Detention of leading opponent sparks violence in Kuwait

Google – AFP, Omar Hasan, 31 October 2012 

Supporters of arrested Kuwaiti former opposition MP Mussallam al-Barrak\

 protest near the central prison in Kuwait City (AFP, Yasser al-Zayyat)

KUWAIT CITY — Kuwait riot police Wednesday used stun grenades and tear gas to disperse thousands of angry demonstrators who marched on the central prison where a leading opposition figure is detained.

The protest came hours after the public prosecutor extended the detention of Mussallam al-Barrak for 10 days over remarks deemed critical of the emir, in a crackdown on dissent ahead of December 1 snap polls.

The crowd, estimated by organisers at 10,000, first gathered at Barrak's residence in Andalus, 20 kms (12 miles) southwest of Kuwait City before marching on the central jail about three kilometers away.

Chanting "freedom for Barrak" and holding banners reading "The nation wants the release of the 'conscience of the nation'" -- the term used for nationalist Barrak -- the protesters were faced with stun grenades as they arrived at the prison.

Activists told AFP that there were at least two other smaller demonstrations in solidarity with Barrak in south and north of the Gulf state which has seen an increased number of protests in recent months amid intense political disputes.

More than 100 protesters were hurt at a massive rally on October 21 organised by the opposition to demonstrate against the amendment of the disputed electoral law.

The opposition is planning a second protest on November 4.

Former MP Barrak was interrogated for five hours on Tuesday on accusations that he undermined the status of the emir at a rally on October 15 when he warned against amending the electoral law and also cautioned Kuwait was becoming autocratic.

The prosecutor, however, freed another opposition figure former MP Faisal al-Muslim on a $355 bail after questioning him on similar charges, his lawyer Abdullah al-Muslim said on Twitter.

Muslim was the sixth former opposition MP to have been summoned for interrogation on accusations of making public remarks critical of Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah.

Last week, the court released three former opposition lawmakers after five days in custody on similar accusations and freed a fourth former MP after a brief interrogation.

Separately, the foreign ministry said late Tuesday it would take legal action against prominent opposition writer Mohammad Abdulqader al-Jassem over an article deemed offensive to leaders in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

In his blog Tuesday, Jassem warned Saudi King Abdullah and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahayan, that protests in Kuwait could quickly trigger similar events in their countries.

He also criticised the two leaders' reported support and encouragement of the Kuwaiti crackdown.

Jassem told AFP on Wednesday that the authorities have yet to notify him of any legal action.

"I have not broken the law in my article and did not threaten anyone," he said. He was jailed on three occasions in 2009, 2010 and 2011 for a total of over four months for allegedly criticising the emir and former premier.

The current crisis flared after the government decided to amend the electoral law in what the opposition claims is a step aimed at electing a rubber stamp parliament.

Twenty-nine candidates registered Wednesday -- the opening day for registering their names for the December poll -- compared to 109 who registered on the first day of registration in the previous election as the opposition boycotted.

The present registration process ends on November 9.

Earlier on Wednesday a dozen activists from the Civil Democratic Movement, an opposition youth group, staged a symbolic protest outside the interior ministry's election department in Kuwait City after it started registering the candidates.

The new elections are the second this year and the fifth since mid-2006 amid political turmoil in the emirate which became the first Arab state in the Gulf to embrace democracy and issue a constitution in 1962.

The February legislative polls, in which the opposition won a landslide victory, were nullified by the constitutional court on June 20 on the grounds of flawed procedures.

The court also scrapped parliament and reinstated the pro-government house elected in 2009. The latter was eventually dissolved early October and snap polls were called.

Taliban could run for Afghan president: poll chief

Google – AFP, Usman Sharifi, 31 October 2012

Former Taliban fighters display their weapons (AFP/File, Aref Karimi)

KABUL — The Taliban could stand in Afghanistan's next presidential election in 2014, the country's top poll official said Wednesday, as a series of suspected insurgent bombings killed 17 civilians.

President Hamid Karzai, who is serving his second term as leader of the war-torn nation, is constitutionally barred from running in the election and no clear candidate to succeed him has yet emerged.

