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BAY MINETTE, Ala. — A civil liberties group said Friday that an Alabama town should not start an alternative sentencing program that would give non-violent offenders a new choice: Go to jail, or go to church.
Starting next week, the program will allow a city judge to sentence misdemeanor offenders to work off their sentences in jail and pay a fine, or go to church every Sunday for a year. Offenders who select church can pick the place of worship but must check in weekly with the pastor and the police department. If the one-year church attendance program is completed successfully, the offender’s case will be dismissed.
The Alabama branch of the American Civil Liberties Union plans to send Bay Minette officials a letter demanding that they suspend the program. While the group says it supports alternative sentencing programs that save money, it believes the plan in Bay Minette violates the Constitution, state ACLU Executive Director Olivia Turner said in a statement.
“But it is a fundamental principle of the Establishment Clause that the government cannot force someone to attend church,” she said. “When the alternative to going to church is going to jail, the so-called `choice’ available to offenders is no choice at all.”
City officials did not immediately return calls from The Associated Press.
Pastor Robert Gates of Christian Life Church leads one of 56 congregations participating in the effort. He predicted it would succeed.
“You show me somebody who falls in love with Jesus, and I’ll show you a person who won’t be a problem to society but that will be an influence and a help to those around them,” he told the television station.
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) one of the world’s leading research-based pharmaceutical and healthcare companies has donated millions of tablets of Albendazole towards the treatment of school children at risk of intestinal worms- soil-transmitted helminths (STH).
The gesture would enable the World Health Organisation (WHO) to de-worm school children in Africa as well as other STH endemic countries in Asia Pacific and Latin America.
This was contained in a GSK statement, made available to the Ghana News Agency in Accra at the weekend by Mr Samuel Nkansah, Head of Government Affairs, Anglophone West Africa.
It explained that intestinal worms are the main cause of disease burden in developing countries, often resulting in stunted growth, anaemia, malnutrition and poor school performance.
According to the GSK statement, the donation demonstrates the company’s commitment to expand the provision of Albendazole to WHO to treat school children at risk of STH.
An agreement signed between the two bodies formalises the pledge made by GSK in October 2010 to provide an additional 400 million tablets of albendazole to the initial commitment of 600 million tablets per year for use in the Global Programme to Eliminate Lymphatic Filariasis commonly known as elephantiasis.
This brings GSK’s total donation commitment to the WHO to one billion tablets of albendazole each year.
The Chief Executive Officer of GSK, Andrew Witty, said: “GSK is committed to playing its part in tackling diseases that affect the world’s poorest countries by investing in the development of new medicines and vaccines and taking steps to increase access to existing treatments.
“In formalising this important agreement, we will help to ensure that there are sufficient volumes of de-worming medicines available to meet the need across the world.”
He said giving one tablet once a year to a child is a simple but of essence is a powerful intervention which can improve their health and development and as a result their academic performance, with the hope of breaking the cycle of poverty in these countries.
To meet this commitment, Mr Witty said GSK has invested in its factory in South Africa to increase its production capacity of Albendazole with the first new production due to come on stream next month.
Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General of WHO commended GSK for its commitment which has continued to contribute to the provision of wider coverage for the millions of children worldwide who silently suffer from the prolonged effects of intestinal worms.
The first African countries to benefit from the package, Togo and Rwanda, have received early shipments of Albendazole treatments to begin scaling-up their school based de-worming efforts.
Mozambique, Namibia, Uganda and Burkina Faso are expected to begin the de-worming programmes over the next 12 months.
The WHO has recommended annual treatment of children in endemic areas with single dose de-worming medicines such as albendazole, which has resulted in substantial improvements in child health and development.
The de-worming exercise has also improved school attendance, academic performance of school children and productivity and is targeted to reduce the burden on already overstretched health systems.
According to WHO statistics intestinal worms affect around 800 million children between the ages of five to 14 years in low-income countries, and account for 11-12 per cent of the total disease burden in this age group.
This is the first of two articles that examine access to information and communications technology in sub-Saharan Africa.
