Mail and Guardian
DRC official arrested over radioactive waste
Eddy Isango Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo
10 November 2007 09:58
A government official in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) suspected of ordering up to 17 tonnes of radioactive waste dumped in a river in the south-east of the country has been arrested, authorities said on Friday.
Environment Minister Didace Pembe declined to identify the person who was arrested because investigations were ongoing. He said the waste belonged to a Chinese company called Magma-Lubumbashi, but that the company had not requested the waste be dumped in the Likasi River.
The mining minister for the DRC's Katanga province announced on a United Nations-backed radio station that 17 tonnes of "highly radioactive" minerals had been found in the river on Monday. He did not provide further details and could not be reached for comment.
Authorities have issued calls over local radio stations asking people to avoid using the river to drink or bathe, Pembe said.
The Likasi River runs through a town of the same name and is not far from the village of Shinkolobwe, which provided the uranium used by the United States in the atomic bombs it dropped on Japan at the end of World War II.
http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__africa/&articleid=324562
Doubts abound over Guinea leader's capabilities
Dakar, Senegal
10 November 2007 09:50
The enthusiasm that came with the storming to office of Guinea's latest prime minister has waned and there are doubts over his capability to lift the country out of misery, a global think tank said on Friday.
Lansana Kouyate, an ex-United Nations diplomat, was early this year named Prime Minister by ailing President Lansana Conte, who bowed to union demands after violent unrest and agreed to an independent head of government with broader powers than his predecessors.
But in its latest report, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) warns that Kouyate has to act fast to avoid losing credibility and prevent the country slipping back into the iron-fisted rule of Conte.
"Initial enthusiasm for Kouyate has been replaced by doubt over the capabilities and will of the new government to break with the Conte system and seriously tackle the daily economic difficulties," said Carolyn Norris, ICG chief in West Africa.
http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__africa/&articleid=324560
Masetlha 'had no political ambitions'
Pretoria, South Africa
10 November 2007 07:48
Former spy boss Billy Masetlha had no political ambitions and would have retired as National Intelligence Agency director general had he not been fired, the Hatfield Community Court heard on Friday.
Masetlha is charged with contravening the Intelligence Services Oversight Act by allegedly withholding information from Inspector General of Intelligence Zolile Ngcakani. He has denied guilt and is adamant that Ngcakani was furnished with all the information needed.
With the defence and state presenting their closing arguments to the court on Friday, Masetlha's attorney, Neil Tuchten, argued that a man of Masetlha's stature and high reputation would not lie.
This followed state prosecutor Matric Luphondo's submission that Masetlha's version of events was so improbable that it bordered on science fiction. He said Masetlha could not say he already gave enough information as it was not for him to decide which information was deemed necessary.
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=324540&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__national/
Masetlha accused of being inconsistent in testifying
Pretoria, South Africa
31 October 2007 06:12
Former spy boss Billy Masetlha was on Wednesday accused of not being consistent in testifying in the Hatfield Community Court.
Prosecutor Matric Luphondo said Masetlha gave different versions of when a report requested by Inspector General of Intelligence (IGI) Zolile Ngcakani was compiled.
Masetlha is charged with contravening the Intelligence Services Oversight Act by withholding evidence from Ngcakani.
Luphondo contended Masetlha testified earlier he could not explain when the report wanted by the IGI was created.
Testifying under cross-examination, the former spy boss said he had a good recollection of when the report was compiled, and that this happened on September 30 2005.
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=323649&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__national/
'All this, for one unarmed woman'
10 November 2007 08:37
Benazir Bhutto was going nowhere. A phalanx of riot police stood at the end of her leafy street, tapping their shields and manning a barbed-wire barricade. Armoured vehicles rolled in.
Officers even prowled the neighbours' gardens, just in case the opposition leader might vault her back wall. "All this, for one unarmed woman," said her spokesperson Sherry Rehman.
In nearby Rawalpindi, where Bhutto was due to hold a mass rally against President Pervez Musharraf's emergency rule, the clampdown was even greater. A city of five million people had virtually shut down. Police roamed the deserted streets on motorbikes, horses and by foot.
A straggle of Bhutto loyalists who ventured outside were chased and, in some cases, thrashed. The party said that 5 000 had already been arrested.
The handful that made it to Bhutto's suburban house in Islamabad, 24km away, were bundled away by plain-clothed intelligence officials. All resisted arrest, waving V-signs to the media as they were carted off. A few took it personally.