The vote, scheduled for April 5, 2014, is seen as crucial to stability after the withdrawal of NATO troops and Fazil Ahmad Manawi, the head of the Independent Election Commission (IEC), insisted his body would act impartially.

"We are even prepared to pave the ground for the armed opposition, be it the Taliban or Hezb-i-Islami, to participate in the election, either as voters or candidates," Manawi told a news conference.

"There will be no discrimination," the IEC chief added, defending the body in response to a question about its impartiality.

Hezb-i-Islami is the faction of former prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar which wages an insurgency along with the Taliban against Karzai's Western-backed government.

The Taliban, whose hardline Islamist regime was overthrown in 2001 by a US-led invasion for harbouring Osama bin Laden, did not take part in the 2009 election. Instead it launched polling day attacks that killed more than 20 people.

At least 17 civilians, most women and children, were killed in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday in roadside bombings which officials blamed on "the enemies of Afghanistan" -- the term they use for the Taliban.

In the deadliest incident, seven women and three children died when a blast tore through the vehicle in which they were travelling in Musa Qala district of Helmand province.

Also on Wednesday, a Taliban attack on a checkpoint in eastern Kunar province left four police dead, while another five officers were killed in an insurgent raid on a post in Zabul province, in the south.

The 2009 poll, in which Karzai was re-elected over former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, was marred by widespread allegations of fraud. The credibility of the 2014 vote is seen as key to avoiding an escalation in violence after the NATO withdrawal.

Donor nations at a conference in Tokyo in July pledged $16 billion for Afghanistan to prevent the country from sliding back into turmoil when foreign combat troops depart, with several pre-conditions including presidential elections in 2014.

The International Crisis Group think-tank warned in October that the Kabul government could fall apart after NATO troops withdraw, particularly if the presidential elections are affected by fraud.

Security officials said they were confident they would learn lessons from 2009 as they seek to prevent violence in the run-up to the next election, only the third since the fall of the Taliban.

"Afghan security institutions will start working to design a comprehensive plan for security during the election," said defence ministry chief of staff Shir Mohammad Karimi.

Under the Afghan system, voters elect the president as an individual rather than as a representative of a party, and candidates must submit their nominations by October 6, 2013.

The IEC will then rule on their admissibility and publish a final list of candidates on November 16.

Initial results of the ballot will be announced on April 24, 2014, and final results on May 14, with May 28 set aside for any potential run-off vote. Provincial council elections will be held at the same time as the main poll.

Egypt's Copts vote for successor to Pope Shenouda III

BBC News, 29 October 2012

Related Stories 

• Egypt pope's death leaves vacuum
• Egypt buries Coptic Church leader
• Obituary: Pope Shenouda III

A blindfolded child will pick the name
of the next Pope from a shortlist of
three on 4 November

A council of Coptic Christians in Egypt is set to vote for a successor to Pope Shenouda III, who died in March.

Two bishops and three monks are short-listed to become the 118th head of the region's largest Christian minority.

The council will pick three, writing their names on separate pieces of paper that will be placed in a box on the altar of St Mark's Cathedral in Cairo.

A blindfolded child will be asked to draw out one of the names on 4 November, thereby picking the new Pope.

The individual chosen will become the new Coptic Pope who will be enthroned in a ceremony on 18 November.

The five candidates are:

• Fr Pachomios al-Syriani - a monk from the Paromeos Monastery in Wadi al-Natrun; currently lives in Italy; aged around 49
• Bishop Raphael - an auxiliary bishop in Cairo; a former aide to the late Pope; a member of the Church's Holy Synod, the Coptic Church's highest authority; aged around 58
• Fr Raphael Ava Mina: A monk at St Mina Monastery near Alexandria; aged around 60
• Fr Seraphim al-Syriani: A monk from the Paromeos Monastery; currently lives in the US; aged around 53
• Bishop Tawadros - an auxiliary bishop to acting head of the Coptic Church, Bishop Pachomios; member of the Holy Synod; aged around 60

Pope Shenouda III led Egypt's Coptic
Christian Church for four decades

The Coptic Church has about 16 million members worldwide, and Copts make up 10% of Egypt's population of 80 million.

Pope Shenouda III died at the age of 88 on 17 March, reportedly after suffering cancer.

