{jcomments on}OMAR, AGNEWS, BXL, le 26 avril 2010 – CNN- April 26, 2010–Islamist rebels advanced on a pirate haven in central Somalia and battled government troops in Mogadishu in a clash that killed at least 10 people, ambulance crews and a local journalist reported Sunday.

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South Africa Redoubles Efforts Against AIDS
www.nytimes.com/By CELIA W. DUGGER/2010/04/26

SOVANE, South Africa — South Africa, trying to overcome years of denial and delay in confronting its monumental AIDS crisis, is now in the midst of a feverish buildup of testing, treatment and prevention that United Nations officials say is the largest and fastest expansion of AIDS services ever attempted by any nation.
The undertaking will be expensive and difficult to pull off, but in the past month alone the government has enabled 519 health facilities to dispense AIDS medicines, more than it had in all the years combined since South Africa began providing antiretroviral drugs to its people in 2004, South African health officials said.

And on Sunday, President Jacob Zuma, who recently admitted to having unprotected sex with a much younger woman, inaugurated a campaign to test 15 million of the country’s 49 million people for H.I.V. by June 2011. In a speech at a hospital east of Johannesburg, he disclosed that his own fourth test again showed he was negative and he said he made the result public “to eradicate the silence and stigma that accompanies this epidemic.”

To hoots and laughter from the audience, and with a touch of humor, Mr. Zuma said, “I’m sure South Africans know I’m open about my life generally.” A photograph of his personal doctor drawing blood from Mr. Zuma’s arm for an H.I.V. test on April 8 had appeared in newspapers across the country.

To broaden access to services, the government has trained the hundreds of nurses now prescribing AIDS drugs — formerly the province of doctors — and will train thousands more so that each of the country’s 4,333 public clinics can dispense the medicines, a step Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi called essential to combating “this monster amongst us” in a country short of physicians.

Michel Sidibé, executive director of Unaids, the United Nations AIDS agency, said South Africa’s undertakings offered hope to the continent. “It’s the first time one country has scaled up so quickly, to so many people,” he said.

South Africa, the region’s richest nation and a symbol of democracy, has an estimated 5.7 million H.I.V.-positive citizens, more than any other country.

“In my village, when we want to kill the snake, we don’t hit the tail, but the head,” said Mr. Sidibé, who is from Mali. “The head of this epidemic is South Africa.”

The South African Finance Ministry said it expected that the broadened access to drugs would put a million more people on treatment in the next few years, roughly doubling the current case load. It has budgeted an extra $1 billion for it. Dr. Motsoaledi said that Mr. Zuma reopened the budget to get more money for AIDS when it became clear that costs would be higher.

South Africa’s understaffed public health system and the ballooning cost of treating millions of people for life will pose daunting challenges to the government’s ambitious goals.

The United States has long been South Africa’s principal donor in the fight against AIDS, giving the country $620 million this year. But advocates worry that global donors will not provide enough money to sustain a rapidly growing treatment program.

For now, though, there is optimism among the scientists and advocates who had despaired as the nation dithered on AIDS under its former president, Thabo Mbeki.

“I’ve never known such a gathering of momentum around H.I.V. as in the last month or so,” said Mark Heywood, who directs the AIDS Law Project, based in Johannesburg.

Mr. Mbeki had questioned whether H.I.V. caused AIDS and suggested that anti-retroviral drugs were harmful. Harvard researchers estimated that the government could have prevented the premature deaths of 365,000 people during the last decade if it had provided the drugs to AIDS patients and medicines that help stop pregnant women from infecting their babies.

“If we had acted more than a decade ago, we might not have been in this situation where we are,” Dr. Motsoaledi said. “Obviously, we did lose time.”

Mr. Zuma, in office for almost a year, has broken sharply with the Mbeki record, broadening access to AIDS drugs for H.I.V.-positive pregnant women and babies, as well as for people with tuberculosis. The government is moving toward routinely offering H.I.V. tests to all who come into the public health system, rather than waiting for people to ask for them.

Silindelokuhle Biyela, a widowed nurse who works at a tidy red-brick clinic in this remote village in the rugged hills of KwaZulu Natal Province, is on the front lines of the new push. She has just completed the training that qualifies her to dispense AIDS medicines. No longer will her patients have to go to a hospital 30 miles away for drugs, an $8 round trip that many are too poor to make.

“The nation is dying,” Mrs. Biyela said. “The people are dying. But we are going to try to help them.”

Hundreds of private pharmacies, including the retail chains Clicks, Link and Dis-Chem, will offer free H.I.V. tests for the next year with government-provided kits. More than 2,000 retired nurses, doctors, pharmacists and other health workers have volunteered to help with the drive.

The health minister said the country was racing to reduce H.I.V. infections — now 1,500 a day — before treatment costs swell even further.

South Africa pays far more for some drugs compared with the prices paid by other African countries covered under steeply discounted prices negotiated by the Clinton Foundation, which is now advising Dr. Motsoaledi.

“We must be able to purchase ARVs at the lowest prices, as we are the largest consumers” of anti-retroviral drugs in the world, despite opposition from local pharmaceutical manufacturers, Dr. Motsoaledi told Parliament this month.

The government is also pushing to prevent new infections. Three years after the World Health Organization recommended circumcision as a way to reduce a man’s risk of contracting H.I.V. by more than half, the country’s hardest-hit province, KwaZulu Natal, began a drive this month to circumcise 2.5 million men. President Zuma said Sunday that the approach would be offered across the nation by next year.

“If you really want to get a handle on the epidemic and reduce the incidence of the disease, this is the most powerful thing you can do, along with reducing the number of sexual partners,” said Daniel Halperin, an epidemiologist at Harvard University.

Dr. Motsoaledi, who became health minister in May, said he planned to personally perform many such procedures to remove the foreskin. “I want to do a thousand,” he said.

Hundreds of young men, many in jeans and track suits, heeded the call of Goodwill Zwelithini, the king of the Zulus, and lined up in a clinic and hospital in Nongoma on a recent Saturday to be circumcised. Concerned about the high rates of H.I.V. infection among his people, the king has declared that the tradition of circumcision must be revived.

It died out in the 19th century during the time of King Shaka, who suspended the custom to avoid having young warriors out of commission while they healed from circumcision cuts that sometimes got infected, said Nelson Ntshangase, a lecturer at the School of IsiZulu Studies at the University of KwaZulu Natal.

Members of the king’s own extended family were among those getting circumcised this month, including Sakhile Zulu, 18, a tall, slender 10th grader who addressed more than 100 boys at his school after he had his circumcision two weeks ago. Back for a follow-up visit, he said he had seen a dozen students from his school there
that day for the procedure. “The king observed many of the men are dying,” Mr. Zulu said. “He said the custom should be brought back to save the people.”

Judge to attend grandson’s bar mitzvah after all
news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/26

A South African judge who said he planned to skip his grandson’s bar mitzvah because of expected protests over the judge’s role in a report that was critical of Israel has now decided to attend the event, he said Sunday.

The judge, Richard Goldstone, authored a United Nations report on the 2008-2009 war in Gaza that accused both Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes.

Known as the Goldstone report, it sparked outrage in much of the Jewish world, and Goldstone – now a law professor at Georgetown University – said earlier this month that he would skip his grandson’s bar mitzvah in Johannesburg out of fear his appearance would draw protests from South African Jews.

But Goldstone told CNN on Sunday that he has decided to attend the event after receiving assurances from a major South African Jewish organization that there would be no protests at the bar mitzvah if he agreed to meet with local Jewish groups.

“I am delighted to be attending this important day for my grandson and my family,” Goldstone told CNN.

In an e-mail to the American Jewish publication Tikkun, Goldstone said that the South African Jewish Board of Deputies had brokered the deal with local Jewish groups.

Last week, Goldstone told CNN that he was planning to skip the event because he’d “received reports that I will likely be physically prevented from entering the synagogue.”

“Imagine the effects of such protests on my 13-year-old grandson and his family,” he said.

Israel rejected the findings of the 2009 Goldstone report on the Gaza conflict, which killed about 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis over three weeks during December 2008 and January 2009.

“We will not agree to a situation where the [Israeli Defense Forces] commanders and soldiers will be treated as war criminals after vigorously defending the citizens of Israel against a loathsome enemy,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in response to the report in October.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak called the report “distorted, false and irresponsible.”

