{jcomments on}OMAR, BXL, AGNEWS, le 25 juin 2010 – An international undertaking to prevent the trade in diamonds that fuel conflict ended in a stalemate Thursday over whether to approve Zimbabwe’s export of millions of carats of newly-mined diamonds, but the nation threatened to sell the stones on its own anyway.
BURUNDI :
Burundi Prepares to Vote
24 June 2010/Peter Clottey /www1.voanews.com
A Burundi analyst says incumbent President Pierre Nkurunziza’s legitimacy could be questioned if he wins Monday’s presidential vote after opposition parties decided to boycott the poll.
Ndikumana Methode said the Independent Electoral Commission (CENI) should have resolved concerns expressed by opposition parties and postponed Sunday’s vote.
“The elections may go ahead in accordance to what the (ruling) CNDD-FDD wants. However, in my opinion I think it is rather unfortunate because it really takes Burundi a little back in (terms of) its democratic process. Because, we have seen so far in our history, all the elections were multi-party and multi-candidates,” he said.
Burundi’s opposition parties unanimously pulled out of the presidential election after accusing the electoral body of failing to prevent fraud in last month’s district elections won by the ruling CNDD-FDD party with over 60 percent of the votes.
Opposition parties also demanded a re-run of the district elections after rejecting the results. But the electoral body, CENI said the presidential vote will proceed as originally scheduled.
Pierre Claver Ndayicariye, chairman of Burundi’s electoral body (CENI) told VOA that the electoral body has a track record of organizing elections that both local and international observers have judged to be free and fair.
“We are a technical commission and our mission is to organize technically the elections. Today, we are preparing (for) the presidential election, which are scheduled on 28th June 2010. We are really preparing (for) this election,” he said.
But analyst Methode said CENI should have addressed the opposition concerns before the vote.
“The committee in charge of elections should have looked into them, giving answers to them then maybe come to some kind of negotiation at local level before they went ahead with the election,” Methode said.
Recently, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, as well as other foreign diplomats, called on the various opposition parties to reconsider their decision to boycott the 28 June election.
Analyst Methode said the opposition boycott weakens the credibility of the election.
“I think they do and yes the legitimacy is pretty much ion question. And I mean what is an election for (only) one man or one candidate or one party? I think they should have sat down and maybe postponed the election and maybe agree on a period of time so that any cloud is removed from this election,” Methode said.
Meanwhile, incumbent President Nkurunziza is expected to win by a landslide after opposition parties including his main challenger decided to boycott Sunday’s presidential vote.
Burundi Opposition Party Denies Leader Fled to Congo
www1.voanews.com /VOA News/ 24 June 2010
A Burundian opposition leader who criticized the government has dropped out of sight, less than a week before the presidential election. The AFP news agency reports that Agathon Rwasa, leader of the FNL party, crossed into the Democratic Republic of Congo before dawn on Wednesday.
Rwasa has accused the government of rigging Burundi’s ongoing election process.
In an interview with VOA’s Central Africa Service, an FNL spokesman did not specify Rwasa’s whereabouts, but said he has gone on a two-week vacation. The spokesman, Jean Bosco Havyarimana, says Rwasa “has the freedom go anywhere he chooses, whether it is inside the country or outside the country.”
All opposition parties have pulled out of Burundi’s presidential election on 28 Jun, saying the ruling party used fraud to win local elections in May. The election commission has rejected calls to re-run those polls or to postpone Monday’s presidential vote. President Pierre Nkurunziza is now running unopposed.
The FNL was the last rebel group to lay down its arms in Burundi’s long civil war.
The current elections are aimed at capping a transition to democracy started by peace deals that ended the war in 2005.
RWANDA
Rwanda: Prospective Presidential Candidate Detained
By JOSH KRON/www.nytimes.com/ June 25, 2010
The police detained a prospective presidential candidate, Bernard Ntaganda, on Thursday, and searched his compound on suspicion of ethnic divisionism and attempted murder. He is the second politician to face similar charges since April. President Paul Kagame formally filed papers on Thursday for his candidacy for re-election.
Woman allegedly took part in genocide
By JOSEPH G. COTE/Staff Writer/www.nashuatelegraph.com/Friday, June 25, 2010
The federal search warrant application and affidavit written by Thomas Andersen, Jr., a special agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Boston. MANCHESTER – A Manchester woman who has depicted herself as a victim of atrocities that happened in her native Rwanda during the 1990s was arrested Thursday on immigration charges and accused of, in fact, taking part in the genocide during which more than 500,000 were murdered over only a few months.
Beatrice Munyenyezi, 40, of 73 Goffe St., was arrested Thursday morning in Manchester. She has been indicted on two counts of procuring citizenship unlawfully, according to John Kacavas, New Hampshire’s U.S. Attorney, and Carmen Ortiz, Massachusetts, U.S. Attorney. A federal affidavit alleges that Munyenyezi participated in the genocide by, among other things, using a wooden club to murder a Tutsi boy and directing the serial rape of Tutsi women and girls.
The investigation of an alleged perpetrator of the Rwandan genocide who then lied about it to gain entrance to the United States appears to be one of the kind. Munyenyezi’s sister, Prudence Kantengwe, has been accused of lying about her political memberships and events she witnessed during the genocide to get into the country, but has not been accused of actually taking part, according to U.S. Department of Justice spokesperson Christina DiIorio-Sterling.
The federal indictment against Munyenyezi alleges that she “participated, committed, ordered, oversaw, conspired to, aided and abetted, assisted in and directed persecution, kidnapping, rape and murder” during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Munyenyezi then lied about her involvement to obtain immigration and naturalization benefits, the U.S. Attorneys said.
During the 1990s, Munyenyezi and her husband were active supporters of the Mouvement Republicain National pour le Developpement (MRND) and leaders of the party’s youth militia, the Interahamwe in Byumba – a state within Rwanda, according to an affidavit written by Thomas Andersen, Jr., a special agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Boston.
The affidavit was attached to a search warrant application for Munyenyezi’s house in Manchester.
Munyenyezi lived at the Ihuriro Hotel, which her husband’s family owned, during the genocide, Thomas said, and there were several roadblocks nearby, including one in front of the hotel.
It was there that Munyenyezi participated and committed in the genocide, Thomas said, based on “several witnesses I have interviewed.”
“Munyenyezi assisted in many ways, including but not limited to, participating in and speaking at meetings and public rallies of the MRND and Interahamwe, bringing supplies to Interahamwe and others who participated genocide against Tutsis including those who manned roadblocks in Butare, identifying and discussing Tutsis to be killed and encouraging others to rape Tutsi women and kill Tutsis, checking identity cards and otherwise identifying Tutsi at roadblocks, and selecting Tutsis to be kidnapped, raped and murdered,” Thomas wrote. “Munyenyezi also took and received personal property and belongings that were taken from victims who were murdered.”
Thomas spoke to several eye-witnesses who were victims of the genocide, according to his affidavit, including one who positively identified Munyenyezi as the person who directed the victim’s gang rape, which took place while the victim’s husband watched.
Another witness, one who also took part in the genocide, told Thomas Munyenyezi directed the serial rape of Tutsi women, ran the roadblock outside the hotel and once killed a Tutsi boy by hitting him in the head with a wooden club, according to the affidavit.
Munyenyezi was admitted to the United States as a refugee in 1998 after providing false information on a number of immigration forms regarding her actions during the genocide and membership in the MRND, Thomas said in the affidavit.
She lied again in 2002 on forms she filed to obtain her naturalization, Thomas said.
In 2005, Munyenyezi told National Public Radio about the challenges she faced in Manchester and said she had escaped the genocide with her family. She said she was discriminated against as an African refugee and described herself as “a fighter against adversity,” Thomas wrote.
Last year, Munyenyezi wrote a story for the National Endowment for the Arts about her experience in Africa, Thomas wrote.
