Tuesday, March 23, 2010

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Amy Witherden.

Making headlines:

Violent South African protests over housing, jobs and lack of basic services must end, said Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe at the weekend, as the country marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre.
For the past two months, protests in poor black townships and shantytowns have become an almost daily occurrence with police using water cannons and rubber bullets to disperse protesters armed with rocks and stones.
Motlanthe, speaking at the commemoration of the killing of 69 people at Sharpeville fifty years ago, which thrust apartheid onto the world stage, said that a lesson could be learned from those protesters who did not burn libraries and loot public facilities. In a democratic era, Motlanthe said that people should use democratic institutions to voice grievances and demands.

Humans are flushing millions of tons of solid waste into rivers and oceans every day, poisoning marine life and spreading diseases that kill millions of children annually, said the United Nations (UN) yesterday.
The sheer scale of dirty water means that more people now die from contaminated and polluted water than from all forms of violence including wars, said the UN Environment Programme (Unep) in a report entitled ‘Sick Water' for World Water Day. Unep said that the two-million tons of waste, which contaminates over two-billion tons of water daily, has left huge "dead zones" that choke coral reefs and fish. It consists mostly of sewage, industrial pollution, pesticides from agriculture and animal waste.
The report said that a lack of clean water was killing 1,8-million children under five every year. Diarrhoea, mostly from dirty water, kills around 2,2-million people a year, and "over half the world's hospital beds are occupied with people suffering from illnesses linked with contaminated water."
The report recommends water recycling systems and multimillion dollar water sewage treatment works. Unep also calls for the protection of wetlands, which act as natural waste processors, and saving animal waste to use as fertiliser.

The Obama administration will put food security at the heart of its Africa policy, as it seeks to enhance ongoing US efforts on trade, investment and HIV/Aids on the continent.
Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson said that the US wants to see the food security initiative take on greater momentum as more African countries are drawn into the programme.
Reviewing the first year of the Obama administration's ties with Africa, Carson said that visits by President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the continent last year underscored strong US support for economic development, good governance and the fight against corruption.
And he said that Africans would soon see the food security initiative rolling out on a scale to rival major trade and HIV/Aids commitments of previous US administrations.

Also making headlines:

The Gauteng African National Congress denies any tensions ahead of its provincial executive committee elections after Premier Nomvula Mokonyane was booed during a human rights commemoration.
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir threatens to expel international election monitors after they said that April's vote may have to be delayed.
Minister for Women, Children and Persons with Disabilities Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya says that separate, more serious, charges must be created for people who kill to collect body parts for muti.
And, a report by the Independent Evaluation Group says that the World Bank needs to pay more attention to pressing water-related problems in developing countries.

That's a roundup of news making headlines today