The shortlist for the Current Affairs category seems to reveal a veritable embarrassment of riches in British documentary makers. The overall winner was the well deserved Undercover Care: The Abuse Exposed from Panorama. The BAFTA committee clearly have good taste, the documentary was also the Bureau’s pick of 2011 investigations.

Remarkably it was Panorama’s first BAFTA win in 12 years.

However, the programme featured some stiff competition including Al Jazeera’s Bahrain: Shouting in the Dark and Channel 4′s Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields, a programme that built on Channel 4 news’ focus on the harrowing atrocities of the Sri Lankan conflict. Finally, the fourth candidate was another Panorama offering, The Truth About Adoption.

All worthy candidates and a great illustration of the potential of British documentary making. However, the BAFTAs was not the first time these titles have been recognised in recent months.

Al Jazeera English’s programme on Bahrain was also nominated for an Amnesty Media Award in the International TV and radio category. Meanwhile Channel 4′s Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields pops up in their Documentary category. The awards will be announced tomorrow, and the Bureau are among the shortlist in the digital and magazine categories.

The Sri Lanka documentary also won a One World Media Award for Channel 4.

A sign of their excellence, perhaps. Alternatively one cannot help but wonder just how much choice the judges have. Is the recurrence of these documentaries actually a sign of a lack of choice?

The Sri Lanka documentary was certainly one of Channel 4′s main focuses for the year, while Panorama’s BAFTA winning effort involved a long-term, and presumably costly, undercover investigation into care homes. It may be that broadcasters can only afford to expend their resources on one or two big investigations a year. With budgets and programme running times being cut the future for documentary film making is not as bright as it could be.

There were other nominees and winners in other award ceremonies certainly, Marathon Boy for BBC Storyville was nominated in the One World Awards for example. And admittedly the BAFTA’s wide remit means they only dedicate one rather wide category to current affairs documentaries. However, with the same programmes recurring across these awards’ shortlists one can only wonder if in fact the choice of hard-hitting, investigative documentaries is sadly limited?

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The campaign to win permission to drill in the Arctic is a masterclass in major-league lobbying: Shell has spent seven years to win over opponents at almost every stage, from the local Native Eskimo community, through multiple layers of environmental agencies, all the way to President Obama. It even managed to win permission to drill not long after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which involved BP and was one of the worst such incidents in US history.

The granting of Shell’s permits will also spark a new oil rush as more companies seek to join Shell in seeking oil in the Arctic. But many fear that an oil spill in the Arctic could be devastating – particularly as no technique exists for cleaning oil from ice – while the rush of industry into the area risks disturbing local wildlife. The fresh supply of oil will also slow the impetus towards more sustainable energy sources.

New York Times reporters John M Broder and Clifford Krauss unpick Shell’s strategy, describing how the company adopted a two-pronged approach focusing on the local community and on Washington.

While many Eskimos depend on oil and energy for their income – it provides a third of all jobs in the state – they also revere the natural environment and rely on the ocean for much of their food. They have long been concerned that oil drilling would disturb whale migration rates.

On a local level, Shell faced a canny opponent in Edward S Itta, who campaigned for mayor of his town on an anti-drilling platform. He was happy to play to the myth of the mystical Native and what the reporters call the ‘special moral authority’ that Eskimos possess in Congress.

After an ill-advised effort at fielding its own candidate, Shell sent in a right-on executive, Pete Slaiby, who embarked on a charm offensive, sponsoring community meetings, serving food, and gamely eating the local delicacy of raw whale meat. Slaiby also made a series of concessions to Itta’s demands – but at the same time the company was working to isolate him, funding local colleges, village parties and whaling equipment. Itta was eventually forced to accept that drilling was inevitable and negotiated for the best possible deal.

Meanwhile, in Washington Shell took the unusual step of joining an anti-global warming alliance, which gave them access to senior policymakers and helped deflect criticism of the scheme’s impact, says the New York Times.

At the 2008 election the company drew up an action plan for winning over each of the candidates in the event of their victory and retained former politicians who they were close to for an inside line to power – although Obama’s win caught Shell on the hop, as it had assumed Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic candidate.

The report examines the lobbying that has gone on since his win. The company employs ‘three dozen’ staff to lobby government officials, according to government registers, and senior Shell lobbyists have visited the White House at least 19 times during Obama’s administration. This is aside from the constant stream of contact with the agencies that would actually grant the permits.

