Mobinil stymied by new numbers delay, info demand

By Alastair Sharp

CAIRO (Reuters) - Mobinil, with Egypt's biggest pool of mobile subscribers, aims to ensure it does not lose the 3 percent of its users that do not meet new government requirements for giving personal details, it said on Tuesday.

The firm, which on Monday posted first quarter net profit that disappointed analysts and the stock market, also said its plan to expand its user base has been stymied by delays to the rollout of a new national numbering plan.

The telecom regulator plans to add an extra digit to all mobile phone numbers in Egypt and has also said all mobile users must have personal information attached to their accounts starting from May 2. Mobinil said three percent of its subscribers were "unregistered".

Chief Executive Hassan Kabbani told a conference call Mobinil could lose those subscribers "if we don't do anything about it", adding: "We are now working on improving the level of customer information".

He said Mobinil has 30 million dials, the individual mobile phone numbers it provides to subscribers, and more than 26 million active subscribers. Mobinil first requested additional dials in May 2009 and received regulator approval last month.

"We were left without (new) dials for almost a year," Kabbani said. "The regulator was unable to provide us with new dials due to the delay in implementing the new national numbering plan".

Mobinil is engaged in a fierce pricing war with the North African country's two other operators, Vodafone Egypt and Etisalat Egypt, which has forced it to offer free and discounted on-network minutes and pressures margins.

Without mentioning newest entrant Etisalat by name, Kabbani made clear that the Abu Dhabi-based firm was dragging its feet on implementing the new numbering plan.

"We are ready for implementation and we are eager to do it as soon as possible. We know that Vodafone is almost in the same situation like us," he said.

In its earnings release, Mobinil said it expected regulatory pressure to intensify as stricter registration rules lead to disconnections and until the plan to ameliorate a shortage of mobile phone numbers is put in place.

The firm's shares fell 3.6 percent to close at 203 Egyptian pounds in Tuesday trade.

Mobinil co-owners Orascom Telecom and France Telecom patched up a long-running dispute over the firm earlier this month and provided details of their new pact earlier on Tuesday.

Under the deal, Mobinil will pay $130 million to acquire Orascom internet assets LINKdotNET and Link Egypt. Mobinil's chief financial officer Khalid Ellaicy told the conference call that the deal would likely by finalised in the second quarter.

Reuters Africa

African leaders join forces in fight against malaria

By JAKAYA KIKWETE AND JOY PHUMAPHI

ANY disease that each year incapacitates 220 million Africans – or more than 30 per cent of the population – and kills 1 million is a global emergency.

Malaria bleeds the continent to the tune of $12 billion in direct costs every year, resulting in an annual loss of an alarming 1.3 per cent of gross domestic product growth.

Our fragile health systems are groaning under the strain – up to 50 per cent of patients are those suffering from the disease during the malaria season and it places great demands on already limited resources, both financial and manpower.

In some countries, 40 per cent of the public health spending is swallowed by this scourge.

Because of lost man hours, many families are not able to earn, plant, or harvest enough to survive on their own. The disease sends productivity levels plunging in critical sectors, such as farming, mining, and manufacturing, and causes children to miss school.

Five of Africa’s most populous countries – Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Kenya – with immense agricultural, mining, manufacturing and service potential have the most malaria cases in the world. This alone is a huge blow to the continent.

In addition, there are malaria-endemic countries battling their way out of conflict, with fragile economies under enormous strain. Poor households that have little money to survive on or to send their children to school, are spending up to $7 per family member per year on prevention, care and treatment. For many, this may constitute up to 10 per cent of their annual income.

For us in Africa, the fight against malaria is an economic, social, ethical and political imperative.

It is for this reason that African heads of state and government are putting its people first. The African Leaders Malaria Alliance (Alma) views Malaria as a ferocious public enemy that must be fought until it is eliminated.

Alma has determined that in order to do this effectively the continent and its partners must achieve 5 Rs.

First we must Regroup. In Abuja in 2000, African heads of state and government agreed on a set of targets to be met by the end of this year.

The UN secretary general reinforced this in 2008, when member states resolved to achieve universal coverage with effective interventions by the end of 2010. In September last year, African leaders formed Alma. The heads of state appreciated the progress that had been made, with the support of development partners.

They felt there was enough evidence to prove that the targets were attainable. Zanzibar for example has already reached universal coverage. Alma met again in Addis Ababa in February to assess progress and identify challenges and solutions.

