Yesterday’s meeting of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel underwhelmed markets, which had been hoping for more radical steps to help the euro zone, reports the Wall Street Journal . It seems investors want more than what the two proposed—among other things, an elected euro-zone president—as…
Continue reading …UK development secretary warns 400,000 children could die in Somalia | Mark Tran
August 17, 2011 No Comment
On a visit to Somalia, Andrew Mitchell announces £25m extra UK aid and issues grim warning on impact of famine and conflict Britain’s international development secretary on Wednesday warned that up to 400,000 children could die through starvation if urgent action is not taken to help Somalia and its neighbours in the Horn of Africa. Andrew Mitchell’s grim warning came as he saw the devastating impact of famine and conflict on the country during a visit to a feeding centre and a camp for internally displaced people in the Somali capital, Mogadishu. “I came to Mogadishu today to see first-hand how Britain can best help people that have been hit by this devastating famine,” said Mitchell, the first British minister to visit Mogadishu in 18 years. “The stark fact is that in southern Somalia the situation is deteriorating by the day. We could face deaths on a similar scale to those seen in 1991-92 if we do not act urgently now. This is a race against time. Evidence of malnutrition is not just in the camps and feeding centres but on every street corner.” As Mitchell visited Mogadishu, Britain announced an extra £25m ($41m) in emergency aid for Somalia. The new package will go through Unicef, allowing the UN organisation for children to double the number of children it is reaching in its supplementary programme. Somalia faces a severe humanitarian crisis and the worst food security crisis in Africa since its famine 20 years ago. At least 3.7 million people – about half of Somalia’s population – need food, and around 3.2 million people are in extreme need of immediate, lifesaving aid because of drought and years of conflict. In neighbouring Ethiopia, the UN refugee agency is reporting that 10 Somali children under the age of five are dying every day of hunger-related causes in Kobe refugee camp. The Department for International Development (DfID) said its £25m children’s package will provide up to 192,000 people with two months of supplementary rations, and supplies to vaccinate at least 800,000 children against measles, plus 300,000 with polio vaccines, vitamin A and deworming. Mitchell urged other countries to step up their aid effort as the UN warns that more regions of Somalia will be hit by famine in the coming months. Relief agencies estimate $2.48bn is required across the Horn. So far, $1.32bn has been raised – just over 50%. The UK, which helped sound the alarm by announcing aid to Ethiopia last month, has been lobbying the international community to send aid to the region . “Other countries must also maintain and increase their support at this crucial stage,” said Mitchell. “Or we risk seeing a whole generation of people decimated by starvation and disease – and further instability across the region.” The UK government has given £119m towards the UN appeal for east Africa. France has given £25m, Germany £25m and Italy just £3m. The African Union has so far pledged only $500,000 for the aid effort, and most key governments have pledged even less or nothing at all. Meanwhile, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) countries pledged $350m in aid for Somalia at an emergency summit in Istanbul. “All in all we have secured $350m in pledges,” said the OIC secretary general, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, at the end of the summit. “We hope to raise the commitments to $500m in a very short time.” Earlier, the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, urged rich Muslim countries to help, saying they bore some responsibility for the crisis for ignoring the poverty in the country. Erdogan told a dozen foreign ministers and other officials that Islam dictates “that you do not go to bed full if your neighbour is hungry. If we had fulfilled our responsibilities, would our brethren nation Somalia be in this situation?” he asked. “This is not only a test for the Somali people, it is a test for all humanity.” Erdogan, is scheduled to go with his family to Somalia on Thursday. Accompanying him will be his foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, who will also take his family. Davutoglu will go on to South Africa and Ethiopia. Few foreign leaders visit Somalia because it is so dangerous, but Erdogan has said it is “impossible for us to be spectators to the human tragedy in Africa”. Al-Shabaab, the Islamist insurgents , have pulled out of the capital, Mogadishu, but security remains precarious with the threat of hit-and-run attacks and suicide bombings. The last leader to visit Somalia was the Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, last November. Ugandan troops form the backbone of the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia, which props up the weak transitional government. Somalia Africa Famine Malnutrition Children Aid Mark Tran guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Police in Albuquerque credit a quick-thinking neighbor with saving a little girl’s life. Antonio Diaz Chacon, a 24-year-old mechanic, jumped in his pickup and gave chase after spotting a man throw a 6-year-old girl into a van as a neighbor shouted at him. He followed the van through a maze…