Click here to read the Bureau’s investigation into lobbying’s hidden influence.

‘I understood they were doing it, I understood why they were doing it, and it wasn’t as subtle as it should have been,’ an official told the New York Times.

Recognising the blunt force power of Shell’s lobbying blitz, environmental groups have backed off according to the paper, choosing to focus on projects where victory is more feasible.

In the end, fuel security and ever-rising oil prices have helped win over President Obama – and while an activist describes the drilling as ‘a reckless gamble we cannot afford’, events such as the Osama bin Laden raid show that Obama, while often cautious, also has a gambling streak.

Barring a major upset, drilling starts in July. As the New York Times points out, ‘It is a moment of major promise and considerable danger.’

Read the New York Times article here.

Editor’s note: the headline of this article has been changed owing to a subbing error.

Walk into any US bookstore and the stacks are crowded with hundreds of books on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet more than a decade in, its hard to find anything on the escalating use of armed drones by the United States.

Now Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the US women-led peace movement Code Pink, is seeking to balance the shelves. Her new book Drone Warfare has just been published. Benjamin, along with Reprieve and the Center for Constitutional Rights, also recently organised the first major international conference on drones in Washington DC.

The gathering coincided with the first anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s killing by US Special Forces. And just a day later, President Obama’s chief counter terrorism official John Brennan gave the most detailed insight yet into the ‘secret’ US drones programme. Benjamin was the sole protestor to disrupt the speech, as the press corps looked on.

In a candid interview with the Bureau following the conference, Medea Benjamin speaks about why the US peace movement has collapsed under Obama;  of the challenges of taking on the drone war in a US election year, and of the message that US campaigners plan to take to Pakistan in a forthcoming trip.

Medea Benjamin disrupts Brennan’s big speech on drones

Q: You’ve been involved in peace activism for a long time, and were heavily involved in the Bush years. In some respects the wars go on but the peace movement doesn’t. How difficult is it to engage on drones with a Democratic administration in the White House, and how is this going to play out in an election year?

Medea Benjamin (MB): It’s terrible. The vast majority of people who were part of the peace movement under Bush have disappeared. Whether they’ve left because they want to leave it to Obama, and that they’re happy that he for the most part withdrew the troops from Iraq and they’re hoping he will do that shortly in Afghanistan, and think that the drones are an alternative to a broader war. Or it’s people who are excited about the Occupy movement and want to put their efforts into the first chance that they feel they’ve had in a long time to make some changes on the domestic front. Or they have been so financially devastated by the economic crisis that they really don’t have time to commit to these issues.

For all sorts of reasons our movement is a tiny portion of what it was under the Bush years. And that makes it very hard. And the fact that during this election campaign you don’t have a voice from the Left, you don’t have a Dennis Kucinich,  you don’t have a Ralph Nader, and you don’t even have a Ron Paul, a libertarian Republican who is speaking out against the wars and the empire and the drone strikes.

So there’s going to be little debate on foreign policy during this election, and if anything, it’s going to be Mitt Romney saying ‘Don’t put a date for pulling the troops out of Afghanistan’. And I don’t think he’s going to criticise Obama at all on these drone strikes, if anything he’s totally gung-ho for it. So it’s going to be pretty miserable in terms of trying to insert this message into the elections.

We will try as much as we can, going out to events and being there with our model drones, and getting on the inside when we can, saying ‘Stop the killer drones!’ And we’ll be going to the conventions, will have contingents who’ll be marching against drones, against the killing of civilians, against the continued war in Afghanistan. But to be realistic, we are not a very strong force at the moment.

And I think we recognise that and we realise that we are starting from almost nothing at this point. When you see a devastating poll that says that 8 out of 10 Americans think it’s OK to kill terrorist suspects, and that it’s even OK to kill Americans with drones, we’ve got a lot of educating to do. So I think it’s going to take us a couple of years even to turn those polls around and then get onto the job of stopping the use of drones. So it’s not going to be easy.

Q: It seems a particularly testosterone-driven period at the moment, with the recent anniversary of bin Laden’s killing. US TV screens are full of a certain sort of swaggering male perspective. Code Pink is very much a women-driven organisation. How difficult is it to engage with that attitude?

