WORLD BANK HAS POSTPONED $90 M LOAN TO UGANDA OVER ANTI GAY LAW

The World Bank has postponed a $90m (£54m) loan to Uganda over its tough new anti-gay law that has drawn criticism from around the world.

World Bank officials said they wanted to guarantee the projects the loan was destined to support were not going to be adversely affected by the new law.

The loan was intended to boost Uganda's health services.

The new law, enacted on Monday, strengthens already strict legislation relating to homosexuals in the country.

It allows life imprisonment as the penalty for acts of "aggravated homosexuality" and also criminalises the "promotion" of homosexuality".

Elimination of discrimination

The law has been sharply criticised by the West, with donors such as Denmark and Norway saying they would redirect aid away from the government to aid agencies.

US Secretary of State John Kerry has called the law "atrocious". Both he and South African Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu compared it to anti-Semitic laws in Nazi Germany or apartheid South Africa.

A spokesman for the World Bank said: "We have postponed the project for further review to ensure that the development objectives would not be adversely affected by the enactment of this new law."

Anti-gay supporters in Uganda rejoiced when the law was passed on Monday
The loan was supposed to be approved on Thursday to supplement a 2010 loan that focused on maternal health, newborn care and family planning.

The World Bank's action is the largest financial penalty incurred on the Ugandan authorities since the law went into force on Monday.

In an editorial for the Washington Post, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim warned that legislation restricting sexual rights "can hurt a country's competitiveness by discouraging multinational companies from investing or locating their activities in those nations".

He said the World Bank would discuss how such discrimination "would affect our projects and our gay and lesbian staff members".

In his view, he adds, fighting "to eliminate all institutionalized discrimination is an urgent task".

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed the anti-gay bill earlier this week, despite international criticism.

Ugandan authorities have defended the decision, saying President Museveni wanted "to demonstrate Uganda's independence in the face of Western pressure and provocation".

Uganda is a very conservative society, where many people oppose homosexuality.

FACEBOOK BUYS WHATSAPP FOR $19 BILLION IN TECH WORLD’S LARGEST BUY

Zuckerberg appears to be willing to pay large amounts of money to purchase hot messaging technologies, which typically attract younger people than Facebook does.

Facebook announced Wednesday that it would pay at least $16 billion to buy WhatsApp, a text messaging application with 450 million users around the world.

But the cost of the deal could go beyond that, US media reports. It could rise to $19 billion, with the application’s employees and founders receiving an additional $3 billion in restricted stock units over the next four years, according to the New York Times.

The users of WhatsApp pay little or no money to use the application.

Facebook, in Menlo Park, Calif., will pay $4 billion in cash and $12 billion worth of shares for WhatsApp, the Times said.

The decision shows that Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and chief executive of Facebook, is determined to keep his company a dominant social network on the Web.

Critics say the proposed price is too steep as the WhatsApp is less known in the United States, and it does not even sell advertising and has very litter revenue.

Facebook paid $1 billion in a 2012 deal for Instagram, the photo-sharing service. Critics at the time assailed the company for overpaying.

Late last year, Facebook unsuccessfully offered to pay $3 billion to buy Snapchat, another messaging service.

Zuckerberg appears to be willing to pay large amounts of money to purchase hot messaging technologies, which typically attract younger people than Facebook does.

“Facebook is constantly working to not lose anybody,” said Nate Elliott, an analyst with Forrester Research, as cited by the Times. “Sometimes that is them innovating on their own, sometimes that’s them mimicking competitors, and sometimes that’s them buying competitors.”

Facebook is now a 10-year-old social network with 1.2 billion users around the world. However, the company may lose some of its users, according to tech experts.

Buying WhatsApp could help Facebook gain access to younger customers who prefer communicating one-on-one or with very small groups rather than sharing information more widely.

VIDEO: TAKFIRI TERRORISTS STRANGULATE SYRIAN GIRL IN PUBLIC

A grisly video has emerged showing Takfiri terrorists operating in Syria strangulating a young girl in public.

In the video, a Takfiri hooded executioner strangulates the young girl to death using a piece of metal wire in an unidentified location.

The girl has been put to death because of her refusal to recognize the rigid-minded beliefs promoted by Takfiri groups in Syria.

Earlier this month, a disturbing video emerged showing al-Qaeda-linked militants in Syria’s central province of Homs beheading a man believed to have been a Shia supporter of the government.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which posted the video, said the beheading was conducted by militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Since the beginning of the crisis in Syria in March 2011, many similar videos have emerged, depicting horrendous crimes, including decapitation and cannibalism, committed by the foreign-backed Takfiri militants against the people in Syria.

A video footage posted online on January 26, showed several mutilated bodies in the western suburb of Aleppo that reportedly belong to the civilians who were executed by ISIL militants.

Another video posted online on May 12, 2013, showed Takfiri militant, Khalid al Hamad, known by his nom de guerre, Abu Sakkar, eating an organ of a dead Syrian soldier.

In an interview with the state-run BBC in July 2013, Abu Sakkar threatened to commit more gruesome murders if foreign-backed terrorists in Syria do not receive more military aid from abroad.

Reports show that the Western powers and their regional allies - especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey - are supporting the militants operating inside Syria.

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