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=324549&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/
The pupil who declared war
10 November 2007 09:07
Waiting for their English lesson to start at 11.45am on Wednesday, Joni Aaltonen and Nurmi Sameli sat on a bench in a corridor at Jokela high school. Close friends and both 17, in their penultimate year at school, the boys chatted.
The school loudspeakers crackled. The voice of the head teacher, Helena Kalmi, sounded an unusual warning to the 500 pupils: get into your classrooms immediately, lock the doors and hide.
"We thought it was a joke. We didn't take it seriously. We ignored it," said Joni. "Then we saw him coming."
Pekka-Eric Auvinen, a student in the year above, came strolling along the corridor. The teenagers glanced at the familiar figure and carried on chatting.
"He walked towards us calmly and slowly. We didn't really pay him any attention. Then he stopped about 2m away from me and my friend. I looked up. He was watching us. He lifted his arm. He pointed the gun at me and started shooting. The dude just pointed it at me and fired."
Joni fled for his life through the corridors, making it to the staffroom, from where he and a teacher dashed out of the school to safety, away from a deranged teenager on a mission to write himself into European criminal history.
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=324554&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/
Call for cooperation between HIV, TB programmes
Cape Town, South Africa
10 November 2007 08:07
Lives are being lost in many countries through lack of cooperation between tuberculosis (TB) and HIV/Aids health programmes, a senior United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/Aids (UNAids) official said in Cape Town on Friday.
Dr Alasdair Reid, the HIV/TB adviser to the international body, was speaking at a media briefing held alongside a major conference on lung health in the city.
He said all people with TB should be offered an HIV test and the chance to obtain life-saving antiretrovirals. All people living with HIV should be screened for TB regularly and given access to Isoniazid, a basic antibiotic used to prevent TB.
"These lifesaving activities can be achieved with greater cooperation between TB and HIV programmes," he said. "They are cheap, simple and readily available in most countries. However a lack of meaningful partnerships between TB and HIV programmes in many countries means that lives continue to be lost unnecessarily."
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=324541&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__national/
Late Captain America back from the dead?
Angela K Brown Dallas, Texas
10 November 2007 08:29
Comic-book hero Captain America may not be back from the dead, but he is back -- sort of.
After Marvel Comics unexpectedly killed off the champion of liberty and the American way earlier this year, he appears in a comic made exclusively for United States soldiers. He is seen on a videotape made before his death.
One million copies of The New Avengers: The Spirit of America, the fifth in Marvel's series for the military, will be available free starting on Saturday at military-base stores worldwide.
The star-spangled Avenger's appearance is expected to create a demand for the comic, once word spreads among collectors.
"If you really, really want one, you need to know someone in the military," said Jim Skibo, director of support for the Dallas-based Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES), which is distributing the comic.
Captain America, whose secret identity was Steve Rogers, was felled by an assassin's bullet on the steps of a New York federal courthouse in a March issue after 66 years of battling villains from Adolf Hitler to the Red Skull.
Captain America is not being resurrected in Spirit of America, said Bob Sabouni, Marvel's vice-president of business development.
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=324548&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/
Hirst's dove stretches wings in formaldehyde
10 November 2007 08:55
Dennis Hopper certainly seemed to like it. "This is his best piece of work I think I have ever seen," he extolled. "This to me covers surrealism, the history of art, the hanging of meat ... the whole thing is great."
The film star was salivating on Friday over the centrepiece of Damien Hirst's latest art-installation-cum-marketing-stunt: a 3,6m-high tank that contains 10 000 litres of formaldehyde. Inside the fluid a diminutive white dove is suspended, its wings outstretched in a metal cage. Flanking it are two brutal halves of a sliced cow, a long string of fat Italian sausages, a well-worn leather armchair and, with a nod to Magritte, an open black umbrella.
The work stands at the front of a Hirst installation that takes over the lobby of Lever House in Park Avenue, Manhattan. Hirst always likes to think big, but School: The Archaeology of Lost Desires, Comprehending Infinity and the Search for Knowledge, is on a grand scale even by his standards.
He uses the theme of a school of anatomy to draw together many of the strands that have run through his work in the past 15 years. "I've always wanted to do an anatomy school -- it has a lot of threads that come together for me, all in the one idea that you can learn something from art," he says.
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=324553&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/
Bye-bye abalone
Fiona Macleod
09 November 2007 11:59
Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk is optimistic that his controversial ban on abalone fishing will be as successful as the ivory ban has been in saving Africa’s elephants from extinction.
In his first interview since announcing the ban two weeks ago, he said there would be no abalone left in South African seas in a few years if drastic steps were not taken.
