{jcomments on}OMAR, AGNEWS, BXL, le 17 mai 2010 – www.nytimes.com- May 17, 2010–Nearly simultaneous grenade attacks in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, killed at least two people and wounded 32 on Saturday evening, the police said Sunday.
RWANDA
Grenade Attacks Shake Capital of Rwanda
By JOSH KRON/www.nytimes.com/ May 17, 2010
KAMPALA, Uganda — Nearly simultaneous grenade attacks in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, killed at least two people and wounded 32 on Saturday evening, the police said Sunday.
The grenades were thrown into crowds at a popular market and the city’s busiest bus station.
The attacks, which occurred within an hour, were the third set to rock Kigali since February. They came as political tension has risen ahead of a presidential election in August. The police said they were investigating.
While past grenade attacks have been aimed mainly at genocide survivors or genocide memorials and were often blamed on rebels, the recent ones have struck at commercial areas, creating a new level of tension in the capital. Kigali residents said Sunday that some roads had been closed and that there was an increased army presence there.
In March, President Paul Kagame blamed two senior army officers who fled Rwanda for being behind the attacks. Since then, two high-ranking generals have been arrested and others dismissed, and security forces have swept the country for arms and ammunition. Two newspapers that reported on a possible coup attempt were suspended.
In a recent phone interview, one general blamed for the attacks, Lt. Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa, said that Mr. Kagame was using security forces to protect his hold on power. “The army, the police, the intelligence, these are personal institutions,” he said. “It cannot be like this forever.”
For Rwandan Students, Ethnic Tensions Lurk
www.nytimes.com/By JOSH KRON/May 17, 2010
BUTARE, Rwanda — When Eva Mutoni’s boyfriend of three years broke up with her, she realized she should have seen it coming.
Ms. Mutoni, 25, whose mother is ethnic Tutsi and whose father is Hutu, and her boyfriend, a full-blooded Tutsi, were college sweethearts at the National University of Rwanda in Butare.
“A year into the relationship, we had a big talk about me being mixed,” she said. They weathered that discussion, aided by the fact that Ms. Mutoni identifies herself as Tutsi. But as they got older, she recalls, his family and some of his friends refused to accept his dating someone of mixed parentage.
“He knew he couldn’t stay with me forever in Rwanda,” she said. “To some, I’m just a Hutu girl.”
Sixteen years after the Rwandan genocide, ethnicity remains an inescapable part of growing up for the young people who will determine the nation’s future. And if the universities, where the government has focused its efforts on building a post-ethnic society, represent the great hope of coexistence, they have so far succeeded only in burying ethnic tensions just beneath the surface.
As presidential elections approach and the nation has grown more repressive, the campuses have become tense. Students say that they are being watched, and that the laws aimed at suppressing ethnic differences have made them afraid to speak openly.
In many ways, college life in Rwanda is no different than it is anywhere else. In hallways and dorm rooms at the elite campus at Butare, the country’s future leaders cope with hormones and final exams, peer pressure and parents. But there is an added element that tends to define all others, what students euphemistically call “ the situation.”
The 1994 genocide, when Hutu death squads massacred hundreds of thousands of minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus, is never far away. At the university, where Hutus and Tutsis live and study side by side, many students are either relatives of the killers or relatives of the victims.
But the Tutsi-dominated government teaches that there are no Hutus or Tutsis, only united, patriotic Rwandans, part of a reconciliation policy enforced by laws criminalizing certain kinds of speech to the contrary.
So the students live in a surreal state of imposed silence, never talking about the one thing always on their minds: each other.
In one way, Feliciano Nshiyimana, a 26-year-old Hutu law student, is a paradigm of President Paul Kagame’s reconciliation efforts. At the crowded and competitive campus, where students sleep four to a room, two to a bed, he shares a bed with a Tutsi genocide survivor. Listening to MP3s on his laptop in his room, surrounded by toiletries, course printouts and posters of the Manchester United soccer team, he says that conversations among his roommates are delicate, but that they generally get along.
“Background is losing importance,” he said, but added, “If you have an ideology, you hide it.”
While students make acquaintances based on their interests, he says, campus life ultimately divides itself along linguistic lines, and friendships across those lines are rare.
“Linguistic lines,” in this case, is code for the ethnic groups that dare not speak their names. Although the linguistic differences are not cut and dried, for students “French speakers” means Hutu and “English speakers” means Tutsi, specifically those who returned from refugee life in English-speaking Uganda after 1994 and now run the country.
Such code has evolved in the face of the governing party’s efforts to keep peace and power by papering over ethnic identity and pushing a cult of nationalism.
The indoctrination starts before college at ingando, the solidarity camps most students attend after high school. Among other activities, the campers learn that any problems between Hutus and Tutsis were started by the Belgian colonists, and that Mr. Kagame’s Tutsi rebels were a nationalist liberation movement that committed no significant crimes against humanity when they took over after the genocide.
Colleges have reconciliation clubs, started on government advice ostensibly to combat ethnic hatred, which reinforce the new non-ethnic narrative. Stickers posted on walls urge unity and warn against “divisionism” and “genocide ideology.” Those broadly defined activities have been banned, partly in response to government reports citing high levels of ethnic hatred in the schools. “Stirring up ill feelings” is proscribed by the genocide ideology ban. Calling a student a name or wearing a T-shirt with the pre-1994 Rwandan flag may be enough to get arrested.
