UN exonerates Shell for oil pollution in Nigeria

It's easy to see why the UN is not trusted when they come to such conclusions. Did they review the region on Shell courtesy flights and hotels? Crime is certainly an issue in the area but the numbers sound suspicious. The Guardian:

A three-year investigation by the United Nations will almost entirely exonerate Royal Dutch Shell for 40 years of oil pollution in the Niger delta, causing outrage among communities who have long campaigned to force the multinational to clean up its spills and pay compensation.

The $10m (£6.5m) investigation by the UN environment programme (UNEP), paid for by Shell, will say that only 10% of oil pollution in Ogoniland has been caused by equipment failures and company negligence, and concludes that the rest has come from local people illegally stealing oil and sabotaging company pipelines.

The shock disclosure was made by Mike Cowing, the head of a UN team of 100 people who have been studying environmental damage in the region.

Cowing said that the 300 known oil spills in the Ogoniland region of the delta caused massive damage, but added that 90% of the spills had been caused by "bunkering" gangs trying to steal oil.

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Oil trading company fined for exporting toxic waste to Africa

While the financial penalty sounds light, it is encouraging that finally that industry is being held accountable for the damage inflicted in Africa.

The oil trader Trafigura has been fined ¤1m (£840,000) for illegally exporting tonnes of hazardous waste to west Africa. It is the first time the London-based firm has been convicted of criminal charges over the environmental scandal, in which 30,000 Africans were made ill when the toxic waste was dumped in Ivory Coast.

A court in the Netherlands also ruled today that the firm had concealed the dangerous nature of the waste when it was initially unloaded from a ship in Amsterdam.

Eliance Kouassi, president of the victims' group in Ivory Coast, said: "Finally Trafigura has been called out in a court of law. It's a real victory for us." The fine is, however, only half the amount sought by the Dutch prosecutors.

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Desmond Tutu criticizes Obama, praises Bush

What I have always appreciated about Desmond Tutu is that he's not afraid to call out anyone. When praise is due, he's quickly there to offer praise. When criticism is deserved, he's not shy regardless of who it is or what position that person holds. Tutu is one of the best out there. NY Times Op Ed:

George W. Bush made an impressive commitment to the international fight against AIDS when he formed the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief program. Since 2004, Pepfar has spent $19 billion to help distribute anti-viral treatments to about 2.5 million Africans infected with H.I.V.

Thanks to these efforts — and similar initiatives, like those spearheaded by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria — the number of African patients with access to AIDS drugs jumped tenfold from 2003 to 2008. Since 2004, the AIDS-related mortality rate in sub-Saharan Africa has dropped 18 percent.

Yet President Obama added only $366 million to the program this year — well below the $1 billion per year he promised to add when he was on the campaign trail. (Pepfar’s total budget now stands at $7 billion.) Most of the countries in Pepfar will see no increase in aid.

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Talk about bad timing for everyone

Unlike BP this is a real photo. A couple was following a whale off the South African coast when it breached and landed on their boat. The problem was probably due to the engine being off so the southern right whale did not notice the boat. The mast broke but everyone survived. They later saw the same whale as they motored back to land.

A couple on a whale-watching trip off Cape Town, South Africa, say they had a lucky escape when a 10m (33ft) specimen leapt on to their yacht.

The southern right whale, a species known for poor eyesight, snapped the mast before sliding back into the water, said Paloma Werner.

She and her partner had just seconds to take cover, she said. A nearby tourist caught the moment on camera.

"I still like whales," Ms Werner told the BBC afterwards.

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Poachers kill last female white rhino in Kruger Park

What a pity. When we were in South Africa they were facing a serious poaching problem related to abalone. Divers were even searching for them at night in the same area where tourists would go to visit great white sharks near Gansbaai. (I left Gansbaai with a very uncomfortable feeling about who was involved in the highly profitable poaching business.) Another similarity was that poachers were highly organized and selling to Asia for high margins. You have to wonder who in power is turning a blind eye to this problem. The poaching rates have increased enough where this should not be a problem that is suddenly an issue. As always, someone needs to follow the money.

Fears are growing for the survival of the rhinoceros as the last female in the popular Krugersdorp game reserve near Johannesburg was killed, bleeding to death after having its horn hacked off by poachers.

Wildlife officials say poaching for the prized horns has now reached an all-time high. "Last year, 129 rhinos were killed for their horns in South Africa. This year, we have already had 136 deaths," said chief game ranger Japie Mostert.

The gang used tranquilliser guns and a helicopter to bring down the nine-year-old rhino cow. Her distraught calf was moved to a nearby estate where it was introduced to two other orphaned white rhinos.

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Bombings kill dozens in Uganda

There are few details now but authorities believe there is an al-Qaeda link.

