Mystery fog engulfs Nigerian city
Nigeria's main city of Lagos has been enveloped in a thick, white, malodorous fog, which has caus-ed panic. Lagos' state governor closed all schools in the city and some residents have complained of irritation to their eyes and stomach pains. Laboratory tests showed the fog had higher than normal levels of sulphuric acid, but was not harmful. The cause is being investigated - one environmental official attributed it to a broken petroleum pipe. The BBC's Sola Odunfa in Lagos says visibility in some areas has been reduced to 100m and there are even worse traffic jams than normal in this busy city. The fog has a strange odour, which caused people to run out of their work places and homes to find out what was going on, he says. Lagos is one of Africa's largest cities, with a population of an estimated 15m people. South Africa’s Zuma to stand trial in 2006 Former South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma is to go on trial in the Durban High Court on 31 July next year. The date for the High Court trial was set following discussions between Mr. Zuma's lawyers and the prosecution. Hundreds gathered in Durban as Mr. Zuma appeared in a magistrate's court, charged with corruption. Mr. Zuma maintains his innocence. His case has split the ruling ANC party and many South Africans still hope he will be the country's next president. The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) welcomed the decision to proceed with the trial in July. "As the NPA we are very pleased with this as it offers us what we wanted all the time - which is enough time to prepare for this case," spokesman Makhosini Nkosi said. It is in Mr. Zuma's interest to conclude the case by 2007, when the ANC elects a new party leader, who is then almost certain to be the party's presidential candidate in the 2009 elections. Mr. Zuma's legal representative, Michael Hulley, said he was "perfectly happy" with the July 2006 trial date, "given the time constraints and nature of the [court] roll". Demonstration During Mr. Zuma's appearance in the magistrate's court, the state and his lawyers reached an agreement that the prosecution must present an indictment by 12 November this year.
Outside the court, about 1,000 people carried placards and sang songs in support of Mr. Zuma, insisting that the former deputy president is innocent. Many in the crowd had kept an all-night vigil outside the court, before Mr. Zuma arrived just before 0900 local time (0700 GMT) in a motorcade. Mr. Zuma was sacked in June, after the corruption trial of his financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, appeared to leave unanswered questions about the then deputy president's own conduct. Mandela ready to help in Zuma row Former South African President Nelson Mandela has made himself available to help resolve the crisis around former Deputy President Jacob Zuma.
Mr. Zuma was sacked by President Thabo Mbeki in June, and was later charged with corruption. The charges have caused deep rifts within the governing ANC party. Hundreds of Mr. Zuma's supporters cheered him as he appeared in court in Durban, some of them burning t-shirts with Mr. Mbeki's image. Mr. Mandela's spokeswoman, Zelda le Grange, said the former president, known by his clan name of Madiba, was "concerned" about the situation arising from the Zuma trial. Unity "Madiba will remain available to the leadership structure to play a role in reaching the goals [of] a unified organization if he is asked to do so," Ms le Grange told the South African Sunday Times newspaper.
There are no indications that Mr Mandela has been approached to assist, and reports suggest that the former president would prefer to avoid getting involved in the controversy if possible. Jakes Gerwel, a friend and adviser of Mr Mandela, was quoted as saying: "My advice and the advice of his wife would certainly not be to get involved." Mr Mandela, 87, no longer has any formal role either in the ANC or in the South African government. EU boosts aid to Africa by $10bn The EU has pledged to increase its aid to Africa by $10bn (£6bn) to $30bn (£17bn) in the next five years. The move comes after talks between the head of the EU's executive branch with his counterpart from the African Union in Brussels. The EU's new aid strategy would make Africa its top priority. However, it depends on EU leaders being able to agree their next long-term budget- something they have so far been unable to do. Mass migration
Speaking after the Brussels talks, President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso said it was not just a question of generosity, but of tackling the structural roots of under-development in Africa. In recent weeks, thousands of African migrants have been trying to enter the EU via the Spanish enclaves of Melilla and Cueta. Eleven migrants died and hundreds have been expelled from the enclaves. African Union head Alpha Oumar Konare said walls and prisons would not solve the problem - people were migrating because of impoverishment. He called on the EU to keep its promises to open its markets, cut subsidies and drop tariffs. But the promise of increased aid depends on whether the EU can agree on its next budget, to run from 2007 to 2013. The budget talks collapsed earlier this year, raising the prospect that Africa will lose out because of Europe's internal wrangling. Mugabe defends urban demolitions Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has denied his country is in the grip of an avoidable famine, and defended his controversial slum clearance policy. Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly, Mr. Mugabe said the demolition of vast urban areas was an effort to boost law and order and development.
