Popular Posts

Saturday, January 15, 2011

My Africa Channel Television: At look back on Arizona gunman's


Police describe accused Arizona gunman's night
January 15, 2011 12:37:11 AM

* Suspect posed with gun in underwear - newspaper
* Doctors say wounded congresswoman continues to improve
* Hundreds attend funeral for slain federal judge

By Tim Gaynor and Brad Poole

TUCSON, Ariz., Jan 14 (Reuters) - Jared Lee Loughner, charged with killing six people and trying to assassinate a U.S. congresswoman in Arizona, checked into a motel, bought bullets and had photographs developed on the night before the shooting, police said on Friday.
The New York Times said the roll of film had "multiple photos" of the 22-year-old college dropout posing in red G-string underwear with a Glock semi-automatic pistol.
FBI sources told Reuters they could neither confirm nor deny the report.
Loughner is charged with five federal counts for allegedly firing into a crowd outside a grocery store in Tucson on Jan. 8 at a public event held by Representative Gabrielle Giffords.
The rampage has reignited debates in the United States about the implications of heated political rhetoric and the relative ease of legally acquiring weapons.
The six dead people included a 9-year-old girl and a federal judge, John Roll, whose private funeral on Friday was attended by hundreds of mourners under tight security.
Giffords, one of 13 people wounded, remains in critical condition after a bullet tore through her brain but doctors said she is regaining some physical function and awareness.
"We're actually confident that she's making some progress now," Dr. Michael Lemole told reporters at the University Medical Center in Tucson.
Giffords, 40, is getting better at following simple voice commands and is opening her eyes more frequently, he said.
Doctors were "very encouraged that she's continuing to make all the right moves in the right direction," Lemole said.
"FAREWELL FRIENDS"
The Pima County Sheriff's Department, which arrested Loughner, released a timeline of his activities on the Friday evening and early hours of Saturday before the shooting.
It detailed how he checked into a motel, bought ammunition and a backpack and dropped off film at a drugstore, collecting the developed photos several hours later, shortly before 2:30 a.m.
The sheriff's department said the FBI had the photos and security video from businesses near the scene of the shooting.
Loughner also posted a message on the Myspace social networking website saying "Farewell friends."
The sheriff's department said he was warned verbally by an officer for running a stoplight at 7:30 a.m. before returning home, where he took a black bag from his car and argued with his father.
At 9:41 a.m., he took a taxi to the grocery store where, just after 10 a.m., he allegedly shot into the crowd at the meeting with Giffords before being wrestled to the ground.
The sheriff's department said Loughner was carrying two 15-round magazines of ammunition, a knife, some money, a credit card and his Arizona driver's license. (Additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by John O'Callaghan)

My Africa Channel TV. The Lost White Tribe of South Sudan

A voter casts his vote at a mostly empty polling station in Juba, Southern Sudan on January 13, 2011 on the fifth day of a landmark independence referendum on south Sudan. AFP
A voter casts his vote at a mostly empty polling station in Juba, Southern Sudan on January 13, 2011 on the fifth day of a landmark independence referendum on South Sudan. AFP.
By AFPPosted Saturday, January 15 2011 at 11:12

