Mediaboss Marketing

Libya, which has lost control of its stakes in nine telecommunications companies in sub-Saharan Africa since the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi, is battling to save its last one.

State-owned Libyan Post Telecommunications & Information Technology Co. in February ceased all funding and investment in fixed-line, mobile and internet provider Uganda Telecom Ltd. The company has accused Ugandas revenue authority of seizing funds in UTLs bank account and said it had lost confidence in the governments ability to implement a $48-million turnaround plan that LPTIC was willing to fund.

The Tripoli-based company has called for an emergency shareholder meeting to discuss its 69 percent stake in the Ugandan provider into which it says Libyans invested more than $250 million since 2007. The remaining stake is held by Ugandas government.

Were concerned about nationalization. Unauthorized sale of our shares, Chairman Faisel Gergab said by phone. Ugandan Finance Minister Matia Kasaija said his ministry has taken over management of UTL after it was divorced by our partners. The government hired PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP to audit the company and will take actions on UTL based on the findings, he said.

The uprising in Libya six years ago saw the North African country descend into turmoil and precipitated the unraveling of telecommunications interests across the continent that LPTIC says totaled more than $1 billion. Among them, Libyan stakes in Zambian and Nigerien providers were nationalized, assets liquidated in Rwanda and Ivory Coast, and a Togo agreement was probed for fraud.

Such assets were just left to run themselves, said Abdulla Boulsien, a former director of Libyas pan-African telecoms portfolio LAP Green Network. The reason these assets started crumbling was because there was no plan in the first place, then the Libyan revolution happened.

The telecommunications dispute is emblematic of broader challenges in Libya, where fights between rival governments, feuding militias and a perennial Islamist threat have crippled state institutions. Libya still holds interests in sub-Saharan Africa, including 11 hotels in locations such as Kenya and OiLibya gas stations in 17 countries including Mali, Nigeria, Sudan and Ethiopia.

The most important market news of the day.

Get our markets daily newsletter.

LPTIC said that after it took ownership of the UTL stake from its predecessor LAP Green Network in August 2015, LPTIC appointed Strategy&, a consulting team at PwC, to advise on its responsibilities as the custodian of Libyas international telecommunications assets. It was immediately clear that UTL required a significant turnaround plan to restore profitability and growth, LPTIC said by email.

The Ugandan minister, Kasaija, said in a March 23 interview that UTLs debts total more than 700 billion shillings (about $193 million).

Ugandan State Minister for Finance and Privatization Evelyn Anite wasnt available when Bloomberg called her office three times for subsequent comments. Secretary to the Treasury at the Finance Ministry, Keith Muhakanizi, wasnt available to comment either.

UTL competes in Uganda with the local units ofIndias Bharti Airtel Ltd. and MTN Group Ltd. of South Africa. The telecommunications regulator declined to give rankings or subscriber numbers for UTL, citing competition.

LPTICs chairman said UTL owes the Libyan company more than $62 million. The company has written to the Finance Ministry and detailed monthly working capital losses at UTL of as much as $900,000, according to Gergab.

Gergab said that, should LPTIC recall this debt, UTL would be de facto insolvent. In a letter shown to Bloomberg by Gergab, Anite told him that UTLs going-concern status was entirely dependent on assurances of funding from LPTIC.

Gergab said delays in the long-standing plan to revise a shareholder agreement and revamp UTL are the root cause of the dispute. Ugandan authorities have said the turnaround agreement was pending clearance by the countrys attorney-general, and requested emergency stop-gap funding of $3 million for crucial operations to avoid disruptions, according to correspondence shown by Gergab.

We will not allow the company to collapse, Kasaija said, when explaining the governments intervention.

Follow this link:
Libya Battles to Control Its Last Sub-Saharan Telecoms Stake ... - Bloomberg

SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER

The Hillchopped the headline down to We Need to Learn From Iraq, even though what Gabbard actually said was, We need to learn from Iraq and Libya, questioning not only President George W. Bushs policy in Iraq but the Obama administrations intervention in Syria.

The main thrust of Gabbards email to The Hillis an argument against military intervention. She evidently used the email to lay it out in a clean and simple fashion.

We need to learn from Iraq and Libya wars that were propagated as necessary to relieve human suffering, but actually increased human suffering many times over, shewrote.

I and thousands of my brothers- and sisters-in-arms went to war in Iraq based on false intelligence and lies from our leaders our president, military, and political leaders. We should have been skeptical then, and we werent, argued Gabbard, an officer in the Hawaiian Army National Guard who served two tours of duty in Iraq.

She also criticized President Trump for failing to seek congressional approval before ordering the missile attack on Syria.

There is a reason our Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war: we should be shown the evidence and given the opportunity to debate the strategy and sacrifice expected.No leader of either party, pro or against military intervention should let our President take us down the path to another regime change war without that debate, she urged.

Gabbard previously denounced Trumps escalation of U.S. involvement in Syria as short-sighted, warning that it would lead to more dead civilians, more refugees, the strengthening of al-Qaeda and other terrorists, and a possible nuclear war between the United States and Russia.