Police Chief Kale Kaihura originally said at least 30 people had been killed, though the toll could be higher.

Later, a senior police official at the scene said that 64 people had been killed 49 from the rugby club and 15 at the Ethiopian restaurant. The official said he could not be identified.

Kaihura said he suspected al-Shabab, that country's most hardline militant group. Its fighters, including two recruited from the Somali communities in the United States, have carried out multiple suicide bombings in Somalia. If al-Shabab was responsible, it would be the first time the group has carried out attacks outside of Somalia.

Simultaneous attacks are also one of al-Qaida's hallmarks. In Mogadishu, Somalia, Sheik Yusuf Sheik Issa, an al-Shabab commander, told The Associated Press that he was happy with the attacks in Uganda. Issa refused to confirm or deny that al-Shabab was responsible for the bombings.

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Mandela invites Ghana soccer team to help raise their spirits

If the US was going to lose to anyone in the World Cup, I wanted it to be to Ghana. I was really rooting for at least one African team to make it through a few rounds. The entire continent of Africa was pulling for them as well. When they lost the other day to Uruguay in the quarter finals, it was a tough loss after fighting to hard throughout the tournament. Like the class act that he has always been, Mandela invited the team over to cheer them up. If meeting the legend in person can't cheer you up, you might be dead. Read More......

Kenyan MP's increase pay to $160,00 per year

That's quite an outrageously high figure considering the average farm worker makes around $38 per month and city workers around $75. Imagine what happens when the lobbyists are introduced. The Guardian:

After resisting calls to pay income tax for years, MPs finally agreed yesterday night to pay the tax, but only after giving themselves a sweetener of 240,000 shillings (£1,960) taking their monthly pay to 1,091,000 shillings (£8,920).

The news was greeted with anger in Kenya, where the minimum wage was last month raised to £50 a month for employees in cities and £25 for farm workers. Since 2003, when President Mwai Kibaki came to power, politicians have become notorious for regularly increasing their salaries. British MPs earn £5,478 a month, while a member of France's national assembly have a monthly salary of £4,260.

"Yet another drastic pay hike for MPs … is the most outrageous, insensitive, immoral and intolerant abuse and impunity by Kenya's officialdom the country has ever witnessed," said the Kenya Alliance of Resident Associations.

On Wednesday, MPs voted to adopt the report of former appeal court judge Akilano Akiwumi, who led a review of politicians' salaries in the wake of public dissatisfaction. MPs' exemption from tax on all but a fraction of their total pay – their effective tax rate is 5% – was a source of particular resentment.

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Tutankhamun died from sickle-cell disease

Sounds like there's still some debate going on, but an interesting development.

King Tutankhamun died from sickle-cell disease, not malaria, say experts. A team from Hamburg's Bernhard Noct Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNI) claim the disease is a far likelier cause of death than the combination of bone disorders and malaria put forward by Egyptian experts earlier this year.

The BNI team argues that theories offered by Egyptian experts, led by antiquities tsar Zahi Hawass, are based on data that can be interpreted otherwise. They say further analysis of the data will confirm or deny their work. Hawass' claim, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association this February, and followed by a swarm of accompanying television shows, claimed King Tut suffered from Kohler's disease, a bone disorder prohibiting blood flow, before succumbing to malaria.

Multiple bone disorders, including one in Tutankhamun's left foot, led to the Kohler's diagnosis, while segments of a malarial parasite were found via DNA testing. Yet the BNI team claims the latter results are incorrect. “Malaria in combination with Köhler's disease causing Tutankhamun's early death seems unlikely to us,” say Prof Christian Meyer and Dr Christian Timmann.

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Oil trader Trafigura hit with criminal charges over dumping

No, this has nothing to do with the oil disaster in the Gulf. Trafigura (here's some history from last year) is now being pursued by Dutch prosecutors for putting "self-interest above people's health and the environment." Sounds familiar, though in this case it was about charges of knowingly dumping toxic waste into an already poor African country. This is an industry that like Wall Street, believes that it's above the law. They've been fortunate enough to have friends in the right places though those ties are being tested now.

At the start of a trial in Amsterdam – at which Trafigura is accused of an initial attempt to get rid of the waste cheaply in the Netherlands – prosecutor Look Bougert told the court the company had put "self-interest above people's health and the environment".

He said Trafigura first tried to conceal how dangerous the waste was, then pumped it back on board its tanker and left the Netherlands with hundreds of tonnes of oil residue, contaminated with foul-smelling sulphur mercaptans and toxic hydrogen sulphide.

Instead of paying for specialist disposal, Trafigura "dumped it over the fence" in Abidjan, the main port of poverty-stricken Ivory Coast in west Africa. "Cheap, but with consequences," Bougert said.

