also alleged that the threat to US business in Nigeria culminated in the US vehement criticism of the failure of the President to hand over to Jonathan upon his departure to Saudi Arabia on November 23, 2009 for medical attention.

A top government official told this reporter in Abuja in February that US passionate backing for Jonathan was prompted by the expiration of 26 oil blocks most of which belonged to the US oil companies, Chevron and Shell Petroleum Development Company. The official revealed that the US believed that it would be easier to get the oil blocks renewed through Jonathan than Yar’Adua.

However, Jonathan’s visit to the US on the invitation of Obama for a Nuclear Summit has been viewed as appropriate, moreso that both countries seem to need each other for the advancement of their interests. While the US needs Nigeria for the continuity of its business, Nigeria also needs the US to relieve it of the credibility crisis authored by its being listed early this year as a terrorist nation. Thus Jonathan had reportedly tasked Nigeria’s Ambassador to the US, Professor Adebowale Adefuye to ensure the delisting of Nigeria’s name from the terrorist list ahead of his visit.

Expectedly, one of the first demands made by Jonathan upon meeting Obama on Sunday was the delisting of Nigeria’s name from the terrorist list. Jonathan was also asked if he intended to sack the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Maurice Iwu, ahead of the 2011 poll, a question which Jonathan answered in the negative.

To affirm that the meeting was considered essential, a former Permanent Secretary in the Foreign Affairs’ Ministry, Joe Keshi, gave a blow by blow analysis of the meeting, but cautioned Nigerians against high optimism from Jonathan’s trip. According to him, it should not be expected to be a miracle visit. He nevertheless, described it as an impetus to move the nation forward.

Keshi said: “I can understand the excitement of Nigerians over (Jonathan’s) trip to the US, but there is the need to put the visit in its proper perspective such that we are not carried away. First, this is not a state visit and strictly speaking, it is equally not an official visit. Jonathan is in the US at the invitation of Obama to attend a conference on nuclear disarmament and like many other world leaders, he would utilise the opportunity to discuss some bilateral issues especially with the US. There are over 100 world leaders honouring Obama’s invitation and if he agrees to grant all audience, which l doubt, it will be, as we say in diplomatic parlance, within the margin of the conference.

“In terms of its significance and coming against the backdrop of what has transpired in this country in the last couple of months, this is an important trip especially for Jonathan who is undertaking his first trip abroad. His presence at the conference will assure the world that Nigeria has sort of resolved its embarrassing leadership crisis precipitated by the ill-disposition of President Umaru Yar’Adua and is again in a position to assume its global responsibilities.

“Politically for Jonathan, this is a plus, depending on how his officials spin the outcome of the visit. I expect, if all goes well, as l hope and expect, that he would return with an enhanced status and determination to seriously move the country forward.”
Pundits have however, argued that the reason for Jonathan’s invitation to the Nuclear Summit, besid
es America’s prospects, is not far fetched. The US escaped another round of tragedy when the terrorist plot by AbduMutallab fell through late last year. In a renewed bid to fight the scourge of terrorism world over, Jonathan who leads the country where the terrorist suspect hails from, would no doubt be an expected stakeholder. It was therefore not surprising when Obama’s depth of discussion at the meeting involving Jonathan focused on nuclear security and terrorism, with issues on democracy among others.
Obama said: “If al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations acquired nuclear weapons it would have no compunction at using them. The single biggest threat to US security, both short-term, medium-term and long-term, would be the possibility of a terrorist organization obtaining a nuclear weapon. This is something that could change the security landscape in this country and around the world for years to come.

“If there was ever a detonation in New York City or London or Johannesburg, the ramifications economically, politically and from a security perspective would be devastating. We know that organizations like al-Qaida are in the process of trying to secure nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction and would have no compunction at using them.”

The Nuclear Security Summit was attended by no fewer than 40 world leaders with the intention to secure “loose nuclear material.” Obama had held one-on-one meetings on Sunday with some of the invited leaders including Jonathan. At the meeting, Obama had stated that world leaders had made “very specific approaches to how we can solve this profound international problem.”

While he hailed South Africa for giving up its nuclear programme, Obama said the country “has been a strong, effective leader in the international community on non-proliferation issues. South Africa has special standing in being a moral leader on this issue.”
Obama who had earlier approved a new nuclear policy for the US, expressed happiness over “the degree of commitment and a sense of urgency that I have seen from the world leaders so far on this issue, adding: “We think we can make enormous progress on this and this then becomes part and parcel of the broader focus that we’ve had over the last several weeks.”

Although for different reasons, Jonathan’s visit to the US has elicited reactions from groups and individuals in Nigeria. While some have criticized some issues which accompanied the visit, others described it as ill-timed. For instance, a coalition of civil society organizations expressed anger over a suggestion of Iwu’s sack by Assistant US Secretary of State, Johnnie Carson, describing it as another manifestation of neo-colonialism. The coalition, led by Mr. Ali Abatcha, warned the US to decline from attempts to dictate to Nigeria how it should be ruled.

“It is in view of this sovereignty and the right to self determination that we, the 41 coalition of civil society groups condemn, in very strong terms, the ‘Iwu-must-go’ statement credited to Johnnie Carson, a senior US official,” the group said.
Jonathan was also asked by a panel of experts at the Council on Foreign Relations’ Think-tank, if in his electoral reform move, he would sack Iwu. But in his reaction, Jonathan said: “I’ve given clear directives to the INEC (Independent National Electoral Commission) that we will not accommodate any wrongdoing,” adding: “I’m convinced that INEC, the president of INEC, can conduct elections in Nigeria (that are) free and fair.”

Also reacting to the trip, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Ghali Umar Na’Abba, criticised Jonathan’s visit to the USA, saying the acting president should have rather sat down and faced the enormous task of repositioning the country. He insisted that it was wrong of Jonathan to have left Nigeria at such a “critical time” like this.
He challenged him to cogitate on how he could govern the country efectively, bearing in mind that there is no vice president, while enormous challenges which need to be addressed abound in the country. He described the visit as inappropriate and nothing but a misplacement of priority.

“He should take time to think on how to administer this country in a situation whereby a sick and substantive President is side by side with him, a situation whereby there is no Vice President and a situation whereby there are so many weighty things waiting to be attended to within the country.
“I thought going out to attend a meeting which I understand is on nuclear weapon for our President is ill-timed and I must advise the acting President to sit down and face the most important domestic problem before him,” Na’Abba said.

