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
Financial Times – Wheat prices rose further on Friday morning in the wake of Russia’s decision to extend its grain export ban by 12 month, raising fears about a return to the food shortages and riots of 2007-08. In Mozambique, where a 30 per cent rise in bread prices triggered riots on Wednesday and Thursday, the government said seven people had been killed along with 288 wounded. The announcement by Vladimir Putin on Thursday extended an export ban first announced last month until late December 2011, sending wheat and other cereals prices to near a two-year high. Read Article
New York Times – Ismail Haji Noor, a local government official, recently arrived in this notorious pirate den with a simple message: we need your help. With the Shabab militant group sweeping across Somalia and the American-backed central government teetering on life support, Mr. Noor stood on a beach flanked by dozens of pirate gunmen, two hijacked ships over his shoulder, and announced, “From now on we’ll be working together.” He hugged several well-known pirate bosses and called them “brother” and later explained that while he saw the pirates as criminals and eventually wanted to rehabilitate them, right now the Shabab were a much graver threat. Read Article
Associated Press – Human Rights Watch has urged Bahraini authorities to immediately look into allegations of torture made by four Shiite activists in detention since mid-August. In a statement Wednesday, the group said Abdul-Jalil al-Singace, one of the detainees, told prosecutors that his captors beat him on his fingers with a hard instrument, slapped him around, and pulled and twisted his nipples and ears with tongs. 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
AllAfrica .Com – A meeting held yesterday in Mendefera town highlighted the need for exerting coordinated endeavors on the part of all government institutions in raising public awareness in introducing renewable energy, as it has vital role to play in preventing deforestation. In the meeting in which the ministers of land, water and environment, as well as agriculture and justice took part, briefings were given regarding the condition of forests and the alarming irresponsible cutting down of trees in the Southern region -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
AFP – A panel of UN human rights experts has strongly condemned the execution of four men over a February 2009 attack on the presidential palace in Equatorial Guinea’s capital Malabo. In a statement seen Saturday on a UN website, the UN working group on mercenaries said a “lack of transparency” during their trial pointed to “severe shortcomings” in the application of human rights in the west African nation. Amnesty International has already decried the swift execution of Jose Abeso Nsue, Manuel Ndong Anseme, Alipio Ndong Asumu and Jacinto Micha Obiang on August 21 by a military court in Malabo. Read Article
Washington Post – An exhaustive U.N. investigation into the history of violence in Congo has concluded that the Rwandan military and its allies carried out hundreds of large-scale killings of ethnic Hutu refugees during the 1990s that amounted to war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly genocide, according to a confidential copy of the report. Read Article
UN Dispatch – The sluggish international response to the Pakistan floods emergency is actually not all that sluggish, at least compared to these humanitarian crises. Introducing the five most under-funded and ignored humanitarian crises:
- Iraqi Refugees
- Guatemala — Tropical Storm Agatha
- Uganda
- Central African Republic
- Civil Unrest in Kyrgyzstan READ MORE ABOUT THESE
AP — Kenya’s president signed a new constitution into law Friday that institutes a U.S.-style system of checks and balances and has been hailed as the most significant political event since Kenya’s independence nearly a half century ago. Kenya’s new constitution is part of a reform package that President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga committed themselves to after signing a power-sharing deal in February 2008. That deal ended violence that killed more than 1,000 people following Kenya’s disputed December 2007 presidential vote. Read Article
BBC – A draft UN report says crimes by the Rwandan army and allied rebels in Democratic Republic of Congo could be classified as genocide.The report, seen by the BBC, details the investigation into the conflict in DR Congo from 1993 to 2003.It says ten of thousands of ethnic Hutus, including women, children and the elderly, were killed by the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan army. Read Article
PressTV – Children of third world countries and nations in transition have become ‘laboratory rats’ for the US’ clinical tests for new drugs, an Indian newspaper says. Under US’ 1997 legislation called the Pediatric Exclusivity Provision, intended to speed up development of new drugs for American kids, the trials were carried out in countries such as Uganda and India, The Times of India reported. Read article