If convicted on the immigration charges, Munyenyezi could face up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, along with the revocation of her citizenship, the U.S. Attorneys said.
Munyenyezi’s fate regarding her alleged war crimes is more complicated, DiIorio-Sterling said. If she is convicted, she would automatically be stripped of her citizenship and may end up serving her sentence in the United States. Another possibility is that she would be deported to Rwanda where she could face genocide charges, DiIorio-Sterling said.
Munyenyezi’s husband and mother-in-law are already facing charges for their alleged actions during the genocide before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Tanzania, according to Thomas’ affidavit. During several days in February 2006, Munyenyezi gave false testimony during those trials, he said.
Munyenyezi’s case was investigated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It is being prosecuted by Special Assistant U.S. Attorneys Aloke Chakravarty and Jeffrey Auerhahn from the District of Massachusetts.
Joseph G. Cote; jcote@nashuatelegraph.com.
UGANDA
Uganda ranks high in MDGs
25 June, 2010 /www.newvision.co.ug/By Milton Olupot
UGANDA is among the top 20 poor countries in the world which are making the most progress towards achieving three of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), according to a report.
The Overseas Development Institute and UN Millennium Campaign report focused on progress on Goal 1, which seeks to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, Goal 4 of reducing child mortality and Goal 5 to improve maternal health
World leaders made promises of significantly reducing extreme poverty, illiteracy and disease by 2015.
The report, an annual assessment of regional progress towards achieving the goals, reflects data compiled by 25 UN and other agencies.
The report said half of the African countries were on track to meet the 2015 target.
The largest number of reductions of deaths of children under the age of five occurred in regions with the highest initial levels of such deaths such as sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia.
Even though the goal of reducing maternal mortality saw the least progress, access to maternal health services improved in 80% of countries.
The report credited sub-Saharan Africa for achieving the fastest progress among developing regions in making primary education available to school-age children, with primary school enrolment improving from 58% in 1999 to 76% in 2008.
However, overall, it indicated that sub-Saharan Africa was not on track to reach the target of reducing extreme poverty.
The region also remains the most affected by HIV, with 72% of worldwide new infections in 2008, although the report showed considerable progress in meeting the target of Goal 6; to halt and reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS.
TANZANIA:
CONGO RDC :
KENYA :
Kenya: August Vote Will Go On, Says Elections Boss
Oliver Mathenge/allafrica.com/Daily Nation/25 June 2010
Nairobi — A court ruling allowing prisoners to vote at the referendum has thrown the electoral commission into confusion.
It has also complicated the whole referendum business, putting the Interim Independent Electoral Commission (IIEC) in a position where it might not fully comply with a court order.
Election boss Issack Hassan is certain that the ruling will not interfere with the referendum on August 4, but he also admits the commission faces a logistical nightmare.
“We received this ruling with surprise and we expect to face major logistical challenges. We have been consulting with the Prisons Department and our legal team in order to weigh the implication and look at the options that we have,” he said.
On Wednesday, the Interim Independent Constitutional Dispute Resolution Court (IICDRC), a special court established to hear cases arising from review process, decided that prisoners should be allowed to vote in the referendum. Under the current law, prisoners do not vote. It ordered the IIEC to ensure that prisoners of sound mind among Kenya’s 53,000 inmates are registered in three weeks’ time.
The same court was on Thursday asked by a local NGO to call off the referendum and compel the election commission to register Kenyans living abroad as voters. On prisoners, Mr Hassan said they would have to seek extra funding from the Treasury to cater for the new costs.
The IIEC is also consulting with the Prisons Department to get a list of all inmates and those who would be eligible to vote in line with the court order. Prisons would also have to be gazetted as voting centres, which might take some time. Election commissioners are meeting on Friday morning to figure out how much money will be needed.
They will be expecting the government to foot the bill. “We have set up a team to do a budget, and tomorrow, we will meet to review all this information and make a decision on how we will run this exercise which has come unexpectedly,” Mr Hassan said. In a meeting between the commission and the Prisons officials on Thursday, it was pointed out that some of the prisoners may not have identity cards.
The meeting also queried why the Prisons Department had not been enjoined in the case. The case for Kenyans living abroad to be allowed to vote was brought by six people, among them activist Omtatah Okoiti. They are also asking the court to bar the Attorney-General, the IIEC and the Committee of Experts on the Constitution from conducting partisan civic education. Judge Violet Mavisi declined to do so until those institutions have had a chance to give their side of the story.
However, she certified the case as urgent, saying it needed to be determined before the referendum. The six also want the court to force the AG, the IIEC and the experts to provide a full account of public funds and resources so far used in the review process. They further want the court to bar the three institutions from using public money for civic education without competitive bidding.
In addition, they want the three institutions barred from facilitating or funding any further civic education or political campaign of any party. In an affidavit sworn in support of the case, Mr Okoiti and Prof Barrack Obonyo said their constitutional and legal rights to participate fully in the review process has been compromised.
The two said they had a right of access to the verbatim record of the proceedings and meetings of the Committee of Experts. Both the AG and the Committee of Experts, they said, have continued to engage in partisan civic education and political campaigns to the prejudice of their rights to a fully free and fair national referendum.
They say Kenyans will suffer irreparable damage should the referendum proceed and the proposed constitution come into force with the attendant irreversible repeal of their constitutional rights. The balance of convenience, they argue, favours caution and legitimacy in the review process and not a divisive referendum tainted with illegitimacy and illegality. The case will be heard in the presence of all the concerned parties on Monday.
Kenya Opens Pirate Court
By Jasper Fakkert/Epoch Times Staff/Jun 25, 2010
A special court to try suspected pirates was opened in Kenya on Thursday.
Kenya currently holds 106 suspected pirates in custody, mainly from arrests by the international navy patrolling waters off the coast of Somalia.
The court was funded by international donors, which include the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime and the European Union.
Earlier this year Kenya said it would stop prosecutions unless other countries gave security guarantees and shared the costs.
Prosecuting pirates has proved to be an arduous task, as Somalia itself lacks a stable central government.
Last week marked the first time an EU court made a conviction against a pirate. On June 17, a Dutch court sentenced five Somali pirates each to five years in prison.
Despite dozens of warships in the vast region, which is part of an EU naval force to curb piracy, the number of attacks by pirates doubled last year.
Kenya: Sh4.6 Billion Withheld over Union Case
Mazera Ndurya/allafrica.com/Daily Nation/25 June 2010
Nairobi — The Treasury will not release money allocated for the hiring of teachers by school boards until a case filed by trade unions is withdrawn.
The Sh4.6 billion, allocated over the past two financial years, will remain at the Treasury until the Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) and the Kenya Union of Post-Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet) resolve their opposition to the hiring of contract teachers, Finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta said.
Mr Kenyatta allocated the project Sh2.5 billion in the last Budget and Sh2.1 billion in the new financial year. On Thursday, Mr Kenyatta urged head teachers, who are attending their annual conference in Mombasa, to implore the unions to stop the court case. “Once the matter is settled amicably, we will release the funds,” said the minister.
He was speaking just a day after his Education counterpart, Prof Sam Ongeri, announced at the same venue that the money would be given to school boards to employ the teachers. Teachers in public schools are usually hired by the Teachers’ Service Commission (TSC).
Prof Ongeri’s announcement had received the support of the 5,000 head teachers under the auspices of the Kenya Secondary Schools Heads Association (KSSHA). The Education minister said that unless something was done urgently to address the shortage of teachers, the situation would get out of hand.
“Currently we have a shortage of over 60,000 teachers both in primary and secondary schools and we expect the number to increase to about 70,000 next year if nothing is done about it,” Prof Ongeri said.
