Winner of Disputed Nigerian Presidential Election Denies Fraud

By Nico Colombant Abuja 23 April 2007

Download

Nigeria's ruling party, whose candidate won the deeply flawed presidential election on Saturday, denied the ballot was rigged. The opposition candidates, however, have rejected the results of the election, which many outside observers said fell short of fairness. VOA's Nico Colombant reports from Abuja.

President-Elect Yar'Adua denies he won flawed vote, 23 Apr 2007

Before a champagne celebration at his campaign headquarters in the capital, President-elect Umaru Yar'Adua said the fairness of the elections cannot be judged by outsiders' measures.

He was responding to the State Department which called Saturday's election flawed.

"It is in respect to which reference point? Is it with respect to the reference point of American elections? Or is it with respect to the 1999 elections or is it in respect to the 1983 elections in Nigeria or to the 2003 elections? So when people make statements, or even organizations, or even the U.S. State Department, they should qualify such statements and we know the reference point from which they are making their statement against," said Umaru Yar'Adua. "Once you know the reference point, then it will actually make sense."

Many Nigerians had cards, but could not vote

Earlier, he rejected accusations by national Nigerian observers and opposition parties that the ruling party had rigged the vote in its favor.

"That is a conclusion which I think is a sweeping conclusion and an allegation which I do not think is based on facts," he said.

International observers have said the vote fell short of regional standards and that election authorities had failed Nigerians.

Earlier Monday, the election commission awarded the ruling party candidate over 24 million votes, nearly four times more than for his nearest rival, former military ruler, Muhammadu Buhari. No number for voter turnout was reported, nor any precise breakdown of the voting.

Women voting in Abuja, one of the rare places voting went well

In many opposition areas, voting never got under way or when it did ballot papers were insufficient for the number of voters.

In areas where voting took place, observers and journalists were witnesses to a number of irregularities, including underage voting, ballot box stuffing and mass thumb printing of unused ballot papers by ruling party supporters.

The party for the third place candidate, Vice President Atiku Abubakar, issued a statement late Monday, saying the results will not stand, but did not give details of how this would happen.

Some have suggested public protests, others court challenges, while some say the national assembly should reconvene and call for new elections. In the northern city of Kano, protesters lit bonfires as mark of their discontent.

Outgoing President Olusegun Obasanjo who was prevented from changing the constitution to seek a third elected term is to hand over power to his successor on May 29.

Yeltsin Leaves Behind Mixed Legacy

By Andre de Nesnera Washington 23 April 2007

Download

Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin has died in Moscow at the age of 76. In this report from Washington, Senior Correspondent André de Nesnera looks at the Russian leader's legacy.

Russian President Boris Yeltsin waves as he arrives at Helsinki airport (File photo - 20 Mar 1997)

Western experts on Russia use one word to describe Boris Yeltsin's presidency from 1991 to 1999 - "contradictory."

Marshal Goldman is a Russia expert at Harvard University.

"The positive side, he helped bring about the collapse of the Soviet system, of communism - he brought in democracy, he brought in the market system," said Marshal Goldman. "But the negative side, from a Russian point of view, if you were Russian - under his administration, Russia lost its status as a superpower."

Few can forget the sight of Yeltsin - newly elected president of Russia - standing atop a tank in

Boris Yeltsin atop a tank (Aug 1991

, declaring illegal an attempted hardline coup against Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev.

Several months later - in December - Gorbachev resigned, bringing to an end the existence of the Soviet Union.

But in October 1993, President Yeltsin stunned the world by ordering the army to shell the parliament building occupied by anti-Yeltsin forces, including lawmakers.

Dale Herspring, a Russia expert with Kansas State University, says Yeltsin had no choice.

"He was working with a parliament that was pretty-much communist dominated and what he did was completely illegal but he felt that he had to destroy them in order to get communism out," said Dale Herspring.

Boris Yeltsin (file photo)

Experts say Yeltsin did introduce many aspects of democracy such as multi-party elections, private property and the right to free speech. But they point out that the single military action against the parliament tarnished his image as a democratic leader.

Analysts say on the economic front, Yeltsin's record was also mixed.

Robert Legvold, a Russia expert with Columbia University, says the Russian president wanted to introduce economic reforms to break with the Soviet past.

"But it was not well-designed and the West was not terribly effective, including the United States, in providing sound advice to him on how he might go about something that he didn't understand," said Legvold. "And so in effect he did smash the soviet economic machinery, but he put in its place a kind of ruthless, even crony - and in the public mind - discredited form of capitalism which has since then created basic problems of legitimacy for the economic system that the Russians have."

