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News 24 – About 600 000 people in the Central African Republic could run out of food because the UN World Food Programme has not got enough money to feed them, the UN agency announced. “WFP has a $15m shortfall over the next eight months to provide food assistance to some 600 000 food insecure and malnourished people mainly in the conflict-affected north,” the WFP said in a statement sent to AFP in Libreville. Read Article
The Australian – MOZAMBIQUE’S capital endured a second day of deadly rioting over rising food prices yesterday as the UN warned that the effects of a global spike in the cost of staples would hit the world’s poor the hardest. Shops were looted, cars set ablaze, roads barricaded and one of the Maputo protesters killed, bringing the death toll to seven after two days of violence prompted by soaring bread prices. One of the dead was a six-year-old girl on her way home from school. Read Article
Reuters – At least 25 suspected drug gang members were killed in an army raid in rural northeastern Mexico on Thursday, the army said in a press release. Soldiers were sent to the location after an airborne patrol sighted armed men outside a building. Fighting began when the men opened fire on the troops. Read Article
Daily Telegraph – Winston Churchill ordered the assassination of Benito Mussolini as part of a plot to destroy potentially compromising secret letters he had sent the Italian dictator, a leading French historian has suggested. Pierre Milza, an expert on fascist Italy, theorizes that the wartime prime minister may have wanted Mussolini dead to prevent the letters, in which Churchill expressed his admiration for his Italian counterpart before the outbreak of the Second World War, coming to light. “There is no doubt, judging by his public declarations back in the 1920s and early 1930s, that Churchill was a fan of Mussolini. Roosevelt too,” Mr Milza said. Read Article
Daily Telegraph – Julian Assange, the founder of the Wikileaks whistleblower website, admitted that he had sexual relations with one of two Swedish women who accused him of sex crimes. Mr Assange said that he had consensual sex more than once with a woman who has accused him of molestation. Sweden’s top prosecutor reopened investigations into allegations of molestation from the woman and of rape by another Swedish female on Tuesday. Read Article
Daily Telegraph – Dominic Grieve, the Attorney General, has asked to examine files on the death of David Kelly, the former weapons inspector, it was reported. Mr Grieve, the senior law officer to the Government, has requested reports relating to the post-mortem examination carried out on Dr Kelly following his death in 2003, it was claimed. His alleged request followed comments earlier this month in which Mr Grieve indicated he would need to see new evidence before an application for a full inquest into Dr Kelly’s death could be considered. Read Article
NY Times — The front pages of South Africa’s newspapers are regularly splashed with articles about politicians living it up at public expense in a country blighted by poverty. Reporters recently pounced on news that a black empowerment deal meant to benefit “previously disadvantaged” South Africans under government guidelines was enriching a company led by President Jacob Zuma’s 28-year-old son, Duduzane, among others, giving them a lucrative stake in the South African arm of a steel giant, ArcelorMittal. Read article
The Guardian – The Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard, today edged closer to retaining power when an independent MP said he would back her centre-left Labor party to form the country’s first minority government in almost seven decades. A bloc of three independents will now decide whether Labor governs for a second three-year term or a conservative Liberal party-led coalition forms the next administration after the 21 August elections failed to deliver a majority for any party. The conservative coalition needs the backing of all three independents to reach a 76-seat majority in the 150-seat House of Representatives, while Labor needs only two. Read Article
The Guardian – Following a firestorm of criticism from civil society groups in Italy and abroad, and a slap on the wrist by the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, the Italian government’s draft “gag law” has been amended. The original bill restricted the use of wiretaps as an investigative tool and imposed an outright ban on publishing transcripts of telephone conversations and other evidence obtained covertly without permission from a judge. The new bill removes the publishers’ liability, but leaves journalists liable if they publish transcripts leaked to them by investigators – something that happens frequently in Italy. Read article
Daily Telegraph – Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his rival, powerbroker Ichiro Ozawa, have launched a leadership battle that threatens to divide the ruling party only a year after it took power. Read Article
EUOBSERVER – People’s confidence in the the European Union has dropped to record lows in most countries amid a placid response to the rising unemployment and the troubles of the eurozone, a Eurobarometer published on Thursday (26 August) shows. Fewer than half of Europe’s citizens (49 percent) think that their country’s membership of the EU is a “good thing” – a seven-year low – while trust in the bloc’s institutions has dropped to 42 percent, six points down compared to autumn 2009. Read Article
Reuters – The CIA is making payments to a significant number of officials in Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s administration, The Washington Post reported. Citing current and former U.S. officials, the paper said the payments were long-standing in many cases and intended to help the agency maintain a source of information within the Afghan government. Some Karzai aides were CIA informants and others received payments to ensure their accessibility, the Post said, citing a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Read Article