But the teachers’ unions still oppose the idea, saying only the TSC should handle recruitment of teachers. Knut secretary general Lawrence Majali said there had to be a structured way of recruiting teachers so that they too can enjoy the benefits of working under permanent and pensionable terms.
Speaking earlier at the meeting, the chairman of the parliamentary committee on education, research, science and technology, Mr David Koech, said the staffing levels in schools were deplorable. “We cannot pretend that everything is going well, especially now that more learning institutions are being constructed in every part of the country but there are no teachers,” he said.
KSSHA chairman Cleopas Tirop said there was no short cut about the teacher shortage and asked the unions to withdraw the case because the situation was affecting the running of schools.
Africa: Seven Nations Named in Top Ten ‘Failed States’
25 June 2010/allafrica.com
Seven of the world’s top 10 “failed states” are in Africa, according to a study published in the United States.
The world’s “most vulnerable” nation, according to the annual Failed States Index, is Somalia, followed by Chad, Sudan, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The next African countries on the list, where conditions are a little better than in Afghanistan and Iraq, are the Central African Republic and Guinea.
Other African countries the index considers among the top 20 failed states are Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Niger.
The index is published annually by Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace, both based in Washington, DC.
Foreign Policy says in its latest edition that the 10 most unstable countries “are a sadly familiar bunch. Shattered Somalia has been the No. 1 failed state for three years running, and none of the current top 10 has shown much improvement, if any, since… [the magazine and fund] began publishing the index in 2005.”
It said Somalia “saw yet another year plagued by lawlessness and chaos, with pirates plying the coast while radical Islamist militias tightened their grip on the streets of Mogadishu.”
“Already isolated Sudan saw its dictator, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, defy an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court and the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of the Congo once again proved itself a country in little more than name,” the magazine added.
The report said that even good news for the troubled states came tempered by hard facts. “A coalition government in Zimbabwe whipped history’s second-worst bout of hyperinflation, fostering the country’s first year of positive growth in more than a decade… But Robert Mugabe’s security goons still rule Harare unchecked…”
The publishers say the index draws on 90,000 publicly available sources to analyse 177 countries and rate them on 12 metrics of state decay. These include refugee flows, economic implosion, human rights violations and security threats.
ANGOLA :
SOUTH AFRICA:
UPDATE: Merck: South Africa Venture, FDA Asthma Drug Approval
JUNE 25, 2010/ online.wsj.com
By Nathan Becker and Shara Tibken Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–Merck & Co. (MRK) announced it was collaborating with South African company Adcock Ingram Holdings Ltd. (AIP.JO) to promote and distribute products in South Africa as it looks to tap into emerging markets, an area the drug-making giant sees as a big part of its business going forward.
Meanwhile, Merck separately said Thursday it had received U.S. Food & Drug Administration approval for Dulera, an inhaler treatment for asthma patients age 12 and older. The drug, expected to hit store shelves nationwide by the end of July, was part of the portfolio at Schering-Plough, acquired by Merck in November.
Analysts were excited about the drug and said it has blockbuster potential but could face hurdles competing against other well-established drugs, such as GlaxoSmithKline PLC’s (GSK) Advair. Last year, Advair generated sales of about $7.5 billion.
“The asthma indication is definitely a huge indication, and if it were to take the majority of the market share, it could be a megablockbuster,” Morningstar analyst Damien Conover said.
But Conover said the drug likely won’t take a majority of the share and could be a “middle-tier type of drug,” with potential peak sales of $1 billion. He added the drug also will face competition from a new drug from Novartis AG (NVS), as well as from a potential generic version of Advair.
Merck shares closed Thursday’s session up 19 cents to $35.61. They have climbed 40% over the past 12 months, but have dropped 6% over the past three.
Financial details of the collaboration with Adcock weren’t disclosed. Merck said jointly promoted products will include over-the-counter products and selected prescription medicines currently registered in South Africa by Merck and Schering-Plough, which Merck acquired in November for $41 billion.
Merck said the collaboration is part of its broader strategy of expanding and taking a leadership position in emerging markets. It said it expects to grow its position in those markets by making collaborations, much like the Adcock Ingram deal, with local companies.
Emerging markets are likely to account for more than one-fourth of Merck’s global pharmaceutical and vaccine revenue by 2013, the company said, based on its current emerging-markets strategy.
Big drug makers are racing to grab market share in countries on the rise, notably China, India and Brazil. Companies such as Eli Lilly & Co. (LLY), Pfizer Inc. (PFE) and GlaxoSmithKline see much of the industry’s growth in coming years being in such countries, as expanding middle classes gain better access to health care and changes in lifestyle increase the prevalence of certain chronic diseases, such as diabetes.
Drug makers also face mounting price pressures in the U.S. and Europe from generic competition as well as public and private insurers, furthering the appeal of emerging markets as a source of growth.
-By Nathan Becker, Dow Jones Newswires; nathan.becker@dowjones.com;
South Africa pushes for IMF, World Bank reforms
Andrew Binet/www.ctv.ca/250610
Africa’s lone voice at the Group of 20 summit is pushing for reforms to two key bodies as his continent seeks “a just international financial and economic order.”
South African President Jacob Zuma will urge world leaders to give emerging economies more heft at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Mr. Zuma, speaking Thursday in Toronto, emphasized that changes in both the voting structure and leadership of these institutions will be crucial in ensuring a more stable and equitable financial infrastructure.
“The developing world has an equal right to run these institutions,” Mr. Zuma said at a forum hosted by the Corporate Council on Africa, in partnership with the Canadian Council on Africa.
Africa’s recent economic success is “proving Afro-pessimists wrong,” Mr. Zuma said. Sub-Saharan Africa’s growth rate is surpassed by only China and India. More than 40 African countries had a GDP growth of more than 4.5 per cent in 2009, while the United States and European countries struggled to break even.
The playing field has changed, and Africa “can not now be viewed only as a destination for development aid,” Mr. Zuma said. “We should not create the impression that we have come cap-in-hand to ask for favours.”
Reform of global financial systems will be a priority issue for many G20 members; China, India, and Brazil will join South Africa in arguing that their economic strength needs to be better reflected in the architecture of major institutions.
Leadership of the World Bank and the IMF has been dominated by Europeans and Americans. Many analysts see this strong Western influence and an imbalanced voting structure as having locked the institutions into patterns of aid and development which are now defunct.
The BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) declared in April that a more-diversified international financial system would make the global economy less prone to crises and more resilient. “The IMF and the World Bank urgently need to address their legitimacy deficits,” they said in a joint report.
The voting structure in both institutions is weighted based on each country’s financial contribution. The United States has 17 per cent of the vote in the IMF, while Japan is next with 6.4 per cent. China has 3.65 per cent of the voting power, less than France. India has only 1.88 per cent of total IMF votes. Major decisions in the IMF require an 85-per-cent majority, which effectively gives the U.S. the sole veto.
The World Bank has a similarly weighted voting structure, but this year agreed to increase the portion of votes allotted to China, India, Brazil, South Korea and Mexico.
The president of the World Bank has always been a U.S. citizen. Robert Zoellick, the current president, was nominated by George W. Bush in 2007. The current Director General of the IMF is Dominique Strauss-Kahn of France, a former finance minister.
SA ‘Blondie’ laughs last
Marrying royalty will change Wittstock’s ditzy image forever, writes David Isaacson
Jun 25, 2010/By David Isaacson /www.timeslive.co.za
The Big Read: Had Charlene Wittstock been a few micro-seconds faster in the pool, her reputation as a swimmer might have overshadowed the “dumb blonde” label bestowed on her by some team-mates and sports writers.
Wittstock, who got engaged to Prince Albert of Monaco this week, enjoyed her ditzy image, which became entrenched with a classic howler at the 1998 Commonwealth Games, in Kuala Lumpur.
