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  • U.S., Japan to modernize alliance

    U.S., Japan to modernize alliance

    The United States and Japan agreed on Thursday to modernize their defense alliance for the first time in 16 years to address growing concerns about North Korea’s nuclear program, global terrorism, cyber intrusions and other 21st century threats.

    The move to modernize the U.S.-Japanese defense alliance follows President Barack Obama’s decision to strategically rebalance U.S. forces to the Asia-Pacific region following a dozen years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Washington’s desire for Japan to take a greater role in its defense dovetails with the rise of nationalist Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has taken a more assertive approach toward such security issues as a territorial dispute with China and the threat from nearby North Korea.

    “Our goal is a more balanced and effective alliance,” U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told a news conference after the first “2+2” meeting to be held in Tokyo.

    He was joined by Secretary of State John Kerry, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera.

    The two countries pledged in a 10-page statement to rewrite their guidelines for security cooperation, begin rotational deployments of U.S. Global Hawk reconnaissance drones to Japan and work to address challenges in cyberspace.

    The ministers agreed to locate a new X-band U.S. missile-defense radar system at Kyogamisaki air base in Kyoto prefecture in western Japan and formalized a decision to relocate 5,000 U.S. Marines from Japan’s southernmost island of Okinawa to the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam.

    North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs have become an increasing threat for U.S. allies in the region. Pyongyang conducted a successful ballistic missile launch in December and a third nuclear test this year, but experts say it will probably need more tests before it can develop a nuclear missile.

    The pariah state has also threatened a nuclear attack on the United States.

    The decision to bolster anti-missile radar coverage in Japan and move Marines to Guam had been announced earlier, but the joint statement fixed the location of the new missile tracking system for the first time and specified Japan’s share of the cost of the move to Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.

    Tokyo agreed to contribute up to $3.1 billion to help move the Marines to Guam from Okinawa, where their presence has often been a source of friction with the local government and population. The move is expected to cost some $8.6 billion.

    U.S. Defense and State Department officials say the location of the new anti-missile radar, which is expected to be installed with a year or so, will help improve tracking coverage of rockets launched toward both Japan and the United States.

    The U.S.-Japanese agreement also calls for additional efforts to realign U.S. forces in Japan and hand back land to local communities to ensure the political sustainability of the U.S. defense presence in the country.

    The ministers also agreed to rewrite the guidelines for U.S.-Japanese Defense Cooperation for the first time since 1997.

    reuters

  • MTN Rwanda gets new Chief Executive Officer

    MTN Rwanda gets new Chief Executive Officer

    {{MTN Group President and CEO Mr. Sifiso Dabengwa has announced the appointment of a new Chief Executive Officer for MTN Rwanda. Mr. Ebenezer Asante takes over from the former CEO Mr. Khaled Mikkawi.}}

    In his farewell to the MTN staff, Khaled Mikkawi said, “I am delighted to have served MTN in this amazing country and Rwanda shall always remain in my heart.”

    Khaled came at a time when MTN had serious network issues. He managed to solve that with a dedicated team and the network improved significantly within a short period.

    Khaled demonstrated the perfect example of the meaning of customer engagement. He internalised the MTN values, most especially Leadership, Can-do and Relationship. His enthusiasm for great customer care has grown our subscriber
    base from 1.3 million to over 3.6 million.

    During the SIM registration drive he personally registered MTN customers including the Prime Minister, Ambassadors and other government officials.

    Since he joined, the number of network sites has increased from just over 100 to over 600 providing population coverage of over 98%. He won the Y’ello Star award for Customer Centricity in 2011.

    He is the only CEO in MTN Group to win this award and his are big shoes to fill.

    Mr. Asante comes with a wealth of experience. He joined MTN Ghana in 2008 as Sales and Distribution Executive, responsible for Sales, Distribution, Trade Marketing, Channel Management and Design, Customer Service and the countrywide MTN branch network.

    Ebenezer has significant experience in creating a distinct customer service. Before coming to MTN, he spent 13 years with Unilever, where he held various roles, including that of Country Manager for Zambia in 2005.

    In 2006, Ebenezer was appointed as Customer Development Director, responsible for Sales and Customer development strategy and execution.

    Ebenezer holds a BA (Hons) Economics & Statistics degree from the University of Ghana, a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from Henley Management College, and was part of MTN’s Global Advancement Programme (GAP) in 2010.

    We welcome Ebenezer Asante as the new CEO for MTN Rwanda and thank Khaled Mikkawi, the outgoing CEO for MTN Rwanda, for his invaluable contribution to MTN over the last few years.

    New CEO

    former CEO Mr. Khaled Mikkawi

  • AU troops kill 8 LRA rebels in CAR, DRC

    AU troops kill 8 LRA rebels in CAR, DRC

    At least eight rebel fighters of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) have been killed in an offensive by the African Union in the past week, according to reports.