At any rate, Jonathan in the course of the visit, summarized his administration’s domestic focus to include electoral reform, delivery of peace dividends to the Niger Delta and vehement fight against corruption. On the global scene, Jonathan said Nigeria was determined to restore its image and traditional role as a key member of the international community.

“In an increasingly uncertain world, Nigeria is a key partner in our collective efforts to maintain peace and security in Africa and beyond. Nigeria will reiterate its commitments to fight terrorism and rededicate our efforts to promote development, democracy and a shared value for human progress,” he said.
Fielding questions on the recent outbreak of violence in Jos, Plateau State, he dismissed the crisis as “purely ethnic,” saying outsiders had wrong perceptions about the violence. “The conflict has come up between the settlers and the natives,” he said, adding that settlers in the area dominate the economy of the area. “There is no conflict between the Christians and the Muslims. . . . The conflict is not a religious conflict,” Jonathan insisted.

Jonathan disclosed that the Federal Government would not set up any commission to look into the killings, explaining that it is the prerogative of the state affected to set up its own commission, besides the commission set up by law enforcement agencies.
“The police must do their work. . . . Anybody who was directly or remotely involved in the crisis must be arrested and prosecuted,” he said. Despite disputing that the violence had been religiously motivated, Jonathan said government officials were meeting with religious leaders in the area on a weekly basis.
By and large, as Jonathan returns to the country, it is left for both the Presidency and the generality of the people of Nigeria to examine the nitty-gritty of the visit and conclude whether it holds any prospect for the country or not.

Farm attacks: An analysis
James Myburgh / www.politicsweb.co.za/14 April 2010

James Myburgh argues that the criminal does not cancel out the political

JOHANNESBURG – The brutal killing of AWB leader Eugene Terre’Blanche has once again highlighted the murderous phenomenon of farm attacks in South Africa. According SAPS statistics there were 9,378 farm attacks, resulting in 1,437 killings, between 1994 and mid-2007 (at which point the police stopped publishing statistics.) These figures are staggering given that there are an estimated 40,000 commercial farmers in South Africa, down from 60,000 several years ago.

The question previously raised about these killings is whether there is some kind of malign political motive behind them. This concern has recently been sent into hyper drive by ANCYL President Julius Malema’s singing of ‘shoot the boer’ and the ANC’s complacent defence of his right to do so.

But as the Mail & Guardian noted this week the phenomenon, despite being intermittently written about for the past decade, is not well understood. Part of the problem, perhaps, is the way in which it is often assumed that the ‘criminal’ element of a killing (theft or robbery) automatically cancels out any possible political or racial motive.

On the face of it, this opposition seems to me to be misconceived. At the extreme: the persecution of prosperous minorities – whether in Germany or Uganda or Zimbabwe – almost always went hand-in-hand with the theft of their property. (Such annihilation processes are driven forwarded by a furious churn of motives – including resentment, greed, hatred and, ultimately, fear of justice and revenge.)

A proper study of the phenomenon of farm attacks would have to dissect the relationship (if any) between the criminal and political. The motives of the perpetrators would need to be teased out and analysed, as well as their political histories or lack thereof.

As far as I am aware this has never been convincingly done. Last year, however, the Daily Dispatch published an brilliant piece of investigative journalism into the phenomenon of attacks on Somali immigrants. This provides a fascinating insight into how prejudice, criminality and government indifference can combine with deadly results.

In his investigation Thaduxolo Jika conducted a series of prison interviews with Andile Tunzana – a criminal responsible for the murder of at least four Somali immigrants in the Eastern Cape. Tunzana explained why he had killed as follows: “We knew they had a lot of money in their shops and had no guns to fight back. We shot those who tried to resist and then looked for money. No one cared for them in the township because they are grigambas.”

He added: “I did not care much about robbing any other person who looks like me because I know that they might be struggling to survive. The Somalis were just other foreign people with money and no one cared about them.”

From Jika’s report it is clear that Tunzana’s actions were driven by a combination of criminal, opportunistic and racial motives. Somali shopkeepers were targeted not just because they had money to steal (the criminal), but because they were seen as soft and morally acceptable targets. The fact that the local community was indifferent to their fate made it easier to get away with these crimes.

It seems likely that many of the murders of (often old) white farmers by criminals would be driven by a similar combination of motives. Farmers are isolated and vulnerable. They also possess valuable goods (often guns) which makes them worth targeting. For many young criminal psychopaths this is probably reason enough to attack these targets. The key question is though whether farmers are seen as legitimate targets in the same way that Somali shopkeepers were?

It is in this context that the culpability of the ANC needs to be evaluated. At the very best the ruling party is guilty of malign neglect on such crime. Part of the reason why this epidemic has run unchecked for so long is that the ANC has done little to turn farmers from soft targets into hard targets. Indeed, their interventions (such as disbanding the commandos and pushing whites out of the police force) have tended to run in the opposite direction.

It is also difficult to see how Malema’s rhetoric could not but provide a kind of moral green light to those thinking about targeting farmers. It is not just the singing of ‘shoot the boer’ that is menacing. In an address to a Black Management Forum conference in October 2009 he stated, to the laughter of delegates, “At the negotiations pre-1994, they [the whites] said to us that for them to agree we must accept the willing buyer-willing seller idea. But now we must say we can’t buy the land from you because you stole it from us.” Is it really a crime, in other words, to take back ‘stolen’ property?

The real problem is that Malema did not invent the song, or this propaganda. He is simply articulating – in a crude, reckless and self-destructive way – deep underlying pathologies within the ANC. As he recently noted he’s been singing ‘shoot the boer’ ever since joining the ANC, aged nine. No-one complained before. So why all the fuss now?

CANADA :

Internet television provides medium for SAT-7 channels in the U.S.
Posted: 14 April, 2010/www.mnnonline.org

Topics in this story:canada, iptv, sat7 arabic, sat7 kids, united states
SAT-7 ARABIC and SAT-7 KIDS stations are now available in the U.S. and Canada through internet protocol television (IPTV). (SAT-7 photo)
International (MNN) ― Thanks to the growing popularity of new television venue, SAT-7, a Christian satellite television service to the Middle East and North Africa, now has channels available in North America.

