{jcomments on}OMAR, AGNEWS, BXL, le 20 janvier 2010 – online.wsj.com, – January 20, 2010–Federal agents used a trade gathering of arms-industry executives in Las Vegas as an opportunity to arrest and charge nearly two dozen people in a sting operation targeting alleged bribery of foreign officials.
RWANDA
Genocide Survivor Demands Opposition Leader’s Prosecution Over Remarks
The general secretary of Genocide Survivors Organization in Rwanda (IBUKA) is calling on President Paul Kagame’s government to prosecute an opposition figure for allegedly making pronouncements that the group considers “insulting”.
Peter Clottey/www1.voanews.com/ 20 January 2010
Washington, DC
The general secretary of Genocide Survivors Organization in Rwanda (IBUKA) is calling on President Paul Kagame’s government to prosecute an opposition figure for allegedly making pronouncements that the group considers “insulting”.
Freddy Mutanguha, who is also the director of Kigali’s Genocide Memorial Center, said opposition leader Victoire Ingabire’s statement contravenes the constitution.
“IBUKA is not happy with the revisionist remarks that were made by Victoire Ingabire when she came to visit Kigali Genocide Center. She should understand that the Genocide Memorial Center is a place where people come and pay respect of the victims of genocide. A place for reflection is not a place where people come to express their view on the politics in the country,” he said.
IBUKA is an umbrella organization for genocide survivor organizations in Rwanda. It literally means ‘remember’.
Mutanguha said Ingabire’s statement is akin to denying the genocide.
“She can speak her mind but some things that should not be speakable, like when the U.N. has recognized genocide against Tutsis in the country to say openly that there have been double genocide is denial of the genocide, and we have laws against it,” Mutanguha said.
IBUKA was created in 1995 to address issues of justice, memory, social and economic problems faced by survivors.
Mutanguha said the group will continue to push for the opposition leader’s prosecution.
“We are in the process and we are asking to get rights because the fact that she came and (stood) on a mass grave and she said those kinds of words is a big insult against genocide survivors,” Mutanguha said.
In 1994, hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were killed in a hundred-day massacre.
Victoire Ingabire, leader of the opposition United Democratic Forces (UDF) party denied the accusation, saying the government is using the charges to undermine her campaign ahead of the upcoming election.
“I don’t understand these people because we condemned genocide committed against Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. But at the same time we said that we also condemn crimes against humanity committed against Hutus. And we believe we cannot achieve reconciliation of Rwanda people if we cannot talk about it,” Ingabire said.
She accused the ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) of using the 1994 genocide for political gains — a charge the ruling party denies.
Rupiah happy with Rwanda, DRC tie
By Chibaula Silwamba /www.postzambia.com/Wed 20 Jan. 2010
PRESIDENT Rupiah Banda has said he is happy that Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are exchanging diplomats.
Speaking to journalists on arrival from Rwanda at the Lusaka International Airport on Monday, President Banda explained that he went to Rwanda to meet President Paul Kagame ahead of the African Union (AU) summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
“We are preparing for our final report to be presented at the AU at the end of this month in Addis Ababa. It was necessary for me to meet with the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo Joseph Kabila and the President of Rwanda; the two heads of state. You remember they didn’t come for the summit,” said President Banda who is also chairperson of the Great Lakes Region (GLR). “So the real issue is that they are all very supportive of the common ground they have taken.
You know they are exchanging diplomats between Congo and Rwanda. So I am very happy about that. But also we have to keep talking to each other all the time about the issues of mutual development between our two countries as well as the African problem that we are facing all the time especially in the Great Lakes Region; the war in the eastern DRC.”
On whether Zambia would help earthquake victims in Haiti, President Banda said Haiti was far from Zambia.
“It’s a little bit far for us. But of course the Vice-President is here. We are very concerned about what is happening in Haiti but there is very little that we can do to assist our brothers there. It’s really terrible, isn’t it?” asked President Banda.
UGANDA
Uganda May Not Approve Tullow’s Oilfield Purchase, Monitor Says
By Fred Ojambo/Jan. 20
Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) — Uganda’s cabinet recommended that the government doesn’t approve the planned acquisition by Tullow Oil Plc of oilfields in the country from Heritage Oil Plc, the Daily Monitor reported, citing minutes from a Jan. 6 meeting.
