Author: Publisher

Nepal to Deploy Security on Mount Everest

Nepal has decided to deploy a team of security officials at Everest base camp, in a bid to avert brawls between climbers, officials say.

Last April a fight erupted between European mountaineers and a group of Sherpas at 7,470m (24,508ft).

Although that dispute was eventually resolved, officials say Everest’s slopes are becoming more crowded.

An office staffed by army and police will open in April at Everest base camp as the climbing season gets under way.

Nepali tourism ministry official Dipendra Poudel told BBC Nepali’s Surendra Phuyal that the security team of nine would comprise three officers each from Nepal’s army, police and armed police force.

He added that they would be assisted by officials from the tourism ministry.

Our correspondent says that last year’s brawl between a group of European climbers and Sherpas raised concerns about the safety and security of climbers.

The conflict – which made headlines around the world – was allegedly over the fixing of ropes on the slope.

Officials say the new office will also be able to help climbers in distress, clean the mountain and enforce climbing rules, the Associated Press news agency reports.

More than 3,000 people have scaled Mount Everest since it was first conquered by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953.

Straddling Nepal and China, the world’s highest mountain has an altitude of 8,848m (29,029ft).

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February 21, 2014
Ukraine Leader Agrees Early Election

{{Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has agreed to hold a presidential election before the end of the year, as part of a deal to end the crisis.}}

He said he had also agreed to a national unity government, and to make constitutional changes reducing the power of the president.

The compromise came after hours of talks with the opposition leaders.

The opposition has not spoken about the deal and it remains unclear whether protesters will back it.

The German and Polish foreign ministers, who mediated the talks in Kiev, are now on their way to talk to protesters in Kiev’s Independence Square.

“Delicate moment over agreement on the settlement of the crisis. All sides need to remember that compromise means getting less than 100%,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said.

Ukrainian broadcaster ICTV said it had seen a copy of the deal, and it had been signed by all parties.

According to the report, the deal contains:

The 2004 constitution will be restored within 48 hours, and a national unity government will be formed within 10 days

Constitutional reform balancing the powers of president, government and parliament will be started immediately and completed by September

A presidential election will be held after the new constitution is adopted but no later than December 2014

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February 21, 2014
Mugabe Turns 90

{{President Robert Mugabe is turning 90 and a weekend of celebrations is planned in Zimbabwe to celebrate the president’s long life. }}

Born in the village of Kutama, south-west of the capital, he was educated by Jesuits and went on to become a teacher before joining the liberation struggle, spending 11 years in prison and becoming Zimbabwe’s first leader in 1980.

{{FITNESS}}

“I fall sick if I don’t exercise,” Mr Mugabe said three years ago. Needing little sleep, he gets up between 04:00 and 05:00 every morning to exercise while, according to a close source, listening to the BBC World Service.

But he’s not fond of the gym machines his wife has installed in state house and prefers to follow his own regime: “In prison we had no equipment, we just had ourselves and that’s what I still do today.”

Another secret to his long life may be that he prefers his sadza – Zimbabwe’s staple food – to be made the traditional way from unrefined grains, which is much healthier than the ubiquitous white version of the maize dish. Plus he doesn’t smoke, although is known to have some wine with dinner.

{{RESURRECTION}}

Despite constant rumours of ill health – a Wikileaks cable suggested he has prostate cancer – his health and political career appear robust. Cataracts are his only confirmed ailment – he had an operation to remove one this week.

“I have died many times – that’s where I have beaten Christ. Christ died once and resurrected once,” he said when he turned 88.

{{MUSIC}}

The late Zimbabwean politician Edgar Tekere told the BBC’s Brian Hungwe that when organising the independence celebrations in 1980, Mr Mugabe wasn’t keen on having Bob Marley perform.

The prime-minister-in-waiting is said to have stated that British pop star Cliff Richard was much more to his taste. Journalist Wilf Mbanga, who knew Mr Mugabe well in the 1970 and 1980s, said country singer Jim Reeves was another favourite of the president.

Others have speculated that Mr Mugabe would have wanted the more clean-cut Jamaican singer Jimmy Cliff to perform at the festivities on 18 April 1980.

His dislike of Rastafarians is well-known – he once warned young Zimbabweans: “In Jamaica, they have freedom to smoke marijuana, the men are always drunk. Men want to sing and do not go to colleges, some then dreadlock their hair. Let’s not go there.”

