Must Reads: Israel, Bin Laden letters and Nigerian brides-to-be

From a Nigerian state playing matchmaker to an Indian world-records maniac named Guinness, here are the five stories you shouldn't miss from the  last week in global news:

Nigeria state seeks husbands for 1,000 brides-to-be

Go-it-alone outlook now shapes Israel's security policy

Bin Laden worried about legacy and sought to kill Obama

In pursuit of Guinness records, India man knows no limits

Italy's Mario Monti speaks softly and carries a big question mark

-- Emily Alpert in Los Angeles

Photo: Har Parkash, also known as Guinness Rishi, poses for photographs at his home in New Delhi on April 5, 2012. Credit: Anindito Mukherjee / European Pressphoto Agency

Nigerian extremists open fire on Christians, killing as many as 20

This story has been updated. See the note below.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- A terrorist attack at a university in the northern Nigeria city of Kano on Sunday left as many as 20 Christian worshipers dead and dozens of other people wounded.

Gunmen in a car and on motorcycles threw homemade bombs at Christians gathered on the campus of Bayero University and shot them as they tried to flee, according to agency reports.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the killings, but the assault was similar to previous attacks by Boko Haram, an Islamic extremist group. At least 450 people have died in attacks this year, according to Associated Press.

Sunday’s attack followed bombings Thursday at two offices of the daily newspaper This Day in the capital, Abuja, and in Kaduna, which killed at least seven people. Boko Haram claimed responsibility for those attacks.

Reuters news service quoted university spokesman Mustapha Zahradeen saying that two university professors were killed in the Kano attack.

Must Reads: Landfill living, Egypt's gas and Africa's richest man

From the richest man in Africa to the rag pickers living off an Indian landfill, here are five stories you shouldn't miss from the  last week in global news:

Nigerian billionaire leaves his imprint in cement

For many in India, landfill is a livelihood and a home

Gas-deal dispute reflects change in Israel-Egypt relations

Conviction of Liberia's Charles Taylor seen as double-edged

At 80, Colombian artist Fernando Botero has no plans to retire

-- Emily Alpert in Los Angeles

Photo: Rag pickers, as they are called, scavenge for recyclable materials at New Delhi's 70-acre Ghazipur landfill. Credit: Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times

Africa calls for World Bank reform after Nigerian denied top post

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- It didn't exactly surprise Africans. But the World Bank decision to pass over Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for the bank's presidency still stung.

Following the selection this week of Dartmouth College president and public health expert Jim Young Kim as World Bank president, Africa financial leaders are calling for more democracy and transparency in the global financial institution.

The selection of Kim, who had faced two other developing-world nominees, the African candidate and former Colombian Finance Minister Jose Antonio Ocampo, continued a seven-decade practice of installing an American citizen to lead the bank.

Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan said Tuesday that Okonjo-Iweala represented the voice of developing countries in a campaign for the reform of the World Bank. She was nominated in a rare show of unity of sub-Saharan Africa's three major rival powers, South Africa, Nigeria and Angola.

Okonjo-Iweala is not widely popular in Nigeria, mainly because of her role in removing a fuel subsidy in January, which provided cheap fuel to the population but cost billions of dollars. At the time, critics saw her as forcing World Bank policies on Nigeria, and thousands protested the removal of what they viewed as the sole benefit from their country's corruption-riddled oil industry.

In response, she tweeted that "It is not fair when people say that this fuel subsidy policy is an Okonjo-Iweala and IMF/World Bank one. It is not. Neither is it about me." (The subsidy was later partially reinstated by Jonathan).

Many in Africa, however, viewed the World Bank's presidential decision as based not on merit but nationality and some said it called the bank's legitimacy into question.

"Many Nigerians are opposed to the policies of the World Bank and IMF, pushed on to developing countries as far back as 1986. Those sentiments remain," said analyst Otive Igbuzor of the African Center for Leadership, Strategy and Development, referring to a policy that has forced tough budget cuts on developing countries in order to qualify for loans.

Igbuzor said in a phone interview that without providing a greater role to emerging economies, the World Bank risked irrelevance -- and a threat that in future those economies could form their own development bank.

"I think the implication for the bank is that the need for the reform of the bank in line with democratic principles and equity should be the clear agenda for the new president. The bank could become irrelevant if it doesn't reform. If the bank doesn't reform there is a possibility that an alternative institution may develop.

