The Commonwealth Update

An Authoritative, nation-by-nation review of events across the Commonwealth, with an update now published six times a year in an issue of The Round Table.

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From 2008, the review is being written by Oren Gruenbaum, the Commonwealth Update editor, and currently Senior Sub-Editor at The Guardian in the UK

In 2007, the review was written by Judith Soal, a journalist who has worked extensively in South Africa and is currently deputy night editor at The Guardian in the UK.

Until 2007 the review was written by Derek Ingram, who was the Founding Editor of Gemini News Service until 1993, and is the author of a number of books about the Commonwealth and is active in the CJA, CPU, CHRI and the RCS, as well as a member of the Moot.

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Commonwealth Update - Issue 404

Oren Gruenbaum

ABSTRACT
Nigerian security forces put down an Islamist uprising by militants of Boko Haram that left 700 people dead. The leader of the Pakistan Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed in a US missile strike and Islamist militants were pushed out of the Swat valley after weeks of fighting. Zambia's former president Frederick Chiluba was acquitted of embezzlement. The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative opposed Rwanda's application for Commonwealth membership. Tonga suffered one of its worst disasters in recent history when a ferry sank, killing 74 people.

AFRICA

Botswana
Six San Bushmen convicted of hunting illegally in their ancestral homeland were freed with a caution. The men were arrested in 2007 in the Central Kalahari game reserve a year after winning a landmark legal victory allowing them to return to the reserve. Survival said: "The Bushmen are not allowed access to their own water, they're refused hunting permits, and they're arrested when they do hunt, which is the only way they can feed their families."

Cameroon
Interpol said Cameroon had become a major conduit for ivory poached in neighbouring Gabon, after seizing 11 shipments of several tonnes to the Far East from Douala.

Gambia
Six journalists were sentenced to two-year prison terms for defamation and sedition for criticising the president. The journalists, described as prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International, had questioned Yahya Jammeh's declaration that the government was not responsible for the death of prominent journalist Deyda Hydara. The critic of harsh media laws was gunned down in 2004 but nobody was charged with his murder. The journalists are the union officials Emil Touray, Sarata Jabbi Dibba and Pa Modou Faal; Pap Saine and Ebou Sawaneh, publisher and editor of the Point newspaper; and Sam Sarr, editor of the Foroyaa newspaper. In 2006, another prominent journalist, Chief Ebrima Manney, went missing.

Ghana
Ghana is to get a $600m three-year loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as high food and fuel prices, a weakening currency, an energy crisis and heavy election spending last year take their toll. But Ghana's economy had proved "relatively resilient", the IMF said, supported by high cocoa and gold prices.

Former foreign minister Akwasi Osei-Adjei was charged with causing financial loss to Ghana over rice imports from India. He is the first to be charged of several members of ex-president John Kufuor's administration under investigation for alleged corruption.

Barack Obama visited Ghana on his first trip to the continent as US president. Outlining his vision for Africa, he stressed the need for good governance, attacked corruption and said it was mainly up to Africans to improve their lot.

Kenya
State and private hospitals are locking mothers of newborn babies in special wards until their families pay the bills. The Kenya Network of Grassroots Organisations found 34 mothers being held in Pumwani, east Africa's biggest maternity hospital, despite its denials.

The cabinet said it would not set up a special tribunal over last year's post-election violence, in which at least 1,500 people were killed and 300,000 displaced, and would use local courts instead once they had been reformed. Earlier, the former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan handed the names of politicians and others accused of inciting violence to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Politicians have not complied with a directive from the finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta to give up luxury cars in favour of one small vehicle, the BBC found. The vehicles are supposed to be sold to raise cash for displaced people.

More than 4,000 prisoners on death row had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment, although there have been no executions for two decades. In the largest movement of livestock in a decade, a giant herd of thousands of cattle moved from northern Kenya into Borena, Ethiopia, to escape a drought, the UN said. Farmers have abandoned villages in search of water, while duty-free maize imports and subsidised fertiliser have failed to help.

Five managers of the state Kenya Pipeline Company and the private Triton Petroleum Company were charged over an alleged $100m conspiracy to defraud petroleum firms in a scandal blamed for regional fuel shortages last year.

The first undersea cable to bring high-speed internet access to east Africa went live. The $650m fibre-optic cable, operated by the African-owned firm Seacom, connects South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Mozambique to Europe and Asia. The 17,000km cable took two years to lay.

