By Patrick Smith, Editor Africa Confidential

Indian companies are routing tens of billions of dollars through Mauritius each year in a giant tax avoidance scheme

India is changing its tax laws in a bid to introduce greater transparency into its financial transactions with Mauritius. The aim is to stem 'round-tripping' of funds by politicians, businessmen and criminal syndicates, and assuage concerns about the unregulated and 'hot' money which transits through the Mauritian economy and into India. The licit and illicit financial flows from Mauritius account for as much as 90%, or tens of billions of dollars, of foreign direct investment in India each year.

Why do British troops who fought just as hard in Iraq or Afghanistan have far lower rates of post-traumatic stress than their Americans cousins? Dr. Simon Wessely, of King's College London, who conducted the study suggests it may have something to do with America's appalling health care system. The US services benefit from five years of free care from the Department of Veterans Affairs, (service-related injuries are covered for life) while in the UK returning soldiers are of course covered free for life. "I've brought this up with American military commanders; why not switch to nationalized health care?" the not-so-diplomatic Wessely told the New York Times. "Went over like a cup of cold spit." researchers analyzed answers from mental health questionnaires given to Royal Army, Navy and Air Force members from 2007 to 2009. The surveys included questions about general mental health, including standard items on depression and anxiety, as well as questions about alcohol use and post-traumatic stress. Many participants had also been involved in the 2006 survey. , according to the most rigorous psychiatric study of

By Jenny Aker   Share  at the Center for Global Development In the wake of the Haitian earthquake, major wireless carriers used text messages to speed up and simplify donation processes, allowing thousands of people to send financial support via their mobile phones.  Within two days, USD$2 million was raised for Haitian relief efforts.  Will mobile phones serve as a new paradigm for providing aid in developing countries? The use of mobile phones in Haitian relief is part of the broader "mobile money" (m-money) movement in the US and Europe, allowing people to pay by bumping two phones together, sending money by text messaging (SMS) or by swiping a credit card on a mobile device.  The trend is not confined to rich countries: m-money systems began appearing in developing countries five years ago, and are now used in countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Kenya, Ghana, the Philippines and Brazil.  Such systems facilitate a variety of financial transactions: transmitting airtime, paying bills and transferring money, including the most popular service, person-to-person (PTP) money transfers.

Jason Motlagh, for the Pulitzer Center

Mikhail Beketov had been warned, but would not stop writing. About dubious land deals. Crooked loans. Under-the-table hush money. All evidence, he argued in his newspaper, of rampant corruption in this Moscow suburb. Not long after, he was savagely beaten outside his home and left to bleed in the snow. His fingers were bashed, and three later had to be amputated, as if his assailants had sought to make sure that he would never write another word. He lost a leg. Now 52, he is in a wheelchair, his brain so damaged that he cannot utter a simple sentence. Read on at the NYT here Interview with Alexander Lebedev from KGB operative to owner of The Independent. Here

#tibet

Kate Saunders, International Campaign for Tibet
A vibrant literary and cultural resurgence has swept Tibet since Spring 2008 when supporters of the Dalai Lama went into open protests against Chinese government policy across the plateau.
A new generation of Tibetan intellectuals, often fluent in Chinese and familiar with digital technology, are daring to refute China's official narrative. Their critiques, expressed particularly in the written word, are among the most wide-ranging indictments of Chinese policy in Tibet for 50 years.

The radio program This American Life has ventured outside the US to look at stories that happen around bridges and other passage-ways around the world. There's a bridge in China that's famous for its massive size and its high suicide rate. One takes it upon himself to patrol the bridge, looking for jumpers. You can read entries from the watchman's blog here. This and other stories where we stop before getting to the other side.

The second segment is about the tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. There are lots of great details, including how much Hamas requires tunnel operators to pay the families of workers who are killed by collapses (or by gas pumped in by the Egyptians); the fact that profits from tunnels decreased (from $10,000 to $1,500 a month) as more and more people got into the business; and the smuggler's claim that most weapon smuggling takes place from Gaza to Egypt.