"The emerging economies are growing very quickly and in 50 years time they'll be bigger than the developed economies."

Daniel Bradlow,  a law professor and economic analyst for the American University and South Africa's Pretoria University, said, "America showed its contempt, in that it didn't really care.

"I think Africa can feel some sense of achievement in that Africa stood united behind Ngozi. It could show that there was an African candidate who was clearly the best candidate. It exposed the fact that this was not a process based on merit."

Bradlow said Europe and America will likely to cling to their dominance of global financial institutions in years to come, and Africa and other emerging economies (known as the BRICS, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) still face deep resistance to their calls for change.

"The basic governance structure of the bank has not changed. My instinct is that it will change very little for the next few years, short of a big shift of power in the world.

"South Africa and the BRICS need to think about, even though power is changing, what are the limitations of that shift? I think that will require reaching out to other countries and to global civil society," Bradlow said.

Okonjo-Iweala congratulated Kim, but called for a fairer, open selection process.

"With regard to the selection process, it is clear to me that we need to make it more open, transparent and merit-based," Okonjo-Iweala said in a statement. "We need to make sure that we do not contribute to a democratic deficit in global governance."

South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan told journalists Monday before the announcement was made that there was a need to "look beyond the verbiage of democracy and the claims to democratic process and ask whether in substantive terms the institution has met the democratic test."

Peter Chowla, of London based nonprofit the Bretton Woods Project, which has been campaigning for reform of global financial institutions, said there was a pressing need to reform the bank and its management.

The organization contends the bank has been pushing failed policies on poor countries for 30 years, with little success in reducing poverty.

"Africa and the developing world have been demanding changes in voting rights and management and management selection for 20 years. I think we are likely to see them continuing to push for reforms," Chowla said.

He also predicted the emergence of one or more development banks financed by emerging economies, that would provide competition to the World Bank giving small African countries various options as to whom they approached for development assistance.

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--Robyn Dixon  

Photo: Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, finance minister of Nigeria, leaves World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C. after interviewing for the position of president in early March. Credit: T.J. Kirkpatrick / Bloomberg

 

At least 38 people killed in Easter suicide bombing in Nigeria

REPORTING FROM JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA -- At least 38 people were killed Sunday in a suicide bombing near a church in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna, news services reported. More than a dozen people were critically wounded.

No group claimed responsibility in the immediate aftermath. However, suspicions fell on the Islamic militant group Boko Haram, which has a history of attacking Nigerian Christians during religious festivals. The group launched a deadly Christmas Day attack on churchgoers last year, killing at least 44 people.

Sunday's attack came after security forces prevented a car from approaching the church. It exploded soon after, killing the driver and others nearby, Reuters news service reported.

Abubakar Zakari Adamu, a state emergency management official, told the Associated Press that at least 38 people were killed, based in part on a survey of hospitals in Kaduna.

Both the United States and Britain warned their citizens of the high risk of an Easter attack in northern Nigeria. The U.S. Embassy said American diplomats no longer travel to the north because of frequent terrorist attacks.

In major northern cities such as Kano and Maiduguri, many churchgoers fear going to Sunday services after a series of attacks in recent months. There was a heavy security presence in Maiduguri on Sunday. The city has seen many schools burned in recent months by Boko Haram, which wants to see Islamic Sharia law imposed across Nigeria, including in the mainly Christian south.

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-- Robyn Dixon

Photo: People gather Sunday at the site of a bombing along a road in Kaduna, Nigeria. Credit: Emma Kayode / Associated Press

 

Senegal's president concedes defeat; victory for African democracy

REPORTING FROM LAGOS, NIGERIA -- Incumbent Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade's move to swiftly concede defeat after Sunday's presidential runoff election is being viewed as a major positive step for democracy in a region better known for military coups and violence-tinged election campaigns.

Wade, 85, who faced a massive public backlash after defying a constitutional provision limiting presidential terms to two, was defeated by a former ally, Macky Sall, 50.

Wade had been in power for 12 years, and was seeking a third term despite his age and the fact that  he developed the two-term limit. His bid to remain in office sparked massive street protests in which seven people died. The protests were joined by Senegal's most famous musician, Youssou N'Dour, and Senegalese rappers who formed the movement Y'en ai Marre, or “I'm fed up.”