JUBA, Saturday
"The Greeks of south Sudan are a tribe. We are not Dinka, we are not Acholi, but we are south Sudanese," George Ghines says proudly as he recalls that it was traders like his family who first founded the regional capital Juba.
"I am the last of the Mohicans," he adds sadly, acknowledging that after the ravages of 50 years of conflict between north and south, he is the only pure-blooded Juba-born descendant of the original Greek settlers who still lives permanently in the city.
Born in Juba, the scion of the family that first settled in south Sudan in 1905 and whose own father settled in the town nearly two decades before the end of British colonial rule, Ghines attempted to exercise his right to register in this week's landmark referendum on independence for the region.
"It was difficult to register because they have never before seen a white south Sudanese," Ghines said.
"They didn't believe that a white Sudanese exists and fulfils the criteria."
It was during the first two decades of the 20th century that Greeks first arrived in south Sudan in numbers.
The territory's then British colonial rulers encouraged them to settle for their commercial skills and they founded Juba as a commercial entrepot across the White Nile from the then British military headquarters.
"They brought people here who were very entrepreneurial. They didn't want them to be French or Italian or any other colonial power," said Ghines, who himself runs a Juba-based restaurant and business consultancy.
The traders built their homes in a neighbourhood the British called the Greek Quarters, now known as Hay Jellaba.
"You have all the buildings with the Greek columns. Of course it is now in a very bad state because of 50 years of neglect," Ghines said.
At its height the community numbered a little under 10,000 out of a total of 22,000 across the Sudan.
The Juba Greeks boasted the whole raft of institutions built by Greek diaspora communities around the world -- an Orthodox church, a library, two social clubs.
One Greek club retained its name until just two years ago, although by then nearly all of its clients were south Sudanese without any Hellenic ancestry, staff at what is now the Paradise restaurant said.
But it is what has happened to the community's cemetery that really irks Ghines.
Litter is strewn across the overgrown grass and creepers that conceal the graves, and the cemetery has clearly been used as an impromptu lavatory by the junior officers who sleep out under canvas behind the adjacent police station.
"I haven't been here for two years. There is a lot of garbage and the vegetation has grown a lot. I am very sad and extremely embarrassed," he said.
"These people were pioneers and I believe that these people deserve much better than this image that you see today.
"Unfortunately the Greek government is completely negligent. We don't exist. It is really sad."
Ghines has a Greek passport as well as his Sudanese one. The start of the south's second devastating civil war with the north in 1983 found him in Athens preparing for university after completing his schooling in Juba and then Khartom
His home city became a garrison town for the northern army, besieged and repeatedly bombarded by the southern rebels in the surrounding countryside, and he was forced to seek refuge.
"Greece was the only country to receive us. I couldn't go to Canada or Britain or Australia and say I was a refugee because they wouldn't believe us. We don't have the right color."
After a decade and a half wandering around the Middle East and North Africa, the 2005 peace deal that ended 22 years of civil war finally gave him the opportunity to return to his native town. He arrived just six days after its signing.
"It is a sad case because we lost everything through the war. It was let's take a bet to get back my lost pride," he said.
He now runs a restaurant which serves tsatsiki and Greek salad with feta cheese alongside south Sudanese dishes. Appropriately it is called the Notos after the south wind of the ancient Greeks as Ghines makes no secret of his support for the southern cause.
"I am a supporter for a state with inhabitants who can live in freedom."
Ghines is the only pure-blooded Juba Greek to have returned. "People my age, my classmates, all of them have rebuilt their lives outside south Sudan which makes it difficult for them to come back."
But there are still offspring of mixed marriages in the town. He says the wife of southern regional president Salva Kiir, Yalouri, is herself the daughter of a Greek father and a Dinka mother.
"We have 25 to 30 children of mixed marriages, we meet quite often. We are trying to revive the Greek community in Juba."
Ghines says he is often hurt by the fact that so many of his compatriots regard him as just another white among the thousands of Western aid workers and diplomats whose 4x4s clog the city's streets.
"When I walk down the streets of Juba, I don't imagine myself as anything other than south Sudanese.
"On the other side, I realize that the new nation has a lot of priorities. We are probably at the bottom of the list."
um.

My Africa Channel TV. Tens Reported Dead in Tunis

REPORT BY BBC.