He had urged officials to do more to address Coptic concerns after numerous attacks on churches in recent years.

He had led the Church, one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, for four decades.

His successor faces the task of reassuring the Coptic community during the Islamist resurgence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, correspondents say.

Many younger Copts will be looking for a leader who can help redefine their community's role in a rapidly changing post-Mubarak Egypt, they add.

The name was selected from a bowl by a blindfolded boy

Related Articles:

BishopTawadros new pope of Egypt's Coptic Christians

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Egypt's Coptic Christian Pope Shenouda III dies

"Recalibration of Free Choice"–  Mar 3, 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Caroll) - (Subjects: (Old) Souls, Midpoint on 21-12-2012, Shift of Human Consciousness, Black & White vs. Color, 1 - Spirituality (Religions) shifting, Loose a Pope “soon”, 2 - Humans will change react to drama, 3 - Civilizations/Population on Earth,  4 - Alternate energy sources (Geothermal, Tidal (Paddle wheels), Wind), 5 – Financials Institutes/concepts will change (Integrity – Ethical) , 6 - News/Media/TV to change, 7 – Big Pharmaceutical company will collapse “soon”, (Keep people sick), (Integrity – Ethical)  8 – Wars will be over on Earth, Global Unity, … etc.) - (Text version)

Guinea-Bissau army arrests alleged coup leader: military

Google – AFP, 27 october 2012 

Captain Pansau N'Tchama poses in 2009 (AFP/File)

BISSAU — Guinea Bissau's military on Saturday announced the arrest of the man accused of being the mastermind behind an attack on an elite army barracks a week ago which the government said was an attempted coup.

"We have arrested Captain Pansau N'Tchama, leader of the October 21 attack in Bissau," chief military spokesman Major Ussumane Conate told AFP.

"We are busy transferring him to Bissau."

Another spokesman, Captain Bwam Bissora, said N'Tchama had been arrested with two suspected co-conspirators in the Bolama, the capital of the Bijagos archipelago on the closest of the islands to the Bissau.

A statement confirming the arrest was also read out on national radio.

The Sunday dawn attack on the army barracks left at least seven people dead, including six of the attackers.

Transition authorities in the west African nation have accused former colonial ruler Portugal of instigating the attack in a bid to re-instate former prime minister Carlos Gomes Junior who was ousted in an April 12 coup.

Several other arrests were made at the headquarters of Gomes' party in the wake of the attack.

Two politicians seized by soldiers were found badly beaten in the countryside on Tuesday, and the interim government distanced itself from what it called "isolated acts of physical brutality."

N'Tchama was the head of a commando unit that assassinated president Joao Bernardo Vieira in 2009. He returned last week from Portugal where he had been undergoing military training since July 2009, security sources said this week.

It was not immediately clear why N'Tchama might have carried out the assault, but the captain is also a former associate of the government overthrown in the April coup.

That putsch interrupted a presidential election between the first and second rounds, which Gomes was leading after the initial vote.

The latest coup bid has caused further turmoil in the west African nation which has suffered chronic instability since independence from Portugal in 1974 due to conflict between the army and state.

No president has ever completed a full term in office.

Coups, counter-coups and regular assassinations have also made the unstable nation an attractive destination for South American druglords seeking a hub to move cocaine into Europe.

A transitional administration has taken over with elections planned for an unspecified date in 2013.

Human trafficking, prostitution thrive in Afghanistan

Deutsche Welle, 24 October 2012

Thousands of Afghan girls and boys are trafficked into neighboring countries and sold into slavery each year. Though it is taboo, prostitution is alive and thriving - at the cost of those forced to work in it.

It is the oldest trade in the world and exists in probably every country in the world. Yet prostitution is not a dream job. Most female sex workers are forced to make a living through prostitution.

In conservative Afghanistan, prostitution is illegal. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Human trafficking is booming - young women are being sold and sent over to neighboring countries, mostly to Pakistan.

Heather Barr says the government has
 a number of other issues to tackle as well

Many people are unaware of just how many women are forced to work as prostitutes, according to Heather Barr of Human Rights Watch's Asia Division.