A similar fate faced Africa’s elephant populations in the late 1980s before an international ban was placed on trade in ivory.
“When ivory was banned there was the same outcry and huge public debate,” he said, “but now that decision has proved to be the correct one. And for the first time it has put Cites [the Convention in International Trade in Endangered Species] in the position earlier this year to consider improving the legal quota of ivory trade, because the elephant population of the African continent has recovered.”
In June Cites approved the sale to Japan of 30 tons of ivory from South Africa, 20 tons from Botswana and 10 tons from Namibia.
Van Schalkwyk said pressures on abalone, which fetches huge prices on international markets as a marine delicacy, had forced several other countries, including Canada, Japan and Australia, to close down their fisheries. North American abalone fisheries have been closed for more than 10 years.
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=324475&area=/insight/insight__national/
African coastline threatened
Yolandi Groenewald
09 November 2007 11:59
Africa’s coastline is in trouble. Research shows that over the past three decades, the amount of fish in West African waters has declined by up to 50%. Pollution has also increased in the same waters, including South Africa’s west coast as more oil companies set up shop in Africa’s west coast waters. A damning report shows that sensitive wetlands (mangroves) and coastal forests have been lost forever, while the increased nutrient loads in fresh-water and coastal systems are causing coastal “dead zones”.
It is against this backdrop that South Africa hosted about 200 African experts, government officials and other stakeholders in Johannesburg this week to discuss how the different coastal countries could, together, tackle the rising environmental threats against the continent’s coastline. The African countries are part of two United Nations conventions that govern the way they deal with environmental issues along their coastlines.
“The degradation of coastal and marine environments are most evident in Africa,” said the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) executive director Achim Steiner.
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=324477&area=/insight/insight__national/
Green Scorpions set to sting
Sydney Masinga
09 November 2007 11:59
Companies that pollute face international sanctions as the Green Scorpions step up their campaign to root out guilty parties. Highveld Steel’s Vanchem plant in Mpumalanga may have its international certification revoked if an investigation finds that it lied about its environmental management.
Vanchem is one of 40 factories in South Africa accused by the Green Scorpions of illegally pumping dangerously high levels of toxic sulphur dioxide, ammonia and dust into the air, endangering its workers and residents in adjacent low-income communities.
Green Scorpions investigators also accuse Vanchem of ground and water pollution at the plant in Emalahleni (formerly Witbank).
The toxic pollutants include vanadium, which causes heart disease. Other pollutants include ammonia, which was up to 15 times above the legal limit and dust, which was up to 27 times above the limit. Ammonia can cause severe skin, eye and throat irritation, while dust can lead to tuberculosis (TB).
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=324476&area=/insight/insight__national/
Hansie Cronje and the chamber of secrets
David Macfarlane
09 November 2007 11:59
Can we read it or can’t we? The centre of this bizarre mystery is a doctoral thesis on disgraced former South African cricket captain Hansie Cronje submitted to Rhodes University in 2005. The thesis was passed last year and the PhD was awarded.
Yet there appears to be an embargo on the thesis, preventing anyone from getting access to it, according to several people involved in the saga. But the university has denied that anyone has been refused access.
Cronje captained the Proteas from 1994, but his glittering sporting career was sharply terminated in 2001 when he was banned for life from participation in the sport for match-fixing for financial gain. In June the following year he died in a plane crash.
The doctorate was written by Anne Warmenhoven, the research for it conducted in the Rhodes psychology department. Sociologist Ashwin Desai, who is writing a biography of Cronje, told the Mail & Guardian he came across a reference to the thesis during a brief research fellowship he held at Rhodes last year.
Given that it is standard practice for university libraries to stock open-access copies of all successful theses, Desai asked the Rhodes library for a copy. He was told that there was an embargo on it. This week he told the M&G that about a year of formal attempts to get a copy of the thesis had failed.
The supervisor of the thesis was Rhodes psychology lecturer Roelf van Niekerk. He told the M&G that to gain access to the Cronje family Warmenhoven had, with his approval, entered into a legal agreement of confidentiality with Rhodes.
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=324474&area=/insight/insight__national/
Zimbabwe police question newspaper executives
Harare, Zimbabwe
09 November 2007 02:47
Zimbabwe police on Friday brought in for questioning an editor and two executives from two leading independent media houses, newspaper officials and a police spokesperson said.
Hama Saburi, editor of financial weekly the Financial Gazette, said he and the newspaper's chief executive were on their way to a police station for apparently violating government price controls.