Students say the universities are crawling with spies. In the last year, at least 10 students have been arrested for a wide range of verbal slurs and provocative writing. Six students were arrested last May for damaging a genocide survivor’s clothes. A professor at a college in the east was sentenced to five years in prison last month after one of his students alerted the police that he had insulted Mr. Kagame during class.
At Butare, direct elections for student leadership have been canceled since 2008, when ethnic code words — francophone and anglophone — were deployed in campaigns. The accused students were dismissed, and the student government dissolved.
According to the law, once a student is convicted of genocide ideology, the student can face jail time and will not be readmitted to school, a policy that has students keeping their opinions to themselves.
The ban on genocide ideology also encompasses accusations that the Tutsi rebels killed civilians in 1994, despite the finding by a United Nations research team that the rebels killed up to 45,000 people. A mention of those killings can land a jail term. The genocide, the law says, was committed only against the Tutsis.
The official narrative, students say, amounts to a kind of denial of history. Or as Denise Kajeniri, a 21-year-old Tutsi economics student, describes it, “pretend and move on.”
But the alternative, breaking the wall of silence, remains elusive. Alice Nishimwe, a 23-year-old Hutu studying for her GMATs in Kigali, the capital, says it may simply be too soon to talk.
“Only after talking about our differences can we bridge that gap,” she said. “But that’s individually.” As for the country, she said, “Maybe in my granddaughter’s time.”
UGANDA
Egypt and Sudan Say No to Nile Basin Agreement
By June Kellum/Epoch Times Staff / May 17, 2010
After a decade of negotiations, four east African countries on Friday signed an agreement that would allow for more equitable distribution of water from the Nile River. Egypt and Sudan, which have primary and secondary rights to the water, refused to sign.
The countries that signed the Nile River Basin Cooperative Framework were Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Ethiopia. The agreement will take effect in one year and allow these upstream countries greater access to Nile water, according to NTV Kenya.
The other upstream Nile countries, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, and Burundi, indicated that they are also willing to sign.
Under the current agreement, brokered by the British in 1929, Egypt has rights to the vast majority of Nile water and veto power over upstream water projects. A 1959 agreement gave Sudan secondary rights to the water.
Cairo says that the Nile water is an issue of “national security.” The country is already struggling with a shortage of water, and a 2007 report by the Water Research Center of Egypt said that the country will face “serious water shortages by the year 2025,” according to Egypt News.
Egypt and Sudan have said they will not sign a new agreement unless they are guaranteed their same share of water.
Egyptian Minister of State for Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Moufid Shehab said in April that, “Egypt does not have a water resource other than the Nile.” Shehab added, “Unlike the other Nile Basin countries, which have several sources of water, the River Nile provides Egypt with 95 percent of the country’s water needs,” according to Cairo online newspaper AL-AHRAM.
“The Nile Cooperative Framework Agreement must clearly recognize Egypt and Sudan’s historic share of the Nile waters,” said Egyptian Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources Mohamed Nasreddin Allam, according to AL-AHRAM.
Zain Transfers Last of African Assets to Bharti, Al-Qabas Says
By Fiona MacDonald/Bloomberg/May 17
May 17 (Bloomberg) — Zain Group received preliminary approval to transfer its licenses in Uganda to Bharti Airtel Ltd., marking the last of the Kuwaiti company’s assets to be transferred to Bharti, Al-Qabas reported, without saying where it got the information.
The deal is to be completed before the next Zain shareholders’ meeting, according to the newspaper, which did not say when the meeting is scheduled.
Zain, Kuwait’s biggest phone company, agreed March 30 to sell its assets in 15 African countries to Bharti for $9 billion.
Anti-gay jolt in Uganda
’Pegger throws light on controversial bill
By PAUL TURENNE, Winnipeg Sun/May 17, 2010
Call it the belly of the beast.
Kaj Hasselriis, a Winnipeg journalist and former mayoral candidate, spent eight weeks in Uganda this past winter chronicling the African country’s gay community and its response to a controversial bill now before Uganda’s parliament that proposes everything from executing HIV-positive gay people to jailing citizens who don’t turn in their gay friends.
Hasselriis, who is gay, had friends tell him he was crazy to willingly to get involved.
“I didn’t think it was nuts, but I was feeling like I had to be a little cautious,” said Hasselriis, who’s been back in Winnipeg since late April. “I’d never read any articles in which gay and lesbian Ugandans were interviewed, so I wanted to go to interview people who were concerned about the bill.”
Hasselriis eventually dispatched more than a dozen stories on the topic to media outlets like Xtra, CBC Radio and Maclean’s magazine, and also spoke at Winnipeg city council’s April 28 meeting in support of a motion denouncing Uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill. The motion passed unanimously.
But before achieving all these things, Hasselriis had to find people willing to talk in a country where homophobia is rampant and openly popular.
“I went to Kampala (Uganda’s capital) not knowing a soul. A couple of days after I arrived I did what gay men do all over the world do to meet each other, which is go on the Internet,” Hasselriis said.
After meeting a few people that way, he discovered a bar that hosted a gay-friendly night, met several people he would eventually befriend, and the information flowed from that point on, leading to several articles that received national play.
