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last several decades violence has been building off and on in the Niger River Delta

lucrative industry, which is living right next to very, very poor people and there is been a lot of conflict over time, a lot of mistrust built up between residents and the companies.

People feel that they have been cheated; people feel that their rights have been violated; they end up protesting against the companies or in some cases attacking the companies. The companies end up -- have to be protected by the military.

RAY SUAREZ: Not gaining but also feeling themselves burdened -- don't they -- by environmental concerns, fouling of the groundwater, that kind of thing?

t money paid to Nigeria's government in taxes - and the Nigerian Government will admit this -- a lot of the money over the years has been stolen.

Nigeria has a tremendous corruption problem, and the money that's disappeared is probably in the billions -- not the millions -- over the years -- perhaps the tens of billions

don't really have much of a functioning government

There aren't any roads in many areas; there aren't good schools in many areas; many places don't even have electricity; many places don't have telephone lines, although cell phones are now spreading through independent companies.

oil companies will say first off that they don't employ that many people

Shell acknowledged more than 200 oil spills last year alone. Thousands of barrels of oil were spilled in the water and there have been many oil spills over the years. And that has contributed, by many people's accounts, to environmental degradation there.

the face of the government to many people is a police officer or a soldier or sailor who is there fundamentally to guard an oil installation and not to help the people, or protect the people.

a feeling that the government has taken sides in this triangle and it's with the companies and not with the people who live there?

various ethnic groups in the Delta and tribal groups and different villages and individuals, many, many different groups, and it is often felt that the oil companies have taken sides, that they have gone about a divide and rule practice as some people will call it.

when they get frustrated, when there is an ethnic militia or an ethnic group that is going to engage in violence, they'll often turn it against oil companies, which they will see as perfectly justified, even though the oil companies will find it an outrageous disruption;

We get 1.2 million barrels a day from Nigeria; it's the fifth largest supplier of oil to the United States

Every day there is some more than 100,000 barrels, 140,000 from one company, as a matter of fact, that doesn't get out of Nigeria because of violence over the last couple of years and some days that's a much higher number.

in some cases you simply have people who live next to an oil facility, who feel they have been cheated, who feel that they're actually worse off for the facility being there because of pollution and other problems - who feel they're not benefiting and they go and they protest.

terminal in 2002 and again in 2005 was invaded by residents from nearby villages who simply felt that they were not gaining anything from Chevron.

They invade the terminal; they shut it down; Chevron makes promises; people feel the promises aren't kept; they come back again. That's one way that there's violence.

ethnic conflicts; there was a major one in 2003 revolving around elections

one group that felt that another group was having the election rigged in their favor and so they struck out. And they battled with Nigeria's military to some degree and they also attacked oil facilities because that was a way that they could strike back at the government.

disputed who owned a bit of oil land. The question who was got paid a little bit of money for the oil that was discovered on that land. They ended up fighting over it; a number of people were murdered.

military came in and essentially, by some people's account, settled matters by burning one of the villages. The military denies that the burning was intentional but, in any event, we went and visited -- a great number of buildings were destroyed, a number of people were killed.

no evidence of the government in many of these places. Does the oil company become -- in effect -- the government, and how do they respond to these challenges? What did they tell you about what they're trying to do in that part of Nigeria?

oil companies will have showcase instances in which they provided some community development.

instances in which oil companies have to acknowledge they have made promises that haven't been kept.

They will promise, for example -- in a village near the Chevron Terminal there is erosion of the land, which is blamed on the way that Chevron has managed its land. Whether that's fair or not, Chevron has promised to fix it by building some new housing on some new land. It hasn't been done yet, and Chevron has its own reasons why that hasn't been done -- they'll say because the situation is too unstable and there's been too much violence.

So each company is trying to do something but the question is: Are they doing something that's just public relations or that's too small to make a regional difference in a region of millions of people, or are they really going to do something that could change the situation?

Zambians are reluctant to accept that HJV is the cause of all the dying. The stigma of AIDS is so enormous here, survivors prefer to say that family members died from tuberculosis or meningitis, common AIDS-related conditions.

a baby who manages to avoid contracting HIV in utero or during delivery has about a one in three chance of getting the virus from breast-feeding

We have 45 orphans in our extended family already

This disease has become a wa

One generation has been wiped out due to AIDS, says Salvation Army social worker Thebisa Ghaava. "The next one will be lost due to a lack of schooling," she says.

