IGIHE

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  • UK: Dozens Hurt as 130 vehicles Crash

    UK: Dozens Hurt as 130 vehicles Crash

    {{ Reports from UK indicate that Dozens of people have been injured as more than 130 vehicles were involved in a series of crashes in thick fog on the A249 Sheppey crossing in Kent.}}

    Eight of those hurt in the collisions, which took place at about 07:15 BST, have serious injuries.

    Early reports said 200 people had been hurt, but police later revised the figure.

    Firefighters said they had freed five people from their vehicles on the southbound carriageway.

    One witness said visibility had been very poor at the time of the crash but drivers were approaching the crossing with no lights.

    Others at the scene described a mass of tangled cars, lorries, and a car transporter. Some reports said the crash went on for 10 minutes as cars continuously collided with each other.

    Driver Martin Stammers said the scene was “horrendous” and described seeing cars under lorries and people lying on the floor.

    agencies

  • One Indian woman killed every hour over dowry

    One Indian woman killed every hour over dowry

    {{One woman dies every hour in India because of dowry-related crimes, women’s rights activists have said.}}

    The National Crime Records Bureau said that 8,233 women were killed across India last year because of disputes over dowry payments given by the bride’s family to the groom or his family at the time of marriage.

    The conviction rate in dowry-related crimes remained a low 32 percent, according to statistics the bureau published last week.

    Women’s rights activists and police said that loopholes in dowry prevention laws, delays in prosecution and low conviction rates have led to a steady rise in dowry-related crimes.

    Dowry demands have become even more insistent and expensive following India’s economic boom, said Ranjana Kumari, a women’s rights activist.

    Suman Nalwa, a senior New Delhi police officer dealing with crimes against women, said dowry practices extended to all classes in society.

    “Even highly educated people don’t say no to dowry,” she said.

    Giving or receiving of a dowry is illegal under Indian law.

    Source: AP

  • Wage strike hits South Africa gold mines

    Wage strike hits South Africa gold mines

    {{A strike by tens of thousands of South African gold miners for higher pay has severely affected production in the struggling industry.}}

    Producers grouped in the Chamber of Mines said output at 16 of the 23 mines currently involved in talks was partially or severely affected on Wednesday morning.

    The stoppage called by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) began at the evening shift on Tuesday, with many miners refusing to go underground.

    NUM, which represents two-thirds of the country’s gold mine workers, has already opened the prospect of a compromise, saying it was prepared to lower its pay increase demands for some specific employee categories.

    The union still wanted a 60 percent increase in basic pay for entry-level underground workers, NUM spokesman Lesiba Seshoka said.

    The Chamber of Mines, which represents industry employers, said gold producers Pan African Resources and Village Main Reef had reached agreement with union leaders at two mines for wage increases of up to 8 percent.

    aljazeera

  • AfDB to raise $100Bn to Fund Africa’s Infrastructure Projects

    AfDB to raise $100Bn to Fund Africa’s Infrastructure Projects

    {{The African Development Bank plans to raise $100 billion to finance bankable infrastructure projects across the continent, a senior bank official has said.}}

    The institution’s regional director for East Africa Gabriel Negatu said about half of the fund would be raised by digging into the foreign currency reserves of willing states among the financier’s 53-member countries in Africa.

    The rest of the money will come from borrowing from global markets and could help finance regional railway, ports and electricity projects in Africa.

    Mr Negatu was speaking to business executives from across the continent in Mombasa, Kenya at the fourth Africa Governance, Leadership and Management Conference, a think-tank organised by the Africa Leadership Forum.

    He said the fund is expected to be operational within three years and could help finance the proposed port at Lamu, Kenya, the planned $11 billion harbour at Bagamoyo in Tanzania, and the standard gauge railway line from Mombasa to Kigali through Uganda.

    Participants heard that prudent macro-economic management, a boom in resource exports and pro-business reforms had driven growth in Africa over the last decade with half of the continent now enjoying per capita incomes of more than $1,000 per year.

    He said although Foreign Direct Investment was up fivefold since 2000, the cost of starting a business had dropped by more than two-thirds and delays halved in the last five years, the growth had not been felt by many.

    “This growth is not felt by all Africans and has not been inclusive,” Mr Negatu said. “The rising tide has not lifted all boats.”

    {{Private sector}}

    The meeting is seeking ways of accelerating growth and intra-African trade and partnerships, under the theme “Opening up Africa to Africa”.

    Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who is the patron of the AFL, said political leaders had driven the African integration agenda over the last 50 years and that while they needed to continue showing commitment and involvement, the private sector must “seize the wheel” and drive the process.

    “The process of integration is too important to be left in government hands alone,” he said.

    He said intra-African trade, which has remained low since the early 1990s while growing in Asia, Europe and North America, was a “sad commentary” on Africa’s integration process.

    “I do not buy the argument that we cannot trade among ourselves because we produce the same commodities. In Europe , France and Germany produce similar commodities but they trade heavily with each other,” he said.

    Kenyan entrepreneur Manu Chandaria, whose business interests span the continent and as far as China, said the private sector must lead efforts to achieve faster growth and deeper trade partnerships.

    “Africa cannot wait for singular expansion. It must be multiple growth and this must be driven by the private sector.”

    {{New models}}

    Apart from putting the private sector at the heart of Africa’s economic renaissance, African policy makers are looking at new ways of engaging the rest of the world in light of China and Asia’s growing economic influence.

    Abdoulaye Mar Dieye, a director at the UNDP regional bureau for Africa said because six of the 10 fastest-growing countries in the world in the last decade are in Africa and 16 out of the 29 countries expected to grow fastest in the next couple of years are also in the continent, there is a need to define a joint African economic policy of engagement.

    “Africa needs to be cautious not to replace the Washington Consensus with the Beijing Accord,” he said in remarks read to participants on his behalf.

    “Africa needs to develop its own consensus for partners to buy into.”

    Central Bank of Kenya governor Njuguna Ndung’u said poverty in Africa was due to lack of access to markets and that Kenya’s progress in mobile banking offered practical examples of mobilising capital from previously unbanked people and bringing them into the formal economy.

    source: NMG

  • German president visits France WWII Massacre Site

    German president visits France WWII Massacre Site

    {{German President Joachim Gauck has become the first senior dignitary from his country to visit Oradour-sur-Glane in France, where 642 people were killed by Nazi troops in June 1944.}}

    The ruins of the village are preserved just as they were after the massacre.
    President Gauck said that he had accepted a French invitation to visit the site with “gratitude and humility”.

    More than 200 children were among the victims of the World War II atrocity that left deep scars in France.

    After the war Gen Charles de Gaulle – who later became France’s president – ordered the village not to be rebuilt but instead remain a memorial to the evils of Nazi
    occupation. A new village was built nearby.

    {{‘Symbol of reconciliation’}}

    “I want to reach out to the victims and tell them: I am at your side,” President Gauck told Europe 1 radio ahead of the visit.

    “I am 73-years-old, I was born during the war, I was steeped in the discussion of our guilt… I will tell the victims and their families: ‘We know what was done.’”

    Mr Gauck said on Tuesday that he would not refrain from making the point to others during his visit that “the Germany that I have the honour of representing is a different Germany from the one that haunts their memories”.

    He was joined in Oradour-sur-Glane by his French counterpart, Francois Hollande, and together they visited the village square, where residents were rounded up by Nazi troops ostensibly to have their identity papers checked.

    They also walked around a church where women and children were incarcerated before it was set on fire. The village’s men were taken to a barn where they were shot with machine-guns.

    The two presidents were accompanied by two of the three living survivors, including 88-year-old Robert Hebras.

    He was 19 at the time of the massacre, and survived because he was buried under the bodies of other men who had been shot.

    “I was consumed by hatred and vengeance for a long time,” he said.

    BBC

  • G20 to Sign Up to Fight Global Tax Avoidance

    G20 to Sign Up to Fight Global Tax Avoidance

    {{Thursday’s meeting of G20 nations is expected to sign an agreement to fight tax avoidance by multinationals.}}

    The group of developing and developed nations formally backed plans to tackle international tax avoidance and evasion at its meeting in July.

    The gathering, in the Russian city of St Petersburg, is officially about global economic matters.

    However, the most meaty topic of conversation is likely to be Syria and how to handle the crisis there.

    The meeting, between representatives of the countries that account for two-thirds of the world’s population, will also ponder the effects of an end to the US financial stimulus programme.

    One of the main topics to emerge this year has been multinational companies’ use of legal, highly complex tax minimisation systems.

    Oxfam warned this week that such behaviour was not only harmful to the countries in which companies were based, but paid little or no tax, but was also damaging to developing nations, with African countries losing 2% of national income to tax-dodging by businesses.

