Despite the joy that greeted independence, South Sudan must still overcome development obstacles of unprecedented scale. Photograph: Pete Muller/AP
In South Sudan, the party is over and the majority of the world's media has moved on. Once the novelty factor of the world's newest country has faded, what comes next is the hard task of building a nation virtually from scratch. The scale is daunting. The education ministry barely has a functioning computer. Few in the embryonic civil service have an education beyond primary school. A new currency is being launched in the next few weeks, but no one knows if there are reserves to back it up.
On Friday, the NGO Save the Children brought out a report highlighting the most pressing issues. South Sudan has the world's worst maternal mortality rate, a fifth of all children are acutely malnourished and only 10% of children complete primary school. The country represents the biggest development challenge in the world.
As if that was not enough, Save the Children points out that, six years after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, there isn't even peace in South Sudan. Coverage around independence covered the conflict in border areas such as South Kordofan and Abyei, but, between January and May, nearly 200 "conflict incidents" were recorded across the country. Thousands of people were killed and more than 100,000 displaced. Most people still live in constant daily threat of violence. The greatest anxiety is that conflict with the north will be replaced by internal conflict as tensions grow between the different ethnic groupings that make up South Sudan. Already, there is a perception that the Dinka dominate the Sudan People's Liberation Army and the embryonic government. It doesn't help that 160,000 members of the army are still on the government payroll.
Save the Children's top recommendation is to urge the government to establish some "quick wins". Evidence of a functioning state, in the form of a school or clinic being built, will help to generate trust and confidence in the new nation and might allay incipient grievances against other ethnic groups. Expectations are very high and some regions are already frustrated by the lack of any sign of the peace dividend. People need to see things happening.
The report was launched at a roundtable at Lambeth Palace on Friday, a reminder that the most effective civil society institutions in South Sudan over the last 40-odd years have been churches. They have played a crucial advocacy role to the international community through their links with the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church. They have also fulfilled a vital role in providing basic services such as health and education.
But what happens now to the church networks which have been built up, and which have been so effective in the absence of a functioning state? Will they step aside to make room for developing state structures, or will they hold their ground? Since much donor funding has in the past been channelled through churches and non-governmental organisations, this is a crucial question. Donors well know that the most urgent priority is to strengthen and build up the new state. Does that mean diversion of funding away from churches? At Lambeth there was a very polite battle going on over the future structure of South Sudan.
Three more key issues emerged in the Lambeth conversation. First, 90% of this new country's revenue comes from oil, and the estimates for how long the oil will last vary from eight to 22 years depending on rates of extraction. The best guess is that South Sudan has about 10 to 12 years to diversify its economy. That is a frighteningly short period of time.
Second, in the six years since the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, $7bn of oil revenue has been unaccounted for. Just in the last few weeks, the new South Sudanese government has signed a fresh oil deal - but with whom and for how much, no one knows. Transparency and accountability for natural resources is already woefully inadequate; all the talk of ringfencing some of this revenue for cash transfers or health and education will remain pie in the sky unless this changes fast.
Third, the donors' record is already looking lamentable. Unlike other countries emerging from conflict, such as Sierra Leone and Rwanda, there are no long-term pooled funding commitments in place, which makes any strategic planning difficult. Current funding is due to run out at the end of this year and there is still no plan for what will follow. Nor has the track record been good; the World Bank had a pooled fund of $800m to spend at the time of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, but less than a third has been used. For example, only 12 of the 114 schools it promised have been built.
Part of the problem is that South Sudan struggles to meet donors' criteria for reporting mechanisms. That's not helped by the current lack of international co-ordination on a pooled funding mechanism; the education ministry, for example, is dealing with 17 separate bilateral donors as well as countless NGOs.
What faces South Sudan is daunting: it needs help on the scale of a Marshall Plan for one country. It's an unprecedented development challenge and, so far, there has been more goodwill than action or sense of urgency.
Picasso's 1943 "Buste de Femme" is on loan from the Van Abbemuseum in
Eindhoven, Holland.
Organizers said they had to overcome a lack of reliable transport and several
Israeli checkpoints along the way.
