I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to the library or a computer lab and found someone still logged into their user account. It used to make me angry. It used to make me wonder what was wrong with people. I don’t know if they just forget or just don’t care, but either way they deserve to be messed with for their stupidity. It took almost a year of my life to find these and to some degree I feel bad, but I’m pretty sure these people won’t ever forget to log out again.

This one is pretty intense and I questioned actually doing it for a solid 15 minutes, but in the end I had to do what I had to do. Plus, she sounds like a pretty annoying girl from the look of her course load so that helped ease my guilt.

I found this gem a week or so ago when I was going to a computer lab. Apparently this genius just bought something off Amazon and forgot to log off his user account. I delved a little deeper and found this guy also opted to save all his information, including his credit card and address. He needs to learn a lesson or two about the internet and security.

This was one of the first ones I found. The girl made a mistake I’ve seen time and time again: she forgot to log out of her e-mail account, so I did what I had to. I invaded her privacy. I looked at a couple past e-mails, then came across one from her dad sent a couple weeks earlier. I thought I’d write him a little note.

I was working on my final paper at the library late one night when I found this one. It was about 1 a.m. and I was only halfway through and couldn’t connect to the wireless so I kept aimlessly walking around to take breaks every 15 minutes. This guy was still logged into facebook. All those girls were the girls who most recently signed his now ex-girlfriend’s wall.

So treat this as a public service announcement. Watch out. Log off. I’m lurking.

(http://www.collegehumor.com)

The Chinese Great Wall Industry Corporation has signed an agreement with the Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited to replace the nation’s first communications satellite, NigComSat-1, which failed in the orbit on November 10, 2008.

Investigations by our correspondent showed that the agreement was signed by the two companies on December 12, 2008. While the President of CGWIC, Mr. Wang Haibo, signed on behalf of the company, the Managing Director, NigComSat, Mr. Ahmed Rufai, signed for the Nigerian company.

The agreement covers the construction of a new spacecraft, the procurement of a launch vehicle as well as rendering of other launch services at no cost to Nigeria. The agreement forecloses the possibility of repairing the failed satellite.

However, the construction of a new satellite to be dubbed, NigComSat-1R, cannot begin until President Umaru Yar’Adua gives the go-ahead for a fresh contract with the Chinese firm, which constructed the failed satellite.

The revelation is coming on the heel of the announcement of the failure of another satellite in orbit by a notable operator in the sector, SES Astra of Luxembourg, on Monday.

Available information showed that the European satellite, Astra 5A, which was built by Thales Alenia Space in November 1997, experienced a technical failure in space on Monday.

However, the company was able to quickly move its customers to one of its numerous spacecrafts thereby, minimising the impact of the failure. The case of the failure of Nigeria’s NigComSat was different because the nation had only one communications satellite.

Incidentally, when Nigeria’s satellite failed, NigComSat had sought capacity from the same European company, SES Astra. Our correspondent learnt that NigComSat had relocated its operations to Astra 2B.

It also relocated its customers to the European satellite.

Another Nigerian company, Galaxy Backbone Plc, which patronised NigComSat-1, had opened the gates to Astra 2B when it first moved its traffic to the spacecraft shortly after the failure of NigComSat-1.

Presidency sources, who spoke with our correspondent on the condition of anonymity on Wednesday, confirmed that a memo seeking the approval of Yar’Adua for fresh contract with the Chinese firm had been received.

Although the contract will be executed at no cost to Nigeria, our correspondent learnt that a contract document was needed as a legal document to replace the original contract that enabled the construction of the failed spacecraft.

The contract document will also specify the timeframe for the completion of the new satellite. It was also learnt that while CGWIC would undertake to construct the new satellite at no cost to Nigeria, it would seek reimbursement from the insurers of the failed one.

(http://www.punchng.com/)

Liberia signed Thursday a 2.6 billion dollar agreement with Chinese conglomerate China Union to develop its main iron ore mine, the biggest ever investment in the West African nation.

A government statement said President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf signed a mineral development agreement with officials from the Chinese mining company to develop the Bong Mines.

