Mandela calls on world leaders to fight poverty

Former South African president Nelson Mandela has called on world leaders and business to ensure that they address the question of global poverty. He also called on the youth of South Africa to behave with the discipline which, Madiba says, has allowed him to live to the age of 90.

Madiba was speaking at his house in Qunu in the Eastern Cape, where he is celebrating his birthday surrounded by members of his family. Madiba and Graca are also celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary. They will have a private lunch, at which traditional Xhosa food is expected to feature prominently – according to Mandela’s personal chef, Xoliswa Ndoyiya who has cooked for and looked after Madiba for the past 15 years.

Ndoyiya says he is very strict about eating healthy food including meat cooked without oil and lots of green vegetables but she says he often craves traditional Xhosa food such as umngqushu and dumplings. And that’s why today’s birthday meal will include tripe, sheep’s head (skopo) boiled lamb and oxtail. There’s fruit for dessert, but Ndoyiya says Madiba can’t go without his double toffee ice cream, irrespective of the weather.

South Africa and the world are gripped by Madiba Magic, as the world’s most loved icon celebrates his 90th birthday. Tributes range from songs by little children to sobering birthday messages.

Original source can be read here, http://www.sabcnews.com/south_africa/general/0,2172,173475,00.html

Israel confirms identity of soldiers’ bodies

Hezbollah has handed the bodies of two Israeli soldiers to the Red Cross to be exchanged for Lebanese prisoners held by Israel.

Many Israelis see it as a painful necessity, two years after the soldiers’ capture sparked a 34-day war with Hezbollah that killed about 1,200 people in Lebanon and 159 Israelis.

Two black coffins were unloaded from a Hezbollah vehicle at a UN peacekeeping base on the Israel-Lebanon border after a Hezbollah official, Wafik Safa, disclosed for the first time that army reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were dead.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) took the coffins and drove them into Israel.The Israeli army positively identified the bodies.

A report on Israeli radio said Israeli generals were on the way to notify the families of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. An Israeli military spokesman said earlier there would be no official announcement on the matter until the families were informed.

“We are now handing over the two imprisoned Israeli soldiers, who were captured by the Islamic resistance on July 12, 2006, to the ICRC,” Mr Safa said at the border. “The Israeli side will now hand over the great Arab mujahid (holy warrior) … Samir Qantar and his companions to the ICRC.”

In a deal mediated by a UN-appointed German intelligence officer, Israel was to free Mr Qantar and four other prisoners.

Mr Qantar had been serving a life prison term for the deaths of four Israelis, including a four-year-old girl and her father, in a 1979 Palestinian guerrilla attack on an Israeli town.

The fathers of the two Israelis soldiers spoke of their pain at watching the television pictures of their sons’ coffins. “It is not easy to see this, although there was not much surprise to it. But … confronting this reality was difficult, yes,” Shlomo Goldwasser told Israel radio.

Zvi Regev said on Army Radio: “It was very moving when we saw it. We couldn’t watch too long. It was a terrible thing to see, really terrible. I was always optimistic, and I hoped all the time that I would meet Eldad and hug him.”

An ICRC truck later drove into Lebanon with the bodies of eight Hezbollah fighters killed during the 2006 war.

Israel will also hand over the remains of nearly 200 Arabs killed trying to infiltrate northern Israel. Hezbollah will return the remains of Israeli soldiers killed in south Lebanon.

The deal also calls for Israel to release scores of Palestinian prisoners at a later date as a gesture to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Hezbollah has dubbed the exchange “Operation Radwan”, in honour of “Hajj Radwan”, or Imad Moughniyah, the group’s military commander who was assassinated in Syria in February.

Yellow Hezbollah flags and banners fluttered across south Lebanon and along the coastal highway from the border village of Naqoura to the capital, Beirut. “Liberation of the captives: a new dawn for Lebanon and Palestine,” one banner read.

Israel denounced the planned festivities.

“Samir Qantar is a brutal murderer of children and anybody celebrating him as a hero is trampling on basic human decency,” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s spokesman Mark Regev said.

For some Lebanese, the exchange demonstrated the futility of the devastating conflict with Israel two summers ago.

“There shouldn’t have been a war in 2006. A lot of lives were lost,” said Rami Nasereddine, an 18-year-old student in downtown Beirut. “It’s good that the prisoner exchange is taking place. Israel should have done that two years ago.”

The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas said the prisoner swap strengthened its own position in demanding the release of hundreds of long-serving prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured two years ago near the Gaza Strip.

