30.12.09 / News / Author: timepasss / Comments: (0)
Nigeria’s new chief justice has been sworn in in the absence of President Umaru Yar’Adua, who is in hospital in Saudi Arabia with a heart condition.
A lawyer has told the BBC that the appointment of Aloysius Katsina-Alu is illegal, as only the president has the power to take his oath of office.
Instead, the ceremony was presided over by outgoing Chief Justice Idris Legbo Kutigi, who retires on 31 December.
There have been several calls for Mr Yar’Adua to resign over his ill-health.
Senior lawyer Bamidele Aturu told the BBC that the constitution makes it clear that the chief justice can only be sworn in by the president.
“This means the legality of the appointment is in question and people can go to court and challenge it,” he said.
But this was denied by Mr Kutigi, who said a law had long been in existence to allow chief justices to swear in their successors.
Panic
The Nigeria Bar Association has called for an independent medical assessment of whether Mr Yar’Adua is well enough to carry out his duties.
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CONSTITUTIONAL JUSTICE?
The appointment of a person to the office of Chief Justice of Nigeria shall be made by the President on the recommendation of the National Judicial Council subject to confirmation of such appointment by the Senate
Nigeria’s constitution, Chapter VII, Section 231 – (1)
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Last week, an opposition politician began legal proceedings to try to force President Yar’Adua to step down on health grounds.
He has been in Saudi Arabia for more than a month.
The BBC’s Caroline Duffield in Lagos says no-one knows who is making decisions and there has been barely concealed panic among officials in Abuja over what to do about the retirement of Nigeria’s most senior judge.
There was talk of flying the new chief justice to the president’s bedside and filming a ceremony.
Instead, officials decided that the outgoing chief justice would perform the president’s job.
They are relying on the Oaths Act, which says that any lawyer can take an oath from anyone else.
But many observers are warning that Nigeria’s constitution is being kicked aside.
Mr Yar’Adua also failed to appoint his deputy acting president when he left – another constitutional requirement.
Doctors say the president is suffering from acute pericarditis – inflammation of the lining of the heart.
He also has a long-standing kidney complaint.
30.12.09 / News / Author: timepasss / Comments: (0)
Twenty-four people, mostly police, have died in twin suicide blasts on the same street in a high-security zone of the Anbar province capital, Ramadi.
Anbar Governor Qassim Mohammed was among 60 people wounded – his condition was described as very serious.
The first bomber was in a car while the second was on foot and wearing army uniform, police said.
The BBC’s Jim Muir in Baghdad says violence has been rising as Iraq prepares for a March general election.
In a separate attack, a roadside bomb killed six Iraqi Shia Muslim pilgrims in Khalis, 80km (50 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
Inside job?
In Ramadi, at least 13 of those killed in Wednesday’s twin bombing were police officers.
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ANALYSIS
Jim Muir, BBC News, Baghdad
The attacks were aimed at provincial government buildings, and many of the casualties were police or officials.
Eighteen policemen, including some senior officers, were reported to be among those who died.
Ramadi was once a stronghold of the Sunni insurgency until tribes turned against al-Qaeda and sided with the Americans and Baghdad government.
That brought a period of quiet to the province, but there has been a mounting number of attacks in recent months, possibly linked to the approach of March’s elections.
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A suicide bomber in a car triggered the first blast at a checkpoint on the main road near the provincial administration buildings, say police.
The governor was injured in the follow-up blast, about a half hour later, when he emerged from his office to inspect damage from the initial bomb.
The second attacker, wearing a suicide vest under what appeared to be an Iraqi army uniform, blew himself up as he ran into the crowd around the governor, said police.
Al-Iraqiya state TV said one of the bombers had been working as a bodyguard for Governor Mohammed, who was initially reported to have been killed in the blast.
He suffered burns to his face and injuries to his abdomen, a doctor told the Associated Press news agency.
“I flew through the air and I woke up in the hospital,” Ramadi resident Ahmed Mahmoud, who was walking to the shops when one of the bombs went off, told Reuters news agency.
The attacks echoed a co-ordinated triple bombing in Ramadi on 11 October, which caused a similar number of casualties.