Chatting to Pieter Rossouw, the star Springbok winger who was there as part of the rugby sevens squad, she proceeded to ask him if he was “that pole-vaulter”, referring to Okkert Brits.
Wittstock wasn’t considered a contender in Malaysia, with Ryk Neethling and Brendon Dedekind being hailed as South Africa’s only swimming hopes in Malaysia. The two men bagged a medal each, and Wittstock came agonisingly close to claiming another.
She was safely in third place as she cruised into the final metres of the 50m freestyle final but then made the mistake of gliding the final foot into the wall. That gave New Zealand’s Toni Maree Jeffs sufficient time to steal bronze by a tenth of a second.
If that hurt, Wittstock never showed it. In public, she was always bubbly, smiling and down to earth.
She told me in an interview once that it was important to treat everyone with respect. She had already met Albert by that time – though she hadn’t started going out with him – but she made it clear that she wouldn’t tolerate even him talking down to people.
Wittstock practised what she preached. At a gala in 1999, she overheard a disabled swimmer, with no arms, complaining bitterly to himself. She asked what was wrong and he explained that he had just missed the qualifying time for the All Africa Games, to be held in Johannesburg the following week.
“He had the right to complain about many things, but for him his world came crashing down because he didn’t make the time,” she said. “It makes you realise that, too often, we complain about things that don’t really matter.”
In the same interview, she admitted to relishing her dumb blonde role: “Anyway, I think you have to be really clever to be a dumb blonde,” pronounced Wittstock, who promptly burst into tears the next day when she saw my article in print.
It was the headline which had upset her, dubbing her “Dumb Blonde” Wittstock, combined with the team-mates calling her “Blondie” as she strolled into the athletes’ village dining hall for breakfast.
But she produced one of the finest swims of her career a few days later, upstaging Egypt’s US-based star Rania Elwani in the 100m freestyle final.
“I couldn’t believe I’d done it,” she raved straight afterwards. “I was looking at my coach and I don’t think he could believe it either.”
At the 2000 Sydney Olympics, she made no impact in her individual race but she was a member of South Africa’s 4x100m medley relay team, which finished fifth. She also earned the respect of deaf medallist Terence Parkin, who said she was one of two team-mates to have become the most proficient in sign language.
I interviewed Wittstock again in early 2001 at her Durban digs, called “The White House”. When I commented on the name, she replied without missing a beat: “And I’m the First Lady.”
For all her easy-going exterior, Wittstock was a determined, fierce competitor. It was 18 months before the 2002 Commonwealth Games, in Manchester, UK, but she had already drawn up a training programme.
Wittstock had a blonde moment that day. Asked about a copy of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings lying around, she replied: “I wanted to read it before seeing the movie, but I didn’t realise it was a trilogy and this was only the first book.”
At the 2002 Games, Wittstock finished fourth again, this time by two-tenths of a second in the 100m backstroke. However, she earned her long-awaited Commonwealth medal – a silver – in the medley relay.
Injury and love ended Wittstock’s career, though she briefly threatened to make a comeback in late 2006.
Wearing a Russian water polo shirt she had nicked from Albert’s wardrobe, she spoke of trying to make it to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
She did make it there, but as a celebrity. That was the last time I saw her, as a spectator at Natalie du Toit’s race, seated next to England’s Princess Anne in the VIP section. Even so, Wittstock popped over to the adjacent media area to say hello.
There are still some journalists, from that trip in 1998, who think of her as a dumb blonde. At a golf tournament not too long ago, one reporter gleefully recounted to younger colleagues how she had mistaken Rossouw for Okkert.
An hour or so later I spotted the same journalist heartily congratulating a golfer on a good round. The man politely replied: “I’m not [he]. You’ve got the wrong guy.”
The dumb blonde, Princess-to-be Charlene, is having the last laugh.
AFRICA / AU :
Mills leaves for South Africa
Source: GNA www.ghanaweb.com/ 25 June 2010
Accra, June 24, GNA – President John Evans Atta Mills leaves Accra for South Africa on Thursday night to hold talks with the South African Government.
A statement issued and signed by Mr Koku Anyidoho, Head of Communications at the Office of the President has said.
It said the trip followed from the visit of Angolan President Eduardo Dos Santos, and matters that had arisen out of the visit leading up to the AU Summit scheduled for Kampala, Uganda, from July 24-27.
The statement said with the presence of President Mills in South Africa at the time that the Black Stars had qualified for the 1/16th stage of the on-going World Cup tournament, he would be in the stands to support the National Team on Saturday, June 26 to bring more glory to Ghana. President Mills is expected back in Accra on Monday, June 28, 2010. 24 June 10
UN /ONU :
UN Charts Slow Rise From Global Poverty
www.aolnews.com/June 25
UNITED NATIONS (June 23) –“Despite the financial crisis, the food crisis, the fuel crisis, the world is still making progress on reducing poverty, albeit more slowly,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today in summarizing a key report on the organization’s Millennium Development Goals.
Five years from the 2015 target date for halving the number of those living in abject poverty, the U.N. says the percentage of the world population living on less than $1.25 a day has fallen from 46 percent in 1990 to 27 percent in 2005 — the latest date for which overall figures are available — and should drop to 15 percent by 2015.
The most progress is being made in parts of Asia, where by 2015 India is expected to slash the number of its extremely poor by 188 million, and poverty rates in China are on course to fall around 5 percent.
“There is bad news as well,” Ban said. “Even before the food and financial crises, hunger and malnutrition in South Asia were on the rise, taking us in the wrong direction. Stubborn gaps persist between rich and poor, between rural and urban, between males and females.”
Sub-Saharan Africa is also not on the road to meet the poverty goal, with more than half of its inhabitants living on an income of less than $1.25 a day in 2005, down only seven points from 58 percent in 1990.
The global poverty levels have a direct impact on progress toward the other Millennium Development Goals, which include achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, fighting HIV/AIDS and ensuring environmental sustainability.
The report underlined that the global economic crisis, which began in 2008 in the developed world, has led to slightly higher projected poverty rates for 2015 than what they would have been had the world economy grown at its pre-crisis pace.
New figures from the World Bank suggest that the crisis will leave an additional 64 million people in extreme poverty by the end of 2010, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern and South-Eastern Asia.
“It is clear the improvements in the lives of the poor have been unacceptably slow, and some hard-won gains are being eroded by the climate, food and economic crises,” Ban said, urging the international community to “keep the promise” to meet the goals.
The report found that hunger may have spiked in 2009 as a consequence of the global food and financial crises. In 2005-08, the last assessed period, 830 million people were still undernourished, an increase from 817 million in 1990-92. Currently, one in four children in the developing world is underweight.
The report found that half the population of developing regions remains without sanitation, suggesting that the world will miss the target of halving the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation.
In 2008, an estimated 2.6 billion people around the world lacked access to sanitary flush toilets or latrines, and this number is projected to grow to 2.7 billion by 2015. The two regions facing the greatest challenges are sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia, where 69 percent and 64 percent of the population, respectively, lack access to these so-called “improved sanitation facilities.”
Open defecation, a deadly threat to human health, remains common in sub-Saharan Africa but is an even bigger problem in Southern Asia, where 44 percent of the population has no access to toilets of any kind.
On the education front, enrollment in primary education has reached 89 percent in the developing world. While the pace is not fast enough to meet the goal of universal primary education, the U.N. highlighted major strides on this front.
The abolition of primary school fees in Burundi, for instance, resulted in a threefold increase in primary-school enrollment since 1999, reaching 99 percent in 2008.
While sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest enrollment, it has achieved the fastest progress among all the developing regions in making primary education available to school-age children, improving from 58 percent enrollment in 1999 to 76 percent in 2008.
Inequality between boys and girls, as well as between urban and rural children, thwarts achieving universal education, according to the report, but the biggest block to education is poverty.
