Central African states on Saturday said they would mobilize up to 1,000 soldiers and law-enforcement officials to immediately start joint military operations to protect the region’s last remaining savanna elephants, threatened by Sudanese poachers on a killing spree in the region. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
It’s been more than a year since the video “KONY 2012″ went viral on the Internet and brought slacktivism into the public spotlight, but the group missed its goal of bringing murderous African warlord Joseph Kony to justice by the end of last year.
Perhaps overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the campaign, San Diego-based organization Invisible Children had stumbled in the months after it launched. It struggled to address questions about its funding and expenses and then co-founder Jason Russell had a well-publicized breakdown. But the group is back on mission, with a fresh video and a renewed effort to shine a spotlight on the jungles of the Congo, where Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, is believed to be hiding.
“We believe that last year was a monumental success. The goal of the film was to make the crimes of Joseph Kony and the LRA known on a mass scale,” Noelle West, a spokeswoman for Invisible Children, told FoxNews.com. “The international institutions that should be responsible for implementing initiatives that could bring an end to this conflict have not felt enough pressure to provide the necessary resources to do so.”
“We wanted to create that overwhelming pressure, and the KONY 2012 campaign was extremely successful at doing just that.”
Despite the failure to see Kony brought to justice, the group claims to have succeeded on several fronts:
“Evidence suggests that Kony is in the border region of Sudan and CAR. Invisible Children donors have been funding the creation and expansion of HF radio networks across the conflict region for the last two years,” West said, adding that Invisible Children has been funding the creation and expansion of HF radio towers across the conflict region for the last two years, which are used to provide early warning to remote communities and record LRA activities and in turn, locate Kony.
Joseph Kony is one of the most notorious guerrilla leaders in the world. He’s been accused by government entities of abducting children to become sex slaves and soldiers. It is estimated that he recruited 66,000 children to become soldiers in the cult-like LRA. Kony was indicted for crimes against humanity in 2005 by the International Criminal Court located in the Hague.
Jason Russell, …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
ForeverGreen’s Products Sold in 37 New Countries During 2013
– Products Currently Sold in 54 Countries
OREM, Utah–(BUSINESS WIRE)– ForeverGreen Worldwide Corporation (OTCBB: FVRG), a leading provider of nutritional foods and other healthy products, today announced during 2012 the company was strongly active in 17 countries. During the soft launch of its new products in 2013, the company has increased this number to 54.
Ron Williams, CEO, stated, “A large driver of this new success is our new FG Xpress brand. We currently sell product to every continent and have gained strong traction in Brazil, India, Russia, Northern and Central Africa, Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Based on interest and requests we expect our product to be sold in over 100 countries within six months. This is a trend we see continuing. The launch of our new products allows us to ship, fairly easily, to nearly anywhere in the world. We are excited to continue to deliver the financial results to our shareholders, and look forward to the continued growth.”
ForeverGreen is encouraged with the future of the FG Xpress model featuring Power Strips and feels that its members and shareholders alike will feel the same. Power Strips are a patented fusion of energy and ancient herbs. Everyone needs energy, while many need relief. Power Strips are worn daily and feature a state-of-the-art, water-soluble adhesive technology with a proprietary blend of herbs, minerals, and ForeverGreen’s exclusive marine phytoplankton.
ForeverGreen Worldwide Corporation develops, manufactures and distributes an expansive line of all natural whole foods and products to North America, Australia, Europe, Asia and South America. Offerings include their new global offering, Power Strips. Additionally, they offer Azul and FrequenSea™ whole-food beverages with industry exclusive Marine Phytoplankton, Versativa line of hemp-based whole-food products, A.I.M. Transfer Factor immune support, 03World™ weight management products, Pulse-8 powdered L-arginine formula, TRUessence™ Essential Oils and Apothecary, 24Karat Chocolate®, and an entire catalog of meals, snacks, household cleaners and personal care products. www.forevergreen.org
ForeverGreen Worldwide Corporation
Craig Smith, 801-655-5500
craig@forevergreen.org
KEYWORDS: United States North America Utah
INDUSTRY KEYWORDS:
The article ForeverGreen’s Products Sold in 37 New Countries During 2013 originally appeared on Fool.com.
Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
By The Huffington Post News Editors
The economy is still in shambles, drones could be surveying your house any day now and to make matters worse, penis stealing is ‘on the rise’.
Alternet’s headline warns, “Penis Snatching on the Rise — Africa’s Genital-Stealing Crime Wave Hits the Countryside.”
The story comes from UC Berkley anthropologist Louisa Lombard, who writes in Pacific Standard Magazine that reports of penis theft, typically confined to urban areas in West and Central Africa, have now spread to Tiringoulou, a “peanut-growing hamlet” in the Central African Republic that’s “so small and poor it barely has a market.”