“IPTV, or internet protocol television, is one of the fastest growing television delivery systems in North America,” said Terry Ascott of SAT-7. This new state-of-the-art service increased in popularity by 40 percent in the U.S. last year, he said. Through Joozor Media Broadcasting’s IPTV, viewers can order any channels they want through the internet and send them to their TVs. The quality is as good as any U.S. cable channels. These channels have always been available online at SAT-7’s Web site, but the quality is somewhat inferior.

One of the best things about this opportunity is: it costs SAT-7 nothing.

“It’s great that we can extend our ministry to Arabic and Farsi and Turkish speakers in North America without any cost to the ministry. It’s just another wonderful opportunity to touch lives,” Ascott said.

Right now, SAT-7 ARABIC and SAT-7 KIDS are the channels available through IPTV. According to SAT-7’s Web site, “SAT-7 KIDS seeks to educate and inform Arabic-speaking children about the basics of the Christian faith.” In addition, “SAT-7 ARABIC provides hope to its millions of viewers by creating and broadcasting life-giving, encouraging, informative Christian TV programming for every member of the family.”

Ascott anticipates as the demand among other immigrants to the U.S. and Canada increases, IPTV will also offer some of their other channels.

For some viewers, when they tune into these channels, they may hear the message of Christ for the first time. Many are refugees from tyranny in their countries and have never met a Christian.

“As they step into this brave new, free world … it’s great that we are able to be there with Christian content that is in their own language,” Ascott said.

Pray for the Holy Spirit to work through the messages being broadcast over these channels. Then, as viewers search for more information from Christians in their community, pray the Church will be ready to reach out to these seekers. Pray that Christians will not view them as terrorists but as fellow children of God.

Deny, deny, deny
www.straightgoods.ca/by Dennis Gruending /April 14, 2010

Catholic church’s reaction to sex abuse charges echoes Mt Cashel, residential schools scandals.

It’s been a bad month for Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic hierarchy, and by extension a bad month for Catholics in general. The church has been rocked by more allegations, many of them now proven, regarding past sexual assaults by priests on young boys and adolescents, and by news of subsequent cover-ups by bishops in Ireland and Germany. These revelations follow a torrent of similar cases in the U.S. in the past decade, others in Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and France, and still others in Canada that surfaced mostly during the 1980s and 1990s.

There are now allegations that Pope Benedict, when he was a powerful cardinal, refused to take action against Father Lawrence Murphy, an American priest who had sexually abused as many as 200 boys, many of them deaf, in Wisconsin over a period of 25 years. Father Murphy died, never seriously challenged and still a priest, in 1998. There are other allegations that Benedict, when he was the Archbishop of Munich in 1980, refused to discipline priest predator under his authority but rather had him reassigned.

Among bishops and priests, loyalty to the institution is prized above all else, even the dictates of conscience.

The Vatican, along with some cardinals, archbishops and bishops have gone into a mode of full damage control. On Good Friday, as the pope looked on during mass, a priest who is close to him compared recent criticisms of the church to the holocaust perpetrated upon Jewish people. He later offered a half-hearted apology in the face of withering criticism. On Easter Sunday, again with the Benedict attending at the mass, a cardinal compared criticism of the pope as what he described as the malicious gossip of women. This week, two senior cardinals appeared on Vatican Radio to talk about an anti-Catholic “hate” campaign targeting the pope because of his opposition to abortion and same sex marriage.

The broad outline of events is available to anyone who watches the news or reads newspapers. I do not intend to pronounce on what Pope Benedict knew, and when, about various sexual predators when he was either an archbishop or a cardinal. I am confident that the truth will emerge. I do wish to add, however, some personal observations based upon four years in the early 1990s when I worked in the communications department for the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB).

I had been fully engrossed in researching and writing a political book in 1989-90 and had not been following the news as carefully as usual. In preparation for my job interview with the CCCB in Ottawa, I spent a couple of days in a library reading both Catholic and secular newspapers and magazines. I encountered a variety of news stories regarding allegations of sexual assaults against young boys by the Christian Brothers at the Mount Cashel orphanage in Newfoundland. I found only scant coverage in Catholic papers but there was much more of it in the mainstream media. It was later discovered that when allegations began to surface in the late 1980s, the provincial government, the police and the church had cooperated in a cover-up. Eventually nine lay brothers were convicted of sexually and physically abusing boys. A commission of inquiry criticized the archbishop for not taking action and he was later to resign.

I remember thinking, What is it about Newfoundland that would allow a situation such as this to occur? A more insightful question would have been, What is it about the church that allows this to occur?

I got the job with the bishops and was confronted almost immediately by a controversy involving allegations of past abuse at church schools in the town of Alfred near Ottawa, and at Uxbridge near Toronto. Some of the victims set up a picket in front of the CCCB offices in Ottawa and also engaged in a peaceful protest at an annual general assembly of the bishops. Eventually, 700 former students came forward to allege abuse. Most decided to seek mediation rather than pursuing legal options.

Then allegations emerged that Aboriginal children had been physically and in many cases sexually abused at residential schools where they had been forced to attend over many decades. Catholic and Protestant churches operated the schools in partnership with the Canadian government, which saw in them a method of forcibly removing children from their homes and assimilating them into the mainstream of Canadian society. The Catholic schools were usually operated by orders such as the Oblates or Jesuits and various orders of religious sisters.

I found that the bishops were in denial about the sexual crimes committed by clergy and seemed incapable of making prompt and transparent decisions. The hierarchy in Newfoundland refused for months to respond to media queries about Mount Cashel, which is an eternity in media terms. The church stonewalled and a public narrative was born from which it has never fully recovered.

Many of the bishops feared, and in some cases loathed, the media. They were generally older men who had received a bookish classical education and they were especially uncomfortable with television. They were much more at home with their own Catholic publications, which in many cases were house organs rather than anything resembling independent media.

When we received calls at the CCCB from journalists regarding allegations or actual criminal charges related to sexual abuse, there was rarely anyone prepared to respond to them. The rationale was that the CCCB was not a head office for the Canadian church but rather an organization to help bishops do some of the things that were difficult to accomplish at the local level — such as writing and presenting briefs to government. Bishops, according to this line of reasoning, are appointed by the pope and answerable to him, not to other Canadian bishops.

We were to refer calls back to the diocese or archdiocese in question. In the case of residential schools, we were to refer queries to the religious orders. Frustrated journalists would soon call back to say they had been rebuffed or ignored when they made those calls. I was frustrated, too, and since the buck appeared to stop in Rome rather than anywhere in Canada, I began to provide journalists with a telephone number for Pope John Paul’s press secretary, a Spaniard named Joachim Navarro-Valls.