Nearly 50 people are reported to have been killed in shooting and rioting at two Tunisian prisons, amid continuing unrest following the removal of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. There was looting and gunfire in the capital, Tunis, after the celebrations marking his flight to Saudi Arabia. Troops are patrolling the city centre and a state of emergency is in force. The violence came as the Speaker of parliament, Foued Mebazaa, took over as interim president. He said he had asked Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi - who had earlier said he was in temporary charge - to form a national unity government. In a televised address, Mr Mebazaa said all political parties including the opposition would be consulted. "All Tunisians without exception and exclusion must be associated in the political process," he said after taking the oath. Speaker Foued Mebazaa has been sworn in as interim president Speaker Foued Mebazaa has been sworn in as interim president The Constitutional Council had earlier declared he should lead the country. Under the constitution a new presidential election must be held within 60 days. The BBC's Wyre Davis, in Tunis, says people are now waiting for some indication that the interim administration is prepared to bring in widespread economic and political changes. Saturday's deadliest incident appears to have been in the resort of Monastir where a fire swept though a prison, killing at least 42 people. The identities of the victims and the cause of the fire are still unclear. Reports said inmates had been attempting to escape. "The whole prison is on fire, the furniture, mattresses, everything," an eyewitness in the city, about 160km (100 miles) south of Tunis, told Reuters news agency. In Mahdia, further south, at least five people were killed after soldiers opened fire on prisoners at the town's jail, a senior official told the Associated Press. The official said the prison director then freed hundreds of other inmates to avoid more bloodshed. map There were reports of violence and escape attempts at several other jails. In Tunis, soldiers and police exchanged fire with gunmen outside the interior ministry, media reports said. The Associated Press said its reporters had seen "two bodies lying on the ground" - it was not clear who they were, or whether they were dead or injured. Troops and tanks are protecting official buildings and the streets are largely deserted, correspondents say. Overnight looting continued into Saturday in the city's suburbs, with French-owned supermarkets among the properties targeted. The city's main railway station has been badly damaged by fire. Continue reading the main story Fall from power * 17 Dec: Man sets himself on fire in Sidi Bouzid over lack of jobs, sparking protests * 24 Dec: Protester shot dead in central Tunisia * 28 Dec: Protests spread to Tunis * 8-10 Jan: Dozens of deaths reported in crackdown on protests * 12 Jan: Interior minister sacked * 13 Jan: President Ben Ali promises to step down in 2014 * 14 Jan: Mr Ben Ali dissolves parliament after new mass rally, then steps down and flees * Profile: Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali * Tunisia holidaymakers back in UK Tunis Carthage International Airport, which was closed amid Friday's unrest, re-opened on Saturday. Hundreds of tourists and other foreigners have been trapped there. Many have been airlifted home. In the past four weeks, protests have swept the country over unemployment, food price rises and corruption. Security forces used live ammunition against protesters and dozens of people died. The African Union has condemned what it called "excessive use of force against the demonstrators". Mr Ben Ali, who had been in power for 23 years, conceded power on Friday after the unrest culminated in a giant rally against him in Tunis. He flew out of Tunisia with his family and, after the French government rejected a request for his plane to land there, was allowed to refuel in Sardinia before landing in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. A Saudi palace statement said: "Out of concern for the exceptional circumstances facing the brotherly Tunisian people and in support of the security and stability of their country... the Saudi government has welcomed President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and his family to the kingdom." Ousted President Ben Ali's plane refuels in Cagliari, Italy, 14 January Mr Ben Ali's plane refuelled in Sardinia, before going on to Saudi Arabia French President Nicholas Sarkozy said on Saturday the Tunisian people had "expressed their democratic will" and called for free elections as soon as possible. Britain condemned the violence and looting and urged restraint from all sides. There has been little official reaction from Tunisia's Arab neighbours to the events. On Saturday the Arab League called on Tunisia's political forces "to stand together and unite" to maintain peace. The UK, the US and France are among the countries advising against non-essential travel to Tunisia. Mr Ben Ali was only Tunisia's second president since independence from France in 1956. He was last re-elected in 2009 with 89.62% of the vote.

My Africa Channel TV. Kenya Facing Starvation

My Africa Channel Television: The New Nigeria


Nigeria begins registering millions for April polls

January 15, 2011 5:39:53 PM


* Estimated 70 million people eligible to vote
* Previous polls marred by problems with electoral roll
* Registration process to take two weeks

By Samuel Tife

OTUOKE, Nigeria, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Nigeria began the mammoth task of registering an estimated 70 million voters on Saturday, a process which will be key to ensuring nationwide elections in April are more credible than in the past.