The Palestinian Authority government of Mahmoud Abbas supported the report. In February, Hamas – which rules Gaza – released a 20-page summary of steps it had taken to investigate wrongdoing during the Gaza conflict, though human rights groups rejected its claims that any rockets fired against Israeli civilians were accidental.

Goldstone is a former justice on South Africa’s highest court and former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

Is South Africa turning into Zimbabwe?
Fred Bridgland/www.heraldscotland.com/ 26 Apr 2010

Aleading black South African ­commentator has uttered the dreaded “Z” word, a sentiment that has been considered too terrible to think for ordinary people and considered near-treasonous in the upper reaches of the ruling African National Congress.

“Hardly a decade from now, Zimbabwe will be our destination, our reality,” wrote Barney Mthombothi in his column in this weekend’s Financial Mail, South Africa’s equivalent of The Economist.

Mr Mthombothi, one of his country’s finest journalists, was commenting in the course of an analysis on the dire situation in neighbouring Zimbabwe where, he said, life had become “hell on earth”.

The tragedy is not simply that Mugabe has destroyed his own country, Mr Mthombothi went on to say. “He has exported the cancer. He’s poisoned the well. He’s contaminated the politics of the region, especially South Africa. Our politicians have learnt from the master’s knee – the buck-passing, blame everything on imperialists and apartheid;

the reckless and incendiary language; the refusal to see reason or deal with reality even as it stares you in the face.

“Our people are increasingly suspicious or even frightened by the actions of their own government. It can no longer be trusted to do what’s right by them.”

Mr Mthombothi’s apocalyptic warning – mirrored by other heavyweight analysts – comes as the global spotlight zeroes in on South Africa, with scarcely 40 more days to go before the country flings its doors open to humanity as it hosts football’s World Cup.

With the first match due on June 11,

a rise in racial tensions and ANC corruption together threaten to derail the feel-good national response that many hoped would be among the benefits of the tournament.

Allister Sparks, the veteran anti-apartheid warhorse journalist who espoused the ANC during its darkest days when banned by whites-only rulers, said the extent to which the movement has abandoned its own core principles is astonishing. The rot is spreading ever deeper into the very soul of the ANC, said Mr Sparks, winner of many international awards for his reporting, in his latest column in the daily Business Day.

The South African crisis, as the World Cup looms, is multi-dimensional. But Mr Sparks highlighted two core principles on which the ANC has gone backwards and which had carried it through all the long decades of its liberation struggle, through the tough constitutional negotiating process of the early 1990s under Nelson Mandela and into the dawn of the new South Africa – “the principle of non-racialism and the principle of clean, honest government that would deliver a better life for all.”

Mr Sparks added: “We have become a corrupt country. The whole body politic is riddled with it. We have reached a kind of corruption gridlock. When so many people in high places have the dirt on each other, no one dares blow a whistle. When the President of the country (Jacob Zuma) has managed to get off the hook on a major corruption case (charges relating to bribes associated with the country’s multi-billion dollar arms deal with Britain and other European Union countries), how can he crack down on corruption anywhere else in his administration?

“When he rewards the acting prosecuting chief who got him off the hook with a judgeship, how can he expect to have a clean civil service all the way down to municipal level?”

Mokotedi Mpshe last year dropped the National Prosecuting Authority’s multiple corruption charges against Mr Zuma under highly controversial circumstances and against the wishes of his own team of investigators. Mr Zuma this year appointed Mr Mpshe a high court judge for life.

MR Sparks is particularly outraged by the sleaze that pervades the ANC as a result of the party’s ownership of many companies to which it awards lucrative government contracts. For example, the state electricity company, Eskom, was last week given a £2.56billion loan to expand over-stretched power supplies. The ANC immediately made £68.5m thanks to the party’s shareholding in Hitachi Africa to whom Eskom’s chairman, Valli Moosa, a former ANC minister and present member of the ANC’s National Executive Committee, conveniently awarded the expansion contract.

“So it’s OK for the ANC in its capacity as controller of the State to hand out hugely profitable contracts to the ANC in its capacity as a political party,” lamented Mr Sparks.

ANC leaders are now competing viciously among themselves for access to state resources, said William Gumede, author of Thabo Mbeki And The Battle For The Soul Of The ANC and currently a senior fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford, in a lecture last week in Pretoria.

Many in the ANC had become part of the “bling culture” – getting rich quickly, using short cuts. “Unfortunately, while this new bling lifestyle has become the new standard for achievement, a sign that one has made it, no new factories are being built and mass poverty is increasing,” said Mr Gumede.

“What cannot be do
ubted any more is that our worse fears have come true: the ANC has lost its soul.”

While the corruption at heart of government is enough to make good men despair, the resurgence of racism, through new injections of race hatred malevolence from the toxic ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema and the resurrection of white racist fringe extremism through the murder of

neo-Nazi leader Eugene Terre’Blanche, has ratcheted up the fear levels of moderate South Africans of all races.

Mr Malema, a badly educated 29-year-old, has achieved huge powers since becoming leader of the Youth League and Jacob Zuma’s most vociferous supporter during the latter’s 2006 trial for rape and his subsequent toppling in 2008 of former President Thabo Mbeki.

Mr Malema defended Mr Zuma against the rape allegations, on which he was found not guilty, by saying 68-year-old Mr Zuma had given his

31-year-old HIV-positive accuser a “nice time”. During Mr Malema’s anti-Mbeki campaign, he said: “We are prepared to take up arms and kill for Zuma.”

This month Mr Malema visited Zimbab­we and promised President Robert Mugabe that South Africa would emulate his policy of violent land seizures, which destroyed Zimbabwe’s economy. His support for Mr Mugabe came against a background of more than 3,000 white South African farmers killed in violent attacks since the ANC achieved power in 1994 in the country’s first all-race general election and the constant singing by Mr Malema at rallies of his theme song with lyrics, translated from the Zulu, that go, with many repetitions: “The cowards are scared. Shoot, shoot, shoot the Boer (white Afrikaner farmer). These dogs are raping. Shoot the Boer.”

Mr Zuma’s refusal to rein in his attack dog has been of growing concern in many sections of society.

“What Malema does to this country is tantamount to treason,” said Peter Bruce, editor of Business Day. “He is destructive and careless. He represents, in every conceivable way, what failure would look like for this country. If the ANC leadership does not get rid of him now, it will never have the opportunity again. And the damage he does will only get worse.”

Allister Sparks said he did not believe Mr Malema’s insistence on singing “Kill the Boer” had any direct role in Terre’Blanches’s murder. “But,” he added, “the fact the two coincided has inflamed racial passions. Thanks to Malema, the faded and farcical Terre’Blanche’s racist cause has found a new lease of life in his death.”

Terre’Blanche, leader of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB), or Afrikaner Resistance Movement, had become a politically irrelevant extremist with miniscule support by the time he was bludgeoned to death in his bed this month by two of his black farmworkers. Their lawyers say their motive was unpaid wages. However, the police said the killers stripped and mutilated the 69-year-old Terre’Blanche in a way that suggested extreme racial hatred.

And Chris van Zyl, manager of safety and security with the conservative Transvaal Agricultural Union, said that in another recent murder of a white farmer the soles of his feet were stripped from him while he was still alive. Mr Van Zyl said 19 farmers had been killed this year, but the increasing violence of non-fatal attacks suggested the singing of “Kill the Boer” is fuelling the sentiment.

Mr Malema ratcheted up his reputation for extremism this month with an attack on a BBC journalist that had commentators comparing him to the late Ugandan military dictator Idi Amin. Mr Malema called BBC staff reporter Jonah Fisher a “bloody agent” and a “small boy” with a “white tendency” as he ordered Youth League security men to throw Mr Fisher out of a press conference on the Youth League chief’s visit to Zimbabwe.

Mr Malema mocked exiled supporters of Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change for belonging to a “Mickey Mouse” organisation and insulting South Africa with statements issued from “air conditioned offices in Sandton,” Johannesburg’s most upmarket suburb.

As Mr Malema went on, Mr Fisher interjected: “You live in Sandton. So they’re not welcome in Sandton but you are?” Mr Malema, who has become a multi-millionaire in a short period of time, snapped and warned Mr Fisher: “Here you behave or else you jump.” Mr Fisher and others laughed. “Don’t laugh,” Mr Malema snarled. Mr Fisher rejoined that the situation had become a joke and that Mr Malema was talking rubbish.

