UNHCR halts some operations after Kenya kidnapping

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An unidentified Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) driver alights from an ambulance as he arrives at the Nairobi hospital in Kenya's capital Nairobi, October 13, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Noor Khamis

By Richard Lough

NAIROBI | Fri Oct 14, 2011 2:02pm EDT

NAIROBI (Reuters) - The U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) said Friday it had suspended non-essential operations at Kenya's Dadaab refugee camp near the border with lawless Somalia as security forces scoured the area for two Spanish aid workers kidnapped a day earlier.

Kenyan security forces fanned out through the semi-arid border area Friday, hunting abductors believed by Kenyan police to be Somali al Shabaab insurgents. The al Qaeda-linked rebel movement has denied it was responsible for the attack.

Some aid agencies have become increasingly concerned by the worsening insecurity at the sprawling camp, where refugee numbers have swollen to more than 460,000 this year as famine and conflict drive Somalis across the border.

Nevertheless, the brazen nature of Thursday's broad daylight attack on two women working for Medecins Sans Frontieres in the heart of the camp stunned its relief workers.

"Today we have to hold everyone (at) base. We just have a thin staffing that is going down to the camps with a police patrol because some services cannot be suspended," said Emmanuel Nyabera, spokesman for UNHCR Kenya.

That meant there would be no registration of new arrivals, he said, but that water distribution, for example, would continue.

It was not clear when the agency's staff would be able to return to normal operations, Nyabera said. For now there were no plans for an evacuation of foreign staff, he added.

Medecins Sans Frontieres in Madrid said Blanca Thiebaut, 30, from Madrid, was one of the kidnapped Spanish women. The other woman, Montserrat Serra, 40, had been named yesterday. They both worked in logistics for the group at the camp.

"MSF has not been able to establish contact with the kidnapped workers so far. A crisis committee has been set up to manage the incident," Jose Antonio Bastos, president of Medecins Sans Frontieres in Spain told a news conference in Madrid.

"MSF always works without armed security... It's part of our policy to show people and armed groups that we have nothing to do with the conflict and we are purely a humanitarian and medical organization," Bastos said.

The African Union strongly condemned the abduction, which came some weeks after gunmen with close ties to Somali militants kidnapped two Western visitors on northern Kenya's coast in separate incidents.

Kenya's North Eastern Province police commander, Leo Nyongesa, said the hostages' whereabouts remained unknown. "We have contacted elders in Somalia to help us with the search."

The MSF workers' hijacked vehicle was found abandoned late Thursday between the Dadaab camp and the border, which lies about 100 km (60 miles) away.

The campaign group Human Rights Watch reported in 2009 that al Shabaab was recruiting fighters from inside Dadaab.

A Kenyan driver working for the international relief group Care is still missing after he was grabbed in September from the Dadaab camp.

The Geneva-based UNHCR said it has 200 staff in Dadaab. A further 100 humanitarian workers work alongside them from aid agencies including MSF.

(Additional reporting by Noor Ali in Isiolo and Catherine MacDonald in Madrid; Editing by George Obulutsa and Mark Heinrich)

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Judge halts work on Amazon dam

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29 September 2011 Last updated at 01:02 GMT Indigenous tribes have been protesting against the project for years A judge in Brazil has ordered a halt to construction of a multi-billion-dollar dam project in the Amazon region.

Judge Carlos Castro Martins barred any work that would interfere with the natural flow of the Xingu river.

He ruled in favour of a fisheries group which argued that the Belo Monte dam would affect local fish stocks and could harm indigenous families who make a living from fishing.

The government says the dam is crucial to meeting growing energy needs.

Judge Martins barred the Norte Energia company behind the project from "building a port, using explosives, installing dikes, building canals and any other infrastructure work that would interfere with the natural flow of the Xingu river, thereby affecting local fish stocks".

Legal battle

He said the building of canals and dikes could have negative repercussions for river communities living off small-scale fishing.