An electoral roll riddled with fictitious names and omitting legitimate voters, combined with ballot-stuffing and intimidation, so badly marred previous votes in Africa's most populous nation that observers refused to sign off on them.

President Goodluck Jonathan, who won the ruling party nomination on Thursday, has said organising clean presidential, parliamentary and state governorship elections in three months' time is a top priority. An accurate electoral roll is key.

Jonathan named Attahiru Jega, a respected academic, to head the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) last June as part of efforts to clean up the system.

Jega said from the outset establishing a new voter list so quickly in a country of 140 million would be challenging.

"Nigerians need to understand what we have started today is such a massive exercise the like of which I don't recall in terms of scale and complexity," Jega told reporters in Jonathan's home village, shortly after the president registered.

"We're working in 120,000 polling stations nationwide. We have to deploy men and materials to these places and we have to ensure the process commences on time."

Crowds of villagers and Jonathan's supporters flocked to his village of Otuoke to see him and his wife Patience register under a makeshift canopy outside their country home.

Schools have been closed until the end of the month and are to be used as registration centres during the two-week exercise.

INEC last year bought 120,000 electronic voter registration kits -- including laptop computers, finger print scanners, cameras and printers -- using part of a controversial 88 billion naira ($585 million) budget.  

Jega said around 98,000 of the kits had been deployed and acknowledged there had been logistical problems, including with some of the scanners. He said he hoped the remainder would be deployed in the next 24 hours.

"I want to ask Nigerians to be patient with us ... We are only 5 hours into the first day of a 15-day exercise," he said. 