Legvold says corruption was not a new phenomenon either in the Soviet Union or in Russia. But he says it reached unprecedented heights in the Yeltsin era because of the nature of the reforms - privatization of state-owned enterprises.

"He continually said that his regime needs to fight against it [corruption], just as the Putin regime has said they must fight against it - but they've never found an effective way to do it," he said.

Experts say history will remember Boris Yeltsin as a leader who fluctuated between democratic tendencies and authoritarian actions. They say Russia under his watch was a far more open place than it was under soviet times. But they also say Yeltsin's hand-picked successor - Vladimir Putin - is reverting back to authoritarian rule to correct what the current Russian government believes was the chaos and uncertainty of the Yeltsin years.

Legislators Agree on Iraq Funding Bill; Vote Later this Week

By Dan Robinson Capitol Hill 23 April 2007

Download

House and Senate negotiators have agreed on a military funding bill containing a timetable for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq. VOA's Dan Robinson reports, approval of a conference report for the Iraq-Afghanistan measure moves it to the full House and later the Senate for approval, but the legislation still faces a certain veto by President Bush.

From left: Representatives David Obey, Rahm Emanuel and Nancy Pelosi, 23 Apr 2007

The meeting in a basement room of the U.S. Capitol was relatively short, mainly because the fate of the legislation, under the veto threat of the president, has already been assured.

With $95 billion of the $120 billion in the bill going for military needs and the rest for various domestic purposes, the legislation now goes to the House floor, and then to the Senate, and from there to the president.

Congressman David Obey began Monday's meeting by addressing the president's threat of a veto, saying that the real significance will be in sending a clear message about the scrutiny the president's war funding requests will get from the Democratic-controlled Congress:

"What is important is not so much the exact language of whatever instrument it is we send to the president," said David Obey. "What is important is the unity that we express in doing so, so that people understand that we are going to be coming back at this issue again and again."

Republicans focused mainly on the need to approve final bill quickly, and get it to the president so he can veto it, returning the measure to Capitol Hill where it will have to be revised.

Congressman Jerry Lewis also conveyed the Republican contention that Democrats are attempting to tie the hands of the president and military commanders:

"This legislation ought to focus on our troops," said Jerry Lewis. "It ought to focus on providing those in harm's way with the resources they need to complete their mission successfully. It ought to respect, not micro-manage our combatant commanders in whom we place the ultimate responsibility for prosecuting military actions."

The measure that goes to the president, probably by week's end, would set a goal of a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops to begin no later than October 1 of this year, with a non-mandatory goal of removing all combat forces from Iraq by April 1 of 2008.

House Democrats agreed to adopt Senate language that is softer than a bill the House approved many weeks ago that proposed a mandatory withdrawal by October 2008.

The Democratic plan would largely limit U.S. troops to training Iraqi security forces, protecting remaining U.S. forces, and conducting targeted counter-terrorism operations.

President Bush makes a statement on the war in Iraq in White House, 23 Apr 2007. With him is Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the multinational force in Iraq

President Bush met Monday at the White House with the commander of the Iraq war, General David Petraeus, and repeated his contention that setting a withdrawal timetable would be disastrous for both nations.

"An artificial timetable of withdrawal would say to an enemy, 'just wait them out.' It would say to the Iraqis, 'do not do hard things necessary to achieve our objectives,' and it would be discouraging for our troops," said President Bush.

The president acknowledged that Iraq continues to be plagued by violence, including what he termed "horrific bombings," but asserts that the military build-up of U.S. forces referred to many as a surge, is showing some signs of progress.

Harry Reid

But in a Washington speech Monday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the president is wrong, and reserved some of his sharpest criticism for the Iraqi government:

"Despite our surge in troops, and spending, they have failed to take meaningful steps toward achieving them [benchmarks for progress]," noted Harry Reid. "Militias have not disbanded and continue to cause terror and now the Iraqi government, once the Bush administration's greatest pride, stands on the brink of chaos."

Without enough support to override a veto, Democrats will have to recraft the measure to make it acceptable for the president, and ensure that funds can move to military forces on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In addition to setting the goal of withdrawing from Iraq, the legislation in its current form also limits the amount of time troops can be deployed to Iraq, and requires that military units be fully battle-ready, but allows the president to waive these requirements if he provides justifications to Congress.