    Col. Gabriel Ayor, the commander of the AU taskforce based in Yambio in Western Equatorial State, South Sudan, says AU forces attacked rebel bases in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.

    “We captured some documents from their camps showing that they were heading towards the south,” Col. Ayor told the United Nations-sponsored Radio Miraya, on Tuesday.

    He said AU soldiers found numerous simsim, ground nuts and maize gardens in about eight rebel camps in DR Congo.

    wirestory

  • Nigeria Ties Up With Chinese Firms for Building of Power Plant

    Nigeria Ties Up With Chinese Firms for Building of Power Plant

    {{Nigeria has signed a US$1.3bn deal with China National Electrical Equipment Corporation (CNEEC) and Sinohydro Consortium to build the Zungeru power plant in Nigeria.}}

    The deal is expected to help in putting an end to the chronic electrical power supply shortages that has been hampering growth in Africa’s second-biggest economy.

    The plant, scheduled for completion by 2018, will help add 700MW electricity to Nigeria’s current 4,600MW capacity.

    The Zungeru power plant in Niger state, about 150km to federal capital of Abuja, was first conceived in 1982, but was abandoned due to lack of funds.

    Now, 75 per cent of the funds needed for the project will be supplied by China’s Exim bank while the Nigerian government will foot the rest of the bill.

    Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said, “This project will create thousands of jobs for Nigerian engineers, technicians and artisans during the construction phase. It will also boost the economy.”

    Chinese Ambassador to Nigeria Deng Boqing said, “The Zungeru power plant project is significant to Nigeria people because it will contribute greatly to economic growth, meeting the growing power demand as the West African nation ushers in a new period of industrialisation and urbanisation.”

    wirestory

  • Uganda Expels Khartoum Envoy Over Spying

    Uganda Expels Khartoum Envoy Over Spying

    {{Uganda has expelled a Sudanese diplomat over suspected espionage activities. Dr. Jad-el-Seed Mohammed Elhag, given 24 hours to pack his bags, left the country on Tuesday.}}

    Elhag, who security has been monitoring, is said to have been in a habit of contacting different high level offices in the country with the aim of trying to obtain information illegally.

    “We have been tracking his movements. In some cases, he would offer to pay some people for documents and over the weekend we set up a meeting between his contact and someone who had agreed to co-operate,” a senior security officer revealed on Tuesday.

    The unsuspecting Elhag, was reportedly nabbed on Sunday as he was paying out money to an agent to secure classified information.

    The operation where he was “caught red-handed” in Kampala involved personnel from the Special Forces Command (SFC), Joint Anti-Terrorism Taskforce(JATT), External Security Organisation (ESO) and the Police.

    Foreign Affairs ministry on Monday sent a diplomatic note to the Sudan embassy demanding for Elhag’s immediate departure.

    “He was a diplomat but was not behaving as one. He no longer conducted himself as a diplomat and had been cited in cases of espionage,” said Asuman Kiyingi, the state minister for regional affairs, on Tuesday.

    He added that after the arrest, Sudan embassy asked “to be given time to recall” the officer to which the ministry objected. Kiyingi maintained that the two countries’ diplomatic relations remain intact.

    Elhag aged 50, came to Uganda in 2010 for a four-year diplomatic tour. He was a liaison officer external security although his formal title is “Foreign Service Officer”.

    In a telephone interview, the Sudanese ambassador, Adil Sharfi, confirmed his officer’s exit saying that he has been recalled by Khartoum. Expressing ignorance about the diplomatic note from Foreign Affairs, he insisted that Elhag had not been expelled.

    He, however, said he did not know why his government had recalled the officer.

    Asked why Elhag’s diplomatic tour had been interrupted, the ambassador said it was normal. “I do not know how you got that news. It’s a normal return not anything else. He had finished his work here and has something else to do in Sudan . We expect a replacement soon,” said the ambassador.

    The incident, he added, will not in any way affect the relationship of the two countries which he described as ”good”. Additionally, Sharfi said his mission had plans to ”develop the good relations” between the two countries.

    The expulsion of a senior diplomat is not an isolated case since there have been cases of conflict between Khartoum and Kampala.

    In March, Sudanese Parliament speaker Ahmed Ibrahim al-Tahir said that his government was working with forces in Uganda that are opposed to President Yoweri Museveni to bring about “positive political influence”.

    Al-Tahir did not provide any details on Khartoum’s efforts in this regard. But reacting to Tahir’s remarks, Foreign Affairs minister Sam Kutesa said Sudan has no chances of succeeding in such plans

    “They can try but there is no chance of succeeding. We have no intentions whatsoever of overthrowing the Sudanese government,” Kutesa said, while state minister Henry Oryem described the remarks as “the usual Sudanese rubbish”

    Sudanese government was infuriated this year after rebel forces and opposition groups signed an accord in Kampala last January calling for toppling the regime of president Omer Hassan al-Bashir.