“A girl in one of the poorest households is 3.5 times more likely to be out of school than a girl from the richest household,” Ban said. “And if girls are out of school, economies won’t make the grade.”
The report found that in almost every developing region, men outnumber women in paid employment, and women are overrepresented in informal employment, which lacks benefits and security. Globally, top-level jobs still go to men to an overwhelming degree, with only one in four senior officials or managers being women.
Documents Show U.S. Blindsided By Korean War
by Tom Gjelten/www.npr.org/June 25, 2010
Sixty years after it started, the Korean War is not yet officially over, and the story of its origins is still unfolding. A batch of newly declassified CIA documents indicates the United States and the South Korean government were caught unprepared for the conflict, in part because of intelligence failures and mistaken assumptions.
The war began on June 25, 1950, when the North Korean army stormed across the 38th parallel that served as the dividing line on the Korean peninsula between the Soviet-dominated northern half and the U.S.-controlled southern sector. Kim Il Sung, the North Korean leader, intended to bring all of Korea under communist rule.
He nearly succeeded. South Korean forces offered little resistance to the invading North Korean army. U.S. forces had been withdrawn from South Korea the previous year, with only about 400 advisers left behind to assist the South Korean government in the development of its military capabilities.
U.N. Role
President Truman, upon learning of the North Korean action, decided it was a test case for the United Nations, which had been established just five years earlier. He asked Secretary of State Dean Acheson to ask for an immediate meeting of the U.N. Security Council, and within 24 hours the U.S. ambassador, Warren Austin, was asking the U.N. to come to South Korea’s defense.
“The Republic of Korea has appealed to the United Nations for protection,” Austin told the council. “I am proud to report that the United States is prepared to furnish assistance.”
But help did not come fast enough for the South. The North Koreans were far superior in numbers and weaponry, and the declassified CIA reports tell a story of panic and disarray on the southern side of the 38th parallel.
“Latest official reports indicate that the capture of Seoul is imminent,” said a CIA memorandum dated June 26. “South Korean units, their morale deteriorating, are incapable of resisting the determined artillery-tank-air assaults with the equipment now available.”
Within days, the North had seized control of the entire peninsula, except for a small area at the southern tip.
The United States, with U.N. support, rushed to South Korea’s defense, with the news relayed to the U.S. population through movie newsreels.
“Against the Red invaders from North Korea, U.S. planes and U.S. ships are ordered into action,” one announcer dramatically intoned. “Based in Japan, U.S. Air Force jets and Mustangs are within striking distance of Korea.”
U.S. ground forces soon joined the fight, but the going was tough. In a radio and television address on July 19, Truman said the attack had taken the United States by surprise, because the “communists” had kept their activities in North Korea a secret.
“It was from that area, where the communist authorities have been unwilling to let the outside world see what was going on, that the attack was launched against the Republic of Korea on June 25th,” Truman said. “That attack came without provocation and without warning.”
CIA Role
Truman meant that the Soviet and North Korean leaders had provided no warning of their war plans, but neither had the CIA, as the agency’s own reporting made clear.
Some U.S. officials saw another intelligence blunder, reminiscent of the failure to foresee the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
A newly declassified CIA memorandum from Jan. 13, 1950, shows that the CIA had not fully understood what was happening in North Korea in the months preceding the invasion. In that memo, the CIA noted the gradual southward movement of the North Korean army but said it was probably “a defensive measure to offset the growing strength of the offensively minded South Korean Army.” That report concluded that an invasion of the South by the North was “unlikely.”
Whether the CIA should be faulted for its failure to predict the invasion, however, is debatable. At the time, the agency was just three years old and lacked resources.
“They didn’t have the human capabilities or the technical collection capabilities to provide that kind of warning,” says CIA historian Clayton Laurie. “That was something expected [by] the Truman administration, to prevent another Pearl Harbor, but nobody in the government had that kind of capability at the time.”
Whatever the explanation, the consequence was costly in U.S. and Korean lives.
Misreading China
The initial intelligence failure was followed four months later by another one. This time the question was whether China would join the fighting on the North Korean side.
Again, the recently declassified documents are revealing.
In a secret report prepared for the White House on Oct. 12, 1950, the CIA said it saw “no convincing indication” that a Chinese intervention in the war was forthcoming. Even after Chinese forces began moving into North Korea a few weeks later, CIA analysts failed to understand what that movement meant.
CIA historian Laurie says the agency was providing strategic guidance but not “tactical” warning, which is far more specific.
“They know there are Chinese troops in Korea, engaging U.N. forces,” Laurie says, “but they do not provide the warning that this is China involved in the war and that this is the precursor of a bigger invasion.”
One explanation for the CIA’s failure to predict either the North Korean invasion or the Chinese intervention in the war is that the agency, along with the rest of the U.S. government, was paying attention primarily to Moscow’s actions.
A Kremlin-Centric View
Truman himself, describing the Korean War in a radio and television address to the nation in April 1951, portrayed it as being instigated from Moscow.
“The communists in the Kremlin are engaged in a monstrous conspiracy to stamp out freedom all over the world,” Truman said. “If they were to succeed, the United States would be numbered among their principal victims.”
That Kremlin-centered view characterized all CIA reporting from the time. One report, titled Current Capabilities of the North Korean Regime and issued just six days before the North’s invasion of the South described the North Korean regime as “a firmly controlled Soviet satellite that exercises no independent initiative and depends entirely on the support of the USSR for existence.”
A candid 2001 summary of prewar Korea reporting, written by a CIA case officer and published by the agency’s own Center for the Study of Intelligence, concluded that the agency’s assumption that the Soviets controlled North Korean decision-making “accounts for the failure to predict the North Korean attack.”
The failure to predict China’s October 1950 intervention in the war may also have been due to the agency’s assumption that Moscow was calling all the shots in Asia.
The Oct. 12 report, titled Threat of Full Chinese Communist Intervention in Korea, concluded with this statement: “While full-scale Chinese Communist intervention in Korea must be regarded as a continuing possibility, a consideration of all known factors leads to the conclusion that barring a Soviet decision for global war, such action is not probable in 1950.” [emphasis added]
“The belief here is that this is monolithic communism,” says CIA historian Laurie, “that things are being orchestrated worldwide by the Soviet Union, and that nothing is going to happen in Asia or Africa without the Soviet Union saying, ‘This is permissible,’ or ‘Go ahead and do this.'”
The situation in Korea appears rarely to have been considered on its own merits.
Still Paying The Price
A key moment had come in January 1950, when Secretary of State Acheson, in a speech, defined what “the defensive perimeter” that the United States was committed to protecting. Korea was on the other side of the line.
That thinking may have explained the controversial U.S. decision, a few months earlier, to withdraw its forces from South Korea.
Korea historian William Stueck of the University of Georgia says the issue should have been given more thought and reflected the idea at the CIA and throughout Washington that it was Moscow that mattered, not Seoul or Pyongyang.
“Given the fact that Korea was not high on our list of priorities, it wasn’t given the kind of attention at the very top level that could have resolved the bureaucratic conflicts that existed,” Stueck says.
Arguably, the United States is still paying the price for the intelligence mistakes of 60 years ago. There was a cease-fire in 1950, but no peace agreement. The United States has long since made peace with both Russia and China, but the Korean conflict continues to this day, with analysts still struggling to understand the Koreans on their own terms.
USA :
CANADA :
G8 nations to take stock of development needs
Fri Jun 25, 2010/Reuters
(Reuters) – Rich countries came up short on fund-raising promises for poor nations and will meet on Friday to figure out how to direct aid resources at a time when their own budgets are squeezed.
Natural Disasters
The Group of Eight nations meet in Huntsville, Ontario, north of Toronto, on Friday, having fallen an estimated $18 billion short of a 2005 pledge to raise their combined aid to the poorest countries by at least $50 billion.