I see certain parallels between the behaviour of the hierarchy in Canada then and that of the Vatican now. Among bishops and priests, loyalty to the institution is prized above all else, even the dictates of conscience. Canadian bishops, for example, seldom if ever spoke out publicly even if they believed that the Vatican was making a big mistake in its position on contraception, or on its stubborn resistance to allow use of inclusive language in the church.

This unconditional loyalty to the institution made it difficult for the hierarchy to acknowledge the innocent victims of sexual abuse, because to do so would have been perceived as an admission of weakness and guilt, and as such a betrayal of the church.

A new and dispiriting defence also began to take hold. According to this logic, it was only a small percentage of clerics who had engaged in sexual abuse — an argument that I believe to be true. Their number, it was said, was roughly comparable in percentage terms to that of people in other occupations yet priests and the church were being singled out for much harsher criticism than those other people.

I found this a most unfortunate comparison for two reasons. It played into the easy tendency to see anti-Catholicism and persecution of the church in every criticism and question, another parallel to what has recently been emanating from Rome. Secondly, the church had, throughout history, claimed that its leaders were divi
nely inspired and that as an institution it was perfect and could not err. Indeed, that was old theology which did not square with a much more modest tone adopted by the world’s bishops at Vatican II in the 1960s. Most Catholics today are likely more comfortable with a church which is prepared to be humbler and to admit to its weaknesses.

To its credit, the CCCB did overcome resistance and a variety of barriers to appoint a task force investigating a wide range of issues and problems related to sexual abuse by clergy. The subsequent report, called From Pain to Hope, was issued in 1992.

It provided guidelines to assist dioceses in dealing with allegations and cases of abuse, looked at better methods of screening candidates to the priesthood for sexual maturity, and recommended better training and formation in seminaries. Significantly, the task force called upon church officials to respect civil laws and collaborate fully with civil authorities in sexual abuse inquiries.

This is precisely what the church had not done in virtually all circumstances previously, whether in Canada, the US, Ireland or Germany — and what the Vatican still seems unprepared to do even now.

The CCCB, in partnership with religious orders that had been involved with residential schools, struck another task force on that issue. There was an agonizing reluctance on the part of bishops and religious orders to admit that the church had been engaged systematically in a culturally destructive project, not to mention the sexual abuse of vulnerable children. There was also a resistance to offering apologies, although they did come eventually. Yet when it came time to provide compensation to victims, Catholics dragged the process out long after other churches were ready to agree to terms.

I left the CCCB in 1994 and do not know how faithful the Canadian church has been in following up on its protocols and promises. In observing subsequent scandals in the US and Ireland, and now at the highest levels of the church in Rome, I am struck by how little has been learned by the international church from the earlier experience in Canada. I am surprised, as well, at how little real repentance there appears to in Rome for crimes that were committed against defenceless children.

It is true that most of the assaults that we are hearing about today happened years ago. In Canada the number of new cases has fallen off dramatically, but unsettling questions remain for the broader church. Recently, attention has focused on Ireland, one of the most traditionally Catholic countries of Europe. Will there soon be another shoe to drop in Asia, Africa, or Latin America? If so, can we trust church officials to respond with transparency and with the interest of victims uppermost in mind?

Let’s hope so, but given the Vatican’s performance in the past few weeks we have at least some reason to be sceptical.

Dennis Gruending is an Ottawa-based author and former Member of Parliament. He is also a former director of information for the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. His most recent book is the biography, Emmett Hall: Establishment Radical.

AUSTRALIA :

Riversdale opens Mozambique coal project, appoints contractor
By: Esmarie Swanepoel/ (miningweekly.com)/14th April 2010

 PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Australian coal-miner Riversdale Mining has officially opened its Benga coal project, in Mozambique, and has appointed a mining contractor for the development of the first stage of mine.

The company would invest A$270-million on the stage-one development, which would produce 1,7-million tons a year of hard coking coal, and 0,3-million tons a year of thermal coal for the export market.

The total mine development expenditure would reach the A$1-billion mark, Riversdale, which is developing the project in a joint venture with Tata Steel, said in a statement.

Riversdale also said that it had signed a deal with MCC Contracts, a subsidiary of South Africa’s Eqstra Holdings, as the openpit mining contractor at Benga.

The Benga project is Riversdale’s first mine in Mozambique and will create 4 500 direct and indirect jobs over the next five years.

Chairperson Michael O’Keeffe said in a statement that the Benga mine would be one of the most significant foreign direct investment projects in Mozambique.

The country’s President, Emilio Guebuza, and senior government and industry representatives and attended the formal ‘ground breaking ceremony’ on Tuesday.

Riversdale said that it believed the scale of the resource at Benga would allow for cost-effective open-cut mining, with the potential to produce 20-million tons of run of mine coal a year, over at least 25 years.

The first coal shipment from Benga will take place in 2011.

The company is also planning a power station project near Benga.

Riversdale currently holds a dominant landholding position in the emerging coal regions of Mozambique. The company has 21 exploration licenses, covering over 250 000 ha adjacent to infrastructure, including the city of Tete, power, water, sealed roads, rail, an international airport and direct access to the Zambezi River.

The Benga license represents less than 8% of Riversdale’s total holdings, the company said.

The neighbouring Zambeze project also has large quantities of coal, which also includes hard coking coal and thermal coal.

Edited by: Mariaan Webb

Mineral Deposits Limited: Launch of 2010 Share Purchase Plan
April 14, 2010/www.marketwatch.com

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA, Apr 13, 2010 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — Mineral Deposits Limited (“MDL” or the “Company”) /quotes/comstock/11t!mdm (CA:MDM 1.00, +0.01, +1.01%) (ASX: MDL) today launched a Share Purchase Plan (SPP) under which Eligible Shareholders will have the opportunity to subscribe for new ordinary shares in MDL (“New Shares”) to a value of $1,000, $2,000, $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000, as selected, without brokerage or other transaction costs, at an issue price of A$0.95 per share.

The issue price of A$0.95 per share is a 7.7% discount to the volume weighted average price of MDL shares traded on the ASX over the five days prior to this announcement.

Participation in the SPP is voluntary and open to all MDL shareholders who at 7.00pm (Melbourne time) on the Record Date of Wednesday, 21 April 2010, were registered holders of fully paid ordinary shares in the Company, with a registered address in Australia or New Zealand (“Eligible Shareholders”).