The art director of the Palestinian
academy, Khalid Horani, said it took two years to arrange the loan.
He said the painting's journey was "a story full of details and difficulties."
The small art school in Ramallah put in the loan request in early 2010.
Normally, such inter-museum exchanges are routine and take about six months
to coordinate.
"Nothing is normal over here," Mr Horani said. "We planned to have an art work
here, but found ourselves going through all the political complications."
Mr Horani said the painting was flown from Amsterdam to Tel Aviv and was then
escorted to Ramallah by an Israeli security company before going on display.
He said the uprisings in the Arab world also postponed the artwork's
delivery.
The painting is the most valuable and prestigious Western artwork ever shown
in the West Bank.
It is the centerpiece of the "Picasso In Palestine" exhibit in Ramallah aimed
at introducing Western art to the Palestinians.
The 39 by 31 inch oil-on-canvas work - a cubist deconstruction of a woman's
face, dominated by gray hues - is the Dutch museum's most valuable piece of
art. It has traveled before to Sao Paolo, Brazil.
For the Palestinian academy, however, it's more than just a chance to host a
renowned painting.
Directors hope the loan will encourage other institutions to lend artworks to
the West Bank.
"Picasso in Palestine is part of a wider development in which a typical modern
art collection tries to come to terms with the social and the cultural
changes taking place around us," said Charles Esche, director of the Van
Abbemuseum.
"Our Picasso will be changed by its journey to Ramallah. It will take on extra
meaning, and the story will remain a part of the history of the painting."
Two men accused of murdering British honeymooners in Antigua
were in possession of the couple's mobile phone hours after the shooting,
the court heard.
The newly-weds, from Pontardawe, South Wales, were staying at the five star,
f330-a-night Cocos Hotel when intruders broke into their cottage in the
early hours of July 27, 2008 in a botched robbery.
Nearly three years later Kaniel Martin, 23, and Avie Howell, 20, were brought
to the Caribbean island's High Court, 10 miles from the scene of the
shootings, to stand trial for the murders.
They are also charged with the murder of Woneta Anderson Walker, 43, a
Jamaican shopkeeper.
Anthony Armstrong, the island's director of public prosecutions, told the
court: "The manner in which these three people were killed was almost
identical. All three were shot in the head.
"They were shot with a single bullet, no more no less. All three victims
were killed using the same firearm."
He said the way the Mullanys were shot ruled out that the attackers were
acting in self defence, that it was an accident, or that they were provoked.
Mr Armstrong said the defendants were "both responsible for these three
deaths" regardless of who pulled the trigger.
He added: "Shortly after the shooting of Ben and Catherine Mullany there
is evidence they had in their possession Mr Mullany's stolen phone."
Cellular phone, ballistic, DNA, and medical evidence would all prove the
defendants' guilt, he said.
Mrs Mullany, 31, a qualified paediatrician, died instantly in the attack.
Her 31-year-old husband, a student physiotherapist, was placed on a life
support machine before being flown home to the Morriston Hospital in
Swansea.
The former South Yorkshire Police officer who had also served in the British
Army, was pronounced dead a week after the shooting.
He and his wife were buried at the church where they had married in Wales.
Martin, of Tindale Road, Antigua, and Howell, of Golden Grove, Antigua, were
charged three weeks after the shootings on August 18, 2008.
The two men have since been held in a ramshackle prison in the Antiguan
capital St John's.
They appeared in court with heir hair identically dreadlocked and dressed in
blue jeans, training shoes and open necked shirts. Each man stood in an open
wood panelled dock and answered not guilty to all three murder charges.
The case in the former British colony was listed as "Queen vs Avie Howell
and Kaniel Martin" and the judge, Mr Justice Richard Floyd, sat beneath
a portrait of a young Queen Elizabeth II in the cavernous court room.
Selecting an impartial jury on the island, which has a population of 87,000,
had always been likely to prove a problem and a parade of potential jurors
came and went.
Five of the original jurors selected to try the case told the judge they knew
members of Martin's family.
One of them went to school with Martin, and another went to school with his
father.