Second we must be Resolute. There are many competing development priorities. The dire food, fuel and financial crises that battered the globe and Africa have taken their toll, but effective control of malaria will free much needed resources to address the pressing challenges of development. Prioritising malaria means putting people and development first.

Third we must Rebuild. Africa’s health systems have suffered greatly in the past decade, as our attention was drawn away from integrated primary health care models. In Addis Ababa, the Alma heads of state and government called on partners to reach out with the technical support required to create robust integrated, comprehensive health management information systems.

Fourth we must make Resources available. Both national and international efforts have to be marshalled for the herculean task ahead.

National governments must move closer to the 15 per cent budget allocation to health that heads of state and government committed to in Abuja. Development partners must protect their investment in Africa by helping us defeat the disease. The fruits of their labours and our toil will then be more achievable in every other development area.

Fifth Africa’s people deserve Results. Universal coverage with indoor residual spraying (IRS), long lasting insecticide-treated nets (LLINs), rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs), and artemisinin combination therapy (ACT) are going to deliver the millennium development goal of reducing child mortality for our countries. In malaria -endemic countries, up to 40 per cent of deaths in under five-year-olds can be from malaria.

Delays in vital drugs and other anti-malaria adjuncts reaching those who need them have been reduced by the removal of taxes and tariffs. The banning of monotherapies means we have treatments that work. This saves lives and protects man hours spent in productive work.

“The malaria decade” ends this year. Therefore we must sustain the investments and gains we have made every year after. Alma hopes for an Africa free of malaria, a serious impediment to development and the well-being of Africa’s people.

This Day

Rwanda president takes stage at Tribeca Film Fest

By JOHN HEILPRIN (AP)

NEW YORK — The tall thin man strode to the stage at the Tribeca Film Festival and fielded a few questions about one of the main subjects of the documentary just screened — himself: Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

The president's star turn Monday night before a chic crowd in lower Manhattan was less surprising considering it was the world premiere of a documentary that portrays Kagame, who is up for re-election in August, in a heroic light. After the 88-minute film, "Earth Made of Glass," ended, filmgoers welcomed him with a standing ovation.

"When you want reconciliation and justice at the same time, they tend to conflict," he replied to one question. "That's what happens every day in our country".

Kagame also pledged to continue cooperating with his nation's former sworn enemy, Congo. The two nations teamed up for a joint operation last year against the extremist Rwandan Hutu rebels who fled to eastern Congo, after Kagame's rebel army ended the 1994 genocide.

Rwanda has, together with neighbor Uganda, twice invaded Congo — in 1996 and 1998. During each invasion Rwanda said it was chasing down the Rwandan militias. The second invasion sparked a five-year, six-nation war in Congo.

Recently, Congo President Joseph Kabila told the United Nations he wants the world body to start withdrawing all peacekeeping troops, ahead of Kabila's re-election bid next year. Kabila's government, however, has since struggled to assert its control in the east and has had difficulty building effective institutions and integrating former fighters into a national army.

"I wish the Congolese the best for their country," Kagame said. "We are trying to work with the Congolese. ... We are going to continue working together in our region to have peace, not only for Rwanda but for Congo as well, and for the rest of the region".

Kagame's Tutsi rebels defeated the Hutu extremists after the 1994 genocide in which half a million people, mostly Tutsis and moderate Hutus, died. Critics of his government argue, however, that the ruling party has used the concept of genocide ideology to discredit detractors and defeat political opponents.

For years, Kagame has sparred with France over an alleged French role in the genocide, with Rwanda's government and genocide survivor organizations often accusing France of training and arming the Hutu militias and former government troops who led the genocide.

In 1998, a French parliamentary panel absolved France of responsibility in the slaughter. But in February, Nicolas Sarkozy became the first French president to visit Rwanda since the genocide and said those responsible for the killings should be found and punished, including any who might be residing in France.

Filmmaker Deborah Scranton's documentary prominently adopts the view of Kagame's 2008 report into what she calls "the French government's hidden complicity" in the genocide.

Also interwoven into the film is the gripping story of how 47-year-old Jean Pierre Sagahutu, a fixer for international news media organizations, tracked down the villagers who years earlier had permitted his father, a physician, to be killed and buried naked in a field beside a road block, simply for being an ethnic Tutsi.

Sagahutu, who takes his children along on parts of the journey, exposing them to the difficulties of balancing justice with peace and forgiveness, also was on hand for the film's premiere.