Sirleaf invited other Chinese companies to come and invest in the country, which emerged from a crippling 14-year civil war in 2003.

“The Liberian leader expressed the hope that the signing of the agreement will serve as a motivation to other Chinese companies to invest in Liberia,” the statement said.

The deal has been sent to the parliament for ratification.

Liberia’s Investment Minister Richard Tolbert announced in December that a deal was in the making with the Chinese mining giant, greeting it as the country’s biggest ever investment.

He said China Union had promised that within 12 months it will have built a one-million-tonne-a-year capacity refining factory at the Bong iron mines, about 150 kilometers (95 miles) north of Monrovia.

He said 3,000 jobs would be created by the project with up to 15,000 following indirectly.

Before Liberia’s 1989-2003 civil war, mines were run by a German concern, the Bong Mining Company. But it was criticised for not carrying out development projects in the region.

((AFP))

Our correspondent says past logging contracts were corruptly agreed

The Democratic Republic of Congo government has cancelled nearly 60% of timber contracts in the world’s second-largest tropical rainforest.

It follows a six-month review of 156 logging deals aimed at stamping out corruption in the sector and enforcing legal and environmental standards.

At the end of the World Bank-backed process, government ministers found that only 65 timber deals were viable.

New contracts will be issued for 90,000 sq km (35,000 square miles) of forest.

Environment Minister Jose Endundo told a news conference in the capital Kinshasa that the other agreements would be cancelled.

“I will proceed within the next 48 hours to notify those applicants having received an unfavourable recommendation from the inter-ministerial commission through decrees cancelling their respective conventions,” he was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.

“Upon notification of the cancellation decision, the operator must immediately stop cutting timber.”

Mr Endundo also said the government planned to respect a moratorium, introduced during Congo’s 1998-2003 war but widely ignored, on granting new logging deals.

The BBC’s Thomas Fessy in Kinshasa says all the timber agreements were struck during the conflict.

Promises

Amid rampant corruption, huge concessions were gifted to logging companies, which paid almost no tax, he says.

Monday’s decision should reduce the surface area exploited by timber firms by up to half, according to our correspondent.

The Congo Basin is home to the second largest tropical forest in the world after the Amazon, but campaigners say it is being eaten away by logging, mining and agricultural land clearance.

Sarah Shoraka, of Greenpeace, says the new rules must be enforced to protect a vital resource.

“Real economic development is what’s needed,” she told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme.

“We’ve highlighted tax evasion, and there’s often quite serious disputes between local people and these logging companies.

“The logging companies promise hospitals and schools and they hardly ever deliver these things on the ground.”

(http://news.bbc.co.uk)

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 22, 2009; Page A01

If the Obama campaign represented a sleek, new iPhone kind of future, the first day of the Obama administration looked more like the rotary-dial past.

Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.

What does that mean in 21st-century terms? No Facebook to communicate with supporters. No outside e-mail log-ins. No instant messaging. Hard adjustments for a staff that helped sweep Obama to power through, among other things, relentless online social networking.

“It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari,” Obama spokesman Bill Burton said of his new digs.

In many ways, the move into the White House resembled a first day at school: Advisers wandered the halls, looking for their offices. Aides spent hours in orientation, learning such things as government ethics rules as well as how their paychecks will be delivered. And everyone filled out a seemingly endless pile of paperwork.

There were plenty of first-day glitches, too, as calls to many lines in the West Wing were met with a busy signal all morning and those to the main White House switchboard were greeted by a recording, redirecting callers to the presidential Web site. A number of reporters were also shut out of the White House because of lost security clearance lists.

By late evening, the vaunted new White House Web site did not offer any updated posts about President Obama’s busy first day on the job, which included an inaugural prayer service, an open house with the public, and meetings with his economic and national security teams.

Nor did the site reflect the transparency Obama promised to deliver. “The President has not yet issued any executive orders,” it stated hours after Obama issued executive orders to tighten ethics rules, enhance Freedom of Information Act rules and freeze the salaries of White House officials who earn more than $100,000.

The site was updated for the first time last night, when information on the executive orders was added. But there were still no pool reports or blog entries.

