Our weekly round-up of must-read stories you might have missed. In focus this week: Uganda‘s ruling National Resistance Movement has recommended the expulsion of four outspoken members of parliament from the party; Babies as young as six months victims of rape in war: U.N. envoy; Trillions of dollars at risk as stock markets inflate value of fossil fuels that may have to remain buried forever, experts warn.
Uganda’s ruling party expels four ‘rebel’ MPs – April 15, 2013
The party’s Central Executive Committee (CEC) Sunday adopted the recommendation of its disciplinary committee to expel the legislators who have been branded “rebellious”. The MPs who have been expelled are Theodore Sekikubo (Lwemiyaga county MP), Mr Muhammed Nsereko (Kampala central MP), Mr Wilfred Niwagaba (Ndorwa East) and Mr Barnabas Tinkasiimire. Rwampara Municipality MP Vincent Kyamadid was handed a four-month suspension. Their expulsion, according to sources, was decided in a meeting called by the party chairman President Yoweri Museveni at State House on Sunday. Mr Museveni, in power since 1986, brooks little dissent from party supporters, but has recently faced opposition from within NRM ranks over a range of issues in the last few months. Government spokesperson Mary Karooro Okurut has called a press conference Monday to announce the expulsions…
Babies as young as six months victims of rape in war: U.N. envoy – April 17, 2013
In her first seven months as U.N. envoy on sexual violence in conflict, Zainab Hawa Bangura has visited a Congolese district where rebels raped babies, and Somalia where a woman was paid $150 restitution for the rape of her 4-year-old daughter. She met a refugee at a camp in Kenya who had been raped at gunpoint when she was eight-months-pregnant while gathering firewood and a Somali father who was fighting for justice for his daughters, aged 4 and 6, who had both been raped. “The stories are horrific and heartbreaking and when these survivors tell you what they endured, and continue to endure, you know that one person raped in war is one too many,” said Bangura, who briefed the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday…
Carbon bubble will plunge the world into another financial crisis – April 19, 2013
The world could be heading for a major economic crisis as stock markets inflate an investment bubble in fossil fuels to the tune of trillions of dollars, according to leading economists. “The financial crisis has shown what happens when risks accumulate unnoticed,” said Lord (Nicholas) Stern, a professor at the London School of Economics. He said the risk was “very big indeed” and that almost all investors and regulators were failing to address it. The so-called “carbon bubble” is the result of an over-valuation of oil, coal and gas reserves held by fossil fuel companies. According to a report published on Friday, at least two-thirds of these reserves will have to remain underground if the world is to meet existing internationally agreed targets to avoid the threshold for “dangerous” climate change. If the agreements hold, these reserves will be in effect unburnable and so worthless – leading to massive market losses. But the stock markets are betting on countries’ inaction on climate change…