"The police came in and said they need to talk to us about our business, so we are now on our way to the police station. I understand it is all about the newspaper price," Saburi told Reuters by telephone.
Staff at the privately owned weekly, the Zimbabwe Independent, said its chief executive had also been taken in.
http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__africa/&articleid=324503
Ugandan rebel hideout hit by cholera
Bogonko Bosire Nairobi, Kenya
09 November 2007 05:30
An outbreak of cholera has swept a hideout camp housing Uganda's rebel Lord's Resistance Army, infecting its leader, Joseph Kony; his deputy, Vincent Otti; and scores of fighters, a spokesperson said on Friday.
The outbreak, caused by recent flooding and poor sanitation in the Sudan-Democratic Republic of Congo frontier hideout, was first reported in September, but details of fatalities remain unclear.
"They are in a healing process," LRA spokesperson Godfrey Ayoo told a press conference in Nairobi.
Scores of LRA fighters were seen on Thursday buying medicine in the border outpost of Nabanga, according to a top official from the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), which governs the semi-autonomous region of southern Sudan.
The United Nations has delivered medicine to the rebel hideouts, Ayoo said.
http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__africa/&articleid=324530
Media independence: From whom?
It can be frustrating when, after speaking to a journalist for 20 minutes, they only use one line of your comments.
This happened to me last week after I was interviewed by the Sunday Times about the proposed takeover of Johncom, publisher of the Sunday Times, by a group involving senior government officials.
I don’t blame the reporter or the newspaper because I understand how these things work, but so often, in situations such as these, one’s comments can be taken out of context.
There are a few issues involved in the Johncom story:
One is the fact that prominent black people, who have already been empowered, are going to be empowered once again. Surely, it is now time to look beyond the usual suspects and start making sure that more and more people are becoming empowered, apart from the small click that seems to be benefiting from all BEE deals at the moment.
Two is the fact that it is not illegal for public servants, whether they be politicians or government officials, to engage in business (maybe it should be, but that is another issue). All they have to do is declare their business interests to their employer, but they don’t have to do it before the deal is done.
It was against this background that I questioned whether the president would have been consulted or would have known about the proposed Koni Media Holdings takeover of Johncom.
I also pointed out that there are so many BEE groups, almost all of them involving senior government officials or senior ANC members, who are all fighting each other for lucrative stakes in companies.
Three is the fact that the Sunday Times is probably the most influential newspaper in South Africa and anyone who wants to be influential in society would consider buying into the Sunday Times. No matter how many guarantees they give about media freedom and editorial independence, one can almost be certain that there will be attempts at interference. It is only human nature….
...I am all for editorial independence, but we need to know from what we want independence. It is not enough to shout about the need for independence from government interference when we appear to remain entirely comfortable with commercial interference.
Just a thought.
http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/rylandfisher/2007/11/09/media-independence-from-whom/
Los Angeles Times
Emergency declared in Bay Area oil spill
By Eric Bailey, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 10, 2007
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency Friday for the San Francisco Bay Area as an oil spill continued to coat some of the state's most storied coastline and imperil marine wildlife.
The declaration commits state money and resources for what he vowed would be an exhaustive battle to clean up the 58,000-gallon spill from the container vessel Cosco Busan.
The 810-foot ship smacked the base of a San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge tower in dense fog Wednesday morning, breaching the vessel's hull and pouring bunker fuel into the bay.
U.S. Coast Guard officials said Friday that a full investigation of the accident was underway and apologized for delays in warning Bay Area officials and the public about the escalating scale of the spill.
The Coast Guard initially said that just 140 gallons of fuel had oozed out, and then failed to update local officials or the public for more than 12 hours as the extent of the spill grew.
Outraged by the delay, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom threatened legal action, and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) sent a testy letter to the Coast Guard commandant. On Friday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) also demanded accountability.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bay10nov10,0,4417250.story?coll=la-home-center
LAPD defends Muslim mapping effort
By Richard Winton,, Teresa Watanabe and Greg Krikorian, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
November 10, 2007
The LAPD's plan to map Muslim communities in an effort to identify potential hotbeds of extremism departs from the way law enforcement has dealt with local anti-terrorism since 9/11 and prompted widespread skepticism Friday.
In a document reviewed Friday by The Times, the LAPD's Los Angeles Police Department's counter-terrorism bureau proposed using U.S. census data and other demographic information to pinpoint various Muslim communities and then reach out to them through social service agencies.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lapd10nov10,0,3960843.story?coll=la-home-center
Bhutto kept from rally
Pakistan opposition leader is held under virtual house arrest by police.