“This is a great victory to the resistance and to Hezbollah and it is a festival for the Lebanese prisoners and their families,” Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said in Gaza.

Original source can be read here, http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/16/2305933.htm

Rasool says he’ll go quietly

Premier Ebrahim Rasool says he will obey his political masters and go quietly if instructed to do so by the ANC.

On Monday morning Rasool spoke out about his imminent axing, a decision reportedly taken by the ANC’s National Executive Committee (NEC), as speculation grew that a complete overhaul of the provincial cabinet is expected to follow, with MECs believed to be aligned to the premier also facing the chop.

A similar purge is expected in the Eastern Cape after Premier Nosimo Balindlela was also effectively sacked by the NEC.

‘You can’t hide newspapers from your children’

By Monday morning Rasool had still not been informed that he was due to be sacked, or forced to resign.

He said the news had been “a long time coming” and he was thus “not unduly shattered”, this in reference to his long-standing battle with political foes within the ANC, in particular a faction led by provincial secretary Mcebisi Skwatsha and his deputy Max Ozinsky.

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He described the internal battles within the ANC as “a dangerous cocktail of matters in the Western Cape”.

Rasool believed that one could possibly question whether the decision had been the “wisest”, the “fairest” or the most “even-handed”. But “it’s good someone is making a decisive intervention”.

“For many, the fact that there is an intervention to get the ANC ready for 2009 should be a relief. I feel fairly relieved that the thing is coming to a head,” he admitted.

Rasool said that while he would obey any ANC decision, handing over the premiership would have a significant impact on his life.

“You can’t hide newspapers from your children, in their heads you have to prepare them at a personal level,” he said after news of his departure made headlines on Sunday.

Similarly, a transition needed to be made in the government and politically, too, he said.

Asked what he might pursue personally, he said: “I’ve not been preparing for a life outside the work that I do now, but as soon as I’m told, those are the things I will have to activate.”

Rasool said there were many callings where he could possibly play a role. Among them was his continued belief in making the Western Cape “a home for all”, his provincial government’s slogan.

Other matters in which he wished to continue to play a role were in dealing with Islamaphobia, Islamic radicalism and other post-September 11 dynamics, “instances in which people have not found one another”.

He would not ask the ANC for any role in particular.

However, “I hope that people will concede that I may have some talents”, he said.

Asked on Good Hope FM whether he supported ANC leader Jacob Zuma, he said: “I had my worries and I failed in my preferences (when President Thabo Mbeki lost the ANC presidency).

“But I have reconciled with the leadership elected; that’s the way democracy works. I have done nothing to undermine that leadership.”

News of Rasool’s axing has been described by some ANC members as an “unashamed purge”.

Community Safety MEC Leonard Ramatlakane, Education MEC Cameron Dugmore and Environment and Economic Planning MEC Tasneem Essop are also believed to be on their way out.

Finance and Tourism MEC Lynne Brown is tipped to take Rasool’s place as acting premier until a new premier is appointed after 2009’s election.

Provincial parliament Deputy Speaker Yousuf Gabru and ANC provincial executive committee members Zodwa Magwaza and Max Ozinsky are among those up for new cabinet positions.

Sources say the cabinet shake-up would be the provincial ANC’s baby and not that of the NEC.

“Who takes over from whom will be discussed at provincial level,” said an ANC source.

Meanwhile, a special sitting of the provincial legislature is expected to take place on Tuesday, when Rasool will either have to resign or be forced out by a two-thirds vote of the legislature.

While some ANC sources say Rasool and Balindlela were both sacked by the NEC for being “behind factional divisions in their provinces”, others say the “redeployments” are strategic, to strengthen the party ahead of next year’s elections and “had nothing to do with personalities”.

However, the two premiers publicly supported Mbeki for a third term as ANC president before the party’s landmark national conference in Polokwane in December.

Rasool’s sacking comes two months after he told the Cape Argus he was “as surprised as everyone else that he still has his job after publicly supporting Mbeki in Polokwane”.

Sources inside the NEC meeting told the Cape Argus that when the Western Cape issues came up for discussion on Saturday evening, two proposals were put on the table by the national working committee (NWC), which had been investigating matters relating to the province.

The NWC proposed that Rasool be dismissed, and provincial ANC chairperson James Ngculu and secretary Mcebisi Skwatsha not contest elections at July’s provincial conference.

“The former suggestion was ‘unanimously’ endorsed while the latter was squashed by the NEC, with some calling for the NWC to apologise to Skwatsha for even contemplating that proposal,” said one source.