No one could quite explain the problem — but they swore it would be fixed.

One member of the White House new-media team came to work on Tuesday, right after the swearing-in ceremony, only to discover that it was impossible to know which programs could be updated, or even which computers could be used for which purposes. The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software. Laptops were scarce, assigned to only a few people in the West Wing. The team was left struggling to put closed captions on online videos.

Senior advisers chafed at the new arrangements, which severely limit mobility — partly by tradition but also for security reasons and to ensure that all official work is preserved under the Presidential Records Act.

“It is what it is,” said a White House staff member, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Nobody is being a blockade right now. It’s just the system we need to go through.”

The system has daunted past White House employees. David Almacy, who became President George W. Bush’s Internet director in 2005, recalled having a week-long delay between his arrival at the White House and getting set up with a computer and a BlackBerry.

“The White House itself is an institution that transitions regardless of who the president is,” he said. “The White House is not starting from scratch. Processes are already in place.”

One White House official, who arrived breathless yesterday after being held up at the exterior gate, found he had no computer or telephone number. Recently called back from overseas duty, he ended up using his foreign cellphone.

Another White House official whose transition cellphone was disconnected left a message temporarily referring callers to his wife’s phone.

Several people tried to route their e-mails through personal accounts.

But there were no missing letters from the computer keyboards, as Bush officials had complained of during their transition in 2001.

And officials in the press office were prepared: In addition to having their own cellphones, they set up Gmail accounts, with approval from the White House counsel, so they could send information in more than one way.

http://www.washingtonpost.com

Relatives of the victims gathered at the court as the sentences came in

Two men have been given the death penalty for their involvement in China’s contaminated milk scandal.

The former boss of the Sanlu dairy at the centre of the scandal was given life imprisonment.

They were among several sentences handed down by the court in northern China, where Sanlu is based.

The scandal, in which melamine was added to raw milk to make it appear higher in protein, led to the deaths of six babies and made some 300,000 ill.

It led to product recalls across the globe, and further damaged China’s reputation for producing safe and reliable products, the BBC’s Quentin Sommerville in Beijing says.

At home, the scandal left parents terrified and caused outrage across the country, coming only four years after an earlier milk powder scandal which left 13 babies dead, he adds.

Victims’ relatives protested outside the courthouse in Shijiazhuang on Thursday. Some said they had been prevented from attending the trial by authorities anxious to contain anger over the affair.

Illegal workshop

The most senior figure to be sentenced was Tian Wenhua, who was chairwoman of the Sanlu Group, the largest producer of baby milk powder.

When the scandal broke in September, it emerged that Sanlu had known it was selling toxic milk - and allowed around 900 tonnes of it to leave its dairies.

It was only when its New Zealand partner intervened that production stopped.

Tian Wenhua pleaded guilty to charges of producing and selling fake or substandard produce in December.

The Intermediate People’s Court in Shijiazhuang gave her a life sentence and ordered her to pay a fine of 20m yuan ($2.9m).

Sanlu itself was fined 50m yuan ($7.3m), Xinhua news agency reports, even though the firm has been declared bankrupt.

Earlier the court sentenced cattle farmer Zhang Yujun and milk trader Geng Jinping to death.

Zhang Yujun was accused of running an illegal workshop in Shandong province in eastern China, producing 600 tonnes of the fake protein powder - the largest source of melamine in the country.

Geng Jinping was convicted of producing and selling toxic products to dairy companies from his milk production base.

One other person received a suspended death sentence, two were jailed for life and six - including three former Sanlu executives - were jailed for between five and 15 years for their part in the scandal, Xinhua news agency reports.

Huge anger

All together, 22 companies sold contaminated milk, which had been supplied by a chain of melamine producers and middlemen.

Sanlu’s Tian Wenhua pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing

The dealers added the industrial chemical to boost the apparent protein content of milk, which had often been watered down to make more money.

Major dairy companies bought the milk from such dealers, failing to test the milk for purity and nutritional value.

The result was widespread poisoning of babies, the group most vulnerable to tainted milk as it was their only food source.

Kidney damage was reported in hundreds of thousands of people. At least six babies were killed because of it.