The G8’s meeting in the sleepy lakeside community provides a respite from Toronto’s hectic urban pace and the difficult tasks that await the larger Group of 20 summit on Saturday and Sunday.
The United States, Britain, Canada, Japan, Italy, France, Germany and Russia make up the club of G8 members.
Although the G8 cannot avoid talking about its own economic troubles — namely the strength of the global recovery and the state of public finances — the smaller group wanted to carve out some time to discuss problems facing poor countries, G8 officials said.
Canada, host of the G8 and G20 meetings, wants to ensure that donor countries follow through on their commitments.
The hosts also want mother-and-child health and the rebuilding of Haiti from a devastating earthquake to be the focus, officials said. Haiti was invited to attend the G8 meeting along with Jamaica and some African countries.
The United States is pushing for more agricultural investment in Africa and has created a fund to boost food production in poorer countries.
The G8 will discuss progress toward meeting the eight U.N. Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, on poverty by 2015. The group will also review the $18 billion shortfall in reaching the $50 billion total pledged in 2005 at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.
The Gleneagles meeting also promised to provide an extra $25 billion a year for Africa as part of the overall $50 billion increase in financial assistance by 2010. Citing figures from the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Bank said the G8 had provided just $11 billion of the $25 billion for Africa.
COUNTRIES URGED TO LIVE UP TO AID PLEDGE
In a report prepared before the summits, the World Bank urged rich countries to make good on their aid pledges, warning that poor countries were vulnerable to any setbacks in the global economic recovery.
It urged rich countries to secure the economic recovery, arguing that the resources of poor states were already overstrained by the last two years of the economic crisis, which has hit exports and worker remittances.
Development groups called on industrialized countries to renew their aid commitments from Gleneagles, arguing that rich countries should not be let off the hook when many African governments had kept their pledges to follow policies that promoted growth and tackled corruption.
“We’re asking them to make good on those pledges over the next two years,” said Mark Fried, policy coordinator for international development group Oxfam. “They need to set clear targets to come up with the money they missed,” he added.
Fried said African countries had lost an estimated $63 billion since the global financial crisis began in 2008 through lower export earnings from a collapse in demand and declines in foreign aid.
(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Better G20 representation for Africa sought
Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan argues for greater representation for a continent of 1 billion people
Campbell Clark/Toronto — From Friday’s Globe and Mail /Jun. 25, 2010
.The new G20 brought more of the world into the club that steers global economic policies, but the emerging group must better represent Africa, says the President of Nigeria, the continent’s biggest nation.
In Canada for an outreach session between G8 leaders and seven African heads of state, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan argues the G20 will need greater representation from the continent if it wants to chart a better common course for the global economy. Africa, a continent of one billion people, has only one G20 representative: South Africa.
Mr. Goodluck argues it’s not just an issue of fairness but common interest – just as the old G8 club needed to expand to include rising economic powers, the new G20 must find a place to encourage the next wave of markets they will need – in Africa.
“Africa should be well represented in the G20. Because we are talking about the global village. What affects one nation invariably affects the others. If African nations have challenges, the West also pays for it,” Mr. Jonathan said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.
It is a dilemma: the old G8 lost its role as an economic steering committee because it didn’t represent major emerging economies which had to be at the table to address global economic threats. The G20 is already unwieldy, and in practice numbers more than 20. But even with a summit that now includes China, India, Mexico, and Brazil, there’s still a major continent, arguing it represents economic potential, if not current financial power, that’s barely represented.
And the likely expansion of the G20’s mandate – the next host, South Korea, intends to put development issues squarely on the group’s agenda – will only heighten arguments that the world’s poorest continent is missing.
Africa should have a place in the G20 to press policies that will help it produce, rather than have it beg for assistance, Mr. Jonathan said. And other nations should see Africa’s potential for their economies.
“For the developed side to develop, they need the developing countries. If you manufacture and there’s nobody to buy, you cannot sell. Nigeria has over 150 million people,” he said. “… So even for economic reasons, you need to encourage them.”
Mr. Jonathan makes no secret that he is arguing for his own nation’s place. Nigeria is the most populous nation in Africa and the dominant nation in West Africa. It is the obvious candidate.
But its troubles, a history of military dictatorships between 1966 and 1999, corruption and organized crime, have underlined why Nigeria, and Africa, have not found a bigger place. When the architects of the G20 designed it for finance ministers’ meetings in the 1990s, Nigeria, governed by military dictators, was considered, but was thought to be too unstable.
Now, Mr. Jonathan has arrived in Toronto for the summits declaring Nigeria is ready to play a larger role on the world stage.
Wearing his trademark narrow-brimmed hat, the former vice-president who officially became president less than two months ago on the death of former president Umaru Yar’Adua, argues that the transfer of power, passing through a constitutional crisis to a man from a different language and religious background, is proof that his country is stable.
“That should tell the world that politically Nigeria is stable,” he said. “From 1999, when the last military head of state handed over to the civilian government, Nigeria has been stable.”
His country is still plagued by corruption and criminal gangs, however, and though Mr. Jonathan took power promising a new politics of anti-corruption and electoral reform, he faces skepticism inside his country and out.
“Nigeria’s struggling. Every country has issues,” he said. “If the purpose of these multilateral organizations is to improve the quality of life of society generally, then of course Nigeria is a good candidate for it.”
Mr. Jonathan’s official role is only at the G8, as one of seven African leaders invited for an “outreach” session on the continent.
The child and maternal-health initiative that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has championed is important to a critical problem in Nigeria, he said.
“These are issues to do with primary health care, not sophisticated health care. And if we can get health facilities across the various countries, it will significantly help.”
But he added he will also bring a message to G8 leaders about delivering on pledges, such as the one made in Scotland in 2005 to double aid to Africa: “They promised $25-billion, but so far just about $11-billion has been given. And that’s one of the areas they can mention to them – if they can give this. Canada has done very well. They have met their commitment. But others have not.”
He argues that African countries were invited to the G8 in the first place out of recognition that they need to be encouraged, and a substantive place in the G20 will give them a chance to press that case in wider economic talks, such as liberalizing trade rules to reduce barriers that discourage African agricultural exports.
“As long as we are not encouraged to export our produce, then we will continue to be begging,” he said. “And we should not be begging. We should be encouraged to produce.”
Canadian Police arrest car driver near G-20 summit
www.hindustantimes.com/Press Trust Of India/June 25, 2010
Toronto,
A 53-year-old unidentified man has been arrested near the G-20 meeting venue in Toronto after police found that his car contained a chainsaw, crossbow and fuel containers.
The man, hailing from Ontario, was pulled over just a block from where tall steel fences have been erected to protect leaders of the G-20 countries who meet on Saturday and Sunday in Canada’s most populous city.
“The car had a large crate strapped to its roof. We do not believe it is G20-related,” G8 and G20 spokeswoman Catherine Martin said.
It was the second such arrest in two days, after police on Wednesday arrested a man and a woman in a home close to Toronto, and charged them with possession of explosives.
The two-day summit, which officially starts tomorrow, brings together the world’s major economies like the US, Germany, Japan, Russia, the UK, India, Brazil and South Africa to discuss various issues related to global economy.
Zimbabwe Diamonds Fail to Get Conflict-Free Approval
By CELIA W. DUGGER/ www.nytimes.com/June 25, 2010
JOHANNESBURG — An international undertaking to prevent the trade in diamonds that fuel conflict ended in a stalemate Thursday over whether to approve Zimbabwe’s export of millions of carats of newly-mined diamonds, but the nation threatened to sell the stones on its own anyway.
Zimbabwe’s military has been accused of violently seizing control of the Marange fields in the eastern part of the country where the diamonds were mined and organizing smuggling operations there, prompting intense debate over giving it an international stamp of approval.