The NWC was expected to visit both the Eastern and Western Cape on Monday and Tuesday to explain their decisions to provincial structures.

While Brown’s star continues to rise in the ANC, it is not clear whether Rasool’s would diminish altogether or he would remain a member of the provincial parliament.

Brown was elected to the NEC at the Polokwane conference and post-Polokwane she has also been chairing the NEC’s sub-committee on legislature and governance.

The ANC in the province has beens divided into two warring camps, one headed by Rasool and the other by Skwatsha.

The NEC’s “intervention” comes after the infighting escalated in the past few months, with accusations of data manipulation, break-ins at ANC offices, accusations of sexual harassment and guns going off at branch meetings, all culminating in Skwatsha’s stabbing in June.

This all plays itself out just three weeks before the provincial conference scheduled for the second week of August.

In response to the dismissals, DA leader Helen Zille said the ANC’s factional power-play had triumphed over service delivery.

Zille said: “Reports of the imminent removal of premiers Nosimo Balindlela and Ebrahim Rasool demonstrate yet again that ANC decisions are driven by factional power plays, not the interests of the people. Service delivery is never a consideration for the ANC in making these decisions.”

She said it should be noted that, contrary to some press reports, the ANC NEC did not have the power to remove or appoint premiers.

“The constitution clearly states that premiers can only be removed by a resolution in a provincial legislature adopted with a supporting vote of at least two-thirds of its members.

The ID’s Patricia de Lille said the dismissals would lead to a loss of support for the ruling party in both provinces.

Original source can be read here, http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=6&art_id=vn20080714114230896C760608

3 rescued US hostages arrive safely in Texas

LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE, Texas (AP) — With little fanfare, three American hostages rescued from leftist guerillas in Colombia returned safely to the United States, more than five years after their plane went down in rebel-held jungle.

The men didn’t wave to reporters or bend down to kiss the ground upon their return late Wednesday. They simply boarded waiting helicopters, which took them to a hospital where they were expected to reunite with their families.

The U.S. military contractors — Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell — had been held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia since their drug-surveillance plane went down in the jungle in February 2003. Nowhere in the world have American hostages currently in captivity been held longer, according to the U.S. Embassy in Bogota.

The three were rescued when Colombian spies tricked leftist rebels into handing them over along with kidnapped presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt. She was also freed Wednesday, as were 11 Colombian police and soldiers.

A plane carrying the Americans landed at Lackland Air Force Base shortly after 11 p.m. All appeared well as they exited the Air Force C-17. The men were then flown by choppers to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, where they were expected to undergo tests.

Long before their rescue, it seemed like any public efforts to rescue the hostages had disappeared.

While France exhorted the world to care about the plight of Betancourt, and even sent a humanitarian mission in a failed rescue attempt this year, the U.S. government remained nearly silent about efforts to free the Americans, employees of a Northrop Grumman Corp. subsidiary that has supported Colombia’s fight against drugs and rebels.

Howes is a native of Chatham, Mass.; Gonsalves’ father lives in Hebron, Conn.; and Stansell’s family lives in Miami.

Their families complained publicly about what seemed to be the U.S. government’s failure to act.

“We didn’t know what the heck was going on,” Gonsalves’ father, George, told reporters. “I’m getting information from you guys.”

The Americans’ fate seemed particularly grim after “proof-of-life” images released in November showed them appearing haggard, even haunted, against a deep jungle background.

The contractors and Betancourt were among a group of rebel-designated “political prisoners” whom the FARC planned to release only in exchange for hundreds of imprisoned rebels. But every attempt at talking about a prisoner swap seemed to go nowhere.

Behind the scenes, however, Colombia’s armed forces were closing in on the rebels, with the help of billions of dollars in U.S. military support.

The U.S. and Colombian governments learned the hostages’ location “any number of times” and planned several rescue missions during their five years in captivity, but the difficulty of extracting them alive had prevented the missions from being carried out, according to a U.S. government official in Washington who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of intelligence matters.

Last month, Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said soldiers had spotted the three men in the southern jungles, but they disappeared into the forest before the troops could attempt a rescue.

After the men were freed, U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield said U.S. and Colombian forces cooperated closely on the rescue mission, including sharing intelligence, equipment, training advice and operational experience.

The Americans appeared healthy in a video shown on Colombian television, though Brownfield, who met with them at a Colombian military base, said two of the three were suffering from the jungle malady leishmaniasis and “looking forward to modern medical treatment.”