The Company reserves the right, in its absolute discretion, to cap the amount raised under the SPP at approximately A$15 million and to scale back applications.

The proceeds from the SPP will primarily be used to contribute towards the funding of the continuing gold exploration activities surrounding the Company’s Sabodala gold operation in Senegal. Exploration programs around Sabodala, on both the Mining Concession and regional land package of approximately 1,600km(2), have been significantly ramped up since late last year, with four drill rigs now in operation systematically testing a number of targets. Budgeted expenditure for calendar year 2010 is more than US$14 million.

The SPP will open at 9.00am (Melbourne time) on 27 April 2010 and close at 5.00pm (Melbourne time) on 14 May 2010. As soon as practicable after the close of the SPP, MDL will make an ASX announcement as to its outcome and the number of New Shares to be issued, as well as information regarding any scaleback. The Company expects to allot New Shares issued under the SPP on 21 May 2010. Holding statements are expected to be despatched on 24 May 2010 and the New Shares are expected to commence trading on this date.

Documentation in relation to the SPP, including a copy of the terms and conditions, is expected to be despatched to Eligible Shareholders on 27 April 2010.

About MDL

Mineral Deposits Limited is an ASX and TSX listed mining company with a current focus in Senegal, West Africa through a producing gold mine, the Sabodala Gold Operation, and a to be developed mineral sands project, the Grande Cote Mineral Sands Project.

The Sabodala Gold Operation, which poured its first gold in March 2009, is located 650 kilometres east of the capital Dakar within the West African Birimian geological belt in Senegal, and about 90 kilometres from major gold mines and discoveries in Mali. The area has only recently been opened for mining and exploration and is emerging as a significant new gold camp, with more than 10M ounces of resources already discovered.

The Grande Cote Mineral Sands Project is located on the coast of Senegal starting approximately 50 kilometres north of Dakar and extending northwards for more than 100 kilometres. The large scale of the ore body and the high quality of the zircon provides the potential to establish an operation of international significance.

Senegal is one of Africa’s most successful democracies, having gained independence in 1960. It enjoys a stable and investor friendly political and social environment. The government of the Republic of Senegal is MDL’s valued partner and holds a 10% free carried interest in both projects, which will accrue dividends once MDL has recovered its capital invested.

SeaBird – 2D & 3D Contracts awarded
April 14, 2010 /insurancenewsnet.com

Cyprus:
SeaBird Exploration Limited (‘SeaBird’ or ‘SBX’) is pleased to provide a contract update regarding its business activities as set out below;

Further continuing a successful series of surveys in the Far East and Australia that began late October 2009, the Aquila Explorer has been awarded two further surveys in South East Asia and one in Australia with a combined total of approximately 4,500 km. The surveys will commence after completion of her current survey for the Victorian Government and her previously reported next survey in South-east Asia. After these new surveys are completed this positions the vessel back in Australia at the beginning of Q4 after her scheduled dry-docking in September, continues her employment through October 2010 and contributes about USD 3 million additional revenue to that previously reported.

A Letter of Intent has been signed for the Geo Mariner to commence a 3D survey of approximately 350 sqkm in West Africa commencing mid April after having been idle for part of Q1. This survey will generate about USD 5 million and employ the vessel through mid to end July 2010.

The Northern Explorer has been awarded a contract of 15,500 km in continuation of her current survey schedule in Indonesia. This survey will generate about USD 9 million and commence immediately after her scheduled dry-docking in Q2, employing the vessel through to approximately end October 2010.

SBX can confirm now that the vessel to carry out the previously awarded and reported survey in East Africa of approximately 5,000 km commencing mid to late April will be the Osprey Explorer and employ the vessel through end May 2010.

For further queries contact:

Tim Isden
CEO SeaBird Exploration
Phone: + 971 504 539075

Kai Solberg-Hansen
CFO SeaBird Exploration
Phone: + 47 920 51455
SeaBird Exploration Limited (Cyprus) `SeaBird` is a global provider of marine 2D and 3D seismic data, solutions for seabed acquisition of 4C/4D multimode seismic, and associated products and services to the oil and gas industry. SeaBird specializes in high quality operations within the high end of the source vessel and 2D market, in the shallow water 2D/3D market and in 4C/4D multimode seismic by nodal seabed acquisition. Main focus for the company is proprietary seismic surveys (contract seismic). SeaBird does not have a multi-client data library. Main success criteria for the company are an unrelenting focus on Health, Safety, Security, Environment and Quality (HSSEQ), combined with efficient collection of high quality seismic data. SeaBird is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange (Ticker: SBX) and currently has nine vessels in its global operational fleet.

All statements in this press release other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements and are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict, and are based upon assumptions as to future events that may not prove accurate. These factors include SeaBird`s reliance on a cyclical industry and the utilization of the company’s vessels. Actual results may differ substantially from those expected or projected in the forward-looking statements.
This information is subject of the disclosure requirements acc. to §5-12 vphl (Norwegian Securities Trading Act)
[HUG#1403317]

Scripps Int’l acquires series for Food Network
‘Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam’ is from SBS Australia
By Elizabeth Guider/www.hollywoodreporter.com/April 14, 2010

Scripps Networks International, the global development arm of Scripps Networks Interactive, has acquired the SBS Australia original series “Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam” for its globally distributed Food Network.

Filmed entirely on location, the show follows restaurateur Nguyen on a culinary journey through the southern regions of Vietnam. The series’ first season will begin airing on Food Network in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia later this summer. Additionally, Scripps Networks International has an option for future seasons. The series’ second season is currently shooting in Vietnam.

” ‘Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam’ is a great complement to Food Network’s lineup as we build a channel to capitalize on the universal appeal of food programming,” said Greg Moyer, president of Scripps Networks International.

Scripps Networks International is in Cannes to continue expansion plans globally; it currently offers Food Network on Sky in the U.K. and throughout Europe, the Mideast and Africa. The company will launch Food Network in Asia later this summer.

EUROPE :

World leaders agree to secure nuclear material – Summary
www.earthtimes.org/By : Mike McCarthy / DPA/Posted : 14 Apr 2010

Category : US (World)
US World News | Home

Washington – US President Barack Obama said Tuesday that more than 40 countries have agreed during an unprecedented summit in Washington to take steps to prevent nuclear material from being used in a terrorist attack.