She has also promised to call for Assads prosecution and execution by the International Criminal Court if he can be proven guilty of using chemical weapons against his own civilians, although she added that the U.S. attack on Sharyat airbase might have made a conclusive investigation impossible.

The Hillchose not to reprint Gabbards email in its entirety, so it is not clear if she acknowledges that some of the pushback she is pushing back against is directed at her indulgence of conspiracy theories that exonerate Syrian President Bashar Assad of responsibility for the chemical weapons deployment in Idlib province last week.

She has also been criticized for visiting Syria and meeting with Assad. Whatever you think about President Assad, the fact is that he is the president of Syria. In order for any peace agreement, in order for any possibility of a viable peace agreement to occur, there has to be a conversation with him, she said in defense of her actions.

Gabbard said her visits to Syria were motivated by her extreme commitment to end this war that has caused so much suffering to the Syrian people, to these children, to these families, many of whom I met on this trip.

That does not bypass the many controversies swirling around her trip, as capably summarized by the Lawfare blog:

She reportedly declined to inform House leadership in advance, met with Bashar al-Assad, toured with officials from a Lebanese political party that actively supports Assad, and received funding from an American organization that counts one of those same officials as its executive director. Moreover, both before and after traveling to Syria, the congresswoman channeled some of Assads positions on the war in statements to the public.

One other controversy, naturally the principal one examined by Lawfare, is that Gabbards renegade diplomacy with Assad would seem like a fairly blatant violation of the Logan Act that strangely-worded, dubiously constitutional, never-enforced 1799 law which is supposed to criminalize freelance diplomacy. However moribund the Logan Act might seem, Gabbard should understand that Americans want their government to present a somewhat unified front on the world stage.

Gabbards point about the need for congressional authorization has been made, or at least tacitly acknowledged, by other politicians of both parties. Both Democrat and Republican lawmakerscriticized President Obama for bypassing Congress when he launched his Libyan intervention, a much larger and more expensive project than anything the Trump administration has currently put on the table for Syria.

On the other hand, skeptics say that most congressional representatives are quietly content with various presidential administrations bypassing their warmaking authority, and thus relieving them of responsibility for difficult and politically inconvenient votes, such as the congressional vote to authorize the Iraq War. AsThe Hillobserves in its post about Gabbards email, congressional enthusiasm for insisting upon involvement in further military decisions related to Syria is mixed.

Read the original here:
Gabbard: 'We Need to Learn from Iraq and Libya' Before Intervening in Syria - Breitbart News

Related Content

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) - It's good to be Lyft right now.

The company announced on Tuesday that it has raised a fresh $600 million from investors. The new funding bumps up Lyft's valuation to $7.5 billion -- still far short of Uber's estimated $68 billion worth.

The news comes at an interesting time, as Uber's ethics and company culture are being sharply criticized.

A former female engineer alleged sexism and harassment at Uber in February. The company hired Eric Holder to conduct an investigation, which is supposed to close at the end of the month. Uber is also fighting a lawsuit against Alphabet's self driving car unit, Waymo, which is accusing Uber of stealing trade secrets.

And in January, a boycott of Uber went viral. Social media users urged customers to #DeleteUber after the company was perceived as breaking up a taxi strike of drivers protesting President Trump's travel ban.

Lyft said it has seen a 60-percent increase in week-over-week new passenger signups since the #DeleteUber debacle.

According to a source, Lyft has been fundraising since late last year, just before Uber's troubles began.

But Lyft has used Uber's situation as a chance to position itself as the ethical alternative to Uber.

And apparently, Lyft's new investors agree.

"Every ride we requested began with our asking the driver which service they most preferred to drive for. Time and again, the answer was Lyft," wrote Vincent Letteri, director of private equity at KKR about the firm's decision to invest in Lyft. "In our analysis, we also saw a mature, focused management team that stands out."

Letteri cited Lyft's new Round Up & Donate program -- announced at the end of March. It's one way the company has worked to generate a more wholesome image for itself. It gives passengers the ability to round up fares to the dollar, donating that change to a charity of choice.

In addition to new funding from existing investors, Lyft's latest round of funding comes from new backers like KKR, Alliance Bernstein, Baillie Gifford, and Canada's Public Sector Pension Investment Board.

"We have big plans on the horizon, and will continue investing in new technology and hospitality in order to create experiences that passengers and drivers will love," said cofounder John Zimmer in a statement.

Read this article:
Company's worth still more than $60B behind Uber - Tristatehomepage.com

Since Attorney General Jeff Sessions took office we have seen the removalof 46 U.S. attorneys, including two prominent African-Americans in Mississippi; the reversal of a policy that would have allowed federal contracts with the prison industry expire; ordered the review of consent decrees with major police departments; and most recently, ordered the end of a beneficial partnership between the government and the science community.