 HT Ursula Lindsey

by Yoani Sanchez

A journalist investigating a top politician dies in gaol and the ensuing scandal damages President Biya's claims to be Monsieur Propre - Mr Clean By Africa Confidential The death of journalist Germain Cyrille 'Bibi' Ngota Ngota in the notorious Kondengui maximum security prison has caused outrage in Cameroon and abroad and could prompt political change in President Paul Biya's ailing regime. Ngota's demise has again undermined Biya's claims that he is determined to address the systemic corruption in Cameroonian politics and business.

By Brian McCartan for Asia Times Online BANGKOK - The Thai government has finally matched its strong rhetoric with action by surrounding "red shirt" demonstrators and cutting off food and utilities to force them out of their protest site in the heart of the capital. The move appeared to be backed up by the shooting on Thursday evening of Major General Khattiya Sawasdipol, a high-profile protest leader and renegade army general in an apparent assassination attempt. Within hours, however, the plan to isolate the protesters seemed to stall in another show of lack of determination. Sporadic gunfire and several grenade blasts occurred after the shooting and one protester was killed during clashes late on Thursday night. But on Friday things became much more serious as troops clashed with the protesters, firing rubber bullets, live ammunition and tear gas in an attempt to seal off their encampment that, according to news reports, had yet to succeed. Khattiya, also known as Seh Daeng, was shot at about 7pm while talking to a group of international journalists at one of the protest barricades at Lumpini Park. He remains on life support at a nearby hospital.

• 

  The oil catastrophe afflicting the Gulf of Mexico underscores just how dangerous offshore oil exploration can be. Oil companies are seeking to extract the planet's last remaining barrels by drilling from ever-deeper sites on the ocean floor that wouldn't even have been considered not too many years ago. From Spiegelonline

  The oil now coating the Gulf of Mexico in reddish brown streaks has a long journey behind it. Tracing that journey would require diving 1,500 meters (5,000 feet) into the ocean, passing through a massive layer of mud and finally pounding through hard salt.

  The oil originated more than four kilometers (two and a half miles) below the ocean floor, in rock layers that formed millions of years ago, during the Tertiary period. It's scalding hot down there, a veritable journey into hell, but companies such as BP, Shell, ExxonMobil and Chevron are daring to make the trip more and more often these days. Flying over the site where the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon sank in late April reveals dozens more oil platforms projecting out of the water on the horizon, like toys bobbing in a bathtub.

  The United States government currently estimates that there are around 60 billion barrels of oil beneath the ocean floor in the Gulf of Mexico. This enormous reservoir would be enough to keep the US economy -- with its trucks, Chevrolets, Learjets and Boeings, its chemical and materials industries -- running for nearly another decade. The question, though, is how dangerous this deep sea oil extraction really is. Deepwater Horizon's catastrophic explosion, which claimed the lives of 11 crewmembers, has turned the spotlight on the challenges of offshore drilling.

  The Frontiers of Geology, Geography and Technology

  The attempt to plug the oil leaks on the ocean floor calls to mind the rescue of the Apollo 13 spacecraft, damaged on its journey to the moon in 1970, admits BP CEO Tony Hayward. "The energy industry is clearly working at the frontiers of geology, geography and technology," he told SPIEGEL in an interview.

  US Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, appointed by US President Barack Obama to coordinate oil spill response efforts, also deplored "the tyranny of distance and the tyranny of depth." Containment work using remotely operated vehicles on a wellhead at a depth of 1,500 meters is "unprecedented," Allen added.

  Efforts failed this week to lower a 100-ton steel containment dome onto the leakage site, because quickly accumulated methane hydrates blocked the device. Now BP is attempting the procedure with a much smaller dome. Still, even if this rescue mission succeeds, the disaster's effects will be felt for years. The sea area covered in oil is already twice as big as Luxembourg.

  First traces of oil washed up on the beaches of the Chandeleur Islands, an uninhabited island chain off the coast of Louisiana, on Friday. Around 10,000 people worked feverishly to keep the oil from reaching any more of the coast. Lockheed C-130 planes sprayed tons of a chemical mixture called Corexit, which is used to break down and disperse spilled oil -- but which is also suspected of causing harm to marine ecosystems itself. The fishing and tourism industries anticipate billions in losses.