    The G20 became an important platform for global policy discussions in 2008 when it was effectively re-booted to co-ordinate a global response – involving developing as well as the developed G7 nations – to fighting the financial crisis.

    The meeting takes place as the leading economies of the eurozone and the US show signs of increasing growth.

    That in itself though means that policymakers, particularly in the US, are planning to edge away from the lax monetary policies brought into alleviate the effects of the credit crunch.

    Some observers are concerned that investors are not ready to deal with an end to easy money and rock bottom interest rates, and this is also lined up as a key topic for discussion.

    Growth in developing economies has slowed sharply and many countries’ currencies have lost value against the US dollar, which has strengthened in anticipation of firmer interest rates.

    However, crisis-ridden Syria is the most immediate global concern to many.

    The two most important nations – the host country, Russia and the US – disagree deeply over how to respond, and comments on the situation in and around that country are likely to attract the most attention.

    The issue of gay rights is another non-economic subject on which Russia and the US hold opposing views, and that issue is also expected to be raised on the sidelines of the meeting with any comments expected to be closely scrutinised.

    wirestory

  • Gabon Investigation Unmasks 3,000 Fake Govt Employees

    Gabon Investigation Unmasks 3,000 Fake Govt Employees

    {{A corruption investigation in Gabon has revealed the existence of about 3,000 fake civil servants who receive monthly government salaries despite holding no official positions, officials said.}}

    The tiny, oil-rich Central African nation’s bloated civil service employs about 70,000 workers and serves a population of 1.5 million.

    “The beneficiaries regularly received monthly salaries despite not belonging to any ministry,” State Prosecutor Sidonie Flore Ouwe said on Wednesday.

    “We have already seized some of them with counterfeit diplomas and fake assignments,” she said, adding that those involved in the scam would be prosecuted.

    Some suspects have been arrested, Ouwe added.

    “This mafia-like network has branches in higher education establishments and in some administrations,” said Maurice Ekogha, an advisor at Gabon’s Budget Ministry.

    The government had estimated that there were up to 10,000 fraudulent state employees, which cost Gabon about 25 billion CFA francs ($50.30 million) in salaries every year.

    In 2009, it launched an overhaul of the civil service and fired 800 employees. Another 2,500 were questioned on suspicion of illegally receiving multiple government salaries.

    Although its oil resources and small population give it one of Africa’s highest per capita income levels, wealth in Gabon is unevenly distributed. ($1 = 497.0310 CFA francs).

    reuters

  • Brazil’s President wants U.S. apology for NSA Spying

    Brazil’s President wants U.S. apology for NSA Spying

    {{Furious about a report that the U.S. government spied on her private communications, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff may cancel a planned White House visit and downgrade commercial ties unless she receives a public apology, a senior Brazilian official said on Wednesday.}}

    A Brazilian news program reported on Sunday that the U.S. National Security Agency spied on emails, phone calls and text messages of Rousseff and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. The report by Globo TV was based on documents leaked by fugitive former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

    Rousseff is due to make a formal state visit to Washington next month to meet U.S. President Barack Obama and discuss a possible $4 billion jet-fighter deal, cooperation on oil and biofuels technology, as well as other commercial agreements.

    The visit, which is the only such invitation extended by Obama this year, was meant to highlight a recent improvement in relations between the two biggest economies in the Americas, as well as Brazil’s emergence over the past decade as a vibrant economy and regional power.

    But the official, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the episode, said Rousseff feels “patronized” by the U.S. response so far to the Globo report. She is prepared to cancel the visit as well as take punitive action, including ruling out the purchase of F-18 Super Hornet fighters from Chicago-based Boeing Co, the official said.

    “She is completely furious,” the official said.

    “This is a major, major crisis …. There needs to be an apology. It needs to be public. Without that, it’s basically impossible for her to go to Washington in October,” the official said.

    Obama and Rousseff are scheduled to attend a Group of 20 meeting in St. Petersburg, Russiathis week. However, as of Wednesday afternoon, the two leaders had no bilateral meeting scheduled, the official said.

    Rousseff is a moderate leftist but comes from a party with roots in trade unions and a historic mistrust of the United States.

    Local analysts have said it would be politically difficult for her to participate in the pomp of a state visit, which includes a black-tie dinner at the White House, so soon after allegations that Washington was spying on her.

