Dozens Killed As Demonstrators Clash With Police

26 September 2013

Sudan has been hit by a deadly wave of protests against the government's lifting of a popular fuel subsidy. Internet across the country was reportedly shut down, as police fired tear gas at stone-throwing demonstrators.

At least 29 people have died in three days of protests, according to medical staff and relatives, as a wave of dissent over fuel prices swept the capital.

Shops were closed in the capital Khartoum and its neighboring sister city Omdurman, with roads reportedly blocked by protesters. In the north of Khartoum, police fired tear gas at demonstrators who had set fire to a police station.

Tear gas was also used in other areas of the capital against protesters throwing stones. Plumes of black smoke were seen rising into the sky above Khartoum, as demonstrators burnt tires.

"The people want the fall of the regime!" protesters chanted, along with calls of "No to high prices!"

One Reuters reporter said hundreds of officers and plain-clothed security agents carrying guns or batons rushed to the city center. Security agents were said to have taken away some 20 protesters in pickup trucks.

Internet access was unavailable across much of the country, prompting some analysts to compare the situation to that in neighboring Egypt during the 2011 uprising that toppled then President Hosni Mubarak. At that time, access to the Internet was said to have been cut to prevent protests being organized via social media.

Rioting initially began in the state of Ghezira, south of Khartoum after the Sudanese government removed subsidies on gasoline and other fuel earlier this week, immediately doubling the price of such commodities.

President Omar al-Bashir has ruled the country for more than two decades and has so far avoided the types of mass demonstrations that deposed leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, and which led to revolutions in Libya and Syria.

In response to the protest Bashir on Thursday cancelled a trip to attend the UN general assembly in New York, which he had planned despite an outstanding arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

(AFP, AP, Reuters)

Source: allAfrica.
Link: http://allafrica.com/stories/201309271131.html.

Female prisoners tortured and sexually abused in Egypt's jails

Saturday, 08 February 2014

Egypt's Women against the Coup movement has revealed that the authorities arrested 200 women in December and January and accused the interior ministry of torture and sexual abuse. "We registered the arrest of 200 women since the ratification of the Demonstration Act, which requires prior permission from the interior ministry for any demonstration and imposes severe retribution against dissidents," said a report by the group.

According to Turkish news agency Anadolu, the women's movement pointed out that female students from Al-Azhar University top the list of prisoners, which includes girls under 15 years old and elderly ladies of 60-plus.

The movement's report noted that most arrests took place on the last Friday of December when 40 women were taken into custody. "Criminal sentences handed down in absentia started to appear in January," the report said. "Six female students from Al-Azhar were sentenced to one year in prison and six from Nasser City were sentenced to five years."

Women against the Coup said that violations against the women prisoners "started from the minute that they were arrested"; the report also uses the term "kidnapped". "They were beaten by batons, their scarfs were removed and they were pulled by the hair; clothes were ripped off and they were sexually molested by officers who touched their private parts," it alleged.

When the prisoners arrived at police stations they were obliged to strip off their clothes and, again, police officers touched their private parts and beat them before putting them in "inappropriate" cells. "After they were taken to Al-Qanater Prison," claims the report, "the women faced virginity tests and were mixed with common criminals, who also attacked them."

The UK-based Arab Organization for Human Rights said that it had received complaints from the families of 12 students imprisoned in Egypt. "The complaints indicated that the ladies were beaten, insulted and sexually abused by soldiers or policemen when they were arrested."

Egypt's Deputy Interior Minister for Western Cairo, Brigadier Ali Damardash, denied the accusations. Speaking to Anadolu, he said: "I do not understand the violations it (AOHR) is speaking about. This is completely untrue… Egyptian prisons follow a system that respects international human rights… There is no basis for all the rumors about torture or violations in the Egyptian prisons."

It is worth noting that many domestic and international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have issued dozens of reports describing the serious violations taking place inside Egyptians prisons. Human rights activists are denied permission to visit the prisons or meet the prisoners.

Source: Middle East Monitor.
Link: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/africa/9647-female-prisoners-tortured-and-sexually-abused-in-egypts-jails.

Bosnians sweep up after violent protests

February 08, 2014

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Bosnians swept up the rubble Saturday after protesters set fire to the presidency and other government buildings in the country's worst social unrest since its devastating war. But the next steps in attempts to clean up are far from clear.

A few hundred people continued to protest peacefully in the capital, Sarajevo, and other cities, angry about the nation's almost 40 percent unemployment rate and rampant corruption. Local governments in four cities, including Sarajevo, resigned amid the unrest, one mayor fled the country and politicians appeared on TV acknowledging mistakes and promising to change before general elections in October. But ordinary Bosnians have many reasons to be skeptical.

The privatization that followed the 1992-95 war decimated the middle class and sent the working class into poverty as a few tycoons flourished. Corruption is widespread and high taxes for the country's bloated public sector eat away at residents' paychecks. Bickering among politicians along ethnic lines means very little functions smoothly and has hampered the country's ambitions of one day joining the European Union.

"This was a long accumulated dissatisfaction," acknowledged Bosnia's Foreign Minister Zlatko Lagumdzija. "The kids who did this were born in a post-war society and watched their parents being ripped off by tycoons in criminal privatization. They grew up with no hope for a bright future, watching poverty and injustice."

He called prosecutors to "wipe off the dust" on corruption investigations and trials. Other leaders blamed each other, the war or the badly designed constitution. The violence started early this week in the northern city of Tuzla, a former industrial center, where thousands of factory workers vented their fury over the dubious privatization that left them without jobs and earned salaries. Images of police beating and arresting members of the crowd prompted protests in over 20 cities.