My Africa Channel Television: flood crises has strock anothe country


The flood crises in Sri Lanka and Australia

15 January 2011

Severe flooding in Sri Lanka and Australia, caused by the same regional La Niña weather pattern, has had devastating consequences in both countries. More than a million people have been affected by the floods triggered by torrential rains in Sri Lanka, particularly in the eastern districts of  Batticaloa  and Ampara. In Australia, thousands of people have had their homes inundated by flood waters, especially in the north-eastern state of Queensland and its capital, Brisbane.
At first sight, the circumstances seem quite different. Sri Lanka is an economically backward country that has suffered a quarter century of communal war, and a destructive tsunami in December 2004, and lacks very basic infrastructure. Australia is a large developed economy, with modern facilities and access to sophisticated technology.
However, in both countries, governments have proven utterly incapable of forewarning and protecting ordinary people from major, yet predictable, adverse weather events. While natural forces of such scope and strength cannot be completely controlled, their social and economic impact has been vastly compounded by the subordination of every aspect of life, including land management, town planning, water supply and emergency services, to the dictates of corporate profit.
There are crucial common features: government spending cuts, poor or decaying infrastructure, the privatisation or commercialisation of basic services, profit-driven land and real estate development, inadequate emergency services and pitiful levels of official relief and compensation for flood victims. These are not simply the result of indifference and neglect, but flow from definite decisions made in the interests of the business elites.
The social consequences are more glaring in Sri Lanka because of the dire poverty of many of the victims, the lack of elementary preventative measures and infrastructure, and the massive diversion of resources by successive governments into the communal war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Many of the 350,000 people forced to leave their homes and live in ill-prepared evacuation camps were also displaced during the 25-year war and the 2004 tsunami. Some of the squalid camps have become flooded themselves, forcing people to flee again. Poorly-maintained reservoirs have burst their banks, deluging farms. Most of the 23 officially-recorded deaths have resulted from mudslides, usually caused by deforestation and the building of houses on the sides of hills, due to the lack of land and proper government planning. The government’s disaster plan basically consists of sending the army back to areas where two or three years ago it was indiscriminately shelling LTTE strongholds, killing hundreds, if not thousands, of Tamil civilians.
Yet what has happened in Australia since the flood crisis began in mid-December is in many ways more revealing. Despite the availability of advanced technology and telecommunications, ordinary citizens have been left to face the elements without proper warnings, and with scant assistance, except from volunteers. Large portions of the riverside suburbs of Brisbane, the country’s third largest city, a major metropolis with more than two million people, have been inundated. Cities, towns and small communities across Queensland and in some other states have either been flooded or cut off by floodwaters for days. Major mines, factories, roads, railways, ports and airports have been paralysed, at great economic and social cost.
There have been terrible scenes of people being swept away by flash floods, or pleading helplessly from car and house roofs for rescue, or forced to abandon their homes without possessions at the last minute. Evidence has emerged that governments have for years ignored and suppressed reports and warnings by meteorologists and engineers about dams that cannot withstand maximum floods, unchecked property development in flood-prone areas and cutbacks to flood mitigation programs. Decisions have been dominated by the drive to boost investors’ profits, including the transformation of the south-east Queensland agency responsible for dams, water supply and flood mitigation into a commercially-operated, money-making corporation.
By any objective measure, this represents a monumental failure of government and the current economic system. Flooding is still continuing in various parts of the country, and more is likely before the four-month wet season ends. The social and economic costs will be immense as people try to rebuild their lives. Numerous homes and small businesses are not covered for flood insurance, which most insurers either refuse to provide or only offer as an expensive optional extra. Given the paltry character of government grants, many people, as in Sri Lanka, will be struggling to recover by relying their own resources and the generosity of friends, relatives and volunteer services.
The Australian Labor government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard, like its Sri Lankan counterpart headed by President Mahinda Rajapakse, has declared that any reconstruction spending will have to be offset by other government cuts. Gillard has insisted that her pledge to the financial markets to eliminate the post-2008 budget deficit by 2013 will still be met, warning that “tough choices” will be involved. Rajapakse is committed to meeting the demand of the International Monetary Fund for a halving of the 2009 budget deficit by 2012. In both countries, for all the official talk of “national unity” and “pulling together,” this means imposing the burden of the floods crisis directly onto the backs of working people.
These issues are by no means confined to Sri Lanka and Australia. More than 500 people have been killed this week by flooding and mudslides in mountainous areas near Rio de Janeiro in south-eastern Brazil, where governments had failed to properly control construction. Floods and unusually cold weather have caused havoc across Europe and North America in recent weeks. Millions of destitute people in Pakistan and Haiti are still waiting in vain for relief and rebuilding assistance following floods and earthquakes in 2010.
These are symptoms of a decrepit economic and social order, increasingly unable to provide even the most basic protections and services to ordinary people. Having bailed out the banks and finance houses that caused the global financial meltdown that began in 2008, governments around the world, including those in Sri Lanka and Australia, are now imposing austerity measures that will only worsen the situation. For humanity to find a way forward, a new revolutionary socialist leadership is required, one capable of implementing a globally-coordinated program to reconstruct society completely along rationally planned, democratic and egalitarian lines, harnessing all the scientific and technological resources now available to avert and manage the worst effects of extreme natural events.
Mike Head

My Africa Channel Television:Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today laid out the United Nations agenda for the coming year.

My Africa Channel Television:Tunisian Prisdent give-up after a hard fight


Veteran Tunisian leader quits after protests

January 14, 2011 11:41:22 PM

 Source News Feed: Reuters World Service

* Ben Ali quits, prime minister says he has taken over
* Ben Ali's whereabouts unclear, protests could resume
* Drama sends shockwaves across authoritarian Arab states

(Adds Clinton comments, report of Ben Ali arriving in Jeddah)

