{{The M23 rebel group in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has said it will stop fighting, following days of clashes with UN-backed forces.}}
M23 official Museveni Sendugo told media its forces had already pulled back 5km (three miles) from the frontline.
Rebel leader Bertrand Bisimwa said the pull-back would allow an independent investigation into how shells fell over the border in Rwanda on Thursday.
The Congolese army denies Rwandan accusations it fired the shells.
DR Congo and the UN accuse Rwanda of backing the M23, a charge it denies.
Their troops have been pounding rebel positions on the Congolese side of the border with Rwanda near the city of Goma since last week.
As tension escalated on Thursday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appealed to Rwanda’s president for restraint.
Rwanda’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN in New York, Olivier Nduhungirehe, told media, “a red line was crossed” by DR Congo on Thursday when he said a Rwandan woman was killed in cross-border shelling.
The M23 rebels, he said, were an “internal problem” within DR Congo, and the Congolese government “should not drag Rwanda” into the dispute.
Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo on Friday tweeted: “Rwandan troops are not in DRC (yet), when they are, you will know.”
Sierra Leone police on Thursday raided the offices of the main opposition party in the northern town of Makeni.
According to reports, officers from the Criminal Investigations Department were acting on ‘intelligence’ information, which alleged that arms and ammunitions had been kept in Sierra Leone Peoples Party’s (SLPP) premises.
The army offices allegedly planned the foiled mutiny in the town, which is the head quarter of the northern region and also the home of President Ernest Bai Koroma.
Reports on Friday said the detained soldiers were recently transferred to the CID headquarters for further investigations.
The men who raided the opposition offices alleged that there was an “illegal gathering” by men in military uniform on August 15 in the same premises.
This allegedly took place on the same day SLPP supporters were supposed to be travelling to the southern city of Bo for their party`s convention.
Truckloads of police officers barricaded the area and imposed a temporary curfew during the operation.
This comes a few days after the controversial detention of the mayor of Bo, Harold Tucker.
He was briefly detained on suspicion of involvement in a “coup plot”.
Opposition supporters are now hinting at compensation demands for the “national and international embarrassment” the incident has caused them.
{{A court in Ghana on Friday rejected a request to extradite a senior ally of former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo, saying the warrant issued by Ivorian authorities was politically motivated.}}
Justin Kone Katinan, Gbagbo’s former budget minister, was arrested in August last year in Accra on an international warrant accusing him of masterminding the looting of banks in the Ivorian capital.
Ivory Coast’s decision to pursue Gbagbo’s supporters for various crimes during the violent political standoff after the disputed 2010 election, has angered the opposition and made reconciliation efforts with the Gbagbo camp difficult.
Gbagbo is awaiting trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague on charges of crimes against humanity committed during a brief 2011 civil war.
After several months of hearings, the court dismissed the robbery charges on Friday saying evidence provided by authorities was not credible.
“Overall, I hold the view that the alleged crimes cannot be devoid of political persecution and I therefore discharge and acquit the accused,” Magistrate Aboagye Tanoh said.
The Ivorian government was not immediately available to comment and Ghanaian prosecutors who led the case for Ivory Coast, said they were yet to decide whether to appeal against the decision.
Relations between the two top cocoa producing neighbors soured after several senior Gbagbo supporters sought refuge in Ghana after the Ivorian civil war ended in 2011.
Ivory Coast said Ghana was not doing enough to control pro-Gbagbo allies who were using the country as a base to regroup and carry out plots to destabilize President Alassane Ouattara’s new government, a charge Ghana denied.
In February, one of Gbagbo’s most vocal allies and leader of his youth movement Charles Ble Goude, was arrested and handed over to Ivory Coast.
However, Friday’s court decision is the second legal victory for Katinan, who has sought political refuge in Ghana.
Last October, another court in Accra dismissed murder charges brought by Ivorian authorities against Katinan for the killing of two men during the war in 2011.
Katinan’s lawyer said the ruling reinforced their view that Katinan was being persecuted for political reasons.
“We are happy for him now because this ruling would enable him enjoy his liberties as an international refugee, rather than a wanted criminal,” lead lawyer Patrick Sogbodjo told media.