"HRW did a report that was released in March this year about women in prison for moral crimes. And one of the things that I found really surprising by doing those interviews, was how many women I met, had been forced in prostitution often by their husbands and in-laws."

Women sold as commodities

The reason, she explained, that women were forced into the sex trade by their families was due to poverty and drug addiction - usually of a husband or brother or both. The families often saw women as a source of money and take advantage of it.

Women from Pakistan are also been bought and sold to Afghanistan. Poor or practically non-existing security at the border means criminals smuggling and trafficking goods and people can easily get away with it. When the trafficked people arrive on the other side of the border, they are fully at the mercy of their pimps.

One woman from Pakistan who wished not to be named is now in Jalalabad - far away from her home in Karachi.

"We are poor and helpless. What are we supposed to do? We don't have anything to eat. That's why the "big man" brought us here from Karachi. No one likes doing this work, but I don't have any other choice," she told DW.

The young woman speaks neither of Afghanistan's official languages - Dari and Pashtu. She said she didn't know who to turn to and was afraid of the consequences she would face should she run away and the authority of her pimp, the "big man," as she called him. But he himself also cited poverty as a reason to force women into prostitution.

Sahar Gul, 15 years old, was tortured
for months by her in-laws for refusing to
prostitute herself

"I do this because I am poor and I want to be able to feed my children. I am aware that there are dangerous consequences, harsh punishments for this kind of work - for instance death or being ostracized and other things."

But he insisted he did not force anyone to work - that the women who work for him prostituted themselves because they wanted to.

Prostitution, whether out of one's own will or not, is illegal according to Islamic law. The cleric Nek Mohammad works for the court in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar and offers consultations on Islamic law. All forms of position are illegal, he told DW.

"At least four people have to bear witness to the crime. And should the prostitute or the person who buys her be married, his or her spouse will have to be stoned. If there are no married people involved, then they receive lashings."

Disease

But punishment is not the only thing to worry about. Most of the prostitutes are unaware of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) such as HIV and do not use condoms. The number of cases of STDs had sharply risen in the past few months, according to Dr. Baz Mohammad Sherzad, head of Nangarhar province's health ministry.

Prostitutes pose as beggars on the
streets of Afghanistan

"Our doctors confirm that many young men who have come to us recently have had urinary tract infections and sexually transmitted diseases. If prostitution is allowed then it is no wonder there is an increase in such problems in Nangarhar."

Nonetheless, doctors should promote educational campaigns, said Sherzad. The government should tackle the problem. Yet the government had a whole set of other problems: "Think about child marriage, forced marriage, domestic violence, the sale of women for marriage and other purposes, forced prostitution, self immolation - honestly the government hasn't been dealing very effectively with any of those issues," said Heather Barr.

She said it was unfortunate that there was a lack of political will to solve these issues. Progress was only made very slow.

As of recently, it is now illegal to lock up women for running away from home, which is just a further symptom of the violence and forced prostitution women continue to face in Afghanistan.

Related Articles:

Archangel Michael: The Declaration of Human Freedom

"... No soul enters life to serve another, except by choice, but to serve its own purpose and that of the Divine from which it came. ..."

"... No person shall be forced into marriage against his or her will. No woman shall be forced to bear or not bear children, against her will. No person shall be forced to hold or not hold views or worship in a manner contrary to his or her choice. Nothing vital to existence shall be withheld from another if it is within the community’s power to give. ...."

Chevron, Shell, Total, BP face S.African price-fixing charge

Yahoo - AFP, 24 October 2012

Subsidiaries of global oil majors Chevron, Shell, Total and BP were on Wednesday referred to South Africa's top anti-trust body on accusations that they colluded to rig consumer prices since the 1980s, with a recommendation that the firms face massive fines.

Following "wide ranging investigations" since 2009, the Competition Commission said it had uncovered "collusive conduct" that stretched back decades, and had referred the case to the Competition Tribunal for judgement.

The commission recommended that each company be fined 10 percent of total turnover from their South African business for the last financial year.

"The investigation revealed collusive conduct through extensive exchanges of commercially sensitive information by the respondent oil companies," the commission said.

The information was said to include detailed monthly sales figures and collusion to influence the regulatory environment.

"The oil companies intended, inter alia through the information exchange, to protect historically high profit margins."