    This has prompted Khartoum to lodge several complaints with the African Union and other regional blocs against Kampala, saying the latter is supporting regime change in Sudan.

    NV

  • Crocodile Takes Mom in Front of Child

    Crocodile Takes Mom in Front of Child

    A paramedic is missing after being attacked by a giant crocodile in front of her 12-year-old daughter in Botswana.

    Beeld reported on Wednesday that Danelle Viljoen, 38, was on holiday with her daughter and friends at Shakawe in the Okavango Delta on Monday.

    She was apparently watching her daughter and a friend’s son while they were fishing, and sat in the shallow water to cool down. Almost immediately, a crocodile pounded on her and dragged her into the water.

    The crocodile was estimated to be 5-metres-long and a metre wide.

    Botswana police searched along the river but there was no sign of Viljoen.

    Viljoen’s daughter is being cared for by her grandparents, who are doing missionary work near Maun in Botswana.

    news24

  • Canada Pledges $4.8M Aid for AMISOM

    Canada Pledges $4.8M Aid for AMISOM

    {{Canada announced Tuesday funding to bolster African Union forces in Somalia, after a deadly mall attack in Nairobi by Al-Shabaab Islamists last month}}.

    Canadian Foreign Affairs minister John Bohn Baird pledged $4.8 million for enhancing counterterrorism efforts through the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom), as well as $960,000 for other security and conflict resolution programs in the Horn of Africa.

    The funds are in addition to $35.7 million already committed by Ottawa for Somalia, and $2.4 billion committed by the international community.

    At a joint press conference, Somalia’s visiting Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs minister Fawzia Yusuf Adam said her government in partnership with the African Union “is defeating” Al-Shabaab.

    “Al-Shabaab is on its last legs, they lost numbers, they lost morale, they lost ground, and they are only in small pockets. We are not worried about them. We are in control of the situation, but we need a last push,” with support from the international community to strengthen the country’s security forces, she said.

    “We need to stand on our feet and defend our shores and defend our ground and finish Al-Shabaab.”

    The four-day bloodbath at the upmarket Westgate shopping mall, which Kenyan forces brought to an end last Tuesday, left at least 67 people dead. The Kenyan Red Cross said Monday that 39 more were still missing.

    wirestory

  • Auditors Criticise EU’s DR Congo Aid

    Auditors Criticise EU’s DR Congo Aid

    {{Many EU projects aimed at building justice and good governance in the Democratic Republic of Congo are failing to deliver results, European auditors say.}}

    The EU “needs to improve significantly its aid effectiveness” in DR Congo, the European Court of Auditors says.

    Their audit covered the years 2003-2011, when the EU granted about 1.9bn euros (£1.6bn; $2.6bn) to DR Congo.

    The vast mineral-rich nation is plagued by poverty, corruption and conflict.

    Congolese and UN troops are currently fighting M23 rebels near the eastern city of Goma.

    For decades the authorities in the capital Kinshasa have struggled to quell insurgencies and hold the country together.

    In response to the auditors’ report, EU Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs said it was “premature” to judge projects which had not been completed.

    He noted that progress had been made in areas such as police reform and elections, even if more work still needed to be done.

    Monitoring programmes

    The auditors said: “Fewer than half of the programmes examined have delivered, or are likely to deliver, most of the expected results.

    “Sustainability is an unrealistic prospect in most cases.”

    They criticised the design of EU programmes aimed at developing good governance in DR Congo, saying local risks had not been properly assessed in many cases.

    The auditors also urged the European Commission to tighten up monitoring of such programmes, to ensure that money was not misspent.

    They noted that fraud and corruption remained big problems in DR Congo and that EU aid should be targeted accordingly.

    The report said that “although the country is facing a difficult economic and budgetary situation, and low salaries are one reason for the inefficiency of government departments, MPs’ salaries were increased from $1,500 during the transition period to $6,000 dollars in 2006 and $13,000 in 2012.

    “In 2011, spending on the Presidency, the Prime Minister, the National Assembly and the Senate accounted for 11 per cent of total budgetary expenditure and was almost three times the amount spent on health.”

    NMG

  • Study Finds Growth not Helping Africa’s Poor

    Study Finds Growth not Helping Africa’s Poor

    {{Improved economic growth over the past decade in Africa has failed to reduce poverty in a majority of countries on the continent, a new study has revealed.}}

    The Afrobarometer survey, released on Tuesday, said that despite playing host to some of the world’s highest economic growth rates, many Africans still reported shortages of basic needs, including water, food, healthcare and cash.