George Gonsalves was mowing his yard when an excited neighbor relayed the news he had seen on television.

“I didn’t know how to stop my lawnmower,” he said. “I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it.”

“We’re still teary-eyed and not quite have our wits about us,” said Stansell’s stepmother, Lynne.

And Howes’ niece, Amanda Howes, said the rescue “redefines the word miracle.”

Congratulations poured in to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe from President Bush and both presidential candidates. Republican Sen. John McCain said Uribe had told him in advance of the rescue plans while he was campaigning in Colombia. “It’s a very high-risk operation,” he said. “I congratulate President Uribe, the military and the nation of Colombia.”

Democrat Barack Obama also sent his congratulations, saying he supports “Colombia’s steady strategy of making no concessions to the FARC, and its targeted use of intelligence, military, law enforcement, diplomatic and political power to achieve important victories against terrorism.”

Gonsalves’ father, who later got a phone call from the FBI confirming his son was free, expected an emotional family reunion, especially for his son’s three children, now teenagers. “Think about your children if they don’t see you for a week a weekend or a month,” he said. “It’s five years pulled out of your life.”

Original source can be read here, http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iBtorXpFqZU8sqHzVJ4WUXv9epiQD91MBEA00

Julius Malema refuses to say sorry

ANC Youth League president Julius Malema refused to apologise today for his controversial “kill for Zuma” remark, and accused the media of distorting his words.

Motlanthe slams youth league firebrand Malema ‘has 14 days to retract remark’ AUDIO: Is Malema inciting violence? “We never meant literally that people should be killed. We never called on anybody to immediately take up arms,” he told reporters in Johannesburg. Asked whether he would apologise for the statement made at a Bloemfontein rally at the weekend, Malema replied: “Why do you apologise for something you did not mean”. However, Malema did say that he would never use the word kill in a speech again. “After this exercise I will never repeat the word ’kill’. I will find a creative way to say I will do anything to protect comrade Zuma.” Malema said ANC president Zuma approached him after the speech and asked him to explain his statement, for which the Human Rights Commission has since requested an apology. “The president of the ANC said to me that was a heavy statement and I had to provide some explanation … the president was shaken by the statement,” he said. Malema, at the rally, said the Youth League was “prepared to die for Zuma. We are prepared to take up arms and kill for Zuma”. But, he said, media reports on his speech were “blown out of proportion with a clear malicious intent and consequence”. “We have noticed a distortion, misinterpretation, vulgar insults and defamatory comments which have been hurled against ANC Youth League”. Malema said it was all part of a political agenda to discredit the Youth League. Original source can be read here, http://www.thetimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=787409

Inside Hillary Clinton’s decision to quit: The 5 hidden emotional stages

Since it’s pretty clear this morning that Illinois Sen. Barack Obama is not going to withdraw from the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in the face of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s admirably annoying tenacity, it falls to the New York senator to adjust to a harsh political reality that was a year ago today absolutely unthinkable: She lost.

Whatever your personal feelings are toward Clinton — and The Ticket’s Comment boards reveal a rude intensity on both sides — or toward any of the other losers in either party who gave up the electoral marathon weeks or months ago, running for office like this requires a profound commitment by the candidate, his/her family and those around them who invest up to 20-hour days for very little pay over what now nearly spans two years.

This nation’s chief executive weeding-out process is brutal, as it should be to force only the most qualified, savvy, lucky, smart to the top.

But we don’t have to bring out the violins for any of the….

…White House wannabes to acknowledge that, political theatre and personal ambition aside, these campaigns are personally grueling affairs, as energetic even joyous as the rallies and speeches seem in the bright lights of the TV cameras.

Like pro hockey teams after a tough game, candidates and their entourages spend a good chunk of many nights moving on to the next city, arriving late and rising early to consult the little printed staff

schedules slipped under their hotel door that remind them what city they’re starting in for that next 18-20 hour day.

Only two people know for certain how long Hillary Clinton has been dreaming, planning, organizing her presidential bid — 8 years, 10, 16, more? Last year she sure looked like she knew victory was inevitable.

And when it starts to slip away, it’s even harder. Walter Mondale has said he knew the moment Ronald Reagan made that famous age quip that his campaign would lose. Yet he campaigned on. Likewise, President Bush I has confided that he knew two weeks before election day in 1992 that his was a hopeless cause.

So when did Hillary Clinton get the first hint? When she kept losing caucuses? When she hadn’t wrapped up the super prize by Feb. 5 as envisioned? When the Obama money machine kept churning out millions?

