The decision by the US to approve an investment deal with Rwanda, the first with an African country since 1998, is seen as a political victory for President Paul Kagame, who has been busy cutting fresh deals with powerful nations.
On Monday, the US Senate approved the United States-Rwanda Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) initiated by former US president George W. Bush and President Kagame in 2008.
The deal, announced after President Kagame visited the US, came days after the Rwandan leader visited France, the first such trip by a Rwandan head of state since the genocide, as he sought to build diplomatic, economic and commercial ties.
While details on all the deals President Kagame inked during the visits remain scanty, analysts said the leader was keen to marshal new international friends to help build the economy as the world slowly slides into another painful economic recession.
A BIT is a treaty of law between the US and another nation meant to promote trade between the two states by providing legal protections for both countries — including transparency in governance and neutral arbitration.
It establishes rules that protect the rights of US investors abroad and provide market access for future US investment. While Kagame’s visit to France was met with protests by pockets of the Rwandan diaspora who felt France should avoid legitimising the Rwandan regime, commentators read more to it.
“For Kagame and Rwanda, a future without animosity from France, a country that for better or worse is one of the wealthiest and most influential in the world, cannot be bad for business broadly defined,” said Frederick Golooba-Mutebi, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Social Research, Makerere University.
“As for the Rwanda government, a constant preoccupation is how to free itself of the domination made possible by unprincipled relationships with big powers. Rwandans leave no one in doubt about wanting to decide how to run their country themselves.”
Ordinarily, BITs also help advance US strategic interests by requiring adoption of market-based economic policies. In exchange, a country signing a BIT with the US is likely to gain greater investments — and the jobs that come with them — than would have been gained had the treaty not been in place.
Only five other sub-Saharan nations have established BITs with the US: Cameroon, the two Congos, Mozambique and Senegal.
Washington is currently exploring such arrangements with Gabon, Ghana, Mauritius and Nigeria and, collectively, with the member states of the East African Community.
The Obama administration regards the Rwandan leader as a force for stability and economic progress in Central and East Africa. Endorsement of the BIT underscores Washington’s willingness to do business with Kagame’s Rwanda.
But the Kagame regime also has critics in the US. Human-rights groups charge that Kagame has sought to silence domestic opponents by brutal means and has generally acted more like an autocrat than a democratic leader.
Opposition groups came out in force in Paris in September to condemn Kagame in similar terms.
He had come to France for only the second time since the 1994 genocide in order to hold talks with President Nicolas Sarkozy.
The trip was viewed as an effort to repair diplomatic relations between the two countries and to encourage French investment in Rwanda.
Ties were snapped in 1996 when a French judge implicated Kagame in the downing of a plane two years earlier that was carrying the then-president of Rwanda, a Hutu. A genocidal rampage against the country’s Tutsi minority then erupted, leading in turn to a insurgent attack by Tutsi forces led by Kagame.
French leaders, on their part, had been incensed by Kagame’s accusations that France was complicit in the genocide that took the lives of some 800,000 Tutsi as well as Hutu who opposed the onslaught.
Ubs, the giant swiss bank, has raised its estimated losses due to alleged unauthorised trading to $2.3bn (£1.5bn) from an initial $2bn.
The bank also said the alleged activity by trader from Ghana Kweku Adoboli was uncovered after UBS began making inquiries.
That prompted Mr Adoboli to admit the losses on Wednesday, UBS said. The trader was charged with fraud and false accounting at a London court on Friday.
The bank’s statement comes as UBS boss Oswald Gruebel insisted he would not resign over the incident.
“I’m responsible for everything that happens at the bank,” Mr Gruebel told Swiss Sunday newspaper, der Sonntag. “if you ask me whether I feel guilty, then I would say no.”
‘Fictitious’ hedges
Mr Adoboli has been remanded in custody until a committal hearing on 22 September.
According to the charges, the fraud took place between January and September this year.The charges add that Mr Adoboli filed false accounts between October 2008 and December 2009, and from January to September 2011.
However, UBS latest statement said the losses only related to trading positions taken on in the last three months.
The 31-year-old worked for UBS’s global synthetic equities division, buying and selling exchange traded funds, which track different types of stocks or commodities such as precious metals.
Prosecutors say Mr Adoboli “dishonestly abused that position intending thereby to make a gain for yourself, causing losses to UBS or to expose UBS to risk of loss”.
The UBS statement claimed Mr Adoboli had conducted legitimate derivative transactions, giving the bank heavy exposure to various stock market indexes.
But he had then entered “fictitious” hedges against these positions into UBS’ risk management system, while in reality he had no hedge in place and was breaching the risk limits that the bank required him to work within.