  'Not for the Faint of Heart'

  An unprecedented deluge of complaints has hit BP and Transocean, the company that operated the Deepwater Horizon. "What has occurred in the Gulf of Mexico is precisely what we have always warned of," criticized geologist Klaus Bitzer at the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas. "They interfered with things that are better left alone."

  If oil companies continue to drill in deeper and deeper waters, predicts the professor at Bayreuth University in southern Germany, we can expect disasters like this one off the coast of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida to become more frequent. At the moment it's unclear to what degree BP is at fault in the disaster, Bitzer says, "but there is one accusation we must make of the industry now: a staunch refusal to acknowledge reality in evaluating future possibilities in oil production."

  The oil barons' daring seems limitless even in the face of the crisis. "The deepwater arena is not for the faint of heart or the underfinanced," writes Mark Riding, an expert at the oil exploration company Schlumberger, in the May edition of Offshore, a magazine dedicated to the offshore oil industry, but "with success comes enthusiasm."

  Deep sea floors rich in oil span the globe. Riding offers a simplistic assessment of the waters off the coasts of Madagascar, the Horn of Africa, Greenland, south of the Arabian Peninsula and along the continental shelves around the Atlantic: all "ripe targets for the drill bit."

  The deep sea has become a playground for engineers and energy market strategists. This enthusiasm, though, is born of necessity. Multinational companies would hardly venture voluntarily to tap difficult undersea reservoirs. Rather, it's the last option they have left. For about five years, global oil production has remained steady at around 85 million barrels a day. "Even though the industry returned to making massive investments between 2003 and 2008, it could not match the tide of rising oil demand," Sadad al Husseini, former vice president of the oil company Saudi Aramco, told the journal Petroleum Technology. "Ultimately, it was unable to exceed a production (that) production plateau."

  A large portion of the world's petroleum is pumped from oilfields that were first discovered more than 60 years ago without a great deal of complex technology. Today, prospectors must use costly methods to search for new oilfields that are located in some of the world's most inaccessible locations and yield amounts of oil once considered marginal.
• 
  
• Exxon Valdez veteran, marine biologist on oil spill's impact on fishing  In 1989, Riki Ott was just your average marine biologist-turned commercial fisherman in Alaska, when the Exxon-Valdez dumped millions of gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound. 

Ott witnessed first-hand the environmental, economic and social impacts of the Valdez spill and was part of a 20-year legal battle with Exxon-Mobil. She's written two books about the impacts of the Valdez spill and now travels the globe, helping other communities deal with oil spils. 

Ott met with a small group of Share the Beach volunteers last week to share her experiences with them and warn them of the potential effects of the Deepwater Horizon spill on the Gulf of Mexico.

In the first video, Ott talks about the impact the Valdez spill had on commercial fishing in Alaska, and speculates about the impact it might have on the Gulf of Mexico and its fragile eco-systems.

Exxon Valdez veteran, marine biologist on oil spill's impact on fishing

• Bhaskar Sen Gupta of Queen's University Belfast collects prize of $75,000.

	An innovative method of removing arsenic from groundwater without using chemicals, has won this year's St Andrews Prize for the Environment. A team from Queen's University, Belfast, addressed the alarming levels of arsenic contamination of water in West Bengal and established operations in six rural areas which now supply clean and arsenic free water to the local populations. This life changing technology is easy to install and operate and can be set up locally with readily available components.
An innovative method of removing arsenic from groundwater without using chemicals, has won this year's St Andrews Prize for the Environment.  A team from Queen's University, Belfast, addressed the alarming levels of arsenic contamination of water in West Bengal and established operations in six rural areas which now supply clean and arsenic free water to the local populations. This life changing technology is easy to install and operate and can be set up locally with readily available components. At a ceremony in the University of St Andrews today, Bhaskar Sen Gupta was presented with the winning prize of $75,000. Bhaskar said: "I am delighted with this win. It will enable us to transfer our knowledge to other groups who will be able to set up 25 more operations with around 25,000 people benefiting from the provision of safe drinking water." The St Andrews Prize is an environmental initiative by the University of St Andrews, which attracts scholars of international repute and carries out world-class teaching and research, and ConocoPhillips, one of the world's largest integrated energy companies, with operations in more than 30 countries. Sir Crispin Tickell, Chairman of the St Andrews Prize for the Environment Trustees, says: "With a record number of entries this year, the Prize is going from strength to strength. It is now in its 12th year and we are delighted that is has become so well established and continues to attract such a range of innovative projects from all over the world. We are looking for entrepreneurs on behalf of the environment - applicants able to champion original and innovative environmental ideas which are realistic and realisable and which take account of social and economic implications."