He insisted that the slum clearances were followed by well-planned building projects design-ed to rehouse the poor. Some accuse him of bulldozing slums housing opposition supporters. Mr. Mugabe defended the demolitions, insisting that Zimbabwe must move forward, rather than tolerate poverty and haphazard urban development. He said Zimbabwe would not lower its urban living standards to allow for mud huts and bush latrines, and did not need "development in reverse". Humanitarian concerns "We find it strange and anomalous that the government of Zimbabwe should be maligned and condemned for restoring order and the rule of law in its municipal areas," he told the UN in New York. "Our detractors fail to acknowledge that Operation Restore Order soon gave way to a well-planned, vast reconstruction programme. "Properly planned accommodation, factory shells and vending stalls are being constructed in many areas of our country for our people." An estimated 700,000 people lost their homes during the slum clearances, which were described as a humanitarian crisis by the United Nations and heavily criticised by Human Rights Watch. Freedom prize for Zimbabwe lawyer Zimbabwean lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa is among the recipients of this year's International Press Freedom Awards by the Committee to Protect Journalists. The other recipients were journalists from Brazil, China and Uzbekistan. Zimbabwe has in recent years closed newspapers and introduced increasingly strict laws restricting the media. The CPJ said: "In a country where the law is used as a weapon... Mtetwa has defended journalists and argued for press freedom, at great personal risk." "I didn't do anything other than to do my job," Ms Mtetwa told the BBC News website. "My most important work never gets near the media," she added, referring to her work as a human rights lawyer. Court orders Earlier this year, Ms Mtetwa won an acquittal for Toby Harnden and Julian Simmonds of the British Sunday Telegraph newspaper, who were arrested during presidential elections. She worked on behalf of the Zimbabwean independent paper the Daily News, which suffered repeated harassment by the government until being closed in 2003. In 2003 Ms Mtetwa became internationally known for her efforts to stop the deportation of Guardian correspondent Andrew Meldrum, a United States citizen, from Zimbabwe. She obtained court orders allowing Mr Meldrum to remain in Zimbabwe, but he was nevertheless abducted by police and detained before being put onto a plane out of the country. Once she had found out that he was at the airport, Ms Mtetwa ran onto the tarmac with a new court order in her hand - but was just too late to stop the plane from taking off. Later that year, Ms Mtetwa was arrested on allegations of drunken driving, and held for three hours at a police station, where she was beaten and choked, then released without charge. Other recipients of this year's International Press Freedom Awards are:
Africa tells UN to do better By Orla Ryan
In the streets of his hometown Kumasi in central Ghana, Kofi Annan is known by the accolade Busumuru -- "the best of the best". Many Africans share Ghana's pride at his rise to secretary-general of the United Nations, but when it comes to his organization’s work, emotions range from gratitude to outraged feelings of betrayal. From its disastrous failure to stop Rwanda's 1994 genocide to routine yet vital tasks like feeding children in northern Kenya or fighting polio in Ethiopia, the United Nations wields perhaps its biggest influence in Africa. As the organization prepares to host the largest gathering of world leaders in history to discuss ways to reform the 60-year-old institution, the message from the continent is clear: "We need you, but you must do better." "They could do a lot more to help Africa," said Erica Kyere, 25, who works at Kumasi's Kuapa Kokoo cocoa firm. "Even where there is war, they are not doing so much. They should try to do more where there is famine as well," she said, delivering a verdict from the relative stability of Ghana that could have come from almost any of Africa's troublespots. Burdened with roles from feeding the hungry to ending wars, the United Nations often finds itself caught between the high expect-ations of Africans on one side, and