Monday, June 14, 2010

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Brad Dubbelman.

Making headlines:

Celebrations for the first FIFA World Cup in Africa also highlight a dramatic change driven by forces more powerful than football. Veteran Nigerian sports broadcaster Larry Izamoje says that the soccer spectacular will "help clear age-long beliefs that Africa and Africans are still in the Stone Age."
While the competition may help change Africa's image in the minds of any outsiders still fixated on clichés of bloodshed and famine, those in the know long ago spotted Africa's emergence from no-go zone to frontier market and are seeing the returns. African Affairs commentator Joel Kibazo says that it is not the FIFA World Cup that defines Africa in 2010, but "Zain buying Bharti Airtel's assets." The International Monetary Fund reports that one-half of the world's ten fastest growing countries will be in Africa in 2011.
But Africans believe that the huge symbolic power of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, as the globe's most watched sporting event, will consolidate the continent's image makeover.

The International Criminal Court's (ICC's) chief prosecutor has urged the United Nations (UN) Security Council to support his crusade to apprehend two men indicted three years ago for suspected war crimes in Sudan.
The Hague-based court issued international warrants in 2007 for the arrest of Ahmed Haroun, a provincial governor and former State Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, and a militia leader known as Ali Kushayb, for helping to organise mass killings and deportations in Sudan's western Darfur region. In March 2009, the ICC announced a third indictment for war crimes in Darfur against Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Sudan rejects all three indictments as politically motivated and refuses to cooperate with the ICC.
ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told the 15-nation council that it should ensure that the UN makes the arrest of both men a priority and treat it "as a critical condition for securing peace and stability to Darfur."
Elise Keppler of New York-based Human Rights Watch says that "Sudan has thumbed its nose at the Security Council's authority for too long" and the council should "make it clear that Sudan cannot ignore its obligation to cooperate with the court." While UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon says that efforts to pursue justice for crimes in Darfur should be tempered with a push to achieve lasting peace.

Zimbabwe's government will soon lift its ban on diamond exports and expects to trade more than four-million carats from the controversial Marange fields.
Mines Minister Obert Mpofu, last month stopped all diamond exports, including from Rio Tinto's Murowa mines and the privately owned River Ranch, until stones from the government's Marange fields were certified by industry regulators. A monitor appointed by the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) to assess the government's mining operations at Marange, last week said that Zimbabwe had met the minimum conditions set by the industry regulator and could start gem exports.
Rights groups are pushing for a trade ban on the Marange stones, alleging serious abuses by security forces deployed by the government to stop illegal diamond digging after up to 30 000 panners descended on the poorly secured fields in 2006. Zimbabwe came under the international spotlight following reports of widespread atrocities in Marange, and the government agreed to a process of assessment by the KPCS.

Also making headlines:

Canada has invited leaders from seven African countries, as well as Haiti, Jamaica and Colombia, to attend this month's Group of Eight summit, citing a desire to make the event more inclusive.
Libya and Switzerland agree end their fierce diplomatic dispute and the Swiss businessperson whose detention was at the centre of the row, can go home.
South Sudan's President Salva Kiir reappoints his deputy Riek Machar, in his first step to forming a new government to take the underdeveloped region to a 2011 independence referendum.
And, Mauritian Prime Minister Navinchandra Ramgoolam says that his country is ready to try and jail suspected pirates, joining Kenya, Seychelles and Tanzania, that have shown interest in helping the situation.

That's a roundup of news making headlines today.