The world's oldest pupil, Kimani Nganga Maruge, died in Nairobi aged 90. The Mau Mau veteran and great-grandfather enrolled at 84 when primary education became free.

Malawi
Child tobacco pickers as young as five are suffering severe health problems from exposure to nicotine poisoning equivalent to smoking 50 cigarettes a day, an investigation by the children's charity Plan found. Malawi depends on tobacco for 70% of its export income and has an estimated 78,000 children working on tobacco estates - some up to 12 hours a day, for under 1p an hour and without protective clothing.

Namibia
A government contract with a Chinese state firm linked to President Hu Jintao's son is being investigated over bribery allegations. Namibia's anti-corruption commission sought to question Hu Haifeng, who was president of Nuctech when it was suspected of bribing a Namibian consultancy over a $56m deal to supply scanners to Namibia's airports.

Nigeria
President Umaru Yar'Adua ordered an investigation into an Islamist uprising in July, which left 700 people dead when it was put down by security forces. Muslim clerics said they had warned the authorities repeatedly about Boko Haram ("Education is prohibited"), before the militants attacked government buildings and police stations across the mainly Muslim north. The sect's leader, Mohammed Yusuf, was accused of taking money from al-Qaida. Police denied any extrajudicial killings, although Yusuf was arrested in Maiduguri but then shot dead. Police say he was killed in a shoot-out when he tried to escape but rights groups called it a summary execution. After the clashes, police found more than 200 women and children locked in buildings in Maiduguri, many seriously ill. A Red Cross official said they had been abducted by Boko Haram from six northern states. Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch accused security forces of killing about 130 people, mostly young Muslim men, when they opened fire at random during sectarian riots sparked by an election last year in Jos.

Some 10,000 militants were offered an amnesty in the oil-producing Niger Delta. Air-Vice Marshal Lucky Ararile said militants who disarmed would be paid a 20,000 naira ($135) monthly allowance while being reintegrated into civilian life. The main militant group, Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend), called a 60-day ceasefire after its leader, Henry Okah, was released as part of the amnesty after 23 months in prison. In an unprecedented attack the day before his release, Mend gunmen in speedboats blew up the main oil depot for Lagos-the first outside the Delta. Unrest in the Delta has cut Nigeria's oil production by 10% in recent years.

The UK will help refurbish prisons so Britain's 800 Nigerian prisoners can be returned without them blocking their transfer on human rights grounds.

The head of the National Gallery of Art, Joe Musa, and four other officials were charged with stealing more than 1bn naira of funds for the gallery.

Sierra Leone
The former Liberian leader Charles Taylor, who is on trial for war crimes at the UN-backed special court for Sierra Leone in The Hague, denied eating human flesh or ordering militias to eat their enemies. Taylor denies 11 charges relating to Sierra Leone's civil war, including arming and directing rebels from Liberia to seize Sierra Leone's diamonds. Taylor, the first African leader to be tried by an international court, also denies terrorism, murder, rape and torture. An estimated 500,000 people were killed, mutilated or suffered other atrocities during the 1991-2002 war.

South Africa
Waves of strikes and protests presented President Jacob Zuma with his first major challenge since taking office in May. Unemployment has risen to about 25% in the first recession in 17 years and Zuma has already retracted an election pledge to create 500,000 new jobs. Doctors, miners, train drivers, and workers in the chemical, construction, energy, paper, printing, retail and state broadcasting sectors all stopped work. Some 70,000 construction workers ended a week-long strike demanding a 13% pay rise that threatened to derail building for the 2010 World Cup. A week-long strike in July that halted rubbish collections and buses saw 150,000 municipal workers win a pay rise of twice the 7% inflation rate. Police fired rubber bullets at protesters in Johannesburg, Western Cape and Mpumalanga. Zuma announced a 2.4bn rand ($300m) training scheme for laid-off workers.

There were also riots in townships over basic services. Fifteen years after apartheid ended, a million South Africans still live in shacks, many without electricity or running water, and the gap between rich and poor has widened. In Durban, 90 unemployed protesters, many elderly women, were arrested for looting food stores.

Clinical trials began of an HIV vaccine, the first by a developing country. The death toll from botched illegal tribal circumcisions of Xhosa boys rose to 37.

Tanzania
An audit by the Global Fund, the main source of funds to fight AIDS, TB and malaria, found millions of dollars worth of drugs had gone missing or expired.

In July, nine people were jailed, one for life, in Burundi over the murder of albino people whose remains were sold for witchcraft in Tanzania. More than 40 albinos have also been killed in Tanzania.