indiffer-ence among member states that provide its funds and man-dates on the other. But with reforms on everything from streamlining management to finding new ways to help countries recover from conflict on the table in New York, many Africans hope the world body will start by confron-ting its own failings as an organization. "The fundamental objectives of the U.N. system are to maintain peace and security and prevent wars," said Charles Murigande, foreign affairs minister of Rwanda. The second U.N. objective, he said, should be to foster interna-tional cooperation to fight poverty. "But the U.N. has failed on both these two fundamental objectives," Murigande told Reuters. "This therefore calls for overhauling the entire U.N. system." KEEPING THE PEACE With a network of offices dealing with tasks as varied as collating AIDS data to saving Africa's great apes, its is hard to generalize about the United Nation's performance across the continent, much less recommend universal reforms. But what does emerge from a cursory survey, particularly in West Africa, is that deploying U.N. troops to guarantee peace agree-ments is one of its most important roles. In Liberia, 16,000 troops are providing security during elections next month aimed at breaking a cycle of civil war, and the United Nations is likely to remain committed for years. "They have established some security in the country and their presence has given Liberians faith in the electoral process," said Silas Siakor, the head of the Sustainable Develop-ment Institute in the capital Monrovia. "But unless the underlying issues of good governa-nce, security, and resour-ce management are add-erssed this crisis will not end with the elections," he said. In neighbouring Sierra Leone, which also welcomed U.N. troops after a devastating civil war, some politicians want the United Nations to play a wider role in fostering democracy across Africa -- call critics say amounts to wishful thinking. "I believe that the U.N. needs to do more by coming in and putting checks and balances to our countries' corrupt practices in Africa, rather than waiting to send troops and spend big money for peace," said member of parliament Issa Mansaray. TIED HANDS Such enthusiasm for the theory cannot hide wider concerns about the performance of the U.N. in practice, perceived by critics as a top-heavy, bloated bureaucracy more concerned with obeying the letter of its mandates than saving lives. People who have lost relatives to massacres or starvation find cold comfort in complaints by U.N. administrators that the Security Council's orders were too restrictive for more robust peace-keeping, or donor funds arrived too late to supply aid. Many Africans would welcome calls from Canada, backed by South Africa and others, to more clearly formulate the United Nation's response-bility to prevent war crimes and genocide, but recent memory has chipped away at faith in the blue helmets. Residents of the eastern Congolese town of Bunia watched with a mixture of horror and contempt in 2003 when peacekeepers from the U.N. mission MONUC stood by as militias slaughtered their neighbours, while many say a U.N.-backed peace process has rewarded dangerous warlords with positions in government. U.N. troops have also been accused of sexual exploitation of women and girls in Democratic Republic of Congo, where the peacekeeping mission is the world's largest with 16,700 troops. "MONUC is there but the Congo is still not working so what are they doing?" said Francois, a taxi driver in the capital Kinshasa. "This is not the first time the U.N. has tried to come in here and they didn't do anything last time either," he said. Such weariness, whether justified or not, reflects a global current of frustration with an organization that embod-ies ideals to which all can aspire, but which so often lacks the money, personnel, agility and backing by its members to implement them. Africa, scene of some of the greatest U.N. triumphs and disasters, is as impatient as any for signs of improvement. "There is a crisis of confidence with the international community in general and the U.N. in particular," said Abdi Samatar, a Somali professor at the University of Minnesota. "There are still plenty of ways that the U.N. can redeem itself," he said. "There are a lot of jewels in the United Nations in Africa." (Additional repo-rting by Alphonso Toweh in Monrovia, David Lewis in Kinshasa, Christo John-son in Freetown and Art-hur Asiimwe in Rwanda). ￭ Quotes - I wish that being famous helped prevent me from being constipated." Marvin Gaye - If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians. Warren Buffett - USA Today has come out with a new survey: Apparently three out of four people make up 75 percent of the population. David Letterman - In my youth,