Obama praised the participating countries for committing to “meaningful” measures to secure vulnerable nuclear stockpiles within four years, and to reduce the use of dangerous material in civilian reactors.

“Because of the steps we have taken as individual nations, and the international community, the American people will be safer, and the world will be more secure,” Obama said as he concluded the summit.

Leaders and top officials from 47 countries attended the largest summit hosted by a US president in more than six decades, agreeing to strengthen existing international safeguards for nuclear material and give a greater role in the effort to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear monitoring body.

European Union President Herman Van Rompuy said the IAEA needs a greater role in keeping dangerous nuclear materials out of the wrong hands.

“The EU believes the IAEA should be the engine in this area and consequently be given the qualifications and resources necessary,” he said.

Reining in the threats arising from vulnerable nuclear material has emerged as a top priority for Obama. He outlined the goal in a speech a year ago in Prague.

In opening Tuesday’s full day of talks, Obama described the potential of a terrorist nuclear attack as among the greatest threats to the world and warned that the danger has increased since the end of the Cold War.

“Terrorist networks such as al-Qaeda have tried to acquire the material for a nuclear weapon. And if they ever succeeded, they would surely use it,” Obama said. “Were they to do so, it would be a catastrophe for the world, causing extraordinary loss of life and striking a major blow to global peace and stability.”

“Two decades after the end of the Cold War, we face a cruel irony of history,” Obama said. “The risk of a nuclear confrontation between nations has gone down, but the risk of nuclear attack has gone up.”

The countries agreed to move away from highly enriched uranium – the key ingredient in nuclear weapons – for power plants and adopt much safer low-enriched fuel.

The United States and Russia pledged to dispose of large amounts of weapons-grade plutonium stockpiles.

Obama announced plans to hold a follow-up summit in 2012 in South Korea.

During the summit, Ukraine announced plans to give up highly enriched uranium by 2012 as part of a broader, long-standing effort led by the United States and Russia to take back the dangerous fuel and convert civilian reactors to low-enriched uranium.

Canada and Mexico announced plans to abandon the use of highly enriched uranium and send their stores of the fuel back to the United States. Right before the summit, Chile shipped the last of its weapons-grade uranium to the United States.

The nations agreed to cooperate in law enforcement and intelligence to apprehend and prosecute individuals involved in the trade of illicit material on the black market.

The US and Canada called on countries to contribute to a goal of 10 billion dollars toward a global fund to promote nuclear security.

While the summit was focused on securing nuclear stockpiles, Iran’s continued defiance of international demands to halt uranium enrichment and come clean about its nuclear activities has been a sub-text at the gathering. Iran denies Western allegations that its nuclear programme is designed to achieve weapons capability.

The topic was high on the agenda when Obama met Monday with Chinese President Hu Jintao as part of an effort to persuade a reluctant Beijing to support tougher UN Security Council sanctions. A senior White House official said after the meeting that China had signaled a willingness to cooperate in drafting sanctions.

“I want to see us move forward boldly and quickly, to send the kind of message that will allow Iran to make a different calculation,” Obama said at his concluding press conference.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the time has come for countries to act decisively in the face of Iran’s continued defiance: “The moment of truth is now.”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was not invited to the summit, refused to back down, telling state television Tuesday that Iran’s “nuclear rights and path are untouchable” despite US-led pressure.

“I believe that the ballyhoo over the nuclear issue is just an excuse by the US to weaken Iran and get domination over the Middle East,” Ahmadinejad said.

Getting China on board for Iran sanctions would be a huge step for Obama, who already has support from Britain and France, which along with China, Russia and the United States are permanent members of the Security Council. Even Russia has shown a willingness recently to consider sanctions.

Obama met with the leaders of India, Pakistan, South Africa, Jordan and a number of other countries before convening the formal session.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov signed a deal to implement an agreement requiring both countries to dispose of 34 metric tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium from existing stockpiles.

The amount is enough to build 17,000 nuclear weapons, the US State Department said.

The United States has pledged to provide Russia with 400 million dollars for Moscow’s effort. Both countries plan to begin in 2018, and it is expected to take years to complete. Washington and Moscow agreed to the plan in 2000, but until now could not come to terms on how to implement it.

The summit came after a US-Russian pact to reduce their existing nuclear arsenals by one-third, a treaty Obama signed Thursday with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

It also followed Obama’s announcement of a shift in US defence policy that pledged to not use nuclear weapons against countries that do not have them. That policy, however, excluded Iran and North Korea because they are not seen as cooperating on non-proliferation.
Copyright DPA

Tsvangirai too busy to travel to Europe: MDC
by Ndodana Sixholo/ ZimOnline/ Wednesday 14 April 2010

HARARE – Zimbabwe’s MDC party on Tuesday said its leader and the country’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was not planning to travel to Europe next week to call for lifting of sanctions against President Robert Mugabe and his inner circle.
Several Press reports over the past week have suggested that Tsvangirai will lead a government delegation expected to leave Harare on April 21 for Brussels on a mission to push the European Union (EU) to lift visa and financial bans imposed on Mugabe and his top allies eight years ago.
Mugabe says sanctions were imposed at the instigation of the MDC and insists that Tsvangirai calls for their removal. The President and his ZANU PF party insist that until sanctions are scrapped they will not fully implement a global political agreement (GPA) with the MDC that led to the former foes forming a power-sharing government last year.
But MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa told ZimOnline that Tsvangirai will not travel to Europe because he was too pre-occupied with “issues of governance, the rule of law and issues of the implementation of the GPA”.
Chamisa repeated the MDC’s position that that the burden to persuade Western countries to lift the punitive measures was not for the party or Tsvangirai alone but that of the coalition government, adding that full implementation of the GPA would see the EU and the United States that has also imposed sanctions scrap the measures.
He said: “It’s a collective responsibility in the transitional government to seek ways of re-engaging with the international community through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Even the GPA appropriates responsibility on all the political parties and not the MDC.
“Once we implement the GPA we believe that all the other things will fall into place. So, it’s not a question of us shouting about the removal of restrictive measures. That will not help at all.”
Mugabe has successfully used the sanctions wrangle to delay implementation of key democratic reforms that could weaken his hold power and see his party defeated at the next elections that should be held under a new constitution.
Southern Development Community (SADC) mediator in Zimbabwe, South African President Jacob Zuma, has unsuccessfully called on the US and EU to lift sanctions to help Zimbabwe’s troubled political transition process to move forward.
Zuma is soon expected to hand a report to the SADC’s special organ on politics defence and security on the Zimbabwean political stalemate. – ZimOnline

CHINA :

The new scramble for Africa
Franklin W Knight/www.jamaicaobserver.com/Wednesday, April 14, 2010

FOR the past decade there has been a new scramble for Africa. Scrambling for Africa is nothing new. It reached its apogee in 1884 when 13 European powers and the United States convened at the palace of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to carve up the continent into spheres of influence. No African attended and decisions were announced as though the African people mattered not at all. Now things have changed a great deal. Europe and the USA no longer dominate the world and the new scramble involves fewer players as well as different players.

