Sunday’s attack, in the Likoni district near Mombasa, came amid heightened warnings of a threat of Islamist violence in Kenya despite boosted security in major cities.
• Dadaab, where people often live in appalling conditions, is home to more than 400,000 mainly Somali refugees.
• Kakuma, a vast desert settlement, is home to more than 125,000 refugees from across the region, including Somalia.
Internal security Cabinet Secretary Joseph Ole Lenku flanked by other Security officials. Photo/EVANS HABIL
Kenya on Tuesday restricted all refugees on its soil to two designated camps in the wake of a weekend attack on a church near Mombasa that claimed six lives.
Kenyans were asked to report any refugees or illegal immigrants outside the overcrowded camps – Dadaab in the east and Kakuma in the northwest – to the police.
Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston, four women—including a survivor of clerical sex abuse—two Jesuit priests and an Italian lawyer are the first eight members of the new Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.
Pope Francis established the commission in December; announcing the first members March 22, the Vatican said they would help define the tasks and competencies of the commission and help identify other potential members.
BBC Former US President Jimmy Carter appeared in Panama City, Florida, on 14 March 2014
Jimmy Carter served as president of the United States from 1977 to 1981
Former US President Jimmy Carter has said he hand-writes letters to foreign and US leaders in an effort to evade what he described as pervasive US electronic surveillance.
Mr Carter, 89, told the Associated Press he had “no doubt” the US monitored and recorded “almost every telephone call” and email.
His humanitarian efforts bring him in contact with a range of foreign and US political leaders.
He left the White House in 1981. ‘Monitored’
“I don’t think there’s any doubt now that the NSA or other agencies monitor or record almost every telephone call made in the United States, including cell phones, and I presume email as well,” Mr Carter told the Associated Press news agency in an interview.
“I feel that my telephone calls and my email are being monitored, and there are some things I just don’t want anybody to know,” he added, describing modern surveillance as a violation of Americans’ basic civil rights.
Mr Carter said he began writing letters in long hand two to three years ago, before former ex-National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked a cache of documents disclosing the agency’s extensive electronic surveillance practices.
The former US leader, a Democrat from Georgia, now runs the Carter Center, focused on human rights efforts and political mediation.
‘Great political clout’ of energy industry trumps those in need of drinking water
– Jacob Chamberlain, staff writer
Creative Commons license)An unrelenting increase in energy production, including unconventional methods such as tar sands extraction and fracking, will severely damage the world’s already dwindling water supply, the UN warned on Friday. (Flickr / Vinoth Chandar /
“There is an increasing potential for serious conflict between power generation, other water users and environmental considerations,” says the World Water Development Report 2014: Water and Energy (pdf), published on the eve of World Water Day.
The energy sector, which has “great political clout,” the report states, is set to consume an unfair share of this limited resource, “despite ongoing progress in the development of renewable.” The report continues:
Heavy toll: Children are particularly vulnerable to poisoning by lead, which is released when the gold is extracted.(Reuters)
Nigeria’s illegal miners have continued their quest for gold despite lead contamination affecting thousands.
Flanked by fields of millet and groundnut, the northern Nigerian outpost of Bagega is so far out on the periphery of the global economy that when the financial crisis struck in 2008 few residents had any idea it was happening. And no one in a village without cars, electricity or tarred roads imagined it would end up indirectly poisoning hundreds of their children.
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Mar 21 2014 (IPS) – The World Bank Thursday approved a 73.1-million-dollar grant in support of a controversial giant dam project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
With another 33.4 million dollars approved by the African Development Bank late last year, the grant, which is being provided by the Bank’s soft-loan affiliate, the International Development Association (IDA), will be used to help establish the legal framework and state authority that will oversee the dam’s construction and operations.
It will also finance a number of environmental and social assessments to shape the development of the multi-billion dollar Inga 3 Basse Chute (BC) dam project.
U.S. Soldiers assigned to the Iowa Army National Guard construct a seven-foot levee to protect an electrical generator from rising floodwater in Hills, Iowa, Jun. 14, 2008. Credit: National Guard/cc by 2.0
WASHINGTON, Mar 19 2014 (IPS) – In an unusual intervention in policy debates, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) warned Tuesday that the world was “at risk of pushing our climate system toward abrupt, unpredictable, and potentially irreversible changes with highly damaging impacts.” Continue reading U.S. Scientists Launch Wake-Up Campaign on Climate Change→
An economist considers Pope Francis’ critique of capitalism.
Jeffrey D. Sachs
Dr. Patrick Angelo wraps a homeless man in blankets under the overpasses on Lower Wacker Drive in Chicago, ill.
Jesus’ teachings offer good news for the righteous, whether they are the poor and marginalized or the rich who are generous with their bounty. All can find a place in the kingdom. Yet there is little comfort for those who expect that their wealth alone will save them. The story of Lazarus and the rich man is a reminder of the fate of the wealthy who ignore the poor in their midst (Lk 16:19-31). Continue reading Market Reformer→
Trade agreements are a subject that can cause the eyes to glaze over, but we should all be paying attention. Right now, there are trade proposals in the works that threaten to put most Americans on the wrong side of globalization. Continue reading On the Wrong Side of Globalization→
The school curriculum could and should ask students to reflect on the contradiction of starvation amidst plenty, on the ethics of food exports amidst famine. And it should ask why these patterns persist into our own time.
To support the famine relief effort, British tax policy required landlords to pay the local taxes of their poorest tenant farmers, leading many landlords to forcibly evict struggling farmers and destroy their cottages in order to save money. From Hunger on Trial Teaching Activity.
“Wear green on St. Patrick’s Day or get pinched.” That pretty much sums up the Irish-American “curriculum” that I learned when I was in school. Yes, I recall a nod to the so-called Potato Famine, but it was mentioned only in passing.
Sadly, today’s high school textbooks continue to largely ignore the famine, despite the fact that it was responsible for unimaginable suffering and the deaths of more than a million Irish peasants, and that it triggered the greatest wave of Irish immigration in U.S. history. Nor do textbooks make any attempt to help students link famines past and present. Continue reading The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools→
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