A bank was launched to help women combat exclusion from financial institutions. The Women's Bank-which also welcomes male customers-says women need only an ID card or passport to open an account, unlike other banks that require title deeds or other proof of wealth, and applicants need only 3,000 Tanzanian shillings ($2) in savings.

Uganda
The UN insisted it was committed to talks with the warlord Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), despite disbanding the office dedicated to the peace process, under Mozambique's former president Joaquim Chissano, in July. Talks stalled on an LRA insistence that Kony's international arrest warrant be withdrawn. However, Chissano said Kony appeared to have little interest in peace. The LRA has killed some 1,200 people and displaced thousands since December.

Details were announced of a major oil find near Lake Albert. "It's a world-class discovery, the most exciting new basin in Africa in decades," said Heritage Oil. The government wants the oil to be refined in the area so Uganda can gain as much added value for the energy as possible.

A former official, Teddy Ssezi Cheeye, was sentenced to 10 years for embezzling Sh120m ($60,000) of AIDS funding in 2005, after which the Global Fund suspended $43m of aid. Weeks earlier a former Uganda Broadcasting Corporation employee, Freddie Kavuma, received five years for similar charges. Three former health ministers were also implicated in the scandal.

Zambia
The former president Frederick Chiluba was acquitted of embezzling $500,000 during his 10-year presidency after a judge said the funds could not be traced to government money. Many hoped that Chiluba's criminal trial would be a watershed for African justice but he blamed "imperialists". Two years ago he lost a civil court case in London that found he plundered about $50m from state coffers. Two businessmen were found guilty of theft and possessing state funds, while his wife, Regina, was sentenced to three and a half years for receiving stolen property. The corruption watchdog Transparency International Zambia said it was deeply disappointed at the verdict.

The news editor of the largest independent newspaper faces jail for distributing obscene images after she sent two photographs to the vice-president, health minister and rights groups of a woman giving birth without medical help. President Rupiah Banda called the pictures pornographic and demanded a police investigation. Chansa Kabwela said she was highlighting healthcare issues and calling for an end to a three-week nurses' strike. The picture was of a woman giving birth to a baby in the breech position in the grounds of Lusaka's main hospital. The woman had been turned away from two clinics. By the time doctors operated, the baby had suffocated.

Zimbabwe (Left Commonwealth, 2003)
Refugees began to return; schools and hospitals reopened as teachers and medical staff began to be paid again, and food reappeared in supermarkets. However, 94% unemployment ensures most people cannot afford to shop; bartering and prostitution is widespread, and the UN said some three million people faced hunger, despite a significant rise in food production. About 70% of the population has no access to clean water and the cholera outbreak that killed more than 4,000 people is widely predicted to return with the rains later this year.

Meanwhile, the unity government of President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) came closer to collapse as MDC activists and MPs, journalists and students were arrested and assaulted. The MDC believes Zanu-PF is trying to eliminate the MDC's slender parliamentary majority by arresting its MPs on trumped-up charges including playing music that "denigrates" Mugabe and stealing a mobile phone. Fourteen MDC MPs and senators are facing charges ranging from corruption to rape. If convicted, they will lose their seats, forcing by-elections. MDC ministers boycotted a cabinet meeting chaired by Mugabe as relations neared breaking point.

Tendai Biti, the finance minister, was sent a bullet and death threat and his gardener assaulted outside his house. He said: "There is a junta that is totally unhappy with the current set-up and is doing everything legal and extra-legal to disturb it." The MDC says 30 of its supporters have died from attacks this year. Talks resumed on a new constitution after riot police broke up a conference amid scuffles between rival delegates.

The BBC and CNN were allowed to report freely from Zimbabwe for the first time in eight years after restrictions were lifted.

The International Monetary Fund said it would not provide Zimbabwe with more funds until its $1bn debts were settled. Although China agreed to lend $950m, Tsvangirai won pledges of just $200m in aid on a tour of Western capitals in June rather than the $7bn needed to revive the devastated economy. Furthermore, the funds will be channelled through aid agencies in a vote of no confidence in Tsvangirai's claims that Zimbabwe has embarked on "an irreversible transition to democracy". Tsvangirai was jeered by exiles in London when he urged them to return home and help rebuild the country. Inflation hit 89.7 sextillion (1021) before the Zimbabwe dollar was scrapped in favour of hard currency. The Zimbabwean, an opposition newspaper in exile in South Africa, printed billboard adverts there that attacked Mugabe's regime on the worthless banknotes.