It was then Mr Malema erupted and ordered the reporter’s ejection from the news conference. Collecting his recording equipment and walking out, Mr Fisher said: “I didn’t come here to be insulted.” Mr Malema bellowed after him: “Go out. Go out. Go out. You bloody agent!”

The opposition Democratic Alliance said the incident proved Mr Malema was “South Africa’s Mugabe”. Mpowele Swathe, shadow minister of rural development, said: “Malema’s hysterical, conspiracy theory-laden attack on the BBC is painfully reminiscent of the frequent claims by Mugabe he is the victim of ‘malicious propaganda by external forces’. His actions, in throwing the journalist out of the press conference, are no different to Mugabe’s censorship of the press in Zimbabwe, and his banning of outlets like the BBC from reporting there.”

Mr Malema has ignored a high court judge’s ruling that singing “Shoot the Boer” amounts to race-hatred speech. He has continued to sing the anthem, but the ANC issued a disciplinary hearing, scheduled for this week, following his attack on Mr Fisher.

Many fear that if Mr Malema is not expelled from the ANC and gets only a slap on the wrist, race relations will deteriorate further, leading Mondi Makhanya, editor of the wide circulation South African Sunday Times to warn: “There was a guy who lived in a country in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s and into the 1940s.

“That particular person was allowed to rise because people didn’t take him seriously.”

BHP, Hulamin, Redefine, Sasol: South Africa Equity Preview
April 26, 2010/By Janice Kew/Bloomberg

April 26 (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 rose 109.06, or 0.4 percent, to 28,931.40. The measure still dropped 0.4 percent in the week, a second weekly decline.

BHP Billiton Ltd. (BIL SJ): Copper climbed for a second day as Greece moved toward securing an emergency aid package, easing concerns of an economic slowdown in the euro region. BHP, the world’s largest mining company, fell 2.63 rand, or 1.1 percent, to 240.30 rand.

Hulamin Ltd. (HLM SJ): Africa’s largest aluminum processor said it plans to raise 750 million rand ($101 million) through a rights offer. Hulamin rose 15 cents, or 1.4 percent, to 10.60 rand.

Redefine Property Ltd. (RDF SJ): The real-estate company may spend 8 billion rand on acquisitions over the next year, Johannesburg-based Business Day newspaper reported, citing Mike Flax, the company’s executive director. Redefine was unchanged at 7.88 rand.

Sasol Ltd. (SOL SJ): Crude oil rose for a fifth day on speculation demand will increase as the world economy recovers from recession. Sasol, the world’s biggest maker of motor fuel from coal, gained 1.70 rand, or 0.6 percent, to 300.60 rand.

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

Anglo American Plc (AAUKY US) rose 0.9 percent to $22.14. AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. (AU US) gained 2.4 percent to $39.94. BHP Billiton Ltd. (BBL US) dropped 0.2 percent to $65.87. DRDGold Ltd. (DROOY US) lost 1.5 percent to $5.17. Gold Fields Ltd. (

GFI US) increased 1.9 percent to $13.14. Harmony Gold Mining Co. (HMY US) rallied 2.7 percent to $9.55. Impala Platinum Holdings (IMPUY US) gained 0.4 percent to $28. Sappi Ltd. (SPP US) advanced 1.2 percent to $4.29. Sasol Ltd. (SSL US) gained 0.7 percent to $40.81.

–Editor: Antony Sguazzin

AFRICA / AU :

West Africa Charts Progress In Malaria Prevention
Kate Thomas /www1.voanews.com/26 April 2010

| Dakar
Millions of mosquito nets are being distributed across West Africa to further increase access to malaria prevention by the end of the year.

Amid growing evidence that increased use of mosquito nets is leading to a reduction in the spread of malaria across West Africa, many countries in the region are implementing large-scale efforts to meet goals set by the Roll Back Malaria initiative, a consortium for coordinated action against the disease.

Pru Smith is from Roll Back Malaria. She said that as part of the consortium’s global framework, stepping up net distribution in West African countries is a priority. “The Global Malaria Action Plan is an agreed-upon strategy to first of all make sure that each country that has malaria can scale up its nets and treatment so that the incidence of malaria goes right down,” she said.

Smith said that in the past decade, bed net coverage has increased sharply in 11 African countries. Programs led by partners of Roll Back Malaria are under way in countries such as Senegal, which has made a countrywide provision to supply anti-malarial drugs to new mothers.

In Nigeria, distributors working with the consortium are handing out two nets per household across the country. Distributors plan to supply 72 million mosquito nets to households by the end of the year – that’s one net for every two people in a country with a population of 144 million.

The United Nations Special Envoy for Malaria, Roy Chambers, said mosquito nets are still the most effective tool for preventing malaria in West Africa. “The two fold benefits are that it protects those sleeping under the net from getting bitten and when the mosquito lands on the net she dies, and that disrupts the Darwinian reproductive cycle,” he said.

He said regular use of treated bed nets continues to be a highly effective prevention tool, reducing overall child mortality by as much as 20 percent. “We’ve had incidences where we’ve provided bed nets to areas but not the surrounding villages, and after a year the surrounding villages noticed a significant decrease in the incidence of malaria,” he said.

But explaining to people how mosquito nets should be used is just as important as distributing them. The Roll Back Malaria consortium has found that in some countries in West Africa, nets distributed for malaria prevention have been used for other purposes, including as fishing nets. “Now the challenge is where the rubber meets the road. That’s organizing, scheduling, implementing, coordinating…getting these tools out to all the people and then they’re utilizing the tools,” he said.

Roll Back Malaria aims to ensure that 80 percent of people in most African countries are sleeping under mosquito nets by the end of 2010. Mass net distributions are also under way in Ghana, Gambia, DR Congo and Equatorial Guinea among other countries.

BASIC group wants global deal on climate change by 2011
PTI /beta.thehindu.com/avril 26, 2010

Cape Town,
Environment ministers of the BASIC countries — Brazil, South Africa, India and China — have said that a legally binding global agreement to limit climate change needed to be completed by 2011, noting that the world could not wait indefinitely for the US to finalise its legislation on the issue.

The BASIC leaders, who met here to look at how to fast-track such a pact to curb global warming, gave the statement at the conclusion of the third meeting of the group on Sunday.

“A step-change is required in negotiations, and incremental progress on its own will not raise the level of ambition to the extent needed to avoid dangerous climate change and impacts on poor countries and communities,” the ministers indicated in a joint statement, noting reports that domestic legislation on climate change in the US had been postponed.

“Ministers felt that a legally binding outcome on long-term cooperative action under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol, to be concluded at Cancun, Mexico in 2010, or at the latest in South Africa by 2011, the ministers said in a joint statement.

Asserting that lack of such agreements hurt developing countries more than developed countries, the ministers said such deals must include an accord on quantified emission reduction targets under a second commitment period for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol.

The ministers who participated in the meeting were Xie Zhenhua, Vice Chairman of the National Development and Reforms Commission from China; Izabella Teixeira, Minister for Environment from Brazil; Jairam Ramesh, Minister for Environment and Forests from India, and Buyelwa Sonjica, Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs from South Africa.

The ministers said the only legitimate forum for negotiation of climate change is the UNFCCC.

Small groups could make a contribution in resolving conflicts, but they must be representative and their composition must be determined through fully inclusive and transparent negotiations, with a mechanism for reporting back to the multi-lateral forum, the statement said.

Building on the discussion held in New Delhi in January 2010, the ministers elaborated areas in which progress could be made in the run-up to Cancun, including the early flow of fast-start finance of the USD 10 billion in 2010 pledged by developed countries. Equity will be a key issue for any agreement.

The ministers noted that the Copenhagen accord set a global goal of keeping temperature increase below 2degreesC above pre-industrial levels, without jeopardising economic growth and poverty alleviation.

This implied a certain global carbon budget.

The implications of this budget for individual countries required careful analysis, and must be based on a multilateral agreement about equitable burden-sharing, including historical responsibility for climate change, the need to allow developing countries equitable space for development, and adequate finance, technology and capacity-building support provided by developed countries for all developing countries.

The ministers were of the view that it would not be possible to deal with mitigation actions by developing countries, without also dealing with support for those actions and the two-fold commitments by developed countries to both provide finance for developing countries and reduce their own emissions, with consequences of non-fulfilment.

They emphasised again that BASIC is more than a forum focused on negotiations.

They supported collaboration among experts from BASIC countries and welcomed the creation of an on-going forum, including work on adaptation and mitigation action plans and scenarios.