But the Washington Posthas detailed what could be worse than all of those things: a return to the bad old days of the war on drugs. The newspaper reports that Sessions has brought in Steven Cook, a federal prosecutor in Tennessee, to help him turn back some of the policies enacted by former President Barack Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder regarding criminal justice. According to thePost, the two men plan on returning to the crime-fighting strategies of the 1980s and 90s, when crime was high, and so was the war on drugs, resulting in a detrimental net effect on communities of color.

Sessions spoke in Richmond, Va., a few weeks ago, noting that the country needs a return to the Just Say No approach to fighting drug trafficking. But far too many people remember that while late first lady Nancy Reagan asked this of the nations youth, urban violence skyrocketed as police, the prison system and the crack epidemic converged to decimate Black communities.

But noting the increase in homicides in cities such as Chicago, New Orleans and others, Sessions believes a tougher approach to crime is appropriate, despite the overall decreases in crime over the past 20 years.

If hard-line means that my focus is on protecting communities from violent felons and drug traffickers, then Im guilty, Cook said in an interview with thePost. I dont think thats hard-line. I think thats exactly what the American people expect of their Department of Justice.

In fact, during a panel by the Post in 2016, Cook was quoted as saying the federal criminal justice system is working as designed.

That design has a resulted in a total of 188,000 federal inmates alone, according to the Bureau of Prisons; 37 percent of them are Black. Thats only part of the number of incarcerated in the United States, the largest number in the world. According to Bureau of Justice statistics, there were 2.1million people either in prisonsor jails in 2015, almost 1 million of them Black. This figure doesnt count those under court or law enforcement supervision.

To put it in perspective, the total number of people incarcerated in the United States in 1980 was 503,000.

What we did, beginning in 1985, is put these laws to work, Cook boasted. We started filling federal prisons with the worst of the worst. And what happened next is exactly what Congress said they wanted to happen, and that is violent crime began in 1991 to turn around. By 2014, we had cut it in half.

Butstatistics show that manyof the people imprisoned during those days up until today have been low-level nonviolent offenders, not violent felons. They were largely driven by mandatory minimum sentences, for which organizations such as The Sentencing Project have advocated for elimination.

Obama and Holders policies included seeking the early release of certain nonviolent drug offenders and also a more intelligent approach to charging nonviolent offenders. Bills have also been introduced in Congress to reduce these sentences, rather than increase them. One in 2015 came close to passage, but Sessions spoke out against it, citing recent spikes in violent crime.

Violent crime and murders have increased across the country at almost alarming rates in some areas. Drug use and overdoses are occurring and dramatically increasing, said Sessions, who was then on the Senate Judiciary Committee and voted against it, the Post reported. Cook echoed the sentiment, saying it was the wrong time to weaken the last tools available to federal prosecutors and law enforcement agents.

The Trump administrations policy has been almost opposite of what Obamas was, favoring a heavy-handed approach to crime, particularly citing urban violence. Advocates of reducing mandatory minimums say Cook and Sessions will turn the government toward policies that have proven to tear apart families and harm communities.

If there was a flickering candle of hope that remained for sentencing reform, Cooks appointment was a fire hose, Kevin Ring, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), told The Post. There simply arent enough backhoes to build all the prisons it would take to realize Steve Cooks vision for America.

Link:
How the Justice Department May Re-Declare the War on Drugs (and On Us) - EBONY.com

In bizarre twist to local politics, Erie County Republicans on Wednesday backed Assemblyman Michael P. Kearns, a Democrat, for county clerk.

The party formally backed Kearns once again after supporting him in three previous Assembly contests on the Democratic, Republican and Conservative lines.

Kearns already gained the Conservative Party backing and is now expected to make a strong bid for winning the election in September by prevailing in the Democratic primary and then appearing unopposed in the November general election.

The move is also expected to further motivate local Democrats in their criticism of the South Buffalo assemblyman, a former South District councilmember and Democratic candidate for mayor. Erie County Democratic Chairman Jeremy J. Zellner has continuously lambasted Kearns for accepting the GOP line.

Erie County Democratic Chairman Jeremy Zellner has lambasted Assemblyman Michael P. Kearns for accepting the GOP line. (Derek Gee/Buffalo News file photo)

The chairman pointed out last month that Kearns lost Democratic backing for the Assembly in 2016 even though he faced no opponent.

I asked Mickey not to take the Republican endorsement last year because of Donald Trump and all he stood for, Zellner said then, adding that any effort by Kearns to seek the backing of Democratic leaders this year will be interpreted as a slap in the face.

Democrats expressing interest in the vacant post include former Buffalo Board of Education member Janique S. Curry, a close ally of Mayor Byron W. Brown, and Steve Cichon, a former WBEN Radio reporter and news director, who drew early and glowing praise from Zellner.

Zellner, meanwhile, said he continues to field inquiries from Amherst businessman Hormoz Mansouri, who has been close to Democratic headquarters for many years.

RELATED LINKS: Lawmakers battle over future of children's psych center

Channel 2's Kevin O'Connell won't run for county clerk

Joanna Pasceri will not run for county clerk

Here is the original post:
Kearns, a Democrat, once again gains support of GOP. This time for county clerk - Buffalo News