WASHINGTON, D.C.– Fifty-seven percent of the adult population — or more than an estimated 151 million people — have mobile phones across the 17 countries Gallup surveyed in sub-Saharan Africa in 2010. The percentage of adults with mobile phones ranges from a high of 84% in South Africa to a low of 16% in Central African Republic, signaling the potential for tremendous growth in the industry on the sub-continent.
Mobile telephone subscriptions have grown faster in Africa than in any other region in the world since 2003, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Mobile phone adoption rates have soared in countries such as South Africa, where Gallup surveys show more than 8 in 10 adults now say they personally have mobile phones. But penetration still remains relatively low in several countries where adoption rates have been more sluggish, including Burkina Faso (19%), Niger (18%), and the Central African Republic (16%).
Mobile Phone Owners More Likely to Be Male, Older Than 18
The average mobile phone owner in the 17 sub-Saharan countries is more likely to be male (62%) than female (52%) and older than 18. Those between the ages of 15 and 18, and arguably with the least spending power, are less likely to say they have mobile phones than older adults. On average, 40% of 15- to 18-year-olds in these sub-Saharan African countries have mobile phones, but the percentage climbs to 63% among those aged 19 to 29 and remains higher than 60% for those between the ages of 30 and 45. Ownership drops off after that, with 51% of those 46 and older saying they have mobile phones.
he average mobile phone owner is also more likely to be educated. Across the 17 countries surveyed, 75% of those with at least nine years of formal education have a mobile phone, while 44% of those with up to eight years of formal education have a mobile phone. The highest rate of mobile phone ownership at each education level occurs in South Africa, where 76% of those with up to eight years of formal education have cell phones and 91% with higher education do. The lowest rate of mobile phone ownership for those with lower levels of education is 10% in the Central African Republic and the lowest rate among those with at least nine years of education is 40% in Liberia.
Location, Income Make a Difference in Most Countries
Urban sub-Saharan Africans are more likely to be mobile phone owners. Sixty-nine percent of sub-Saharan Africans living in urban areas in the 17 countries surveyed have a mobile phone, while significantly fewer living in rural areas, 53%, do. However, in Ghana (urban 58%, rural 60%), Nigeria (urban 77%, rural 66%), South Africa (urban 82%, rural 86%), and Zimbabwe (urban 54%, rural 39%), urban and rural dwellers are statistically as likely to have mobile phones.
Not surprisingly, household income and mobile phone ownership are also related. Those with a mobile phone report average per capita household incomes near $1,100 and those without a mobile phone report per capita household incomes lower than $740. This income pattern is present in all countries except Botswana, Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa, where there is no statistical difference in per capita household income.
Implications
Mobile phone access in sub-Saharan Africa ranges widely by country. At the same time, men, those with higher education levels, urban residents, and those with higher per capita household income generally are more likely to have mobile phones. The challenge for the mobile phone industry is to expand from this base to rural and poorer areas, where cost will likely remain an obstacle to growth.
For complete data sets or custom research from the more than 150 countries Gallup continually surveys, please contact SocialandEconomicAnalysis@gallup.com or call 202.715.3030.
Survey Methods
Results are based on face-to-face interviews with 1,000 adults, aged 15 and older, conducted in 2010 in Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error ranges from ±3.4 percentage points to ±4.1 percentage points. The margin of error reflects the influence of data weighting. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
A coalition of African leaders on Monday launched a “scorecard for accountability and action” to track their progress in the fight against malaria, following on successes in battling the disease that claims hundreds of thousands of lives in Africa each year.
The 40-member African Leaders Malaria Alliance (Alma), which was launched two years ago, aims to bring malaria deaths to near zero across the continent by 2015 in line with United Nations Millennium Development Goals to improve health, reduce poverty and boost development in Africa.
“The evidence is becoming obvious. Malaria infection in Africa is receding,” Tanzania’s President Jakaya Kikwete told a press conference on Monday in New York for the launch of the scorecard.
He said in recent years 11 malaria-endemic countries in Africa have been able to slash malaria cases by 50 percent.