The judge said building work currently underway on accommodation blocks for the project's many workers could continue as it would not interfere with the flow of the river.

The consortium behind the project is expected to appeal against the decision.

In June, the Brazilian environment agency backed the construction, dismissing concerns by environmentalists and indigenous groups who argue that it will harm the world's largest tropical rainforest and displace tens of thousands of people.

The agency, Ibama, said the dam had been subjected to "robust analysis" of its impact on the environment.

The 11,000-megawatt dam would be the third biggest in the world - after the Three Gorges in China and Itaipu, which is jointly run by Brazil and Paraguay.

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Spain halts lottery privatisation

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29 September 2011 Last updated at 12:18 GMT The national lottery is famous for its El Gordo, or fat one, draw Spain has stopped the part-privatisation of the national lottery which had been expected to raise billions of euros.

The sale of up to 30% of the national lottery was postponed because the market valuation had been too low, the finance ministry said.

It intends to start the sale process again when conditions improve.

Spain had hoped to sell off a number of its assets, including 49% of the airports operator, to cut its deficit.

The lottery sale had been expected to raise several billion euros and would have been the country's biggest privatisation. It would also have created one of the biggest firms on the Spanish stock exchange's Ibex index.

It had been approved by the Spanish government just last week and presentations for potential investors had been expected to start at the beginning of October.

"Rather than have it valued for less than we had expected and for less than we believe to be the fair value, we decided to delay this listing," Finance Minister Elena Salgado told Spanish radio.

"Among individual investors there was and still is an extraordinary interest and among institutional investors too, but at prices that we did not want to accept."

But analysts suggested that opposition to the sale from the Popular Party, who are considered likely winners of the general election in November, may have played a part in the decision to pull it.

Elena Salgado added that the sale of almost half of Aena, the airports operator, would still go ahead.

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Power blackout hits Chile, halts copper mines

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1 of 3. A woman listens to news on the radio during a blackout in Vina del Mar city, about 121 km (75 miles) northwest of Santiago September 24, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Eliseo Fernandez

By Moises Avila and Simon Gardner

SANTIAGO | Sat Sep 24, 2011 11:04pm EDT

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - A massive power blackout paralyzed crucial copper mines in Chile on Saturday and darkened vast swaths of the country including the capital Santiago before energy was largely restored, officials said.

The outage acutely exposed the fragility of the energy grid in the world's top copper producer, which was devastated by a powerful earthquake in 2010.

Critics have blamed Chilean President Sebastian Pinera for under-investment in infrastructure and his popularity ratings have dropped since taking office last year. Prior to the power failure, he was already struggling with massive protests by university students demanding deep educational reforms.

Scrambling engineers were able to fully restore power generation and get distribution up to 90 percent of normal, the government said after the blackout, which lasted a couple of hours in most places.

"We've regained power in various regions of the country," said Chilean Energy Minister Rodrigo Alvarez.

At an earlier briefing, Alvarez said the cause of the outage was unknown but that computers that help run the energy grid had also malfunctioned. The blackout primarily hit the center of the country, where nearly 10 million of Chile's 16 million people live.

Initially, Angloamerican said its Los Bronces mine was halted and state-run Codelco said its Andina division and El Teniente mine were also paralyzed.

But Codelco later said power had been restored at the Andina division and El Teniente. It said output was not hurt at Andina as generators were used.

Meanwhile, Los Bronces said it was relying on generators and production was at a third of capacity as normal energy supplies had yet to come on line.

Authorities said the Collahuasi and Chuquicamata mines in the far north of Chile were not affected and that the blackout did not extend that far.