{{POLITICS}}

Mr Mugabe’s political awakening happened while in Ghana, where he was a teacher and met his first wife, Sally Hayfron. He arrived a year after pan-Africanist politician Kwame Nkrumah had led the Gold Coast to independence in 1957, the first sub-Saharan country to throw off the shackles of colonial rule.

He said he was inspired by their liberation encapsulated in Ghana’s Highlife music.

On his return home two years later, he began politicising people. “I started telling people… how free the Ghanaians were, and what the feeling was in a newly independent African state,” he said in an interview in 2003.

“I told them also about Nkrumah’s own political ideology and his commitment that unless every inch of African soil was free, then Ghana would not regard itself as free.”

{{SCHOOL}}

In total Mr Mugabe has seven degrees, first graduating from South Africa’s University of Fort Hare, where Nelson Mandela studied, with a bachelor of arts.

He did his other degrees by distance learning – two of them while he was in prison – in administration, education, science and law.

He has also boasted of leading a party with “degrees in violence” – in a warning to trade unionists before strikes in 1998.

A violent crackdown on opposition activists amid the political turmoil of the last decade has led several universities to revoke honorary degrees awarded to him for his achievements.

Queen Elizabeth II also stripped him of his honorary knighthood as “a mark of revulsion at the abuse of human rights and abject disregard for the democratic process in Zimbabwe”.

{{FAMILY}}

He has three children with his second wife Grace Marufu, his former secretary. The couple’s third child, Chatunga, was born in 1997, a year after they were married.

His first son, Nhamodzenyika, died of malaria at the age of three in Ghana. Mr Mugabe, then a prisoner of the Rhodesian government, was refused permission to join his wife Sally in Accra for the funeral.

February 21, 2014
Anne Frank’s Diary Vandalised in Japan Libraries

More than 100 copies of Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl have been vandalised in public libraries in Japan’s capital Tokyo, officials say.

Pages have been ripped from at least 265 copies of the diary and other related books, they added.

It is not clear who is behind the vandalism. A US Jewish rights group has called for a police investigation.

Anne Frank’s diary was written during World War Two, while the teenager hid from the Nazis in occupied Amsterdam.

The book made her a symbol of the suffering of Jews during the war.

The head of Japan’s library council, Satomi Murata, told media that five of Tokyo’s wards had reported the vandalism so far.

“We don’t know why this happened or who did it.”

Meanwhile, Toshihiro Obayashi, a library official in West Tokyo’s Suginsami area, said: “Each and every book which comes up under the index of Anne Frank has been damaged at our library.”

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a global Jewish human rights organisation, said it was shocked and concerned by the incidents, and called for the authorities to investigate.

“The geographic scope of these incidents strongly suggest an organised effort to denigrate the memory of the most famous of the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis in the World War Two Holocaust,” associate dean Abraham Cooper said.

“Anne Frank is studied and revered by millions of Japanese,” Mr Cooper added. “Only people imbued with bigotry and hatred would seek to destroy Anne’s historic words of courage, hope and love in the face of impending doom.”

The book was added to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s Memory of the World Register in 2009.

BBC

February 21, 2014
Somali Presidential Palace Bombed

{{Militants in Mogadishu have attacked Somali presidential palace, police said Friday without disclosing any casualities.}}

During the attack, Police says, the militants were wearing suicide vests and carrying guns and grenades.

A Police officer told local media that militants began the attack with a car bomb, and then tried to fight their way into the presidential palace as guards returned fire.

Another bomb blast was heard inside the presidential palace.

The heavily guarded presidential palace is the residence of the country’s president, prime minister and speaker of parliament.

February 21, 2014
President Obama to Meet Dalai Lama

{{US President Barack Obama will meet exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Friday, at the White House , US officials say.}}

China has urged the US to cancel the meeting, saying it will “seriously impair China-US relations”.

China describes the Dalai Lama as a separatist, while the spiritual leader says he only advocates greater autonomy for Tibet, not independence.

Officials say the US does not support Tibetan independence but is concerned about human rights in China.

The two men last met in 2011, in talks that angered China.

Tibet is governed as an autonomous region in China.

China has been widely accused of repressing political and religious freedoms in Tibet. Beijing rejects this and says economic development has improved Tibetans’ lives.