Sasoil and Engen were also accused of price fixing.

The other children of Pakistan's war

BBC News, 23 October 2012

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• Taliban policy under scrutiny
• Portrait of the girl blogger
• Pakistan media condemn attack

Malala Yousafzai is one of thousands
of Pakistani children whose education
has been interrupted

The Taliban's attempt to kill teenaged activist Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan earlier this month underlines the dangers that the militant conflict holds for the country's schoolchildren.

Tens of thousands of school pupils have been displaced along with their families from areas across Pakistan's tribal belt on the Afghan border where the Taliban have carved sanctuaries for themselves.

Thousands were deprived of an education as the militants carried out a persistent campaign against secular education, destroying nearly 1,000 schools since 2006.

Years of military operations in these areas have led to further destruction.

While militants have been driven out from some areas, the territory they once occupied has not yet been fully secured under a civilian administration.

And many significant sanctuaries still remain, especially in North Waziristan, parts of South Waziristan, the Orakzai region and the Khyber region.

Outspoken critic

From these sanctuaries, militants have been able to conduct raids on Pakistan's military as well as civilian targets deep inside the country, breaching security cordons and creating an enduring sense of uncertainty.

Malala was an outspoken critic of the Taliban's opposition to girls' education, but she was only a schoolgirl and never believed that they would consider her a serious threat. 

Officials say that many schools have
 been forced to close throughout 2012
because of Taliban threats

But while she was not the only child victim of this conflict, she may have been the only one targeted because of her views.

A year ago, Taliban gunmen ambushed a school bus south of Peshawar city, killing at least four boys and injuring more than 12, including two seven-year-old girls.

A Taliban spokesman in the nearby Khyber tribal region later said it was a response to the local tribes who had raised an armed volunteer force to resist the Taliban presence in Peshawar's southern outskirts.

Children have suffered in other ways as well.

Pakistani officials claim more than 30,000 civilians and over 3,000 soldiers have been killed in the "war on terror" since late 2001. It is not known how many of them were children.

The latest United Nations report on the issue, released in April 2012, says that at least 57 children were killed in Pakistan during 2011 alone - mainly by landmine explosions, roadside bombs, shelling and targeted attacks.

This figure would be much higher if casualties from the country's unending sectarian attacks are included.

Recruiting and indoctrinating

There are also recurrent reports of children being killed as unintended targets of drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas.

The CIA-operated unmanned planes have carried out a persistent campaign against militants in their north-western tribal sanctuaries.

The media do not have free access to these areas, but in November 2011, British legal charity Reprieve arranged for a number of tribesmen to travel to Islamabad to protest against drone strikes.

The delegation included boys allegedly maimed by drone strikes, and men narrating eyewitness accounts of civilians, including children, killed in those attacks.

None of this can be independently verified.

What is confirmed, though, is the fact that the Taliban have been recruiting and indoctrinating easily-impressionable teenage boys as suicide bombers for attacks in Pakistan.

In February 2011, they used a 12-year-old boy to penetrate the well-fortified garrison in the north-western city of Mardan to attack army recruits.

Wearing the uniform of a school located inside the garrison area, the boy managed to slip past several security check posts and detonate the explosives vest he was wearing at a parade ground where the recruits were doing physical training.

Teenaged boys have been indoctrinated
 by the Taliban for suicide attacks across
Pakistan

At least 30 people were killed, most of them army recruits.

Three months after that incident, the BBC interviewed another would-be suicide bomber who was caught by the police.

Omar Fidai, 14, said he was part of a double-attack plan at a Sufi shrine in Dera Ghazi Khan city. He was to detonate his explosives near the rescue workers after his partner - also a teenager - had blown himself up killing more than 40 people.

But his vest did not explode properly. He was injured, but survived.

He said he was trained at a camp for suicide bombers in the North Waziristan tribal region, and was given to believe that he would go straight to heaven once he had killed the infidels and the heretics.

The UN's 2012 report has recorded 11 incidents during 2011 in which teenage boys, some as young as 13, were used by armed groups to carry out suicide attacks.

