Malawi prosecutors Tuesday obtained a court order to force ex-president Bakili Muluzi, who faces graft charges, to sign a 12 million dollar bond to ensure he returns from a medical check in Britain.
"We want Muluzi to sign for a non-cash bond of 12 million (8.6 million euros). We want the whole nation to be in peace that Muluzi will come back," Alex Nampota, head of the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), told AFP.
The ACB last week seized Muluzi's passport in a bid to prevent him from travelling to Britain.
Muluzi, who ruled the impoverished southern African nation from 1994 to 2004, is facing charges graft over the theft of 12 million dollars in aid money.
"We are not taking any chances on the possibility that Muluzi might abscond," said Nampota.
The bureau has seized Muluzi's property which includes 150 cars, an office complex and his upmarket residence located in the Limbe district of Blantyre.
"We have also frozen all his bank accounts to satisfy ourselves that he will come back," added Nampota.
But Muluzi's lawyer Jai Banda says the 66-year-old leader plans to challenge the order.
"This is unacceptable because Muluzi is not yet convicted," said Banda.
"It's pathetic...he is actually very sick, and if you see him walking, you can actually see that he is not well. It's worrisome," Banda said.
Muluzi is the most senior figure to face graft charges in a sweeping anti-corruption campaign launched by President Bingu wa Mutharika, his successor and estranged protege.
The graft charges were first raised in 2006 but were withdrawn by the former director of public prosecutions, Ishmael Wadi. Mutharika revived the charges last year.
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
TNM partners with Starfish to launch VAS (Malawi)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Telekom Networks Malawi (TNM) has reportedly teamed up with African wireless application service provider Starfish Mobile International to introduce a range of mobile content services. This enables subscribers to access a number of value added services (VAS) including news and sport updates via SMS, exchange rates, horoscopes and ringback tones.
According to the report, the launch forms part of Starfish Mobile’s long term strategy with TNM to build an exciting, innovative and profitable VAS business and bring content services to a vast number of mobile subscribers, many of which have not been able to access such services before. ‘We are very excited with our strategic partnership with TNM and in the potential of the Malawian VAS market going forward,’ said Per Ostberg, Starfish Mobile Manager for Malawi.
According to the report, the launch forms part of Starfish Mobile’s long term strategy with TNM to build an exciting, innovative and profitable VAS business and bring content services to a vast number of mobile subscribers, many of which have not been able to access such services before. ‘We are very excited with our strategic partnership with TNM and in the potential of the Malawian VAS market going forward,’ said Per Ostberg, Starfish Mobile Manager for Malawi.
Madonna and Mercy: What Really Happened, 8pm, Channel 4
If ever two people were less destined to meet, it’s Madonna and Mercy James. At least, that’s according to presenter Jacques Peretti who travelled to Malawi in an attempt to uncover the truth behind the recent adoption saga.
So on the one hand, we have the 50-year-old Queen of Pop - a “single mum from New York”, who co-founded the Raising Malawi charity with Kabbalah leader Philippe van den Bossche. And on the other, we have a four-year-old “orphan” who’s been offered a “better” life overseas. Except, of course, Mercy isn’t really an orphan because her father is still alive - but who cares about technicalities like that when the most famous woman in the world bowls up with wads of cash and a maternal glint in her eye?
Last night’s documentary made for uncomfortable - and often confusing - viewing. And, as is so often the case with this kind of programme, it posed more questions than it answered. Is Madonna saving Mercy from poverty or depriving her of her culture and country? Was her adoption an act of charity or immoral and wrong? And what’s Kabbalah got to do with it all?
Peretti seemed keen to press home his theory that the whole thing smacks of white colonialism: just as 19th-century Christian missionaries headed into Africa armed with Bibles, Madonna and the gang are setting up children’s centres in Malawi that promote their “loony religion”.
But when the cameras were allowed inside Mercy’s former home - the Kundanani Orphanage - Peretti found it nigh-on impossible to find fault with the set-up. Madonna has pumped $12 million (£7.2m) of her own money into Malawi - and if that means hundreds of otherwise poverty-stricken children are getting a high standard of care and education, what’s the problem?
Of course, Mercy is now safely ensconced in Madonna’s world - so only time will tell how life pans out for her and whether she thinks her new mum was right to adopt her. Is a life being hounded by the paparazzi better than one spent in a remote village in Africa? I’m not sure I could answer that - could you?
So on the one hand, we have the 50-year-old Queen of Pop - a “single mum from New York”, who co-founded the Raising Malawi charity with Kabbalah leader Philippe van den Bossche. And on the other, we have a four-year-old “orphan” who’s been offered a “better” life overseas. Except, of course, Mercy isn’t really an orphan because her father is still alive - but who cares about technicalities like that when the most famous woman in the world bowls up with wads of cash and a maternal glint in her eye?