Stock markets have fallen 10%-20% in the past two months on growing fears of a renewed recession in the US and a disorderly debt default by Greece.
“Following inquiries directed to him by UBS control functions that were reviewing his positions, the trader revealed his unauthorized activity on September 14, 2011,” the UBS statement said.
The bank said it was now operating within normal risk limits, implying that the unauthorised positions had been hedged or unwound.
Nigerian security forces killed at least 23 people in the northeastern city of Maiduguri in retaliation for a bomb attack blamed on a radical Islamist sect, Amnesty International said on Monday.
Boko Haram, a radical group which wants sharia law more widely applied across Africa’s most populous nation, has been behind almost daily shootings and attacks with homemade bombs in and around Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state.
Saturday’s attack near a market in the centre of the city injured three soldiers and killed several civilians, authorities and witnesses said.
Maiduguri residents have accused members of a military Joint Task Force (JTF) of using indiscriminate force when reacting to attacks carried out by Boko Haram. The government says there have only been isolated incidents of misbehaviour by officials.
“House to house searches, brutalisation, unlawful arrests, killings and disappearances have been the operating practice in Maiduguri for some months now,” said Tawanda Hondora, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Africa.
“Unless steps are taken to ensure security forces operate within the law and respect human rights at all times, the next time Boko Haram attacks or kills a soldier, we are likely to see the same thing happen again,” Hondora added.
Thousands of people have fled Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, in recent weeks, fearing being caught up in clashes between JTF officials and Boko Haram.
More than 250 people have been killed since July 2010 by people believed to be members of Boko Haram, Amnesty International said in a press release on Monday. Attacks usually target police, churches and outdoor drinking areas.
Bomb blasts in the north have replaced militant attacks on oil facilities hundreds of kilometres (miles) way in the southern Niger Delta as the main security threat in Nigeria. The United States and European Union have condemned the violence.
Boko Haram strikes have spread farther afield in recent months, including a bomb in the car park of national police headquarters in the capital, Abuja, last month.
The group’s views are not espoused to by the majority of Nigeria’s Muslim population, the largest in sub-Saharan Africa.
Last month, Energy and Minerals Minister William Ngeleja said in a presentation to parliament that the government was seeking loans from China to finance construction of the pipeline from Mtwara to Dar es Salaam.
The Guardian on Sunday newspaper reported $300 million of the loan will be used to construct processing plants at Mnazi Bay, and that Finance Minister Mustafa Mkulo and Ngeleja were expected to fly to Beijing next week to sign the loan agreement.
“This is a must project for the future of this country … we have secured financing from the Chinese and the agreement will be signed next week,” Ngeleja was quoted saying.
“Some people have been misleading the public by saying the Chinese own this project, but the truth is it’s government owned … The Chinese are financiers and the project will boost gas supply as well as reducing or ending the power supply problem in the country.”
Tanzania’s chronic energy shortages have resulted in rolling power outages, undermining economic growth in the country.
The Tanzanian government said it plans to shift its focus to investment in thermal plants fuelled by natural gas and coal in attempts at weaning itself off weather-dependent hydropower, which accounts for 55 percent of the country’s energy sources. (Reuters)
A French woman seized in northern Kenya was taken to Somalia by her captors after a sea battle to rescue her failed, Kenyan government officials said.
Gunmen snatched the woman early Saturday from her holiday home in Manda Island, close to where a Briton was abducted and her husband killed last month.
They were "10 heavily armed Somali bandits suspected to be al-Shabaab operatives" from Ras Kamboni, across the border in Somalia, Kenyan security minister George Saitoti said in a statement.
Security forces pursued the men as they raced in a high-speed boat toward the border, but despite the Kenya navy injuring several abductors in a shoot-out, they managed to reach Ras Kamboni, according to Saitoti.
Are Somali pirates shifting tactics?
UK man killed, wife kidnapped in Kenya
"In the meantime, every effort is being made to rescue the victim," he said.
Andrew Mwangura, a piracy expert and editor of Somalia Report, said his sources in Somalia told him the French hostage has been taken deeper into the country.
She was taken to a town in the north, Mwangura said, which makes her rescue more complicated in an area run by the al-Shabaab.
French authorities are not releasing the woman's name, said Eric Bosc, a spokesman for the French Foreign Affairs Ministry.
She is in her 60s and lives in Kenya about six months a year, and French authorities are doing everything they can to free her, the spokesman said.
Kenyan officials and an acquaintance said the woman uses a wheelchair and is not in good health.
It is the second kidnapping near the popular tourist town of Lamu in a month. Gunmen fatally shot a British man and kidnapped his wife, Judith Tebbutt, from a safari lodge near the town last month.