The government has scrambled to fight off allegations that it reacted slowly to the crisis, by pledging to improve food safety standards and promising to bring the culprits of the scandal to court.

But families of the victims say China’s lack of openness, public accountability and official corruption mean they have little faith that similar poisonings will not happen again, our correspondent reports.

(http://news.bbc.co.uk)

Chinese volunteers have donated over 100 tonnes of rice to Sarah Obama, US President Barack Obama’s step-grandmother, to help her AIDS orphans in western Kenya.

Sarah Obama, 87, has adopted 82 orphans, aged four to 18, most of whose parents died from AIDS, the China Daily and Beijing Youth Daily said.

“She will be very happy to see the support from China after she returns from Obama’s inauguration,” Kenyan Ambassador Julius Ole Sunkuli, who attended a donation ceremony on Tuesday, was quoted as saying.

Obama sworn in as the 44th President of the United States on Tuesday in Washington.

Kenya launched a $470 million aid appeal on Friday to help millions suffering from drought and lack of food at a time when the government is mired in corruption scandals. (Reuters)

(http://www.eastandard.net)

The work to establish three to five economic and trade cooperation zones in Africa has proceeded smoothly, China’s Minister of Commerce Chen Deming said recently. The China-Africa Development Fund, aimed at encouraging and supporting Chinese enterprises investing in Africa, has also already invested nearly 400 million USD.

Chen led a Chinese government economic and trade delegation from January 12-19 on a visit to the three African nations of Kenya, Zambia and Angola.

Setting up three to five economic and trade cooperation zones in Africa is one of the eight measures proposed by Chinese President Hu Jintao at the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in 2006, regarding economic and trade cooperation with Africa. The Zambia-China Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone, the Nigeria-Guangdong Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone, the Lekki Free Trade Zone in Nigeria, the Egypt Suez Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone and the Ethiopian Oriental Industrial Park are all under construction.

Among them, the Zambia-China Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone was the first one established by China in Africa. In 2007, Chinese President Hu Jintao unveiled the plaque of the zone together with Levy Patrick Mwanawasa, former President of Zambia. To date, the zone has developed well, as evidenced by the fact that 10 enterprises that have set up offices in the zone have signed contracts to make a total investment of more than 700 million USD in industries such as mining, smelting and chemical engineering. They will offer 3,500 jobs to local people and reach a total of 300 million USD in local procurement.

On January 15, the opening ceremony of the Lusaka sub-zone under the Zambia-China Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone was held in Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, at which Zambian President Rupiah Banda and Minister Chen were present. The newly established Lusaka sub-zone will focus on the development of industries such as light industrial machinery, textiles and clothing, household appliances manufacturing and food processing. It will develop into Zambia’s manufacturing base and business center.

The China-Africa Development Fund, officially launched in 2007, is currently China’s largest private equity fund and its first equity investment fund focused on investment in Africa. The first phase of funding, 1 billion USD, was financed by the China Development Bank. Funding will eventually expand to 5 billion USD.

As of the end of 2008, the Fund had already invested nearly 400 million USD in 20 projects, bringing total investment in Africa by Chinese enterprises to over 2 billion USD, Chen said. By the end of 2008, China’s direct investment stock to Africa had surpassed 5 billion USD.

During this visit to Africa, Chen looked specifically into how Chinese enterprises fulfill their social responsibilities there. Many enterprises have done their work in a positive and effective way and the sense of fulfilling social responsibility is being identified with and practiced by more and more Chinese enterprises in Africa. He said that the Chinese government has made clear requests to Chinese enterprises in Africa, hoping they contribute more to the economic development of the host countries, comply with local laws and regulations, live in harmony with the local people, actively give back to the local society while developing themselves, create more employment opportunities and seriously fulfill their social responsibilities.

By People’s Daily Online
(http://english.people.com.cn)

President Bush was given an Iraqi-journalist-style sendoff on his last full day in office Monday, as tourists and demonstrators lobbed shoes, pumps, boots, sandals and Crocs from Pennsylvania Avenue onto the White House lawn.