A sixth juror was a close friend of Howell's parents and a seventh stepped
down because they knew one of the witnesses.
Three people called to replace them also knew witnesses in the case and had to
be excused.
Yet another turned out to know no fewer than three people involved in the
case.
In all, 11 people had to be removed as jurors because of connections to the
defendants or some of the 70 potential witnesses.
A jury of eight men and four women was eventually sworn. Mr Armstrong told
them to be "fair and fearless" and to use "old fashioned
common sense." Mr Mullany's parents, Cynlais and Marilyn, and Mrs
Mullany's parents, Dai and Rachel, were not in court.
Speaking at a meeting of the Palestinian
Liberation Organisation and his Fatah party, he said: "I say that if
negotiations have failed we will go to the United Nations for membership.
"Until now there have been no new incentives to return to negotiations."
The meeting, in the West Bank city of Ramallah where Mr Abbas has his
headquarters, was called to make preparations for the UN campaign.
Mr Abbas had indicated that the Palestinians would be willing to give up the
September bid for recognition of a Palestinian state if long dormant peace
talks with Israel could be resurrected.
While many states have indicated they will support the bid, including France
and Britain, it has faced strong opposition from Israel, the US and Germany,
who said any progress toward a Palestinian state must be made through a
negotiated agreement.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said that granting UN membership to a
Palestinian state could actually help bring the sides back to the
negotiating table.
"We do not think that there is a contradiction between the two demands,"
he said. "This measure is inevitable if (the international community)
wants to preserve the peace process."
Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians ground to a halt in September
2010 when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to renew a
partial freeze on settlement construction in the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinians then refused to return to talks as long as Israel built on
land they want for a future state.
Instead, they decided to go to the UN General Assembly in September to ask for
membership and recognition of a Palestinian state in the borders that
existed before the 1967 Six-Day War.
One of the stumbling blocks to a renewal of talks has been a recent unity deal
between Abbas's Fatah party and Gaza's Islamist Hamas rulers after years of
enmity.
Israel has refused to deal with Hamas, or any government in which it is a
partner, for as long as it calls for Israel's destruction.
The unity deal has also run into domestic difficulties, with the two
Palestinian sides failing to agree on a prime minister for an interim
government.
Hamas has vociferously rejected Abbas's candidate, incumbent Prime Minister
Salam Fayyad.
Talks between Abbas and Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal on a new Palestinian
cabinet, set for Cairo last week, were indefinitely postponed.
But Abbas indicated on Sunday he was not giving up on reconciliation and would
be prepared to go to the Gaza Strip.
"For a long time I said I would go to Gaza, and now I say I am still
determined to go to Gaza and it will be a surprise for all," he said.
Men on motorcycles targeted drinkers relaxing in private beer gardens in the
majority Muslim town of Maiduguri, throwing grenades or improvised
explosives into at least two bars, a police source said.
"There were men on the back of motorbikes who drove past and attacked,
before roaring off," the official said at the police headquarters in
Kano, northern Nigeria's
main city.
"Two pubs were hit, maybe more. Many people have been killed, 25 people
at least." Another 30 were wounded, according to reports.
Suspicion immediately fell on Boko Haram, a formerly obscure militant group
who have in the past demanded an absolute adherence to Islamic sharia law in
Nigeria's north.
The organisation - whose name translates as "modern education is
forbidden" - carried out a suicide bomb attack on Nigeria's national
police headquarters in Abuja, the capital, with agents trained by
al-Qaeda-linked terrorists in Somalia.
That raid, a fortnight ago, killed 22 people. Last year, Boko Haram targeted
Nigerians celebrating the country's independence day celebrations, and it
was behind a series of other attacks on police and army barracks.
Nobody immediately claimed responsibility for Sunday's attacks, but if Boko
Haram planned them, it would be the first time it singled out people
contravening Muslim laws.
Drinking alcohol is illegal in most places in northern Nigeria, where
provinces are ruled according to a mixture of secular federal legislation,
and local Islamic rules.
But many small pubs are allowed to operate, with authorities turning a blind
eye.