Zimbabwe should be banned from the diamond trade for forcing people to search for gems at gunpoint, according to the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme, the organisation set up to stop the use of diamonds to fund conflict. Human Rights Watch said children were being used as forced labour to fund Zanu-PF and the army, with some 200 people killed there last year.

Vice-President Joseph Msika, a close ally of Mugabe and former deputy to Joshua Nkomo, leader of Zanu-PF's rival liberation movement Zapu, died aged 85.

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ASIA

Bangladesh
Six months after the decisive election victory of Sheikh Hasina's Awami League, the high court in Dhaka ruled that her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, should be seen as the "father of the nation" for first proclaiming independence in a speech made as the 1971 war with Pakistan began. The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party has always claimed that the late husband of its leader, Khaleda Zia, first declared independence. Thousands of people in cyclone-prone areas will be warned of coming storms by phone alerts. At least 200 people died when Cyclone Aila hit the country in May.

The health ministry plans to train snake charmers in treating poisonous snakebites, which kill 6,000 people a year. A clouded leopard, thought to be extinct after last being in 1992, was found in remote jungle near Burma.

Hong Kong
Tens of thousands of people marched to demand more democracy on the 12th anniversary of the city's transfer to Chinese rule. Hong Kong residents cannot directly elect the territory's chief executive or half of the legislative members.

The economy emerged from recession, growing by 3.3% in the second quarter as exports picked up and private consumption was lifted by the stock market, which has rebounded 80% since March.

India
MPs approved a landmark education bill that guarantees free and compulsory education for children aged six to 14. The bill will set up new state-run schools and will force private ones to reserve one in four places for poor children. About 70 million children receive no schooling and a third of the population is illiterate.

India and the 10-country south-east Asian bloc Asean signed a free trade agreement after six years of talks. India excluded 489 products, protecting its sensitive agricultural and information technology sectors from the trade deal. India and the US signed defence agreements allowing the sale of sophisticated American military equipment to India and increasing US involvement in India's space programme.

The government said it wanted to withdraw troops from areas it controls in the divided region of Kashmir. Hundreds of thousands of troops are stationed in Kashmir, which has suffered two decades of insurgency.

Shah Rukh Khan, a leading Bollywood film star, was detained for two hours at Newark airport as he arrived in the US to promote a film on racial profiling. He was released after the Indian embassy intervened. In July, the US Continental Airlines apologised to APJ Abdul Kalam amid outrage in India after the former Indian president was frisked and made to remove his shoes at Delhi airport. Meanwhile, India protested over its listing by a US congressional body as a country that fails to protect its religious minorities. The commission cited anti-Christian and anti-Muslim riots in Orissa and Gujarat in 2008 and 2002, respectively.

Gay rights activists celebrated a Delhi high court ruling overturning the colonial-era ban on gay sex. Nationwide decriminalisation is expected to follow. Gay sex was previously punishable by up to 10 years in prison. A few days before the decision the second-ever gay-pride march was held in the capital.

Heavily irrigated parts of northern India face severe water shortages, findings by NASA's gravity satellites suggest. Unsustainable extraction of underground water was exacerbated by the driest June in 83 years as monsoon rains fell 43% below average. Many areas have rationed water to a few hours a day. Elsewhere, however, 500,000 people were stranded by floods in Assam, tens of thousands of people were inundated in Bihar and scores were killed by flash floods in Orissa. The government's own State of Environment Report also warned of a water crisis, saying 45% of India's land area was "degraded due to erosion, soil acidity, alkalinity and salinity, water logging and wind erosion". Up to 70% of Indians are dependent on farming. An environmental group, the Navdanya Trust, claimed India was becoming the world centre of hunger, with more than 200 million Indians malnourished-more than in sub-Saharan Africa. Meanwhile, a pilot project in Maharashtra successfully cut the birth rate by paying couples $100 to delay having a child for two years or $500 if they wait three. India's 1.2 billion population is expected to grow to 1.5 billion by 2050.

A high court ruled that a leading Indian travel company, Barefoot India, could build an eco-resort at Collipur that anthropologists say could lead to the extinction of the Jarawa, an indigenous tribe that lived in isolation on the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands for millennia until 1997.

Poaching has left two tiger parks in Madhya Pradesh, the "tiger state", with no tigers, it was reported. Numbers have also fallen to zero in Rajasthan's Sariska national park.