The film grew out of a chance dinner conversation two years ago between Scranton and Kagame, who she said had "inspired within me and my whole crew an incredible vision of a path to peace that I think the world could take a lesson from".

Associated Press

Israeli soldiers reprimanded over Palestinian deaths

By Kevin Flower, CNN

Jerusalem (CNN) -- The Palestinian prime minister's office on Tuesday slammed Israel for giving only a "symbolic" punishment to soldiers involved in last month's shooting death of four Palestinians.

"The punishment was very symbolic while the crime was really horrible," said Ghassan Khatib, a spokesman for Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

"We hoped that the Israeli army would punish those soldiers in a way that will deter others from doing the same," Khatib said. "In fact this kind of escaping from punishment will encourage other soldiers who are incited by right-wing leaders everyday to repeat such crimes".

Israel's top military commander said earlier Tuesday that a sergeant was dismissed and three officers were reprimanded over the incident.

Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi concluded "that the events could have ended differently from a professional standpoint, and the difficult results could have been prevented" and that "disciplinary measures must be taken against some of the officers involved," the military said.

A brigade, battalion and a deputy company commander were reprimanded for the conduct of forces under their command, the statement said.

The four Palestinians died in two separate incidents in the West Bank.

The first incident happened on March 20 when two Palestinian teens were shot at a West Bank demonstration.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights accused the Israeli soldiers of intentionally firing at the two "from close range," killing them "in cold blood." The group said the two teens were not involved in protesting when they were shot.

In its probe, the Israeli military called the demonstration a "violent riot" and said one of its soldiers testified that he "shot a number of rubber bullets toward the rioters" and that one Palestinian was identified as being hit. The Israeli military said it could not be determined whether live fire was used and that military police were still investigating the incident.

In the second incident, which took place on March 21 near the West Bank village of Awarta, two Palestinian men were shot by Israeli soldiers while being stopped for a security check.

After the shooting, the head of the Palestinian medical relief services in the area, Dr. Ghassan Hamadan, told CNN the two Palestinians were both shot in the back. One had four gunshot wounds in the back and one in the shoulder, he said

According to the Israeli investigation of the incident, one of the Palestinian men "began acting suspiciously and finally assaulted one of the soldiers with a bottle."

The probe determined "one of the soldiers felt his life was in danger and fired at the Palestinian".

"At that point, the second suspect, who was a few meters away, raised his hand holding a sharp object, causing the soldier to believe, that he, too, was attempting to attack," the statement said. "As a result the soldier fired and killed the Palestinian".

Residents in the area dispute this version of events and said the two men were innocent farm workers. The four killings over the course of one weekend brought strong condemnation from Palestinian officials at the time, and the results of the investigation were being watched closely.

In an interview with CNN earlier this month, Fayyad said, "it doesn't look like the narrative on this from the Israeli military early on stands up to the facts" and "escalation and violence from the Israeli side is totally unacceptable".

CNN

Journalist shield law may not halt iPhone probe

by Declan McCullagh and Greg Sandoval

The criminal investigation into Apple's errant iPhone prototype took a new twist this week, when Gawker Media claimed that the warrant used by police to search an editor's home was invalid.

It's clear that federal and state law generally provides journalists--even gadget bloggers--with substantial protections by curbing searches of their employees' workspaces. But it's equally clear that journalists suspected of criminal activity do not benefit from the legal shields that newspapers and broadcast media have painstakingly erected over the last half-century.

No less an authority than a California appeals court has ruled that the state's shield law does not prevent reporters from being forced, under penalty of contempt, to testify about criminal activity, if they're believed to be involved in it.

California law does not prevent "newspersons from testifying about criminal activity in which they have participated or which they have observed," the court ruled in a 1975 case involving the Fresno Bee.

Eugene Volokh, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles who teaches First Amendment law, says that court decision--the case is called Rosato v. Superior Court(PDF)--means that California's state shield law "wouldn't apply to subpoenas or searches for evidence of such criminal activity."

Translated: If Gizmodo editors are, in fact, a target of a criminal probe into the possession or purchase of stolen property, the search warrant served on editor Jason Chen on Friday appears valid. A blog post at NYTimes.com on Monday, citing unnamed law enforcement officials, said charges could be filed against the buyer of the prototype 4G phone--meaning Gizmodo.

In the Fresno Bee case, the judges noted that the attorney-client privilege, the physician-patient privilege, and the psychotherapist-patient privilege are circumscribed during criminal investigations of lawyers, doctors, and therapists. Each of those privileges is stronger than the limited immunity that California extends to journalists.