MB: It’s very difficult to engage with that swagger, especially when that’s now coupled with a technology that people seem to just drool over. They love these drones, they love the hi-tech, there’s a fascination with it. It’s boys’ toys that get exhibited everywhere.

As we were meeting in our drone summit, there was a science fair going on in the Convention Center across the street from us, where they were simulating drones overhead in Washington DC for the kids. And the kids just loved it. So yes it’s swagger, it’s testosterone coupled with boys’ toys. Which makes it even more difficult.

So we women are up for the challenge [laughs] and we recognise that this is a moment when, just like after 9-11, women’s voices were needed more than ever. There’s the joking about drone strikes and the lies and the sense of statesmanship given to people who say that we don’t kill civilians with drones, who just out-and-out lie about it.

We’ve got to use the Code Pink tactics of interrupting these people, of direct action, of civil disobedience, of being out there with our pink handcuffs to try and arrest them and hold them accountable for war crimes. But let me just reiterate: in an election period, when our natural allies would be independents and Democrats, we’ll lose all the Democrats. People on the left, the progressives, will be very reluctant to criticise Obama.

Summit-goers outside the US Supreme Court express their views on drones

Q: How do you think the recent Washington drones summit went? And why has it taken 11 years of bombing to get a conference like this in Washington?

MB: It’s a good question, and I would say a criticism of the entire anti-war movement here in the United States. I looked around and I thought, ‘It’s pathetic, why have we taken so long to get together on this?’ Sure we’ve had a lot of meetings and outside conferences and endless protests about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But we’ve kind of ignored the fact that our government is way ahead of us and while we’re focusing on the covert wars and the boots on the ground, our soldiers dying, they’re transforming the way they’re waging war and taking it out of the public view, spilling over into Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia, and building up drone bases in Kuwait and Qatar and Ethiopia and Seychelles and Australia and Turkey, and on and on. So they’re not just one step ahead of us, they’re 1,000 steps ahead of us. And we should have had this conference a long time ago.

The only thing that we’re a bit ahead of the curve on is on the proliferation of drones here at home. That since the regulations haven’t yet been written by the Federal Aviation Administration, we have a chance to influence those. So that’s the one thing I feel somewhat good about.

But it’s terrible that it’s taken us so long to organise this. On the other hand people think of drones as just a piece of technology, so why would you organise around a piece of technology? You want to organise around the wars themselves.

Q: And what’s your answer to that? Isn’t it just another piece of technology? What’s different about drones?

MB: The difference with drones is that drones make these wars possible. From being able to wage them without even having to go to Congress, because according to the Administration’s definition of war, war is when you put your own soldiers’ lives at risk. And since we’re not doing that with drones, it’s not war, it doesn’t have to be agreed in Congress. It doesn’t even have to be open to the American people. It can be carried out in total secrecy.

And as some people said in the conference, drones are the only way to wage some of these battles because of the issue of national sovereignty. You could never get away with the boots on the ground. And because, for example with the terrain in Yemen, you wouldn’t be able to do it any other way than with drones.

So I think that drones are a special piece of technology that make extending these – I wouldn’t call them wars, they’re violent interventions – make them possible to do. So we do have to focus on the technology, but within the context of war.

Q: You’re now planning for a group trip to Pakistan. A critic at the recent conference said that people in the room were ‘naïve’, that their understanding of Pakistan was over-simplified and that there were far bigger issues there that were more important.

MB: I think there’s a certain truth to the fact that most of the people in the room were very unaware of the complexity of the situation in Pakistan. And so their own agenda is a pretty simple one.  ‘I don’t want my government killing people without due process, whether Americans or people in other parts of the world. And I don’t think that makes me safer at home. I don’t think it makes the world a safer place.’

Pakistanis have their own complex internal situation, but they’re going to have to deal with it and our interference is not helping. So as Americans, to go in there with a simple message and say, ‘We don’t want our government violating your sovereignty, it is up to you to decide how to deal with your issues of Taliban and al Qaeda and terrorism and fundamentalism, and it’s up to us to make our government obey international law.’

So I think we stick to a pretty simple message. And say we don’t want to get involved in your internal affairs, they’re far too complex for us to even think that we can comprehend them… We just want to step aside and let you figure it out.

This is an edited version of a longer interview.