Rising prices and high unemployment contributed to Wade’s defeat, as did the perception he was more interested in monumental projects than in helping ordinary people, symbolized by a $27-million, 160-foot bronze statue called “African Renaissance” he commissioned on a hill outside the capital. The statue was built by North Koreans.

Effort to stop polio aims to vaccinate 111 million children in four days

Health groups are trying to immunize more than 111 million African children against polio in only four days, hoping to stamp out an incurable disease that is all but gone in the West.

“Either we succeed in eradicating polio today or this initiative will falter tomorrow and polio will explode,” UNICEF West and Central Africa regional director David Gressly said in a statement this week. “Making Africa polio free is within our reach.”

Nineteen African countries will be covered by door-to-door volunteers starting Friday. Volunteers will kick off their four-day oral vaccination campaign in Nigeria a week later for logistical reasons. The campaign is part of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, which unites governments, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and nonprofits to wipe out polio.

Polio, a viral disease that invades the nervous system, cannot be cured, only prevented. It mainly affects children under the age of five, leading to paralysis and even death.

The disease has been cut by more than 99% since the global campaign to eradicate polio was launched in 1988; India, which once had half of the polio cases in the world, recently marked a year without a case.

But if children do not continue to be immunized, polio can strike again. Between 2009 and 2010, infections reemerged in 23 countries that were previously free of polio, due to imports of the virus from elsewhere.

Last year, 650 cases were reported worldwide, with persistent pockets in Nigeria and along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The virus resurged in Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, and Niger. The World Health Organization map below shows where the wild virus was found in most of 2011:

 

Oral polio vaccines must continue almost universally for several years to reduce the risk, but only five West African countries have attained or maintained over 90% coverage over the past four years, with others showing gaps in immunization, the World Health Organization found last month.

The oral vaccine has been hailed as an easier way to ensure immunization, but in very rare cases can cause polio infections. The CDC says the benefits of the oral vaccine outweigh the risk in areas where polio is endemic or the risk is high, since it provides better intestinal immunity, but it is no longer recommended for routine immunization in the United States, where doctors inject the inactive vaccine instead.

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-- Emily Alpert in Los Angeles

Photo: Nigerian children line up at a school in Lagos to receive polio vaccine in 2004. Credit: European Pressphoto Agency
 

Britain, Italy at odds over failed hostage-rescue mission

REPORTING FROM LONDON AND ROME -- A day after two Western hostages were killed by suspected terrorists in Nigeria before a military raid could free them, British and Italian officials traded barbs Friday over who knew what and when regarding the failed mission.

The Italian government says it was informed of the joint Nigerian-British rescue attempt only after it was underway. Hours later, a somber British Prime Minister David Cameron announced that the operation had not succeeded and that the two hostages, Briton Chris McManus and Italian Franco Lamolinara, had been killed by their kidnappers.

Rome said it had kept in close contact with London about the two men but had received no warning when the raid was launched. Italian President Giorgio Napolitano said it was "inexplicable" that British officials had not "contacted and consulted with Italy about undertaking an action of force."

But Philip Hammond, the British defense secretary, shot back that there was nothing inexplicable about what happened.

Hostages killed in Nigeria before rescuers reach them

This story has been updated. See the note below.

REPORTING FROM LONDON -- A Briton and an Italian who were kidnapped by suspected terrorists in Nigeria were killed by their abductors before a rescue operation could reach them Thursday, British Prime Minister David Cameron said.

Cameron said that, together with the Nigerian government, he had authorized a joint mission to try to rescue Chris McManus and Franco Lamolinara, both of whom worked for an Italian construction firm doing business in Nigeria. The two men were kidnapped from their residences last May in northwest Nigeria.

"After months of not knowing where they were being held, we received credible information about their location. A window of opportunity arose to try and secure their release. We also had reason to believe that their lives were under imminent and growing danger," Cameron said. "Preparations were made to mount an operation to rescue Chris and Franco. ... It is with great regret I have to say that both Chris and Franco have lost their lives."

Details of what happened were still sketchy, but "the early indications are clear that both men were murdered by their captors before they could be rescued," Cameron said, adding: "I am very sorry that this ended so tragically."