Before launching the operation live, the shoe-chuckers took target practice in Dupont Circle on a 20-foot-tall blow up doll of the outgoing president, decked out in the flight suit he wore aboard the “Mission Accomplished” aircraft carrier.

Unlike Muntazer al-Zaidi, the Iraqi reporter who inspired the protest, none of the shoe-throwers in the group were arrested. (Later that day, reports NBC, one man was arrested for chucking a shoe at the White House.)

Marching down Connecticut Avenue with handfuls of footwear, the group of about a hundred was on the receiving end of enthusiastic honks, thumbs-up and waves from people in the street.

The reception was almost as warm from the people guarding the White House.

“Don’t hit me!” one officer behind the White House fence joked as shoes rained around him.

Tracey Primavera, a shoe-lobber from Provincetown, Massachusetts, shouted at the guard that she had a pump that would look nice on him.

“I tried that. It didn’t look good on me,” yelled back the officer. Primavera tossed him the pump anyway.

Tourists on Pennsylvania Avenue picked up shoes and lobbed them at the White House as well. “A lot of random people joined in,” noted one organizer, David Swanson. “Everybody wanted to be photographed with an “Arrest Bush” sign.

The tourists also joined a spontaneous chorus that formed. On the night of the election, thousands of people swarmed the White House and sang the old sports classic, “Hey, Hey, Hey, Goodbye.” The song made a reappearance Monday, as did a number of tunes apparently written for the occasion, with lyrics such as “Hang down your head, George Bush/Hang down your head in shame,” and “Take him to the Hague” — the latter sung to the tune of “Working on the Railroad.”

The target practice on the giant Bush doll began around 11:00 in the morning and was still going five hours later, as thousands of people walking through the circle stopped to pick up a shoe and wing it at the outgoing president. Some threw fastballs like al-Zaidi. Others tied several together in an attempt to land them on Bush’s long Pinocchio-esque nose. Children took part. (”Okay. One more shoe, kids,” said one parent.) Some folks simply walked up to the doll and kicked it in the shins. It fell over at one point and people rushed it, beating it with shoes.

Still others, like al-Zaidi, missed.

“Ah! I missed!” yelled Sharon Kerr, in town from Austin, Texas, after chucking wide of her presidential mark. She said that she felt a little like the Iraqi reporter for missing. But she noted in his defense, “He had people blocking him.”

Kerr began to leave the circle but stopped. “I’m gonna go one more time. I’m gonna nail him this time,” she said before winding up and striking him cleanly in the belt.

Cheryl Upshaw, in from Atlanta and sporting a full-length fur coat, hit the Bush doll high on the shoulder. “I was really trying to aim for his heart,” said Upshaw, a registered nurse who owns a home healthcare agency. The throw was cathartic, she said, and it seemed to relieve some of her anger.

“It’s not that I hate him,” she clarified. “I don’t hate him personally. I hate what he has done to this country.”

Medea Benjamin, a cofounder of the antiwar group CODEPINK, said the protest was a way to “get the Bush era out of your intestines.”

“I was a little reluctant because I want to be in a positive mood,” she said. “I don’t want to be seen as doing something violent. The shoe-throwing is borderline, but the intent is to insult, not to hurt. There’s a fine line.”

Once all the shoes had been tossed onto the White House lawn, the officers collected them and piled them into the back of a small truck. “The next person who throws them gets arrested,” said one, though the entire pile had already been thrown.

As the protesters headed back toward Dupont Circle, a Secret Service agent left them with a parting observation.

“You all won,” he said.

(Photo credit: James Sappington)

(http://www.huffingtonpost.com)

Visiting Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming said here on Monday that China-Africa trade volume hit an all time high in 2008, reaching a historic new level of 106.8 billion U.S. dollars.

In an exclusive interview with Xinhua, Chen said the past eight years have witnessed a super fast growth of 30 percent since China-Africa trade volume reached more than 10 billion dollars in 2000.

He added that in recent years, especially since 2006 when China hosted the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, the Chinese-African friendly relations have been further consolidated and strengthened which has given an impetus to the fast growth of China-Africa economic relations and trade.