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It seemed a simple enough request: grassroots campaigners asking a major national charity for information on any cuts to services in their area. The charity in question – Rethink Mental Illness, which runs around 400 services and support groups across the country – thought it sounded pretty straightforward, too, and its policy team swung into action to compile a nationwide picture. They contacted every local authority in England, making a Freedom of Information request for details of any changes to mental health spending in 2011/12, compared to 2010/11 .

Then things started to get a little complicated. Anyone who’s ever submitted a blanket FOI request to a group of respondents, whether local authorities, NHS trusts or police forces, probably won’t be surprised to hear that more than half of the councils – 53 per cent – didn’t provide the information requested. Some were able to refer the enquirers to online “budget books” containing the figures, others said that DCLG’s annual publication of the data it receives from all councils on their spending allocation would provide the answer. (Public bodies can legitimately refuse FOI requests if the information requested is scheduled for future publication. In this case, the DCLG release was three months away.)

So the charity recorded the responses they had received, extracted the data they were pointed towards, and waited for the DCLG publication of council spending breakdowns. When this came, they checked the data they’d been given by local authorities against that held centrally – and things moved from merely complicated to downright contradictory.

In only 14 out of 151 instances did the local authority FOI response produce figures that tallied with the DCLG figure. By contrast, more than double that number, 30, produced figures diverging by more than 10 per cent. Comparing spending in 2010/11 with that planned for 2011/12, Cheshire West and Chester’s FOI response said it was increasing mental health spending by +25.7 per cent, when DCLG figures showed a cut of -14.3 per cent; Knowsley’s balance sheet says it is cutting by -1.5 per cent, whereas DCLG stats say they are increasing spending by +29.3 per cent; Croydon’s figures suggest a whopping increase of +62.9 per cent, but the DCLG puts that at a rather more modest +7.4 per cent.

Rethink queried those councils with the most divergent figures. Some offered explanations that are reasonable, but probably opaque to a layperson. Cheshire West and Chester, for example, said that their own figures were the “direct budget” for mental health services, whereas the DCLG revenue accounts give costs on a “statutory accounting basis”. Others pointed to the inclusion or exclusion of services for the over-65s as a reason for discrepancies. Still others confessed to simple errors – while several more treated the request for clarification as a new FOI and are yet to respond.

But end result is that, more than a year on, experts within a major national charity are still completely in the dark about the spending changes they set out to map. “And if we, as a national charity with research and policy teams, can’t get hold of the numbers,” says Rethink Mental Illness’s CEO Paul Jenkins, “what chance do ordinary people have?”

Those who work with FOI requests day in, day out, are unsurprised by the charity’s lack of success. Iain Overton is editor of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which frequently deploys Freedom of Information requests in its research.

“I have had FOIs rejected on spurious grounds, where a neighbouring PCT or council has happily handed over the data,” says Overton. “I have seen government organisations do their utmost not to answer a simple question, such as ‘How much does your chief executive earn?’

“And I have had FOI responses come through that contain a story, the facts of which are not challenged by the press officer when asked.  But when the story comes out, the same press officer goes to their local paper and says that facts are wrong.”

This government has enthusiastically embraced the theory of open government, and is perceived by many as a global leader on these issues. Last month the United Kingdom became co-chair of the Open Government Partnership for a year-long term; and rights groups have applauded British efforts to improve transparency in countries receiving international aid.

But meaningful open government isn’t simply about the disclosure of data. It’s about whether that data is usable, reliable, and – surely it’s not too much to ask? – intelligible. Rethink’s experience suggests that greater transparency needs to begin at home.

This article was first published in the New Statesman.  It is republished here with thanks.

Read Rethink’s report, Lost in Localism, here.

For nine months last year, government officials secretly scrambled to find missing DNA samples, bank details and passport applications, which they had lost on a flight from Afghanistan.

The incident is one of thousands of data losses that took place in the first year of the Coalition government.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) suffered by far the most losses, with 1,807 personal data incidents. They included 154 losses which happened inside the the department’s own secured premises, and more than a thousand ‘unauthorised disclosures’.

An MoJ report admitted there has been a ‘significant increase’ in data loss, but claimed: “This is largely the consequence of increased levels of reporting.’

The data was gained through requests under the Freedom of Information Act. Of the departments which were asked for the figures, 12 gave the full details from the first year of the coalition government. Six departments, including the MoJ, agreed only to give the number of personal data protection breaches during the financial year. Three departments did not provide any information.

