Sri Lanka govt orders probe after cricket defeats

The Sri Lankan government has ordered a probe into the national cricket team's "crisis situation" after they fell to another defeat in their one-day series in South Africa, an official said Wednesday.

Sports Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage asked the country's cricket governing body to investigate and recommend remedial action to end the side's recent poor performances, his spokesman Harsha Abeykoon said.

South Africa defeated Sri Lanka by four runs on Tuesday to take a winning 3-0 lead in their five-match ODI series.

"Carefully investigate the current crisis situation in the national cricket team and report back to me within a week," Aluthgamage told the chairman of Sri Lanka Cricket.

The probe was ordered a week after another minister slammed the side, blaming lack of team spirit for a 258-run thrashing by South Africa, the island's worst one-day international defeat.

The Sri Lankan government is often accused of meddling in the sport and recent uncontested elections for the cricket board were mired in allegations of interference.

Sri Lanka did reach the final of last year's World Cup but since the retirement of bowling star Muttiah Muralitharan in July 2010, the team have won only one Test match.

Skipper Tillakaratne Dilshan has blamed his side's inconsistent results on the island's weak domestic scene.

Some players have complained about months of unpaid wages as the cricket board struggles with debts of $69 million after building two new venues and revamping a third ground for the World Cup.

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Tourists from 5 nations victims in Ethiopia attack

Gunmen in the Ethiopia's arid north attacked a group of European tourists, killing five, wounding two and kidnapping two, an Ethiopian official said Wednesday.

Ethiopian Communications Minister Bereket Simon said the gunmen came from neighboring Eritrea and attacked the tourist group before dawn on Tuesday. Two Ethiopians were also taken hostage. Eritrea denied it was involved.

Austrian, Belgian, German, Hungarian and Italian nationals were among those in the tourist group, Simon said.

Ethiopian officials could not immediately say with certainty which countries the victims were from.

Ethiopian state television reported on Tuesday that there had been eight tourists in the targeted group, but Austrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Peter Launsky-Tiefenthal said late Tuesday that two groups totaling as many as 22 people may have been attacked, though he said the numbers were not confirmed.

The tourists were visiting a volcanic region in Ethiopia's northern Afar region, which lies below sea level and is known for its intense heat and picturesque salt flats.

Bereket said that "some groups trained and armed by the Eritrean government" attacked the tourists about 20 to 25 kilometers (12 to 15 miles) from the Eritrean border.

Eritrea's ambassador to the African Union, Girma Asmerom, said Ethiopia's allegations are an "absolute lie" and that the attack is an internal Ethiopian matter.

Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a border war from 1998 to 2000,claiming the lives of about 80,000 people. Tension between the neighboring East African countries rose last year when a U.N. report claimed that Eritrea was behind a plot to attack an African Union summit in Ethiopia.

Launsky-Tiefenthal said there was an Austrian Foreign Ministry travel warning in effect for the region since 2007 "because of several incidents involving attacks on tourist groups ... in some case politically motivated in others criminally motivated."

In 2007, five Europeans and 13 Ethiopians were kidnapped in Afar. Ethiopia accused Eritrea of masterminding that kidnapping, but Eritrea blamed an Ethiopian rebel group. All of those hostages were released, though some of the Ethiopians were held for more than a month.

In 2008, Ethiopia foiled a kidnapping attempt on a group of 28 French tourists in the area.

"The problem is, there is no infrastructure in the area, no telephone lines, satellite phones barely work," Launsky-Tiefenthal said, describing the remote area to "the surface of Mars."

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US calls on S. Africans to prevent Sudan crisis

The U.S. is calling on South Africa to help prevent a humanitarian disaster in Sudan.

Speaking Wednesday in South Africa, Princeton Lyman, the special U.S. envoy on Sudan, said civilians caught up in fighting in Sudan's Blue Nile and South Kordofan states are running out of food and medicine. Lyman says South Africa should pressure Sudan to allow in international humanitarian agencies.

Lyman says fears "the prospect of hundreds of thousands of people dying with no access to food or medicine."

Fighting between the Sudanese army and rebels who want to topple the Khartoum government started last year in the states. Groups in both states, which border the new country of South Sudan, sided with the south during a lengthy civil war but remain part of the north.

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Five Europeans killed in Ethiopia attack

Ethiopia said on Wednesday that five tourists killed in an attack blamed on terrorists in the northeast were all European, and that two other foreigners in the group had been kidnapped.

The government confirmed the attack, first reported by state television late on Tuesday, and blamed terrorists backed by its arch-foe neighbour Eritrea.

"Terrorist groups trained and armed by the Eritrean government crossed the border and attacked them and the assailants have gone back," government spokesman Bereket Simon told AFP.

"They killed five, wounded two and kidnapped four, out of which two foreigners, one police and one driver," Bereket Simon said.

Eritrea vehemently denied involvement in the attack.

Simon earlier said those killed were a German, a Belgian, an Italian, a Hungarian and an Austrian.

He did not give the nationalities of those wounded or abducted.