The ministers agreed that, remaining anchored in the G77 and China, they would continue to contribute constructively to the multi-lateral negotiations on climate change.

The next BASIC ministerial meeting he will be in Brazil in July, followed by one in China in October 2010.

UN /ONU :

UN Watch Welcomes News That Judge Goldstone Will Attend Grandson’s Bar Mitzvah
www.globalpost.com/April 26, 2010

Geneva, April 25, 2010 – UN Watch welcomes the news, as reported by the New York Times, that Richard Goldstone, the South African judge who presided over the controversial UN Human Rights Council report into Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, will attend his grandson’s bar mitzvah ceremony at a Johannesburg synagogue next week without facing protests outside the event.

Following earlier reports last week that Judge Goldstone would not attend as a result of threatened protests by some South African Jews, UN Watch contacted the South African Jewish community to convey its concerns. UN Watch, which has numerous readers and supporters in South Africa, expressed the position that any protest surrounding a bar mitzvah ceremony would be inconsistent with basic decency and propriety.

After the story made international news, its main effect was to rally defenders of the one-sided report, who pointed to the controversy as alleged proof that opposition to the document was ad hominem and not substantive.

In an L.A. Times op-ed last week entitled “Attacking Goldstone,” Daniel Terris, director of a Brandeis University ethics center chaired by Goldstone, defended the conclusions of the UN mission, and accused “prominent critics of the report” of making “a quick leap from debate to invective.”

In fact, the most prominent critics of the report have published detailed objections, including the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, philosopher Moshe Halbertal, attorney Trevor Norwitz, Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz and the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. None of these significant documents has been met with any meaningful response.

UN Watch continues to vigorously oppose the report at the UN Human Rights Council, which recently voted to perpetuate the report’s findings and recommendations through the establishment of various committees, and to keep it on the agenda at future sessions.

UN humanitarian chief in West Africa to focus on food crisis
www.un.org/26 April 2010

– The United Nations top humanitarian official is visiting the Sahel region of West Africa to draw attention to the plight of an estimated 10 million people facing a food and nutritional crisis as a result of poor harvests caused by long dry spells in the mostly arid part of the continent.

John Holmes, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, began the first leg of his mission yesterday in Senegal, where he had talks with Government officials and regional representatives of humanitarian organizations on strengthening cooperation among the various aid agencies in the region.

He will also review the main areas of cooperation in disaster management, risk reduction and strengthening humanitarian coordination.

Mr. Holmes met with Mamadou Lamine Ba, Senegals”s newly appointed minister for international and humanitarian affairs. More than 50 international humanitarian organizations are based in Senegal and Mr. Holmes noted that the country was better placed to promote a regional approach to humanitarian issues.

Mr. Holmes travelled to Niger today to assess the human impact of the serious food crisis affecting some 7.8 million people there, and request urgent response by donors to the appeal launched recently for an additional $133 million to respond to humanitarian needs.

He will visit Zinder area of southern Niger, one of the places worst affected by the food crisis, to meet with local people and visit nutritional centres.

While in Niger, Mr. Holmes will also draw attention to the humanitarian crisis facing some two million people in Chad, and request help for 258,000 Malians, 370,000 Mauritanians and vulnerable communities in northern Nigeria.

In addition to drawing attention to the need for resources to provide life-saving assistance, Mr. Holmes” visit will also focus on the need to address the root causes of the recurring food crisis in the region.

Investment in smallholder agriculture and rural infrastructure, strengthening poverty alleviation measures and disaster risk reduction in the context of climate change are some of the issues Mr. Holmes is will raise.

“The current food crisis, five years after the last emergency, shows that without joint action between development and humanitarian actors in support of responsible Governments to deal with the structural issues, it will become increasingly difficult to contain these recurrent crises, which do so much to undermine economic and social progress in the Sahel,” said Mr. Holmes.

Somalia rebels battle pirates, government troops
By the CNN Wire Staff /April 26, 2010

Mogadishu, Somalia (CNN) — Islamist rebels advanced on a pirate haven in central Somalia and battled government troops in Mogadishu in a clash that killed at least 10 people, ambulance crews and a local journalist reported Sunday.

Fighters from the al Qaeda-linked militia al-Shabaab were advancing on Harardhere, the pirate stronghold on the Somali coast, a local journalist in contact with pirate sources told CNN. The pirates recently captured a boat loaded with weapons from Yemen that were intended for the militia, and had stopped paying bribes to the Islamists, said the journalist, whose identity is not being disclosed for security reasons.

The journalist said a spokesman for al-Shabaab, which is trying to topple Somalia’s U.N.-backed transitional government, said the Islamists are only a few kilometers from Harardhere. The journalist reported that the pirates appeared to be retreating from Harardhere to the port town of Hobyo, Somalia with their captured ships.

No further details were immediately available, and the European Union naval force that patrols the waters off Somalia said it had no information about the situation.

U.N. reports have found that Yemen is a source for arms shipments into Somalia despite a longstanding U.N. embargo on weapons. The Yemeni government, which is battling its own al Qaeda uprising, has attempted to crack down on arms dealing within its territory but also faces an influx of Somali refugees.

The advance on Harardhere, about 430 km (270 miles) north of Mogadishu, came the same day a clash between al-Shabaab fighters and government forces left at least 10 people dead and 40 wounded, ambulance crews reported. Heavy shelling followed an attempt by government troops to ambush al-Shabaab fighters, witnesses reported.

Al-Shabaab has ties to al Qaeda and is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, but it has taken control of much of Mogadishu and southern Somalia.

The fighting has escalated a long-running humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa nation, which has not had an effective central government since 1991.

USA :

CANADA :

Hertz Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Dollar Thrifty
April 26, 2010/www.marketwatch.com

PARK RIDGE, NJ, Apr 26, 2010 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — Hertz Global Holdings, Inc. /quotes/comstock/13*!htz/quotes/nls/htz (HTZ 12.88, +0.15, +1.18%) (“Hertz”) and Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group /quotes/comstock/13*!dtg/quotes/nls/dtg (DTG 38.85, +0.19, +0.49%) (“Dollar Thrifty”) announced today that they signed a definitive agreement providing for Hertz to acquire Dollar Thrifty for a purchase price of $41.00 per share, in a mix of cash and Hertz common stock, based on Friday’s closing stock price. When completed, Hertz anticipates that the transaction will be immediately accretive to annual adjusted earnings per share.

Mark P. Frissora, Hertz’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said, “Combining Hertz and Dollar Thrifty is an excellent strategic fit. Dollar Thrifty is a $1.6 billion business with more than 1,550 corporate and franchise rental locations worldwide which, when combined with our global network, will serve rental customers on six continents from approximately 9,800 locations. Together we will be able to compete even more effectively and efficiently against other multi-brand car rental companies, offering customers a full range of rental options in the U.S. between the Hertz, Dollar, Thrifty and Advantage brands. Dollar Thrifty also has a strong international presence, complementing our global footprint, which enables us to utilize a recognized brand to accelerate our leisure rental strategy in Europe and other markets. Financially, we believe the deal is attractive, accretive to earnings and structured to maintain Hertz’s strong credit profile. We’ve identified at least $180 million of synergies already, primarily in fleet, IT systems and procurement, enabling our companies to operate at an even lower cost,” he added.

Scott L. Thompson, Dollar Thrifty’s President and Chief Executive Officer, said, “The combination of Dollar Thrifty with a larger company like Hertz will provide Dollar Thrifty with greater resources and the technology needed to expand our value focused leisure brands. We see the combination of our brands with Hertz’s brands as very compelling.”

Under the terms of the definitive agreement, the $41.00 per share purchase price is comprised of 80% cash consideration and 20% stock consideration. The cash portion will be paid in two components; (1) a $200 million special cash dividend representing approximately $6.88 per share, to be paid by Dollar Thrifty immediately prior to the transaction closing and (2) $25.92 per share to be paid by Hertz at the closing. The stock is at a fixed exchange ratio of 0.6366 per share, based upon a Hertz common stock closing price of $12.88 per share on April 23, 2010. The $41.00 per share purchase price represents approximately a 19% premium to the 30-day average closing price of Dollar Thrifty’s common stock. At the closing, Hertz will issue an aggregate of approximately 18 million shares of its common stock (excluding shares issuable upon the exercise of options that are being converted to Hertz options) and pay an aggregate of approximately $750 million in cash (excluding the special $200 million Dollar Thrifty dividend). Hertz intends to fund the cash portion of the purchase price with existing liquidity from the combined company. Hertz will also assume or refinance Dollar Thrifty’s existing fleet debt, outstanding at closing. Upon the close of the transaction, Dollar Thrifty stockholders will own approximately 5.5% of the combined company on a diluted basis. Dollar Thrifty will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hertz and Dollar Thrifty common stock will cease trading on the NYSE.