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March in Namibia over forced sterilization

When I first saw the headline, I assumed that this was something dating back to the former South West Africa days. Amazingly, it's something much more recent. BBC:

Three women in Namibia are suing the state for allegedly being sterilised without their informed consent after being diagnosed as HIV positive.

The women say the doctors and nurses should have informed them properly about what was happening.

The rights group representing them, the Legal Assistance Centre, says it has documented 15 cases of alleged HIV sterilisation in hospitals since 2008.

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Malawi frees gay couple sentenced to 14 years following UN visit

A very positive move by Ban Ki-moon after one of the most disgusting cases on the continent. Well done by Jacob Zuma as well for speaking out against the case and the sentence. Shouldn't Malawi be more focused on irrigation and farming to feed its population instead of hateful actions like this? The Guardian:

A gay couple sentenced to serve 14 years in jail in Malawi have been pardoned after their country's president met Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general.

Steven Monjeza, 26, and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, 20, were tried and found guilty of sodomy and indecency earlier this month in a move that sparked international condemnation.

But after talking with Ban today, Malawi's president, Bingu wa Mutharika, announced the pair would be freed.

"These boys committed a crime against our culture, our religion and our laws," he said after the meeting, at the southern African country's State House. "However, as the head of state, I hereby pardon them and therefore ask for their immediate release with no conditions.

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Big Oil's other spill zone disaster: Nigeria

Being outside of the media spotlight for the rich countries, Nigeria doesn't receive the same media attention. That's not to say the problem doesn't exist though. The ExxonMobil example is only one of many. And these are the companies that Washington allows to call the shots?

On 1 May this year a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline in the state of Akwa Ibom spilled more than a million gallons into the delta over seven days before the leak was stopped. Local people demonstrated against the company but say they were attacked by security guards. Community leaders are now demanding $1bn in compensation for the illness and loss of livelihood they suffered. Few expect they will succeed. In the meantime, thick balls of tar are being washed up along the coast.

Within days of the Ibeno spill, thousands of barrels of oil were spilled when the nearby Shell Trans Niger pipeline was attacked by rebels. A few days after that, a large oil slick was found floating on Lake Adibawa in Bayelsa state and another in Ogoniland. "We are faced with incessant oil spills from rusty pipes, some of which are 40 years old," said Bonny Otavie, a Bayelsa MP.

This point was backed by Williams Mkpa, a community leader in Ibeno: "Oil companies do not value our life; they want us to all die. In the past two years, we have experienced 10 oil spills and fishermen can no longer sustain their families. It is not tolerable."

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Big Oil and the gas flares of Nigeria

How is it possibly fair that such practices are illegal elsewhere in the world yet uses in Nigeria? As we watch the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, it's hard to have very much trust in the oil industry. It's even more difficult to trust those in politics who are so eager to promote that industry, people and environment, be damned.

"This is environmental racism," said Alagoa Morris, an investigator with a local group, Environmental Rights Action, who regularly risks arrest to monitor activities at the heavily guarded oil and gas installations. "What we are asking for is that oil companies should have to meet the same standards in Nigeria that they do operating in their own countries."

The Opolo-Epie plant is set to join at least 100 other flares burning across the swamps, creeks and forests of this oil-producing region, filling the atmosphere with toxins, seeding the clouds with acid rain and polluting the soil.

The gas flares, some of which have been burning constantly since the 1960s, are visible from space. In a country where more than 60 per cent of the people have no reliable electricity supply, the satellite images show the flares burning more brightly than the lights of Nigeria's biggest city, Lagos.

Medical studies have shown the gas burners contribute to an average life expectancy in the Delta region of 43 years. The area also has Nigeria's highest infant mortality rate – 12 per cent of newborns fail to see out their first year.

The process of burning off unwanted "associated gas" brought up when oil is pumped out of the ground has been illegal in Nigeria since 1984.

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Iran strikes secret nuclear mining deal with Zimbabwe's Mugabe regime

Bad news on so many levels:

The agreement was sealed last month during a visit to Tehran by a close aide to Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean president who last weekend celebrated 30 years in power, The Sunday Telegraph has learned.

In return for supplying oil, which Zimbabwe desperately needs to keep its faltering economy moving, Iran has been promised access to potentially huge deposits of uranium ore – which can be converted into the basic fuel for nuclear power or enriched to make a nuclear bomb.

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UK to ban Uganda MP if anti gay legislation passes

He better be blocked from any travel, anywhere, if not arrested for inciting hatred. The Guardian:

The British government will ban a Ugandan MP from travelling to the UK if he is successful in passing a law that would impose the death penalty in Uganda for being gay.