 BY SARAH LASKOW  Media Consortium blogger

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill  in the Gulf of Mexico is worse than anyone thought, and the crisis will likely go on for months. British Petroleum (BP) is tripping over itself to say it'll cover the costs of the clean-up, yet before the spill, the company spent its time and money pushing back against government regulation and safety measures.

Care2 reports, "A piece of machinery costing .004% of BP's 2009 profits might have prevented the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that is currently threatening the U.S. gulf coast. An acoustic valve designed as a final failsafe to prevent oil spills costs $500,000; the Wall Street Journal writes that the valve, while not proven effective, is required on oil rigs in Norway and Brazil, but not in the U.S."

By Kawkab al-Thaibani in Sanaa
Basam al-Haidari is 26-years-old,. He has little education but dreamed of supporting his big extended family - ten siblings, five of whom are deaf.

Instead of leading his family to security al-Haidari has walked himself into a death sentence.

Last April, al-Haidari was behind the bars of the Specialized Criminal Court of Appeals when he heard the Judge confirm the death sentence, for a crime committed while messing around on the internet.

He was sentenced to death for offering to spy for Israel.

By Coco McCabe / Oxfam America

The talk this morning, when we arrived at the Oxfam office in Haiti's capital, was all about the aftershock that jerked people awake in their beds around midnight last night. Did you feel it, they asked each other?

Some did. And at least one couldn't get back to sleep for hours.

And again this afternoon, another hit, sending some people scampering outside for safety.

In a city that is slowly coming back to life, I had forgotten the fear these aftershocks can trigger, a fear fed by the unpredictable: Could the January 12 earthquake that killed so many people in Port-au-Prince  and caused such massive destruction happen again?

Driving through neighborhoods jammed with cars, school kids, and sidewalk merchants, you get the feeling that people are trying hard to move on. They're trying to put that terrible time behind them, even as many go "home" at night to temporary camps and shelters made from sheets of plastic, even as heaps of pulverized concrete--all that's left of office buildings and homes-spill onto the roads, even as people know parts of their old lives may be gone for good.

The leader of one of Mexico's largest and most profitable drug trafficking cartels is in close contact with his police and army pursuers, by phone and email - which ixplains why he has remained at liberty for years.
Nearly 10 years ago Joaquín Guzmán aka El Chapo or Shorty, escaped from a maximum-security prison after hiding in a laundry cart.
It now turns out that the very people who are supposed to be pursuing him are apparently on his staff.
Internal documents recovered by the Mexican authorities from an associate of Guzmán, show that he has a sophisticated spy network and routinely buys off top police officers and soldiers with his ample drug profits.
[Forbes' famed "rich list" of the world's billionaires contains a lot of the usual suspects like Warren Buffet, Carlos Slim, Bill Gates, as well as one controversial addition - 54-year-old Guzman, head of the Sinaloa drug cartel. On the list, his industry is listed as "Shipping." "El Chapo's" spot at #701.]

Julie Schindall of Oxfam in Haiti, 

About 10 days ago, we found out that the government of Haiti identified a site for temporary location of homeless people living in flood-prone settlements in Port-au-Prince. They took two months to identify the site and we had one week to prepare it.

It's a desert-like flat plain about 15 km outside of PaP. The dust is intense. We sent out emergency WASH (water, sanitation, hygiene) teams to install latrines, showers and water bladders. They were the only ones working on the site up until the last day before the arrival of the first group of IDPs (internally displaced people -- ie, people left homeless by the quake and living in settlements). Our engineers installing latrines had to wear face masks to protect against all the dust. The American military calls that site "peanut butter camp," because when it rains, the plain turns into a brown mud pit.

That's not to say the site can't be made workable.