Pakistan warned that India's launch of a nuclear-powered submarine, the first nuclear submarine built entirely in the country, threatened regional peace.

The government in the troubled north-eastern state of Manipur ordered an inquiry into the death of a former separatist rebel in the capital, Imphal. TV footage and newspaper photos show Chungkham Sanjit being dragged into a shopping centre by police commandos and his lifeless body being dragged out. Security forces retook areas of West Bengal formerly "liberated" by Maoists; the Maoist Communist Party was outlawed as a terrorist group after nearly 50 police were killed by militants.

The supreme court refused a petition to stop the Dalit politician Kumari Mayawati, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and an icon for India's 160 million low-caste Hindus, building giant statues of herself. Mayawati was also accused of evading tax as political donations raised her income to $10m from $200,000 in 2003.

The Commonwealth Games Federation expressed concerns after the sports ministry conceded that only five of 17 venues for next year's Commonwealth Games in Delhi were more than half completed.

Car sales jumped 31% in July, the sixth successive monthly rise, as customers took the first deliveries of the world's cheapest car, the Tata Nano.

Malaysia
More than 200 arrests were made and tear gas was fired as 20,000 protesters demonstrated in Kuala Lumpur against the notorious Internal Security Act, which has been used to detain more than 4,000 people without trial.

Environmental groups called for the Malaysian billionaire Tiong Hiew King, founder of the logging conglomerate Rimbunan Hijau, to be stripped of a British honorary knighthood for destroying huge swathes of rainforest, especially in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

The prime minister, Najib Razak, halved the quota of company shares reserved for ethnic Malays in an effort to encourage foreign investment.

A Malaysian prince, Mohammad Fakhry, is suing his Indonesian child bride and her mother over claims that he tortured and sexually abused his 17-year-old wife, Manohara Odelia Pinot, during his year-long marriage. Indonesia said it would stop sending domestic workers to Malaysia in a long-running row over abuse of migrant workers.

Pakistan
The country's most wanted man, Baitullah Mehsud, head of the 5,000-strong Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan alliance in South Waziristan, was killed by a US drone missile. His death sparked a power struggle: Maulvi Faqir Mohammad, head of the Taliban in Bajaur, a Waziri warlord, Hakimullah Mehsud, and a militant cleric, Wali-ur Rehman, have all claimed the leadership. Baitullah Mehsud was suspected of, but denied, the 2007 assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, wife of President Asif Ali Zardari. The US had blamed him for attacks on American troops in Afghanistan and put a $5m bounty on his head.

The foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, said the army had driven militants from 95% of the Swat valley and Malakand following 10 weeks of fighting. An opinion poll found 80% of Pakistanis now believe the Taliban and other Islamist militants are a "critical threat" to the country.

Maulvi Omar, a senior aide of Mehsud and chief spokesman for the Pakistan Taliban, was arrested in Mohmand, while Qari Saifullah, a commander of Harkat Jihad-e-Islami, was detained while being treated at a hospital after a missile strike. Maulana Ali Sher Hyderi, head of the banned Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, the largest extremist Sunni group, was killed in an ambush after a rally in Sindh.

About 200 militants were killed in strikes by US drone missiles on militants' camps and convoys in North and South Waziristan. In June, a drone struck twice within hours killing more than 60 people, most of them militants at the funeral of victims of the first strike. In Mohmand, a pro-government tribal militia killed at least 15 Taliban.

In militant attacks, a suicide bomber targeted a petrol station, killing six, in Mohmand. Qari Zainuddin, 26, a tribal leader who opposed Mehsud, was shot dead in Dera Ismail Khan. Militants in Khyber killed an important pro-government tribal elder with two guards and destroyed two fuel tankers resupplying NATO forces in Afghanistan. The Taliban blew up two boys' schools.

A UN official appealed urgently for more money to support an estimated two million people displaced by fighting in Swat. The UN also began an inquiry began into the assassination of Bhutto.

The supreme court overturned a conviction against the former prime minister Nawaz Sharif for hijacking then army chief Pervez Musharraf's aeroplane in 1999. The ruling allows him to run for the office again. Musharraf, who left for the UK in June, faces possible, if unlikely, trial for treason over his imposition of military rule in 2007. The supreme court ruled that his suspension of the constitution was illegal, annulling decrees made under the emergency. Lawyers celebrated it as a triumph of democracy.