{{‘Respected leader’}}

Mr Obama will host the Dalai Lama in a private meeting in the White House Map Room on Friday morning, US officials said.

Obama traditionally hosts foreign leaders in the Oval Office, so the decision to use the Map Room is viewed as an attempt to give the visit a lower-profile.

Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said Mr Obama would meet the Dalai Lama “in his capacity as an internationally respected religious and cultural leader”.

“We do not support Tibetan independence,” she said, adding that the US “strongly supports human rights and religious freedom in China.

“We are concerned about continuing tensions and the deteriorating human rights situation in Tibetan areas of China.”

Meanwhile, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said that Beijing was “firmly opposed” to the meeting.

“The US leader’s meeting with the Dalai is a gross interference in China’s internal affairs, a severe violation of codes of international relations and will seriously impair China-US relations,” she said in a statement.

China had “already lodged solemn representations” with the US on the matter, she added.

In recent years more than 110 ethnic Tibetans – mostly young monks and nuns living in areas outside Tibet – have set themselves on fire in apparent protest against Beijing’s rule.

BBC

February 21, 2014
Libyan Militias Extend Deadline for Parliament to Quit

{{Libya’s powerful militias have extended to Friday a deadline demanding that the interim parliament step down or face arrest. The move comes as Libyans prepare to vote on Thursday for a panel that will draft a new constitution.}}

Militias made up of former rebels from the western town of Zintan had given the General National Congress (GNC), the country’s highest political authority, a late Tuesday deadline to quit, threatening to seize any lawmakers who failed to comply.

But Prime Minister Ali Zeidan said that a “compromise” had been reached with the militias, extending the deadline by 72 hours to Friday. He said that “wisdom had prevailed” after discussions with representatives from the militias, the assembly and the United Nations.

One rebel commander, Jamal Habil, accused the parliament of “seizing power” and said it was trying to extend its mandate for as long as possible. The mandate of the parliament was to have expired this month but a motion was passed to extend it by another year.

Many Libyans are angry that parliament, widely viewed as a failed institution, should hold on to power until then.

Yielding to pressure in the wake of street protests, the GNC agreed on Sunday to hold early polls to elect new transitional authorities rather than wait for the constitution to be finalised.

The speaker of the GNC, Nuri Abu Sahmein, had earlier rejected the militias’ ultimatum, calling it “a coup d’état” and saying the army had been ordered to act against the militias.

Zeidan himself was kidnapped and briefly held by armed militiamen last year.

{{Constitutional panel}}

Thursday’s vote marks the latest milestone in the chaotic transition following the 2011 overthrow of Moammar Gaddafi, but it has so far generated little enthusiasm among Libyans who are frustrated by the government’s inability to impose order on the rebel groups that helped depose him.

In the more than two years since Gaddafi was captured and killed, former rebel brigades – many of them armed with heavy weapons looted from Gaddafi’s arsenals – have carved out fiefdoms across the sprawling country, with many refusing government demands to disarm or to join the armed forces.

The ultimatum from the Zintan militias was also criticised by several other rebel groups, political parties and civil society groups, which voiced support for the elected government assembly.

The militias issuing Tuesday’s ultimatum included the Al-Qaaqaa and Al-Sawaiq brigades, two of the most powerful and well-disciplined. They are both nominally loyal to the regular Libyan army.

The newly elected constitutional panel will be in charge of deciding key issues such as establishing Libya’s new system of government, outlining the status of ethnic minorities and determining the role of Islamic sharia law.

But only 1.1 million people have registered to vote, compared with more than 2.7 million who registered for the 2012 vote on the interim parliament, from an electoral roll of 3.4 million.

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February 21, 2014
UN Chief Urges 3,000 More Troops for CAR

{{UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the international community Thursday to rapidly deploy another 3,000 troops and police to Central African Republic, where religious fighting has killed at least 2,000 people and displaced around one million.}}

Ban’s plea comes amid growing fears that the conflict in CAR could transform into an ethnic cleansing.

The European Union is already set to deploy 1,000 troops to join 6,000 African Union peacekeepers and almost 2,000 French soldiers, who have struggled to stop the fighting, which began after the mostly Muslim Seleka rebel group seized power a year ago in the majority Christian country.

“The security requirements far exceed the capability of the international troops now deployed,” Ban told the UN Security Council. “We need more.”