The cabinet is concerned that Tullow’s purchase of the assets may limit competition in the domestic oil industry, the Kampala-based newspaper reported, citing government spokeswoman Kabakumba Matsiko.
Tullow on Jan. 17 said that it exercised pre-emption rights to acquire fields being sold by Heritage in Uganda’s Lake Albert region. Heritage said in November that it planned to sell the assets to Eni SpA, Italy’s largest energy company, for $1.5 billion.
U.K. Lawmakers Ask Uganda To Scrap Gay Death Bill
blackstarnews.com/January 20th, 2010
Special To The Black Star News
More than 28 British Members of Parliament (MPs) have condemned Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
They have signed an Early Day Motion (EDM 575) in the UK Parliament, urging the scrapping of the Bill.
http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=40154&SESSION=903
Support for the parliamentary motion comes from across the political spectrum, from left to right. Many more signatures are expected as MPs return to the House of Commons.
The EDM, drafted by east London Labour MP Harry Cohen, urges the Ugandan government to “uphold international humanitarian law by abandoning the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, decriminalizing same-sex acts between consenting adults in private, and outlawing discrimination against gay people.”
British MPs are especially appalled that the Bill proposes the death penalty for “serial offenders” –people who commit homosexual acts more than once– and life imprisonment for merely touching another person with homosexual intent.
“We hope this motion will send a signal from the British parliament to the Ugandan government that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill constitutes an outrageous attack on the human rights of Uganda’s lesbian, gay and bisexual citizens,” said Peter Tatchell of the London-based gay human rights group OutRage!
OutRage! is helping coordinate the UK campaign against the Bill, with the support of Ugandans living in Britain.
“Even if the death penalty is dropped, the Bill will still be unacceptable. It will still violate the equality guarantees of international human rights agreements, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” added Tatchell.
He added: “We support the many Ugandan people who oppose this homophobic witch-hunt. The scapegoating of gay Ugandans is reminiscent of the way Adolf Hitler scapegoated the Jewish people in Germany in the 1930s.
“Demonizing lesbians and gay men is a diversion from the real issues that blight the lives of many Ugandans: poverty, unemployment, low wages, disease, poor sanitation, dirty drinking water and inadequate health and education services.
“Uganda’s anti-gay laws were not devised by Ugandans. They were devised in London in the nineteenth century and imposed on the people of Uganda by the British colonisers and their army of occupation. Before the British came and conquered Uganda, there were no laws against homosexuality. These laws are a foreign imposition. They are not African laws.
“This Bill violates Article 21 of the constitution of Uganda, which guarantees equality and non-discrimination.
“It also breaches the equality and anti-discrimination clauses 2, 3, and 4 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which Uganda has signed and pledged to uphold.”
Zackie calls for Jon Qwelane protest
Says ‘gay-hater’ must not be SA’s ambassador
Jan 20, 2010/By AMUKELANI CHAUKE /www.timeslive.co.za
Columnist and alleged gay-basher Jon Qwelane’s reported appointment as ambassador to Uganda has been slammed by rights groups.
The Sunday Times reported that Qwelane, who was heavily criticised for his 2008 column, “Call me names, but gay is not okay!”, would be appointed ambassador to Uganda next month but the government has yet to confirm the appointment.
This while Uganda faces mounting international pressure to drop its proposal to enact an anti-homosexuality bill.
Yesterday, on social networking website, Facebook, well-known Aids activist Zackie Achmat called for a public protest against Qwelane’s appointment.
“Jon Qwelane is deeply homophobic and racist. Now, he has been appointed as SA ambassador to Uganda, where MPs seek the death penalty against [homosexual, bisexual, transgender and inter-sexed] people. Protest now. Call the department of international relations in Tshwane and Cape Town,” he wrote.
And the DA said it was “deeply concerned” reports of Qwelane’s appointment. The party said it would be seen as a “tacit endorsement of the repressive stance Uganda is taking on homosexuality”.
DA spokeswoman Linda Mazibuko said: “The Ugandan government is in the process of installing the death penalty for homosexual acts.
