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World Bank: Food prices have entered the ‘danger zone’
Robert Zoellick, World Bank president, said food prices are at “a tipping point”, having risen 36pc in the last year to levels close to their 2008 peak. The rising cost of food has been much more dramatic in low-income countries, pushing 44m people into poverty since June last year.
Another 10pc rise in food prices would push 10m into extreme poverty, defined as an effective income of less than $1.25 a day. Already, the world’s poor number 1.2bn.
Mr Zoellick said he saw no short term reversal in the damaging effect of food inflation, which is felt much more in the developing world as packaging and distribution accounts for a far larger proportion of the cost in the advanced economies.
Asked if he thought prices would remain high for a year, Mr Zoellick said: “The general trend lines are ones where we are in a danger zone… because prices have already gone up and stocks are relatively low.”
Rising prices have been driven by the changing diet of the ballooning middle classes in the emerging markets. “There is a demand change going on, with the higher incomes in developing countries. People will eat more meat products, for example, that will use more grain.
“I am not suggesting that the improved diets in the developing world are the source of the problem but it means it takes longer to Read more…
World sea attacks surge with more violent pirates
AP
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Sea piracy worldwide hit a record high of 142 attacks in the first quarter this year as Somali pirates become more violent and aggressive, a global maritime watchdog said Thursday.
Nearly 70 percent or 97 of the attacks occurred off the coast of Somalia, up sharply from 35 in the same period last year, the International Maritime Bureau’s piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur said in a statement.
Attackers seized 18 vessels worldwide, including three big tankers, in the January-March period and captured 344 crew members, it said. Pirates also murdered seven crew members and injured 34 during the quarter.
“Figures for piracy and armed robbery at sea in the past three months are higher than we’ve ever recorded in the first quarter of any past year,” said the bureau’s director Pottengal Mukundan.
He said there was a “dramatic increase in the violence and techniques” used by Somali pirates to counter increased patrols by international navies, putting large tankers carrying oil and other flammable chemicals at highest risk to firearm attacks.
Of the 97 vessels attacked off Somalia, he said 37 were tankers including 20 with more than 100,000 deadweight tonnes.
International navies have taken a tougher stance against pirates, with the Indian navy alone arresting 120 mostly Somalian pirates over the past few months. The U.S. and other nations have also prosecuted suspects caught by their militaries, although some were released as countries weigh legal issues and other factors.
Mukundan said the positions of some of the attackers’ mother ships were known and called for stronger action to be taken against these mother ships to prevent further hijackings. Pirates held some 28 ships and nearly 600 hostages as of end-March, the bureau said.
Elsewhere, nine attacks were reported off Malaysia and five in Nigeria in the first quarter.
Nigerian vote must succeed for Africa: Ghana ex-president
(AFP)
ABUJA — Nigeria must hold a credible presidential election this weekend since failing to do so could set a disastrous example for the rest of the continent, Ghana ex-president John Kufuor said Thursday.
ex-president of Ghana John Kufuor
Kufuor, widely respected for having bowed out gracefully following his two terms in office in nearby Ghana, is heading an observer team from the African Union in Saturday’s election in the continent’s most populous nation.
“It’s very important that we should get this election right for the good of the image of Africa,” the 72-year-old told AFP in an interview.
“There are other elections pending in many parts of our continent. If things should go awry here, I am afraid to think of what may transpire elsewhere. Nigeria is too important for Africa.”
Kufuor stepped down in Ghana in 2009 after two four-year tenures in a peaceful transition after a closely fought election in which his party’s candidate lost to the opposition by less than one percent.
On what Nigeria, also Africa’s largest oil producer, could learn from Ghana’s elections, Kufuor said, “Nigeria, I believe, should serve itself well by playing by the rules… That’s all they need to do.”
Parliamentary polls held last weekend were seen as a major step forward for the country, which is seeking to break from a series of violent and deeply flawed elections.
But a first attempt to hold the polls a week before had to be postponed after personnel and materials failed to arrive in a large Read more…
Giant ocean whirlpools puzzle scientists
US scientists discovered two giant whirlpools in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Guyana and Suriname. It became a sensational discovery because this part of the ocean has been studied thoroughly, and no one expected anything like that to appear in the area. More importantly, no one can understand where the whirlpools came from and what surprises they may bring to people.
According to Brazilian scientist Guilherme Castellane, the two funnels are approximately 400 kilometers in diameter. Until now, these were not known on Earth. The funnels reportedly exert a strong influence on climate changes that have been registered during the recent years.