By Mfonobong Nsehe, Contributor
Uhuru Kenyatta, one of Kenya’s richest men and the son of Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta, has won the presidential election despite facing charges by the International Criminal Court of financing post-electoral violence in 2007. Uhuru Kenyatta makes history by becoming the East African nation’s youngest president (he’s 51) and the first son of a president to take power in a competitive election in East and Central Africa. Kenyatta won 50.07% of the total votes cast, in comparison to his closest rival, incumbent Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who pulled 43% of the votes. Under Kenyan law, the winning candidate is required to win at least 50% of the total vote in order to avoid a second round runoff. Shortly after Isaack Hassan, the chairman of Kenya[/entity]’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, made the announcement on Saturday, an elated Kenyatta publicly thanked the country for electing him as the country’s new leader and promised to work for the benefit of everyone.[/entity] “We celebrate the triumph of democracy; the triumph of peace; the triumph of nationhood,” Kenyatta said. “Despite the misgivings of many in the world, we demonstrated a level of political maturity that surpassed expectations.” But while the wealthy Kenyatta enjoys a strong and favorable following, particularly among Kenya’s young population, Kenyatta’s victory is likely to upset international powers, because the International Criminal Court (ICC) has indicted him for instigating and financing violence in the aftermath of the presidential elections of 2007. Prime Minister Raila Odinga accused the government at the time of rigging the vote and this prompted widespread violence in which over 1,200 were killed and several other thousands displaced. Kenyatta denies any wrongdoing. Kenyatta has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Amherst College, in Massachusetts, U.S.A. On returning to the country after his studies, he founded a horticulture business which he subsequently sold in order to focus on managing his family’s extensive business holdings. They include a commercial bank, luxury hotels and vast holdings of prime Kenyan land. Along with members of his family, Kenyatta owns at least 500,000 acres of prime land across Kenya. While it is documented that the land was legally acquired by his father in the 60s and 70s under a World Bank-supported settlement transfer funds scheme that allowed government officials to acquire land from the British colonialists at giveaway prices, Uhuru’s critics still maintain that the older Kenyatta unscrupulously grabbed land at the expense of ordinary Kenyans. The Kenyatta family land holdings alone are worth over $500 million and the family is renowned as one of the wealthiest families in Kenya. Kenyatta started his successful career in public service in 1999 when the Kenyan president at the time, Daniel Arap Moi, appointed him as chairman of the Kenya Tourism Board. In 2001, he was elected to the Kenyan parliament and was made minister for Local Government. In 2008 he was appointed Deputy Prime Minister under the coalition government and assumed position of Minister of Finance in 2009. Now, he is 4th President …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
By Harvey Jones, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
LONDON — Every investor dreams of that elusive 10-bagger, the stock that multiplies every pound or dollar you invest by 10. This doesn’t just happen with smaller companies: At least 10 FTSE 100 stocks have delivered a total return of between 1,000% and 2,000% over the [ast decade, according to research from Fidelity Worldwide Investment. Last week, I looked at the top 3 FTSE shares over the past 10 years. But the next three are almost as impressive. And they are …
Randgold Resources
There are more peaceful places to do business than Mali, but few more profitable.
Over the past decade, Randgold Resources , a gold miner and explorer mostly based in the strife-torn African nation, has returned a dazzling 1,723%. Its strategy is to unearth multimillion-ounce deposits in the prospective gold belts of West and Central Africa and develop them into profitable mines. It currently operates four gold mines — Morila, Loulo, and Gounkoto in Mali and Tongon in Cote d’Ivoire — and is developing a fifth, Kibali in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
After enjoying a golden decade, its share price is down 23% over the past six months, and that’s despite reporting record production levels in 2012 and a 16% rise in full-year profits to $511 million. Even a 25% dividend hike didn’t help the share price shine, although on a current yield of 0.6%, this isn’t for income seekers.
The falling gold price is a concern, as investors become less risk-averse. Political unrest is another worry, both in Mali and Cote d’Ivoire. But Randgold is hungry for more and has launched a hefty program of capital investment. The recent share-price dip looks like a buying opportunity, except I worry that gold’s glory days are now over. Despite its impressive portfolio of mines, this stock is too risky for me. Gold bugs will feel differently.
Tullow Oil
If gold isn’t your thing, what about black gold?
Today’s second FTSE 100 multibagger is oil explorer Tullow Oil , which returned 1,600% over the past decade, making it a sweet 16-bagger. It enjoyed a solid 2012, with sales revenue up 2% to $2.34 billion, and full-year profit before tax up 4% to $1.1 billion. Net debt fell from $2.9 billion to $1 billion. Highlights included the discovery of a new oil basin in Kenya, the Ngamia-1 and Twiga South-1 wells, its fourth major discovery in six years. It also enjoyed success in Uganda and Ghana.
