Telegraph – Afghanistan’s authorities have ousted the managers of the country’s biggest bank to try and prevent a collapse due to toxic property investments and murky loans to politically powerful customers, it has been reported. Hamid Karzai personally approved the intervention to prevent a meltdown at Kabul Bank which could send shock waves through the Afghan economy. Sher Khan Farnood, the chairman, and his chief executive Khalilullah Frozi were replaced by staff from the Afghan central bank this week. Read Article
Guardian – The Home Office pathologist criticised for his autopsy on the body of the newspaper seller who died at the G20 protests in London was found guilty of misconduct and “deficient professional performance” today. Dr Freddy Patel’s fitness to practise is impaired, a disciplinary panel of the General Medical Council ruled. He is now likely to face an application that he should be struck off or suspended from the medical register. Patel’s examination of the newspaper vendor, Ian Tomlinson, when he said Tomlinson had died of a heart attack, was later contradicted after a second examination and his role has become pivotal to the controversy surrounding the case. 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
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
BBC-The UN’s climate science body needs stricter checks to prevent damage to the organisation’s credibility, an independent review has concluded. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has faced mounting pressure over errors in its last major assessment of climate science in 2007. The review said guidelines were needed to ensure IPCC leaders were not seen as advocating specific climate policies -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
FOX – An all-out war has broken out between Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit and a prominent securities analyst who is saying that the big bank may be cooking the books by inflating its earnings through an accounting gimmick, FOX Business Network has learned. The analyst, Mike Mayo, of the securities firm CLSA, has been telling investors that Citigroup (C: 3.67 ,-0.08 ,-2.13%) should take a writedown, or a loss on some $50 billion of “deferred-tax assets,” or DTAs. That is a tax credit the firm has on its financial statement that Mayo says is inflating profits at the big bank by as much as $10 billion. Read Article
Huffington Post – When federal investigators discovered that the manager of a Saudi Arabian company paid bribes to win two lucrative subcontracts supplying food to American troops in Iraq, they naturally wanted to know more. Did he act on his own? Had U.S. taxpayers been cheated? Five years later, investigators are still largely in the dark. They suspect similar activities by other subcontractors may have tainted contracts worth up to $300 million. But the investigators are unable to uncover even basic information, such as how the manager of the Saudi company had come up with $133,000 in bribe money. 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
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
LA Times – The $53-billion reconstruction effort is not without its successes. But poor planning, violence and a failure to consult Iraqis derailed many projects, which may offer lessons in Afghanistan. The shell of a prison that will never be used rises from the desert on the edge of this dusty town north of Baghdad, a hulking monument to the wasted promise of America’s massive, $53-billion reconstruction effort in Iraq. Construction began in May 2004 at a time when U.S. money was pouring into the country. It quickly ran into huge cost overruns. Violence erupted in the area, and a manager was shot dead in his office. The Iraqi government said it didn’t want or need the prison. In 2007 the project was abandoned, but only after $40 million of U.S. taxpayer money had been spent. Read Article
NPR-Hurricane Katrina, and the destruction it wrought, are often referred to as a natural disaster. Think again, says actor Harry Shearer. In his documentary, The Big Uneasy, Shearer says much of the destruction in New Orleans was man-made and preventable — and largely the fault of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers -Read Article
New York Times – The aide to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at the center of a politically sensitive corruption investigation is being paid by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to Afghan and American officials. Mohammed Zia Salehi, the chief of administration for the National Security Council, appears to have been on the payroll for many years, according to officials in Kabul and Washington. It is unclear exactly what Mr. Salehi does in exchange for his money, whether providing information to the spy agency, advancing American views inside the presidential palace, or both. Read Article
Press TV – A press report says former French President Jacques Chirac and his conservative UMP party have agreed to pay a fine to escape prosecution on charges of fraud. The report, confirmed by the city of Paris, reveals a deal under which Chirac and France’s ruling UMP party will pay the city 2.2 million euros to drop its fraud charges against the former president, Deutsche Welle reported. Read Article