“Most gay men and lesbians there are very afraid to tell anyone they’re gay, including their families,” Hasselriis said, noting people fear being “outed” will threaten their jobs and homes, or worse. “But people were excited and quite willing to talk to me. People there do have a pretty good understanding that international pressure is what’s going to stop the bill.”
paul.turenne@sunmedia.ca
TANZANIA:
African Lutherans press opposition to gay rites
www.christiancentury.org/17052010
Three months before a major assembly of the Lutheran World Federation, church leaders in Tanzania and Ethiopia—who represent the two largest Lutheran constituencies in Africa—have expressed opposition to “same-sex marriages and those who support the legitimacy of such marriage.”
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America last year urged members to allow congregations that choose to do so “to recognize, support and hold publicly accountable lifelong, monogamous same-gender relationships,” but delegates did not call them marriages—reserving that term for heterosexual couples.
A statement posted April 29 on the Web site of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (ELCT) said it will neither accept money nor work with groups that “support the legitimacy” of same-gender marriage. It was uncertain whether the ELCT included support for same-sex blessings and committed gay partnerships as cause for boycott as well. The 2009 ELCA assembly also acknowledged that its members were divided on the issue and would respect the consciences of Lutherans who disagree.
The 70-million-member Lutheran World Federation will hold its once-every-seven-years meeting July 20-27 in Stuttgart, Germany, and homosexuality is expected to be a divisive issue. The LWF president is Mark S. Hanson, who is also presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
The ELCA announced that Hanson would hold private meetings in Chicago in May with leaders of the two African Lutheran bodies—Wakseyoum Idosa, president of the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus, and Alex Mala susa, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Luth eran Church in Tanzania.
Those African churches expressed deep concern over decisions of the 2009 ELCA assembly—and, separately, the Church of Sweden—on sexuality matters.
Hanson said in a May 4 statement that he expects to have “honest and open conversations” with those leaders in separate meetings. Hanson said he would affirm “the ELCA’s shared commitment with partner churches to be engaged in God’s mission for the sake of the world.”
Rafael Malpica Padilla, executive director of the ELCA’s Division for Global Mission, said that since the 2009 biennial assembly in Minneapolis, his mission staff has been in touch with many companion churches. “Our intent is to continue to be respectful of local policies and practices in the assignment of mission personnel and the development of shared ministries,” Padilla said.
Meanwhile, in the United States, ELCA officials continue to implement policies that now allow eligible Luth erans in publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships to serve as clergy and professional lay leaders.
Bradley E. Schmeling, an openly gay Atlanta pastor whose clergy status was removed in 2007, has been reinstated to the ELCA clergy roster along with partner Darin Easler.
“It feels like being back with the family again after a time of uncomfortable separation,” said Schmeling, who serves as pastor at St. John Lutheran Church in Atlanta. Schmeling’s case attracted considerable attention in the news media.
Easler, who left an ELCA parish in Minnesota in 2003, had been removed from the ELCA clergy roster in 2006, but he later worked as a United Church of Christ minister in hospice care. A regional ELCA synod in Minnesota approved Easler’s request for reinstatement April 30.
CONGO RDC :
KENYA :
ANGOLA :
SOUTH AFRICA:
Libya Aviation Accident: “Miracle” child survives horrific Tripoli plane crash
May 17, 2010/ (NewYorkInjuryNews.com – Injury News)/New Source: JusticeNewsFlash.com
05/13/2010 // West Palm Beach, Florida, USA // Sandra Quinlan // Sandra Quinlan
Tripoli, Libya—An aviation disaster claimed the lives of 103 individuals Wednesday morning, May 12, 2010, sparing only one person: an 8-year-old boy. The deadly plane crash occurred as an Afriqiyah Airways jet attempted to land at the Tripoli International Airport in Libya, as reported by CNN.
According to information provided, an Airbus A330-200 commercial passenger airliner was ending a nearly 9-hour commute from Johannesburg, South Africa when the unthinkable occurred.
As the plane attempted to land at Tripoli International Airport, it violently crashed at 6 a.m. As a result, 92 passengers and 11 crew members were killed. Of those fatally injured in the plane wreck, “58 passengers were Dutch, six South African, two Libyan, two Austrian, one German, one French, one Zimbabwean and two British. Another 19 passengers’ nationalities could not immediately be identified. The 11 crew members were all Libyan.”
The sole survivor, a Dutch citizen identified as Ruben van Assouw, was subsequently rushed to Al Khadra Hospital. Assouw reportedly suffered several broken bones and had to undergo surgical procedure after the horrific aviation accident occurred.
President of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, with regard to the child’s survival noted, “given this tragic event, is truly a miracle.”
On behalf of Afriqiyah Airways, Airports Company South Africa representative Nicky Knapp stated, “We express our sincere regret and sadness on behalf of the airline. As well, we would like to express our condolences to the relatives and friends of those who had passengers on Flight 8U771 destined for Tripoli late last night, due to arrive around 6 o’clock this morning.”
Officials reportedly found the aircraft’s flight data recorder (FDR), or “black box”, and are expected to conduct a full and formal probe into the devastating Flight 771 plane crash.
AFRICA / AU :
Over 20 killed in fresh fighting as militants attack Somali parliament meeting
www.defpro.com/May 17, 2010
| At least 23 civilians have been killed in Mogadishu during fighting and exchange of artillery fire between Somali government forces and militants who the attacked parliament building where sessions resumed Sunday morning.
Medical sources say that most of the deaths occurred in and around the main Bakara Market, an insurgent hotbed south of the Somali capital, as government forces and African Union (AU) troops reacted to the insurgents who fired from the market toward the parliament building.