Continue reading …Burt Reynolds may be about to lose his South Florida mansion, “Valhalla.” A foreclosure lawsuit claims that the Smokey & the Bandit star is $1.2 million in arrears on the home he bought with ex-wife Loni Anderson in the ’90s, and hasn’t made a payment since September last year,…
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Hezbollah suspects can be linked to phones used to plot killing of former Lebanese leader Rafiq Hariri, UN tribunal says Mobile phones used by the assassins of the former Lebanese leader Rafiq Hariri mapped their movements as they tracked him around Beirut for more than a year, then eventually betrayed their identities, according to a United Nations tribunal established to investigate the killing. A prosecution indictment , which has charged four members of Hezbollah for conspiring to kill Hariri, alleges the phones were used for different phases of the complex plot and can conclusively be linked to each of the accused. The indictment was unsealed on Wednesday morning, more than six years after Hariri was killed by a two-and-a-half-tonne car bomb on the Beirut waterfront and almost two months after it was handed to the Lebanese authorities by the tribunal, based in The Hague. It focuses heavily on networks of phones that investigators believe were intended to be used only to plot the assassination. Five networks were identified and hundreds of calls made by the numbers linked to them have been traced to cell towers near where Hariri was at the time. The 47-page indictment does not explicitly state how any of the accused, Mustafa Badreddine, Salim Ayyash, Assad Sabra, or Hussein Oneissi, were linked to the networks, but implies that one or more may have used a covert phone to call a number that they were known to use privately. Investigators are believed to have put together their case from one or more such lapse. The indictment also suggests that documentary evidence and witness statements helped corroborate what it concedes is a largely circumstantial case. Badreddine, who is one of Hezbollah’s most senior figures, is accused of being the controller of the group, while Ayyash is alleged to have carried out the operation. Both are brothers in law of a former overall military commander, Imad Mugniyeh, who was killed by a car bomb in Damascus in 2008. Sabra and Oneissi are accused of orchestrating a false claim of responsibility in the hours following the blast on 14 February 2005 that killed Hariri. Oneissi is accused of recruiting a 22-year-old Palestinian, Abu Adass, from al-Houry mosque in west Beirut who would be used to make a videotaped false claim of responsibility. Adass vanished on 16 January 2005, a month before Hariri was killed. Hariri’s assassination polarised an already brittle Lebanese state and it is still dealing with the repercussions. The allegations of Hezbollah’s involvement, first raised in 2009, inflamed sectarian tensions between Hariri’s largely Sunni Muslim support base and Hezbollah’s Shia Islamic backers. Hezbollah’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, has mounted a strident campaign to discredit the investigation, pointing to a string of espionage arrests in Lebanon, including several of technicians in mobile phone carriers, which he claims allowed Israel to manipulate call data records. Lebanon’s court of public opinion remains divided along sectarian lines about the merits of the investigation. Hariri’s son, Saad Hariri, who was ousted by the Hezbollah-led opposition as prime minister in January, has insisted that Nasrallah hand over the four accused and allow a trial to be held. He has refused to do so and Lebanese authorities could not locate the men during the month the tribunal gave them to do so after it handed over the indictment on June 30. Saad Hariri said on Wednesday: “Today, the international justice has decided to reveal an important part of the proofs and facts related to the terrorist assassination crime, which took the life of one of the important symbols of moderation, nationalism, integrity and success in Lebanon and the Arab world. “What is required of Hezbollah’s leadership is simply to announce their disengagement with the accused.” Nasrallah is expected to make a further television address rebutting the detail in the indictment, however Hezbollah MPs in the Lebanese parliament have said privately that they believe their leader has done enough to convince supporters that the group has been the target of a conspiracy. The content of the indictment is unlikely to satisfy those closest to Hariri who have argued ever since his death that those who ordered his killing must be investigated with the same rigour as those alleged to have carried out the plot. The assassination took place when Hariri was at loggerheads with the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, over Assad’s demand that the term of the Syrian-anointed Lebanese president, Emile Lahoud, be extended. The indictment does not address the motive for the killing. A trial in absentia is likely to be held in The Hague later this year, or early in 2012. Lebanon Middle East Martin Chulov guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Hold the applause, please: Taylor Momsen is quitting acting at the ripe old age of 18. (Critics would say she stopped acting years ago.) The bad, bad girl says she has quit Gossip Girl —though other reports say her role was slashed by bosses —and will now focus on…