Zambia has little in the way of a national HIV/AIDS education program

Life expectancy has dropped from 56 years to 37 in recent years, and observers believe it could reach as low as 30 within the next decade.

For 19-year-old Rachel Musonda, who lives in the Copperbelt mining region in the north of the country, the past four years have been a nightmare, as first her father, then her mother, and then her three older siblings died of AIDS. With each new casualty, Musonda, who was forced to drop out of high school to nurse her parents and who has no skills or financial means, has been left with more children to raise. At 15, she had no choice but to become mother and father to her six younger siblings, then aged from 13 down to one year. With the subsequent deaths of her two older sisters and brother, and their spouses, she had to take on three more children, bringing the total to nine, because there was nowhere else for them to go.

Anti-AIDS medications cost $10,000 to $15,000 a year, more than the vast majority of Africans earn in a lifetime.

Consequently, the country's budget for health care is a pitiful $6 to $8 per person per year, and that sum includes the cost of hospitals and treating other rampant health problems such as malaria.

And even the discounted price of $2000 a year per patient is still a fantastical sum for Zambians, representing as it does an average of nearly seven years' income for the 40 percent who are fortunate enough to be employed.

medications must be taken on a strictly observed schedule around meals. In Zambia, the reality is that many people can eat only when food is available. And that is increasingly becoming only once every several days.

50 percent of children are chronically malnourished.

In spite of Christianity's wide reach, traditional beliefs still run deep, and AIDS is often attributed to witchcraft

Another growing factor in the spread of AIDS is the legion of street kids, often AIDS orphans, many of whom must turn to prostitution to survive, as the country has only a handful of orphanages. About 750,000 children, some as young as four, have already been forced onto the streets.

In 1991, they underestimated the number of infections in the year 2000 by 40 percent. Already, 17 million have died, and today there are more than 25 million infected.

n the capital, the HIV rate among pregnant 15-to 19-year olds is beginning to drop for the first time

Twenty-five percent of our population is positive," she says but that means 75 percent is negative. Three out of four of us have the means to turn the situation around. But to do that Zambians need to take control of their lives."

"Once the decision on talks on the Partnership and Co-operation Agreement [with Russia] was made, Sweden and Poland, co-drafters of the [Eastern Partnership] initiative, were given a green light to 'move ahead'."

The French support for Russia came at a time when Russian troops were still parked in Georgia proper in violation of a French-brokered peace agreement.

Previously leaked cables on the 2008 war show that France, Germany and Italy tried to soften the EU's reaction at every step of the conflict.

France later cemented relations with Russia by buying a stake in its Nord Stream gas pipeline and selling it two state-of-the-art warships.

When religion goes wrong

Currently, seven powerful drug-trafficking organizations occupy different regions of Mexico -- La Familia Michoacán, the Gulf Cartel, Los Zetas, the Beltrán-Leyva Organization, the Sinaloa Cartel, the Tijuana Cartel, and the Juárez Cartel.

For example, the Mexican government is working to improve the effectiveness of its federal police force, planning to hire 8,000 additional police investigators during 2010, while at the same time trying to purge the force of corruption.

In August 2010, nearly 10% of the federal police were fired for failing lie detector, drug, or other tests that form the "trust control exams" designed to identify officers with ties to organized crime.

In addition, Plataforma México, a recent reform related to information management, aims to create real-time interconnectivity within Mexico's police force by developing a national crime database to facilitate tracking drug criminals.

More importantly, the government is taking the punishment of convicted drug criminals seriously and has increased extraditions to the U.S.

An estimated 7,000 people died in Mexico in 2009 as a result of the drug war -- significantly more than the 1,300 people who are believed to have died in 2005 before the war began. There were also an estimated 1,200 kidnappings in 2009.

Pemex, the state-owned petroleum company, has been a repeated target of the cartels. In 2010, the company experienced multiple kidnappings and theft by the cartels and corrupt employees. Reuters estimates that Pemex loses "US$750 million of fuel and oil from its pipelines each year" along with "valuable spare parts and equipment."