The new scramble is not as overtly and arrogantly unilateral as in the late 19th century and reflects the changed realities of today. Europeans have united themselves in a constantly expanding community and the 27 members largely offer a common position in international affairs. Asia has three major world economic powers, China, India and Japan, with China and India hotly contesting across Africa. Africa ranks third behind the European Community and the USA in overall Asian trade.

Not to be outdone is the United States. The four big players across Africa, the EU, China, India and the USA share common goals but employ different strategies. Other participants lag far behind.

In 2008 the European Union announced a new agreement with the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries that linked aid, trade, investment and development. European trade with Africa in petroleum, cocoa beans, diamonds, machinery, motor vehicles, boats and ships, and medicines amounts to around ¤80 billion annually. European investments in Africa account for a mere three per cent of total outflows, equivalent to about ¤3 billion. Africa clearly does not rank highly in either the commercial or political activities of the Europeans in the 21st century.

For China, Africa is a major area of interest. Lacking the political baggage of its rivals, Europe, the USA or India, China explicitly states that it has no imperial ambitions in Africa. It carefully avoids involvement in African domestic politics and stresses long-term arrangements of mutual interest to both parties. As an industrialising country, China has an insatiable appetite for raw materials. Its largest investments are in Algeria, Angola, Gabon, Guinea, Kenya, Nigeria, the Sudan, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zambia. Algeria, Angola, Nigeria and the Sudan are rich in oil. Zambia has vast reserves of copper, and Gabon exports iron ore.

Chinese interests are not confined to raw materials. Rather, they have a much broader policy for investment in road and rail networks, schools, sports facilities, telecommunications, computer clusters, and energy-generating capabilities. With a Central Bank flush with hard currencies, and a close relation between Chinese government and commercial interests, China has a major advantage over its rivals. In Ethiopia Chinese firms are rebuilding the capital, Addis Ababa, along with the gift of a headquarters building for the African Union. They designed and built the memorial park to Kwame Nkrumah in Accra, Ghana. The Chinese built the first railroad linking Zambia and Tanzania and are now rebuilding it. And like much of the rest of the world, African shops and markets abound with goods imported from China.

Although overshadowed by the Chinese efforts, the Indians are not to be overlooked. Indian trade with Africa long preceded that of the Europeans, and Indian diasporas already existed along the east coast of Africa from Somalia to South Africa when Europeans were sporadic visitors and slave traders along the western coast. India has a long trade relation with its diaspora communities especially in Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria. But recently the Indian government has cranked up its support for Africa. It has offered to spend more than US$500 billion in development aid by 2013 and to extend US$5.45 in credits to African states. At the same time more than 300 Indian companies have invested more than US$1.8 billion in Africa.

The USA did not pay much attention to sub-Saharan Africa after the abolition of its transatlantic slave trade at the beginning of the 19th century. Until 1815 when the second war against the Barbary Coast pirates relieved the situation, merchandise trade in the Mediterranean was the focus of attention. By the 1980s, however, two issues forced a renewed interest in Africa. The first was the growing awareness of the scarcity of oil on the world market accentuated by the increasing demand, especially in Asia, as well as the declining supplies available from known sources. The second was the expansion of world terrorism and the self-declared intention of the USA to lead the global fight against it.

At present Nigeria, Algeria, Angola and Gabon supply between 15 and 20 per cent of US oil imports. Combined African daily oil imports exceed the total imported individually from Saudi Arabia, Mexico or Venezuela and fall slightly behind Canada, the single largest supplier of oil to the US. One motive for the renewed US involvement across Africa obviously lies in its interest in varying its sources of petroleum and limiting its dependence on volatile areas like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran and Venezuela. Potential new oil exporters such as Ghana (and Brazil in the Americas) have also attracted unusual attention.

On October 1, 2007 the USA established a new military division, the Africa Command or AFRICOM, headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, and signed bilateral military agreements with some 53 African states that emphasised their mutual concerns. Basically the USA pledged to refrain from direct military activity in Africa, but would supply arms and military training through private contractors at a steadily escalating cost that approximates US$2 billion per year. At the same time, trade with sub-Saharan Africa boosted by the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) of 2008 has exploded, almost doubling in five years.

For Africa this new scramble appears to have better prospects than before. But the eventual result will depend as much on Africans as on foreigners and this time one hopes that the Africans can take better advantage of the international relationships.

INDIA :

Modi told Tharoor’s office to deny visa to this model
www.indianexpress.com/Posted: Wednesday, Apr 14, 2010

They may be trading insults and allegations since last Sunday but Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor’s office and IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi were quite “friendly” until at least last January.

So much so that the IPL czar is learnt to have asked Tharoor’s office to deny a visa to South African model Gabriella Demetriades, one of the contestants for Miss IPL Bollywood during IPL 2.

E-mails between Modi and the Minister’s office in January show that the model’s visa was due to expire in February 2010 and Modi wanted Tharoor’s office to ensure that her request for the visa’s renewal be turned down.

The Ministry didn’t oblige — and Demetriades did get a visa.

When asked why he wanted her visa blocked, Modi declined to comment.

Speaking to The Indian Express from Mumbai tonight, before she left for South Africa, Demetriades, 23, said that she had arrived in India in October last year on a six-month visa.

“I went back in December to renew my visa which was to expire in February. While in South Africa, I lost my passport. I managed to get a temporary passport and, subsequently, a visa from the Indian consulate in Durban in January and then traveled to India,” she said. “I am not associated with IPL 3 and was here only to do modeling assignments and some commercials.”

Asked whether Modi played any role in her visa request, she replied in the negative. Asked about her association with Modi, she said: “He is a friend, we met during last year’s IPL in South Africa.”