But as the deliberations dragged on, Zimbabwe warned on Wednesday that it might export its diamonds without the approval of the United Nations-backed Kimberley Process, which seeks to stop the trade in diamonds that finance conflict.
The country’s mines minister, Obert Mpofu, denied the accusations of abuse and said in an interview that Zimbabwe planned to set up diamond polishing plants, which could give it a way around the Kimberley Process, which only monitors the trade in rough, unpolished stones.
As to how the country would export its diamonds without the body’s approval, Mr. Mpofu said, “That is a question for Zimbabwe, not for you.”
Human rights groups say Zimbabwe’s ability to trade its rough diamonds remains suspended because of the impasse, despite all night negotiations in Tel Aviv that broke up at 5:30 a.m. Thursday and continued again for five hours in the afternoon.
But it is not clear that the Kimberley Process — a voluntary effort of countries, diamond industry representatives and advocacy groups — has the power or the political will to stop Zimbabwe if it follows through on its threat to trade them anyway.
After days of negotiation, the more than 70 countries participating in the Kimberley Process were deeply divided over Zimbabwe, a rift that some participants say has the potential to weaken the Kimberley Process itself, which relies on consensus to act.
Most African countries — including South Africa, Botswana, Angola and Tanzania — along with India, China and Russia contended Zimbabwe should be allowed to export its diamonds, as had been recommended by a monitor sent by the Kimberley Process, participants said. The monitor, Abbey Chikane, a South African businessman, concluded the country had met the Kimberley Process standards.
The United States, Canada, Australia and advocacy groups opposed the exports, in part because the diamond fields are still under the control of Zimbabwe’s military. Global Witness and Partnership Africa Canada, both nongovernmental organizations, contended the military continued to commit human rights abuses and run smuggling operations.
The nature of the division — with African countries generally lined up behind Zimbabwe — fueled Zimbabwe’s longstanding contention that the West’s opposition to its diamond sales is an imperialistic effort to topple President Robert Mugabe, who has ruled the country for the past 30 years.
“Every time the African countries and others spoke in favor of letting Zimbabwe export, there was resounding applause,” said one participant, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the deliberations were confidential. “When the United States, Canada, Australia and the NGOs spoke, there was dead silence.”
Zimbabwe’s decision to jail Farai Maguwu, a leading advocate who has sought to document the military’s attacks against informal diamond miners, deeply angered international groups that have worked with him. He has been detained for three weeks on allegations that he published false information prejudicial to the state, punishable by 20 years in prison.
In court papers denying his request for bail, Judge Chinembiri Bhunu asserted that documents the police obtained from Mr. Maguwu were false. The judge said the documents identified 15 victims who had been bitten by dogs, shot or assaulted, named the soldiers and policemen accused of killing or maiming people, and cited seeing the dead bodies of victims at mortuaries.
“The appellant makes a living out of publishing false information detrimental to his country,” the judge wrote. “That kind of behavior, if proved, is treacherous.”
A sub-group of the Kimberley Process will try again next month to reach a compromise on Zimbabwe, said Eli Izhakoff, president of the World Diamond Council. He said it would be a very negative development if Zimbabwe traded its diamonds illegally, possibly undermining consumer confidence.
“If those goods get out into the market underground, smuggled out, there are huge quantities of diamonds, and that can create problems in trading centers,” Mr. Izhakoff said. “We have to alert everybody. You can’t make it foolproof. Diamonds are small and easy to stash.”
Dina Kraft contributed reporting from Tel Aviv.
AUSTRALIA :
EUROPE :
Gadhafi, Zapatero ‘in talks’ on next EU-Africa summit
(AFP)/25062010
TRIPOLI — Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero met to ready an EU-Africa summit scheduled for later this year, Jana news agency said.
The two leaders on Thursday stressed “the importance of preparing the third EU-Africa summit well, so it will contribute to the development of Africa and do away with clandestine immigration” to Europe, the agency said.
They also discussed the situation in Iraq and in the Palestinian territories.
Tripoli did not give details about Zapatero’s programme during his snap visit which comes a week before the end of Spain’s six-month EU presidency.
Spain played a major role in settling a diplomatic row between Libya and Switzerland that ended earlier this month when Tripoli allowed detained Swiss businessman Max Goeldi to return to his home country.
Goeldi and another businessman, Rachid Hamdani, had been blocked from leaving Libyan territory in a tit-for-tat action after the brief arrest in Switzerland of one of Moammar Gadhafi’s sons in July 2008.
In September 2009, they were taken from the Swiss embassy, where they were staying, by Libyan officials to a secret location where they were held until November.
They were later returned to the embassy, and Hamdani was allowed to leave the country in February, while Goeldi was sentenced to jail for visa offences.
The EU-Africa summit is to take place November 29-30.
EXTRA:G8 must speed up development boost, EU’s Barroso says
www.earthtimes.org/By : dpa / 25 Jun 2010
Toronto – The leaders of the Group of Eight top industrial nations must speed up their efforts to boost development aid ahead of a key deadline in 2015, the head of the European Union’s executive said Thursday on the eve of the annual G8 summit.
Ten years ago, world powers vowed to increase their development aid massively by 2015 under the so-called Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). But the latest figures show that they are well off target.
“Today, we have not yet reached all the commitments in terms of MDGs … If we want to be successful, we have to speed up our work,” Jose Manuel Barroso told journalists in Toronto.
Barroso is a regular G8 attendee, as the EU counts as the ninth member of the influential eight-country club.
G8 leaders on Friday are expected to discuss their progress on the MDGs and on a parallel pledge to boost aid by 50 billion dollars by the end of this year. Summit host Canada is expected to push members to increase their pledges.
“I would like to see a strong signal by G8 leaders on how to speed up the pace on achieving the MDGs … The contribution of the EU and its member states … will be substantial,” Barroso said.
Policy coordination to be key challenge at G20 summit
June 25, 2010/english.people.com.cn /Source: Xinhua
At the Group of 20 (G20) summit in Toronto, achievements of an out-of-recession and slow growing world economy will be cheered. But more important to observe is that how governments deal with their differences or even conflicts in major economic or financial policies amid an uneven recovery.
Countries of G20, with their varied pace of recovery from the global financial crisis, will review conditions of the world economy and coordinate their macroeconomic policies at a summit this weekend in Toronto to secure the global recovery.
Issues like anti-protectionism, free trade and investment, and development in Africa etc will be discussed. But divergence among major economies on key issues of exit strategy or financial regulation reform will be the center of the summit.
Balance between exit and recovery
The top priority on the G20 Toronto Summit agenda may be that how to balance financial consolidation and protecting economic recovery in the post-crisis era. But it is the issue which Europe and United States agrees on least.
Troubled by sovereign debt crisis, many countries in the European Union have launched financial austerity plans in a bid to cut public spending and reduce fiscal deficit. EU leaders have made it clear that they believe delaying exit strategy will endanger the financial stability.
In a joint letter to G20 partners, EU President Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the EU will stick to its financial consolidation targets in order to achieve a sustainable financial system. And if necessary, all EU members will take further steps to speed up consolidating their finances.
EU’s move has triggered worries from the United States. The world’s number one economy is concerned that EU members’ conservative financial policies will hurt the world economic recovery. “Countries must put in place credible plans to stabilize debt-to-GDP levels and set a pace of consolidation that reinforces the momentum of growth,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council, wrote in an opinion piece posted on Wednesday’s The Wall Street Journal.
“We must demonstrate a commitment to reducing long-term deficits, but not at the price of short-term growth,” they wrote. “Without growth now, deficits will rise further and undermine future growth.”
Controversy on banking tax
The financial crisis demonstrated the urgency of global financial regulation reform. While it is widely agreed that there should be more transparency and higher standards in regulation the financial industry, countries have different mind-set on how to prevent future crisis.