Daily Mail – David Cameron is offering rich businessmen the chance to dine with him – if they give £50,000 a year to the Conservative Party. Donors can enjoy exclusive lunches after Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons, or meet the Premier at drinks receptions and campaign launches. They can also mingle with other senior Cabinet members in what critics call a clear case of ‘cash for access’ – with the wealthy buying the chance to put their case directly to the Prime Minister. It comes just months after Mr Cameron made a major speech attacking the murky world of ‘secret corporate lobbying’. Read Article
Reuters – An major trial of Avandia puts patients at risk and should be stopped, a U.S. advocacy group said on Tuesday, calling on regulators to immediately halt the global study of the controversial GlaxoSmithKline Plc diabetes drug. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration asked the company in 2007 to conduct the trial to compare the drug’s long-term heart effects with those of rival Actos by Takeda Pharmaceutical Co Ltd after other evidence suggested Avandia increased the risk of heart attack and chest pain. Since then, even more data have linked Glaxo’s drug to greater heart risks… Read article
Related article: Diabetes Drug Maker Hid Test Data on Risks, Files Indicate
Telegraph – Altaf Hussain, the leader of the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM), said the political establishment’s lacklustre response to the severe flooding should provoke an uprising. He called on “patriotic generals to initiate martial-law-like steps against federal politicians” and legal proceedings against those “who save their crops and divert floods towards the localities as well as villages of the poor”. In a country where most leading politicans are also titled hereditary landlords, he called for a French Revolution-style redistribution of land between the classes in response to unprecedented destruction. Read Article
The Age - The company will pay $42 million for violations that include illegal weapons export to Afghanistan and making unauthorized proposals to train troops in southern Sudan, The New York Times reported. The company, now known as Xe Services, struck a deal with the U.S. state department to pay the fine in order to avoid criminal charges. This will also allow it to continue to obtain government contracts. Xe Services still faces other legal troubles, including the indictment of five former executives on weapons and obstruction charges. Read Article
Reuters- Poor farming practices, lack of water management, deforestation and climate change are turning vast stretches of the Earth into barren deserts, the United Nations said on Monday. Launching a 10-year campaign to halt the advance of deserts, the U.N. environment programme (UNEP) said land degradation in dry places had affected 3.6 billion hectares (8.9 billion acres) — a quarter of the world’s land area — and a billion people -Read Article
Photographs from the Guardian Eyewitness series: A Greenpeace aerial survey reveals an area of deforestation in Sumatra stripped for pulp and palm oil plantations and logging. Photographer: Romeo Gacad/AFP/Getty Images
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
Dailymai-It’s not exactly rocket science – when building a wind farm, look for a site that is, well, quite windy. But more than half of Britain’s wind farms are operating at less than 25 per cent capacity. In England, the figure rises to 70 per cent of onshore developments, research shows. Experts say that over-generous subsidies mean hundreds of turbines are going up on sites that are simply not breezy enough -Read Article
Washington Examiner – Too few in Washington have been digging into the scandals behind the collapse of the “government-sponsored entities” (GSE’s) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and their role in helping trigger the global financial crisis. Their collapse has cost taxpayers $146 billion thus far. Freddie Mac sought an additional $1.8 billion in taxpayer support just last week. There is no end in sight, as the Obama administration, through executive fiat, has placed no upper limit on the taxpayer liability for these two monstrosities. Read Article
The Guardian – Former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich was found guilty on just one count out of 24 in a massive corruption trial that had fascinated America and potentially reached some of the most prominent Democratic politicians in the nation. Blagojevich, a colourful and outspoken character, escaped being found guilty on the 23 other counts after the jury could not decide on any other charges. That, in effect, made the verdict a sort of victory for Blagojevich and his legal team. But any celebrations were shortlived as government prosecutors immediately signalled they would push for a retrial. Read Article
The Guardian – Electoral officials in Afghanistan have decided not to open nearly 900 polling stations in the most violent areas of the country for next month’s parliamentary election, in an attempt to prevent a repeat of the massive fraud that wrecked last year’s presidential contest. Despite worries about disenfranchising large numbers of voters, the country’s independent election commission is expected to announce tomorrow that it has been forced to abandon initial plans to open 6,835 polling centres, after Afghan security chiefs and Nato commanders decreed that parts of the country are too dangerous for voting to take place. Read Article