Anbar was the heart of Iraq’s Sunni Islamist insurgency following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, but became relatively secure after tribal leaders turned against al-Qaeda in 2006.
Our correspondent says while Anbar has been generally quiet, the number of attacks has been rising in recent months, a worrying development in advance of March’s general elections.
Despite this, he says general levels of violence in Iraq have fallen a long way.
In November, the number of civilians killed was just 88, compared with more than 3,000 Iraqis who died in the same month three years ago.
Iraqi MP Dr Mowaffak Rubaie told BBC’s World Update programme the attacks were al-Qaeda’s strategy to sow chaos, after failing to ignite a sectarian war.
He said: “Now they are trying to create general anarchy all over the country… towards the general election. This is to show how weak the government is.”
30.12.09 / News / Author: timepasss / Comments: (0)
The US was aware that “a Nigerian” in Yemen was being prepared for a terrorist attack – weeks before an attempted bombing on a US plane.
ABC News and the New York Times say there was intelligence to this effect, but its source is unclear.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab flew from Lagos to Amsterdam before changing planes for a flight to Detroit on which he allegedly tried to detonate a bomb.
The Netherlands is to introduce body scanners on US flights within weeks.
Dutch Interior Minister Guusje Ter Horst said Mr Abdulmutallab did not raise any concerns as he passed through Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport to board the flight.
She said the airport would be able to use body scanners on all flights to the US from the airport in three weeks.
Obama denounces lapses
US President Barack Obama has said security failures were unacceptable.
He has said a systemic failure allowed Mr Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian, to fly to the US on 25 December despite family members warning officials in November that he had extremist views.
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US FLIGHT ADVICE
Only one item of hand luggage, including items bought airside
BA and Virgin Atlantic not charging to check in extra hand luggage
Check in wrapped presents
Passengers subject to “pat-down” searches before boarding, on top of usual security checks
Customers to remain seated during final hour of flight
No access to hand luggage and a ban on leaving possessions or blankets on laps during this hour
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The source of the intelligence about “a Nigerian” in Yemen was reported as coming from the Yemeni government or from US intercept intelligence, which can refer to intercepted e-mail and phone calls.
Mr Obama said he wanted to know why a warning weeks ago from Mr Abdulmutallab’s father did not lead to the accused being placed on a no-fly list.
“We need to learn from this episode and act quickly to fix flaws in the system,” Mr Obama said.
“When our government has information on a known extremist and that information is not shared and acted upon as it should have been, so that this extremist boards a plane with dangerous explosives that could have cost nearly 300 lives, a systemic failure has occurred.”
Some passengers and crew tackled Mr Abdulmutallab in his seat about 20 minutes before landing in Detroit as he allegedly tried to detonate explosives in his underwear.
Initial investigations found he had used the explosive PETN and a syringe filled with liquid.
The Dutch interior minister described the bomb as professionally made but executed in an “amateurish” way.
Mr Abdulmutallab has reportedly told investigators that he trained in Yemen with al-Qaeda.
He was living in Yemen from August to early December, the foreign ministry said, according to an earlier report from the official Saba news agency.
He had a visa to study Arabic at an institute in the capital, Sanaa.
CIA spokesman George Little earlier said the agency had become aware of Mr Abdulmutallab in November when his father, who had lost contact with him, visited the US embassy to seek help in finding him.
He said the agency had ensured the Nigerian’s name was added to the government’s terrorist database, and was forwarded to the National Counterterrorism Center.
Nigerian airports ‘safe’
Meanwhile, Nigeria has rejected suggestions that its airport security was lax in allowing Mr Abdulmutallab to begin his journey from Lagos.
Nigeria’s Information Minister Dora Akunyili told the BBC: “We are not disorganised and our airports are very safe.”
Ms Akunyili said CCTV footage from Lagos airport showed Mr Abdulmutallab from check-in through to boarding the plane.
Lagos airport security has been tightened since the incident.
It also emerged on Wednesday that a Somali man had tried to board a commercial flight from the Somali capital, Mogadishu, in November, carrying powdered chemicals, liquid and a syringe – materials that resembled those used by Mr Abdulmutallab.