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, regulatory approvals, approval by Dollar Thrifty stockholders and payment of the special dividend. The transaction is not conditioned on receipt of financing by Hertz.

Barclays Capital acted as lead financial advisor to Hertz and Bank of America Merrill Lynch also provided advice. Hertz also worked with the law firms Debevoise & Plimpton LLP and Jones Day. Dollar Thrifty was advised by J.P.Morgan and Goldman, Sachs & Co. and the law firm of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP.

Hertz is the largest worldwide airport general use car rental brand operating from more than 8,200 locations in 146 countries worldwide. Hertz is the number one airport car rental brand in the U.S. and at 78 major airports in Europe, operating both corporate and licensee locations in cities and airports in North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. In addition, the Company has licensee locations in cities and airports in Africa and the Middle East. Product and service initiatives such as Hertz #1 Club Gold(R), NeverLost(R) customized, onboard navigation systems, SIRIUS XM Satellite Radio, and unique cars and SUVs offered through the Company’s Prestige, Fun and Green Collections, set Hertz apart from the competition. The Company also operates the Advantage car rental brand at 26 airports in the U.S., global car sharing club, Connect by Hertz, in New York City, Berlin, London, Madrid and Paris. Additionally, Hertz operates one of the world’s largest equipment rental businesses, Hertz Equipment Rental Corporation, offering a diverse line of equipment, including tools and supplies, as well as new and used equipment for sale, to customers ranging from major industrial companies to local contractors and consumers from approximately 325 branches in the United States, Canada, China, France and Spain.

Through its Dollar Rent A Car and Thrifty Car Rental brands, Dollar Thrifty has been serving value-conscious travelers since 1950. Dollar Thrifty maintains a strong presence in domestic leisure travel in virtually all of the top U.S. and Canadian airports, and also derives a significant portion of its revenue from international travelers to the U.S. under contracts with various international tour operators. Dollar and Thrifty have approximately 300 corporate locations in the United States and Canada, with approximately 6,000 employees located mainly in North America. In addition to its North American operations, the Company maintains global service capabilities through an expansive international franchise network of over 1,250 franchises in 81 countries.

Conference Call Information Hertz has previously announced that it plans on issuing a press release detailing its first quarter 2010 results prior to market open on Monday, April 26, 2010 and is scheduled to hold a conference call to discuss these results at 10:00 a.m. ET on Monday, April 26, 2010.

Conference Call Dial-In Information: ———————————— Time/Date: 10:00 a.m. ET, Monday, April 26, 2010 Phone: (800) 230-1766 (U.S.) (612) 332-0226 (International) Conference Title: Hertz First Quarter 2010 Earnings Call Passcode: 153677

The call can be accessed by providing the title or passcode to the operator. Replay Dial-In Information: ————————— Phone: (800) 475-6701 (U.S.) (320) 365-3844 (International) Passcode: 153677

This call will also be available through a live audio webcast. This webcast can be accessed through a link on the Investor Relations section of the Hertz website, www.hertz.com/investorrelations, and will remain available for replay.

Important Information for Investors and Stockholders

This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities or a solicitation of any vote or approval. Hertz will file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) a registration statement on Form S-4 that will include a proxy statement of Dollar Thrifty that also constitutes a prospectus of Hertz. Hertz and Dollar Thrifty also plan to file other documents with the SEC regarding the proposed transaction. A definitive proxy statement/prospectus will be mailed to stockholders of Dollar Thrifty.

INVESTORS AND STOCKHOLDERS
OF DOLLAR
THRIFTY ARE URGED TO READ THE PROXY STATEMENT/PROSPECTUS AND OTHER DOCUMENTS THAT WILL BE FILED WITH THE SEC CAREFULLY AND IN THEIR ENTIRETY WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE BECAUSE THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE PROPOSED TRANSACTION.

Investors and stockholders will be able to obtain free copies of the proxy statement/prospectus and other documents containing important information about Hertz and Dollar Thrifty, once such documents are filed with the SEC, through the website maintained by the SEC at http://www.sec.gov. Copies of the documents filed with the SEC by Hertz will be available free of charge on Hertz’s internet website at www.hertz.com or by contacting Hertz’s Investor Relations Department at 201-307-2100. Copies of the documents filed with the SEC by Dollar Thrifty will be available free of charge on Dollar Thrifty’s internet website at www.dtag.com or by contacting Dollar Thrifty’s Investor Relations Department at 918-669-2119.

Hertz, Dollar Thrifty, their respective directors and certain of their executive officers may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from the stockholders of Dollar Thrifty in connection with the proposed transaction. Information about the directors and executive officers of Hertz is set forth in its proxy statement for its 2010 annual meeting of stockholders, which was filed with the SEC on April 9, 2010. Information about the directors and executive officers of Dollar Thrifty will be set forth in its proxy statement for its 2010 annual meeting of stockholders, which will be filed pursuant to Regulation 14A promulgated by the SEC not later than April 27, 2010.

Other information regarding the participants in the proxy solicitation and a description of their direct and indirect interests, by security holdings or otherwise, will be contained in the proxy statement/prospectus and other relevant materials to be filed with the SEC when they become available.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this press release include “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve a number of risk and uncertainties, and actual results or events may differ materially from those projected or implied in those statements. Examples include statements regarding the parties’ ability to consummate the proposed transaction and timing thereof, the benefits and impact of the proposed transaction, including accretion to earnings, the combined company’s ability to achieve the synergies and value creation that are contemplated by the parties, Hertz’s ability to promptly and effectively integrate Dollar Thrifty’s business, and the diversion of management time on transaction-related issues. Additional examples of forward-looking statements include information concerning Hertz’s, Dollar Thrifty’s or the combined company’s outlook, anticipated revenues, results of operations and implementation of productivity and efficiency initiatives, and the anticipated savings and restructuring charges expected to be realized or incurred in connection therewith, as well as any other statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact.

These forward-looking statements often include words such as “believe,” “expect,” “project,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “plan,” “estimate,” “seek,” “will,” “may,” “would,” “should,” “could,” “forecast” or similar expressions. These statements are based on certain assumptions that Hertz and Dollar Thrifty have made in light of their experience in the industry as well as its perceptions of historical trends, current conditions, expected future developments and other factors that they believe are appropriate in these circumstances. Hertz and Dollar Thrifty believe these judgments are reasonable, but you should understand that no assurances can be given that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will transpire or occur, or if any of them do so, what impact they will have on the results of operations or financial conditions of Hertz, Dollar Thrifty or the combined company, due to a variety of important factors, both positive and negative. Among other items, such factors could include the ability of the parties to obtain all necessary regulatory consents to the proposed transaction and to meet any conditions imposed by regulators in connection therewith; the overall strength and stability of general economic conditions, both in the United States and in global markets, including the timing and strength of the current recovery; levels of travel demand, particularly with respect to airline passenger traffic in the United States and in global markets and the impact of disruptions or reductions in air travel resulting from airline bankruptcies, industry consolidation, capacity reductions, pricing actions or other events; the effect of significant changes in the competitive environment, including as a result of industry consolidation, and the effect of competition in Hertz’s and Dollar Thrifty’s markets, including on their pricing policies or use of incentives; their ability to achieve cost savings and efficiencies and realize opportunities to increase productivity and profitability; their ability to accurately estimate future levels of rental activity and adjust the size of their fleets accordingly; the impact of safety recalls by the manufacturers of their rental vehicles and equipment; the impact of a major disruption in their communication or centralized information networks or payment systems; and changes in the existing, or the adoption of new, laws, regulations, policies or other activities of governments, agencies and similar organizations where such actions may materially affect their operations or the cost thereof.

Hertz and Dollar Thrifty caution you that you should not rely unduly on these forward-looking statements, which reflect their current beliefs and are based on information currently available. Neither Hertz nor Dollar Thrifty undertakes any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements as of any future date. Additional information concerning these statements and other factors can be found in Hertz’s and Dollar Thrifty’s filings with the SEC, including the Annual Reports on Form 10-K, the quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K and other documents Hertz and Dollar Thrifty have filed.