“We have collected 50 wounded civilians from different villages, but most of the casualties took place in Bakara Market” the head of Life-Line Africa-Nation Link Telecom ambulance service Ali Muse Sheik told reporters in Mogadishu.
“Our medical staff members have also counted the deaths of 15 civilians” he said, adding that most of the wounds are very serious.
At least three civilians died in the Elgab village near the presidential house, when mortar shells hit the area, eye witnesses confirmed. Five others were killed by stray artillery shells in the north of the city, according to residents.
Meanwhile, although hundreds of law makers were present, the Somali parliament session did not open as fracas and shouting by parliament members dominated in the conference hall where AU peacekeepers and Somali police were heavily guarding the parliament speaker.
Nearly three hundred of the 550-member Somali parliament are arguing the mandate of the parliamentary speaker, ended in October last year, saying that Sheik Aden Mohamed Nur could not claim chairmanship of the parliament, while the rest are defending his legality in the leadership.
“Down with Sheik Aden, we don’t want him, he must announce his resignation” the Anti-speaker law makers were shouting.
The Somali parliament did not meet for the past several months after it fled from its former interim conference centre at the Somali police traffic workshop, as the Islamist fighters were advancing.
However, the meeting was postponed with no later date of its resumption having been fixed by the parliament.
—-
By Shafi’i Abokar, Special Correspondent for Somalia
Why NCP blackmails AU-UN forces in Darfur?
Monday 17 May 2010/www.sudantribune.com/By Abdellatif Abdelrahman.
May 16, 2010 — On February 2008, Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) was signed between the UN-African Union and the Government of Sudan, furthermore; the Sudanese Government and the UNAMID signed on December 29,2009 additional protocol to enhance safety measures to ensure the security of the peacekeepers working in Darfur. However, according to the above mentioned (SOFA) agreement, the Sudanese Government is responsible of the security and protection of UNAMID peacekeeping personnel and their assets.
The reason that stirred me to write this article is; the continuous attacks on the African Union and United Nation forces in Darfur by the Ruling National Congress Party in Sudan and it’s allied Janjaweed militias. The most recent of these attacks was the attacks on the Egyptian forces that brought the total deaths of UNAMID forces in Darfur to 24 personnel; since the beginning of their mission in Darfur on February 2008. In addition to sporadic continuous abduction to this forces which the latest was kidnapping of four South African police advisers.
These killings and abductions, consequently shade lights on the politicized nature of these attacks and kidnappings, and also shows how the NCP uses the stands of certain countries to attacks their forces on the ground; in order to force them change their positions or soften their stands, pertaining to the indictment of the fugitive President AL-Bashir or on the ongoing bleak political situation in Sudan.
I don’t want to indulge deeper in commenting on these prejudiced agreement, but it is clear that (SOFA), was tailored in some parts to please the genocide regime of Khartoum, because those who drafted it would not be non other than those who overnight made pro-government rebel out of U.N official ( Al-Tigani Sessei), to serve their special interests and agendas. Some body might say, having something is better than nothing, and the SOFA agreement was dictated by the situation of adamant resistance of Al-Bashir’s to accept foreign troops in Darfur. Yes, nobody can deny the fact that (SOFA) is the product of it’s time, thus it has numerous flaws and shortcomings. But; why the Genocide regime is entirely responsible of the security and protection of the UNAMID? And if the Government attacked the UNAMID in a way or another, as is happens today, what are the measures to keep those accountable or leave it to Khartoum to keep its people accountable? I am sure that the architectures of the lame agreement have never thought of addressing such loopholes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
On 7th of may 2010 a convoy of Egyptian peacekeepers with three vehicles and 20 military personnel was a ambushed near Katilla village, 85 KM south of Edd al Fursan former Edd al-Khanam), in South Darfur. As a result, two soldiers were killed and three others were injured. However; its well known to UNAMID THAT the most areas where the UNAMAID forces are attacked including the Egyptian forces, are free of rebel groups. But let us go back to the political climate between Sudan and Egypt, which coincided with the attacks on the Egyptian forces. The attack came few days, after the Yemeni Government blocked the Arab Parliamentarian Conference on Darfur under Sudanese government pressure. The Egyptian MP from the Wafd Party, Sober Mohamed Hassan told the Elaph on line; “I regret as Egyptian representative coming to meet Arab Parliamentarian for Darfur, in order to offer suggestions and cooperation that would contribute to the resolution of this crisis. Unfortunately I am surprised by the cancellation of the conference which for me is suspicious I feel sorry for the Arab regimes, this is why we are backward”. This is an insult to the Arab Parliamentarians whether from the Yemeni authorities or the intervention of the Sudanese Government and unfortunately in this manner they create the counter effect in the Darfur crisis, and in this mental state Sudan will be divided to five countries and not only two”. He concluded.
The attack also came in a time when Egyptian Government invited the Justice and Equality Movement, after they suspended their participation in Doha talks, the move which roused fury of the regime in Khartoum. In continuation of it’s never –ending cycles of abductions and attacks, also on April 11,2010, when Janjaweed militias belongs to the border guards from Niyala named “ people’s Democratic Struggle Movement”, abducted four UNAMID police advisers from South Africa. We did not need political analyst, to tell us why South African personnel were abducted in the middle of Niyala the capital of Southern Darfur State. If we cast casual glimpse on President Zuma’s unbudging statements to the media, vis-à-vis Al-Bashir’s facing to the justice in the ICC and Sudan Government’s blaming to the Republic of South Africa of assisting the SPLM/A. I confidential source confided to me that, a high-ranking NCP official told, South African Government representative that, “Look!!! Your Government is assisting South Sudan to secede”. While the respond from South Africa was; “what is wrong with that since secession is already written there in the CPA”.