“Instead of sending an admitted homophobe [Qwelane] to Uganda, South Africa should be making an effort to demonstrate its disapproval of this policy.”
By late yesterday, a Facebook group named “Protest Jon Qwelane’s appointment as SA ambassador to Uganda” had attracted more than 600 members.
Qwelane could not be reached for comment.
Saul Molobi, spokesman for the department of international relation, was not available to confirm the appointment.
TANZANIA:
CONGO RDC :
KENYA :
Viewing Obama from his Ancestral Kenya
www.pbs.org/Jan. 20, 2010
SUMMARY
One year into the Obama presidency, Tristan McConnell of the international news Web site Global Post looks at mixed feelings toward Barack Obama in Kenya, where his father was born.
Transcript
GWEN IFILL: Finally: looking at President Obama’s first year in office from farther away, the view from Kenya, where the president’s father was born, and also a nation coping with ethnic conflict and corruption.
Tristan McConnell of the international news Web site GlobalPost gathered these voices.
TRISTAN MCCONNELL: When Barack Obama took office, Kenyans celebrated that a black man with roots in their country had become president of the United States. He was a source of both pride and inspiration.
A year on, I went to find out what Kenyans think of the Obama presidency.
MAN: So far, no disappointments, I will say. We’re happy to have him as our president on the other side, and we’re happy to have him as part of our Kenyan lineage.
WOMAN: So far, Obama has not helped Kenya in any way.
WOMAN: I would like Barack Obama to check on the economy of Kenya, because Kenyans are so poor, our economy is so low, and it’s because of our leaders, and I will add, Kenyan leaders to stop corruption, so that he may help us in our economy.
MAN: If there is a desire of most Africans, and, to be particular, Kenyans, is that President Barack Obama may be tougher, so that his policies can help this country come out of a intensive care unit, so that it can be able to stand on its own.
WOMAN: I don’t think that people should put so much expectations, because this is just like any other president. We shouldn’t expect so much. But, as for Kenya, we also expected that he should also come and also build our economy a little.
MAN: Barack Obama is pushing our president and other officials to clear corruption in Kenya, so that we can get — have a peaceful country.
MAN: Our leaders could learn much more from Obama. And the one of — the first one is the determination when he was campaigning, “Yes, we can.” And that faith that we can, because, in any case, what’s troubling Africa, these problems are problems that can be solved by ourselves. One who can say it the way he say it, yes, we can solve these problems.
ANGOLA :
SOUTH AFRICA:
BHP, SABMiller, Massmart, Shoprite: South Africa Equity Preview
By Garth Theunissen and Renee Bonorchis/Bloomberg/Jan. 20
Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) — The following is a list of companies whose shares may have unusual price changes in South Africa. Stock symbols are in parentheses after company names and prices are from the last close.
South Africa’s FTSE/JSE Africa All Share Index lost 13.04, or less than 0.1 percent, to 28,086.66 at the close in Johannesburg.
BHP Billiton Ltd. (BIL SJ): The world’s largest mining company said second-quarter iron ore production rose 11 percent to a record as commodity prices recovered because of demand from China and developed economies. The stock gained 1.51 rand, or 0.6 percent, to 251.70 rand.
SABMiller Plc (SAB SJ): The world’s second-largest brewer was downgraded to “equal weight” from “overweight” at Morgan Stanley by equity analyst James Easterbrook. SABMiller fell 2.81 rand, or 1.3 percent, to 214.50 rand.
Shoprite Holdings Ltd. (SHP SJ): A government report scheduled for release at 11:30 a.m. in Johannesburg will probably show that retail sales fell for a 10th month in November, according to the median estimate of 12 economists surveyed by Bloomberg.
Shoprite, South Africa’s biggest retailer by market value, lost 34 cents or 0.5 percent, to 65.50 rand.
Massmart Holdings Ltd. (MSM SJ): South Africa’s largest food and goods wholesaler declined 1.19 rand, or 1.3 percent, to 87.91 rand.
Truworths International Ltd. (TRU SJ): South Africa’s largest clothing retailer by market value retreated for a third day, losing 23 cents, or 0.5 percent, to 42.02 rand.