He said the past few years have also seen a steady development of China’s investment in the African continent. “By the end of 2008, China has invested a total of over 5 billion dollars in African countries,” he added.

Referring to the ongoing world financial crisis, Chen said, it has no doubt slowed down the pace of world’s economic development and a special attention must be paid to its side effects towards the developing countries and underdeveloped countries.

He said many African countries have, relatively speaking, weak economic foundation and rely heavily on foreign investments and aid. These African countries are now facing financial difficulties following the big cut in the price of crude oil in the world market.

“We hope China and African countries can work together to further strengthen multilateral cooperation to face the tough challenges brought about by the ongoing world financial crisis,” he said.

Chen and his delegation members were scheduled to leave Angola for home on Monday to end his three-nation African work visit which also brought him to Kenya and Zambia.
Editor: Deng Shasha
(http://news.xinhuanet.com)

I recently travelled north to the Mongolian border and south to Guangzhou and Macao, working on separate stories about human trafficking and China’s African population. Over the next few weeks I’ll be writing some short postcards from each of the cities, since I think they provide interesting snapshots of China today. This one is about Guangzhou, where the African community, China’s largest, is at a breaking point.

* * *

In Guangzhou, you can buy anything. On the chaotic streets of the old city there are stores selling over–sized stuffed animals, Christmas decorations, plastic trees, neon signage, bulk candy, and elastics. There are separate shops for plastic, paper, and reusable bags. Stationary. Wigs. Sneakers. Scooters. Jay-Z t–shirts. Whatever you could possibly want, it’s available here. Guangdong province – the “world’s factory” – is home to 28,000 industrial firms, including 15,000 overseas–funded business. It makes 75% of the world’s toys and 90% of its Christmas decorations (in a country that doesn’t celebrate it). In Guangzhou, the provincial capital, it’s all available for purchase, direct from the source.

Over the years, this access to cheap goods has attracted traders from across the world. Guangzhou was once called Canton, China’s first port opened for trade with foreign countries.^{** Back in the day, foreigners lived on an island called Shamian. Today, the island is where foreign couples wait, for months at a time, to adopt Chinese babies. Though adoption is getting more difficult, the Starbucks on Shamian island is still packed with young white couples waiting to adopt, sipping lattes all the while.} Today, the most visible ex–pat community in Guangzhou is African. What was a community of a few hundred traders a decade ago now numbers as high as 20,000. It’s been dubbed “Little Africa,” or “Chocolate City,” and its residents come from Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola, Tunisia, and elsewhere to buy jeans, trainers, fake iPods, and more. There are times walking around Guangzhou when, were it not for the storefront signs written in Chinese characters, the city could be mistaken for Lagos or Accra.

For the most part the community has thrived. Markets are devoted to African buyers and whole neighbourhoods cater to them. There are African restaurants, bars with African music, African churches. Many traders have lived in Guangzhou for years; some have settled with Chinese wives.

But Guangzhou’s African community is at a breaking point. The rising cost of goods, currency inflation, and a faltering economy are putting the squeeze on Little Africa. Numbers are down and business is suffering. More crucially, visas are being denied or granted only for the short term. Africans who allow their visas to expire are often imprisoned and forced to pay a hefty fine. And, according to interviews with over two dozen African traders, the community is facing increased persecution at the hands of police, a crackdown that coincides with the sentencing to death of 8 Africans accused of smuggling drugs into China.^{**** In the lead–up to the Olympics there were several crackdowns on Africans living in China. In September, 2007, at least 20 blacks, including a diplomat’s son, were rounded up by police in Beijing’s Sanlitun bar district. In the weeks before the Games rumours surfaced that bar owners had been instructed to ban black patrons.}

I recently travelled to Guangzhou with a fellow journalist, Tom Mackenzie, and a photographer, James Wasserman, and spent six days hanging out with the African community. We visited markets, ate chicken and rice in a Nigerian diner, attending mass, sat down with an Imam, and interviewed a cross–eyed preacher over Red Bulls and apple slices. What we found is a colourful community that is slowly dying.