In the last many weeks as Obama’s delegate totals moved closer to the magic majority, many have watched in fascination as Clinton seemed to move through the same five stages of grief that Elizabeth Kubler-Ross described in “On Death and Dying.” Except it was Clinton’s campaign and White House dream that was dying.

The first stage is Denial: This isn’t happening. How could this be happening when she was to inherit the political mantle of her once-again popular husband, the only Democratic president elected twice since Franklin Delano Roosevelt? How could this Illinois nobody with no credentials, few accomplishments other than a golden tongue move in so easily?

The second stage is Anger: “Shame on you, Barack Obama!” Remember those angry outbursts a few hours after the kissy we’re-all-Democrats-in-this-together-it’s-an-honor to compete against Sen. Obama stuff at the debates?

The third stage is Bargaining: That’s less visible to observers, more internal. If I only work harder, things will work out. No one can doubt her determination and grit despite internal campaign turmoil, overspending and controversies with her overpaid consultant who was working both sides of the Colombian trade deal.

And in recent weeks when so many thought her effort was hopeless, she sure didn’t show hopelessness. And her loyalists responded to that fighting spirit with overwhelming victories in crucial places like Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.

The fourth stage is Depression: This can manifest itself in many ways, possibly in a stubbornness to accept the inevitable delegate math. And so often the Clintons’ political careers have been saved by last-minute salvations if only they hung on long enough in the face of what others saw as hopeless adversity.

Gennifer didn’t derail Bill in 1992’s New Hampshire primary; he only took second, but declared victory and folks remember him winning. How similar that Hillary was holding what looked like a victory rally in Texas while Obama won some more states elsewhere. Or what was an actual victory rally for herself in Florida, after a vote that wasn’t supposed to count.

The same could be said of her Tuesday night speech when so many convinced themselves she would concede despite contrary signals from her aides. So many commentators didn’t like her tone. No submission. No contrition. No magnamity.

She said she was going to take a few days to decide her future path. There’s a momentum and life force to major national campaigns. You can’t turn off the machine and the candidate’s adrenalin and emotional commitment like a light switch. It winds down.

The defeat must sink in.

And besides, what’s the rush over a few days? Clearly, in a strange way the victorious Obama camp ends up needing the losing Clintonites much more than they need him.

Which brings us to stage 5, Acceptance: That might have come to her over the next week or so. But Wednesday’s pre-dawn joint statement by Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and who’s-its, the West Virginia governor, sped up that process. They set a Friday deadline for uncommitted superdelegates to make their calls, which forces Hillary’s hand.

Still, she said nothing about surrender in Wednesday morning staff meetings. It wasn’t until her afternoon phone call with Congressional colleagues that she, well, accepted their message that it was over. And needed to end quickly. And she made the decision to pull the plug.

Friday she’ll have a celebration with some supporters and word will no doubt leak from there that at another Saturday “celebration” (how did that word get in here?), she’ll formally suspend her campaign and endorse Obama, as previously promised.

From St. Paul yesterday afternoon, Matt Burns, communications director for the Republican National Convention, fired off an e-mail to The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder reporting they’d received numerous calls from Clinton supporters offering to work for McCain.

With up to 40% of Clinton primary voters vowing to exit-pollsters that they’d opt for the GOP over Obama, that’s not too surprising.

Nor would it be surprising if somewhere in the recesses of that mind that now publicly accepts her defeat and will officially do so with an Obama endorsement, there resides a residual pocket of hope about the future.

As Jay Leno said in his monologue earlier this week, “The good news is that the whole voting process ended tonight. It’s all over as of tonight. The bad news: The 2012 Democratic primaries start on Thursday.”

That’s today!

Now, the first stage of grieving is Denial….

–Andrew Malcolm

Original source can be read here, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/06/clintons-grief.html

Wife ’sold to 100 men’

Stockholm – A 44-year-old Swede has been charged with trafficking and pimping after forcing a mentally-challenged 19-year-old woman to work as a prostitute, freely distributed newspaper Metro reported on Friday.

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Sienna attacks paparazzi

Los Angeles – Sienna Miller lashed out at photographers on Tuesday – hitting one with her handbag.

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Major blindness breakthrough

Gene therapy for a rare type of inherited blindness has improved the vision of four patients who tried it, boosting hopes for the troubled field of gene repair technology, scientists say.

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Calls to criminalise collusion

Johannesburg – The SA Communist Party called on government to pass legislation that would criminalise food price fixing, the SABC reported on Sunday.

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