SOURCE: The Hertz Corporation

AUSTRALIA :

EUROPE :

Outcome of Re-launched EU-US Development Dialogue: Towards Joint Action on Millennium Development Goals, Food Security and Climate Change
www.prnewswire.com/ April 26

WASHINGTON, April 25 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The EU-US dialogue on development was relaunched today in Washington. It provides a framework for cooperation between the two largest donors in the world in their efforts to tackle poverty worldwide. This initiative has been a priority for EU Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs and USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah in the first few months since they both took up office. With five years remaining to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, the relaunch is a sign of new political will to work together in the fight against poverty.

European Commissioner for Development, Andris Piebalgs, said: “Today’s commitment of the two biggest donors, the EU and US, to join forces in the fight against poverty is good news for poorest countries. I’m confident that the three roadmaps agreed for joint action on Millennium Development Goals, Food Security, and Climate Change will ensure concrete progress on the ground.”

Agreed joint roadmaps

At the EU-US Summit in November 2009, leaders decided to re-launch the EU-US development dialogue and cooperation process. Leaders also decided to hold annual meetings at ministerial level to advance and guide transatlantic cooperation at policy level as well as the achievement of results in the field.

After an inactive period of more than a decade, the EU-US development ministerial (High Level Consultative Group on Development) was re-launched today. It is the first political-level meeting in this format since world leaders adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The initial focus areas of this renewed dialogue are the MDGs, food security and climate change.

During the meeting, the EU and the US agreed on three roadmaps for cooperation in the next two years covering:

•Millennium Development Goals: the EU and US agreed to focus efforts on those countries most in need. They committed to work together in making aid more effective. The Commission presented the proposed 12-point EU Action Plan to support developing countries in getting back on track. The Dialogue will take forward cooperation in health, education and gender-related MDGs in view of the UN High Level meeting on MDGs due to take place in New York in September;

•Food Security: both sides agreed to work together at global level, notably in reforming the Committee on World Food Security and to ensure concrete follow up of G8 L’Aquila Summit; at regional level, in particular in Africa; and at country level. Some pilot countries will be identified in the coming months in consultation with partner countries;

•Climate Change: Following the Copenhagen Summit and in view of the Cancun Summit, both sides stressed the importance of adaptation, of reducing emissions from deforestation, and of mitigation The EU underlined the importance of ensuring the application of aid effectiveness principles to any additional funding for climate change adaptation and mitigation work in developing countries.

Finally, it was agreed that the next EU-US Development Dialogue would take place in Europe in 2011.

CHINA :

World Bank $5.1 Billion Capital Increase Raises China’s Stature
April 26, 2010/By Sandrine Rastello/Bloomberg

April 26 (Bloomberg) — World Bank shareholders supported capital increases that will provide $5.1 billion in cash and enhance China’s clout at the agency created after World War II to eradicate poverty.

The 186 member countries yesterday agreed to provide $3.5 billion to the bank’s unit that lends to governments, the first general increase in 22 years. Another $1.6 billion from developing nations will boost their voting powers, enabling China to leapfrog countries such as Germany and the U.K. to become the third-largest shareholder behind the U.S. and Japan.

“This package is a first for the bank — never has it attempted to change voting power while also asking for a general capital increase to boost resources,” President Robert Zoellick told reporters in Washington yesterday. “The additional capital means we will be able to continue playing the role that is demanded of us.”

Zoellick, 56, traveled from Tokyo to Paris in the past six months to convince shareholders his institution needed capital after stepping up aid during the financial crisis. He warned that without a pledge of support, the bank would have to reduce loans this year for projects such as road building and education.

The risk of having to cut back lending no longer exists, he said yesterday.

“This capital increase is certainly an important achievement for Zoellick, and he has fought very hard,” Domenico Lombardi, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a former executive board member at the World Bank, said in an interview April 24.

Stronger Accountability

Shareholders endorsed a proposed new strategy, which the bank said will strengthen efficiency and accountability. Creating “opportunities for growth in sectors such as agriculture and infrastructure” is part of the plan, it said in a statement.

A group of environmental and poverty-fighting organizations such as Africa Action and Friends of the Earth in a press release last week said they didn’t support the capital increase because of the bank’s “continued financing of dirty energy projects.”

Zoellick, in yesterday’s press conference, put forward environmentally friendly actions taken by the bank, such as climate-investment funds.

“We will move people towards low-carbon growth, but we will also help build support for the climate-change negotiations,” he said. “The poor need energy to grow, and many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa only have 7 to 10 percent of their public with electricity.”

Paid-In Capital

The $5.1 billion for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which lends to governments, is the paid-in part of a total $86.2 billion capital increase. The difference between the two is callable capital, or money countries would have to disburse if the institution were in danger of defaulting.

The bank’s private investment arm, the International Finance Corp., for which the bank initially saw a need for as much as $2.4 billion, will get a cash injection of $200 million as part of the shift in voting rights.

The increase in developing countries’ clout was agreed by Group of 20 leaders at a meeting in Pittsburgh last year. Their voting power will rise by 3.1 percent at the IBRD unit and 6.1 percent at the IFC, the bank said.

China’s voting rights at the IBRD will increase to 4.42 percent from 2.77 percent. Korea’s will rise to 1.57 percent from 0.99 percent. Among those with a falling share are France and the U.K, both going to 3.75 percent from 4.17 percent.

Poor Nations

“It looks like we’ll have a more representative World Bank, with countries like China being given a bigger say, but poor countries are still effectively shut out,” Elizabeth Stuart, a spokeswoman for aid organization Oxfam International, said in a statement.

Of 47 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, only Sudan gained in voting rights, and more than a third lost some, according to Oxfam.

Payments for the capital increase still have to be approved by countries’ parliaments. Zoellick said he has found initial support among U.S. lawmakers, while acknowledging the process won’t be easy.

“There’s going to be a battle in Congress over the general capital increase,” said Beatrice Edwards, the International program director at the Government Accountability Project, a Washington-based watchdog group, pointing to a report by the staff of U.S. Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, the top Republican at the Foreign Relations Committee.

“Any new capital increase should be approved only after the relevant institution has formally agreed to a reform agenda and begun to implement it,” said the report, which called for changes at international financial institutions.

–Editors: Christopher Wellisz, Chris Anstey

INDIA :

India’s Bond Yields at 18-Month High on Concern Over Debt Sales
April 26, 2010/By V. Ramakrishnan/Bloomberg

April 26 (Bloomberg) — India’s 10-year bonds dropped for a second day, pushing their yield to an 18-month high, on concern appetite for the debt will cool as the government steps up sales to finance its budget deficit.

The government may borrow 120 billion rupees ($2.7 billion) of bonds this week, according to the central bank’s indicative auction calendar. The details of the securities to be sold will be announced today. The Reserve Bank of India increased its benchmark policy rates by a quarter-percentage point each at a meeting on April 20.

“The fact that the government’s borrowing program is robust will continue to push up yields,” said Krishnamurthy Harihar, Mumbai-based treasurer at the Indian unit of FirstRand Ltd., South Africa’s second-largest financial services company. “Given the outlook for inflation and the economy, more interest-rate hikes are also expected.”

The yield on the 6.35 percent note due January 2020 rose one basis points to 8.07 percent as of 9:40 a.m. in Mumbai, according to the central bank’s trading system. The price fell 0.06, or 6 paise per 100 rupee face amount, to 88.58. The 10- year yield rose as much as three basis points to 8.09 percent earlier, its highest since October 2008.

The Finance Ministry has already borrowed 370 billion rupees of its record 4.57 trillion rupees target for the fiscal year that began April 1, 36 percent more than in April last year.

The central bank said on April 23 it would auction 90 billion rupees of treasury bills on April 28.

–Editors: Sandy Hendry, James Regan

Multibillion-dollar cricket scandal rocks India
By Jonathan Manthorpe, Vancouver Sun/April 26, 2010

A massive corruption, bribery and sex scandal involving the hugely profitable Indian Premier League of cricket has already cost one New Delhi minister his job, is threatening to topple another two ministers and has seen one of India’s richest men helping tax and graft investigators with their inquiries.