Shares or American depositary receipts of the following South African companies closed as follows yesterday:
Anglo American Plc (AAUKY US) rose 4.4 percent to $23.07. AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. (AU US) shed 0.1 percent to $40.77. BHP Billiton Plc (BBL US) gained 3.3 percent to $68.73. DRDGold Ltd. (DROOY US) slipped 0.3 percent to $7.44. Gold Fields Ltd. (GFI US) added 0.5 percent to $13.32. Harmony Gold Mining Co. (HMY US) rose 0.3 percent to $10.42. Impala Platinum Holdings Co. (IMPUY US) climbed 1.1 percent to $29.33. Sappi Ltd. (SPP US) was unchanged at $4.59. Sasol Ltd. (SSL US) gained 0.2 percent to $41.14.
AFRICA / AU :
GSK offers to share data to help fight malaria fight
GlaxoSmithKline is to take the unprecedented step of sharing its scientific data and laboratories in an effort to wipe out tropical diseases.
By Graham Ruddick, City Reporter (Pharmaceuticals)/ www.telegraph.co.uk/ 20 Jan 2010
Andrew Witty, chief executive of GSK and the driving force behind the move, said the drug company has a “genuine appetite to change the landscape of healthcare for the world’s poorest people”.
Africa is estimated to carry 70pc of the worldwide healthcare burden but receives just 3pc of global healthcare resources. Mr Witty said the issue was “very personal” to him after periods working on the continent.
Last year, GSK announced it would create a patent pool of some of its existing products and not-for-profit-pricing on a string of drugs for the developing world. However, the new initiative goes further and is focused on malaria, which kills at least one million children every year in Africa.
GSK, the world’s third-largest drug company, will freely release 13,500 of its compounds, via a website, that it believes have the potential to be developed into new malaria treatments. The UK company will also open up one of its labs in Tres Cantos, Spain, for non-GSK scientists to use to investigate treatments for other tropical diseases. The “Open Lab” will have space for 60 scientists and GSK will provide $8m (£4.9m) of funding for their research
Mr Witty said: “If there is a scientist out there without the resources, we are putting together the various strands.”
GSK will also adopt not-for-profit pricing on its potential malaria vaccine, the world’s leading candidate for a prevention of the disease, and reinvest the small returns in the research of tropical disease treatments.
A spokesman for the Red Cross said: “Any research which reduces the burden of this disease has to be welcomed.”
Has Obama been good to Africa?
By KEVIN J KELLEY in New York and PETER LEFTIE in Nairobi/ www.nation.co.ke/ January 20 2010
US President Barack Obama’s record on Africa during his first year in the White House is drawing mixed reviews from analysts in Washington and Nairobi.
There is general agreement in Washington that Kenyans and other Africans held exaggerated hopes for a US president of African descent that could not possibly be fulfilled.
In Nairobi, the government downplayed Mr Obama’s failure to visit Kenya during his tour of Africa, instead saying that the country had gained a lot during the US president’s first year in office.
Foreign Affairs minister Moses Wetang’ula praised Mr Obama for “exemplary performance” in his first year in office. The minister was speaking in Naivasha on the sidelines of a parliamentary committee meeting on constitution review.
He said the 2009 Nobel Prize win for the US president and the progress made so far in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were the major achievements of President Obama’s first year.
“He has so far carried himself properly when dealing with Kenya,” he said. Mr Wetang’ula said America
Mr Wetang’ula said America will remain Kenya’s ally when it came to trade and the fight against piracy in the risk-prone Indian Ocean Coast.
The Africa Growth Opportunity Act (Agoa) conference held in Nairobi last year, is also a hallmark of President Obama’s commitment to his ancestral land, the minister said.
However, he warned the US against venturing on the “sovereign no-go zones” as was the case with the recent visa bans on corrupt government officials.
A top Foreign Affairs ministry official speaking separately explained that the decision by president Obama – whose father was Kenyan – not to visit the country last year should not be misconstrued to imply that he had snubbed Kenya.
“President Obama’s decision not to come to Kenya on his first tour of Africa was very strategic. If he did come, he would have played along the stereotype prevailing then that Kenya was going to be given special preference by the US,” said Prof Egara Kabaji, the Director of Communications at the ministry.