The plane was due to fly to the northern Somali city of Hargeisa, then to Djibouti and Dubai.
The African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia confirmed that the man was arrested before boarding the 13 November flight. He is in custody in Mogadishu.
US officials have learned about the Somali case and are investigating any possible links with the attempted attack in Detroit, the Associated Press news agency reported.
Somalia’s UN-backed government is fighting an Islamist insurgency and only controls a small part of Mogadishu, including the area around the airport.
There are daily flights to neighbouring countries such as Djibouti and Kenya.
30.12.09 / News / Author: timepasss / Comments: (0)
Former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid has died aged 69, according to party officials.
Wahid, who was often referred to by his nickname Gus Dur, ruled the country between 1999 and 2001.
He was the first elected president after the fall of the 32-year Suharto regime in 1998.
Wahid had been suffering from a number of medical problems in recent years. He was a diabetic and was known to have had a series of strokes.
Short tenure
“Gus Dur just passed away,” Lukman Edy from Wahid’s National Awakening Party told reporters.
“We lost a great statesman who had dedicated all of his life to the nation, struggling for the sake of those suffering from injustice,” his brother Solahuddin Wahid told The Associated Press.
According to local television reports Wahid died of heart failure, but this has not yet been confirmed.
The partially blind Muslim cleric came to power after defeating Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of founding President Sukarno, in October 1999.
His win was a surprise – Mrs Megawati’s party had won far more votes in the legislative polls – and a testament to Wahid’s ability to build coalitions with other parties.
He used this skill to try to bring unity in the tumultuous post-Suharto years.
But he not been in the job long before his opponents accused him of failing to tackle the economic crisis, and doing little to resolve the secessionist conflicts in several provinces of Indonesia.
In July 2001, less than two years into the job, he was sacked by the country’s national assembly amid unproven allegations of corruption and incompetence.
Educated in Indonesia, Egypt, Iraq and Canada, Wahid had a reputation for religious tolerance and moderate politics.
As well as his prominent political role, he was also a leader of Nahdlatul Ulama, a Muslim group with some 40 million members – and one of the largest independent Islamic organisations in the world.
He suffered several strokes and was confined to a wheelchair in his later years, but despite his fading health he remained an influential figure in politics.
30.12.09 / News / Author: timepasss / Comments: (0)
The US space agency Nasa has selected three projects as finalists for its next celestial mission.
The projects aim to either probe the atmosphere and surface of Venus, return an asteroid fragment to Earth, or send back rocks from the Moon’s south pole.
The proposals are part of the New Frontiers programme, designed to carry out frequent, low-cost missions.
Nasa has provided funding for a fuller analysis of the projects, with a winner to be selected in mid-2011.
The cost of the winning project must not exceed $650m (£410m) and must be ready to launch by the end of 2018.
These limits are in keeping with the New Frontiers programme’s principles of funding focused, short-term, and comparatively cheap space science missions.
The three proposals are:
- The Surface and Atmosphere Geochemical Explorer, or Sage, would gather information about Venus’ atmosphere during the descent of a lander, which would then scratch at the planet’s surface to determine its chemical and mineral composition in detail.
- The Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer, or Osiris-Rex, would initially orbit an asteroid, landing on it to collect about 60g of material that would be returned to Earth.
- The Lunar South Pole-Aitken Basin Sample Return Mission would land near the Moon’s southern pole, returning about a kilogram of material that scientists believe has risen from the moon’s interior to the surface.
Each team has been given $3.3m (£2.1m) to further flesh out the details of their proposals over the coming year.
“These are projects that inspire and excite young scientists, engineers and the public,” said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for Nasa’s Science Mission Directorate.
“These three proposals provide the best science value among eight submitted to Nasa this year.”
The proposal that is eventually chosen will form the third mission in the New Frontiers programme.
The first, New Horizons, was launched in 2006 and is bound for a Pluto fly-by in 2015. The second, dubbed Juno, will be the first craft to orbit Jupiter from pole to pole after it launches in August 2011.