Furthermore; in August last year ( 2009), a group of armed men kidnapped two French UNAMID staff members( one woman and one man) in Zalingei, they were released in mid-December. The targeting of French staff within the UNAMID, plus others abducted in Kabkabiyya from Medicine Sans Frontiers- France, for sure, had its political dimensions.
Having explained a
ll above; the question lurks in is: how many people needed to be killed or kidnapped from UNAMID so that they can be given rights of self-protection? Not only to protect themselves, but also to protect the civilians where the purpose of their mandate in Darfur is to protect vulnerable innocent civilians from being constantly killed and rapt by Sudan Government and its militias before their own eyes.
I believe that, UNAMID, although it was ill-equipped and below the number, nevertheless, is doing super job, and it will be a crime to leave them vulnerable to the Government attacks all the times. The head of UNAMID, Ibrahim Gambari, and the AU-UN Joint Special Representative in Darfur, said in an interview with UN Radio on Tuesday that they want to make it clear that an attack on international peacekeepers is a war crime and a violation of international criminal law. Yes, Mr.Gambari you are absolutely correct, attacking peacekeepers constitute a heinous war crime, but when you are faced with a situation whereby, a stubborn dictatorship regime like the NCP does not fear committing those crimes on your troops or abide by any protocol, you have to rethink your policies and your rules of engagement.
Last not the least my condolences to the UNAMID forces a long with their countries and families who lost their loved ones on their noble duties and may God rest their souls in Peace. AMEN.
The author is based in Kampala, he can be reached at tibotoum@yahoo.com
UN /ONU :
USA :
Gruesome task of identifying victims
May 17, 2010 /By ZANDILE MBABELA and SAPA-AP
——————————————————————————–
The department of international relations will today receive confirmation of the number of South Africans’ bodies positively identified from the debris of the Afriqiyah Airways flight which crashed near the Tripoli airport in Libya last Wednesday.
By late yesterday, department spokesman Saul Molobi could not say how many South Africans had been positively identified, as some of the bodies were burned beyond recognition.
“We will get the latest report from the Libyan government [today] and work from that,” he said.
Plane crash investigators – including experts from the Netherlands, South Africa and the US – began combing the wreckage of the plane in which 103 people died last week, as relatives arrived in Libya to identify bodies and take them home for burial.
Thirteen South African families arrived in Tripoli late last week to begin the gruelling task of identifying loved ones.
So far, only two South Africans have been positively identified. They are Catherine Tillett, the 45-year-old cabin crew trainer at Global Aviation, and Norbert Taferner, a former Global Aviation employee.
Both were identified by the company’s project manager Jean Wolmarens, who reportedly said he identified Tillett from the uniform she wore and from the documents in her possession.
“It was a harrowing sight, but it had to be done,” the Sunday Independent quoted him as saying.
Afriqiyah Airways last week confirmed the nationalities of passengers on board as 67 Dutch, 13 South Africans, two Libyans, two Austrians, one German, one Zimbabwean, one French, one British, four Belgians and one unidentified passenger. All 11 crew members were Libyan.
The sole survivor of the crash, Ruben van Assouw, 9, was flown home to Holland on Saturday.
Airbus SA spokesman Linden Burns said it could take months for the investigation to be completed.
CANADA :
African Queen Mines Signs Earn-in and JV Agreement for Rongo Gold Field Project in Kenya’s Lake Victoria Greenstone Belt
May 17, 2010/www.marketwatch.com
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, May 17, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — AFRICAN QUEEN MINES LTD. (the “Company”) is pleased to announce that it has now entered into an Earn-in and Joint Venture Agreement (the “Agreement”) with Kenyan private company ABBA MINING COMPANY LIMITED (“Abba”), covering exploration, development and exploitation of the Rongo Gold Field Project (the “Project”), which is the subject of Special License No. 287 (the “License”), granted to Abba by the Commissioner of Mines and Geology of the Government of the Republic of Kenya (the “Commissioner”) on January 22, 2010. The License grants full and exclusive rights to prospect and explore for all minerals for an initial period of two years within an area of approximately 112 sq. km. known as the Rongo Gold Field in the Kanango gold mining area of the Migori District of Nyanza Province in Southwest Kenya near Lake Victoria.
The Project is situated some 380 km. by road from the capital city of Nairobi and 60 km. N of the border with Tanzania, forming part of the rich Lake Victoria Greenstone Belt extending from Tanzania and hosting known world-class gold deposits including African Barrick Gold’s Bulyanhulu and North Mara Mines, within approximately 100 km. of the Project, and AngloGold Ashanti’s Geita Mine.
Under the terms of the Earn-In and Joint Venture Agreement with Abba, the Company may earn up to an 85% interest in the Project by funding prescribed optional stages from exploration through feasibility. In addition, the Company is required to make three payments to Abba to secure its rights under the Agreement in the sum of U.S. $100,000 each on the date of effectiveness of the Agreement (now), the commencement of Phase 2 and the commencement of Phase 3, respectively. The Company is designated as manager and operator of the Project on behalf of the joint venture partners, subject to full consultation with Abba on all material aspects of the Project. Abba has agreed to transfer the License to the Company’s Kenyan operating subsidiary presently being formed upon the Company’s election to proceed to Phase 3 and payment of the above three rights payments. The Agreement has now been approved by the Commissioner.