Civil servants in the Foreign Office, the Department for International Development and the Borders Agency are drawing up plans to block the visa of born-again Christian MP David Bahati if he does not drop legislation that would see consenting adults who have gay sex imprisoned for life and impose the death penalty on those with HIV – which will be called "aggravated homosexuality".

The bill also proposes the death penalty for those having gay sex with anyone under the age of 18, with someone disabled or what the legislation describes as "serial offenders".

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South African youth leader to face disciplinary hearing

South Africa can either move in this direction or sweep racism and hatred under the carpet and become like Zimbabwe. There's no room for such behavior in a modern country so Julius Malema needs to be sent packing. The most ridiculous part of this story is that Malema acts like such a tough guy though he was a baby when the ANC was fighting a life and death struggle. Funny how those leaders - the real leaders - have moved on yet he somehow wants to pretend as though he is a freedom fighter.

The youth leader of South Africa's ruling ANC, Julius Malema, will face a disciplinary hearing for bringing the party into disrepute, reports say.

The reports in South African media say the charges are believed to include promoting racism and intolerance.

Mr Malema recently embarrassed the African National Congress by ejecting a BBC reporter from a news briefing.

He has also defied a party order to stop singing a song inciting hatred against white farmers.

Mr Malema has also ignored ANC policy by publicly supporting Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.

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Mandela's wife tells UK to 'keep quiet' about Zimbabwe

Um, no. There's no question that Britain's colonial past left much to be desired but please. As they say, two wrongs don't make a right. Human rights abuse is human rights abuse whether it's white against black, black against black or anything else. I say this as someone from a family who was subjected to British colonial rule and who emigrated because of it. There was never any love in my household growing up for the British but their stand against thugs like Mugabe is completely correct.

Graça Machel, a founder member of the Elders group of world leaders and the wife of Nelson Mandela, warned British politicians to "keep quiet" about countries such as Zimbabwe and let African diplomacy take its course.

Machel, 64, is a former first lady of Mozambique, where she served as education minister, and has won numerous international awards for her advocacy of women's and children's rights.

In an interview with the Guardian in Johannesburg, she indicated that the crisis in Zimbabwe has revealed the shortcomings of a persistent imperialist mindset.

"Can I be a little bit provocative?" Machel said. "I think this should be an opportunity for Britain to re-examine its relationship with its colonies. To acknowledge that with independence those nations will want to have a relationship with Britain which is of shoulder to shoulder, and they will not expect Britain to continue to be the big brother.

"When a nation is independent, there is no big brother. They are partners. Part of the reason why Britain finds it difficult to accept Zimbabwe is precisely because that relationship of a big brother is influencing [efforts] to try to understand."

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World Bank approves polluting coal power plant in South Africa

This is a terrible way to spend $3 billion though at least the US and a few other allies abstained from participating in the vote. More pollution is not the direction we need at this time. Nobody is arguing against creating more energy but coal?

The World Bank on Thursday approved a controversial $3 billion loan for the development of a coal-fired power plant by the South African state utility Eskom despite lack of support from major shareholder countries.

The United States, the Netherlands and Britain said they abstained from supporting the loan because of environmental and other concerns about the project.

Eskom has defended the development of the 4,800-megawatt Medupi plant in the northern Limpopo region, saying it is critical to ease the country's chronic power shortages as well as to ensure electricity flows to neighboring states.

The World Bank said the loan would help "South Africa achieve a reliable electricity supply." In addition to the $3 billion loan for the coal plant, the World Bank approved $750 million in financing for renewables and energy-efficiency projects.

"Without an increased energy supply, South Africans will face hardship for the poor and limited economic growth," Obiageli Ezekwesili, World Bank vice president for Africa, said in a statement.

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South African fossils may be missing link

Another amazing discovery from Africa.

The extraordinary remains are thought to represent a period of evolutionary transition between tree-dwelling apes and the earliest human ancestors, or hominids, to take their first tentative steps on two feet. Their position at the very root of our family tree has led scientists to claim that the skeletons will help define what it means to be human.

The remains were recovered alongside the fossilised bones of at least 25 other animals, including sabre-toothed cats, a hyena, a wild dog, several antelope and a horse, according to two reports in the journal Science. At the time the creatures died, the region was dominated by a grassy plain crossed by wooded valleys.

The discovery of the mass grave has led researchers to suggest that the ancient animals and the hominids fell into the cave network through "death trap" holes in the surface and were unable to escape. The skeletons were so well preserved that palaeontologists believe the two individuals fell into the cave together and were dead and buried within days or weeks.

The remains, found in the Malapa cave network at the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site 40km outside Johannesburg, have already triggered a row over their identity, because they share anatomical features with both early humans from the genus, Homo, and their ancient predecessors, the Australopithecines, or southern apes.

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