In August 2010, the far-reaching impact of Mexico's drug-related violence prompted Calderón to open debate on legalizing drugs.

For the past two years, American Chamber Mexico (AmCham) has conducted a survey of its members -- foreign and national managers -- to gauge their sentiment regarding corporate and personal security: 75% say their businesses have been affected by the country's insecurity.

Nearly 60% of the respondents felt less secure on a personal level in 2009 than in 2008; but the same respondents were equally divided as to whether their respective companies were more, less, or equally secure across the same period.

Of the third of the respondents who viewed their companies as being less secure than the year before, the most commonly noted contributing factors were the strengthening of organized crime activity, impunity in the judicial process, and activities associated with drug trafficking. Among those who felt their companies were more secure, 25% credited the work of the Mexican authorities, while 75% attributed the improvement to the results of efforts within their own companies.

As previously noted, vehicle armoring is a principal offering of the security industry, and it is not surprising that the growth of the market is most visible in this subsector. In Latin America, the armoring market has increased by 850% in the last eight years, and Mexico is now the second largest market after Brazil. Since 2008, the number of armored cars has increased by 25% in Mexico City and by 60% in the rest of the country. This market is expected to grow by 20% in 2011. Businesses have responded to this need: There are now 70 registered providers of armoring, compared to only three 15 years ago.

Kroll estimates the direct cost of insecurity to the government, businesses, and citizens to be US$65 billion, or 8% of GDP.

focuses

Tehran reaped some benefit from Hezbollah's increased popularity and perhaps can point to the organization's robust performance as a warning to those considering military action against Iran, but this war wasted much of the deterrent power that it had vested in Hezbollah for its own hour of need

But instead, Hezbollah managed to put itself at the center of Lebanese politics, leading an anti-American coalition against the anti-Syrian March 14 coalition.

As the guns fell silent and the dust began to settle onto a scene of extensive devastation, many Lebanese were initially preoccupied with the debate about who had "won" or "lost" the war. Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader, rushed to declare a "divine victory": the war had not ended with triumph for Israel (as all other Arab- Israeli wars have)

Hezbollah fighters had routed Israeli armored columns and elite brigades, and Hezbollah had continued to launch missiles and inflict heavy losses on Israeli troops throughout the war.

Hezbollah's victory was trumpeted throughout the Arab and Muslim world.

But it also became clear that Lebanon, and particularly the Shiite areas in southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut, had paid an enormous human and economic price. Some 1,200 civilians (almost a third of them children) died, 4,000 were wounded, and a million were displaced. Some 130,000 housing units, thousands of small businesses, hundreds of roads, 300 factories, 80 bridges, dozens of schools and hospitals, and the country's electricity network were destroyed or damaged. This was the costliest Arab-Israeli war in Lebanon's history - - more devastating even than Israel's 1982 invasion. Economic losses were initially estimated at around $7 billion, or 30 percent of GDP. For a country still paying for a decade of laborious reconstruction and with a debt burden equal to 180 percent of GDP, the war dealt a staggering blow.

South Waziristan.

Zainuddin hit out at Mehsud for recent attacks in which civilians have been killed.

The fresh violence comes as the Pakistani army is preparing to launch a new offensive against Taliban fighters under Mehsud's command.

Zainuddin was taken to the hospital where doctors pronounced him dead.

Not a jihad'Earlier this month, Zainuddin criticised Mehsud after an attack on a mosque which killed 33 people.

"Islam stands for peace, not for terrorism,"

Mehsud is thought to head the most powerful group of militants in the country, with a network of alliances with other militants.

It also advocates peace: "Those who invoke not with God, or any other god, nor slay such life as God has made sacred in vain."

Muslims to see terrorism as a selfless and righteous act for the greater good of the global Muslim community.