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Ukraine’s ex-president says Orange revolution partner acted against national interests in signing 2009 gas deal with Russia The former Ukrainian president, Viktor Yushchenko, has testified against his Orange revolution partner, Yulia Tymoshenko, in her abuse of office trial. The scene on Wednesday underlined the disappointment many feel in Ukraine after hopes for reform raised by the massive 2004 pro-democracy demonstrations and Yushchenko’s ascent to the presidency dissolved in factional squabbling and political paralysis. Yushchenko claimed that the former prime minister was driven by political gain when she
Continue reading …Historians say Michael Gove risks turning history lessons into propaganda classes
August 17, 2011 No Comment
Academics warn against education secretary’s plan to celebrate Britain’s ‘distinguished’ role in world affairs Leading historians are to hit out against Michael Gove’s plans for history teaching, saying they risk “going down the route of propaganda”. Gove has said history in schools ought to “celebrate the distinguished role of these islands in the history of the world” and portray Britain as “a beacon of liberty for others to emulate” . But Tom Devine , professor of history at the University of Edinburgh, said: “I am root and branch opposed to Gove’s approach. It smells of whiggery; of history as chauvinism. You cannot pick out aspects of the past that may be pleasing to people.” Devine was speaking before a debate on history teaching at the Edinburgh international book festival , where he will be joined by Professor Linda Colley of Princeton University, and RW Johnson , the emeritus fellow in politics at Oxford. Devine said of the Aberdeen-raised Gove: “I find it remarkable someone educated in the Scottish system can come up with this nonsense.” Speaking about Gove’s contention earlier this year that the history syllabus “doesn’t mention a single historical figure – except William Wilberforce and Olaudah Equiano” – key figures in the British movement to abolish slavery – he accused the secretary of state of creating “straw men”. “The syllabus is not devoid of content. History teaching has never been more exciting.” Also speaking in Friday’s debate, which is organised by the London Review of Books , is South Africa-based historian RW Johnson, who warned against the follies of a celebratory, nationalist syllabus. “I live in South Africa, a society where nationalism is running riot in history teaching, and the results are disastrous,” he said. History teaching before 1994 was there, he said, to “bolster up Afrikaaner nationalism, and black South Africans were merely the objects of history”, he said. “Now, under the ANC, that has completely reversed. The years 1652-1994 are simply called ‘the oppression’ and everything about that period is lost. You wouldn’t know that South Africa fought in two world wars, sent troops to Korea and did other things other than whites oppressing blacks. “When it comes to 20th-century history, black people are portrayed as martyrs, heroes, victims and the whites as simply bastards. It is just as much a distortion as was Afrikaaner history.” He said, though, that teaching ought to be done through a frame of narrative history. “If you don’t have that you are a bit lost: we need to be able to look at the way things work out over a very long period: what the French call the longue durée .” Devine, who has advised the Scottish government on history teaching, agreed, saying that “one of the most important things about the discipline is to convey a sense of change over time, to do which you must present events chronologically.” But he warned against the “Burns-supper school of history” and insisted the history teaching needed to be “critical” rather than self-congratulatory. He also argued that though “national history should be the core”, world history must be taught in parallel “to avoid introspection and parochialism”. He acknowledged that in Scotland, there was a danger of the ruling Scottish National party “pushing Scottish history in a Braveheart direction”. Linda Colley, professor of history at Princeton, who also speaks in Friday’s debate, said she welcomed Gove’s interest in the teaching of history. “But the best way to do it,” she said, “is to make history compulsory to 16, as it is in many European countries. That gives teachers the room to teach it in a more nuanced way. If he is going to jump up and down about history teaching, this is the reform he should consider.” Devine condemned the quality of the debate over history teaching in England. “In Scotland, there would have been incandescence in the academic community and also in civil society. It has been a poverty-stricken and parsimonious debate.” Education policy History and history of art National curriculum Michael Gove Schools Charlotte Higgins guardian.co.uk
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Coalition tensions rise as former anti-terror adviser accuses ministers of trying to influence more stringent sentences The government’s former terror adviser has intervened in the row over the sentencing of people who took part in last week’s riots, accusing ministers of appearing to “steer” the courts into handing down the more stringent sentences. Lord Carlile, the barrister and former Liberal Democrat MP warned that the sacrosanct separation of powers between the government and the judiciary had appeared to have been breached by some of the messages coming out of government since the riots engulfed neighbourhoods last week. Carlile, who served for six years under Labour and the coalition until March as the government’s anti-terror adviser, told the Guardian: “I don’t think it’s helpful for ministers to appear to be giving a steer to