Some 200 policemen and 100 protesters were injured in Friday's clashes as protesters smashed government buildings, cars and streetlights. Almost 100 people were detained, many of them teenagers. Protesters also set upon local government buildings in Zenica, Mostar and Travnik.

On Saturday, people showed up in Tuzla with brooms and cleaned up debris. Many other people stayed home. "I think this was done by hooligans, not real demonstrators," said Ivica Murgic, a retired Sarajevan. "I can't understand why the buildings had to be burnt."

Reforms have been held back by Bosnia's complicated political system. The war that killed over 100,000 people ended with no winner, but with a peace agreement that divided the country ethnically into a Bosniak-Croat federation and a Serb republic.

Each has its own government and parliament and they are linked by a central government, parliament and presidency. The Bosniak-Croat Federation is further divided in 10 cantons — each with a similar set of institutions.

This means that nearly 4 million people are governed by over a hundred ministries on four different levels of government — an expensive and ineffective system that Bosnia's Serbs have defended over fears that centralization would decrease their autonomy.

Friday's protests occurred almost exclusively in the Bosniak-Croat Federation, where salaries and pensions are higher. German diplomat Christian Schwarz Schilling said people in the Federation enjoy more freedom, while the Bosnian Serb part is under the thumb of its president.

"There is neither freedom of media there, nor the freedom to express your opinion without fearing you might fall out of the window afterward," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Saturday.

Central prison in Aleppo taken after storming. Thousands of hostages released

6 February 2014

Sources from Syria reported that units of Jabhat al-Nusrah and Ahrar al-Sham stormed the central prison in Aleppo.

During the decisive assault, a lot of Assadites were partly eliminated, and a part of them knocked out of their positions.

According to the latest reports from the battle scene, the fighting aims to eliminate the last remaining block of the prison. 4,000 to 6,000 prisoners and hostages are held there.

Hundreds of exhausted hostages and prisoners have been already freed. The process continues. The condition of many prisoners is very miserable. All of them are exhausted and barely stay on feet.

During the assault on the central prison, Emir Seyfullah al-Chechen became a martyr, Insha'Allah. Emir Seyfullah al-Chechen was born in Pankisi, Georgia. There is no accurate information so far on the overall losses among Mujahideen and Assadites.

It is to be recalled, that the central prison in Aleppo has been besieged by the Mujahideen for about a year. There were several major attempts to attack, including martyrdom operations, but all of them failed. Many Mujahideen from the Caucasus, Crimea, etc. martyred in the battle.

It should be noted that the liberation of the central prison is a major success in the battle for Aleppo, because the prison is located in a strategically important area. Now, the main road used by Assadites to deliver supplies to their troops in Aleppo fell under the Mujahideen control.

Department of Monitoring
Kavkaz Center

Source: Kavkaz Center.
Link: http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2014/02/06/18850.shtml.

China to build new port-city in Colombo on 99-year-lease

[TamilNet, Monday, 29 July 2013]

The Sri Lankan State, which has been trading human rights with the West and ports with China for completing the structural genocide on the occupied country of Eezham Tamils, has now signed a US$1.43 billion deal with China Communications Construction to build a port facility with a 99-year-lease on a 230 hectares reclaimed land in Colombo, Sri Lanka Ports Authority chairman Priyath Wickrama has announced. “The Chinese firm will be given 50 hectares of reclaimed land and the construction project, schemed to start in September will last for 39 months,” said a report by Latvia-based Transport Weekly on Monday.

The port facility will become a ‘city’ with eco-parks, residential areas, offices and shopping malls, the report further said.

“The site is next to the main Port of Colombo, close to Shangri-La Hotels Lanka, a unit Hong Kong-listed Shangri-La Asia, which is building a 500-room hotel.”

Source: TamilNet.
Link: http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=13&artid=36516.

Opponents of Kiev protests gather at barricade

February 08, 2014

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Thousands of people angered by months of anti-government protests in the Ukrainian capital converged on one of the protesters' barricades Saturday, but retreated after meeting sizable resistance.

Although the confrontation ended without violence, it underlined the tensions that persist as the protests slog through a third month with no sign of concession from either side. The anti-government protesters have set up an extensive tent camp on downtown Kiev's main square and occupy three nearby buildings, including the city hall, that they use for operations centers, sleeping quarters and even an improvised library. They have also built extensive barricades of earth, bags of ice and refuse on the fringes of the area.

About 2,000 people streamed toward the barricade near city hall at midday, blocking traffic on the capital's main avenue and placing tires in the roadway. Igor Polishchuk, one of the men placing the tires, said the crowd intended to show its peaceful opposition to the protests that have pushed the country into a political crisis and complained that police had done little against the protesters.

"It's a critical mass in there, without control," he said. "The authorities aren't anywhere inside." Protesters from the anti-government side stood atop the three-meter (10-foot) barricade and members of the protest camp's self-defense marshaled, many of them carrying metal shields and protecting their heads with cycling or hockey headgear.

After about two hours, the protesters' opponents pulled back, with the self-defense volunteers following, banging their shields with rods in an eerie imitation of the technique used by the country's feared riot police.

After riot police violently dispersed two of the early protest rallies, crowds swelled — sometimes exceeding 100,000 people — and the protest issues expanded to denunciation of police brutality and calls for the resignation of President Viktor Yanukovych.

The protests began in late November after Yanukovych backed away from an agreement to deepen ties with the European Union and pursue closer relations with Russia. A wide swath of Ukrainian society resents Russia's long dominance or influence on Ukraine and avidly supports integration with the EU as a way to bolster democracy and human rights.

Many of the demonstrators who challenged the protesters' barricade on Saturday wore St. George's ribbons, a traditional Russian military emblem. Yanukovych's strongest support is in the Russian-speaking eastern part of the country.

