Friday, March 18, 2011

As the nuclear crisis in Japan’s crippled Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant appears to worsen, Japan’s nuclear safety agency raised their assessment of its severity from 4 to 5 on the 7-level International Nuclear Event Scale, the same rating given the 1979 Three Mile Island crisis. Japan’s Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, said bluntly that the situation at the nuclear power plant was “very grave”. Weather forecasts indicate changing winds may begin moving radiation closer to Tokyo by March 30.

Efforts thus far to cool nuclear fuel in the reactors and the spent-fuel pools has produced little if any success, contends United States government officials.

Engineers are working frantically to connect electrical power to two reactors in the plant, as well as to restart the cooling systems and prevent overheating of fuel rods. Tokyo Electric Power Co. stated that it hopes to reconnect a power line needed to restart water pumps to the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors by Saturday morning. However, a TEPCO official cautioned that if the water pumps were damaged by the tsunami, they could fail to restart.

The extent of the damage to the plant’s reactors is still unclear. Japanese officials have concentrated on cooling spent fuel rods in Reactor No. 3’s storage pool. On Friday, however, steam was seen rising from Reactor No. 2., where an explosion occurred on Tuesday. Additionally, engineers said on Thursday that the steel lining of the storage pool at Reactor No. 4 and its concrete base seemed damaged, as attempts to refill the pool with water became increasingly difficult.

In a briefing on Friday, Philippe Jamet, a commissioner at France’s nuclear regulator Autorite de Surete Nucleaire, said, “We must avoid being overly optimistic. This will likely take human intervention like going into control rooms to reconnect valves.”

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• Forex Gold Index: $424.30/barrel, $0.80

• 1 US Dollar (US$):

= STG£0.5349 = €0.7727 = ¥106.4000

• 1 Euro (€):

= STG£0.6923 = $1.2942 = ¥137.6900

• 1 Pound Sterling (STG£):

= US$1.8694 = €1.4443 = ¥198.8550

• 1 Japanese Yen (¥)

= STG£0.0050 = $0.0094 = €0.0073

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Wednesday, July 10, 2019

Leaders of African Union (AU) member states met in Niamey, Niger’s capital, for an AU summit where on Sunday Presidents Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria and Patrice Talon of Benin signed the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement.

Nigeria previously announced it planned to join the AfCFTA in the week leading up to the summit. AU trade and industry commissioner Albert Muchanga announced Benin was to join. The commissioner said, “We haven’t yet agreed on rules of origin and tariff con[c]essions, but the framework we have is enough to start trading on July 1, 2020”.

Niger’s president Mahamadou Issoufou said, “Nigeria is Africa’s biggest economy and most populous country. Without Nigeria the free trade zone would’ve been handicapped.”

The agreement seeks to remove tariffs on 90 percent of commodities and better intregrate African economies.

At the opening of the AU summit, AU chairperson President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt said, “The success of the AfCFTA will be the real test to achieve the economic growth that will turn our people’s dream of welfare and quality of life into a reality”.

With Sunday’s signings, all but one of the member states of the 55-member AU have signed on to the agreement, with Eritrea the only state unsigned. African leaders have negotiated the deal over the last four years. While 54 nations have signed onto the AfCFTA, only 27 have ratified the agreement.

While many transactions in Africa occur using U.S. dollars or euros, the AU announced an electronic pan-African payment system.African Export–Import Bank president Okey Oramah said the use of third-party currencies “costs Africa between $5 and $7 billion,” further saying, “Beyond that, it also reduces trade because Africa has a scarcity of foreign exchange.”

There are reportedly 1.3 billion people in the free trade area, with the combined economies of the countries worth US$3.4 trillion. One of the stated goals of AfCFTA is to encourage more intra-Africa trade. Currently about 16–17 percent of African trade occurs between African countries. This is in contrast to the European Union members, where intra-European trade accounts for over 60 percent of trade.

The International Monetary Fund said in May the AfCFTA might be for African countries comparable to the European and North American trade blocs as an “economic game changer”.

Seven members states had bid to host the AfCFTA secretariat, the operational organ of the free trade agreement, with Ghana winning the bid.

Saturday, October 8, 2005

The first veto of United States President George W. Bush’s presidency may be used to block an amendment that bans torture and mistreatment of detainees, proposed by two Republican senators. The White House sent a “statement of administration policy” to the Senate declaring strong opposition to the legislation, alleging that it would tie the nation’s hands in the “War on Terrorism”. The statement said that if the bill’s final version contained the anti-torture terms, then “the president’s senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill.”

The amendment, an addition to the $440 billion dollar military spending bill, proposed by senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, would establish the Army Field Manual as the uniform standard for the interrogation of Department of Defense detainees and secondly prohibit cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of persons detained by the U.S. government.[1]

The legislation comes in the wake of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal and allegations of Human Rights Watch, which, in a recent report, accused soldiers of the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division of “systematically torturing Iraqi detainees”. The report was critizised by a Department of Defense spokesman as using “distortions and errors in fact.”

The amendment received 90 votes in support, and 9 votes against in the Senate. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as 28 other retired senior military officers, also endorsed it.

General Powell said in a letter to McCain: “Our troops need to hear from the Congress, which has an obligation to speak to such matters. I also believe the world will note that America is making a clear statement with respect to the expected future behavior of our soldiers.” Powell said the Senate action “will help deal with the terrible public diplomacy crisis created by Abu Ghraib.”

McCain, a one-time P.O.W. during his military service in the Vietnam War, said after the vote that the White House should not be working against him on this issue: “We think it would be very helpful because it would send a message to the world that the United States of America does not engage in torture. We will not treat people inhumanely. We will adhere to treaties that we are signatories to, and the men and women who do the interrogating will have clear instructions as to how to conduct interrogations.”

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who later voted for the bill, and White House lobbyists led the unsuccessful opposition to the amendment and senator Ted Stevens had argued that the amendment would prevent “our people from taking the leadership. (sic)”