Editors at Gizmodo, part of Gawker Media's blog network, last week said they paid $5,000 for what they believed to be a prototype of a future iPhone 4G. The story said the phone was accidentally left at a bar in Redwood City, Calif., last month by an Apple software engineer and found by someone who contacted Gizmodo, which had previously indicated that it was willing to pay significant sums for unreleased Apple products. Other gadget blogs were contacted too, including Engadget, and the criminal probe appears to be widening.

That criminal investigations can surmount journalist protection laws should come as no surprise. "It would be frivolous to assert--and no one does in these cases--that the First Amendment, in the interest of securing news or otherwise, confers a license on either the reporter or his news sources to violate valid criminal laws," the U.S. Supreme Court has said. "Although stealing documents or private wiretapping could provide newsworthy information, neither reporter nor source is immune from conviction for such conduct, whatever the impact on the flow of news".

Under a California law dating back to 1872, any person who finds lost property and knows who the owner is likely to be--but "appropriates such property to his own use"--is guilty of theft. There are no exceptions for journalists. In addition, a second state law says any person who knowingly receives property that has been obtained illegally can be imprisoned for up to one year.

Knowing that an item probably belonged to someone else has led to convictions before. "It is not necessary that the defendant be told directly that the property was stolen. Knowledge may be circumstantial and deductive," a California appeals court has previously ruled. "Possession of stolen property, accompanied by an unsatisfactory explanation of the possession or by suspicious circumstances, will justify an inference that the property was received with knowledge it had been stolen". (California law says lost property valued at $100 or more must be turned over to police)

Stephen Wagstaffe, chief deputy district attorney for San Mateo County, did not return phone calls. CNET was thefirst to report the existence of an investigation last Friday.

The journalists-accused-of-crime loophole

A federal newsroom search law also does not protect journalists accused of a crime. The 1980 Privacy Protection Act says, in general, it is unlawful for state, local, or federal police to search newsrooms. Criminal proceedings targeting reporters are the exception.

Congress enacted the PPA after police obtained a warrant to search the Stanford Daily's newsroom, and the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that the search was constitutional. The purpose was, in that heady post-Watergate era, to force the use of less intrusive subpoenas instead of search warrants--while allowing searches in which journalists were the ones suspected of the crime.

The PPA does limit police searches for journalists' "work product materials" and "documentary materials." But both terms are defined to exclude anything, such as a computer or phone, that "has been used as the means of committing a criminal offense." Prosecutors looking to charge Gizmodo employees with a crime--and, again, that has not happened--would surely say that the MacBooks and other seized property were used to illegally obtain what's being called the "4G" iPhone.

In another twist, a subsequent Supreme Court court decision calls into question the constitutionality of the entire PPA, according to Volokh, the UCLA law professor. The justices ruled in 1997 that the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which trumped local ordinances, "contradicts vital principles necessary to maintain separation of powers and the federal balance." Volokh says a federal law limiting the authority of local prosecutors to obtain search warrants might fall into the same category.

"If I were prosecuting, I'd go after (any blogger who bought the phone) vigorously," said Michael Cardoza, a prominent San Francisco defense attorney and former prosecutor. "I'd fight them tooth and nail to see that they wouldn't get protection under the shield law. I'd play hardball, in this case. They didn't find the phone as part of their reporting but instead bought property that they knew or should have known wasn't the property of the seller".

To be sure, the California newsroom search law does not explicitly permit searches of journalists suspected of a crime. And no court appears to have ruled directly on this topic.

But state courts have spent decades whittling away at protections for journalists in other areas, ruling that journalists can be required to testify in court when they're party to a lawsuit, that they can be forced to disclose information when they're not directly engaged in news gathering, and that they can be compelled to reveal the names of attorneys who leaked sensitive documents about murders. (Timothy Alger, now Google's deputy general counsel for litigation, wrote a 1991 law review article describing some of these exceptions. Its subtitle: "The Illusory Newsgatherer's Privilege in California")

Orin Kerr, who teaches computer crime law at George Washington University, told CNET that he wouldn't be surprised if a state court follows suit and "read an implied exception for journalists involved in crimes."

Declan McCullagh writes about the intersection between law and technology for CNET and can be reached at Declan.McCullagh@cbs.com. Greg Sandoval writes about digital media for CNET and can be reached at Greg.Sandoval@cbs.com

CNetNews