I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the
great discovery that liberty is a product of order. African farmers who use weather forecasts based on El Niño data are likely to see an increase in crop yields, according to a new study. Researchers ran workshops in four Zimbabwean villages to in-form farmers of the forecasts. Those that used the information to choose when and what to plant saw greater yields of crops such as maize. Details are released in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Initial doubts At the beginning of their study in September 2000, the researchers, from Boston University in the US and the University of Zimbabwe in Harare, found a fair degree of scepticism among farmers about the value of weather forecasts. During a series of workshops, they attempted to stimulate awareness of the potential benefits of using forecasts, and discussion on how farming practices could be changed to cope with abnormally wet or dry seasons. Coming into the 2002/2003 season, the scientists predicted a lower than average rainfall because of a mild El Niño event; and broadly, this proved to be correct. The following season, the prediction was for a return to normal, which again turned out to be largely accurate. Just over half of the farmers - 57% - reported that they changed decisions on when and what to plant because of the forecasts, either planting at different times or choosing different varieties. Reaping the rewards Averaged over the two seasons, farmers who based decisions on the forecasts had a yield 9.4% higher than those who did not. "These farmers are fairly risk-averse," Professor Anthony Patt from Boston University told the BBC News website, "and their baseline strategy is to prepare for drought, to plant quite drought-tolerant varieties and so on. "So if they know a drought is coming, there's not a lot extra they can do. "But in the second year they were able to take a bigger risk and plant higher-yielding varieties, and this is where they saw the benefits." Seven-year hitch El Niño events occur roughly once in every seven years, although the pattern is far from rigid, with the mild event of 2002/3 coming just five years after a much more severe occurrence in 1997/8.
The driving force appears to be the development of unusually warm water in the eastern Pacific, which distorts the usual pattern of ocean currents, winds and rainfall throughout the tropics, and sometimes further a field. Through increased use of satellites and ground-based equipment, scientists are able to give notice of an El Niño season months in advance, although forecasts are imperfect. A decade ago, researchers showed that changes in eastern Pacific sea temperatures account for 60% of the variation between annual yields of maize in Zimbabwe. Previous studies in other parts of the world have shown that distributing drought-tolerant seeds in advance of an El Niño event can reduce its impact on yields; but the new study from Zimbabwe may be the first to show that subsistence farmers can benefit simply by using the information - so long as they believe it. "I think one of the clear results coming out of this study is that taking the time to talk with people on a very local basis makes a huge difference," Anthony Patt told the BBC News website, "and simply broadcasting weather information isn't anywhere near so effective. "Going out to them is resource-heavy; and I guess if you're going to commit these resources you're going to want to know that it's worthwhile, and I think that is what this paper is demonstrating." ■ Nigeria stores up future
Nigeria's government has lost the latest battle in its war against the unions. The government has bowed to pressure and moderated its planned petrol price rises. But economists say the government is storing up trouble for itself in the future.