The mass burial site for the victims of an Israeli air strike on Qana on July 30, 2006.(FEYROUZ / CC)

By Tom Sleigh

When we drove into Qana last year," Joseph told me, scanning the gray concrete houses on either side of the road, "we heard flames roaring, the sound of the jets, people screaming, and the ringing of cell phones." He looked at me and shrugged. "The relatives of people were calling to see if they were okay." Joseph worked for the Red Cross during the 2006 war with Israel and was one of the first to enter the village after an Israeli bombardment massacred twenty-eight Lebanese civilians. Soft-spoken, slight, he was solicitous on the surface but, like many Lebanese, reserved, even wary. When I hired him as my driver and interpreter to take me south from Beirut, I knew only that he drove a taxi with his father and worked as a draftsman in an engineering firm to pay his way at Lebanese University. But then he offered to take me to Qana. He could show it to me, he said; he could tell me what he'd seen.

Tom Sleigh most recent volume of poetry is Space Walk. He teaches in the MFA Program at Hunter College. His essay "The Deeds," from the Summer 2008 issue of VQR, was selected forBest American Travel Writing 2009.

• Obama Administration pushes Kenya as GMO "biotechnology and biosafety" hub
• African farmers offered "royalty free" hybrid seeds in trials
• Most small African farmers still oppose use of GMO seeds
• Oxfam UK adviser says small scale African farmers could benefit from GMO

 

A press release from the oil spill Joint Command could have been in the satirical "newspaper" The Onion.The half-dozen tar balls found at Dauphin Island were being sent to a lab for testing to determine their point of origin--as if there were any doubt that the tar came from the BP oil sick. 

Warrant officer Adam Wine of the Coast Guard said they planned to test the tar, but "strongly suspected it came from the oil spill."

The Institute for Southern Studies (ISS) features a vivid video on its website documenting an overflight at ground zero of the BP oil catastrophe resulting from the explosion of the Transocean/Deepwater Horizon well platform on April 20. 

This is the view that cannot be seen from sanitized satellite photos and composite maps depicting the direction and extent of the massive river of oil threatening entire ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico. Tar balls have already been reported on pristine Dauphin Island, and the damage is escalating daily.

By Patrick Smith, Editor Africa Confidential

There is a worsening crackdown on journalists in many regions of the world, especially Africa, as governments and businesses struggle to deal with harsher economic conditions.

One of the latest victims in Africa is Ngota Ngota Germain, editor of the weekly Cameroon Express, who died in detention on 23 April in Yaoundé's Kodengui gaol. Along with two other journalists, Serge Sabouang and Robert Mintya, Ngota had been investigating allegations of corruption against Secretary General in the Presidency Laurent Esso and the state oil company.

A Kurdish journalist kidnapped in Erbil, the capital of the semiautonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq, was tortured and then dumped on a main road with two bullets in his head. Zardasht Osman, 23, was killed because he had lacerated region's two Kurdish parties, including the powerful Barzani clan. A university student, Osman was a freelance journalist who used a pseudonym online "I am in love with Barzani's daughter," read one of his scathing posts which violated the taboo of even referring to a female family member of the region's president, Massoud Barzani. Osman wondered aloud how he might marry one of Mr. Barzani's daughters.

Haley Sweetland Edwards

Foreign Policy

April 30, 2010

The sad case of Elham Assi, a 13-year old Yemeni girl who died from internal hemorrhaging after being raped by her 23-year-old husband, has certainly sparked conversation in Yemen over the longstanding practice of child marriage. But the conversations -- taking place everywhere from Sanaa kitchens to the parliament building -- aren't exactly what you'd expect.

Instead of addressing the question of children's rights in a country where a quarter of all girls are married before they're 15 and half before they're 18, some Yemenis are treating Elham Assi's death as a rallying point against the so-called imposition of a Western agenda. Instead of catalyzing protective legislation for children in Yemen, as the tragic 1911 Triangle Factory fire did for industrial laborers in the United States, her death may actually make it more likely that others will share her fate.

In February 2009, parliament approved a bill to raise the marriage age to 18 years old, causing an immediate furor in the Islamist community, which denounced the legislation as un-Islamic. The September 2009 death of a 12-year-old-girl in childbirth once again drove home the importance of this issue. However, the bill has since languished while a parliamentary subcommittee decides whether or not it's in accordance with sharia law. The subcommittee's decision is scheduled for May.