    On Monday, Rousseff’s foreign minister demanded a written response to the Globo report from the U.S. government by the end of this week. A foreign ministry official told Reuters there had been no response by Wednesday afternoon.

    Communications Minister Paulo Bernardo, one of Rousseff’s most trusted aides, told reporters late on Tuesday that the spying was “more serious than it seemed upon first impressions,” which may help explain why Brazil is now seeking an apology in addition to the written explanation.

    {reuters}

  • Nigeria’s Dangote signs $3.3 bln loan from banks for refinery

    Nigeria’s Dangote signs $3.3 bln loan from banks for refinery

    {{Nigeria’s Dangote Industries clinched a $3.3 billion syndicated loan from banks on Wednesday for a 400,000 barrel-per-day oil refinery and petrochemical plant, saying the project would cut African reliance on international markets.}}

    Standard Chartered and Nigeria’s Guaranty Trust Bank led the loan deal, which also involved two South African and eight Nigerian banks.

    Dangote Group, the umbrella company of Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote, has said it is seeking a further $2.25 billion from development funds for the $9 billion project, into which it would put $3.5 billion of its own equity, and which will also produce fertilisers.

    “As a result, several African nations will be less reliant on importing fuel and fertiliser from foreign markets, reducing the negative impact of negotiating terms within increasingly turbulent international markets,” Aliko Dangote said at the signing ceremony in Nigeria’s capital Abuja.

    Nigeria imports 80 percent of fuel needs and the lack of refining capacity is a major brake on Africa’s second biggest economy.

    The company expects the refinery to be completed around 2016.

    A statement issued at the event said the plant will produce 2.8 million tonnes of urea for fertilising crops and polypropylene, used to make plastics and synthetic fabrics.

    The Dangote Group has interests ranging from cement to basic food processing to oil and gas.

    The statement said stronger profit margins at Dangote Cement , which makes up nearly a third of the stock exchange, meant it could afford to foray into such projects.

    “The project will significantly boost Nigeria’s economic productivity and create valuable jobs,” the head of Standard Chartered’s Nigeria branch Bola Adesola said.

    Nigeria now has the capacity to produce some 445,000 barrels per day among four refineries, but they operate well below that level owing to decades of mismanagement and corruption.

    A boost to its refining capacity would be a blow to European refiners and oil traders, which make huge profits bringing gasoline into the country.

    Other banks involved in the loan were South Africa’s Standard Bank and FirstRand, and Nigerian lenders Access Bank, Zenith Bank, Ecobank Nigeria Limited, Fidelity Bank, First Bank, Diamond Bank, UBA and First City Monument Bank.

    “I expect over the next year or two we will see other investors coming into the private refining sector,” Oil Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke said at an economic summit in Abuja, where the signing took place.

    wirestory

  • US Senate Approves Use of Military Force in Syria

    US Senate Approves Use of Military Force in Syria

    {{A divided U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday approved a resolution authorizing the use of military force in Syria by a vote of 10-7, with one senator merely voting “present.”}}

    The panel’s action clears the way for a vote on the resolution in the full Democratic-controlled Senate, likely next week. The Republican-led House of Representatives must also pass a version of the measure before it can be sent to President Barack Obama for his signature.

    Obama is asking Congress to back his call for limited U.S. strikes on Syria to punish President Bashar al-Assad for his suspected use of chemical weapons against civilians.

    Before approving the measure, the senators voted for amendments to more clearly define the military activity being authorized. The measure approved by the panel is narrower than a proposed version that Obama sent to Congress for its approval.

    The vote was not along party lines. Two Democrats, Tom Udall and Chris Murphy, joined Republicans Marco Rubio, John Barrasso, James Risch, Ron Johnson and Rand Paul in voting against the measure.

    Udall said he was “horrified” by Assad’s attacks on his own people, but said he did not want the United States becoming embroiled in Syria’s war.

    “I’m voting ‘no’ because this policy moves the United States toward greater involvement in the Syria civil war,” he said after the vote.

    Three Republicans – Bob Corker, the top Republican on the panel, as well as John McCain and Jeff Flake – voted “yes” along with seven Democrats – panel chairman Robert Menendez, Barbara Boxer, Ben Cardin, Jeanne Shaheen, Chris Coons, Dick Durbin and Tim Kaine.

    Senator Edward Markey, a Democrat, voted “present.”

    reuters