The e-mails reveal that Modi kept Tharoor’s office informed about Demetriades losing her passport and applying for a new one. Demetriades, in turn, kept Modi informed about the loss of her passport and her visa application.

Around world, fewer women die in childbirth
By David Brown/www.washingtonpost.com/Wednesday, April 14, 2010

The rate at which women die in childbirth or soon after delivery has fallen by about 40 percent since 1980, with dramatic reductions in the populous nations of India, China, Brazil and Egypt.

Maternal mortality is a key gauge of a population’s health and wealth, as well as of women’s status. The rate differs greatly between countries and regions, with the best- and worst-performing nations differing by a factor of about 400, according to a study in the Lancet, a European medical journal.

The global rate in 2008 was 251 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births, according to a research team led by Christopher J.L. Murray at the University of Washington. The highest rate was in Afghanistan (1,575) and the lowest in Italy (4). The United States was 17; Canada, 7; and Mexico, 52.

More than half of all maternal deaths (about 343,000 in 2008) occurred in six countries, researchers found: India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Between 1980 and 2008, China’s maternal mortality rate fell to 40 from 165; India’s to 254 from 677; and Brazil’s to 55 from 149. In many sub-Saharan African countries, a decline that began in the 1980s flattened in the 1990s because of the prevalence of HIV infection, which increases a woman’s risk of death during pregnancy and after delivery.

Prenatal care and “skilled birth attendants” — midwives or physicians — at delivery reduce both a woman’s and her baby’s risk of dying in childbirth or soon after. Maternal mortality also tends to fall when per capita income rises, when women have fewer children and when they go to school longer.

Maternal and child health — partly eclipsed by AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in the past decade — is gaining attention on the global health agenda. It is a major part of the Obama administration’s Global Health Initiative. Norway is devoting about 35 percent of its overseas development aid to maternal, newborn and child health.

A group of public health experts — joined by six government leaders in the United States for this week’s Nuclear Security Summit — will meet in New York this week to map a strategy for further reducing maternal and child mortality. They are two of the eight Millennium Development Goals established by the United Nations in 2000.

“We do not have silver bullets for achieving this,” said Flavia Bustreo, an Italian physician who directs a partnership, headquartered in Geneva, of 300 health organizations. Instead, she said, there is a menu of proven interventions that need to be implemented more widely.

For example, in the 68 countries where 97 percent of maternal deaths occur, less than 20 percent of recently delivered women are visited at home by a health worker who can instruct in breast-feeding and assess the mother and infant for infection. Only 50 percent of deliveries in those countries have skilled birth attendants present. On the other hand, more than 80 percent of babies get the recommended immunizations.

BRASIL:

PREVIEW: Summits galore: Now, it’s Russia, India, China in Brazil
Posted : Wed, 14 Apr 2010 /By : Helmut Reuter / www.earthtimes.org

Category : US (World)
US World News | Home

Sao Paulo – Compared to the just-ended nuclear security summit in Washington, two upcoming gatherings in Brasilia may seem like small affairs.

But that could not be further from the truth.

The group comprising Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) contributed almost 50 per cent of world economic growth from 2000- 2008.

“From 2008-14, BRIC will account for 61.3per cent of global growth,” said Brazilian Ambassador Roberto Jaguaribe, who is coordinating the BRIC summit.

All four BRIC leaders travelled earlier this week to Washington, where they joined a 47-nation summit to discuss ways to prevent nuclear terrorism and safeguard nuclear material.

Logical, then, that the leaders of Russia, China and India, having already travelled half way around the globe to get to Washington, would make use of the opportunity to drop in on Brazil.

At least they’ll only have to change one time zone.

Analysts expect these four highly-populated, consumption-loving economies to overshadow the G-7 (the world’s seven-largest economies) within 20 years. Whether the dollar can remain the global currency by then is uncertain, because BRIC countries are already searching for an alternative.

The message coming out of Brasilia is set to be clear: On issues of finance and economics, all paths lead to BRIC.

Chinese leader Hu Jintao will make the most of the multilateral summit, meeting one-on-one with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva ahead of the BRIC summit.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh were expected in Brasilia Thursday.

Before the BRIC summit, there is set to be a gathering of the so- called IBSA group (India, Brazil and South Africa). South African President Jacob Zuma is also expected Thursday in Brasilia, on the way home from Washington.

Trade among IBSA countries has risen from 6.5 billion dollars per year in 2002 to 26.4 billion dollars per year in 2008.

IBSA is set to discuss among other things the long-debated reform of the UN Security Council, according to South African government sources. Both Brazil and India are lobbying for permanent seats in the council.

BRIC countries (without South Africa) will pursue their talks Friday, focusing mainly on economic issues. A final declaration was to be issued, reportedly with calls for more dialogue at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

Behind the scenes, however, discussion is expected to focus on how to cast aside the dollar as a global currency. Russia and China, in particular, are keen on dropping the “greenback” and are looking for an alternative.

Diplomatic sources are busy making it clear that the BRIC summit does not target anyone in particular, not even the United States.

However, it is at least as obvious that countries like China and Brazil came out of the recent global financial crisis relatively unscathed, by comparison to the United States and European nations, and they want to use this as a platform for their demands.

“Exchanges among the four nations concerning major global challenges would be conducive to increasing the influence of emerging and developing countries, and promoting the development of multilateralism,” China’s Deputy Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai said of the meeting’s goals.

Medvedev agreed.

“I am convinced that our cooperation has a great future,” he said. “Even if we are still starting along the path, our alliance already has stable foundations.”

These foundations, however, did not prevent Russia from slipping into a deep recession during the crisis. Its GDP fell by 7.9 per cent in 2009 – the largest drop since 1994. And poor prospects remain into 2010, with a fall of 7.2 per cent expected in Russian GDP.

Summit host Brazil only lost 0.2 per cent of its economy last year, and it expects to grow by over 5 per cent in 2010.

And China beats them all. The Asian giant grew by an impressive 8.7 per cent in 2009, and the World Bank estimates growth this year at around 9.5 per cent.

Political signals are likely to abound even beyond Brasilia, as the leaders depart.

Hu for example is set to fly to Venezuela to see left-wing populist President Hugo Chavez. Barely two weeks ago, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was in Caracas, while Lula meets with the most outspoken critic of the United States every three months or so.

EN BREF, CE 14 avril 2010 … AGNEWS / OMAR, BXL,14/04/2010