There are two things guaranteed to anger the average Nigerian: Firstly, the fact that their oil-rich country relies on fuel imports and secondly, the price of petrol. Nigeria exports about 2.5 million barrels of crude oil a day, but is then forced to buy back petrol, diesel and other refined fuels from non-oil producing countries, such as Spain, at a far higher price. Foreign investors Nigeria's government has reaped an estimated $280bn from oil in the past 30 years but has failed to invest enough money in its own oil industry to ensure efficient refineries and a proper supply network to distribute the fuel to service stations. The restoration of Nigeria's decrepit refineries - owned by Nigeria's state-owned oil company - has been a priority for a succession of ministers. But chronic mismanagement, years of corruption and a string of political appointees has left the refineries in a worse state than ever. As President Olusegun Obasanjo started his second term, he embarked on a different tactic altogether: wooing foreign investors to come and build their own refineries and distribution networks. Bitter pill Nigeria's downstream oil industry holds substantial appeal to international oil firms. The country has a population of 130 million and a large number of people with money to spend on fuel. The problem has been compounded by the fact that oil prices have been rising steadily since President Obasanjo was re-elected, thus pushing the gap between the true price of petrol and the price at which it is sold in Nigeria ever wider. But there is one obstacle preventing their entry into the marketplace: the heavy subsidies on fuel prices which amount to about $2bn a year. That is why the government has been trying to press ahead with the highly unpopular measures of raising petrol prices, a move that is broadly supported by economists. It is only when Nigeria's petrol prices come into line with their true value on the international marketplace that the foreign investors will finally arrive. Angry drivers President Obasanjo has been trying to persuade people of the benefits of removing the subsidies by convincing them that the money could be spent instead on improved education or health care. Indeed, the amount of money spent subsiding fuel is a huge drain on the budget and could be spent much more effectively elsewhere. Subsidies, after all, benefit the rich as much as the poor.
But there is no easy way of weaning people off cheap fuel, and the promise of future investment in social services is hardly able to sway people who are facing an immediate rise in petrol prices they simply cannot afford. The cost of fuel already accounts for an unwieldy proportion of people's pay packets. The prospect that fuel prices may double again is met with incredulity and, increasingly, anger. Long-term fears Two thirds of Nigeria's population is still living on less than $1 a day, and the proposed fuel price increases are crippling large swathes of society, preventing people getting to work and threatening some small businesses with bankruptcy. The government's plans have been strenuously opposed every step of the way: people are weary of hearing that they must swallow a bitter pill for their own future good. And that bitter pill is made virtually impossible to swallow by the knowledge that vast amounts of cash have been squandered or stolen during the 1980s and 90s. This time, the threat of another general strike - and the union's promise to deliberately target oil exports - caused the government to back down on its policy at the eleventh hour. Avoiding the hugely unpopular petrol price rises is undoubtedly a huge relief for many Nigerians in the short term. But it is one step backwards in the long-term goal of breaking the cycle that makes Nigeria reliant on imported petrol, which leads to the equally unpopular fuel shortages. Liberian poll results trickle in
First official results have been declared in Liberia after the historic elections following the 14-year civil war which ended in 2003. With votes counted from a fraction of the 3,000 polling stations, one of the favourites, ex-footballer George Weah, is ahead in the presidential race.
He has 27.5% of the 34,901 votes counted. Another fancied contender, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has 16.7%. Twenty-two candidates are standing, and a second round is being predicted in four weeks time between the top two, unless someone secures more than 50% of the vote. The commission said that turnout from the first polling stations to have their results ratified was 75%. Election Commission head Frances Johnson Morris said there had been no reports of violence or complaints. 'Peace vote' Results have been posted at individual polling stations around the country and can be heard blaring from loudspeakers in the central market area in the capital, Monrovia, broadcast by local radio stations. Liberians have been seen arguing about what these results mean.
The BBC's Mark Doyle in Monrovia says that the process of collecting results from the 3,000 polling stations may take several days in Liberia where there are very few paved roads, no electrical grid and no nationwide telephone system. In remote areas, United Nations helicop-ters have been helping transport ballot papers. Praise Turnout among the 1.35m registered voters was reported to be high. Many used umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun and complained of waiting for more than five or six hours to vote, but UN forces - first deployed two years ago - helped to calm tempers.
Election officials said the process of voting itself took a long time, as each voter had to mark three ballot papers: One for president and vice-president; one for members of the Senate; one for members of the House of Representatives. The head of the UN mission in Liberia, Alan Doss, said Liberians had "voted for peace". "At all polling places I visited, I was struck by the patience, the determination and the friendliness displayed by all Liberians as they set about exercising this most precious right and responsibility," he said. Voters hope the elections will mark a new page in the country's brutal history. |
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