A further 3,000 troops and police would increase the international force in CAR to some 12,000.

Ban also proposed that all international forces in Central African Republic be brought under “a coordinated command,” with a priority placed on protecting civilians and ensuring the delivery of humanitarian aid.

He suggested that $38 million in logistical and financial aid be given to the African Union mission in CAR over six months, and that the government receive financial assistance so that it can bring back some of its essential public services, such as police and courts.

February 21, 2014
President Kagame’s Remarks at Northern Corridor Integration Projects Summit

{{I am pleased to participate in this 4th Summit of the Northern Corridor Projects and would like to thank President Museveni and the people of Uganda for once again hosting this important meeting. We should soon be doing the same with the central corridor.}}

Let me also express our solidarity with the people and government of South Sudan who are experiencing a difficult period in their country. We will continue to work together to support the return to peace, stability and development in South Sudan.

This 4th meeting is an important illustration of the commitment to the goals set last year here in Entebbe, to work together on initiatives needed to advance development in our region.

The progress made on current joint projects is encouraging. We have to maintain and even speed up the momentum, especially on core infrastructure for transport and electricity in order to complete the agreed projects for the benefit of the people of our countries.

Following the launch of the Single Customs Territory last October, the system is now fully operational with emerging challenges being resolved progressively.

In January this year, the use of Identity Cards as travel documents started. I was very pleased to use my national ID card to come here yesterday. I was granted only a six-month stay.

Next time, I will ask for more. The statistics indicate that these new services are already benefiting our populations. Thousands of our citizens have already travelled throughout the region using their national identities cards, facing less problems than before in their travels.

I am reliably informed that Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda will have a common pavilion at next month’s international tourism fair in Berlin. This is not only good business for our countries but a clear indication of our genuine commitment to the broader integration agenda.
Today we will see the signing of several pacts. All of them are significant milestones in our collective development and in strengthening our cooperation to safeguard regional stability.

We welcome and look forward to continue broadening accession to these pacts and participation in their implementation.

In conclusion, I wish to thank the teams that continue to work diligently to ensure the realisation of our agreed integration projects. The citizens of our countries are the ultimate judges of our work and I am confident that they fully benefit from the fruits of these initiatives.

Thank you for your attention.

February 21, 2014
USAID Project Showcases the Next Generation of Rwandan Capacity Builders at HICD Exposition

{{The U.S. government, through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), hosted an exposition on the innovative Human and Institutional Capacity Development (HICD) method of performance improvement for local organizations and institutions. }}

Working in partnership with the National Capacity Building Secretariat (NCBS), the event brought together leaders of the private sector, members of the government of Rwanda, international donors, and almost 60 Rwandan consultants trained in the HICD methodology, who are members of the project’s Community of Practice.

USAID launched the event last evening at the Serena Hotel, featuring Minister of Public Service and Labor, Anastase Murekezi, as the keynote speaker. Individual presenters and civil society representatives spoke on successful examples of HICD being implemented in Rwanda at both the civil society and individual levels.

The Minister officially presented “Making Rwanda the Hub for Performance Improvement in Africa,” the USAID-developed directory of CVs and biographies of each of the HICD-specialist members of the Community of Practice.

The innovative HICD initiative is an evidence-based performance improvement model designed by USAID that seeks to improve service delivery and accountability in targeted institutions of the Government of Rwanda, leading civil society organizations (CSOs), and elite members of the public and private sectors.

“It’s exciting to see all of the consultants together, using the HICD model in practice, and eager to share their expertise to improve the work of organizations in Rwanda and throughout the continent” said Emily Krunic, Director of USAID’s Democracy and Governance Office.

“Building local expertise that organizations can access and use for years to come is what this project is all about.”

HICD/R currently partners with government and CSOs working in agriculture, health and civic engagement.

The project works with each of these organizations to develop detailed performance analyses, design solutions, and implement them, helping civil society and the GOR achieve their goals and better serve the Rwandan people.

The HICD project is a five-year initiative that aims to build the ability of government institutions and civil society to operate efficiently and in a way that is responsive to citizen needs and desires.

Over its life, the project will work with several public sector institutions, and civil society organizations to identify and address their specific performance gaps, and create evidence-based solutions, as well as host expositions like the one launched today to build and maintain the skill set of highly qualified Rwandan professionals to carry out this work once the project ends in 2017.

February 21, 2014