“The Alma scorecard is a good idea, and in our view it is a powerful monitoring tool because it involves the heads of state at the highest level of leadership and brings a collective focus of governments and partners in the fight against malaria,” said Dr. Luis Gomes Sambo, regional director for Africa of the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Targeted Measures
Kikwete partially attributed the successes to specific measures: distribution of bed nets, residual spraying of insecticide, rapid diagnostic tests and administration of combination drug therapy.
Since 2008, he said, 229 million long-lasting insect-treated bed nets have been distributed in Africa, which he said was sufficient to achieve 84 percent coverage of those at risk of contracting the disease. Homes covered by indoor, residual spraying of insecticide had increased from 20 million to 75 million over the past five years.
The Alma scorecard will be updated quarterly with data on key health metrics across several malaria-endemic countries to help African leaders hold themselves and each other accountable for progress in anti-malaria goals. It aims to spur decisive action among leaders and provide greater transparency in the efforts to fight malaria.
The scorecard will also track indicators for maternal, newborn and child health.
Still a Killer
Kikwete noted that malaria was Africa’s leading killer, affecting 170 million people on the continent each year. A child dies from malaria every 45 seconds, according to the WHO.
Malaria also hurts development, with two percent of Africa’s GDP lost each year because of the illness. Production of goods and services is disrupted and poor families end up spending 25 percent of their incomes for treatment, he said.
Despite successes in combating malaria, Kikwete noted that challenges remain. He said gains must be sustained, access to interventions scaled up and new sources of revenue identified. Also member countries and donor partners need to improve their compliance with commitments to fight malaria.
“We have guided our countries in making great strides in the fight against malaria and we remain committed to do whatever it takes to overcome the remaining challenges and win this war,” Kikwete said.
“Losing is not an option.”
Local Interventions
Among the most successful countries in the malaria battle is Rwanda.
Malaria deaths dropped by 60 percent between 2005 and 2010 through a rapid scale-up of malaria interventions, according to Rwanda’s health ministry.
Rwandan Health Minister Agnes Binagwaho attributed this to an integrated approach with community health workers.
“But more than that we have focused our activities where the people were dying and where people were sick at the community level,” she told Monday’s press conference. “We have a national policy for community health. Our objective is to keep 80 percent of any burden at the community level where people are living.”
She urged other African leaders to come up with homegrown solutions for country ownership in their malaria fight. “You cannot replicate,” she said.
She urged a greater regional approach to fighting malaria, because mosquitoes cross borders, and the creation of public-private partnerships so that bed nets could be produced within Rwanda and on the continent as a whole.
Mr Kweku Adoboli appeared before magistrates on Friday
Kweku Adoboli, the UBS trader alleged to have lost UBS $2bn (£1.3bn) in unauthorised trading, has appeared in court in London charged with fraud and false accounting.
He has been remanded in custody until a committal hearing on 22 September.
According to the charges, the fraud took place between January and September this year.
UBS is expected to provide more details of Mr Adoboli’s trading by Monday morning.
The charges add that Mr Adoboli filed false accounts between October 2008 and December 2009, and from January to September 2011.
The 31-year-old worked for UBS’s global synthetic equities division, buying and selling exchange traded funds, which track different types of stocks or commodities such as precious metals.
Prosecutors say Mr Adoboli “dishonestly abused that position intending thereby to make a gain for yourself, causing losses to UBS or to expose UBS to risk of loss”.
Political pressure
BBC business editor Robert Peston reports that Mr Adoboli worked in the back office before becoming a trader, which may explain how he managed to keep his trading secret.
“This revelation, that it may have been almost impossible for UBS to spot Mr Adoboli’s unauthorised dealings at an early stage, is expected to reinforce political pressure in Switzerland for UBS to hive off its investment bank,” our correspondent said.
The Financial Services Authority (FSA), the City regulator, is investigating why the Swiss bank did not identify the trades.
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One banker described UBS’s inability to see what Mr Adoboli was doing as quite extraordinary.”