Yanukovych met Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday on the sidelines of the opening day of the Sochi Olympics. No details of the meeting were made public. After Yanukovych shelved the EU deal, Russia agreed to a $15 billion financial aid package to Ukraine; his opponents fear that was a prelude to joining a trade bloc that Moscow is leading as a counterweight to the EU.

Juncker resigns, Luxembourg to hold snap elections

July 11, 2013

LUXEMBOURG, July 11 (UPI) -- Luxembourg, which has not had a government fall in a century, will hold new elections after its prime minister resigns Thursday amid a secret service scandal.

"I will convene the government ... at 10 a.m. [4 a.m. EDT] and will go to the palace to suggest snap elections to the grand duke," Jean-Claude Juncker said Wednesday night in announcing his plans to resign after a 7-hour parliamentary grilling over his failure to control Luxembourg's secret service.

Le Service de renseignement de l'Etat luxembourgeois, or SREL, is being investigated by the state prosecutor for illegal wiretapping, corruption and dealing in stolen cars.

"It's true the secret service wasn't my top priority," Juncker, 58, told members of Parliament. "But I did look after it," he said.

He said he'd made fighting terrorism and the proliferation of weapons a priority.

He also said the parliamentary control committee also had power to rein in the secret service.

"It could have controlled it. ... It did not," he said.

At one point in the questioning, Juncker sardonically told lawmakers, "I'm not perspiring because I'm scared but because it's hot."

The early elections are expected to be held in October. They must be held within three months, the Parliament's website says.

It was not immediately clear if Juncker, in government for 30 years and prime minister since 1995, would be a candidate.

The president of the Christian Social People's Party, which has led all but one government since the end of World War II, said in a radio interview Wednesday he expected Juncker would run.

But the Financial Times quoted local media reports as saying EU Justice Minister Viviane Reding and Luxembourg Finance Minister Luc Frieden were front-runners to lead the party.

The 998-square-mile landlocked country of 525,000 people -- per capita the richest in Europe -- hasn't had a government fall since 1916.

A parliamentary commission led by Francois Bausch, the chamber's Green Party leader, accused Juncker of spending so much time in Brussels presiding over Eurogroup meetings and EU summits that he wasn't adequately able to oversee the "dysfunctional" SREL.

From 2005 until January, Juncker led the Eurogroup conclave of eurozone finance ministers, presiding over marathon meetings and putting together eurozone bailout packages.

His political skills are widely credited with holding the EU's single currency together during the debt crisis.

SREL Director Patrick Heck said in January that under his predecessor the agency illegally bugged phone conversations of senior officials, including those of Juncker. The parliamentary commission said the wiretapping took place from 2004 to 2009, when Marco Mille was dismissed as SREL director after being accused of orchestrating the irregularities.

The commission also found the SREL also ran a fictional counter-terrorism operation that was really a front to help a Russian oligarch pay $10 million to a Spanish spy.

"I did say that the intelligence service was not my priority," Juncker told lawmakers, adding, "Moreover, I hope that Luxembourg will never have a prime minister whose top priority is SREL."

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2013/07/11/Juncker-resigns-Luxembourg-to-hold-snap-elections/UPI-46571373520600/.

Kosovo university head resigns after protests

February 08, 2014

PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) — Kosovo's top public university official has resigned from his post following days of clashes between police and protesters who accused him and other staff of faking their teaching credentials.

Ibrahim Gashi made the announcement Saturday on Kosovo's public broadcaster, RTK. He blamed the events on Kosovo's political opposition parties. Gashi's appointment was backed by the ruling coalition.

For over a week demonstrators, mostly students, said university president Gashi and dozens of staff published research in dubious journals abroad. Police in riot gear clashes with protesters outside Gashi's offices in the capital Pristina. Dozens of police and protesters were injured.

More demonstrations are expected next week as protest organizers demand all teaching staff credentials are scrutinized by an independent body.

London signs off on two major wind farms

July 11, 2013

LONDON, July 11 (UPI) -- The British government said Thursday it has created the right climate to attract major investors to its growing wind energy sector.

British Energy Secretary Ed Davey said the government gave its consent for the eventual construction of what he said would be the world's largest offshore wind farm, the Triton Knoll project. It represents a $5.6 billion investment and will generate 1,200 megawatts from its 288 turbines off the coast of Lincolnshire and Norfolk.

The Pen y Cymoedd wind farm in South Wales, meanwhile, represents a $509 million investment and will generate enough wind power to meet the annual demands of 140,000 homes. Davey gave the consent for the project's construction, which should start next year.

"We have provided certainty early to onshore and offshore wind investors and now see significant investment decisions being made that will benefit the U.K.'s economy for years to come," Davey said in a statement.

British officials have set a goal of getting 30 percent of the country's electricity generated by renewable resources by 2020.

Davey in March said the government wants to give project developers the confidence they need to invest in the country's low-carbon economy.

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2013/07/11/London-signs-off-on-two-major-wind-farms/UPI-46461373542611/.

Stranded American dissident Snowden forced to seek temporary asylum in bloody KGB Russia

16 July 2013

American political dissident Edward Snowden applied for temporary asylum in Russia on Tuesday after three weeks holed up at a Moscow airport trying to avoid prosecution in the United States for disclosing truth about the CIA and NSA crimes against humanity, reports Reuters.

Mr. Snowden is seeking refuge in Latin America after leaking details of criminal U.S. government surveillance programs, but has not risked taking any flight that might be intercepted by the United States since flying in from Hong Kong on June 23.

"He reached the conclusion that he needs to write an application for temporary asylum (in Russia), and this procedure has just been done," Kucherena, a KGB lawyer who met Mr. Snowden on Friday along with human rights activists.