Guangzhou is the type of teeming Asian city one imagines before going to Asia. In the old city, the narrow streets are lined with palm trees, and elevated freeways clogged with traffic offer views of apartment towers with barred balconies strung with laundry. The new city features soulless apartment complexes, spotless Audies and Mercedes, and skyscrapers plucked from the Hong Kong skyline.

Little Africa is actually two areas in the old city surrounding markets that cater to the African community. One area is predominantly Muslim, the other Christian. The men (they are mostly men) that frequent them buy bulk goods and ship them back to their home country, where a relative or friend distributes them. The most popular items for purchase, it seemed, were baggy, hip–hop jeans. “G–Star is popular. Diesel,” an Angolan trader told us. “It depends if you can get the cheap price.”

I don’t want to give too much of the story away, since it’s yet to be published, but talks with over two dozen Africans in Guangzhou confirmed that the community is in trouble. It was evident in the markets. At one market in the Muslim area, long aisles of shops on several floors were largely empty. When asked how business was going, Kimba, a sharply dressed man from Niger chewing a matchstick in a leather bag shop, told us, “Look, see for yourself. There are no customers. In China, business is very, very bad.”

More alarming than the business downturn is the increased police persecution. More than a dozen people we spoke to independently reported increased violence against Africans at the hands of police. One man with a cast on his leg said he jumped from a balcony after a chase with police and didn’t receive medical treatment for over 24 hours.

There’s an irony here. For years, Chinese business, from oil producing giants to individual entrepreneurs, have been encouraged to set up shop in Africa and foster trade relations. In 2007, China invested US$7–billion in the continent. In their destination countries, Chinese are welcomed with open arms. In Lagos, Nigeria, for example, a has been established under full protection of the Nigerian authorities. That warm welcome has not been reciprocated in Guangzhou, where African businessmen have few rights and little legal protection.

On a Sunday in late November, we attended mass in the city’s impressive catholic church, where a Cantonese preacher delivered a sermon on the end of days under the church’s high ceiling, chandeliers, and CCTV cameras. The audience of roughly 700 was over 90% black, mostly Nigerian. After mass, the congregation spilled out to the church grounds and an adjacent hall, dimly lit and crumbling, where they sang and danced to the rhythm of guitar and African drums. The mood was festive, but it masked tensions that could see this weekly scene become a thing of the past.

Once word got out that we were journalists, people were eager to talk. Many were angry, some afraid. A group of young men surrounded me and talked about the visa crackdown while I scribbled down notes. For these men, Guangzhou is home, but they are on temporary visas and are worried about over–extending them. Some already have.

“If you over–extend your visa, you have to pay a fine,” a stocky Nigerian named Joe told me. “If you can’t pay the visa fine you are thrown in jail and not allowed out of the country. A lot of us want to leave the country, but we don’t know how.

“I come here to buy goods to send to my country,” Joe said. “I’m helping the economy. I don’t understand why they do this.”

Photographs by James Wasserman.

(http://www.walrusmagazine.com)

PREPARATIONS for the third annual African e-government Forum that Rwanda will host in March have begun.

Organizers said the three-day event will give an opportunity to Information and communication technologies to voice their views, insights, knowledge and share experiences at the forum, which is Africa’s leading e-government conference.

The Forum will attract Ministers of Technology, heads of e-government projects, civil society leaders and representatives from IT organizations including mobile operators, infrastructure providers, foundations, development and donor agencies to discuss current issues and witness success stories on e-government in Africa.

Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO), which is organizing the event, said the forum will see the participation of Ministers of Technology in the continent, heads of e-government projects, civil society leaders and representatives from IT organizations including mobile operators among other stakeholders.

“The CTO is honoured that this year the Ministry of Science and Technology, Rwanda will be hosting the 3rd Annual African e-Gov Forum.

“Key ICT stakeholders in the region, including Ministers of technology, heads of e-Gov projects, civil society leaders and representatives from IT organisations, mobile operators, infrastructure providers, foundations, development and donor agencies will discuss current issues and witness success stories on e-Gov in Africa,” it said.

CTO is an international development partnership between Commonwealth and non-Commonwealth governments, business and civil society organisations.