EU leaders said they will push G20 partners to reach agreement on banking tax and financial transaction tax during the Toronto summit.
During the EU summit last week, leaders of EU members agreed to impose a banking tax, so that financial institutions will pay for their mistakes in the future instead of tax payers. EU said it will try to push for a global protocol under the G20 framework so that the new policy will not put European financial industry in a disadvantaged position.
But the proposal of banking levy has been rejected by Canada, the host of Toronto summit, and emerging countries like India and South Korea. Canada is expected to advance its position of no tax on banks during the summit.
Reform of international financial system
The economic crisis has had a significant impact on the developing countries and the most vulnerable. And governance reforms to enhance the credibility, legitimacy and effectiveness of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been on the G20 agenda.
It is agreed on the G20 Pittsburg summit last September that IMF will shift at least five percent of voting quota from advanced countries to developing and emerging countries. As the World Bank has completed a similar switch in April, which increased developing countries’ voting power by more than three percent, details of IMF quota reform are expected to be discussed during the Toronto summit, with a view to meeting the November 2010 deadline for agreement.
CHINA :
Export hardly an elixir for China’s rise
June 25, 2010/english.peopledaily.com.cn
Facing upbraiding from major economic powers for the tightly-regulated currency policy for so long a time, China needs to come out of the shackles and think creatively about free convertibility of the yuan. It’s futile and dispiriting to keep wincing before external pressure.
The theory goes that the gross domestic product is fired by three cylinders – home consumption, investment and exports. As Chinese consumption has kept going up at double digits and investment has never wrinkled during the first decade of the century, exports, which eked out this country’s first success story of Mr. Deng Xiaoping’s China-rise plan, could take the bench for the moment.
Or at least, the backward export mix of low-value, labor-intensive, and mostly processed products must be upgraded.
As China’s economic juggernaut is poised to become the world’s second largest this year, and the world’s longest high-speed train will flash between Beijing and Shanghai late in 2011 (with more lines under pavement to link nearly all the provincial capitals), it is time to render the global position of the yuan. Why cannot the middle kingdom work out a five-year or 10-year plan to make the currency a global reserve tender?
Many still have legions of concern about the implications of a freely convertible currency on the country, especially, queries about the country’s export prospect, competitiveness of its work force, and, sustainability of the domestic market growth.
But, we could make ourselves fairly assured with our resolution to push forward ongoing reforms: spearheading knowledge-based high-tech and new product export (such as wind turbines and solar cells), building a world-advanced bullet train system and other infrastructure, and continuing vigorous social welfare expansion to inspire home consumption.
And, a freely convertible currency will engender China’s incorporation with the global system, and a reserve currency of the yuan will enable the country’s entrepreneurs to make better use of world’s resources and create more jobs and wealth in less-developed countries, such as in Africa.
To China’s central bank, a hard currency of the yuan might help it control inflation, though invisible risks of money management difficulty could prop up, say, possible gyrations of China’s capital markets ransacked by speculative hedge funds. But, China is not supposed to balk at the challenge.
There are signs that the country’s policymakers are steadfast to bring the domestic currency to the world stage. The central bank has decreed to extend the yuan’s usage beyond the borders. Starting this month, Chinese businesses are allowed to settle trade and investment with their foreign partners with the yuan, provided both parties do not oppose.
And, the central bank restarted the yuan’s exchange rate flexibility reform, after a de-facto 20-month pegging to the U.S. dollar amid a hope to mitigate the impact of the global financial crisis. From now on, the yuan value will follow volatilities of a basket of currencies on the market, and, is expected to go up or down on a daily basis against the dollar, the euro, the pound, the yen and the won.
The above two measures will make the currency more market-driven, and at the same time, enable the regulators to test the waters for any eventual free convertibility of the yuan in later years.
For the outside world and China’s trading partners, they could take positions to facilitate a huge developing economy’s integration to the global market. The course could take some time before China feels confident enough with the experiment and proceeds to free convertibility. Surely, China does not want to bundle it, and, I think, its major partners ought not to exert pressure on it to throttle the course, for a besieged economy in China never helps a world hit hard by a giant crisis.
Freight rates draw S.Africa, Colombia coal to Asia
Fri Jun 25, 2010/By Fayen Wong/Reuters
PERTH (Reuters) – The recent plunge in freight rates has re-opened the price arbitrage for Colombian and South African coal to move into Asia, sparking renewed interest from Chinese buyers, trade sources said on Friday.
The Baltic Exchange’s main sea freight index, which tracks rates to ship dry commodities, fell to its lowest in over eight months again on Thursday after posting its 21st consecutive sessions of decline.
Chartering rates for a capesize vessel from Colombia to southern China have fallen by some $10 earlier this year to between $25-$28 per tonne, while free-on-board prices for Colombian coal are in the mid-to-high $70 levels, which means traders are able to move Colombian material into China at a landed rate of about $105 a tonne, traders said.
For South African coal, FOB prices at Richards Bay port are hovering at $90 a tonne. Combined with freight rates of $16-$17, their landed price into China stands at about $107 a tonne.
“A price arbitrage has certainly opened thanks to the free-fall in freight rates and we’re seeing fresh interests from Chinese buyers again,” said a Singapore-based trader.
“But it’s a very fickle market and the window can disappear very quickly, so sellers will have to be very quick and prompt to be able to do something.”
One trader said he sold a July-loading cape-sized shipment of Colombian coal into China two weeks ago at a landed rate of less than $110 a tonne, while another trader said he had just sold a July-loading South African cargo into China at about $107 a tonne this week.
The traders asked not to be identified due to commercial sensitivities.
Including the coal import tax of 17 percent, Chinese buyers are now able to buy Colombian or South African material as much as $3-$4 per tonne cheaper than domestic supplies.
However, industry sources said China’s demand for coal imports have weakened considerably over the past few months, and that it was unlikely that there would a mad rush of orders for Colombian or South African coal that was seen earlier this year.
China’s gift to the world: The vuvuzela
They may have an African heritage, but its the Chinese who are cashing in on the ‘vuvu-voom’ of the World Cup
By Jessica Beaton / www.cnngo.com/25 June, 2010
Love them or hate them, vuvuzelas have become an indelible part of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa experience. The brightly colored plastic horn is the hallmark of any football celebration around the world this month.
Although there’s debate surrounding the origins of the vuvuzela — some say it is related to the kudu horn that was blown to summon African villagers to meetings — there’s little argument over where they’re being produced: China.
Rolling off the productions lines from some of the biggest northern Chinese factories, vuvuzelas are one of China’s most direct connections to the World Cup games. Wu Yijun of Ninghai Jiying Plastics Products Factory tells the BBC that “90 percent of the vuvuzelas blown in South Africa for the World Cup are made in China.”
Wu explains that although his company began producing the vuvuzela in 2001, they failed to market it well until this year and the 2010 World Cup came along.
In the first four months of the year, Wu says, his factories were producing over 250,000 vuvuzelas a day to prepare for the games, and are looking forward to the 2010 Asia Games and the 2012 London Olympics as their next markets.
For those who are already sick of the booming sound that reminds people of a noice somewhere between an “elephant passing wind and a swarm of angry wasps,” it looks like vuvuzelas are not going anywhere. They can take a bit of comfort in the fact that these horns are annoying many Chinese people in the country making them, as much as fans abroad.
A recent Youku World Cup poll asked people in China “What made the biggest impression on viewers of this year’s World Cup?”
Vuvuzelas topped the list. They don’t look like they will be remembered with much love though, as 22.5 percent of people responded that the noise was “ear splitting.” Other ways people described the sound: “A giant hive full of very angry bees” and “A goat on the way to slaughter.”
At least we’re all suffering together.
INDIA :
BRASIL:
EN BREF, CE 25 juin 2010… AGNEWS /OMAR, BXL,25/06/2010