Mobs killed eight Christians for allegedly desecrating the Koran in Gojra, and police rescued a woman from crowds who destroyed her house in Sindh for the same alleged offence in the latest of hundreds of similar attacks since blasphemy laws were introduced in the 1980s.

At least 15,000 people were made homeless after heavy rains breached a dam in Baluchistan.

Singapore
The economy emerged from its worst ever recession, expanding by 20.4% between April and June, helped by pharmaceutical sales and construction, after shrinking 12.7% in the first quarter.

China and Singapore held joint anti-terrorism exercises in southern China under a defence pact signed last year.

Sri Lanka
The government "categorically denied" that its troops were involved in war crimes against Tamils after a video broadcast on British and Indian television allegedly showed a government soldier executing two naked men. The footage showed a man in army uniform shooting bound and blindfolded men in the head. The camera then pans to show the bodies of other men in pools of blood. The video was obtained by a Sri Lankan group called Journalists for Democracy.

The new head of the Tamil Tiger rebels, Selvarasa Pathmanathan, was arrested in Kuala Lumpur. Pathmanathan, who is believed to have run the rebels' arms smuggling, said the Tigers would try non-violent methods. The first elections since the war were held; the ruling coalition won in Jaffna but suffered a surprise defeat in Vavuniya.

The International Monetary Fund approved a $2.5bn loan to Colombo despite concerns over the treatment of Tamil and an unprecedented move by the UK to abstain from voting in protest. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, director of a leading human rights thinktank, the Centre for Policy Alternatives, was warned he would be killed if the European Union withdrew preferential trade benefits. The EU decision on trade benefits is considered as important as the IMF loan, with the government looking for international support amid Western disquiet over human rights and treatment of Tamils.

The UN expressed concerns at inadequate medical care for some 300,000 Tamils still held in internment camps. It said nearly half of all casualties were children. Amnesty International called the refugees' detention "without charge or trial" a breach of international human rights. Heavy rain in the north flooded the camps with parts totally under water. Water is contaminated with sewage in another. The US assistant secretary of state for South Asia, Robert Blake, criticised holding the refugees "against their will" and warned that failure to share power with Tamils could lead to renewed violence. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty condemned the disbanding of a presidential commission that was looking into mass killings.

Journalists at Uthayan, a Tamil newspaper in the Jaffna, were told to quit or be killed in June. Two staff were murdered in May. Police arrested a popular astrologer, Chandrasiri Bandara, for predicting President Mahinda Rajapaksa would be ousted.

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EUROPE

Cyprus
Turkish Cypriots celebrated the 35th anniversary of the invasion by Turkish troops, which led to its partition, while Greek Cypriots marked the "black anniversary" with wailing sirens. Talks on reunification show little progress. However, leaders agreed to open a new crossing of the green line at Limnitis.

United Kingdom
Pledges of reforms to the financial system made when the recession took hold receded as rising stock markets and profits encouraged banks to resume paying bonuses. Barclays alone paid $1.2bn to 410 staff in June. The Bank of England surprised the City by announcing it would pump another £50bn ($83bn) into the economy to take the total financial stimulus known as quantitative easing to $286bn. As June's budget deficit reached an all-time high of $21.5bn, an influential thinktank, the Institute of Fiscal Studies, said Britain faced spending cuts of 16% to key public services. Public-sector net debt is now 57% of gross domestic product. Youth unemployment jumped to 928,000 in the second quarter to become the worst in Europe. Overall, the jobless rose to a 14-year high of 2.5 million.

The oldest loyalist terrorist group, the Ulster Volunteer Force, which murdered some 350 civilians during Northern Ireland's "Troubles", said it had disarmed. The rival Ulster Defence Association said it would follow suit.

Swine flu appeared to have levelled off at 50,000 new cases a week by August but only about 55 deaths. The UN's Office on Drugs and Crime said Britain had the most cocaine users and the largest number of "problem" drug users in western Europe.

The News of the World, a tabloid newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch, was found to have employed private investigators to hack into thousands of mobile phones, including those of politicians.

Mabey & Johnson became the first major UK firm to be prosecuted for paying bribes abroad after admitting paying kickbacks to win bridge-building contracts in Ghana, Jamaica and Iraq.

The number of British military deaths in Afghanistan rose above 200. Human Rights Watch said UK intelligence officers had in effect sub-contracted torture of British Islamic terrorist suspects to Pakistan's ISI spy agency.

In a major constitutional reform, the highest court will no longer be part of the House of Lords and sit in parliament but will from October become an autonomous supreme court.