Sixty percent of Americans believe that "there is a lot of discrimination" against Muslims, according to the Pew Forum. Thirty-eight percent say they think Islam is a violent religion,

while a small number of dangerous Islamic terrorists continue to wage war on the West, the majority of American Muslims are simply trying, like the rest of us, to get by.

oni people

Ogoni, Ijaw and other people in the Niger Delta, those who have been worse affected for decades have been trying to stand up for themselves, their environment and their basic human and economic rights.

divide communities by paying off some members to disrupt non-violent protests.

threaten the livelihood of neighboring local communities. Due to the many forms of oil-generated environmental pollution evident throughout the region, farming and fishing have become impossible or extremely difficult in oil-affected areas, and even drinking water has become scarce. Malnourishment and disease appear common.

loss of property, price inflation, prostitution, and irresponsible fathering by expatriate oil workers.

Organized protest and activism by affected communities regularly meet with military repression, sometimes ending in the loss of life.

While the story told to consumers of Nigerian crude in the United States and the European Union—via ad campaigns and other public relations efforts—is that oil companies are a positive force in Nigeria, providing much needed economic development resources, the reality that confronted our delegation was quite the opposite

oil company operating in the Niger Delta employing inadequate environmental standards, public health standards, human rights standards, and relations with affected communities.

Far from being a positive force, these oil companies act as a destabilizing force, pitting one community against another, and acting as a catalyst—together with the military with whom they work closely—to some of the violence racking the region today.

Oil For Nothing: Multinational Corporations, Environmental Destruction, Death and Impunity in the Niger Delta, Essential Action and Global Exchange, January 25, 2000

in the killing of Ken Saro-Wiwa to Chevron-marked helicopters carrying Nigerian military that opened fire upon protestors,

The military have been accused of thousands of killings, house/village burnings, intimidating people, torture and so on.

oil companies have neglected the surrounding environment and health of the local communities

oil spills that are not cleaned up, blatant dumping of industrial waste and promises of development projects which are not followed through, have all added to the increasing environmental and health problems.

corruption and religious tensions between Muslims and Christians

into 2004

Shell companies have worsened fighting in the Niger Delta through payments for land use, environmental damage, corruption of company employees and reliance on Nigerian security forces.

Shell companies and their staff creates, feeds into, or exacerbates conflict.

Voilence in the Niger Delta kills some 1000 people each year,

With over 50 years of presence in Nigeria, it is reasonable to say that the Shell companies in Nigeria have become an integral part of the Niger Delta conflict

Human Rights Watch’s 2010 report. They note although free speech and independent media remain robust and there have been some anti-corruption efforts. However, this is overshadowed by religious and inter-communal violence that has seen Muslims and Christians killing each other and by Nigeria’s political leaders’ “near-total impunity for massive corruption and sponsoring political violence”.

latest escalation of violence began in early 2006, hundreds of people have been killed in clashes between rival armed groups vying for illicit patronage doled out by corrupt politicians, or between militants and government security forces. Armed gangs have carried out numerous attacks on oil facilities and kidnapped more than 500 oil workers and ordinary Nigerians for ransom during this period

June 2009, followed a major military offensive in May against militants in the creeks of Delta State, which left scores dead and thousands of residents displaced.

— Nigeria, World Report 2010, Human Rights Watch

Obama administration will face renewed scrutiny to account for the $1.4 billion, multiyear Merida Initiative, the cornerstone of American aid in Mexico’s drug fight.

in June 2010 a Justice Department report described a "high and increasing" availability of methamphetamine mainly because of large-scale drug production in Mexico.

In October 2010, the government announced that it was preparing a plan to radically alter the nation’s police forces, hoping not only to instill a trust the public has never had in them but also to choke off a critical source of manpower for organized crime. It would all but do away with the nation’s 2,200 local police departments and place their duties under a “unified command.”

the rising count of gruesome drug-related murders is evidence that the government's strategy has failed.

Mr. Calderon dismisses suggestions that Mexico is a failed state, he and his aides have spoken frankly of the cartels' attempts to set up a state within a state, levying taxes, throwing up roadblocks and enforcing their own perverse codes of behavior.

United States and Mexico set their counternarcotics strategy on a new course in March 2010 by refocusing their efforts on strengthening civilian law enforcement institutions and rebuilding communities crippled by poverty and crime.