City of London Police said in a statement that its “investigation is ongoing and officers continue to work in close collaboration with the FSA (Financial Services Authority), SFO (Serious Fraud Office) and CPS (Crown Prosecution Service).”
Earlier, it emerged that UBS learnt of the unauthorised trades after being informed by Mr Adoboli.
“The disclosure that it was Mr Adoboli’s decision to inform his colleagues of his actions that set alarm bells ringing at UBS, rather than its own monitoring system, will add to concerns that investment banks simply aren’t capable of controlling the huge risks that their traders take,” Robert Peston said.
Mr Adoboli has taken on the law firm Kingsley Napley, which also represented Nick Leeson, the rogue trader who brought down Baring’s bank.
According to reports he is the son a retired United Nations employee from Ghana, and that he attended school and university in Britain.
‘Much riskier’
The credit rating agency Moody’s says it is reviewing UBS’s rating, focusing on “ongoing weaknesses” in the Swiss bank’s risk management.
Another agency, Standard & Poor’s, suggested it was considering lowering the bank’s A+ rating.
UBS lost £35bn in the 2007-8 banking crisis and had to be bailed out by Swiss taxpayers.
Moody’s said that although UBS was strong enough financially to absorb the loss, it had concerns about its risk controls.
“We have continued to express concerns with regards to the ability of management to develop a robust risk culture and effective control framework,” the agency said.
Job losses
Last month the bank announced 3,500 jobs cuts. Of the 65,000 staff worldwide about 6,000 are in the UK, with the bulk of UBS’s investment banking operations based in London and New York.
It has been reported that the fresh losses from the investment bank will lead to a major restructuring of the business, involving thousands more job losses, which will be announced in November.
“We believe that yesterday’s event could have personnel consequences on senior management level, which in turn could lead to adjustments to UBS’ business portfolio,” said Teresa Nielsen, an analyst at the Swiss bank Vontobel.
“The exit from non-core businesses inside the investment bank could be accelerated,” she added
NEW YORK — The lawyer for the woman who accused former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault said Saturday that he believes prosecutors plan to dismiss some or all of the charges.
Attorney Kenneth Thompson told The New York Times that he got a letter from an assistant district attorney offering to meet with his client Monday, the day before Strauss-Kahn’s next scheduled court appearance.
The letter was written in terse tones and said the purpose was to discuss what would happen in court the next day. It said prosecutors would only meet the woman at 3 p.m.
“Should she not be available or should she fail to attend, I will assume that she does not wish to take advantage of this opportunity,” wrote the prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Artie McConnell.
“If they were not going to dismiss the charges,” he told the newspaper, “there would be no need to meet with her. They would just go to court the next day to say, `We’re going to proceed with the case.’ ”
Thompson sent an email to The Associated Press saying he was on a plane and couldn’t immediately discuss the issue.
A spokeswoman for the Manhattan District Attorney’s office declined to comment.
Strauss-Kahn was arrested during a May visit to New York City after a housekeeper at a Manhattan hotel told police he attacked her when she arrived to clean his suite. The woman, Nafissatou Diallo, told police that he forced her to perform oral sex and then left the hotel.
The arrest prompted Strauss-Kahn to resign from the International Monetary Fund, and disrupted his political career in France, where he was seen as a probable candidate for president.
But in July, prosecutors said publicly that Diallo had lied to them about her personal history, and about some critical details of the case. She also admitted lying to U.S. immigration officials about her life in Guinea, her native country, when she applied for political asylum in 2003. A law enforcement official also said prosecutors discovered that, a day after the alleged attack, Diallo had called a friend to talk about the incident, and that during that call she had mentioned Strauss-Kahn’s wealth.
The district attorney’s office then agreed to relax the conditions of Strauss-Kahn’s bail, allowing him to be freed from house arrest.
The Associated Press generally doesn’t name people who report being sexually assaulted unless they agree to be identified, as Diallo has done.
An Accra based man of God is blazing the trail with an innovation which he believes is the antidote to curbing the rapidly emerging trend of homosexuality in the country.
Prophet Dominic Ackah Manlenzie says he has set up what he refers to as a “special solution center for gays and lesbians” at his church to help people who so wish to break the habit.