"For now he is not going to go anywhere. For now he plans to stay in Russia," the KGB man said, adding that if Mr. Snowden were granted temporary asylum, he should have the same rights as other citizens and be free to work for the KGB and travel in Russia.

The asylum application could end his time in limbo but risks deepening tension between America and Russia, which has refused to expel him to his homeland for prosecution.

The head of Russia's Federal Migration Service (FMS) confirmed the agency had received Snowden's application. Anti-secrecy group Wikileaks, which has been helping Mr. Snowden, said on Twitter that he had applied for "a temporary protection visa".

Mr. Snowden, 30, is trapped in the transit zone of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, an area between the runway and passport control which Russia regards as neutral territory.

He said on Friday he would seek refuge in Russia only until he can travel to one of the three Latin American countries ready to give him political asylum - Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

He said America and its allies were preventing him from reaching those countries. Washington has revoked Snowden's passport and urged other nations not to help him reach an asylum destination.

The KGB man Kucherena said he expected a decision on Snowden's asylum request "soon", though the Federal Migration Service has up to three months to decide on the application.

The process for seeking temporary asylum is different from that for political asylum, which Kucherena said would require a decree from Russian tyrant Putin.

Tyrant Putin has rejected repeated American calls to send Mr. Snowden to the U.S., but has said he does not want the fugitive to harm already strained relations with Washington. Russian patriots have been long accusing the tyrant of working for CIA.

Tyrant Putin has invited Obama for a summit in Moscow in September and both countries have signaled they want to improve ties.

Tyrant Putin has said twice that Mr. Snowden must stop all activities "aimed at harming our American partners" if he wants political asylum in Russia, but he has not made clear whether the condition applies to temporary asylum as well.

Temporary asylum is granted by the FMS, but tyrant Putin would be expected to make the final decision himself, even though he has tried to distance himself from Mr. Snowden's predicament.

Tyrant Putin said on Monday he hoped Mr. Snowden would leave as soon as he could, but left the door open for granting him asylum, saying there were signs the American dissident was moving towards meeting the conditions he has set.

Temporary asylum can be granted for up to a year, with the possibility of extension.

Department of Monitoring
Kavkaz Center

Source: Kavkaz Center.
Link: http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2013/07/16/18062.shtml.

American in Russian captivity promises not to disclose U.S. state secrets under most grisly KGB tortures

17 July 2013

The Guardian published correspondence by e-mail on Monday 15 July between a captive of Putin's gang of FSB American dissident Snowden and former US Senator Gordon Humphrey.

Senator writes:

"Provided you have not leaked information that would put in harms way any intelligence agent, I believe you have done the right thing in exposing what I regard as massive violation of the United States Constitution".

The Guardian also published a reply email from Snowden, in which he writes:

"No intelligence service - not even our own - has the capacity to compromise the secrets I continue to protect. While it has not been reported in the media, one of my specializations was to teach our people at DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency, its main task is to collect information for the pre-emptive nuclear attack on Russia - KC) how to keep such information from being compromised even in the highest threat counter-intelligence environments (i.e. China).

You may rest easy knowing I cannot be coerced into revealing that information, even under torture. With my thanks for your service to the nation we both love".

Meanwhile, Sen. Lindsey Graham in an interview with The Hill said the US should boycott the Olympic Games in Sochi in 2014 because of anti-American actions by Russia.

"What they're (Russians) doing is outrageous We certainly haven't reset our relationship with Russia in a positive way", the politician said in an interview.

He also expressed his attitude to the development of the situation: "If they grant this guy asylum it's a breach of the rule of law as we know it and is a slap in the face to the United States".

Graham is the first senator to suggest a link between the Olympics and Snowden.

Senator John McCain proposed to expand the Magnitsky List and resume construction of air defense systems in Eastern Europe.

It is to be recalled that according to Russian authorities Edward Snowden is in the transit area of ??the airport Sheremetyevo since the end of June. The day before he sought a temporary refuge in Russia.

Former CIA officer Edward Snowden became world known when he published classified information about the US government spying on citizens of the country. Initially, he was hiding in Hong Kong, but soon after the publication of the scandalous information, he came to Moscow. From the Sheremetyevo he intended to go to Venezuela.

Department of Monitoring
Kavkaz Center

Source: Kavkaz Center.
Link: http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2013/07/17/18066.shtml.

Poll observers declare Zimbabwe elections generally 'free and fair'

Johannesburg, August 1 2013: The African Union's (AU) top poll observer has said that Zimbabwe's presidential elections have passed off smoothly.

According to News24, former Nigerian leader Olusegun Obasanjo, who leads the 69-member observation team, said that the election were conducted quite peacefully and were free and fair.

Earlier, the AU mission had been criticized by Morgan Tsvangirai, challenger of President Robert Mugabe, for manipulation in the electoral roll.

It is said that the electoral list contains many duplicate and ghostly voters, the report added.

The Election Resource Center (ERC), an NGO which is collating reports of problems, has claimed that it has received multiple complaints from voters on improper conduct of the elections.

Source: New Kerala.
Link: http://www.newkerala.com/news/story/49336/poll-observers-declare-zimbabwe-elections-generally-free-and-fair.html.

Nigeria seeks farming revival to break oil curse

BY JOE BROCK
SAULAWA, Nigeria
Thu Jul 4, 2013

(Reuters) - Down a winding dirt track in this sleepy village in northern Nigeria lies a corn farm which looks much like the dozens that surround it. The difference is, this one is turning a profit.

"I can barely lift my 8-year-old. He's the fattest in the village," said Ibrahim Mustapha, 50, drawing laughter from his fellow farmers as he pretends to lift up his chubby son.