VOASE0423_Science In the News

23 April 2007

Tuberculosis Can Be Cured, But It Must Be Treated the Right Way
If TB is not handled correctly, it can become resistant to drugs -- a serious problem in many countries. Second of two reports.

Download
Download

VOICE ONE:

This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. I’m Barbara Klein.

VOICE TWO:

And I’m Steve Ember. On our program this week, we tell about the disease tuberculosis. It is one of the world's leading infectious diseases. We also tell about efforts to fight tuberculosis in several countries.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

A nurse attends to a TB patient at a government hospital in Gauhati, India

The World Health Organization says one-third of the world’s population is infected with the bacteria that cause tuberculosis. That is about two billion people. One in ten people infected with the TB bacteria will become sick with tuberculosis at some time during their life. The WHO says almost nine million people became sick with the disease in two thousand five. About one million six hundred thousand people died of the disease that year. However, the WHO also says almost sixty percent of TB cases around the world are discovered. A large majority of them are cured.

VOICE TWO:

Most people infected with the bacteria never develop active TB. However, people with weak body defense systems often develop the disease. TB can damage a person’s lungs or other parts of the body and cause serious sickness.

The disease is spread by people who have active, untreated TB bacteria in their throat or lungs. The bacteria are spread into the air when infected people talk or expel air suddenly.

Most TB cases can be cured with medicines. Successful treatment of TB requires close cooperation among patients, doctors and other health care workers. The World Health Organization has a five-step program to guarantee that TB patients take their medicine correctly. The program is called Directly Observed Treatment, Short-course, or DOTS. Directly observed means that patients must go to local health centers every day or several times a week to take their medicines. Health care workers watch to make sure patients take their medicine every day. Full treatment usually lasts from six to nine months to destroy all signs of the bacteria.

VOICE ONE:

It is very important for patients to be educated about the disease and its treatment. Sometimes patients fail to finish taking the medicine ordered by their doctors. Experts say this is because some patients feel better after only two to four weeks of treatment and stop taking their medicine. This can lead to the TB bacteria becoming stronger, resistant to drugs, and more difficult to treat.

This kind of TB is called multi-drug resistant tuberculosis or MDR-TB. The World Health Organization says MDR-TB is one hundred times more costly to treat than the other form of the disease.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

The World Health Organization says most deaths from tuberculosis are in developing countries. More than half of all deaths from TB are in Asia. And half of all new cases are in six Asian countries. They are Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan and the Philippines.

More than twenty-five percent of the world's multi-drug resistant tuberculosis cases are in Asia. Patients with MDR-TB must take more powerful and costly drugs for more than two years. Some patients experience side effects from the drugs.

VOICE ONE:

Experts say the fight against TB and drug resistance has been successful in Hong Kong. In the past fifty years, Hong Kong has reduced cases of TB by almost ninety-eight percent. In the nineteen fifties, the British colonial government built TB hospitals and began giving vaccines to children. The government also replaced poor, unclean housing with modern public housing.

Today, the Chinese government gives anti-TB drugs free of cost in public health centers. Health workers visit patients who fail to go to health centers to get their medicines. So Hong Kong has very low levels of drug-resistant TB.

VOICE TWO:

The World Health Organization is improving its efforts against TB in China. Almost one million four hundred thousand people there develop active TB each year. Almost twenty-five percent of the world's multi-drug resistant cases are in China. The WHO says the situation is now improving. It says half of China's provinces have put the DOTS treatment method into effect. This has resulted in about a fifty percent reduction in deaths from TB.

The WHO has also set a goal for nations in the Western Pacific area. They are being urged to cut by half infection rates and deaths from TB within three years. Doctors say this goal may not be possible because the disease AIDS is a serious problem in the Western Pacific. Other problems are poverty and lack of money for public health.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

In Africa, more than three million people are living with TB. Five hundred thousand people there die each year from the disease. The number of TB victims is rising quickly in Africa. This is mainly because of the virus that causes AIDS. The virus weakens the body's ability to fight disease.

Drug-resistant TB is a serious problem in South Africa. Sizwe Hospital in the city of Johannesburg treats only people with MDR-TB. Three thousand new cases of MDR-TB were identified in Johannesburg alone last year. People with this kind of TB have only a fifty percent chance of being cured. Patients must take one painful injection of medicine and as many as twenty-four pills each day. Treatment can take up to two years. The drugs have serious side effects.