Henry Allingham, one of the last veterans of the First World War and the world's oldest man, died aged 113.

In one of cricket's most celebrated rivalries dating from 1882, England won the final Test match of the series to regain the Ashes trophy from Australia.

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AMERICAS

Canada
Ending a 10-year legal battle, Karlheinz Schreiber, a defence industry lobbyist, was extradited to Germany to face charges of bribery and tax evasion. Schreiber was a key figure behind illegal payments to Germany's Christian Democratic Union, and also paid money to Brian Mulroney, a former Canadian premier.

Ottawa sparked a diplomatic row by re-imposing visa restrictions on Czechs after an influx of mostly Roma asylum-seekers claiming discrimination in Europe, such as firebomb attacks. New passport controls imposed by the US on Canadians in June caused a sharp drop in cross-border travel.

The prime minister, Stephen Harper, visited the Arctic region to view military exercises as Canada asserts itself in the far north. As global warming opens up formerly frozen tracts and waterways, the Arctic nations, which also include Russia, the US, Norway and Denmark, are putting forward territorial claims before a United Nations commission meets to rule on sovereignty in the resource-rich region.

The federal court of appeal upheld a ruling ordering the government to seek the return of a Canadian detained for six years at Guantánamo Bay. It said the government's refusal to ask for Omar Khadr's repatriation infringed his constitutional rights.

Canada's unemployment rate hit an 11-year high of 8.6%. The economy shrank by 5.4% year-on-year in the first quarter. Inflation fell by its largest amount in 56 years as petrol prices fell sharply on 2008's levels. The maker of the BlackBerry mobile phone, Canada's Research in Motion, is the world's fastest-growing company, according to the business magazine Fortune. Profits at RIM grew 84% in three years.

About 2,000 forest fires forced 5,300 people to leave British Columbia.

Jamaica
The UK suspended the Turks and Caicos parliament and imposed direct rule for two years on the former Jamaican dependency in August after a Foreign Office inquiry found evidence that the former premier Michael Misick illegally amassed a multimillion-dollar fortune by selling Crown land to foreign property developers. Misick and his deputy, Floyd Hall, deny any impropriety. The TCI have had their own government since 1976 and have been largely independent of Britain since the 1960s. The premier, Galmo Williams, called it a "coup" and said his country was "being invaded and re-colonised". However, civic leaders welcomed the move.

The sprinter Usain Bolt broke his own world records at the World Championships in Berlin to become the first man to hold the 100m and 200m world and Olympic titles at the same time.

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PACIFIC

Australia
PetroChina, Asia's largest oil company, signed a $41bn deal to buy gas. Australia's largest ever trade deal came despite rising tensions between Australia and China: four executives of the Anglo-Australian mining conglomerate Rio Tinto were formally arrested in China on suspicion of stealing Chinese trade secrets and taking bribes, while a diplomatic row erupted over a visit to Australia by a exiled Uighur activist, Rebiya Kadeer, whom Beijing accuses of inciting recent riots between ethnic Uighurs and Han Chinese in Xinjiang province.

Australia's parliament passed a law demanding that 20% of the country's electricity come from renewable sources by 2020, matching European targets, after the government agreed to increase aid to industries that are heavy users of electricity and protect investment in coal mining.

The world's first human trials of a swine flu vaccine began as the death toll from the virus in Australia rose to 41 out of 14,703 confirmed cases.

Bundanoon became what is believed to be the world's first town to ban the sale of bottled water.

Fiji (Suspended, 2006)
Fiji will have a new constitution in 2013 that scraps the ethnic-based system-in which the majority indigenous population and minority Indians vote for candidates of their own ethnicity-introduced in 1997. The country's military ruler, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, who took power in a 2006 coup, also promised to overhaul the complex land tenure system, in which indigenous Fijians own 90% of the land.

The 16-nation Pacific Islands Forum, meeting in Australia, became divided over the question of democracy in Fiji, which remains suspended from the forum because of the military coup. The forum called for the military government to return the country to democracy after rejecting attempts by the country's Melanesian allies, including Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, to get the Fijians reinstated.

The Methodist Church, Fiji's largest, said seven leaders had been detained by police while planning an annual conference. The government accused the church of being too political. Police also detained 14 freemasons for "allegedly practising sorcery" after villagers complained. Emergency regulations imposed by the military regime allow police to detain people for up to 48 hours without charge.