{{Former South African President Nelson Mandela, who has been receiving medical treatment for three months for a lung ailment, is still in hospital in Pretoria in a critical but stable condition, the government said on Saturday.}}
The presidency said reports by some international media that the revered anti-apartheid leader, who is 95, had been discharged and returned to his home were “incorrect”.
“Madiba is still in hospital in Pretoria, and remains in a critical but stable condition,” the presidency said in a statement, using the traditional clan name by which Mandela is affectionately known in South Africa.
“At times his condition becomes unstable, but he responds to medical interventions,” it added, repeating a medical bulletin it had issued a week ago which had said the ailing Nobel Peace Prize laureate was showing “great resilience”.
News of Mandela’s hospitalization in June with a recurring lung infection attracted worldwide attention for the revered statesman, who is admired as a symbol of struggle against injustice and of racial reconciliation.
Mandela celebrated his 95th birthday in hospital on July 18, showered with tributes from around the world.
He spent nearly three decades in prison before being released and being elected South Africa’s first black president in multi-racial elections in 1994 that ended apartheid rule.
Mandela’s 27 years in prison under white minority rule included 18 years on the notorious Robben Island penal colony. His lung infection dates back to this time, when he and other prisoners were forced to work in a limestone quarry.
{{The first Japanese astronaut to live aboard the International Space Station is preparing for a return flight, this time to serve as commander, officials said on Wednesday.}}
Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, is due to leave in November with a pair of veteran astronauts from the United States and Russia.
Wakata, 50, is expected to take command of the orbital research outpost in March, marking the first time a Japanese astronaut will lead a human space mission.
“It means a lot to Japan to have its own representative to command the International Space Station,” Wakata told a news conference broadcast from the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“It’s a big milestone for Japan … to have this experience,” he said.
In 2009, Wakata became the first astronaut from Japan to live aboard the $100 billion research laboratory that flies about 250 miles above Earth.
Japan, one of 15 nations participating in the project, provided the station’s largest and most elaborate laboratory, named Kibo, as well as cargo resupply ships.
Wakata, who was part of two missions on NASA’s now-retired space shuttles, is training for his fourth flight along with NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin, both 53.
Mastracchio, a veteran of three shuttle missions and one of NASA’s most experienced spacewalkers, will be making his first long-duration flight. Tyurin will be living aboard the station for a third time.
Command of the station typically rotates between a U.S. astronaut and Russian cosmonaut. In 2009, Belgium astronaut Frank De Winne became the first European to command the station. Canada’s first commander, Chris Hadfield, was in charge from March until May.
Wakata, a native of Saitama, Japan, holds a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering, a master’s in applied mechanics and a doctorate in aerospace engineering from Kyushu University. Before being selected as an astronaut in 1992, he worked as an aircraft structural engineer for Japan Airlines.
Wakata’s first two spaceflights, in January 1996 and October 2000, were aboard NASA space shuttles. He was Japan’s first live-aboard space station resident from March to July 2009. Upon returning to the station in November, Wakata will serve as a flight engineer before taking over command in March.
The Pentagon is taking a harder look at proposed foreign acquisitions of U.S. companies given the increasing financial complexity of such deals, but continues to encourage foreign investment, a top U.S. defense official said this week.
“If you have a deal that is in the interest of the U.S. economy and does not impinge on national security, we will approve it,” said Brett Lambert, the Pentagon’s representative on an interagency committee that reviews foreign takeovers.
Lambert, who retires Saturday after four years as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for manufacturing and industrial policy, bristled at the suggestion that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) was making it difficult for foreign investors to acquire U.S. companies.
“It’s completely the opposite,” Lambert told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.
He said foreign interest in U.S. companies remained high, given the continued importance of the U.S. defense market despite recent budget cuts, and said he expected the number of foreign transactions reviewed by CFIUS to double in coming years from more than 100 last year.
“You have foreign capital that wants to come in, which we want, which we encourage. The question is how do we allow that foreign capital to come in while protecting national security,” Lambert said.
He acknowledged that the Defense Department and other agencies involved in the CFIUS review process were often taking longer to review transactions but said that was largely because of the increasing complexity of the transactions.
Lambert said high-profile cases that were rejected tended to generate headlines but the majority of cases were approved, including some with conditions.