The Babban Gona or "Great Farm" project, in northern Kaduna state, is one of a handful where private investment is helping former subsistence farmers like Mustapha make profits for themselves and the companies backing them.

When President Goodluck Jonathan was elected two years ago, he pledged reforms that would transform the lives of tens of millions of farmers who live on less than $2 a day despite occupying some of Africa's most fertile land.

Oil remains the main source of foreign currency and state revenues, but agriculture is by far the biggest contributor to GDP, making up 40 percent of Africa's second largest economy.

With 170 million mouths to feed and a growing food import bill thanks to the disarray in the farming sector, agriculture ministry officials say there's no time to lose.

If productivity does not improve Nigeria could face a food crisis within a decade, its current account surplus would be wiped out and the credit worthiness of Africa's second biggest debt issuer would be under threat.

"If we did nothing, it would be a disaster," Agriculture Minister Akinwumi Adesina told Reuters in the capital.

"We don't eat oil, we don't drink it ... We cannot sustain the amount of money we use to import food," Adesina said, a Nigerian flag hanging behind his office chair.

In some cases, the imports substitute for things Nigerians are growing but can't get to market or lack the means to process.

The country is the second largest grower of citrus fruit in the world after China and yet it spends $200 million a year on imported fruit juice while its own produce rots, Adesina said.

It also produces 1.5 million metric tons (1 metric ton = 1.1023 tons) of tomatoes annually of which 45 percent perish, while consumers spend $360 million on tomato paste imported from countries such as Italy and China.

CURING DUTCH DISEASE

To succeed, Adesina's reforms will need to reverse the inadvertent damage done to the sector by Africa's earliest and biggest oil and gas boom, which crowded out other commodities.

In the 1960s, Nigeria was the biggest exporter of peanuts in the world and had 27 percent of the palm oil trade. It remains one of the world's top cocoa growers, but production and bean quality have declined since their heyday in the 1970s.

While an elite allied to a series of military dictatorships grew rich on the spoils of the energy sector, millions of mostly subsistence farmers were given little or no help at all.

The result: Nigeria is now the world's second largest importer of rice and the biggest buyer of U.S. wheat, while much of its own fertile land lies fallow. A booming population has sent its food import bill rocketing to around $11 billion a year - equivalent to more than a third of the federal budget.

Agriculture also offers the best chance to cut unemployment, which feeds an Islamist insurgency in the north and oil theft in the south. Unemployment is 23 percent and youth unemployment double that, national statistics suggest.

"Poverty is the source of a lot of the insecurity problems we have. A hungry man is an angry man," Adesina said.

The minister plans to create 3.5 million new jobs in agriculture and boost food production by 20 million metric tons by 2015, the year of the next national election.

To achieve this, he wants to boost access to microfinance for farmers and draw in $10 billion of foreign investment into farming and food processing.

He has received tentative praise for early successes from foreign diplomats, bankers and aid agencies, but big agro-business projects have yet to take off.

Adesina took a corrupt fertilizer subsidy out of politicians' hands and now farmers are texted subsidy vouchers directly to their mobile phones so they can recoup from fertilizer sellers, a policy used in Kenya's farming reforms.

Seventy percent of farmers now receive subsidized fertilizer and seeds, compared with 11 percent under the corrupt program previously run by state governments, Adesina said.

LONG ROAD AHEAD

Production of rice, cassava, wheat, sorghum, and corn are rising and cocoa, Nigeria's most important export crop, looks set to go up by more than a third this season.

In 2012, agriculture exports rose by 128 billion naira ($788 million) and food imports fell by 850 billion, Adesina says.

Foreign investors such as food giant Cargill, seed company Syngenta, brewer SABMiller and Africa's richest man Aliko Dangote are planning to build everything from fertilizer plants to food processing factories.

Yet rice imports still soak up $7 million a day, while poor infrastructure and policy flip-flopping have in the past seen farming potential wasted. Farmers needs infrastructure to get goods to market -- and rural Nigeria's is as woeful as it gets.

Nigerian billionaire Dangote has pledged to spend $35 million on a tomato paste plant in the northern city of Kano and $45 million in Cross River state to process pineapple juice.

Adesina says he has received $8 billion in commitments but such promises are often not kept in Nigeria. Cargill and SABMiller told Reuters they are only "considering" investing.

"I would estimate that no more than one dollar of investment actually occurs for every $100 of announced commitments," said Fola Fagbule, an Africa-focused investment banker in Lagos.

A central bank initiative has issued guarantees on around 25 billion naira of agriculture loans since it began in July last year, lifting lending to the sector to around 4 percent of total loans, from 1.5 percent at end-2009, the bank says.

The World Bank is putting in $100 million into agriculture, while British and U.S. aid projects pump in tens of millions.

This barely scratches the $10 billion Adesina says the sector needs by 2015. Smallholders say banks still don't lend to them, while the scheme doles out cheap money to big firms.

"We've heard it all before and I have never seen it get better," says Alhaji, a farmer wrestling with two scrawny long-horned cows dragging a rusty plough through a field.

"I have 15 children and ... we barely get enough food to feed ourselves," he said.

BEARING FRUIT?

A few success stories nonetheless give cause for optimism.

Farmer Mustapha says he made $1,350 per hectare from his harvest after paying back private firm Doreo Partners, which runs the Babban Gona project, compared to previous years where he might earn $200 per hectare.

"Now I want to grow my farm, I have so much space I never used. Now I will send my children to school," he said, while behind him mostly unused farmland stretched to the horizon.

Doreo is working with 600 farmers. It has ambitious plans to boost this to 500,000 by 2020, and 5 million by 2030.

"I know it sounds ambitious but it's been done elsewhere and Nigeria has so much easy-to-reach potential," said Kola Masha, the company's head.