Visit Egypt
The US president chose to visit Egypt and Ghana, leaving out Kenya during his tour of Africa last year.
Prof Kabaji noted that Mr Obama’s first year in office had seen the number of tourists visiting the country especially from the US rise sharply, with Kogelo village in Siaya district – the birthplace of Obama Snr – becoming a major tourist attraction.
“Today I can proudly state that it is Kogelo that is driving the Western tourism circuit, and this just within a year of his administration. Kenya is also suddenly attracting thousands of scholars from all over the world, thanks to the fact that the leader of the most powerful nation in the world traces his roots here,” he stated.
Prof Kabaji also denied that the Obama administration was exerting undue pressure on the government especially in the area of governance.
“US is not unfairly hard on Kenya. Given the democratic space prevailing in Kenya in relation to other African countries, it is only reasonable that the Obama administration pushes us even harder so that we expand our democratic space further,” he said.
“Expectations in Africa that he would treat Africa differently from his predecessor were based at least partly on race,” says John Campbell, a former US ambassador to Nigeria and now an Africa expert at the non-governmental Council on Foreign Relations. “The president himself and the American political system are actually considerably more complicated than that.”
In the specific case of Kenya, observes expert Joel Barkan, President Obama’s lineage served to reinforce the view in both Washington and Nairobi that the two countries share a “special relationship” dating to the time of independence. “That resulted in higher expectations on the part of Kenyans and also deeper disappointments with how the United States evaluates Kenya.”
Economic reforms
Both Mr Campbell and Mr Barkan give Obama’s first-year Africa policy a positive rating. Each analyst points in particular to the president’s July speech in Ghana in which he promised that his administration would be most responsive to those African countries that moved further and faster in achieving political and economic reforms.
President Obama did not intend to insult Kenya by travelling to Ghana rather than his father’s homeland on his first African safari as president, Mr Barkan says.
The president was simply stating a fact when he referred in his speech to corruption in Kenya as an obstacle to development.
It’s FCPA Time! Huge Undercover Investigation Leads To 22 Bribery Arrests
Erin Geiger Smith/ www.businessinsider.com /Jan. 20, 2010
It took approximately 150 FBI agents, 14 search warrants in Arkansas, San Francisco, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and the United Kingdom.
The result was 22 arrests today of various employees and executives in the “military and law enforcement product industry.” According to the Blog of the Legal Times, one of the men, Amaro Goncalves is a vice president at Smith & Wesson
The charges were brought under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. According to the Department of Justice, “[t]he indictments allege that the defendants engaged in a scheme to pay bribes to the minister of defense for a country in Africa. In fact, the scheme was part of the undercover operation, with no actual involvement from any minister of defense. As part of the undercover operation, the defendants allegedly agreed to pay a 20 percent “commission” to a sales agent who the defendants believed represented the minister of defense for a country in Africa in order to win a portion of a $15 million deal to outfit the country’s presidential guard. In reality, the “sales agent” was an undercover FBI agent. The defendants were told that half of that “commission” would be paid directly to the minister of defense.”
White-collar attorneys predicted that the government would be moving for more prosecutions under the FCPA.
It sounds like, however, that only the UK government was a necessary cooperator in the investigation. As the WSJ Law Blog and the FCPA Professor blog noted, the “foreign officials” were fake.
UNESCO identifies Africa as region for priority action in education
January 20, 2010 /Source: Xinhua
A new United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report released here Tuesday identifies sub-Saharan Africa as a region for priority action in ensuring children’s education, especially during the current global economic downturn.
The report, titled UNESCO 2010 edition of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report, highlights sub-Saharan as a region with a large deficit of children out of school, because of factors such as the global economic downtown and rising fiscal deficits.
Educational systems across the region could be at a loss of around 4.6 billion U.S. dollars per year in public spending in 2009 and 2010 as a direct impact of the economic crisis, the report said.
Inequalities go hand-in-hand with poverty, gender, ethnic and language as they continue to threaten the progress in education.
The report measured marginalization in education that identified groups facing extreme restrictions on educational opportunity.
An “education poverty” threshold of four years was recognized as the minimum required in obtaining basic literacy for young adults in the 17 to 22-year-old age range.