The Guardian-A three-year investigation by the United Nations will almost entirely exonerate Royal Dutch Shell for 40 years of oil pollution in the Niger delta, causing outrage among communities who have long campaigned to force the multinational to clean up its spills and pay compensation. The $10m (£6.5m) investigation by the UN environment programme (UNEP), paid for by Shell, will say that only 10% of oil pollution in Ogoniland has been caused by equipment failures and company negligence -Read Article
Financial Times – South Africa’s trade minister on Tuesday embraced China’s surging investment in Africa, saying that Beijing was not pursuing a neocolonial policy and its growing interest in the continent would bring huge benefits. The trade minister is part of a delegation led by South African President Jacob Zuma that includes almost 400 business executives and 11 cabinet members, the biggest group yet to accompany a South African leader abroad. Read article
BBC – The United Nations is investigating claims that rebel fighters raped more than 150 women and baby boys in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The attacks happened over four days within miles of a UN base, a US aid worker and a Congolese doctor said. Read Article
Wall Street Journal – U.S. officials believe al Qaeda in Yemen is now collaborating more closely with allies in Pakistan and Somalia to plot attacks against the U.S., spurring the prospect that the administration will mount a more intense targeted killing program in Yemen..Such a move would give the Central Intelligence Agency a far larger role in what has until now been mainly a secret U.S. military campaign against militant targets in Yemen and across the Horn of Africa. It would likely be modeled after the CIA’s covert drone campaign in Pakistan. The U.S. military’s Special Operation Forces and the CIA have been positioning surveillance equipment, drones and personnel in Yemen, Djibouti, Kenya and Ethiopia 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
BBC – Somali fighters have stormed a hotel close to the presidential palace and killed several MPs, witnesses have told the BBC.A reporter for government-run Radio Mogadishu said he had seen eight dead bodies, including several MPs. Read Article
Deutsche Welle – Researchers say they have come up with a new way to prove where coltan samples came from. That could allow companies and refineries to purchase African coltan knowing that it did not come from a conflict area. In the late 1990s and early 2000s the world began to wake up to the reality of “blood diamonds,” or diamonds mined in regions of sub-Saharan Africa used to fund violent conflicts, especially in Liberia, Angola and Sierra Leone. Read article
BBC – Human rights activists have accused Kenya of secretly sending four terror suspects to Uganda after the World Cup bomb blasts in Ugandan capital Kampala. Kenya’s Muslim Human Rights Forum said this was a violation of Kenyan law. The group’s chairman, Al-Amin Kimathi, also said FBI agents interrogated three of the suspects illegally. The US embassy said the US was aiding the investigation but did not comment on the role of the FBI. Nairobi has so far not commented on the affair. Read Article
CNN – Police corruption and abuse are rife in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, according to a report from Human Rights Watch. The New York-based group issued a 102-page report Tuesday saying that “widespread corruption in the Nigeria Police Force is fueling abuses against ordinary citizens and severely undermining the rule of law in Nigeria.” “Good policing is the bedrock for the rule of law and public safety,” said Corinne Dufka, senior West Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The long-term failure of the Nigerian authorities to address police bribery, extortion, and wholesale embezzlement threatens the basic rights of all Nigerians.” Read Article
BBC – Police in Tanzania say they have arrested a Kenyan national who was attempting to sell an albino man. The arrest was made in a sting operation as police pretended to be businessmen buying albino body parts. Police say they struck a deal equivalent to more than $250,000 (£159,000) for the 20-year-old man. Read article
Gulf – Several tons of gold imported into the UAE by traders and investors turned out to be fake on closer inspection, resulting in millions of dirhams in losses and high levels of stress to the victims. Speaking to Emirates 24|7, Mohamad Shakarchi,, Managing Director of Emirates Gold, said: “A lot of people in the UAE who tried to import gold at lower prices or through dubious overseas companies have been cheated. Read Article
PhysOrg.com – In research published this week in PLoS Medicine Stephen Lim and colleagues (University of Washington) systematically estimate the changes in distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs) across Africa between 2000 and 2008, and find that several countries have managed to scale up their ITN coverage from near zero to more than 60%. Read article