judges. The judges in criminal courts are mostly extremely experienced and well capable of making the decisions themselves. Ministers should focus on securing the safety of the public.” Asked whether ministers had overstepped the mark, he said: “Some judges may feel that and some ministers may feel that they have had a responsibility to use the language of sentences rather than policy.” He defended the actions of judges saying it would be inevitable that sentencing would be tougher in the circumstances of the public disorder that took place last week, but he warned that there would be numerous appeals and called for the court of appeal to produce guidelines for judges and magistrates. He said that “just filling up prisons” would not contribute to maintaining the peace of England’s streets, and warned that there were too many first-time offenders who had been remanded in custody on relatively minor offences after the events who would be eligible to appeal for bail. It comes amid growing concerns over the length of prison sentences being handed down for riot-related offences after two men in Chester were jailed for four years for posting messages on Facebook inciting people to create disorder in their home towns despite the fact that the riots didn’t take place. Simon Hughes, deputy leader of the Lib Dems, said he hoped the courts would show more leniency for first-time offenders. The prime minister David Cameron praised the work of the courts, after he was asked during a visit in Warrington about the Facebook case. “What happened on our streets was absolutely appalling behaviour and to send a very clear message that it’s wrong and won’t be tolerated is what the criminal justice system should be doing,” he said. “They decided in that court to send a tough sentence, send a tough message and I think it’s very good that courts are able to do that.” But dissatisfaction about the hardline reaction on the Tory benches among their Liberal Democrat coalition colleagues is intensifying with key figures urging caution. The former Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell said: “With all due deference to the prime minister, politicians should not be either cheering nor booing in the matter of sentencing. It is an important part of our constitutional principles that political influence is not directed at the judicial system.” Hughes told Sky News: “The courts are independent, thank god entirely independent. They will reflect community feeling as well as tariffs and sentencing. Each judge will look at each case individually, if they are outside reasonable sentences they will be brought down on appeal. “I think the message has to go that look, if you were involved last week you can expect to be punished toughly and firmly. If you are not a first offender you can seriously expect the courts to come down on you. But I hope the courts will show understanding and relative leniency on first-time offenders and make sure that all the sentences don’t just put people inside and pull them out again but engage with the community.” Carlile’s intervention is significant as he is the most prominent figure to suggest that ministers have sought to influence the courts. Respected on all sides of the house, Carlile has worked in government alongside civil servants in the home office reviewing its counter-terror policy and although appointed by Labour the coalition extended his job after the election. He stepped down earlier this year after six years. He is also president of the Howard League for Penal Reform. He said: “I think there may be a slight problem in that judges and magistrates are working without court of appeal guidelines and I expect cases to reach the court of appeal quickly. I share the hope of many lawyers that the court of appeal will produce a set of guidelines so there can be a sufficient level of consistency, even with guidelines there will be variation because a judge is perfectly entitled to reflect local circumstances. “My suspicion is that as time passes the level of sentencing in these cases will reduce. I am actually more concerned with the number of people who are on remand in custody. There are numerous first offenders who have been remanded in custody who in other circumstances would not have been remanded in custody. I think there will be crown court appeals. A lot of people have been remanded in custody by magistrate courts for relatively minor offences such as receiving small quantities of stolen clothing. In ordinary circumstances people in that situation would not be remanded in custody – they might get a custodial sentence but they would not be remanded in custody in the first instance.” He said that deterrent sentences were to be expected for those who commit acts of violence or theft of valuable items but added: “There will be a shakedown of the less serious cases although all forms of looting and rioting are going to attract greater sentences. In due course people with no previous convictions who have received stolen clothing for example may be more likely to find themselves with non-custodial sentences.” He added: “Just filling up prisons may not be contributing in the long term to the peace and orderliness of society. They may only have themselves to blame but prison should never be the first option.” UK riots Crime Judiciary David Cameron Liberal-Conservative coalition Prisons and probation UK criminal justice Liberal Democrats Conservatives Facebook Internet Social networking Simon Hughes Sir Menzies Campbell Polly Curtis Allegra Stratton guardian.co.uk
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