The License area is comprised primarily of Archaean age metavolcanics of the Nyanzian System. This region has historically recorded gold production with Migori, one of the earliest gold mines in Kenya and well known for its Archaean lode gold production, located just SW the southern perimeter of the License. The mineral occurrences on the License were reported to have been first discovered in 1994 by an unsuspecting farmer who correctly identified a gold nugget in the soil. Subsequently, artisinal miners entered the area and have been carrying out sporadic small-scale operations to present principally geared toward recovering gold from vein quartz pebbles in the soil profile. Nonetheless, the potential hard-rock deposit is largely occluded by a layer of topsoil and overburden, with very few visible outcroppings. Only this topsoil has been worked by the local farming community and has led to the property being overlooked and underexplored, with its mineral potential largely unrecognised until now. Recent pitting, trenching and sampling has revealed a highly auriferous mineralized zone below the overburden covering an area extending at least 5 sq. km. at surface, with presence of visible gold in significant quantities.
The Company carried out a comprehensive site examination in April, 2010, as well as a due diligence review of the License and Project. A number of rock chip samples were identified within which visible gold was seen. The rocks are generally mafic to intermediate metavolcanics (andesites) which are extensively epidotised and often silicified. These rock types host the majority of Archaean lode gold deposits in Australia, Canada, Zimbabwe and neighbouring Tanzania. The main type of mineralization in the License area comprises sheet swarms and stockworks of gold-bearing quartz veins commencing at or near surface. The gold is typically associated with pyrite, galena and other copper sulphides. Historic grab samples taken from the artisanal workings have reported grades in excess of 2 g/t au and as high as 96 g/t au.
Geological exposures were visited in the field and late stage granites can be distinguished in the western parts, while the central and eastern areas are largely underlain by mafic and felsic volcanic rocks. Large shear zone related structures are identified which are certain to have played a role in the location of the gold bearing quartz veins. Initial social awareness programmes indicate that the community is very much in support of investment through mining and is welcoming the Company’s activities in the region. No areas of protected forest are noted with the entire area being used for agriculture.
Phase 1 of the Project, scheduled to get underway as soon as practicable, is a ground exploration program comprised of soil and rock sampling, mapping, trenching, pitting and sample analysis, together with review of geophysics and historic data, as well as such additional studies as the parties shall agree. The objective of the Phase 1 Exploration Program is to assess the overall geologic structure of the License area and the likelihood of a commercially viable gold deposit within the License area, as well as to identify discreet drill targets for a Phase 2 core drilling program. The costs for Phase 1, estimated at up to U.S. $200,000, are being paid by the Company. The Company earns a 25% interest in the Project by paying all costs of Phase 1. The Project is being managed on behalf of the Company by Senior Consulting Geologist Mr. Pete Siegfried (M.Sc., MAusIMM), a qualified person, who has approved the contents of this press release.
According to Irwin Olian, CEO of the Company, “We are delighted to be moving forward with the Rongo Gold Field Project in Kenya on the rich Lake Victoria Greenstone Belt. The geology is exciting and we have developed a strong relationship with our JV partner Abba as well as the Government of Kenya in the past few months during our preliminary studies and due diligence review. We have been welcomed by the Prime Minister of Kenya as well as local church and community leaders and anticipate a very positive relationship with the people of Kenya, who will share in the benefits of our project. We are very happy indeed to be adding this Project to our portfolio of existing projects in Mozambique, Ghana, Botswana and Namibia. Together with the King Solomon Project in Mozambique and Noyem Project in Ghana, Rongo now gives the Company a third very promising gold project with potential to host a commercial, large scale deposit. We are committed to building a successful mining company through development of our key projects, while also adding to our portfolio of mineral assets in the ground on an ongoing basis through acquisitions and joint ventures. In this way, we are striving to build a portfolio of long-term hard assets for our shareholders in a period of deteriorating confidence in governments and paper currencies around the world.”
About African-Queen
The Company is an exploratory resource company with diversified mineral properties in Southern and West Africa. It is exploring its properties in Mozambique, Kenya and Ghana for gold and other metals and it is exploring its properties in Botswana and Namibia for diamonds. The Company’s licenses in Botswana and Namibia comprise approximately 9208 sq km of diamond prospects. In Mozambique it has approximately 380 sq km of gold and other metals licenses under agreements with two other companies. In Kenya it has approximately 112 s
q. km. of gold and other minerals licenses under an agreement with another company. Its operations in Botswana are carried out through its operating subsidiary, PAM Botswana (Pty) Ltd.; its operations in Namibia are carried out through its operating subsidiary PAM Minerals Namibia (Pty) Ltd.; its operations in Mozambique are carried out through its subsidiary PAM Mocambique Limitada and its operations in Ghana are carried out through its subsidiary AQ Ghana Gold Limited. Its operations in Kenya will be carried out by an operating subsidiary presently being formed. The Company has its executive offices in Vancouver, Canada.
ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF
AFRICAN QUEEN MINES, LTD.
“
Irwin Olian”
————–
Irwin Olian
Chairman & CEO
The TSX Venture Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of the content of the information contained herein. The statements made in this press release may contain certain forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual events or results may differ from the Company’s expectations.
SOURCE: African Queen Mines Ltd.
African Queen Mines Ltd.