Over the past few months, Sheikh Mohammed Hamzi, an official in the powerful Islamist party, al-Islaah, along with hundreds of other conservative lawmakers and clerics, has issued a clarion call to "true believers" to oppose the law, arguing that it is a first step toward allowing the West to take over Yemeni affairs.

"We will not bend to the demands of Western NGOs. We have our own laws, our own values," said Hamzi, who made headlines again this week when a coalition of Yemeni rights groups announced it would take legal action against the sheikh for maligning activists as infidels and agents of the West during his regular sermons at a Sanaa mosque.

Elham's death sparked reinvigorated calls from local rights activists to pass the bill. In response, Islamist lawmakers, conservative clerics, and members of the ultra-conservative Salafist minority renewed their vehement opposition. On April 22, the infamous henna-bearded Sheikh Adbul-Majid al-Zindani, an influential Yemeni Islamist scholar and reportedly a former spiritual guide for Osama bin Laden, told a crowd at the conservative Iman University that the bill "threatens our culture and society," and he vowed to gather a million signatures opposing the law. His audience cheered in response.

Proponents of the bill say Islamists like Hamzi and Zindani are just using rhetoric to manipulate Yemeni public opinion. Here, anything that is perceived as un-Islamic or Western is immediately and virulently condemned by liberals and conservatives alike. The root of the problem, perhaps, lies in the frequency that these terms -- un-Islamic and Western -- are used synonymously. "If people think a law is 'American,' it's done. Finished. It's over," said parliament member Abdulrahman Moazid, who supports the ban on child marriage. It's a political two-step not unlike referring to a law as "socialist" in certain circles in the United States.

Certainly, the frenzied accusation that the proposed bill does not conform with sharia is ill-founded. Saudi Arabia, Yemen's ultraconservative neighbor to the north and its guide to all things Salafist, has passed similar legislation, declaring it acceptable under Islamic law. Furthermore, despite the claims of conservative clerics, Western NGOs had very little, if anything, to do with the legislation. Yemeni rights activists, lawyers, and women's groups are almost entirely responsible.

Yet, to many Yemenis, the issue seems to awaken a visceral fear of Western cultural imperialism. Anti-American sentiment runs deep here -- there is an entire generation of Yemeni men named Saddam, born after their namesake "defeated the Americans" in 1991 -- and this fear directly affects the country's domestic politics and foreign policy.

In January, after the failed Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 was tied back to a plot hatched in Yemen, rumors about U.S. security forces setting up bases in the country were met with scathing speeches and editorials by politicians, imams, and Yemen's dwindling literati alike. A group of 150 Islamic scholars signed and published a public letter affirming Yemenis' religious right and duty to "global jihad" if their land was invaded. Locals posted signs saying that if U.S. troops so much as set foot on Yemeni soil, every Yemeni would join al Qaeda.

Similarly, the Islamists' double talk on child marriage appears to be working. At a protest outside parliament in late March, opponents of the bill, holding Korans above their heads, accused lawmakers of being anti-Muslim and kowtowing to Western demands. "Who are you to say we should change our laws?" a young woman who had been at the protest asked me. "This is our country. We have our own religion, our own values, and we don't need you telling us what to do." Other demonstrators condemned the bill while simultaneously opposing U.S. military involvement on Yemeni soil.

Most Yemenis are appalled by the marriage of 8-year-old girls and were horrified by Elham's early death. However, they are against anything that impinges on their cultural sovereignty. Yemenis are, and will continue to be, emphatically opposed to anything that is perceived as anti-Islamic. The problem is that, with the help of some rabble-rousing clerics and politicians, the circle of what constitutes "anti-Islamic" is constantly widening.

Haley Sweetland Edwards is a freelance reporter living in Sanaa, Yemen. Her work, funded in part by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, appears regularly in the Los Angeles Times.

See this article as it originally appeared at Foreign Policy.

Learn more about this reporting project.

The investigative programme 60 Minutes traveled to Dr Congo with Enough Project's co-founder John Prendergast to learn how conflict minerals are fueling the one of the deadliest wars in the world. 

The massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has had several names since the deadly explosion on on 20 April which continues to pour hundreds of thousands of oil gallons of a day into the ocean.
President Obama named it "the BP oil spill" while in Lousiana last week, much to the horror of BP's boss Tony Howard and its communications chief Andrew Gowers.
Elsewhere the media has played with "the Deepwater Horizon spill," the Gulf Coast disaster". Least memorable and therefore the one BP probably prefers is "the Macondo spill," named after the well itself.

By Kathie Klarreich, Christian Science Monitor correspondent 

Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Two weekends ago, 15-year old Rosemadette Aijais stayed out late with friends, trying to distract herself from the daily grind of life in one of the many tent camps that now dominate Haiti's capital.

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Just minutes after she zipped up her tent flap to turn in for the night, she heard it unzip. Five men she'd never seen before entered and told her that her evening was just about to begin.

When they were done beating and raping her, Rosemadette crawled to a friend's tent, but her friend told her it wasn't safe to stay, so, bruised and frightened, she inched her way back home. Only at the urging of others did she eventually seek medical attention.

The Obama administration pledged to regularly evaluate the progress of peace in Sudan--or lack thereof.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that "backsliding by any party will be met with credible pressure in the form of disincentives leveraged by our government and our international partners."
UN Ambassador Susan Rice underscored that "there will be significant consequences for parties that backslide or simply stand still. All parties will be held to account."

 Six leading human rights and Sudan advocacy groups are keeping the Administration on its toes and have produced a rigorous analysis of leading indicators across nine overarching categories of benchmarks. Its not good.

From gangster to social media revolutionary, Clinton Liederman's story from Leonard Doyle on Vimeo.

First he dropped off the map for 13-months, only to emerge in March from the Chinese gulag after an international outcry.   

Now the human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng vanished again, after a visit to Urumqi, the capital of the East Turkestan/Xinjiang region of western China, where he had been visiting his father-in-law.

by Yoani Sanchez

With a tight sweater and gel-smeared hair, he offers his body for only twenty convertible pesos a night. His face, with its high cheekbones and slanted eyes, is common among those from the East of the country. He constantly moves his arms, a mixture of lasciviousness and innocence that at times provokes pity, at others desire. He is a part of the vast group of Cubans who earn a living from the sweat of their pelvis, who market their sex to foreigners and locals. An industry of quick love and brief caresses, that has grown considerably on this Island in the last twenty years.

Havana has the air of a brothel at times, particularly if you pass through Monte Street where it meets Cienfuegos. Young women in their flashy - if a little faded - clothes offer their "merchandise," especially after night falls and the spandex doesn't look quite as baggy nor the circles under their eyes quite as dark. 

Documents emerged yesterday showing BP had previously downplayed the possibility of a catastrophic accident at the Deepwater Horizon platform which exploded with disastrous consequences seven days ago.. 

The documents suggested in a 2009 exploration plan and environmental impact analysis for the well that an accident leading to a giant oil spill - and damage to beaches, fish and animals - was unlikely or virtually impossible.
The plan for the Deepwater Horizon well, filed with the Federal Minerals Management Service, said repeatedly that it was 'unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would occur from the proposed activities'. 

Vote-fixing in an election lacking any credibility has galvanised opposition in the North and may undermine the ruling party

A beaming President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir waved his stick triumphantly as his victory was announced in Khartoum on 26 April. Yet the ruling National Congress Party faces a succession of challenges after what many African and Western officials call deeply flawed elections - though mainly in private. The divided and formerly supine Northern opposition now looks determined to continue the struggle triggered by the polls.

By Leonard Doyle
Shirin Neshat's movie "Women Without Men," reveals a chapter in Iranian -US relations that most Americans have forgotten, (if they ever knew about it).
Iranians are still living with the consequences of the American led, British backed coup d'état that brought down the democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, and reinstalled the Shah to power.

Women Without Men - Trailer from IndiePix on Vimeo.

Drawing on magical realism she chronicles the intertwining lives of four Iranian women during the summer of 1953; a cataclysmic moment in Iranian history. Unfortunately the Washington Post seems to have sent a work experience intern to review this important film.