“Funnels rotate clockwise. They are moving in the ocean like giant frisbees, two discs thrown into the air. Rotation occurs at a rate of one meter per second, the speed is Read more…
Ivory Coast: Laurent Gbagbo stays in bunker and vows not to surrender
Ivory Coast’s embattled leader Laurent Gbagbo is protected by a rump of just 200 soldiers in his bunker beneath the presidential palace, the French defence minister said, but he is refusing to surrender to advancing forces.
Gerard Longuet said Mr Gbagbo has an estimated 1,000 troops left in Abidjan, as forces loyal to president-in-waiting Alassane Ouattara had the palace surrounded.
“We’re going to wait and let him come out like a rat,” said an adviser to Mr Ouattara
However, Mr Gbagbo refuses to give up his increasingly fragile position and continues to Read more…
Ancient Human Metropolis Found in Africa
By Dan Eden for viewzone.
They have always been there. People noticed them before. But no one could remember who made them — or why? Until just recently, no one even knew how many there were. Now they are everywhere — thousands — no, hundreds of thousands of them! And the story they tell is the most important story of humanity. But it’s one we might not be prepared to hear.
Something amazing has been discovered in an area of South Africa, about 150 miles inland, west of the port of Maputo. It is the remains of a huge metropolis that measures, in conservative estimates, about 1500 square miles. It’s part of an even larger community that is about 10,000 square miles and appears to have been constructed — are you ready — from 160,000 to 200,000 BCE!
The image [top of page] is a close-up view of just a few hundred meters of the landscape taken from google Read more…
Look who’s in line to replace Gadhafi
 Anjem Choudary |
British cleric Anjem Choudary says al-Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood have assets on the ground in Libya and are ready to take control if Moammar Gadhafi is removed from power.
The top Muslim cleric accuses the U. S. and French-led coalition trying to topple Gadhafi of working to install a puppet regime, but he says there are al-Qaida operatives in Libya who will stop the West from installing a friendly government.
“Al-Qaida has their own agents and their own people in the region who are propagating their own Islamic ideas and their agenda. At the right time they will make the move, and we will see the emergence of Islam and Shariah in that particular region,” Choudary said.
“The power vacuum is very useful for anyone who has an agenda and an alternative Read more…
Djibouti evicts US vote group ahead of election
Djibouti’s government has kicked out an American election monitoring group less than a month before the nation’s presidential election, a vote opposition politicians are boycotting because they say the president is repressing dissent.
Djibouti is a tiny East African nation that hosts the only U.S. military base in Africa. Situated on the Gulf of Aden between Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Yemen, the city-state is a major shipping hub in a volatile region.
The country is nominally democratic, but events leading up to the April 8 presidential election appear to show a hardline approach by President Ismail Omar Guelleh at a time when democracy movements are upending administrations.
Democracy International, a U.S. group that works on democracy and governance programs, was halfway through a two-year, $2.2 million U.S. government-funded contract when it was accused of assisting opposition politicians and barred from the country earlier this month. Read more…
‘The West is to be forgotten. We will not give them our oil’ – Gaddafi
This is just the first step in a long line for the US on not receiving any oil that is pumped from any country in the Middle East resulting in third world status. Lindsey Williams mentioned it on the Alex Jones Show almost a month ago.
http://rt.com/news/libya-oil-gaddafi-arab/
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi dismissed his Western partners in an exclusive interview to RT, saying he will give all the country’s oil contracts to Russia, China and India.
“We do not believe the West any longer, that is why we invite Russian, Chinese and Indian companies to invest in Libya’s oil and construction spheres” Gaddafi told RT in an exclusive interview about how he sees the current situation in Libya and the international reaction to events there.
“He condemned the Western powers, saying Germany was the only country with a chance of doing business with Libyan oil in the future. “We do not trust their firms – they took part in the conspiracy against us.”
The Libyan leader also added that as far as he is concerned, the Arab League has ceased to exist since it stood up against his country.
According to Gaddafi, the recent upheavals in his country were a “minor event” planned by Al Qaeda that will soon end.
Meanwile, Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim promised that Libya will honor Read more…
Biometrics: dream come true or nightmare?
Having previously looked at how biometric recognition is more than a fictional spy-thriller, we didn’t look at biometric technology used in the past which seems like something out of the future. These are some of those past biometrics, followed by a few new biometric recognition technologies being proposed for everything from securing your smartphone, replacing the ID in your wallet, and even required testing to prove paternity.
From WikiLeaks diplomat cables, we discovered that the State Department is more interested in collecting biometric data than was previously disclosed. A cable supposedly from Hillary Clinton told certain embassies in Africa to collect more biographical information like fingerprints, facial images, DNA, and iris scans for U.S. Intelligence. Besides asking for “detailed biometric Read more…
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