The report identified 11 countries in sub-Saharan Africa as having 50 percent or more below the threshold.
With sub-Saharan off track in meeting their target for halving malnutrition under the Millennium Development Goals, it has perpetuated a cycle of continued disadvantage where children in the region have entered school with learning impairments that stem from malnutrition, ill health, poverty and lack of access to pre- primary education.
The report also noted that sub-Saharan has made strides in education since the Education for All (EFA) goals were adopted in 2000, which 160 countries committed themselves to.
In general, primary education has risen and the gender inequality gaps have closed, the report said, but it added that even with these gains, the economic crisis continues to threaten any gains.
With the 2015 target date to achieve the Millennium Development Goal in achieving universal primary education, the report warned that the window of opportunity for getting back on track is closing.
It said there has been a collective failure by the donor community in acting on their EFA goal in 2000 and calls for countries to step up their efforts in their aid commitments to basic education.
The report called the UN secretary-general to convene a high- level pledging conference in 2010 to address the financing shortfall.
Claremont businessman indicted on ivory smuggling charges
Doughnut shop owner Moun Chau, who lives in Montclair, faces federal charges regarding elephant tusks bought on EBay. An alleged accomplice in Thailand also has been indicted.
By Kim Christensen/www.latimes.com/January 20, 2010
The owner of a Claremont doughnut shop was indicted Tuesday on federal charges that he bought endangered-elephant ivory on EBay and smuggled it into the United States from Thailand three years ago.
Moun Chau, 50, of Montclair was charged with conspiracy and the illegal importation of wildlife, according to the indictment, which cited violations of the Endangered Species Act and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
The alleged smuggling was discovered in November 2006 when authorities found four African elephant tusks in a shipment purported to be toys. With rare exception, the U.S. prohibits the importation of any ivory, federal officials said, because endangered elephants often are killed for their tusks to make jewelry, statues and other items.
“Buyers in the United States and elsewhere in the world are creating this market for ivory and feeding the poachers in Africa who are killing these animals,” said Erin L. Dean, who heads the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s law enforcement office in Torrance.
Fish and wildlife agents tracked the shipment of tusks to Chau’s business in Claremont, where they later seized dozens of ivory pieces. Samples of those items and others from undercover ivory purchases in Thailand were sent to Fish and Wildlife’s forensic lab in Ashland, Ore., for DNA testing, which determined they were from endangered African elephants, Dean said.
A joint investigation by her agency and the Royal Thai Police, with help from animal welfare groups such as the Freeland Foundation, led to the indictment of Chau and his alleged accomplice in Thailand, Samart Chokchoyma, 36.
Besides conspiracy and smuggling, Chokchoyma was charged with several counts related to his alleged illegal sale of ivory via the Internet.
Assistant U.S. Atty. Bayron Gilchrist declined to put a dollar value on the alleged transactions, which occurred before EBay banned ivory sales in January 2009 — after an animal welfare group reported that the Internet auction was listing thousands of items taken from endangered species.
Chokchoyma also faces charges in Thailand, where he was arrested Nov. 16 and accused of smuggling African ivory. Thai police this week arrested two other suspected ivory dealers, the Freeland Foundation said Tuesday.
If convicted, Chau faces up to 25 years in prison. He has not been arrested and will be summoned to appear for an arraignment next month in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, officials said. Chau did not respond to messages left at his business Tuesday.
Chokchoyma could spend up to 53 years in prison. Gilchrist said prosecutors will monitor the Thai case before deciding whether to seek his extradition.
Tuesday’s indictment reflects a fraction of an illegal trade in wildlife and endangered-animal products that, by various estimates, generates up to $20 billion a year.
“More than 10 metric tons of African elephant ivory have been seized in Southeast Asia during 2009 alone,” Freeland Foundation said in a news release. “However, until this case, there had not been any arrests of ivory traffickers in the region.”
UN /ONU :
UN: Education for Poor Children Suffers Due to Global Economic Crisis
Lisa Bryant/www1.voanews.com/20 January 2010
| Paris
The report by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, outlines a vicious circle. Rising poverty and malnutrition – one of the spinoffs of the global economic crisis – has prevented many children from attending school. But that’s only part of the problem, says Samer Al-Samarrai, one of the study’s authors.