    “Meeting their basic daily needs remains a major challenge for a majority of Africans, even at a time when their countries are reporting impressive economic gains,” the survey found, citing data retrieved from the citizens of 16 African countries over the past 10 years.

    In a second part of the study, the report surveyed the opinions of more than 50,000 citizens of 34 countries across the continent between 2011-2013 and concluded that “lived” poverty remains “pervasive across the continent”.

    The continent’s economy is expected to grow by almost five percent this year, but half of survey respondents said they occasionally lacked food, clean water, and medicine. One in five said they face frequent shortages.

    {{Measuring poverty}}

    “Either economic growth is not trickling down to average citizens and translating into poverty reduction… [or] there is reason to question whether reported growth rates are actually being realised,” the researchers found.

    People were poorer in areas where government spending on basic infrastructure lagged, the survey found.

    “The data show significant correlations between access to electrical grids, piped water, and other basic services in communities and lower levels of lived poverty.”

    Low education levels also had a big influence on poverty.

    People in West Africa and East Africa experienced most shortages, while North Africans reported the least.

    The highest poverty levels were measured in Burundi, Guinea, Niger, Senegal and Togo, while Algeria and Mauritius had the lowest.

    The study has been conducted roughly every three years since 1999, with more countries added to the survey each time round.

    Carried out by independent African organisations, the Afrobarometer aims to measure poverty as an alternative to countries’ own national income and expenditure surveys, which are often too costly for some governments.

    Of 16 countries studied for the past decade, the researchers measured little improvement in lifestyle, said Afrobarometer’s Robert Mattes at the study’s release in Johannesburg.

    “Poverty has come down very, very slightly,” said Mattes, who also heads the University of Cape Town’s Democracy in Africa Research Unit.

    The lives of people in Cape Verde, Ghana, Malawi and Zambia improved over the past decade.

    In this period, however, poverty went up in South Africa, Botswana, Senegal, Mali and Tanzania.

    Zimbabweans also reported a dramatic drop in poverty since 2008, which researchers attributed to a “peace dividend” after a power-sharing government was formed following a decade of political and economic turmoil.

    Over half the respondents rated their country’s economy as bad, while only a third thought the economy and their living conditions had improved in the past year.

    Most however thought things would look up in the coming year.

    The researchers urged governments to focus on reducing poverty rather than simply growing their economies.

    “Investments in education and infrastructure may be among the most effective ways to extend economic gains to the continent’s poorest citizens.”

    The Afrobarometer study echoes a World Bank report earlier this year which found growth in Africa has been less poverty-reducing than elsewhere in the world.

    While strides have been made in reducing the levels of Africans living on less $1.25 a day, more than a third of the world’s extreme poor still live in sub-Saharan Africa.

    {Agencies}

  • UN Finds Widespread Torture in Libya Jails

    UN Finds Widespread Torture in Libya Jails

    {{Torture and brutality are widespread in Libyan prisons run by various militias two years after the overthrow of leader Muammar Gaddafi, according to a United Nations report.}}

    About 8,000 prisoners are held without trial in government jails on suspicion of having fought for Gaddafi, while countless others are detained by militias out of sight and in primitive conditions, the report, released on Tuesday, said.

    “Torture and ill-treatment in Libya is an on-going and widespread concern in many detention centres,” said the report from the UN’s top human rights office (UNHCR) and the world body’s mission in the country.

    UN investigators, who had periodic access to various detention centres, said there was evidence that 27 people have been tortured to death in the prisons, 11 of them this year, according to the report.

    The report said that the problem is rampant in jails run by militias that triumphed in the eight-month civil war in 2011.

    “In some cases, members of the armed brigades freely admitted, and even tried to justify, the physical abuse of detainees,” the report said.

    No one was immediately available for comment from the Libyan government.

    ‘Torture will become institutionalised’

    The report noted the Libyan government had declared its commitment to ending torture and to ensuring the proper working of the country’s criminal justice system, and praised its passage of a law making torture a criminal offence.

    But both UN bodies feared that unless firm action was taken “there is a danger that torture will become institutionalised within the new Libya”.

    Many arrests were arbitrary, motivated by personal or tribal score-settling, the report said.

    The paper detailed cases of men, some hauled off the street on the way to work or in their homes without explanation by militiamen, and how they were beaten and raped with bottles or large bullets and left without food in filthy jails.

    In government-controlled jails run by trained police or prison officers, which UN staff had been able to visit, conditions and the treatment of detainees was better than in those operated by the militias – to which they had had little access.

    In the latter, it said, torture was most frequent immediately upon arrest, and then – as in Gaddafi’s time – detainees were held without access to lawyers and with only sporadic visits by their families.

    A tribal group near Zintan in south-western Libya is holding Gaddafi’s son and one-time political heir Saif al-Islam and has rejected a government request to transfer him to a Tripoli jail.

    {Agencies}