Masha is attempting to emulate giant food cooperatives like CHS in the U.S. or India's dairy franchise Amul, who make huge profits while helping millions of smallholder farmers.

He gives farmers high-quality fertilizer, seeds, equipment and expertise on credit to massively increase their yields, while negotiating with firms like Nestle to buy the produce at higher prices than the farmers could get themselves.

Farmers working with Masha, he said, are using 40 times more fertilizer than neighbors who could never afford that amount.

"It's early days but I'm more optimistic than I've ever been," he said.

(Editing by Tim Cocks and Giles Elgood)

Source: Reuters.
Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/04/us-nigeria-agriculture-insight-idUSBRE96305A20130704.

Russia kicks off Sochi Games with hope and hubris

February 07, 2014

SOCHI, Russia (AP) — A Russia in search of global vindication kicked off the Sochi Olympics looking more like a Russia that likes to party, with a pulse-raising opening ceremony about fun and sports instead of terrorism, gay rights and coddling despots.

And that's just the way Russian President Vladimir Putin wants these Winter Games to be. The world's premier athletes on ice and snow have more to worry about than geopolitics as they plunge into the biggest challenges of their lives on the mountain slopes of the Caucasus and in the wet-paint-fresh arenas on the shores of the Black Sea.

But watch out for those Russians on their home turf. A raucous group of Russian athletes had a message for their nearly 3,000 rivals in Sochi, marching through Fisht Stadium singing that they're "not gonna get us!"

Superlatives abounded and the mood soared as Tchaikovsky met pseudo-lesbian pop duo Tatu and their hit, "Not Gonna Get Us." Russian TV presenter Yana Churikova shouted: "Welcome to the center of the universe!"

Yet no amount of cheering could drown out the real world. Fears of terrorism, which have dogged these games since the Putin won them amid controversy seven years ago, were stoked during the ceremony itself. A passenger aboard a flight bound for Istanbul said there was a bomb on board and tried to divert the plane to Sochi. Authorities said the plane landed safely in Turkey, and the suspected hijacker — who did not have a bomb — was subdued.

The show opened with an embarrassing hiccup, as one of five snowflakes failed to unfurl as planned into the Olympic rings, forcing organizers to jettison a fireworks display and disrupting one of the most symbolic moments in an opening ceremony.

That allowed for an old Soviet tradition of whitewashing problems to resurface, as state-run broadcaster Rossiya 1 substituted a shot during from a rehearsal with the rings unfolding successfully into their live broadcast.

Also missing from the show: Putin's repression of dissent, and inconsistent security measures at the Olympics, which will take place just a few hundred miles (kilometers) away from the sites of a long-running insurgency and routine militant violence.

And the poorly paid migrant workers who helped build up the Sochi site from scratch, the disregard for local residents, the environmental abuse during construction, the pressure on activists, and the huge amounts of Sochi construction money that disappeared to corruption.

Some world leaders purposely stayed away, but U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and dozens of others were in Sochi for the ceremony. He didn't mention the very real anger over a Russian law banning gay "propaganda" aimed at minors that is being used to discriminate against gay people.

But IOC President Thomas Bach won cheers for addressing it Friday, telling the crowd it's possible to hold Olympics "with tolerance and without any form of discrimination for whatever reason." For all the criticism, there was no shortage of pride at the ceremony in what Russia has achieved with these games, after building up an Olympic Park out of swampland. The head of the Sochi organizing committee, Dmitry Chernyshenko, captured the mood of many Russians present when he said, "We're now at the heart of that dream that became reality."

"The games in Sochi are our chance to show the whole world the best of what Russia is proud of," he said. "Our hospitality, our achievements, our Russia!" The ceremony presented the Putin's version of today's Russia: a country with a rich and complex history emerging confidently from a rocky two decades and now capable of putting on a major international sports event.

Putin himself was front and center, declaring the games open from his box high above the stadium floor. Earlier, he looked down as the real stars of the games — those athletes, dressed in winter wear of so many national colors to ward off the evening chill and a light dusting of man-made snow — walked onto a satellite image of the earth projected on the floor, the map shifting so the athletes appeared to emerge from their own country.

As always, Greece — the birthplace of Olympic competition — came first in the parade of nations. Five new teams, all from warm weather climates, joined the Winter Olympians for the first time. Togo's flagbearer looked dumbstruck with wonder, but those veterans from the Cayman Islands had the style to arrive in shorts!

The smallest teams often earned the biggest cheers from the crowd of 40,000, with an enthusiastic three-person Venezuelan team winning roars of approval as flagbearer and alpine skier Antonio Pardo danced and jumped along to the electronic music.

Only neighboring Ukraine, scene of a tense and ongoing standoff between a pro-Russian president and Western-leaning protesters, could compete with those cheers. That is, until the Russians arrived. Walking in last to a thundering bass line that struggled to overcome the ovations from the hometown crowd, the Russians reveled in all the attention. Their feeling could perhaps best be summed up by Russian singers Tatu, whose hit "Not Gonna Get Us" accompanied them to their seats.

Russians place huge significance in the Olympics, carefully watching the medal count — their dismal 15-medal performance in Vancouver four years ago is on the minds of many. These games are particularly important, as many Russians are still insecure about their place in the world after the end of the Cold War and the years since that have seen dominance of the United States and China.

International politics were never far beneath the surface. One member of the VIP crowd carrying the Olympic flag was Anastasia Popova, a young television reporter with the state-owned Rossiya TV channel, best known for her reporting on Syria's civil war. Putin and Russian state media have stood strongly behind Syrian President Bashar Assad, and Popova's coverage laid the blame for the war squarely on Syrian rebels.