Irwin Olian, 604-899-0100
Fax: 604-899-0200
President and CEO
tigertail@africanqueenmines.com
or
Carrie Howes
Phone: Dusseldorf – +49 (0) 1722 1234 47
Phone: London – +44 (0) 7780 602 788
Corporate Communications
carrie@africanqueenmines.com
AUSTRALIA :
EUROPE :
CHINA :
China to build refineries in Nigeria
Source: Global Times/May 17 2010
China and Nigeria have agreed on a cooperation to invest at most $23 billion to build three refineries and a petrochemical complex in the African country.
Emmanuel Egbogah, special adviser to Nigerian president on petroleum matters, revealed that China State Construction Engrg. Corporation (CSCEC) signed the memorandum of understanding on May 13.
The project will be funded by Bank of China and other State-owned banks.
The localities will be the cities of Lagos, Kogi and Bayelsa, with other cities yet to be fixed. Under the deal, the refineries will be completed within five years with a daily capacity of 750,000 barrels.
Officials said some critical details remain unsettled, such as the financial terms of the deal and who will operate the plants.
Nigeria, the world’s eighth-largest oil exporter and first in the African continent, has been for many years, importing refined oil to meet local demand. The Nigerian government has highlighted that foreign companies interested in carrying out investments in the country should first, give priority to infrastructure and economy before benefiting from oil and gas exports.
Nigeria’s four refineries, with total capacity of 445,000 barrels per day, are using less than 30 percent of their installed capacity, according to official figures.
Currently, China’s drilling rights in the African country are limited. Statistics from China Customs shows that in 2009, China imported 28,000 barrels of crude oil a day from Nigeria.
China’s Tencent on prowl for global Internet buys
Mon May 17, 2010/Reuters
(Reuters) – China’s No.1 online gaming operator Tencent Holdings (0700.HK), armed with $1 billion in cash, wants to take over the world or at least the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and Southeast Asia to start with.
Deals | China | Russia | Brazil
Tencent, China’s most valuable Internet firm with a market capitalization bigger than eBay (EBAY.O) and Yahoo (YHOO.O), turned heads in April when it paid $300 million in cash for 10 percent of Digital Sky Technologies (DST), operator of Russia’s most popular social networking site and an investor in Facebook.
The Chinese firm, with its chubby penguin logo that has become synonymous with the Internet in China, was also shortlisted to buy AOL’s (AOL.N) chat messaging platform ICQ and vying to buy social networking site Friendster, before eventually losing out to other buyers.
“The DST investment is … part of our strategy to gradually go international,” Martin Lau, Tencent’s president said in a conference call last week, after the company reported a record quarterly profit, up 70 percent from a year ago.
Analysts said Tencent could be looking for deals in Brazil and to boost its stakes in game operators in Vietnam and India.
Having mastered many of China’s Internet spaces already, including chat and online games, Tencent, co-founded by the notoriously media shy Ma Huateng, also known as Pony Ma, is using its expertise and cash to try to export its success to other developing markets, analysts said.
It is China’s largest online game operator, and runs a wildly popular instant messaging service called QQ because the letters sound like “cute cute, with over 580 million users.
Tencent, along with rivals Shanda Games (GAME.O) and NetEase.com (NTES.O), is riding strong on the popularity of Internet chat and gaming in the world’s largest Internet and mobile markets.
Tencent could also use stock to fund purchases, with shares that have logged an enviable 42-fold increase since their 2004 IPO, rising from an offering price of HK$3.70 to their current price of around HK$155.
“We are all very worried,” said an executive from an online game company in China, who declined to be named when speaking about a rival. “They are really bent on being big.”
Tencent’s expansion plans come as China’s Internet market becomes more cut-throat, with a wide range of martial arts and fantasy games jockeying for attention from an audience of increasingly sophisticated gamers.
Analysts said the global route is the logical choice for the cashed-up company.
“If they really want to be a global Internet company, they really need to be present in countries other than China,” said Citigroup analyst Alicia Yap. “Look at Google, it is all around the world.”
Earlier this year, Tencent, was said to be a possible contender for some of China’s Internet search business with the vacuum left by Google (GOOG.O).
FOREIGN FORAYS
Tencent already has strong overseas connections through its 30-percent ownership by South Africa’s largest media group Naspers (NPNJn.J).
In 2008, Tencent agreed to pay $7.5 million for an equity stake in Naspers’ Indian unit MIH India, which owns a Facebook-like site called ibibo. Tencent also owns a minority stake in VinaGame, Vietnam’s largest online game operator.
“We want to find markets where there is big potential for growth and particularly if there are similarities we can draw from the experience of China,” Lau said in the call.
Tencent’s foreign forays also mesh with a broader trend that has seen cash-rich Chinese Internet firms shop for global assets.
Shanda Games snapped up U.S. based game developer Mochi Media early this year, and Perfect World (PWRD.O) is said to be on the prowl for overseas assets.
Tencent, co-founded by the notoriously media shy Ma Huateng, also known as Pony Ma, is taking the approach of a passive investor, similar to Naspers’ position in the Chinese company.
Given the different Internet conditions in each country, analysts said it is unlikely Tencent will take an active advisory stake in any of the companies it invests in or enter the countries directly.
(Reporting by Melanie Lee; Editing by Doug Young, Ken Wills and Valerie Lee)
INDIA :
Glaxo Plays Catch-Up in Emerging Markets ‘Land Grab’ (Update1)
May 17, 2010/By Trista Kelley/Bloomberg
May 17 (Bloomberg) — GlaxoSmithKline Plc plans to double revenue from India and China by 2015 as the drugmaker cuts prices to catch up to Pfizer Inc., Sanofi-Aventis SA and Novartis AG in emerging markets.