State television said the wounded had been taken to hospital by government forces in the region.

The attack occurred Monday in the remote Afar region near Ethiopia's border with Eritrea. The group was visiting the Erta Ale volcanic site.

A German foreign ministry official who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity said they were probing reports that German nationals could have been victims of the attack.

"Reports of an attack on tourist group with German citizens in Ethiopia are being followed up. The German foreign ministry and the German embassy are working with determination to clarify the matter and the fate of the German citizens," the officials said on phone from Berlin.

The official said the tourists were travelling in the same group.

The Afar region, an inhospitable scrubland and desert with shallow salty lakes and chains of volcanoes, is reputed to be one of the hottest places on Earth. It also known for hominid fossil finds.

Addis Ababa routinely accuses Eritrea of supporting rebels fighting the Ethiopian regime, charges that Eritrea denies.

"It has become the modus operandi of the Ethiopian government to blame Eritrea for anything happening inside Ethiopia," Asmara's representative to the African Union, Girma Asmerom said.

"Eritrea has never supported and will never support such an incident."

The rival Horn of African countries fought a bitter territorial war between 1998 and 2000 and are still deeply at odds over their border.

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World Bank slashes global GDP forecasts, outlook grim

The World Bank warned developing countries on Wednesday to prepare for the "real" risk that an escalation in the euro area debt crisis could tip the world into a slump on a par with the global downturn in 2008/09.

In a report sharply cutting its world economic growth expectations, the World Bank said Europe was probably already in recession. If the euro area debt crisis deepened, global economic forecasts would be significantly lower.

"The sovereign debt crisis in the euro zone appears to be contained," Justin Lin, the chief economist for the World Bank, told reporters in Beijing on Wednesday.

"However, the risk of a global freezing-up of the markets and as well as a global crisis similar to what happened in September 2008 are real."

The World Bank predicted world economic growth of 2.5 percent in 2012 and 3.1 percent in 2013, well below the 3.6 percent growth for each year projected in June.

"We think it is now important to think through not only slower growth but sharp deteriorations, as a prudent measure," said Hans Timmer, director of development prospects at the bank.

The World Bank said if the euro area debt crisis escalates, global growth would be about 4 percentage points lower.

It forecast high-income economies would expand just 1.4 percent in 2012 as the euro area shrinks 0.3 percent, sharp downward revisions from growth forecasts last June of 2.7 percent and 1.8 percent, respectively.

It cut its forecast for growth in developing economies to 5.4 percent for 2012 from its previous forecast of 6.2 percent, saying expansion in Brazil and India and to a lesser extent Russia, South Africa and Turkey, had slowed already.

It saw a slight pick up in growth in developing economies in 2013 to 6 percent. But the report said threats to growth are still rising, suggesting the outlook remained highly uncertain.

"The downturn in Europe and weaker growth in developing countries raises the risk that the two developments reinforce one another, resulting in an even weaker outcome," it said.

It also cited failure so far to resolve high debts and deficits in Japan and the United States and slow growth in other high-income countries, and cautioned those could trigger sudden shocks.

On top of that, political tensions in the Middle East and North Africa could disrupt oil supplies and add another blow to global prospects.

It said that while Europe was moving toward a long-term solution to its debt problems, markets remained skittish.

On balance, the World Bank said global economic conditions were "fragile and there remains great uncertainty as to how markets will evolve over the medium term."

DEVELOPING COUNTRIES VULNERABLE

Against that backdrop, it said developing countries were even more vulnerable than they were in 2008 because they could find themselves facing reduced capital flows and softer trade.

In addition, many developing countries have weaker finances and wouldn't be able to respond to a new crisis as vigorously.

China's growth -- forecast in the report at 8.4 percent in 2012 -- could help bolster imports and gives it "big fiscal space" to respond to changing conditions, Lin said.

"No country and no region will escape the consequences of a serious downturn," the World Bank said, adding that now was the time for developing countries to plan how to soften the impact of a potential deep crisis.

A serious crisis would manifest itself in not just reduced trade flows, but also reversal of capital flows, making it hard for countries, especially in Eastern Europe and Latin America, who have debt coming due.

The World Bank pointed out that since last August risk aversion to Europe has shot up and "changed the game" for developing countries that have seen their borrowing costs escalate sharply and the flow of capital to them decrease.

High-income countries have prime responsibility for preventing a crisis, the World Bank said, but "developing countries have an obligation to support that process both through the G20 (Group of 20 rich and developing countries) and other international fora."

Among other things, developing countries "could help by avoiding entering into trade disputes and by allowing market prices to move freely."

It also said developing-country governments should start contingency planning to identify spending priorities and to try to shore up safety net programs. Those contingencies should take into account possible drops in commodity prices and a fall in capital inflows, the World Bank said.

The World Bank forecast is lower than ones from the International Monetary Fund and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, who last officially updated their numbers in September and November, respectively.

The IMF, which has said it expects to cut its forecasts had predicted world growth of 4.0 percent in 2012, while the OECD had penciled in 3.4 percent.

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