Last night’s documentary made for uncomfortable - and often confusing - viewing. And, as is so often the case with this kind of programme, it posed more questions than it answered. Is Madonna saving Mercy from poverty or depriving her of her culture and country? Was her adoption an act of charity or immoral and wrong? And what’s Kabbalah got to do with it all?
Peretti seemed keen to press home his theory that the whole thing smacks of white colonialism: just as 19th-century Christian missionaries headed into Africa armed with Bibles, Madonna and the gang are setting up children’s centres in Malawi that promote their “loony religion”.
But when the cameras were allowed inside Mercy’s former home - the Kundanani Orphanage - Peretti found it nigh-on impossible to find fault with the set-up. Madonna has pumped $12 million (£7.2m) of her own money into Malawi - and if that means hundreds of otherwise poverty-stricken children are getting a high standard of care and education, what’s the problem?
Of course, Mercy is now safely ensconced in Madonna’s world - so only time will tell how life pans out for her and whether she thinks her new mum was right to adopt her. Is a life being hounded by the paparazzi better than one spent in a remote village in Africa? I’m not sure I could answer that - could you?
Last Night's Television - Inside Nature's Giants, Channel 4; Madonna and Mercy: What Really Happened? Channel 4
t was only a matter of time, I suppose, before someone performed an autopsy of an elephant on the telly. Or before someone on the telly performed an autopsy of an elephant, I should say, before my colleague Guy Keleny skewers me for ambiguous syntax. Or should that be syntactical ambiguity? Whatever, a vet called Mark Evans promised us at the start of Inside Nature's Giants that we'd be getting "natural history as you've never seen it before", and of that there was no doubt whatever. Once you've seen the inner workings of an elephant's rectum, you have to ask yourself whether natural history has any mysteries left.
With fitting solemnity given the august surroundings – a lecture hall at the Royal Veterinary College – Evans presented the dead female elephant and referred to her death – from euthanasia, administered after severe arthritis had been diagnosed – as "tragic". Is the demise of an arthritic elephant tragic? I'm not sure, although Evans was plainly keen not to challenge the sensibilities of anyone who might have thought that the old girl's dignity was being somewhat compromised even in death as she was sliced open, the camera closing in on a fecal pellet that she hadn't quite got round to expelling.
Whatever, this spectacle produced an interesting discussion in our house, as my sons considered what other animals routinely produce fecal pellets. "Sheep," said the younger. "Rabbits," ventured the older. "Imogen on our girls' weekend away," said my wife, explaining that Imogen, to whom I have considerately given what I suppose might be called a poodonym, always struggles with her bowel movements on their annual jaunt to Dorset.
Pardon the levity, but I can't honestly claim that any of us watched Inside Nature's Giants with a straight face. This is not to say that we were laughing, just that our faces weren't straight, stretched as they were in expressions of slack-jawed, wide-eyed incredulity. If you've ever wondered what the large intestine of an elephant looks like laid out on the floor of a lecture theatre, and I can't pretend I ever had, then the answer is that it looks like most of the trans-Saharan pipeline. But then it needs to be big. Elephants eat their entire body weight every 20 days or so, and the cecum (pronounced secum), which links the large and small intestine and is where the elephant's diet of plants and trees gets fermented to extract the goodness, is at least the size of its near-namesake, the late, great Sir Harry, at his most rotund.
Delving with impressive enthusiasm into all this were a variety of experts, among them a woman who looked as though there was nowhere she would rather be than up to her elbows in an elephant's guts. She is a comparative anatomist rather aptly called Joy, and Evans seemed slightly in awe of her. "She's probably been inside more whales than anyone else on the planet," he assured us, and I knew there had to be a joke in there somewhere, but contented myself by imagining all the indignant challenges to this wild assertion from people watching at home. "Mum, she's supposed to have been inside more whales than anyone on the planet, but isn't that Mr Wigley from number 42?"
Anyway, Joy and her colleagues certainly achieved their objective on the pachyderm front, leaving us with increased admiration for one of evolution's more extraordinary creations. There are those who think that elephants belong in Africa, not zoos in Europe and America, but as an educational tool this one was worth her weight in textbooks.