Press TV – Less than a week ahead of the US-backed talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Tel Aviv insists on resuming its West Bank settlement expansions. In November, Israel announced a 10-month freeze on West Bank settlements which excluded the projects in East al-Quds (Jerusalem) and allowed construction of schools, synagogues and ‘community centers.’ “There is a government decision to freeze construction only for 10 months, and when that period ends, the decision is no longer valid,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a meeting of Likud ministers on Sunday, the Jerusalem Post reported. Read Article
The Independent – Tony Blair secretly courted Robert Mugabe in an effort to win lucrative trade deals for Britain, it has emerged in correspondence released to The Independent under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents show that the relationship between New Labour and the Zimbabwean President blossomed soon after Tony Blair took office in Downing Street. Just weeks after the Government unveiled its ethical foreign policy in May 1997, the British PM wrote a personal letter to Mr Mugabe congratulating him on his role in unifying Africa and helping to improve relations between the continent and Britain. Read Article
Daily Telegraph – The US has broadened financial sanctions against North Korea, freezing the American assets of four North Korean citizens and eight firms in part to punish it for the sinking of a South Korean warship. Read Article
Top News – Kapiti Coast District Council had to reduce fluoride dosing in its town supply after it faced public pressure. Previously in the month of June, extremely divided council made the decision that it would retain the usage of fluoride in the water supply for Waikanae, Paraparaumu and Raumati, however, on Thursday, it voted to lessen the usage of the chemical. Read article
BBC – The federal police force in Mexico says it has sacked almost 10% of its officers this year for corruption, incompetence or links to criminals. Commissioner Facundo Rosas said 3,200 officers had been fired. More than 1,000 others were facing disciplinary action and could also lose their jobs, he added. In a separate development, a shoot-out between troops in Veracruz state and a suspected drugs gang has left six gunmen and one soldier dead. Read Article
The Independent – The secret services must become more transparent if they are to halt the spread of damaging conspiracy theories and increase trust in the Government, claims a leading think tank. A Demos report published today, The Power of Unreason, argues that secrecy surrounding the investigation of events such as the 9/11 New York attacks and the 7/7 bombings in London merely adds weight to unsubstantiated claims that they were “inside jobs”. Read Article
Reuters – As U.S. combat operations come to a close on Tuesday 7-1/2 years after the invasion, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis like Abboud, who fled mixed-sect neighborhoods at a time when bodies were piling up in the streets overnight, are living in squalor. Many Iraqis fear the reduction in U.S. troops and their full withdrawal next year will re-ignite sectarian bloodshed. The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, says the Iraq war produced the worst humanitarian crisis in the Middle East since 1948, when half the Arab population of Palestine fled their homes after the creation of Israel. According to the UNHCR, 1.5 million people are displaced inside Iraq, of which 500,000 are squatting in camps or public buildings. In Baghdad, 200,000 people live in 120 camps. There are also hundreds of thousands of Iraqis abroad, mainly in neighboring Jordan and Syria. Read Article
BBC – More than 100 Russian skinheads have attacked a music festival in central Russia, reports say. At least 10 people were injured while attending the Torndao festival in Miass, in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region. The skinheads were reported to have been armed with truncheons and sticks when they launched their attack on the event, attended by some 3,000 people. Read Article
Associated Press – A top Afghan prosecutor who has complained that the attorney general and others are blocking corruption cases against high-ranking government officials said Saturday that he had been forced into retirement. Deputy Attorney General Fazel Ahmed Faqiryar said his boss, Attorney General Mohammad Ishaq Aloko, wrote a retirement letter for him earlier this week and that President Hamid Karzai accepted it. Faqiryar, 72, said he wanted to continue doing his work, which has involved pursuing corruption allegations against top officials in the Karzai administration — a task which had put him in the middle of a political fire storm. Read Article
AP) — Afghan officials said they found the bodies Sunday of five kidnapped campaign workers for a female parliamentary candidate in the western province of Herat.The five were snatched Wednesday by armed men who stopped their two-vehicle convoy as it was traveling through remote countryside. Five others traveling in the vehicles had earlier been set free, according to a man who answered the phone at the home of candidate Fawzya Galani and declined to give his name. Read Article
Al Jazerra – Two vessels carrying 46 international human rights activists have reached the Gaza Strip, despite Israel’s strict 14-month siege of the Palestinian territory. The end of the mission to symbolically break the siege came after Israel backed down from an earlier warning to the ‘Free Gaza’ protest group not to breach the blockade. Read Article
BBC – Tens of thousands of people have attended a controversial rally in Washington DC organised by conservative talk show host Glenn Beck. Civil rights leaders criticised Mr Beck for holding the rally at the Lincoln Memorial, the place where Martin Luther King Jr made his “I Have a Dream” speech 47 years ago to the day. Former US vice-presidential hopeful Sarah Palin also spoke at the rally. Read Article
“When rich people fight wars with one another, poor people are the ones to die.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre
As voted for by OYEN readers on our Facebook page this week, selected from the daily Thoughts of The Day. Did you have your say?
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