He declined to discuss specific CFIUS cases under review, including a $4.7 billion bid by a Chinese company to take over Virginia-based pork producer Smithfield Foods Inc.
The most recent CFIUS report to Congress showed that the committee reviewed 111 transactions in 2011, of which 40 were investigated under a longer 45-day review. Six of the notices were withdrawn. Data for 2012 has not been released.
U.S. lawmakers have raised concerns about various takeover bids by Chinese firms in recent years, but CFIUS approved plans by China’s largest auto parts maker in January to buy car battery maker A123 Systems Inc.
In February, CFIUS approved the $15.1 billion purchase of Canadian oil firm Nexen Inc by China’s state-owned CNOOC Ltd., although it imposed conditions limiting its operation of wells in the Gulf of Mexico.
CFIUS rejected a bid by another Chinese-owned company, Ralls Corp, to build wind farms near a U.S. military site in Oregon, but the company has challenged that decision in court.
Lambert said the Nexen case showed U.S. authorities were willing to work with companies seeking to invest in the United States as long as they showed a willingness to compromise. “We can come to accommodations. We will work with the companies but they have to respect our national security concerns.”
Lambert said foreign companies seeking to invest in the United States should hire lawyers who had already shepherded other deals through the process.
He said government officials also welcomed contact with companies involved in mergers or acquisitions, noting that senior officials in the proposed merger of Europe’s EADS, the parent of Airbus, and Britain’s BAE Systems had been forthcoming about their plans.
Lambert said meeting those officials helped him keep Pentagon leaders informed about the merger, which ultimately collapsed.
Lambert co-founded a national security consultancy, DFI International, in 1989 and then sold it in 2007 to Detica, a London-based firm that was subsequently taken over by BAE Systems. He said he reviewed the CFIUS files on the DFI sale after coming to the Pentagon to understand the process better from the government’s point of view.
In Britain, Two Tory ministers who missed the crucial vote on Syria were in a room just yards from the Commons where they did not hear the division bell, it has emerged.
Justine Greening, the development secretary, and Mark Simmonds, the Africa minister, were reportedly in a small, soundproofed meeting room called the Reasons Room directly behind the Speaker’s chair, near where the doorkeepers shout “division”, discussing the situation in Rwanda. The House of Commons authorities told PA that the room is “solidly constructed” with a “well-fitting door”.
Both ministers were present for a vote on the Labour amendment, but missed the controversial coalition motion directly afterwards, claiming they did not hear a bell calling them back to the chamber.
{Justine Greening and Mark Simmonds said they did not hear the bell calling them back to the chamber for the coalition motion. }
{{U.N. experts left Syria on Saturday after investigating a poison gas attack that killed hundreds of civilians, and the United States said it was planning a limited response to punish Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad for the “brutal and flagrant” assault.}}
U.S. President Barack Obama said the United States, which has five cruise-missile equipped destroyers in the region, was in the planning process for a “limited, narrow” military action that would not involve boots on the ground or be open-ended.
In a sign the United States may be preparing to act, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke on Friday to the foreign ministers of key European and Gulf allies, as well as the head of the Arab League, a senior State Department official said.
A Reuters witness said the team of U.N. experts arrived at Beirut International Airport on Saturday, after crossing the land border from Syria into Lebanon by foot earlier in the day.
The 20-member team, including experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, have been into the rebel-held areas in the Ghouta suburb of Damascus three times, taking blood and tissue samples from victims. They also took samples of soil, clothing and rocket fragments.
They will be sent to laboratories in Europe, most likely Sweden or Finland, for analysis. The U.N. experts have already been testing for sarin, mustard gas or other toxic agents.
The analysis should establish if a chemical attack took place but not who was responsible for the August 21 attack on a Damascus suburb.
Final results might not be ready for two weeks, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told Security Council members, according to diplomats.
The United States released its own unclassified intelligence report on the attack, which Kerry said killed 1,429 Syrian civilians and was clearly the work of Assad’s forces.
“If we choose to live in the world where a thug and a murderer like Bashar al-Assad can gas thousands of his own people with impunity” it would set a bad example for others, such as Iran, Hezbollah and North Korea, Kerry said.