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) admitted it recorded 396 data losses between 2010 and 2011. They included 65 occasions when files were stolen. The MOD did not confirm how many of the documents had been marked as secret, but said that 49 of the incidents involved personal information.

In one incident computer files containing at least 50,000 people’s personal information went missing. Later in the same week, thieves stole documents with 200 people’s confidential data from MOD officials.

The MOD claimed that its size meant it was ‘almost inevitable’ that it would lose information.

It said: ‘The MOD takes any loss or theft of data very seriously and has robust procedures in place.’New processes and instructions have also been implemented to raise awareness of the need for vigilance in all aspects of Departmental security. Our procedures are constantly reviewed and internal communication is regularly updated.’

It added: ‘Investigations are undertaken into every loss or theft, and appropriate disciplinary action taken where necessary.’

Lost in Bahrain
Elsewhere, the Foreign Office reported only six data losses, but they included a period of nine months during which officials scrambled to find a missing diplomatic bag containing DNA samples from Afghanistan.

Delivery company DHL was handed the samples, along with bank details, medical records and passport application forms, which were meant to be flown from Kabul to the UK.

But the items were taken on a route via Bahrain, during the country’s political uprising, because of a ‘commercial decision’ by DHL. When staff in Bahrain realised the package was missing, the unrest meant full searches had to be delayed because of security issues.

It was only after six months of delays and worldwide searches, that the Foreign Office finally contacted all the people affected, telling them the items were missing.

One woman, whose credit card details had been lost, told officials: ‘Had someone looked into the missing bag earlier it might have been located.’

Meanwhile, DHL failed to apologise over the incident. A British Embassy official in Kabul said: ‘It would have been nice to have received something from DHL to forward on to the senders in the way of an apology but we’ve had nothing.’

Finally, in November, staff discovered the package sitting in a lost and found depot in the UK.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: ‘We regret the delay and we take the protection of diplomatic bags very seriously.  We have taken steps to ensure that this would not be repeated. There are lessons we have learned from this case.’

In other government departments hundreds of missing sensitive and personal documents were never recovered, including more recent data losses.

Bank details and national insurance numbers
Documents show that in June the Department of Communities and Local Government accidentally sent the bank details and national insurance numbers of all its 2,000 staff members to the wrong email address. The department claimed that protocols were activated immediately and said the person responsible for sending the email was retrained.

Elsewhere the Treasury Office revealed that members of staff had accidentally left ‘sensitive’ and ‘restricted’ documents on planes and trains on four occasions so far since May 2010.

Several incidents in the Department of Health saw patients’ details and prescription information sent to the wrong email addresses. In June a system shut-down was triggered when a software error allowed system users to access the personal data of other users.

Bryan Glick, editor in chief of Computer Weekly said: ‘From files being dumped in skips to memory sticks being lost, there have been regular losses from government departments. It’s difficult to deny that some is inevitable, as there is some degree of human error. Security will never be 100%, but these figures show that the government could be doing a lot better.’

He added: ‘For the MOJ to have more than a thousand data losses in one year is pretty scandalous. Because the government holds so much sensitive and confidential information, data losses are even more serious. The nature of the data means that the government should be going beyond what’s expected, but it seems like it is not even reaching the basic standards.’

Data breaches have plagued government departments and particularly the MOD, who acknowledged in November that it had lost 150 laptops in just 18 months.

In 2008 an MOD security probe criticised the department for not taking security seriously enough. The inquiry had been launched after thieves stole a laptop containing personal details of 600,000 recruits. The laptop had been left in a parked car over night in Birmingham.

Investigators found that three other similar laptops had also been stolen from cars since 2004. The report said: ‘Generally, there is little awareness of the current, real, threat to information, and hence to the Department’s ability to deliver and support operational capability. Consequently, there can be little assurance that information is being effectively protected.’

It added: ‘Outside MOD HQ, with a few notable exceptions, there is very limited understanding of the Department’s obligations under the Data Protection Act.’

The breach also led the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to issue an enforcement notice to the MOD. But the ICO said that the loss of two CDs by HMRC in 2008 which contained 25 million people’s personal details remains the most serious breach investigated.