Exploration will always be a risky business, and Tullow wrote off an eye-watering $671 million on failed exploration activities, a massive leap from the $121 million lost in 2012. Happily, its strong balance sheet should help it shrug off these losses, as well as fund the 40 exploration and appraisal campaigns in 2013, including new territories in Africa as well as Guinea, Greenland, Uruguay, and Mozambique.
You only have to look at the company’s earnings-per-share growth to see how volatile your holding is likely to be. It …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
Top conservation organizations warned Wednesday that the illegal ivory trade is hastening the decline of Africa‘s already endangered elephant population, and said they are ready to punish nations that are lax in fighting the problem.
“Globally, illegal ivory trade activity has more than doubled since 2007, and is now over three times larger than it was in 1998,” said a report issued in Bangkok at a meeting of CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
CITES has put three African and five Asian nations on notice that they have failed to adequately crack down on the ivory trade, and that by next week they must come up with a detailed and credible plan of action for curbing the trade across and within their borders. They must also meet those targets or face trade sanctions next year.
The nations threatened with sanctions are Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and China. Sanctions would keep those nations from trading even in legal wildlife products by barring other CITES member nations from buying from them.
A CITES-led project that monitors about 40 percent of Africa‘s elephant population estimated that 17,000 elephants were illegally killed in 2011, and the numbers are probably the same or greater for last year, said the report, produced by CITES, the U.N. Environment Program, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and the Wildlife Trade Monitoring Network, better known as TRAFFIC.
The report said the increased poaching and loss of habitat threaten the survival of elephant populations in Central Africa and undermine previously more secure populations in West, Southern and East Africa.
Curbing the ivory trade is a major topic for the CITES meeting, attended by about 2,000 delegates representing 178 governments, businesses, non-governmental organizations and groups speaking for indigenous peoples.
The report, “Elephants in the Dust — The African Elephant Crisis,” said criminal networks are increasingly active and entrenched in the trafficking of ivory between Africa and Asia. “Training of enforcement officers in the use of tracking, intelligence networks and innovative techniques, such as forensic analysis, is urgently needed,” it said.
Officials from the conservation groups said CITES is also putting pressure on governments of nations found to be key links in the chain of the illegal ivory trade.
Tom Milliken, TRAFFIC‘s ivory expert, said he …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Not particularly beautiful but extremely rare and exotic, carbonado is an incredibly hard stone also known as black diamond. It is found exclusively in Brazil and Central Africa, and yet the traces of hydrogen contained within carbonado suggest that it wasn’t even formed on this planet. As a best guess, scientists posit black diamonds were created billions of years ago by an exploding star. READ MORE ››
A group that tracks the Josephy Kony-led Lord’s Resistance Army says the group killed 51 civilians across Central Africa in 2012, a huge drop in the number killed from two years previous.
President Barack Obama sent 100 U.S. advisers to help in the hunt for Kony and the LRA in late 2011, but the report released Thursday by the LRA Crisis Tracker did not say if their presence helped reduce the number of attacks.
The group said that the 51 civilians killed last year is the lowest number since 2007. It said the LRA killed 706 civilians in 2010 and 154 in 2011.
The LRA carried out attacks within 10 kilometers (6 miles) of Obo — where U.S. advisers are stationed — twice in 2012, the report said.
Former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan launched a commission Thursday to tackle drug trafficking in West Africa as the region increasingly becomes a stopover point for cocaine and marijuana shipments from the Americas to Europe.
The 10-member commission, headed by former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, will raise awareness, promote regional capacity to deal with the problem, and develop policy recommendations for political leaders, he said. The Commission on the Impact of Drug Trafficking on Governance, Security and Development in West Africa is sponsored by the Koffi Annan Foundation
The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said in a report last year that cocaine trafficking in West and Central Africa generates some $900 million annually for criminal networks.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
The Security Council has approved the use of surveillance drones over eastern Congo to monitor roving militias so it can more effectively deploy U.N. peacekeepers.
A letter released Thursday from the president of the Security Council to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that the council members note the robot spy planes will be used “on a case-by-case basis” and will not set a precedent for the U.N.’s general consideration of “legal, financial and technical implications of the use of unmanned aerial systems.”
The letter from Pakistan U.N. Ambassador Masood Khan, who holds the rotating Security Council presidency, was released as a U.N. expert launched a special investigation into drone warfare and targeted killings, which the United States relies on as a front-line weapon in its global war against al-Qaida.