“Even when they’re in school, their ability to concentrate and actively participate in lessons – the financial crisis has had a really big impact on that,” said Samer Al-Samarrai. “But second of all, the crisis has really put national education budgets under substantial pressure.”
The United Nations says 72 million children do not attend school. Universal primary education by 2015 only five years from now – is one of the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals.
During the past decade, progress has been made. About 33 million more children now attend school than in 1999. And many more children now complete primary school.
Some of the biggest successes have been in Sub-Saharan Africa. But the region’s children might be among the most affected by the economic downturn.
Ultimately, says education economist Samer Al-Samarrai, everyone stands to lose.
“If levels of aid to education drop, this is likely to set back progress for a whole generation of children,” he said. “And education is an investment in the future.”
The UNESCO report says international aid for education needs to be reformed. It calls for donors to commit billions more dollars in education aid to meet the U.N. goal of education-for-all. The report also urges the United Nations to host a donors’ conference this year to address the education financing shortfall.
USA :
Twenty-Two Arrested in U.S. Bribery Probe
online.wsj.com/By EVAN PEREZ And BRENT KENDALL/ JANUARY 20, 2010
Federal agents used a trade gathering of arms-industry executives in Las Vegas as an opportunity to arrest and charge nearly two dozen people in a sting operation targeting alleged bribery of foreign officials.
Federal Bureau of Investigation agents posed as representatives of a senior government minister of an African country. The agents proposed a scheme under which executives and employees at several companies would pay 20% “commissions” in order to win business, according to the Justice Department.
The business, according to indictments unsealed by a federal judge Tuesday, was purported to be a $15 million deal to outfit the unnamed African country’s presidential guard with pistols, tear-gas launchers, bullet-proof vests and other supplies.
Instead, 21 of the 22 defendants were arrested when they arrived in Las Vegas for the Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show and Conference, Justice officials said. One defendant was arrested in Miami, officials said.
The employees targeted work for companies in the U.S., U.K. and Israel.
Among those arrested was Amaro Goncalves, 49 years old, vice president for sales at Smith & Wesson Holding Corp. Also arrested was R. Patrick Caldwell, a former Secret Service agent who last year became chief executive of Protective Products of America, a Sunrise, Fla., company that makes bullet-proof products.
A Smith & Wesson official didn’t respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for Protective Products of America didn’t return a call for comment.
FBI agents met with the defendants in luxury hotels in Miami and elsewhere and arranged for a small “test” sale of the defendants’ products to gain the trust of the accused employees, according to the indictments.
Lanny Breuer, assistant attorney general and chief of the Justice Department’s criminal division, called the case the department’s largest-ever foreign bribery case. It is part of a crackdown that began four years ago and has focused on a variety of companies, including many in the oil industry. The sting was the department’s biggest undercover operation involving the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Mr. Breuer said.
Mr. Breuer said officials hope the two-year sting would deter bribery by prompting executives involved in potential schemes to ask themselves, “Am I really paying off a foreign government official or is this a federal agent?”
No companies were charged in the indictments unsealed Tuesday. Mr. Breuer said the investigation was continuing.
CANADA :
US troops would ‘hamper’ Al-Qaeda fight: Yemeni FM
(AFP) /200110
OTTAWA — Visiting Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Kurbi on Monday warned that sending Western troops to his country to combat extremist threats would only fuel terrorism.
“The fight against Al-Qaeda should be undertaken by the Yemeni counterterrorism units and the Yemeni armed forces,” he told a joint press conference with his Canadian counterpart.
“The presence of external troops in Yemen would actually hamper our efforts to fight Al-Qaeda. What we need is logistic support, training and technical capabilities to fight Al-Qaeda,” said al-Kurbi.
As well, al-Kurbi said Yemen needs business investment and development aid to stem poverty and unemployment that he claimed were fueling extremism in his country.
US President Barack Obama has said he has “no intention” of sending troops to Yemen.
But critics lament Yemen’s human rights record, suggesting that Western support for its government is stoking extremists.
“Yes, there we have problems in Yemen,” al-Kurbi acknowledged. “But unfortunately they have been exaggerated,” he added.