An ICO spokesman said: ‘It’s vital that organisations take this legal responsibility seriously. This is even more crucial when handling sensitive information such as people’s medical details.’

‘Any report of a loss of personal information is obviously a concern for us – that’s why we encourage bodies to put sufficient resources into ensuring they get it right, including encryption and adequate staff training.’

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Away from the spotlights and ballads, Azerbaijan remains an oppressive regime, where ordinary people live in relative poverty while the ruling class lines its pockets.

In Eurovision’s Dirty Secret, a Panorama team went undercover in Baku, the country’s capital, to explore a country that looks modern but hides some nasty habits – and which certainly doesn’t welcome teams of foreign investigative reporters. Within days, they are being tailed by a rather conspicuous secret-service detail, similar to the men in shades who openly film opposition protesters and hang around outside the homes of activists.

At times the oppression verges on the farcical – one man claims he was taken in for questioning after voting for Azerbaijan’s arch-enemy Armenia out of protest during last year’s Eurovision – but it can also be brutal.

Satirists and protest singers who dare to highlight the corruption of the regime are arrested and beaten according to the investigation, and journalists claim the programme have been arrested, bugged, blackmailed and even killed on their own doorsteps.

All this allows President Aliyev and his family to operate with relative impunity, amassing fabulous wealth and a string of companies in Panama. His son even owns a $40m house in Dubai’s exclusive Palm development according to Panorama – not bad for a 15-year-old.

So how can an international competition that aims to encourage understanding between nations justify holding the event there? Perhaps it’s to her credit that Ingrid Deltenre, chair of the European Broadcasting Union which runs the competition, doesn’t attempt to whitewash the country’s human rights record, holding her hands up to the reporters’ charges of oppression and corruption in the country.

The rules are the rules, she explains slightly wearily: Azerbaijan won last year’s competition and so is entitled to host this year’s event. And maybe the event will draw attention to the country’s human rights record.

But even with the rules, nobody is forcing pop stars to participate, and one of Panorama’s most entertaining segments is when the reporters confront the UK’s representative, Engelbert Humperdinck, about Azerbaijan’s human rights record, while his handlers frantically attempt to wrestle him away from the camera.

You could argue that March’s Grand Prix in Bahrain did help bring attention to the country’s human rights abuses – but a month later, while the protests continue the world’s attention has moved on. Will the same be true in Azerbaijan?

Watch Eurovision’s Dirty Secret here.

NGOs and  medical teams are deeply concerned that vaccinations from common childhood diseases are not getting to thousands of vulnerable young children who have fled to the Nuba mountains in Sudan.

The few doctors left working in the area are critical of the UN after vaccine supplies dried up nearly a year ago. They now fear the largely refugee community are at severe risk of outbreaks of infectious diseases, including measles, which could prove devastating to the vulnerable population, particularly malnourished young children.

Over a million desperate people have fled to the Nuba mountains after a rise in violence and chaos along the border of the newly created South Sudan. But the area has provided little safety. It is being held by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army and as a result is under constant bombardment from aerial bomb attacks from the Sudanese government.

President Omar al-Bashir has banned all UN agencies from operating in the area, except under specific exceptions.

Those exceptions have been limited meaning UN agencies, usually tasked with supplying food and medical supplies, have faced severe restrictions.

According to UNICEF they have managed to carry out only one vaccination campaign in the area, since June 2011. The children’s agency says the polio campaign reached 1,700 children under 5 years old  in a few, limited areas of the Nuba mountains under the control of the SPLM-N rebel forces. They had aimed to reach 4,000.

The UN agency also claim they managed to transfer 1,500 polio doses to the area but admit those supplies have long since run out.

However doctors on the ground reject UNICEF’s claims saying that the last vaccines they received from the official UN agency in August were unusable, after being exposed to sunlight and heat when the box of vaccines had been opened by security forces in Kadugli, the province’s capital.

Dr Alamin Osman is director general of the Secretariat of Health for the region and the only qualified Sudanese doctor working in the area. ‘I can confirm the last vaccines received in good condition were before war,’ he said. ‘UNICEF in Sudan must answer to the world why they allowed Sudan security to mishandle those items they claim to have sent to Kauda,’ he added.

Responding to Dr Osman’s claims UNICEF told the Bureau, ‘The inspector opened the lid very briefly and only to confirm that they were indeed vaccines contained in the box. Adequate cold chain was in place.’