David Tebbutt was killed in the attack when he resisted, according to Kenyan police.
The U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office issued revised travel advice to its citizens traveling near the Somali border.
"We advise against all but essential travel to coastal areas within 150 km of the Somali border, following two attacks by armed gangs in small boats against beach resorts in the Lamu area on 11 September and 1 October 2011," the statement said.
Its previous advice cautioned against travel within 60 kilometers (37 miles) of the border.
Security analysts have said Judith Tebbutt is being held by pirates in a remote corner of Somalia. British government officials have asked journalists not to reveal her exact location to avoid abduction attempts from rival gangs.
The French embassy in Nairobi urged "extreme caution" for people visiting Lamu and the surrounding area.
Manda Island is made up of luxury homes and some small hotels. It is directly across a narrow channel from Shella Beach, one of the most popular -- and long considered safest -- tourist spots in Kenya, on Lamu Island. The channel runs straight from the open ocean.
It is off-season in the area, an is frequented by Europeans and other expatriates living in Kenya.
Hadija Ernst, a resident of the area and editor of the local magazine Chonju, said the abductions have put local residents and tourists on edge.
"The people are actually leaving, the tourists that are here are leaving because of the reports that we're getting," she said.
Ernst, who knows the kidnapped woman, said she is a "kind and gentle person."
"She's very interested in Swahili culture, the culture of the island here," she said.
Security in the area should have been improved following the first kidnapping, Ernst said. She has not seen any signs of increased security in the area and worries that the tourist economy in the area will suffer.
"So we are all very concerned and we want to see the government take this matter very seriously," she said.
Saitoti called the abduction a serious violation of Kenya's territorial integrity.
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has revealed that he will field a mixture of first-team players and youngsters against Shrewsbury Town in the Carling Cup on Tuesday.
The Gunners host the League Two club in the third round of the competition at the Emirates Stadium and will hope to bounce back from their 4-3 away defeat to Blackburn Rovers
in the Premier League on Saturday.Wenger, who led Arsenal
to the final of the Carling Cup last season, has said that he will hand full debuts to Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Ryo Miyaichi."I will be faithful to our policy but I will try to find a good mixture between youth and experience," said Wenger on Arsenal's official website.
"You will see the likes of Ryo and Oxlade-Chamberlain. You should be excited about Oxlade-Chamberlain because he is a great talent.
"My target is to develop him so he confirms the expectation I have for him."
Leading UK polar scientists say the Times Atlas of the World was wrong to assert that it has had to re-draw its map of Greenland due to climate change.
Publicity for the latest edition of the atlas, launched last week, said warming had turned 15% of Greenland's former ice-covered land "green and ice-free".
But scientists from the Scott Polar Research Institute say the figures are wrong; the ice has not shrunk so much.
The Atlas costs £150 ($237) and claims to be the world's "most authoritative".
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
End Quote Scott Polar Research Institute staffIt is... crucial to report climate change and its impact accurately and to back bold statements with concrete and correct evidence”
The 13th edition of the "comprehensive" version of the atlas included a number of revisions made for reasons of environmental change since the previous one, published in 2007.
The break-up of some Antarctic ice shelves due to climate change, the shrinking of inland waters such as the Dead and Aral Seas, and the drying up of rivers such as the Colorado River are all documented.
But the glossy publicity sheets begin with the contention that "for the first time, the new edition of the (atlas) has had to erase 15% of Greenland's once permanent ice cover - turning an area the size of the United Kingdom and Ireland 'green' and ice-free.
"This is concrete evidence of how climate change is altering the face of the planet forever - and doing so at an alarming and accelerating rate."
The Scott Polar group, which includes director Julian Dowdeswell, says the claim of a 15% loss in just 12 years is wrong.
The Scott Polar team says treatment of eastern Greenland is of particular concern "Recent satellite images of Greenland make it clear that there are in fact still numerous glaciers and permanent ice cover where the new Times Atlas shows ice-free conditions and the emergence of new lands," they say in a letter that has been sent to the Times.
"We do not know why this error has occurred, but it is regrettable that the claimed drastic reduction in the extent of ice in Greenland has created headline news around the world.
"There is to our knowledge no support for this claim in the published scientific literature."
Many of the institute's staff are intimately involved in research that documents and analyses the impacts of climate change across the Arctic.
As such, they back the contention that rising temperatures are cutting ice cover across the region, including along the fringes of Greenland; but not anything like as fast as the Times Atlas claimed.
"It is... crucial to report climate change and its impact accurately and to back bold statements with concrete and correct evidence," they say.
The Times Atlas is not owned by The Times newspaper. It is published by Times Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, which is in turn owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.