Syria blames rebels fighting to topple Assad for the attack. Its main ally Russia, which has repeatedly used its U.N. Security Council veto to block forceful action against the Syrian leader, says any attack on Syria would be illegal and only inflame the civil war there.
Syria’s Foreign Ministry repeated its denial that the government had used chemical weapons against its own people. Kerry’s accusations were a “desperate attempt” to justify a military strike. “What he said was lies,” the ministry said.
{{Countries in the WHO African Region on August 31, celebrate the African Traditional Medicine Day under the theme “Traditional medicine research and development”. }}
This theme draws attention to the urgent need for research and development (R&D) to enhance the role of traditional medicine in health-care delivery.
Current WHO estimates show that for 80% of the people in the developing world, traditional medicine is the main—and sometimes the only—source of health care. In our Region, traditional medicine has strong historical and cultural origins.
It is regrettable that traditional medicine R&D has not been given adequate funding.
The celebration of the African Traditional Medicine Day 2013 provides an excellent opportunity for stakeholders, including governments, researchers, traditional and conventional health practitioners, nongovernmental organizations, communities, and development partners, to share information and experiences on traditional medicine R&D, plan for collaborative projects and mobilize resources for generation of knowledge and new traditional medicine products.
The history of traditional medicine in Africa dates back thousands of years before the advent of modern medicine. Yet, within a comparatively short period modern medicine has developed adequate methods for efficacy proving, quality assurance, safety testing and standardization of manufacturing practices for its products.
In our Region, some countries have made commendable progress in traditional medicine R&D.
It gives me great pleasure to report that in 2012 the number of traditional medicine research institutions had increased to 28 from 18 in 2000; 13 countries were using research results to authorize marketing of some traditional medicine products for treatment of malaria, diabetes and sickle-cell disease; and 8 countries had traditional medicine products in their national essential medicines list compared with only 1 country in 2000.
As we commemorate the African Traditional Medicine Day 2013, I appeal to governments in the African Region to increase investment in traditional medicine R&D. This will yield positive returns for the Region, where traditional medicine products have high acceptance.
Governments need to include traditional medicine R&D in their national health research agenda and create budget lines to support the implementation of the traditional medicine strategy adopted by the WHO Regional Committee for Africa.
On its part, WHO will continue to support countries in their endeavour to make traditional medicine a viable component of their national health systems.
I call for stronger partnerships involving governments, donors, the private sector and relevant stakeholders to take forward this important undertaking of traditional medicine R&D.
{{The M23 rebels in DRCongo have this morning announced that their fighters are engaged in a fierce battle against a coalition of Congolese forces, UN intervention brigade and FDLR rebels.
According to a statement released by the M23 rebels, the allout attack on their positions is seen as a rapture of the Kampala peace talks and an invitation of an allout war.}}
Below is a full statement from the M23 rebels
{The leadership of the Movement of March 23 informs the national and international opinion that the Congolese Government has just decided to launch, this morning, a large-scale offensive on all the positions of the Movement of 23 Mars to the North of Goma.
Several FARDC and FDLR infantry brigades alongside U.N. special intervention brigade troops , beefed up by dozens of Tanks and helicopter gunships, troops of the Brigade of Intervention including, have simultaneously been fielded. They are right now exchanging fires with our troops on the KANYARUCINYA-KIBATI and MUTAHO axis.
Our Movement reckons that the option of the violence made by the Government of Kinshasa for the resolution of this conflict is a clear decision to rupture the Kampala peace talks from which all the Congolese delegates were ordered to pull out some time back.
The Movement of March 23, which unreservedly chose the path of dialogue, is now regrettably compelled to defend itself against the government, FDLR and U.N. coalition. We call on the entire Congolese national community and the international community to witness the consequences of this unjust and useless war for which the Congolese Government along with its partners bear total responsibility.
Our Movement regrets that the strategy we adopted consisting in not drawing advantage from the losses we inflicted upon the enemy, and to content ourselves only with the defense of our positions, as determined by the Declaration of the ICGLR Heads of State on November 24th, 2013, was reckoned as a sign of weakness. This has regrettably induced the Government’s violence option.
We invite all the populations living within the confines of the area protected by the Movement of March 23 to remain at peace. Our forces have been given strict orders to defend our territory and ensure the protection of all the inhabitants and their property.