But back to that Russian pride. As Churikova rallied the crowd to scream "louder than ever," she told the fans in their cool blue seats their keepsakes from the night would last 1,000 years. When explaining the show would be hosted in English, French and Russian, she joked that it didn't matter, because in Sochi, everyone "speaks every language in the world."

Viewers of the Olympic ceremony romped through the wonders of Russian cultural and scientific achievements — from Malevich's avant-garde paintings to Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace," from Mendeleev's periodic table of elements to the string of Soviet "firsts" in space.

Capping it all off, Russian hockey great Vladislav Tretiak and three-time gold medalist Irina Rodnina joined hands to light the Olympic cauldron. He's often called the greatest goaltender of all time by those who saw him play, she won 10 world pairs figure skating titles in a row.

That was how it ended. At the top, the show — and the games — easily avoided talking about prickly issues even when the women in Tatu took the stage. The duo, who put on a lesbian act that is largely seen as an attention-getting gimmick, merely held hands during their performance on this night, stopping short of the groping and kissing of their past performances.

This time? Their lead-in act was the Red Army Choir MVD singing Daft Punk's Grammy-winning "Get Lucky."

AP Sports Writers Stephen Wilson and Jon Krawczynski contributed to this report.

Washington Post. Sochi: Failures everywhere. Even no lamps at bedside tables

4 February 2014

Washington Post’s Moscow correspondent Kathy Lally, who is now in Sochi, describes the situation in this Russian-occupied Emirate city in a report entitled "Olympic dream in Sochi: Internet in the hotel".

Putin is counting off the final days until the opening ceremonies of the games on Friday, and that’s probably time enough to get the Internet working in the hotels.

But getting grass to grow? Perhaps not. There’s so much goopy earth everywhere, it could be time to call out the Olympic mud wrestlers. Finding homes for the packs of hungry stray dogs? That would get at the spirit of the games.

Putin and his deputies here have repeatedly promised that every detail will have fallen into perfect place. No doubt that includes hopes of rooms finished in time to house every spectator who has already paid for one, lamps at every bedside table (many are still undelivered) and bulbs for those already in place (not yet).

As every Russian is fond of saying, hope dies last.

From the air at night, everything looks ready. The Olympic coastal cluster glows hospitably. Lights gleam in the hotel windows.

Check into one of the media hotels, and thank goodness the fire hoses are in place. Open the white cabinet in the bathroom, a miniature hose lies curled inside, ready to extinguish the threat of a bathroom blaze.

There’s also a sink — a tiny, tiny sink — big enough to wash your hands unless they’re particularly meaty. The little sink sits atop an exposed white plastic pipe, stuck to the wall and surrounded by an unruly gob of caulk. Might as well forget about a shower curtain. The way the bathroom is set up there’s no place to affix a rod.

The single room has two lamps — which don’t have light bulbs, but that’s okay because they aren’t near any unused outlets.

An overhead chandelier has five shades, three of them with bulbs. There’s no phone. The television doesn’t work. A brainstorm interrupts an unsuccessful effort to plod through the manual — in Russian. There’s no battery in the remote!

Still no luck. Turns out the TV needs Internet to operate. Any moment, a manager assures, and WiFi will be available — at least in the lobby. The rooms have their own fuse boxes, where some kind of meter runs inside, raising fears they’re going to charge extra for electricity.

Most of the construction equipment has been cleared away, and the landscapers have moved in with trees and shrubs, stuck here and there among clods of earth, pools of rainwater and the mud. The turf men are nowhere to be seen, and the soil hardly seems prepared for them.

Debris-filled dumpsters still sit near some of the hotels. Men carry boxes in and out of the buildings late at night. In the morning, other men with brushes and cans of white paint stand in the rain, dabbing at the sides of hotels.

Department of Monitoring
Kavkaz Center

Source: Kavkaz Center.
Link: http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2014/02/04/18838.shtml.

SO. Threat to athletes and tourists in Sochi comes from KGB and Russian mobsters

6 February 2014

The largest American TV channel reported about danger of hitting Americans in the Russian-occupied Caucasus Emirate. In a report entitled "Russian Spies, Mobsters Hacking Your Smartphones", the TV channel says in particular:

"Spectators in the Black Sea town will face a stealthier threat to their digital lives from Russian spies and tech savvy mobsters, experts and security sources told ABC News.

Russian law allows its intelligence agents to do electronic snooping on anyone inside the country, meaning the phones and personal computers of thousands of foreign visitors, including Americans, are fair game.

But even outside of the law, Russian organized crime groups also are well known for hacking smartphones and email for information they use for illicit profit.

"The host government, private enterprise and individuals pose a big threat to people traveling to the Sochi Games, in respect to monitoring conversations on cell phones and intercepting texts and emails", one Olympic security contractor told ABC News last week.

"It should certainly be expected," agreed a senior US intelligence official, who told ABC News that the influx of tens of thousands of American spectators and dignitaries will be "an intelligence bonanza" for both Russian spies and organized crime groups.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's domestic spying agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB) (earlier, the same Russian gang was called the KGB - KC), will target dignitaries for intelligence collection.

Mobsters hack devices for passwords and data to facilitate digital larceny and, at times, can be used as proxies by the FSB for any number of tasks, sources said.

For instance, a recent cybersecurity report by private firm CrowdStrike fingered Russian intelligence as likely involved with, or at least aware of, the work of a hacker group known as "Energetic Bear," which has targeted Western energy interests.

US officials generally are required to trade in their regular smartphones for "clean" devices when traveling to countries such as Russia and China, which have the most sophisticated spy operations. The assumption of government security officers, based on past experience, is that smartphones operating on foreign networks are easily comprised by foreign intelligence services.