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Pakistani girl shot over activism in Swat valley, claims Taliban

Archangel Michael: It’s Time to Let Go of the Old (AAM channeled by Linda Dillon) - New

“……

AAM: Let us speak first to the terrible — and I use “terrible” in its truest sense — terrible issue of racism, of hatred, of control. Because all racism, all fanaticism, whether it is political or religious or economic — there is a great deal of economic fanaticism on your planet still, and you see it every day -  is bred from a very peculiar mix, and it is bred from fear, entitlement, and what you may choose to call karma and what I will refer to as some past-life bleed-through.

These people are going to have a very hard time if they choose to resist and fight. And that is why we ask each of you to make sure that you are the transmitters and the beamers, but that you are not becoming involved in that morass of chaos, that they undoubtedly are creating and will create.

It is all stemming from a lack of self worth and self love, an unknowing of deservingness and of worth. Because when you are in your heart and you know, innately, deeply, fully of your connection to the One, of your divinity, and that you hold that love not in a superficial way that we so often witness upon your planet… it has improved, but it is still there. When there is really love there can be no hatred or disgust with those that you deem or designate as less than. It is such an absurd construct, that. Did we not understand the various levels and the emanations, we would simply shake our heads. So will this be wrenched from them? They have a choice, and, if they choose to continue to cling, then of course the choice is they will be relocated elsewhere. But what I am also saying, individually — and you think, “How can you do this, Michael, individually to millions upon millions of millions of people?” Well, I suggest you leave that to us. They will have their confrontations with their egos, and they will also have their opportunities to see their divinity and to acknowledge the equality of all beings.

For many, it will be extremely uncomfortable. But it is necessary. That is why we have encouraged so many to do the work, so that you are not at the last minute being wrenched in this way. That is partially what Syria is about. That is what Milala in Afghanistan is about. It is the choice, for people to look at that and say, “How can this be? And how could I hold such hatred in my heart?”

Now, these examples have been brought up to you time and again. The shootings, long ago, Martin Luther King, the freedom fighters, the executions, in Iraq and Iran. These are the mirrors that are held up to those who think they are better than, because that is the end result of hatred and entitlement.

It is pathetic.

SB: Lord, could I intervene at this moment and say that photos have been produced that suggest that Milala’s shooting was staged. There’s a photo of her not having any throat wound. There’s a photo of her walking to the helicopter. Was it staged, or not?

AAM: No, it was not staged. It was a brutal attack.

SB: All right. Thank you.

AAM: Was it staged by us? Yes!

SB: What do you mean by that, Lord?

AAM: I mean it is an opportunity. Is it real in physical form? Yes. Is it real in terms of an opportunity for people to say, “This type of persecution has need to end”? Yes.  ……….”

Afghan man kills wife for working: police

Google – AFP, 22 October 2012 

Afghan policemen board the back of a police pick up truck at a police

training centre south of Herat in September (AFP/File, Aref Karimi)

KABUL — An Afghan man stabbed his wife to death because she worked for an NGO outside the home, police said Monday after arresting the suspect in the western province of Herat.

"Kulsoom was stabbed eight times by her husband on Friday afternoon because she was working," provincial police spokesman Noor Khan Nekzad told AFP.

"We have arrested the murderer, Abdul Rahim, who killed his wife," Nekzad said.

The couple had been married for six years and had two children.

The killing occurred nearly a week after a 20-year-old woman, Mah Gul, was beheaded in the same province by her in-laws after she refused to go into prostitution.

Abdul Qader Rahimi, the regional director of the government-backed human rights commission in western Afghanistan, said violence against women had dramatically increased in the region recently.

"There is no doubt violence against women has increased. So far this year we have registered 100 cases of violence against women in the western regions," he said, adding that many cases go unreported.

Last year, in a case that made international headlines, police rescued a teenage girl who was beaten and locked up in a toilet for five months after she defied her in-laws who tried to force her into prostitution.

Russia slashes African debt and increases aid

RT.com, 18 October, 2012

AFP Photo / Alexander Joe

  

Russia is writing off $20bln in African debt coupled with a $50mln donation to the poorest countries. This is part of a diplomatic move to help the African Continent.

"We take part in peacekeeping operations on the continent. We expand programmes to train African peacekeepers and law enforcers," Vladimir Sergeyev, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry Department of International Organisations, told the UN General Assembly.