The organisation provides the international community with effective means to help bridge the digital divide and achieve social and economic development, by delivering to developing countries unique knowledge-sharing programmes in the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the specific areas of Telecommunications, IT, Broadcasting and the Internet.

Last year, Uganda hosted the e-government forum–ITNewsAfrica.

Nearly 1,000 people have been caught cheating on China’s notoriously competitive civil service entrance exams, some with high-tech listening devices in their ears, state media reported Monday.
The official China Daily newspaper said in an editorial the number caught cheating was the largest ever for the exam.
Cheating during tests is common in the country of 1.3 billion people, where pressure to pass competitive national exams for entrance to universities and civil service jobs is intense. About 9.5 million young people take college entrance exams each year, but only one in four are eligible for college enrollment.
The cheaters had people feeding them information through wireless mini earplugs, and bought standard answers for the exams from outside companies, the official Xinhua News Agency cited the State Administration of Civil Service as saying.
About 775,000 people took the competitive civil servant exam last year to fill just 13,500 available positions. In some cases thousands were competing for more coveted positions, such as a ministry or a department with travel prospects, Xinhua reported.
Calls to the State Administration of Civil Service rang unanswered Monday.
There are no specific rules in dealing with cheaters in regards to civil servant exams, but they should face the harshest punishment, the China Daily said.
Those who cheat in examinations for civil servants fall into the category of worst offenders and deserve the severest punishment, the editorial said. It said civil servants should be role models in moral integrity.
An earlier Xinhua report warning the public not to buy exam answers, said exam papers were state secrets and those caught leaking them faced three to seven years in prison.
China’s civil service exam has been in place from imperial times and has long been seen as a stepping stone to social status and financial stability.

(http://www.euronews24.org)

Villiage Urugwiro — Visiting Chinese Foreign Minister, Yang Jiechi, paid a courtesy call to President Paul Kagame at Urugwiro Village yesterday afternoon from where he called for a boost in the bilateral relations between the two countries.

Speaking to reporters shortly after the meeting, Jiechi, who arrived in the country yesterday morning for a two-day State visit extolled Kagame’s role in promoting the present “friendly” Rwanda-China relations.

“I paid high tribute to the President’s attendance and participation in the China-Africa cooperation summit back in 2006,” he said.

“I also paid high tribute to his State visit to China in 2007. Because of that visit, our leaders have reached a consensus on a variety of areas of cooperation,” he said, adding that both countries would now like to maintain high-level visits to exchange views.

Jiechi also expressed China’s wish to further promote trade and economic cooperation with “this great country” and underlined a desire to encourage Chinese companies to come and invest in Rwanda.

The two countries’ relations date back as far as 1971 and China has been assisting Rwanda in various areas since.

China sponsored the construction of Bugarama cement factory, a hospital in Ngoma district in the east, Kinyinya-Nyarutarama and Kinyinya-Utexrwa roads in Kigali, as well the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building whose inauguration ceremony Jiechi duly attended after meeting Kagame.

The country also gives scholarships to Rwandan students and, under the framework of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), and “envisions” funding other projects, including the construction of a 100-150 bed polyclinic in Kigali, an agricultural demonstration centre and a malaria prevention and treatment facility.

Last year China’s contribution to Rwanda development was valued at USD 7,800,000 and is expected to increase this year.

“We hope that the projects can proceed very smoothly, come to good conclusion and we have pledged our best efforts,” Jiechi said.

“We also believe that it’s important to have more Rwandan students coming to study in China,” he said, promising to continue offering more scholarships and, increase cooperation with Rwanda on many regional and international issues.

“The President expressed very important views on how to further promote the relationship and I was deeply impressed by his sincerity and broad vision I will report to my leaders.”

Foreign Minister Rosemary Museminali, who also attended the Chinese top diplomat’s meeting with the President, underlined that Rwanda-China relations have been growing “from strength to strength, year by year.”

“We want to commit to continue working on them and improving them,” she pointed out.

Apart from delivering the new Minaffet structure, a multi-million complex worth USD 8,940,000, the Chinese Minister also inaugurated the new Chinese Embassy in Kigali.

(http://allafrica.com)