VOICE TWO:

Few people survive a new kind of TB, called Extreme Drug-Resistant TB. This disease is resistant to just about every drug known to science.

The National Health Laboratory in Johannesburg tests for drug-resistant TB. Its workers test five hundred samples from patients from all over southern Africa every day. The testing often last several weeks because each bacterium must be tested in several ways. Almost one-fourth of the bacteria tested are found to be drug-resistant. These have to be tested again to show which drugs they resist.

During this time, the patient may be infecting other people. So it is important to find ways to test for the disease more quickly. The laboratory is now carrying out experiments with tests that identify drug-resistant bacteria within two days. This helps health workers quickly identify an infected person and begin treatment.

VOICE ONE:

Patients being treated for MDR-TB are separated from their families, sometimes for years. This causes economic and social problems for patients and family members. The head doctor at Sizwe Hospital says most patients accept treatment and separation. Health workers believe patients with drug-resistant TB should be separated to protect their communities. But human rights activists say this would be a violation of their rights.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

Tuberculosis is a health emergency in Russia. In February, the Russian parliament approved almost three billion dollars to fight infectious diseases such as TB.

Russian studies show that eighty-three of every one hundred thousand people in Russia are infected with TB. Thirty thousand people die of the disease every year. However, the number of people infected is not fully known because officials say not all cases are reported. The WHO official for TB control in Central Asia says education about tuberculosis is lacking. The population does not know much about the disease or how it is treated.

VOICE ONE:

The United Nations says the highest rates of reported infection in Russia are among men between thirty-five and sixty-four years of age. Many of these men are unemployed and drink too much alcohol. Many are former prisoners who are also homeless. So treating these men is difficult. Health experts say tuberculosis spreads easily in prisons. The infection rate in prisons is about twenty times higher than the general population. Drug-resistant TB is also a problem there.

VOICE TWO:

World Health Organization officials say fighting TB in Russia is not just a medical problem but also one of economics and organization. They say government money is now available for health care workers to visit treatment centers to study the care and progress of the disease. There is also more money to train workers and provide equipment for laboratories. Health officials say there is now hope in the fight against TB.

((THEME))

VOICE ONE:

This SCIENCE IN THE NEWS program was written by Shelley Gollust. Brianna Blake was our producer. I’m Barbara Klein.

VOICE TWO:

And I’m Steve Ember. Join us again next week for more news about science in Special English on the Voice of America.

VOASE0423_Agriculture Report

23 April 2007

Officials Hunt for an Explanation of Pet Food Scare
One theory is that ingredients contained a chemical to create appearance of higher protein levels.

Download
Download

This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.

Melamine is an industrial chemical. So how and why did it get into pet food that caused kidney failure in cats and dogs? And what might be the risk to the human food supply? These are questions that food safety investigators in the United States are trying to answer.

Larry Klimes of Idaho holds a photo of his dog, Joey, who died after eating pet food

Tests found melamine in wheat gluten imported from China and used in pet foods. The United States Food and Drug Administration says Chinese officials said the wheat gluten was not meant for pet food. They said it was meant for industrial use.

But an F.D.A. official noted that melamine can make products appear to contain more protein than they truly do. So one theory is that it may have been added to the wheat gluten on purpose.

In addition, the agency says melamine has been found in some pet food products in rice protein concentrate from China. Those products have been withdrawn from market.

And, in another development, the Royal Canin operation in South Africa has recalled products made in its factory in Johannesburg. The company acted on reports of animals dying after eating food made with corn gluten that contained melamine. Royal Canin USA has announced it will no longer use Chinese suppliers for any of its vegetable proteins.

In the United States, pet foods marketed under more than one hundred different names have been withdrawn, since March.

Melamine has also been identified in the urine of pigs at a California farm. State health officials say the melamine is believed to have come from rice protein concentrate in pet food added to animal feed.

Operations at the farm have been halted while further testing is done. But officials said the evidence so far suggested no serious health risk to anyone who ate meat from the pigs.

The F.D.A. says it is looking for any threat to the human food supply. The agency says it is now testing samples from all shipments of rice protein concentrate from China. The agency says it is also testing all shipments of wheat gluten from China.

The pet food scare as well as recent cases of people getting sick from bad food led a subcommittee in the House of Representatives to call a hearing Tuesday. The lawmakers have questions about the ability of the Food and Drug Administration to protect the safety and security of the nation's food supply.

And that's the VOA Special English Agriculture Report. Transcripts and audio files of our reports are available at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Bob Doughty.