It was not immediately clear whether they were killed during the rescue operation or before. [Updated March 8, 1:05 p.m.: The Associated Press quoted an unnamed Nigerian official as saying the men were killed in the crossfire during the operation, but the information could not be confirmed late Thursday.

The news service also quoted Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan saying that “the perpetrators of the murderous act, who have all been arrested, would be made to face the full wrath of the law.” Jonathan did not specify how many people had been arrested or exactly what roles they had in the kidnapping and killing of McManus and Lamolinara.]

Cameron did not identify the group suspected of orchestrating the abduction. The BBC reported that the kidnapping was probably carried out by members of the Islamic militant group Boko Haram, some of whose adherents are believed to be linked to Al Qaeda.

A video of McManus and Lamolinara -- who appeared blindfolded with their captors standing behind them, faces covered -- was circulated after their abduction. It was unclear what demands, if any, were being made for their release.

McManus' family issued a statement through Britain's Foreign Office saying that they were devastated by their loss.

"We knew Chris was in an extremely dangerous situation," the family said. "However, we knew that everything that could be done was being done" to secure his release.

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-- Henry Chu

Photo: Briton Chris McManus. McManus and Italian colleague Franco Lamolinara, who were taken hostage in northern Nigeria last year, were killed by their captors before they could be rescued in a military operation Thursday, Britain's prime minister said. Credit: Agence France-Presse / Getty Images.

World's slum children in desperate need, UNICEF says [Video]

REPORTING FROM JOHANNESBURG -- You see them, night and day, in nearly every African city. They are ragged children dodging between the cars: beggars, shoeshine boys, teenage prostitutes, petty traders and porters carrying loads on their heads with thin, pinched faces and anxious eyes.

They tap on car windows, begging, and wait by the highway desperate to sell their goods.

Around half the people in the world live in cities and towns, a billion of them children, as the urban population spirals. Millions of children live in slums and shantytowns and they're dying of the same illnesses that kill the rural poor, according to UNICEF: hunger, diarrhea and disease caused by poor sanitation and overcrowding.

Many of the urban poor don't go to school, according to a UNICEF's report on the state of the world's children. Instead they work, often in dangerous or exploitative jobs. Some 115 million of the world's children work in hazardous jobs, the report said.

Like the rural poor, slum children often lack access to water, electricity and health facilities.

According to the report, the plight of the the urban poor has been overlooked, their poverty concealed in statistics that indicate that, on average, children in urban settings are better off.

"The hardships endured by children in poor urban communities are often concealed, and thus perpetuated, by the statistical averages on which development programs and decisions about resouce allocation are based. Because averages lump everyone in together, the poverty of some is obscured by the wealth of others," the report said.

Some 60% of urbanized Africans live in slums, and by 2020 the global slum population will reach 1.4 billion, mainly in Africa and Asia. In Nigeria, 50% of the population lives in cities and in South Africa, 62% have fled rural areas hoping to find jobs in cities and towns.

But they often meet not just unemployment, poverty and hunger, but precarious housing, forced to live in flimsy shacks or squalid rooms with no tenant rights.

Lack of food contributes to a third of the deaths of children under 5 years old annually, according to the report. A 2004 study of 10 sub-Saharan African countries found that more than 40% of urban populations were undernourished and in several countries the figure was higher than 70%.

In the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, two-thirds of the population lives in sprawling slums where the under-5 mortality rate is "alarming" the report said, at 151 per thousand live births.

"Poor water supply and sanitation, the use of hazardous cooking fuels in badly ventilated spaces, overcrowding and the need to pay for health services, which effectively puts them out of reach of the poor, are among the major underlying causes of under-5 deaths," the report said.

People in urban slums are often forced to pay street vendors for potable water, so the cost of water can be 50 times higher than for wealthy people in the same city. A study of Kenyan urban slum dwellers in 2009 showed that, with public health facilities almost nonexistent, people used unlicensed and ramshackle private clinics offering substandard treatment.

"When we think of poverty, the image that traditionally comes to mind is that of a child in a rural village,” said UNICEF Director Anthony Lake in a statement released with the report. “But today, an increasing number of children living in slums and shantytowns are among the most disadvantaged and vulnerable in the world, deprived of the most basic services and denied the right to thrive.

“Urbanization is a fact of life and we must invest more in cities, focusing greater attention on providing services to the children in greatest need,” Lake said.

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-- Robyn Dixon

Video: UNICEF