Kiribati
Rising seawater was seeping into the soil and freshwater supplies, hampering government efforts to encourage people to grow healthy food rather than "live off rice and tinned food", a community leader, Pelenise Alofa Pilitati, said. Kiribati is officially 4m above sea level, but Pilitati said most people lived "at eye level" with the sea.

New Zealand
In a referendum on a 2007 law banning the smacking of children, there was a resounding vote against the legislation. The law was introduced to combat New Zealand's high rates of child abuse and murder.

The economy shrank for the fifth consecutive quarter, making it the longest recession in New Zealand's history. The International Monetary Fund expects a 2% decline for the whole of 2009.

An international row blew up after a newspaper columnist wrote approvingly of an Auckland man who cooked his pet pitbull terrier on a barbecue. Paea Taufa said he was surprised when inspectors arrived because dog was a delicacy in his native Tonga.

A 7.8-magnitude earthquake, the biggest in 78 years, moved New Zealand 30cm closer to Australia.

Papua New Guinea
Police are investigating a series of sorcery-related killings in the remote Highlands province of Chimbu, where three women were burnt alive or stoned to death. Two other women were rescued by relatives after they were locked in their home, which was then set alight.

Solomon Islands
The prime minister, Derek Sikua, urged the Pacific Islands Forum not to isolate Fiji. "Only through dialogue can we be in a position to move forward and find a solution for Fiji," he said.

Tonga
A ferry capsized and sank with the loss of 74 lives near the capital, Nuku'alofa, in one of the worst disasters to hit the island nation. Fifty-four people survived. The ferry's captain said he was pressured into sailing even though authorities knew the Princess Ashika had problems. Tonga's prime minister, Feleti Sevele, has insisted the vessel was fully seaworthy but the captain, Maka Tuputupu, blamed the sinking on rusted loading ramps that allowed water into the ship. Survivors described the ferry rocking violently and waves breaking into the lower deck before it went under.

Tuvalu
Kausea Natano, public utilities minister, said his nation of 12,000 people wanted to be "an example to all" by producing all its energy from renewable sources by 2020. Tuvalu estimates it would cost about $20m to generate all its electricity by using wind and solar power instead of imported diesel.

Eleven Tuvaluan seamen on a German cargo ship captured by Somali pirates in April were released after being held hostage for four months when a ransom was paid to the pirates.

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GENERAL

Commonwealth News
The non-governmental Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative has opposed Rwanda's application for Commonwealth membership. Advising that preconditions for membership had not been met, it cited suppression of the rule of law and free speech, criminalisation of "genocide ideology", media harassment, military intervention and human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Rwanda said it had made "phenomenal progress that surpasses many Commonwealth countries that did not go through a small fraction of what Rwanda went through" (http://tinyurl.com/m8nsr7).

The Commonwealth gave Fiji one month to announce a timetable for holding democratic elections by 2010, otherwise it would be suspended from the 53-nation organisation.

Fewer than one in four people in Commonwealth countries believe that Prince Charles should succeed the Queen as their head, a YouGov poll found. Instead, Commonwealth citizens prefer the idea of a headship that rotates between states. Half of those polled in India preferred that option compared with just 15% who backed Charles. In Jamaica, US President Barack Obama had more support than Charles as a leader. The prince had most support in Australia, where 27% backed him. Danny Sriskandarajah, director of the Royal Commonwealth Society, which commissioned the study, said: "An association that was useful to ease decolonisation needs a 'post-colonial' identity."

Commonwealth organisations representing civil society, local government, business and other sectors met their counterparts from Zimbabwe and southern Africa at a conference in Johannesburg in July to marshal support for humanitarian aid, infrastructure rehabilitation, economic reconstruction, and for better governance and human rights in Zimbabwe (http://tinyurl.com/l98yhb).

Commonwealth Publications - http://publications.thecommonwealth.org/

  • Purna Sen, Universal Periodic Review of Human Rights: Towards Best Practice, ISBN 978-1-84929-005-0
  • Lalage Bown, Maintaining Universal Primary Education: Lessons from Commonwealth Africa, ISBN 978-0-85092-827-3
  • Cyrus Rustomjee, The Commonwealth and the Economic Crisis, ISBN 978-1-84859-054-0

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Correction

The new Anniversary Endowment Fund referred to in the previous Commonwealth Update has attracted initial commitments of £1.6m, not £2.6m. Although the pledges were announced by the Commonwealth Secretary-General, Kamalesh Sharma, the fund is not part of the Secretariat but marks the 50th anniversary of the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan, which brings together all awards for study among member states.