A spokesperson for HarperCollins said its new map was based on information provided by the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).
"While global warming has played a role in this reduction, it is also as a result of the much more accurate data and in-depth research that is now available," she said.
"Read as a whole, both the press release and the 13th edition of the Atlas make this clear."
McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton reckons the key to being quick is to take risks on the racetrack - and be in no rush to start a family. On the subject of starting a family with pop star girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger he says: "I'm still young and I'm not in that position yet."
Full story: Reuters
Former world champion Kimi Raikkonen and Force India driver Adrian Sutil have both recently paid visits to the Williams factory in Grove, prompting speculation over who will drive for the team in 2012.
Full story: Joe Saward's grand prix blog
Bernie Ecclestone says he wants to add grands prix in South Africa and Mexico to the calendar in the future. The F1 supremo also reveals the organisers of the Bahrain Grand Prix, which was dropped from the schedule this season because of civil unrest, still paid the fee to host the race - meaning F1's owners did not lose any money.
Full story: The Independent
Williams driver Pastor Maldonado is preparing for his first drive around Singapore's Marina Bay circuit. "Everyone has told me it is the most beautiful place and I really like street circuits so I think I can be quick there," he said. Williams will also try out an upgraded diffuser and new front wing during Friday practice.
Full story: Williams F1 team
Pirelli are taking the soft and super-soft tyre compounds to Singapore and the F1 tyre supplier reckons the humid, night race provides tyre technicians with a unique problem, as track temperatures tend to go down dramatically during each session, rather than rise.
Full story: Pirelli
Force India reserve driver Nico Hulkenberg is in Goa for the the team's Driver Academy Finals. "Down to 25 kids from many thousands," the German says.
Nico Hulkenberg on Twitter
Michael Schumacher is targeting more points for Mercedes at this week's Singapore Grand Prix and is even looking forward to the bizarre schedule that comes with a night race. "Surprisingly, it [is] somehow fun to drive and have meetings in the middle of the night."
Full story: Michael Schumacher
Team Lotus will put on a "maximum downforce" package for Singapore and technical chief Mike Gascoyne hopes a new floor, diffuser and bigger front brake ducts will help improve the car's performance.
Full story: Team Lotus
Renault driver Vitaly Petrov arrives in Singapore on Monday to acclimatise to the hot and humid conditions ahead of Sunday's night race. The Russian adds: "I don't think you can easily prepare for this race. The conditions will be the same as we faced in Malaysia, and we can't simulate these weather conditions back in England!"
Security forces in Yemen have killed more than 50 people in two days of violence against anti-government protesters, activists say, in the country's bloodiest clashes for months.
Snipers in Sanaa fired from rooftops at a protester camp, killing bystanders including a child, witnesses said.
Government forces also shelled areas held by troops loyal to the protesters.
The opposition has promised to carry on its campaign to oust President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
For months, thousands of people have been waging a campaign to depose Mr Saleh, who has ruled the country since 1978 and is currently in Saudi Arabia recovering from a bomb attack in June.
The opposition believes the government is deliberately orchestrating the violence to derail any chance of agreement.
But a Yemeni minister strongly denied reports that the authorities had fired on peaceful demonstrators, telling the BBC government forces were being attacked by militants sympathetic to al-Qaeda.
The US and EU nations were among members of the UN Human Rights Council who used a meeting in Geneva on Monday to urge Yemen's government to stop using force against protesters.
Meanwhile, as the violence intensified, envoys from the UN and the Gulf Co-operation Council arrived in Yemen, in a new attempt to negotiate a handover of power from Mr Saleh.
Air attacks
The last two days have seen the worst violence in the country for several months: on Sunday, 26 people were killed and many more injured as they marched towards the presidential palace in Sanaa, the capital.
IE 10, which will be available with the company's next operating system (OS), Windows 8, will come in two versions – one for PCs and one for PC tablets. The versions of the OS designed for tablets, called Metro, will not support plug-ins such as Flash.
According to a blog post by head of IE development, Dean Hachamovitch, Metro will allow the web to move forwards and consumers will get the most out of touchscreen technologies, "improved battery life as well as security, reliability, and privacy".
The Metro browser, which displays applications and programs as easy to touch coloured tiles, is gesture-oriented interface and is expected to be more commonly used for tablets the other version of IE.
However, Metro will work with a mouse and keyboard as well. Flash is likely to continue to be supported on desktop PCs running Windows 8.
The announcement has not perturbed Adobe as the company's platform general manager Danny Winokur said the company would continue to develop and support Flash.
Read more: http://www.computeractive.co.uk/ca/news/2110203/microsoft-drop-flash-windows-tablets#ixzz1YQIvHDEF
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