Indeed, there were several reports in India at the end of last week that the flamboyant and controversial businessman Lalit Modi, who as the chief executive of the IPL is at the centre of the scandal, will be asked today to step down by the sport’s governing body, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

The scandal around the league, whose tournaments are worth about $5 billion a year in this cricket-mad country, has already forced the resignation last week of junior foreign minister Shashi Tharoor, who was for a while India’s candidate for secretary-general of the United Nations.

Tharoor denies allegations that he used a proxy, a Dubai socialite named Sunanda Pushkar whom the Indian media primly describes as the former minister’s “girlfriend,” to acquire a $15-million stake in a consortium that bought for $1 billion a franchise for a new IPL team in Kochi in Kerala state.

But the political storm forced his resignation anyway and after a rowdy session in parliament at the end of last week, during which there were scuffles and the IPL was called “a den of thieves” and “a huge scam,” there may be more.

Opposition politicians have their sights set on agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, widely held to be IPL chieftain Modi’s main political protector and also a former president of the BCCI.

Pawar is accused of improperly using his position to influence bids for IPL franchises, an allegation he denies.

The other minister the opposition would like to see tumble is the civil aviation minister Praful Patel, who is accused of diverting an Air India flight to pick up some IPL players in need of a lift.

From its start in 2008 there was much suspicion that the IPL was attracting too much money, too many high-stakes investors with records of taking shortcuts in business and too many Bollywood glitterati to remain clean for very long.

For about 40 years there have been efforts to re-work the rules for cricket, whose classic games can take up to five days, to cater for the television audience’s passion for speed and excitement.

The first change came in Britain, the game’s birthplace, in the 1970s with the introduction of one-day cricket.

Most recently came the development of a version where each team plays 20 overs, each of six balls. These games last about three hours and are a perfect format for Indian television, where audiences are used to Bollywood movies of that length.

Even so, the BCCI as an upholder of the virtues of classic cricket, was at first reluctant to allow the IPL to launch its “Twenty20” tournament.

When the board did finally agree and in 2008 the franchises started to be auctioned off it was immediately apparent IPL cricket was instantly becoming one of the world’s richest sports.

Franchises for the first eight teams in the league sold for $724 million and the 10-year TV rights fetched $1.02 billion.

Winning bidders included such magnates as Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries who paid $111.9 million for the Mumbai team.

Kingfisher Airlines owner Vijay Mallya paid slightly less, $111.6 million, for Bangalore.

The Jaipur team was snapped up for $67 million by a group including Hollywood star Russell Crowe, a cousin of former New Zealand cricket captain Martin Crowe, and Lachlan Murdoch, son of global media baron Rupert Murdoch.

IPL games have quickly become a fixture on prime time Indian television with each broadcast claiming an audience of over 500 million.

Within three seasons the IPL has come to account for an astonishing 70 per cent of worldwide cricket revenues.

Modi, who was a vice-president of BCCI when he led the launch of the IPL, predicted at the time, conservatively as it turns out, that within a few years each franchise would be worth at least $500 million.

But India’s anti-corruption police and tax investigators began to take an interest in IPL and its cast of colourful characters amid rumours of bribery in awarding TV rights, money secreted in tax havens, fraud, illegal betting, money laundering and proxy owners.

Modi himself has spent several hours talking to the tax and corruption investigators, who softened him up by leaking to reporters a confidential report on some of his dealings.

These included some highly questionable land deals in Rajasthan and the creation of a “maze of shell companies and offshore entities used to route payments and equity stakes worth hundreds of crores of rupees.” One crore equals 10 million in India’s counting system.

Whether Modi sang to the investigators is not yet public knowledge, but he has certainly been singing on Twitter. In several Twitter posts Modi has made public the names of people allegedly given free equity in the Rendezvous Sports World consortium, which paid $1 billion for the Kochi franchise and which included foreign minister Tharoor’s “girlfriend.”

jmanthorpe@vancouversun.com

World briefs – April 26, 2010
www.thestar.co.za/April 26, 2010

Edition 1
Schoolgirls ill after attack

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan: About 48 schoolgirls and several teachers fell ill after a suspected poison gas attack on their school, authorities said yesterday. The Taliban banned education for girls when they ruled from 1996-2001 and it remains a disputed issue. In the areas where the Taliban control towns and villages, girls’ schools remain shut, teachers are threatened and girls have been attacked with acid.

Two die in balloon accident

DUBAI: At least two people – one each from India and France – died yesterday when a hot air balloon carrying 14 passengers crashed in the desert south of Dubai. Balloon Adventures Emirates director Peter Kollar said a sudden change of wind struck the balloon as it came in to land. “It was a freak wind change,” Kollar said. “The balloon did not fall out of the sky. It happened at landing.”

For crying out loud

Tokyo: The yearly Naki Sumo (crying baby contest) was held yesterday at the Sensoji Temple in Tokyo. The first baby to cry wins the contest. The competition is also intended to generate good health for the babies.

Air turbulence rocks 20

NEW DELHI: At least 20 people aboard an Emirates airlines flight from Dubai to the southern Indian city of Kochi were injured yesterday when the aircraft encountered heavy turbulence shortly before landing. The turbulence occurred suddenly and many passengers – of the 350 on board who were not wearing seatbelts – suffered injuries. Most were discharged after receiving first aid.

58 die in Sudanese clashes

KHARTOUM: Clashes between south Sudan’s army and Darfuri Arab tribes killed 58 people and raised tension along the north-south border as results of the first open elections in 24 years were released, officials said yesterday. The north-south civil war, Africa’s longest, has raged on and off since 1955. It has claimed 2 million lives and destabilised much of East Africa.

Writer Sillitoe dies

LONDON: Novelist and poet Alan Sillitoe, one of the 1950s’ Angry Young Men of British fiction, has died aged 82. Sillitoe, best known for his gritty novels which vividly portrayed the lives of working-class men in post-war Britain, had two books – Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner – made into films.

Hungarian party rampant

BUDAPEST: Hungarians started voting yesterday in a second round of elections in which the centre-right Fidesz party aims to secure enough power to enact reforms to fight recession and job losses. Having won an outright majority by defeating the ruling Socialists in the first round on April 11, Fidesz is now well placed to garner a legislative super-majority of two-thirds in the run-off vote.

Japanese turn the screws

TOKYO: Nearly 100 000 people rallied on Okinawa yesterday to demand that a US airbase be moved off the Japanese island. The rally deepened Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama ‘s woes as he struggled to resolve the feud by the end of next month. Voters’ perception of the way Hatoyama has mishandled the row is eroding support for his government ahead of a mid-year vote.

Eyes right in Austrian poll

VIENNA: Austrian President Heinz Fischer was expected to win a second term in elections yesterday, but all eyes were on how well a far-right politician, who has challenged the country’s anti-Nazi law, will do. Polls predict a clear win for Fischer, a Social Democrat, with Barbara Rosenkranz from the anti-foreigner and anti-European Union Freedom Party coming a distant second.

Toxic waste story wins

GENEVA: A joint report by European journalists from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, The Guardian, the BBC and de Volkskranton, on the dumping of toxic waste in Ivory Coast, has won the Daniel Pearl Award for international investigative reporting. The Washington-based Center for Public Integrity gave a second award to Aram Roston of the US weekly The Nation.

Party sticks with candidate

BUJUMBURA: Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza, a former rebel leader and “born-again” Christian, has been chosen as the ruling party’s candidate for June elections. Nkurunziza was elected president by the Burundian parliament in 2005 as the country emerged from 13 years of civil war that pitted the Tutsi-dominated army against Hutu rebel movements.

MTN looking to buyout Orascom’s networks in Africa?
By Dusan Belic/ www.intomobile.com/ April 26th, 2010

The African mobile market is heating up as never before. Just recently we had India’s Bharti Airtel acquiring Zain’s networks across the continent, excluding Sudan and Morocco, and now we’re hearing Johannesburg-based MTN is looking to grab several of Orascom’s mobile businesses in Africa.

According to the Financial Times, talks had initially focused on Orascom’s Algerian business but have been expanded to include other markets, including Tunisia, Burundi, Central African Republic, Namibia and Zimbabwe. A person familiar with MTN said Phuthuma Nhleko, the company’s CEO, had coveted Orascom’s African mobile businesses for years.

MTN said in a statement that it was in talks that “may or may not lead to a transaction,” not naming Orascom directly.

Finally, it’s important to add that the MTN’s move on Orascom is the latest attempt by the South African company to expand its business after two failed attempts to merge with India’s Bharti.

