By Jaya Ramachandran | IDN-InDepth NewsReport
GENEVA (IDN) – There is good news from Africa. The continent is witnessing the second fastest economic growth, and according to knowledgeable sources it may grow even faster in 2013. What is more, currently Africa accounts for 14 sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) with a total amount of USD114 billion in 2009, representing 3% of global SWFs, and that share is expected to increase in future with the establishment of new SWFs.
By Martin Khor* | IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint
GENEVA (IDN) – The issue of foreign debt has made a major comeback. This is due to the crisis in Europe, in which many countries had to seek big bailouts to keep them from defaulting on their loan payments. Before this, debt crises have been associated with African and Latin American countries. In 1997-99, three East Asian countries also joined the indebted countries’ club.
European countries, notably Germany, insisted that private creditors share the burden of resolving the Greek crisis. They had to take a “haircut” of about half, meaning that they would be repaid only half the amount they were owed.
By Mirjam van Reisen* | IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint
BRUSSELS (IDN) – Arab Spring has arrived in the Horn of Africa. Young people have been campaigning for the last year, inspired by events in Tunisia and Egypt, phoning households in the country that has been in the grip of its leader Isaias Afewerki since independence from neighbouring Ethiopia in 1991.
By Jaya Ramachandran | IDN-InDepth NewsReport
LONDON (IDN) – The increasing resort to drones by President Barack Obama will over the long term usher in “a new arms race and lay the foundations for an international system that is increasingly violent, destabilized and polarized between those who have drones and those who are victims of them”, a leading terrorism expert has warned.
One of the distinctive elements of President Obama’s approach to counterterrorism has been his embrace of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or drones, to target terrorist operatives abroad, says Michael J Boyle in an article for International Affairs, a British journal published every two months.
By Richard Johnson | IDN-InDepth NewsReport
GENEVA (IDN) – Stepped up violence among ethnic groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the second largest country in Africa, has led to a serious humanitarian crisis, displacing thousands of people who live in hostile conditions, according to the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO). The world body and its partners are, therefore, appealing for $30.5 million to assist some 59,000 people in DRC’s eastern province of North Kivu.
By Eva Weiler | IDN-InDepth NewsReport
BERLIN (IDN) – The German Confederation of Trade Unions (DGB) has tabled a 260 billion Marshall Plan for Europe aimed at providing a decisive impetus for qualitative growth as well as new jobs with a future in all 27 European Union (EU) countries for a 10-year period from 2013 to 2022.
The proposed investments and investment subsidies of €260 billion annually comprise direct investment and investment grants of €160 billion and ten-year low-interest loans of €100 billion to private investors.
By Devinder Kumar | IDN-InDepth NewsReport
NEW DELHI (IDN) – Though the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd. (NPCIL) and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are at pains to ‘sell’ atomic energy as a “safe, environmental friendly and an economically viable source of electrical energy to meet the increasing need of electricity in the country”, protests continue unabated.
By Bijoy Das*
IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
NEW DELHI (IDN) – After establishing Sansha, passing a new maritime regulation from Hainan, and, printing maps on passports, the Chinese authorities have now unveiled a plan to survey all marine and island territories for marine resources.
Although the report indicates that the survey will be carried out throughout the country, it also specifically mentions Sansha (i.e. South China Sea) and baseline points (which would include all disputed marine territories). The terse report, when translated, reads as follows:
“The 2nd Chinese Comprehensive Survey of Marine and Island Resources will be started sometime in the first half of this year. The survey is expected to be completed by December 2016. By this survey, the Chinese hope to fill earlier gaps regarding the distribution, quality and quantity of resources in important marine and island territories like Sansha and other baseline points.”
By Bernhard Schell | IDN-InDepth NewsReport
DUBAI (IDN) – More than one billion people live without electricity mainly in poor and rural communities. Providing universal access to energy will therefore be a key discussion point at the sixth World Future Energy Summit (WEES) from January15 to17 in Abu Dhabi, an eminent emirate of the federation of United Aran Emirates (UAE).
By Julio Godoy* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
BERLIN (IDN) – Under different conditions, the recent admission by the head economist of the International Monetary Fund, Olivier Blanchard, that the Fund was dead wrong when it prescribed tough austerity measures to countries trapped in a sovereign debt crisis and in recession, would be a reason for satisfaction. But the price paid by the youth in Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, to name only the European victims of the IMF ill advices, is too high for celebrating being right.
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