By Tarek Amara and Christian Lowe

TUNIS, Jan 14 (Reuters) - A surge of anger in the streets over police repression and poverty swept Tunisia's veteran leader from power on Friday, sending a chill through unpopular authoritarian governments across the Arab world.
President Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali stepped aside after more than two decades in power and looked to have flown out of the country. His exact whereabouts were unclear.
Ben Ali's prime minister told Tunisians he would steer the state until early elections. The streets of the capital were mostly calm amid heavy security, but analysts questioned whether the change of face at the top would satisfy the protesters.
After days of violence that spread from provincial towns to Tunis, leaving dozens dead as security forces struggled to contain angry young demonstrators, the government declared a state of emergency on Friday and imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew.
The last ditch attempt to reassert control failed and within hours it was announced Ben Ali had quit.
The violence and rapid turn of events sent shockwaves across the Arab world, where similar authoritarian rulers are deeply entrenched, but face mounting pressures from growing young populations, economic hardship and the appeal of militant Islam.
"The fall of Ben Ali marks the first ever collapse of an autocratic regime in the face of a popular uprising in the Arab world," said U.S. political risk consultancy Stratfor.
"Leaders across the Arab world, and especially in North Africa, will now look to the Tunisian example with concerns about how the situation could be replicated in their own countries."
There was no evidence of new protests in Tunis after the announcement by Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi that he would act as president until elections could be held. But occasional gunfire could still be heard. Police helicopters flew over the city after Ghannouchi, in an interview with a private television channel, promised to protect people from looters.
The calm, after days of intense violence, appeared fragile.
Fadhel Bel Taher, whose brother died in the clashes, told al Jazeera television that protests would soon resume. "Tomorrow we will be back in the streets, in Martyrs Square, to continue this civil disobedience until ... the regime is gone," he said.
Some, however, were in a more jubilant mood. In the town of Menzel Bouzaiane, south of Tunis, about 5,000 people gathered in the streets to celebrate Ben Ali's apparent departure, local trade union activist Mohamed Fadhel told Reuters.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Ben Ali had left the country, as widely reported by Arabic TV stations.
Saudi Arabian-owned Al Arabiya TV reported that he had landed in the Saudi city of Jeddah.
He had been originally thought to have flown to France, Tunis's former colonial power, but French media quoted President Nicolas Sarkozy as saying that France had refused to give Ben Ali permission to enter the country.
CALL FOR UNITY
Western powers have long turned a blind eye to rulers in the region who provide a bulwark against Islamist radicals. The United States led international calls for calm and for the people of Tunisia to be given a free choice of leaders.
"I condemn and deplore the use of violence against citizens peacefully voicing their opinion in Tunisia, and I applaud the courage and dignity of the Tunisian people," said U.S. President Barack Obama.
In Washington, Clinton said in a statement that Ben Ali had left Tunisia. "Young people especially need to have a meaningful role in the decisions that shape their lives," she said after returning from a trip to the Middle East this week.
"Addressing these concerns will be challenging, but the United States stands ready to help," she added.
Western countries urged their citizens to avoid travel to the popular tourist destination due to the instability. Holiday operator Thomas Cook said it was evacuating almost 4,000 German, British and Irish tourists from Tunisia.
It remained uncertain how far those around Ben Ali, only the second president Tunisia has had since independence from France, were ready to relinquish power to opposition groups.
"Since the president is temporarily unable to exercise his duties, it has been decided that the prime minister will exercise temporarily the duties," Ghannouchi said.
"I call on the sons and daughters of Tunisia, of all political and intellectual persuasions, to unite to allow our beloved country to overcome this difficult period and to return to stability."
In power since 1987, Ben Ali had declared a state of emergency earlier on Friday and said protesters would be shot in an increasingly violent confrontation. He had also dismissed the government and called an early parliamentary election.
The latest unrest was sparked when police prevented an unemployed graduate from selling fruit without a licence and he set fire to himself, dying shortly afterwards of his burns.
As the violence escalated, police fired tear gas to disperse crowds in central Tunis demanding his immediate resignation. They were not satisfied with his promise on Thursday to step down, but only at the end of his current term in 2014.
A Reuters photographer saw people looting supermarkets in a Tunis suburb and said they had set fire to a police station.
On almost every block in suburban Tunis, people were standing on the street with baseball bats to protect their cars and homes from damage by looters, a Reuters reporter said.
Opposition leader Najib Chebbi, one of Ben Ali's most outspoken critics, described the events as a "regime change".
"This is a crucial moment. There is a change of regime under way. Now it's the succession," he told France's I-Tele TV. (Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, John Irish, Brian Love and Laure Bretton in Paris; writing by Maria Golovnina; Editing by Matthew Jones)