(Additional reporting by Antonio Delajara and Alexandra Ulmer; Writing by Terry Wade; Editing by Todd Eastham)

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'Ceasefire' halts Yemen fighting

The latest violence is the worst the country has seen for several months

20 September 2011 Last updated at 17:12 GMT Anti-government activist Ahmed Al-Shawish said the action was ''cruel and aggressive''
A ceasefire has been agreed in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, after government forces shelled a protester camp there, killing seven people, reports say.
It was apparently negotiated by Yemen's vice-president and Western envoys.
The city fell quiet before sunset after hours-long gun battles between government troops and armed opponents spread into the wealthiest suburbs.
Government soldiers launched a bloody assault on protesters on Sunday in which dozens have now died.
The latest violence is the worst the country has seen for several months.
The protesters want President Ali Abdullah Saleh to stand down.
Mr Saleh, who has ruled the country for more than three decades, has been in Saudi Arabia since June, when he was seriously injured in a rocket attack on his presidential compound.
He has refused to stand down and is promising to return to the country.
Negotiated truce
Only sporadic bursts of gunfire could be heard after Tuesday's ceasefire came into effect at 16:00 (13:00GMT) on Tuesday.
Continue reading the main story 27 Jan: Thousands take to the streets in Sanaa and southern cities urging President Saleh to quit; weeks of mass protests follow 18 Mar: 52 protesters killed by snipers; Mr Saleh declares state of emergency21 Mar: Several senior army commanders defect to protesters23 Apr: Mr Saleh says he will stand down within weeks; he later appears to renege on deal24 May: Clashes erupt between Saleh loyalists and tribal groups; dozens die in days of fighting3 Jun: Shells hit presidential compound, injuring Mr Saleh; he leaves country for treatment18 Sep: Government forces launch crackdown on protester camps; more than 50 die in two daysThe truce was negotiated by Vice-President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi and several foreign envoys, including the US and British ambassadors in Sanaa, unnamed officials were quoted as telling the Associated Press news agency.
Everyone will now be watching to see if the calm lasts, says BBC Middle East Correspondent Jon Leyne from Cairo - and whether it provides space for negotiations over a handover of power currently being mediated by international representatives.
Envoys from the UN and the Gulf Cooperation Council arrived in Yemen on Monday to try to sort out a deal to end the bloodshed.
Violence erupted before dawn on Tuesday, as a rocket attack hit worshippers returning from early morning prayers.
Witnesses said government snipers targeted protesters from the rooftops in Sanaa, and that the main protest camp in Change Square came under intense shelling.
According to doctors, three opposition soldiers, three protesters and a civilian bystander were killed by the rocket attacks on the camp, where tens of thousands of protesters have been calling for the president to stand down.
Manea al-Matari, a protester, told Reuters news agency: "We were walking back from prayers. All of a sudden a rocket hit close by from out of nowhere, and some people fell down.
"And then a second one came and that's when we saw the two martyred."
Government forces were also involved in full-scale combat - involving intense mortar and machine gun fire - with the army unit that defected to the protesters months ago. Witnesses said military aircraft targeted positions held by the opposition troops.
The rebel military unit had been protecting protesters in the city centre, and opposition supporters were reportedly caught in the crossfire.
Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) expressed its alarm at reported gunfights inside in al-Gomhori hospital - one of Sanaa's main medical centres.
Ministers have consistently denied that their soldiers have targeted civilians or peaceful demonstrators, telling the BBC that the unrest was initiated by al-Qaeda-linked forces within the opposition.
'Humanitarian crisis'
Analysts say the final battle for control of the country could pit the republican guards against opposition troops and their tribal allies.
On Tuesday, fighting spread to the Hadda neighbourhood, which is home to government officials and several members of Mr Saleh's inner circle.
Reports said the gun battles there were likely to be between government troops and tribes long hostile to the Saleh regime.
Mass protests and killings by security forces have also been reported in the cities of Taiz and Aden in recent days.
Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world. It faces multiple crises and some analysts already see it as a failed state.
It has an active al-Qaeda cell, as well as a separatist movement in the south and a Shia-dominated uprising in the north.
Aid agencies warn that the country is suffering a severe humanitarian crisis with about 7.5 million Yemenis - one third of the population - going hungry.
Mr Saleh had enjoyed long periods of support from the US and West by casting himself as an implacable enemy of al-Qaeda and other extremists.
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