Glaxo aims to beat the industry’s 12 percent to 14 percent growth in developing-country sales, said Abbas Hussain, the president for emerging markets at the London-based company. Worldwide, drug revenue will increase at least 5 percent a year through 2014, according to IMS Health Inc., which tracks pharmaceutical sales. The difference underscores the importance of winning business in emerging markets, Hussain said.
“There’s absolutely a land grab going on right now because obviously there’s no growth in the U.S. and Europe, or very little growth,” Hussain, 45, said in a May 13 interview at Bloomberg’s New York headquarters. “There’s a real fight on for market share.”
Chief Executive Officer Andrew Witty hired Hussain, a 20- year veteran of Eli Lilly & Co., in 2008. Glaxo’s sales in emerging economies have jumped by 50 percent since 2007 to 3 billion pounds ($4.4 billion) last year. He’s increasing the sales force and snapping up smaller companies. Glaxo now has 13,000 sales representatives in emerging markets and will expand further, especially in China, Hussain said.
“We’ve been playing catch up, particularly in China and Russia, with the likes of Novartis and the Sanofis and the AstraZenecas,” Hussain said. Glaxo is first among its peers in India, Pakistan and the Middle East, he said.
Slashing Prices
Glaxo has been slashing prices of products in emerging markets by as much as 70 percent. Price reductions have helped boost volumes in some markets by sixfold to ninefold in the past four quarters, he said. In February, the company introduced the Avamys allergy treatment in Mexico after doing “very sophisticated pricing research,” Hussain said.
“The old mindset at GSK would have been: Come in and launch it and have access only to the top 5 or 10 percent, to the top people who can afford it,” he said. “We brought it in at a 50 percent discount.” Within four months the company had won 50 percent of patients, he said.
Glaxo is trying a similar strategy in Brazil for the medicine, he said. The company defines emerging markets as Latin America, Africa, the Middle East including Turkey, Russia and former Soviet states, India and China. Sales in those countries, excluding swine flu products, grew 17 percent last quarter.
Volume Play
Operating margins, at about 35 percent, are “matching GSK’s operating margin as a whole,” he said. “It really is an absolute volume play. If we decide we need 500 reps in China we’ll go ahead and do that,” he said.
The emerging-markets strategy carries risks, said Jeremy Batstone-Carr, London-based head of research at Charles Stanley & Co.
“All companies are facing up to the fact that this is where the growth is coming from, and Glaxo is a little bit further down the road than most,” the analyst, who has an “accumulate” rating on the stock, said in a telephone interview. “But it’s very important to be focused on value. If you just go for volumes, there is a risk that earnings are going to be more volatile and be lower quality, and may ultimately feed into the rating of the shares.”
Seeking Acquisitions
Glaxo also has looked for growth through acquisitions, though Witty said in a May 7 interview that he walked from away from five potential purchases or partnerships since October because prices were too high. In December, the company bought Algerian drugmaker Laboratoire Pharmaceutique Algerien for 26 million pounds and paid 87 million pounds for NovaMin Technology Inc. of the U.S.
Net income in the first quarter rose 19 percent to 1.34 billion pounds, boosted by sales of the vaccine for pandemic flu. Glaxo’s stock has returned 17 percent in the past year including reinvested dividends, compared with a 26 percent increase in the Bloomberg Europe Pharmaceutical Index.
Glaxo shares rose 1 penny to 1,168 pence at 8:24 a.m. in London trading.
“The next eight quarters will define who really is positioned in terms of the land grab that’s going on,” Hussain said. “You can’t be half pregnant in these markets. You either have to go for it, and realize you need huge portfolios, big scale, and reach and distribution, and be willing to innovate, or you decide you’re going to be a boutique player.”
–With assistance from Shannon Pettypiece in New York. Editors: Phil Serafino, Kristen Hallam
BRASIL:
Africa benefits if it lessens dependence on euro: Ahmadinejad
05-17-2010 /ISNA – Tehran ,Service: Foreign Policy
TEHRAN (ISNA)-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said African countries will benefit if they lessen dependence on euro.
In a meeting with Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade in Tehran on the verge of G15 summit, Ahmadinejad referred to African countries’ decision to lessen dependence to euro and said that, “the decision prevents further damage to African countries’ economy.”
“If the countries can lessen dependence on euro, it benefits them, since Western countries turned to superpowers through using money of these countries.”
He also said, “Iran and Senegal can influence regional issues properly through bilateral cooperation.”
Abdoulaye Wade on his part expressed satisfaction on his trip to Iran and stressed maturing bilateral relations on petrochemistry, oil and industry.
He also expressed hope joint projects will be implemented as soon as possible.
Also in a meeting with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Ahmadinejad expressed hope Group of 15 (G15) could create a big change in the world in coming years.
Mahinda Rajapaksa on his part expressed satisfaction over his trip to Iran, saying that, “Iran has managed to succeed considerably.”
Tehran is hosting G15 summit Monday with presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers and other high-ranking diplomats.
G15 senior experts held a meeting on Friday and foreign ministers gathered Saturday in Tehran.
End Item
EN BREF, CE 17 mai 2010 … AGNEWS / OMAR, BXL,17/05/2010