We’ll definitely keep watching the global mobile market, so stay tuned.

[Via: MobileBusinessBriefing]

BRASIL:

Poorer Nations Get Larger Role in World Bank
By SEWELL CHAN/www.nytimes.com/Published: April 26, 2010

WASHINGTON — Members of the World Bank agreed on Sunday to support a $5.1 billion increase in its operating capital, the largest increase in general financing since 1988, and to give developing economies a greater say in running the antipoverty institution.
Under the changes, China will become the bank’s third-largest shareholder, ahead of Germany, after the United States and Japan. Countries like Brazil, India, Indonesia and Vietnam will also have greater representation.

“We are grateful to our shareholding countries for this strong vote of confidence,” the bank’s president, Robert B. Zoellick, said at the conclusion of the spring meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The bank’s 186 members also agreed to support a reform package that calls for greater openness and disclosure of information and improvements in managing risks and measuring results.

The World Bank has made $105 billion in financial commitments since July 2008 in response to the global economic turmoil. The new capital in essence allows the World Bank to maintain its programs at their level before the crisis.

“We could start to see this last year, at the time of our annual meeting, that unless we could get additional capital infusion, we wouldn’t be able to continue this high lending volume,” Mr. Zoellick said in an interview on Friday. “And indeed, even coming out of the crisis, we would be in a position where we’d have to come back below precrisis levels.”

In a Global Monitoring Report, released Friday, the bank reported that the economic crisis had slowed the pace of poverty reduction in developing countries. As a result of the crisis, 53 million more people will remain in extreme poverty by 2015 than otherwise would have, the report found. Even so, the report projected that the number of people in extreme poverty — defined as living on less than $1.25 a day — would be 920 million in 2015, a significant decline from the 1.8 billion in 1990.

Some developing countries sought a bigger capital increase, as other development banks have received. But the wealthier nations, which are squeezed, resisted such a move.

Timothy F. Geithner, the United States Treasury secretary, said Mr. Zoellick had “made a strong and compelling case” for the money that was approved. He pledged to seek Congressional support for the United States’ share of the capital increase, $586 million or about $117 million a year for five years.

“For every dollar the United States contributes to paid-in capital for the World Bank, $26 worth of assistance is delivered,” Mr. Geithner said Sunday.

Mr. Zoellick carefully devised the capital increase and voting changes to be adopted together.

The $5.1 billion in so-called paid-in capital, which the bank can use for day-to-day operations, will bring the bank’s cash on hand to about $40 billion. Of the $5.1 billion, developing countries will contribute $1.6 billion in connection with a shift in representation that will give them 47.19 percent of voting power, up from 44.06 percent. The actions fulfill a pledge the bank’s members made in Istanbul in October.

In 2008, the bank’s members approved a smaller shift of 1.46 percent of voting power to the developing countries from the wealthy ones and added a 25th seat on the bank’s governing board, raising to three the number of seats for sub-Saharan Africa.

All told, the cumulative shift of 4.59 percent of voting power amounts to the greatest realignment in representation at the World Bank since 1988.

“As the developing countries gain more shares, they have to pay for them,” Mr. Zoellick said in the interview. “Part of the good story here is a burden-sharing story.”

The bank’s members approved on Sunday an $86.2 billion general capital increase, bringing the bank’s total subscribed capital, not counting about $26 billion in reserves, to $276.1 billion. But except for the $5.1 billion, that new money is “callable capital,” which resides with the member countries but can be drawn upon in an emergency. (The bank has never had to do so.) The callable capital lets the bank enjoy a top-notch credit rating and borrow at favorable rates. All but roughly $40 billion of the $276.1 billion is callable.

The bank’s members said it should redouble its focus on helping the poor, especially in sub-Saharan Africa; invest in agriculture and infrastructure; promote global “collective action” on climate change, trade and other priorities; combat corruption; and prepare for crises.

Mr. Zoellick, who served as the United States trade representative and then as deputy secretary of state under President George W. Bush, said in the interview that the less wealthy countries were leading the global economic recovery, while the United States, Europe and Japan had rebounded more slowly.

“A lot of growth is coming from the developing world, and so the financing we do in the developing world is now beyond charity and social solidarity — it’s a question of self-interest,” he said. “They have become sources of demand.”

A Successful Restructuring in Greece May Leave a Weaker Europe Economy
APRIL 26, 2010/online.wsj.com

It matters little in the long run whether Greece’s euroland colleagues and the International Monetary Fund agree to the requested €45 billion bailout— €30 billion from the euro-zone countries, €15 billion from the IMF. Even if the deal gets done, the bailers will have only applied a Band-Aid to a hemorrhage.

The loans would do little more than buy some time before Greece is forced to restructure—the polite word for a partial default— on its massive and rising debt.
The country, now thought to have a deficit of close to 14% of GDP, has spilled and continues to spill too much red ink to be able to meet its obligations, on the best assumptions about budget cutting, growth, tax collections, the generosity of its fellow euro-zone members, and the ability of the IMF to impose draconian cost cuts on the Greek polity.

But even a successful restructuring would leave in its wake a seriously weakened European economy. The gaggle of agencies that will now involve itself in the making not only of Greece’s but also other nation’s economic policies is likely to be so unwieldy as to produce something between sluggish responses to economic developments and paralysis. IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn will want to demonstrate the sort of financial skill that will increase his chances of unseating Nicolas Sarkozy when the French presidential elections roll around in 2012. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the eurogroup finance ministers, now has an excuse to dabble in national budget-making. Olli Rehn, the EU’s economic and monetary-affairs commissioner, is demanding an “audit like” right to review national budgets before they are submitted to national legislators. There are others, but you get the idea: Rapid decision making is not in the euro zone’s future, just when the pace at which markets react to news is accelerating.

More important, it is not clear that the social fabrics of Greece and several other countries can survive the deflation that will come on the heels of the IMF clampdown on spending. Restructuring means Greece’s creditors, most notably the European banks that hold billions of dicey Greek government paper, will take big write-downs. That will force them to cut back on their lending, stifling growth in all of euroland, even in countries that haven’t let their budgets get out of control.

Besides, nothing now in sight addresses the fundamental problem: The Greek economy, burdened by high labor costs, low productivity, and burdensome regulation simply can’t compete in a globalized world. This wouldn’t matter much were it not true of other euro-zone economies. It is now fashionable to say that the southern euro zone consists of profligate, laggard economies such as Greece, Spain and Italy, while the northern euro zone is home to sound, efficient economies.

There is some truth to that, but only some. The northern tier is indeed efficient by comparison with the southern tier. But, the current recovery in France and Germany notwithstanding, no one expects euroland as a whole to grow at a long-term annual rate close to that of the U.S. and China. Europe’s failure to reform its labor markets and welfare states will inevitably become an irresistible drag on growth.

Doubt that and consider a new study by James Heckman and Bas Jacobs, professor of economics at the University of Chicago and professor at the Erasmus School of Economics in the Netherlands, respectively. In their careful and equation-laden study (“Policies To Create And Destroy Human Capital In Europe”), prepared for the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research, they find, “High marginal tax rates and generous benefit systems reduce labor force participation rates and hours worked and thereby lower the utilization rate of human capital.”

A better description of conditions in most European countries would be difficult to find. So it seems likely Europe will be an economic laggard long after the Greek problem is solved, if the injection of new layers of bureaucracy and the imposition of deflationary policies can be classified as a solution.

The political dissatisfaction produced by these circumstances will be exacerbated by the superior performance of other sectors of the global economy. The Chinese, ever eager to point out that their state-managed economy is turning in a performance that tops that of the West, are already letting it be known that they are writing Europe off and have no intention of making major investments there. Their cash is flowing to Brazil, Africa, the Middle East and, if truth be told, the U.S.

Meanwhile, the American economy is picking up steam. The consumer has come out of hiding, sales of tax-advantaged existing and new homes are up, corporate profits are exceeding expectations, and even the auto industry is seeing better days. Inevitably, Europeans will wonder whether the euro, a currency concocted by politicians more intent on European integration than on creating a sustainable currency, and the growth-stifling eurocracy, might just be the reasons for their inability to keep pace with faster-growing countries.

—Irwin Stelzer is a business adviser and director of economic-policy studies at the Hudson Institute.
Write to Irwin Stelzer at irwin.stelzer@wsj.com

EN BREF, CE 26 avril 2010 … AGNEWS / OMAR, BXL,26/04/2010