By Laura King and Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
November 10, 2007
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- President Pervez Musharraf successfully thwarted a demonstration Friday by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, encircling her home for hours with riot police, barbed wire and metal barricades, but U.S. officials still held out hope the two could strike a power-sharing agreement.
The latest turn of events appear to have put Bhutto and her Pakistan People's Party on a collision course with Musharraf, who suspended the constitution and imposed emergency rule a week ago, about two weeks after Bhutto returned to Pakistan from self-imposed exile.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-pakistan10nov10,0,3722078.story?coll=la-home-center
Police officer's 4th wife is missing; officials to exhume 3rd wife.
Kathleen Savio's family long suspected her husband in her death, which was ruled accidental; now the case is reopened.
By P.J. Huffstutter, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 10, 2007
CHICAGO -- For years, the family of Kathleen Savio has insisted that her police officer ex-husband was involved in her 2004 death.
They refused to believe an inquest's finding that she had accidentally drowned. Her body had been found face down in an empty bathtub. They said Savio had feared her husband, a veteran police officer in the middle-class suburb of Bolingbrook.
It wasn't until Drew Peterson's next wife, Stacy Ann Peterson, mysteriously disappeared two weeks ago, that their claims were taken more seriously. Investigators launched a search for Stacy on Oct. 29. Days later, they reopened the case of Kathleen Savio.
On Friday, as search teams scoured nearby woods for 23-year-old Stacy Peterson, a judge granted a request by Will County State's Atty. James Glasgow to exhume Savio's body.
Police consider the 53-year-old police sergeant a suspect in the disappearance of his fourth wife, a state law enforcement official said.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-wife10nov10,1,1104104.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
This explains your doughnut addiction
In a study, rats overwhelmingly prefer sweetened water to cocaine, even those already hooked on the drug.
By Denise Gellene, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 10, 2007
Researchers have learned that rats overwhelmingly prefer water sweetened with saccharin to cocaine, a finding that demonstrates the addictive potential of sweets.
Offering larger doses of cocaine did not alter the rats' preference for saccharin, according to the report.
Scientists said the study, presented this week in San Diego at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, might help explain the rise in human obesity, which has been driven in part by an overconsumption of sugary foods.
In the experiment, 43 rats were placed in cages with two levers, one of which delivered an intravenous dose of cocaine and the other a sip of highly sweetened water. At the end of the 15-day trial, 40 of the rats consistently chose saccharin instead of cocaine.
When sugar water was substituted for the saccharin solution, the results were the same, researchers said.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-sweet10nov10,0,5568654.story?coll=la-home-center
Hugo Chavez's criminal paradise
Under the anti-globalization president, Venezuela has become a haven for global crime.
By Moises Naim
November 10, 2007
While President Hugo Chavez has been molding Venezuela into his personal socialist vision, other transformations -- less visible but equally profound -- have taken hold in the country.
Venezuela has become a major hub for international crime syndicates. What attracts them is not the local market; what they really love are the excellent conditions Venezuela offers to anyone in charge of managing a global criminal network.
A nation at the crossroads of South America, the Caribbean, North America and Europe, Venezuela's location is ideal. Borders? Long, scantly populated and porous. Financial system? Large and with easy-to-evade governmental controls. Telecommunications, ports and airports? The best that oil money can buy. U.S. influence? Nil. Corrupt politicians, cops, judges and military officers? Absolutely: Transparency International ranked Venezuela a shameful 162 out of 179 counties on its corruption perception index. Chavez's demonstrated interest in confronting criminal networks during his eight years in power? Not much.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-naim10nov10,0,7607104.story?coll=la-home-commentary
'Pandering' and porn
Once again, the Supreme Court will rule on Congress' effort to crack down on child pornography.
November 10, 2007
Michael Williams, a child pornographer whose appeal was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court last week, is not seeking exoneration. Indeed, he has acknowledged both possessing sexually explicit images of children and offering to provide such loathsome material to an undercover agent. The justices took Williams' case, however, not to establish his guilt or innocence but to answer two larger legal questions: Is the federal law against "pandering" child pornography so loosely worded that it could allow the government to prosecute speech protected by the 1st Amendment? And, if so, must the court strike down the law?
The answer to the first question is clearly yes. The pandering provision makes a criminal out of anyone who "advertises, promotes, presents or distributes" material that "is intended to cause another to believe" that it includes photographs of minors engaged in sexual activities or computer-generated images of children that meet the court's definition of obscenity. The term "presents" is particularly vague.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-porn10nov10,0,2434361.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials
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