Civilian killings and injuries that result from drone strikes on suspected terrorist cells will be part of the focus of the investigation by British lawyer Ben Emmerson, the U.N. rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights. The U.N. said Emmerson will present his findings to the U.N. General Assembly later this year.
The U.N.’s spy drones over Congo would be unarmed.
Ban proposed in December that the U.N. peacekeeping force in Congo be supplied with “intervention” troops, night-vision equipment, surveillance drones with cameras and enhanced river patrols.
The proposals are aimed at improving the protection of civilians from the threat of armed groups in Congo‘s vast mineral-rich eastern region, which has been engulfed in fighting since the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
The Security Council wants to beef up the U.N. peacekeeping force known as MONUSCO, which has more than 17,700 U.N. peacekeepers and over 1,400 international police, following last year’s takeover of many villages and towns in eastern Congo by M23 rebels who briefly held Goma before withdrawing in early December.
U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous had previously faced opposition from neighboring Rwanda, which is believed to be backing the M23, especially on the possible deployment of unarmed drones. Diplomats said Russia was among the other countries raising concerns about the use of drones.
The Rwandan government denies any support for the M23, which is made up of hundreds of soldiers who deserted the Congolese army in April, mainly from the Tutsi ethnic group that was targeted for extermination by Hutu militias during the Rwanda genocide. Since withdrawing from Goma, M23 has taken steps toward negotiating with the Congolese government.
Diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity because the consultations were closed, said France, Britain, the U.S. and other Western countries back the deployment of drones and other advanced equipment in eastern Congo, saying it would enhance the ability of peacekeepers to track armed groups and help protect U.N. forces from ambushes.
U.N. officials say drones could also be useful in other African conflicts and possibly in the search in Central Africa for leaders and members of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a brutal gang of jungle militiamen headed by warlord Joseph Kony, who is accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
The United Nations outlined its case to the Security Council Tuesday to use surveillance drones in Congo for the first time but ran into opposition from neighboring Rwanda which is believed to be backing rebels who recently took control of many towns in the conflict-wracked east.
U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous asked the council to support the deployment of drones to help the more than 17,700 U.N. peacekeepers and over 1,400 international police in the vast country carry out their main mission of protecting civilians, U.N. diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the meeting was closed.
Congolese army troops were unable to halt the M23 rebels who took control of many villages and towns in the mineral-rich east and briefly held the key eastern city of Goma before withdrawing in early December. The peacekeeping force — the largest of the U.N.’s 15 global operations — did little to protect the tens of thousands of civilians, many of whom fled their homes.
Brieuc Pont, the spokesman for France‘s U.N. Mission, tweeted that “the U.N. in Congo needs additional and modern assets, including drones, to be better informed and more reactive.”
But Rwanda‘s U.N. Ambassador Eugene-Richard Gasana said his government and others have legitimate concerns about the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, especially before an assessment from the U.N. Secretariat later this year on the legal, technical and financial implications of using UAVs.
“It might have a precedence on other countries,” Gasana told several reporters after the meeting. “We owe them a kind of explanation. It is about human beings, it is not about ‘Star Wars.’ We need this new technology, but at which cost?”
Drones are being increasingly used in Western military operations but there are suspicions, especially in developing nations, that they will become a new intelligence-gathering tool for the West.
Rwanda raised its concern in the closed session that drone inspections would make the U.N. a belligerent force, which wouldn’t contribute to the safety of U.N. peacekeepers, one diplomat said. Diplomats said Pakistan, where U.S. drones have been used against suspected terrorists, also voiced concerns about their use in Congo at the council meeting.
The diplomats said France, Britain, the U.S. and other Western countries back the deployment of drones in eastern Congo, saying it would enhance the ability of peacekeepers to track armed groups and help protect U.N. forces from ambushes. U.N. officials say drones could also be useful in other African conflicts and possibly in the search in Central Africa for leaders and members of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a brutal gang of jungle militiamen headed by warlord Joseph Kony which has been accused of carrying out massacres, mutilating victims and using children as soldiers and sex slaves.
Eastern Congo has been engulfed in fighting since the 1994 Rwanda genocide, in which at least 500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by Hutu militias before a Tutsi-led rebel army took power in Rwanda. More than 1 million Rwandan Hutus fled across the border into Congo, and Rwanda has invaded Congo to take action against Hutu militias there. The exploitation of Congo‘s mineral resources continues to exacerbate conflict and instability on the ground.
The M23 rebel group is made up of hundreds of mainly Tutsi soldiers who deserted the Congolese army in April. A U.N. group of experts reported in November that M23 is backed by Rwanda, which has provided them with battalions of fighters and sophisticated arms, like night vision goggles. Rwanda denies supporting and arming the rebel group.
Since withdrawing from Goma, M23 has taken steps toward negotiating with the Congolese government.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