The ethics of moving natives of Africa to the West was further explored by Jacques Peretti in Madonna and Mercy: What Really Happened?. This was a documentary examining the pop star's recent adoption of a four-year-old Malawian girl called Mercy, and Peretti, while disingenuously claiming that he was open to all kinds of conclusions, duly arrived at the one that he had clearly reached long before the cameras started rolling – namely that Madonna has no business swanning over to Malawi and plucking out cute-looking kids to take back to New York. He also suggested, while never managing to find much evidence, that the esoteric spiritual movement to which Madonna belongs, Kabbalah, lends a decidedly sinister dimension to her family-planning decisions.
Undoubtedly, there is a valid debate to be had about Madonna adopting children from Malawian orphanages, especially as it turned out that Mercy is not an orphan. But Peretti crafted a documentary to fit his own preconceptions. He also claimed that, when he got to Africa, a local journalist "reminded" him that Madonna had previously adopted another Malawian child, David Banda. If he needed reminding, then he should have been a little more thorough with his research. If he didn't, he shouldn't have insulted our intelligence by pretending he did. But in fairness, he uncovered plenty of material worth knowing, enabling the rest of us to be rather more objective before deciding whether Madonna has behaved monstrously, or admirably.
With fitting solemnity given the august surroundings – a lecture hall at the Royal Veterinary College – Evans presented the dead female elephant and referred to her death – from euthanasia, administered after severe arthritis had been diagnosed – as "tragic". Is the demise of an arthritic elephant tragic? I'm not sure, although Evans was plainly keen not to challenge the sensibilities of anyone who might have thought that the old girl's dignity was being somewhat compromised even in death as she was sliced open, the camera closing in on a fecal pellet that she hadn't quite got round to expelling.
Whatever, this spectacle produced an interesting discussion in our house, as my sons considered what other animals routinely produce fecal pellets. "Sheep," said the younger. "Rabbits," ventured the older. "Imogen on our girls' weekend away," said my wife, explaining that Imogen, to whom I have considerately given what I suppose might be called a poodonym, always struggles with her bowel movements on their annual jaunt to Dorset.
Pardon the levity, but I can't honestly claim that any of us watched Inside Nature's Giants with a straight face. This is not to say that we were laughing, just that our faces weren't straight, stretched as they were in expressions of slack-jawed, wide-eyed incredulity. If you've ever wondered what the large intestine of an elephant looks like laid out on the floor of a lecture theatre, and I can't pretend I ever had, then the answer is that it looks like most of the trans-Saharan pipeline. But then it needs to be big. Elephants eat their entire body weight every 20 days or so, and the cecum (pronounced secum), which links the large and small intestine and is where the elephant's diet of plants and trees gets fermented to extract the goodness, is at least the size of its near-namesake, the late, great Sir Harry, at his most rotund.
Delving with impressive enthusiasm into all this were a variety of experts, among them a woman who looked as though there was nowhere she would rather be than up to her elbows in an elephant's guts. She is a comparative anatomist rather aptly called Joy, and Evans seemed slightly in awe of her. "She's probably been inside more whales than anyone else on the planet," he assured us, and I knew there had to be a joke in there somewhere, but contented myself by imagining all the indignant challenges to this wild assertion from people watching at home. "Mum, she's supposed to have been inside more whales than anyone on the planet, but isn't that Mr Wigley from number 42?"
Anyway, Joy and her colleagues certainly achieved their objective on the pachyderm front, leaving us with increased admiration for one of evolution's more extraordinary creations. There are those who think that elephants belong in Africa, not zoos in Europe and America, but as an educational tool this one was worth her weight in textbooks.
The ethics of moving natives of Africa to the West was further explored by Jacques Peretti in Madonna and Mercy: What Really Happened?. This was a documentary examining the pop star's recent adoption of a four-year-old Malawian girl called Mercy, and Peretti, while disingenuously claiming that he was open to all kinds of conclusions, duly arrived at the one that he had clearly reached long before the cameras started rolling – namely that Madonna has no business swanning over to Malawi and plucking out cute-looking kids to take back to New York. He also suggested, while never managing to find much evidence, that the esoteric spiritual movement to which Madonna belongs, Kabbalah, lends a decidedly sinister dimension to her family-planning decisions.
Undoubtedly, there is a valid debate to be had about Madonna adopting children from Malawian orphanages, especially as it turned out that Mercy is not an orphan. But Peretti crafted a documentary to fit his own preconceptions. He also claimed that, when he got to Africa, a local journalist "reminded" him that Madonna had previously adopted another Malawian child, David Banda. If he needed reminding, then he should have been a little more thorough with his research. If he didn't, he shouldn't have insulted our intelligence by pretending he did. But in fairness, he uncovered plenty of material worth knowing, enabling the rest of us to be rather more objective before deciding whether Madonna has behaved monstrously, or admirably.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