Zambia and Tanzania are among other countries due to get help from Russia, which comes under the framework of the U.N. Debt Relief Initiative. The agreements signed between the countries involve funding promising projects in agriculture, education and medicine. "We are preparing similar agreements with Benin, Mozambique and Ethiopia," Sergeyev added.

On top of that, Russia allocated another $50mln to the World Bank to support the most fragile states, primarily the part of the continent located south of the Sahara.

"Humanitarian aid is provided to the countries of the region on a bilateral basis. Donor assistance is rendered to Ethiopia, Somalia, Guinea, Kenya and Djibouti," the Russian diplomat specified.

Russia was also planning to spend $42.9mln to improve quality of elementary education in developing countries, including Africa. "Over 8,000 African students have received education in Russian universities. Half of them have their tuition paid for by the Russian government," Sergeyev said.

Qatari emir to visit Gaza Tuesday: Hamas

AFP, 21 October 2012

Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani in September2012 

(AFP/File, Emmanuel Dunand)

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories — Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani will visit Gaza on Tuesday in the first such visit by an Arab leader since Hamas took over in 2007, sources close to the ruling Islamist movement said.

"The emir of Qatar will arrive in Gaza on Tuesday," a source close to the Hamas government told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"Tomorrow (Monday), a Qatari delegation will come to Gaza to prepare the programme and discuss details of the visit."

Earlier, the Shihab news agency which is close to Hamas quoted an unnamed official from the movement as saying: "The emir of Qatar will come to Gaza on Tuesday to open several projects in the strip."

It will be the first visit to the Palestinian enclave by an Arab head of state since the territory was occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.

The emir will also be one of Gaza's most high-profile international visitors since Hamas ousted the rival Fatah movement of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in June 2007.

The official Qatari news agency QNA reported that the emir telephoned Abbas on Sunday to discuss bilateral ties and also received a call from Hamas premier Ismail Haniya for talks that centred on the Palestinian situation.

Abbas confirmed the conversation in a statement, saying he received a call from the Qatari emir saying he intended to visit Gaza and Qatari development projects there.

"President Abbas welcomes Qatari efforts in Gaza," the official WAFA news agency reported, stressing "the need to preserve the unity of the Palestinian territories and put an end to the division" between Fatah and Hamas.

Qatar in February brokered talks between Abbas and Hamas's exiled political chief Khaled Meshaal, who has shifted his political base from war-torn Damascus to Doha, in a bid to promote Palestinian unity.

Last month, Mohammed al-Emadi, Qatar's envoy to the Hamas-run territory, said Doha was to invest $254 million (195 million euros) in rebuilding Gaza.

He said the project would involve the construction of roads, housing and infrastructure, as well as agricultural development.

On Saturday, Emadi told AFP that Cairo had given permission for all the necessary building materials to enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing with Egypt.

Over the past year, diplomatic ties between Gaza and Qatar have warmed.

In January this year, Haniya paid his first visit to the Gulf emirate.

Several months later, Qatar delivered 30 million litres of fuel in a bid to ease a chronic energy crisis in the territory, which is still subjected to a partial Israeli blockade.

In recent days, Qatari flags have appeared on the streets of Gaza alongside pictures of Haniya with the Qatari emir which were taken when he visited Doha.

Huge hoardings have also been put up, showing posters reading: "Thank you Qatar for keeping your promises. 

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Qatar ruler begins landmark visit to Gaza


"Healing the Military Energies in our family Tree" – Jun 13, 2011 (Kryon channelled by David Brown)

“ … There’s much violence and anger throughout the world; when we look at the Middle East, we can see that changes are coming there. The West has a lot of power over the Middle East, but that power will begin to dissolve. The Muslim people of this world will begin to have their own power, and their own prosperity, and they will begin to disconnect from the Western World. This disconnection doesn’t have to be violent as violence only happens when somebody hangs onto what doesn’t belong to them....

... What Military Energy means if we use an analogy: it would be like putting grinding paste into the oil of your motor car. Once you release these energies you will begin to feel lighter as you disconnect from this reality, and, you will find it easier and easier to release any other negative emotions. Military Energies are the core of all your problems...."