The $331 million plan was at the center of a visit to Mexico in March

The revised strategy has many elements meant to expand on and improve programs already under way as part of the so-called Mérida Initiative that was started by the Bush administration including cooperation among American and Mexican intelligence agencies and American support for training Mexican police officers, judges, prosecutors and public defenders.

American and Mexican agencies would work together to refocus border enforcement efforts away from building a better wall to creating systems that would allow goods and people to be screened before they reach the crossing points. The plan would also provide support for Mexican programs intended to strengthen communities where socioeconomic hardships force many young people into crime.

The most striking difference between the old strategy and the new one is the shift away from military assistance. More than half of the $1.3 billion spent under Merida was used to buy aircraft, inspection equipment and information technology for the Mexican military and police. Next year's foreign aid budget provides for civilian police training, not equipment.

But Ciudad Juárez belongs in its own category, with thousands killed each yea

Libya holds around 44 billion barrels of oil reserves, the largest in Africa.”

The sudden change in Libya, a fallout of the democratic fervour blowing across North Africa and the Middle East, now meant that Libya oil supplies are in jeopardy, pushing the supply pressure on Nigeria and Angola.

Comments :   Now Nigerians,Africans & all the world can see the reason why IMF wants SANUSI TO DEVALUE NIGERIAN NAIRA so that the WESTERN WORLD will gain.SANUSI MAY THE GOD ALMITHY continue to strenghten u $ MR PRESIDENT never to listen to those animal impersonators.They thought u wiil be like IBB & others. Posted by: wyclef kojak , on Sunday, February 27, 2011 Report this comment This is a great opportunity for our country to make profits and use them for infrastructural development. I hope our government has the right sense to invest and appropriate this. Instead of diverting them for selfish and political purposes. Posted by: OgaFatai , on Saturday, February 26, 2011 Report this comment

officials responded cheerfully – and absurdly – that it had been built from scratch

after

negotiations in 2008.

North Koreans lied

ot only to the United States

but also to China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea

For South Koreans, whether to care for hungry North Koreans, who are both kith and kin, will be a much tougher decision than for others

South Korea's government will confront one of the toughest choices that any government can face: whether the short-term cost in human lives is worth the potential long-term benefits - also in terms of human lives - that a famine-induced collapse of North Korea could bring.

thieves have cost Nigeria an average of around 100,000 ba

rrels of crude oil per day.

Financial analysts, meanwhile, said that Nigeria is benefiting from the rising price of crude oil.

Oil prices are at two-year highs in part because of the civil war raging in Libya, Africa's top oil producer.

Officials at the Nigerian Financial Derivatives Co. told Nigerian newspaper Next that tensions in the Middle East were a "blessing" for Nigeria.

The students were dismayed by opinion polls revealing that American evangelicals put a low priority on ministry to people with HIV/AIDS.

Zambia has more than 630,000 children orphaned due to HIV/AIDS. About 1.1 million are infected with the virus.

The One Life program offered a catalog showing ways students could assist an African village by raising money. Opportunities ranging from an $8 chicken to a $53,000 schoolhouse were included

some were strongly opposed to this big ministry dream. Some students felt this new "God-sized" goal was sudden, unreasonable, and driven by guilt. Others asked why their resources should go to Africa, and especially to fighting a sexually transmitted disease like AIDS. D

Each of us committed to pray every single day about it

ose prayers changed not only their attitudes of fear and doubt toward the project, but also attitudes within the entire school--students, teachers, and administrators. The arguments ceased and a potent passion for Zambia ignited as hundreds of students mobilized to raise funds.

Zambia, all of Africa, and the AIDS pandemic became urgent concerns for Wheaton Academy's students

pictures from Zambia as daily reminders of what life is like for children in Kakolo

For the 2005-06 school year, Wheaton Academy students have launched AIDS Student Network (www.aidsstudentnetwork.org), aiming to recruit 1,000 American high schools in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa

Ahmed Mubarak, the police chief of the Dera Ghazi Khan district, said the teen told police that more than 300 boys between ages 12 and 17 are being trained in North Waziristan's Mir Ali area to stage suicide bombings.

The Hariri murder has been widely blamed on Syria, a main backer of Hezbollah along with Iran.

Damascus has consistently denied involvement.