The Russian electronic surveillance program, called SORM, rivals any American domestic FBI or NSA surveillance program -- with one key difference: the Russians don't need the formality of a court order to suck up all of the targeted person's data, which is archived for three years.

Security services are, as required by law, hardwired into the communications infrastructure here so they don't need the phone and internet companies to give them the data.

NBC, which is telecasting the Games as the US rights holder, has warned employees that emails sent or received while in Sochi may not be private, according to sources.

"The Russians will own your communications when you go there. The only way to guard against that is to take a clean device and use a temporary email address", Joel Brenner, who served as US National Counterintelligence Executive from 2006-2009, told ABC News.

Smartphones can be penetrated and comprised anytime they are out of the owner's hands, such as passing through an airport security screening checkpoint, or remotely by hackers through compromised cell signal towers or illicit mobile relay devices.

"The risk is the theft of personal data stored on a smartphone: your contacts, banking info, etcetera," the security contractor working on the Sochi Games said.

"Criminal elements have ready access to the cell towers in Russia". Several current and former U.S. officials confirmed that organized crime figures in Russia are believed to have some access to cell towers in Sochi.

"That possibility exists", a US official involved in securing the Games warned last week about the threat posed by both spy and hacker.

"I wouldn't say everyone who goes will be considered a high value cyber-target, but there is a high likelihood that it will happen".

Department of Monitoring
Kavkaz Center

Source: Kavkaz Center.
Link: http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2014/02/06/18848.shtml.

Russian news agency hit by cyberattack

July 22, 2013

MOSCOW, July 22 (UPI) -- Russian state media agency RIA Novosti said it was struck by one of the largest cyberattacks on its website so far this year.

Anatoly Stoyanovsky, director of RIA Novosti's software development, said the website was hit by a denial-of-service attack last week.

"Our on-duty services immediately responded to the emergency. Automatic filtering mechanisms were activated as planned," he was quoted Friday as saying. "We saw the peak number of requests per minute reaching some 150,000, but within several minutes, malicious traffic was blocked."

He did not indicate blame in the attack. Denial-of-service attacks overwhelm a website with data requests, forcing some computer systems to crash.

Frustration with the government of President Vladimir Putin has been high since his election to a third non-consecutive term last year. Stoyanovsky didn't indicate whether the attack was foreign or domestic.

The Russian government said Monday it lifted a ban on the political activities of the opposition Left Front movement. Its leader, Sergei Udaltsov, is under house arrest for allegedly plotting against the state.

Intelligence agencies across the world have said cyber issues are an emerging threat to national security.

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/Technology/2013/07/22/Russian-news-agency-hit-by-cyberattack/UPI-37161374502651/.

Thousands protest sentence for Putin critic

Jul. 18, 2013

by Anna Arutunyan
Special for USA TODAY

MOSCOW - Thousands of people protested in the streets Thursday steps away from the Kremlin to express anger over the jailing of an opponent to President Vladimir Putin on what they alleged are false charges to keep him quiet.

Alexei Navalny, a Moscow mayoral candidate who blew the whistle on high-level corruption and mocked the Kremlin, was sentenced to five years in a penal colony on embezzlement charges.

"We were supposed to go to a museum, but the verdict changed that, and now we're here," said Anna Abdelkhabi, a mother of three who turned up at the protest with her children. "Of course, it was obvious that [Navalny would be found guilty], but on the other hand, there was this tiny, tiny bit of hope."

"I expected the verdict," said Stas Starevsky, an information technology specialist, "but what no one wanted to believe happened."

The sentence is the latest in a crackdown on dissent that followed Putin's re-election to a third presidential term in March 2012. The Kremlin has arrested opposition activists and pushed for passage of laws that sharply increased fines for Russians who take part in protests not permitted by the government.

Protesters who found out about the demonstration via Facebook showed up at Manezh Square, just off Red Square, to find the area blocked by police. They gathered on the streets around Manezh Square and near the State Duma, Russia's lower branch of parliament.

Police moved in to disperse protesters before midnight and detained those who refused to leave. More than 100 people were detained, Gazeta.ru reported.

A court in Kirov found Navalny and a co-defendant guilty of embezzling $500,000 worth of timber from the state-owned KirovLes company. The embezzlement, which Navalny denied, was alleged to have taken place in 2009 while he was an adviser to the Kirov regional governor.

Navalny handed his mobile phone and watch to his wife, Yulia, before bailiffs took custody of him.

Navalny wrote about corruption at state-owned companies in which he owned shares, and his blog had hundreds of thousands of readers. With the help of volunteer lawyers, he used property records abroad to identify top officials and lawmakers who own undeclared foreign assets and hold foreign citizenship.

Navalny called the dominant United Russia party "the party of crooks and thieves," and he targeted a wide circle of Putin loyalists, from members of parliament to state bankers. He chronicled all the promises Putin failed to deliver on.

When charges of fraud in the 2011 parliamentary elections led to massive protests, Navalny became a leader of the movement. He announced his candidacy to run for mayor of Moscow in an election in September.

If Navalny's verdict comes into force before the election date, he will be forced by law to step down from the race. Amnesty International condemned the trial as politically motivated. White House spokesman Jay Carney said the United States was "deeply disappointed" in the verdict.

Others didn't buy the idea that Navalny was railroaded by Putin-controlled courts.

"He deserved it," said Tatyana Krainskaya, a Moscow resident. "Whatever he did, that's what he deserved. He stole the timber, that's clear."

Pro-Kremlin analysts and politicians denied that the case was politically motivated.

"The verdict against Navalny is a direct warning to our 'fifth column,'" Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the nationalist LDPR party, posted on his Twitter. "That's the path for all who are connected to the West and work against Russia."

Source: Florida Today.
Link: http://www.floridatoday.com/usatoday/article/2555451.