After the failed Christmas Day bombing of a US jetliner by a young Nigerian with Yemeni ties, Islamic clerics warned that any landing of foreign troops in Yemen would be met by a “holy war.”
Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said: “Recent developments in Yemen and in North America, in fact at our border with the United States, have attracted the attention of the international community on the growing threat of extremist elements based in Yemen.”
“Yemen is also facing other severe internal challenges in a very difficult regional context, particularly the Horn of Africa.
“Canada is concerned by these developments which threaten the stability of Yemen, the region and the international community.”
In his statements, Cannon alluded to an attempt by a young Nigerian with Yemeni ties to set off a bomb on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on December 25.
Canadian media also said British and US intelligence reports suggested that 20 Yemeni-trained “terrorists” were trying to get into Canada in order to then sneak into the United States.
Oxfam: Change education funding
By The Citizen Reporter/ 2010-01-20
International efforts to provide universal primary education in
the poorest countries have failed because of poor governance of the world’s education financing body (Unesco) and lack of investment by donors, according to a new report published by Oxfam.
The report titled Rescuing Education For All, said the future of 72 million children currently out of school, largely depended on a fundamental shift in the way education is funded
globally.
In order to address the situation, Oxfam has appealed to G8
and G20 leaders to launch a global fund for education at their next annual summit in Canada in June.
This comes on the heels of a new Unesco report that reveals a $16 billion annual education financing shortfall.
Without this money, the goal of education for all children by 2015, agreed to by world leaders in 2000, will not be met.
Oxfam’s report highlights an alarming decline in aid commitments to Education for All – Fast-Track Initiative
(FTI), set up by world leaders
in 2002 to help low-income countries
achieve universal basic education.
�The scandal of the missing billions of dollars revealed by Unesco, shows how fundamentally the FTI and other education donors have failed,� said Oxfam report author
Katie Malouf. �Aid commitments for
education are being conveniently forgotten
during the economic downturn.�
In addition to being inadequately
funded, the FTI suffers from lack of
autonomy from the World Bank, weak
governance and stakeholder participation,
and bureaucratic hold ups,
Oxfam�s report said.
Malouf said �Unnecessary Word
Bank restrictions and red tape, have
resulted in unacceptable delays in
getting money out of the door. For
example a $20 million grant for
Yemen, agreed to in 2006, has still not
been released.�
�The economic crisis is now
threatening to make a bad situation
worse for children in poor countries.
Yet funds languish in a bank account
in Washington, when it is urgently
needed to get children into school,�
she said.
Oxfam�s report recommends the
transformation of the FTI into a Global
Fund for Education, independent
of the World Bank and able to operate
flexibly and in partnership with
poor countries needing to build
classrooms and hire teachers.
AUSTRALIA :
EUROPE :
CHINA :
INDIA :
BRASIL:
Petrobras’ domestic oil and gas production up 5.1 percent in 2009
January 20, 2010 /Xinhua News Agency/Source: iStockAnalyst
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan. 19, 2010 (Xinhua News Agency) — Brazil’s state-controlled energy giant Petrobras announced on Tuesday that its domestic oil and natural gas production had reached 2.28 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe) per day in 2009, up 5.1 percent from 2008.
The domestic oil production reached 1.97 million barrels per day, up 6.3 percent from 2008, Petrobras stated. The natural gas production totaled 50.34 million cubic meters per day, roughly the same figures registered in 2008.
Petrobras’ oil production abroad totaled 14,576 boe per day in 2009, up 13.7 percent from 2008. The natural gas production abroad, on the other hand, fell 3.2 percent, totaling 16,519 boe per day. The company’s total production abroad reached 237,803 boe per day, up 6.1 percent from 2008.
According to Petrobras’ statement, the increase in the oil production abroad was due to the start of operations of the Akpo field, and of some wells in the Agbami field in Nigeria. The decrease in the gas production was attributed to the lower demand for natural gas in Bolivia.
In 2009, Petrobras’ total oil and gas production was 2.52 million boe per day, up 5.2 percent from 2008.
EN BREF, CE 20 janvier 2010 … AGNEWS / OMAR, BXL,20/01/2010