Dr Osman is worried a health disaster could be on the way. He has limited supplies and ran out of vaccines a long time ago. ‘There are reported cases of measles but I am not in a position to do any thing,’ he said.

According to experts an outbreak of measles could prove devastating to a population already weakened by hunger and upheaval.

The markets are expecting a politically rudderless Greece to exit from the euro within weeks, if not days. An economic storm to make 2008’s bank collapse feel like a mild shower is now increasingly likely.

For four years, European leaders have been staring into the abyss. Co-ordinated European spending cuts triggered rampant unemployment in Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain – the so-called PIGS. Growth has failed to materialise so now Europe’s financial nightmare is entering a new darker phase. And the people of southern Europe in particular face hyperinflation and further unemployment.

To think the European Union was created to ease social and economic tension. Suddenly continental peace and stability doesn’t seem a given.

Billions up in smoke
In anticipation of ‘Grexit’, Greek financial institutions are currently suffering a ‘bank jog’ which could soon break into a run. As Greece readies itself to print horrendously devalued drachmas, the spectre of rampant inflation draws near wiping out Greek’s dwindling savings. The worry is if contagion spreads beyond Greece.

Last Friday, redoubtable City commentator David Buik suggested Spanish bank exposure to Greek debt is €37 billion out of a total Eurozone exposure of €290 billion. If Greece leaves the single currency Spanish banks will see those billions go up in smoke. Earlier this week Spanish banks received emergency funds to keep them afloat.

Respected economic commentator, Martin Wolf in Friday’s Financial Times spelt out the implications of a disorderly ‘Grexit’.

In the short term, he suggested, a worst case but not unrealistic scenario would see runs on Portuguese, Irish, Italian and Spanish banks. Last week even the mighty Santander, the Spanish owned bank that in recent times gobbled up Abbey National, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley in the UK, was downgraded.

This has worried British Santander savers and sent the twittersphere into overdrive. Though Santander and consumer experts suggest the UK subsidiary of Santander is one of the safest UK institutions in the country.

Wolf also cited research suggesting Eurozone output would fall 2% with international investors faith in the eurozone shattered.

And don’t forget we are entering this phase of the crisis with Greek and Spanish youth unemployment both above 50%.

One minute to midnight
So as the survival of Europe’s single currency reaches one minute to midnight, the questions are stacking up.

Will the fiscally prudent Germans – whose economy in the most recent quarter grew a relatively robust 0.6% – tolerate a relaxation of the bailout terms offered to the austerity battered Greeks?

Has new French president, Francois Hollande sufficient clout, wit and political capital to frame a Europe wide growth plan that brings both his fellow leaders and the public onside?

And will David Cameron contribute in any meaningful way to a resolution of this crisis?

The answer to all three questions appears: ‘No.’ Almost inevitably, Hollande”s plan to ease Europe’s debt crisis by introducing a Financial Transactions Tax has been blocked by the British prime minister at last weekend’s meeting of the Group of Eight leading industrial countries.

The G8 consists of the ‘richest’ European nations plus the US and Canada. Until 10 years ago, it was the most significant geopolitical axis on earth.

Not any more. Today it is Brazil, India and China through the G20 who hold the power.

So much so that last year, European officials went cap in hand to the Chinese begging Beijing to underwrite European debt. It was a humiliating gesture and one the Chinese wisely sidestepped.

But Europe combined is the world’s second largest trading bloc. And the deepening euro crisis could have a debilitating effect on China.Earlier this year, the International Monetary Fund warned it could even halve China’s growth.

It seems the Euro crisis won’t be solved by Europe, and the silence from China is deafening. The abyss beckons.

Facebook, the social media giant, will begin trading in New York today, launching its share price at $38 (£24). This values the company at a sky-high $104 billion, the second largest IPO in US history behind Visa.

But what do commentators think? With nearly a billion users, and an army of some of the industry’s best and brightest minds, are the shares a sure-fire bet or a damp squib? The Bureau summarises the key opinions so you don’t have to read them:

Ian King, Business Editor, The Times
He writes that Facebook ‘polarises opinions like few other stocks’. He points out: ‘By all regular investment yardsticks, a $100 billion valuation is madness. It values Facebook at slightly more than 25 times its 2011 sales. Google, a more established business and considerably more profitable, by contrast trades at six times sales. Apple, on some valuation metrics being applied to Facebook, would be worth more than 42 trillion.’