The founder and General Overseer of Heaven’s Embassy located at SCC junction on the Kasoa-Winneba road, like many other concerned clergy told DAILY GUIDE, homosexuality is the by-product of satanic influence and an abomination to God.
He said to suggest that homosexual tendencies were genetic and therefore natural, is a big mistake. He noted that God created us to be heterosexual in our sexual leanings and desires and that is the more reason why gays and lesbians need divine spiritual intervention to save them from harmful physical and spiritual effects of the practice.
“The truth is that this thing is not from God and I know there are many out there who got themselves entangled in it rather innocently and now want to get out but don’t know how because it has become an addiction very much like smoking or alcoholism. The forces behind homosexuality are powerful so you need a higher power, God’s power to break their hold over the lives of their victims,” Prof Manlenzie said.
The man of God explained the center is manned by himself together with several of his other deliverance ministers and counselors.
“We have had some people referred to us for help through their friends and family and some are now living their lives normally. Some are still in the program. Let me state here that the process to recovery does not always happen at once. It may take days, maybe even weeks or months depending on the individual involved and the unique circumstances and severity of each case. Just like they didn’t hooked on homosexuality in a day, deliverance most likely won’t take place in a day.”
He said after completing the program, participants are counseled to maintain their new healing by keeping a close relationship with God through regular prayer and bible study as well as fellowship with other believers.
They are also cautioned to avoid places and people that could re-trigger their old habits, Prophet Dominic noted saying “when an unclean goes out from a man he will hang around to see whether there are any loopholes he can exploit to gain access into his victim’s life once again (Matt 12:43).
Asked to talk more about the center he said it offers tailor-made prayer, fasting and counseling sessions. He said since he is a prophet, he gives his clients prophetic direction relevant to their situation as well.
“We are careful to take down the client’s family and relationship/sexual history and lead them to Christ if they are not already born again. There is a family, relationship counselor who will talk with them and offer them sound biblical guidance.”
Prophet Manlenzie believes his center will help people get out of homosexuality even if not everyone can be saved. It is not enough to constantly condemn it, he said.
“What pastors, health personnel as well as civil society and government need to do is get on board and actually do something about the problem.”
The numbers of US women having a stroke during pregnancy has surged, according to doctors.
The incidents increased from 4,085 in 1994-5 to 6,293 in 2006-7, the journal Stroke suggests.
It is thought other risk factors such as obesity, heart disease and diabetes may be to blame.
The Stroke Association said it was concerned by the sharp increase. Pregnancy is a known – if small – risk factor for stroke.
This study compared data from more than 1,000 hospitals in 1994-5 with 2006-7.
More common
During pregnancy itself, the proportion of women having a stroke increased by 47%, going from 0.15 to 0.22 strokes per 1000 deliveries.
In the 12 weeks after birth there was an increase from 0.12 to 0.22 strokes per 1000 deliveries, an 83% increase.
Dr Elena Kuklina, lead researcher from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said: “I am surprised at the magnitude of the increase, which is substantial. Our results indicate an urgent need to take a closer look.”
The researchers suggest that two conditions – high blood pressure and heart disease – “explained almost all of the increase” in stroke after birth.
Dr Kuklina said: “Now more and more women entering pregnancy already have some type of risk factor for stroke, such as obesity, chronic hypertension, diabetes or congenital heart disease.
“Since pregnancy by itself is a risk factor, if you have one of these other stroke risk factors, it doubles the risk.”
Many of these conditions are also increasing in the UK.
Dr Sharlin Ahmed, research liaison officer for The Stroke Association, said: “We’re concerned that this study has found such a sharp increase in pregnancy-related stroke over the past few years.
“It is so important for woman wanting to start a family to understand the risks associated with pregnancy and to take steps to make sure they are as healthy as possible before they become pregnant.”
BAY MINETTE, Ala. — A civil liberties group said Friday that an Alabama town should not start an alternative sentencing program that would give non-violent offenders a new choice: Go to jail, or go to church.