The Wall Street Journal
A story in the WSJ earlier this week brought bad news for a company about to float. It was reported that General Motors, one of the largest advertisers in the US, is to pull its advertising with Facebook, explaining ‘that paid ads on the site have little impact on consumers’ car purchases’. ‘The move by GM [General Motors], one of the largest advertisers in the US, puts a spotlight on an issue that many marketers have been raising: whether ads on Facebook help them sell more products’.

‘GM’s decision raises questions about the ability of Facebook to sustain the 88% revenue growth achieved in 2011. Facebook said last month its first-quarter ad revenue was down 7.5% from the previous three months. Facebook blamed “seasonal trends” for the decline, as well as a greater number of users from outside the US, where ad rates are lower.’

Full piece here.

Barry Ritholtz, columnist, Washington Post,
In bearish mode Ritholtz points out that Facebook has been slow to monitise its users. ‘Google gets about $30 per user in annual revenue; movie service Netflix does even better — $148.20 per year. And Facebook? A mere $5.02 per user per year. The challenge the company faces is bringing that revenue per user number up significantly — without alienating the user base the way Myspace did.’

Full piece here.

Richard Blackden, US Business Editor, The Daily Telegraph
Blackden highlights Facebook’s Achilles’ Heel – its inability to make money off users through advertising. ‘Despite the multi-billion dollar valuation Facebook has achieved, real questions remain about the company’s ability to increase its advertising revenues without alienating the users that are its chief asset.’

‘Facebook mania is a sharp contrast to how Americans have placed their money since the financial crisis. Investors have pulled money out of mutual funds, which remain the most popular investment vehicle for most Americans, in 10 of the 13 quarters since the start of 2009. Trading volumes across the country’s exchanges tumbled to a daily average of 6.49bn shares last month, the lowest since December 2007, according to figures from Credit Suisse.’

Full piece here. 

Tim Bradshaw, Tech Blog, Financial Times
He rounds up some of the last-minute warning bells from seasoned tech folk – and they don’t get much bleaker than this.

He quotes Mark Cridge, chief executive of Aegis-owned digital agency Glue Isobar, who described the pricing as a ‘bubble’.

Zee Kane, chief of tech blog network The Next Web who puts in a plug for new start-up Pinterest, which he predicts will be worth more than Facebook in five years.

Roger Ehrenberg of Information Arbitrage, an investor in data start-ups who describes Facebook as a ‘great company’ and ‘indisputably powerful’, but he believes that ‘the multiples being applied to its revenues and cash flows stress the imagination.’

And the biggest bear of all, Mark Cuban, tech entrepreneur turned basketball team owner who warns that the ‘unwashed’ retail investors being attracted to Facebook will be ‘lambs to the slaughter’ for algorithmic traders.

Josh Constine, technology journalist, TechCrunch
After the doom mongers here’s the ‘four aces’ Facebook could have up its sleeve which would boost the revenues a year it currently earns per user. Let’s hope Constine has some insider knowledge.

He suggests Facebook could use what it knows about its users to offer highly targeted, and therefore highly valuable advertising. Facebook could challenge Amazon and move into the retail space if it made its payment system more attractive. It could also introduce payment for apps. But each of these three strategies would have to be handled with care as there are huge potential downsides and problems with each, but Constine suggests the easiest way the company could very quickly boost its revenues would be to introduce big, glossy ads that look like content.

If nothing else Constine’s four paths to revenues provides a glimpse of the reason perhaps Facebook has been able to push out such an ambitious share pricing.

Full piece here.

Wall Street.  It keeps getting better.

The hedge fund Magnetar helped create billions of dollars’ worth of risky deals called collateralized debt obligations, many of which failed spectacularly in the financial crisis. Magnetar, meanwhile, had taken positions that allowed the firm to profit when many of those same CDOs collapsed. Since Magnetar’s dealings was reported on two years ago, there’s been a long line of investigations and settlements related to the hedge fund.

Magnetar itself has never been charged with wrongdoing, and it has always maintained that it did not have a strategy to bet against CDOs they were involved with. But today’s Wall Street Journal reported that Magnetar is indeed under investigation by the SEC.