Three years, three different Japanese Prime Ministers. Is the LDP’s 54-year run at an end? The story in the New York Times:

Prime Minister Taro Aso faced the possibility of a revolt in his own party on Monday, after a bruising defeat in a local vote forced him to call for a general election in which his Liberal Democratic Party faces almost certain defeat.

Mr. Aso had been trying to put off the national elections, now set for Aug. 30, in part because polls had shown that his party could lose its almost unbroken 54-year grip on power. Mr. Aso’s hand appeared to have been forced, though, by a poor showing on Sunday in a municipal election in Tokyo.

With both Mr. Aso and the conservative Liberal Democrats sinking in opinion polls, political experts say that the prime minister may face the wrath of his own party members, who fear their organization could break apart if it finds itself in the unusual position of losing power.

A poll conducted last week for Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan’s largest newspapers, showed that 37 percent of those surveyed said they would vote for the opposition Democrats in national elections, compared with 22 percent for the Liberal Democrats. A poll last week by another newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun, found Mr. Aso’s approval rating had fallen to 20 percent.

In recent weeks, a growing chorus of lawmakers has called for Mr. Aso to step down so the party could enter the elections with a new, and they hope more popular, leader. Experts expect that chorus to swell in the coming weeks. “We can’t just engage in group suicide,” Hidenao Nakagawa, a former party secretary general, told a party meeting two weeks ago.

The Liberal Democrats have governed Japan for most of its postwar history, but recently the party has appeared unable to adapt to a changing era. Disgruntled voters increasingly blame them for failing to outgrow traditional pork-barrel politics and find an end to the nation’s seemingly intractable political paralysis and economic decline.

“The Tokyo assembly vote pushed Prime Minister Aso into a position where he either had to dissolve the Parliament or resign,” said Ichita Yamamoto, a Liberal Democratic lawmaker. “The feeling inside the party is that he couldn’t put off the decision any longer.”

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In Malaysia, some immigration officials have been accused of involvement in selling refugees from Myanmar, also known as Burma, to gangs in Thailand.

The Attorney General’s office in Malaysia says 10 immigration officers are being investigated after the US State Department placed Malaysia on its list of the worlds worst human trafficking offenders last month.

Karen Zusman, an independent journalist, recently returned from Malaysia, where she reported on the plight of the Burmese refugees.

Malaysia is a destination and, to a lesser extent, a source and transit country for women and children trafficked for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation and for men, women, and children trafficked for the purpose of forced labor. Malaysia is mainly a destination country for men, women, and children who migrate willingly from Indonesia, Nepal, Thailand, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Philippines, Burma, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, and Vietnam for work – usually legal, contractual labor – and are subsequently subjected to conditions of involuntary servitude in the domestic, agricultural, food service, construction, plantation, industrial, and fisheries sectors. Some foreign women and girls are also victims of commercial sexual exploitation. – U.S. State Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2009

You can read the full report on Human Trafficking in Malaysia here.

Elaine Pearson, deputy director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the status of the Myanmar refugees in Malaysia and the problem of human trafficking in Asia.

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On Saturday, President Obama addressed a crowd in Ghana, where he spoke candidly about the African continent’s state of affairs.

Obamas message was described as a kind of tough love, encouraging democracy and at the same time warning African nations they need to take care of themselves.

Yaw Nyarko, a professor of economics and director of Africa House at New York University, joins Martin Savidge to discuss why the president chose Ghana and what is at stake for the U.S. in Africa.

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Fighters from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) attacked an oil tanker wharf in Lagos. While MEND has been responsible for hundreds of attacks in the Niger River Delta area, this attack in Lagos, Nigeria’s most populous city and the country’s financial centre, is unprecedented.

More from Al Jazeera:

At least five oil workers have been killed after a Nigerian rebel group launched an attack in Lagos, the country’s most populous city and financial capital.

Fighters from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) attacked an oil tanker wharf in the city’s harbour.

The attack came shortly before Henry Okah, a suspected Mend leader, was freed on Monday as part of a government amnesty aimed at ending the fighting in the Niger Delta.

Mend says it is fighting for greater autonomy for the Niger Delta and a fairer distribution of its oil wealth.

‘Unprecedented attack’
Mend said in a statement on Monday that the “depot and loading tankers moored at the facility” were set alight after its fighters carried out the “unprecedented attack”.

“We encountered some slight resistance from the Nigerian navy guarding the facility but they were easily overpowered. Over nine may have been injured or killed,” it said.

Government, military and oil industry officials confirmed that the Atlas Cove Jetty had come under attack.

Ken Odaga, a villager who lives near the facility, said he heard a “huge boom” at about 10:45pm on Sunday.

“I saw three speed boats with militants off the coast. They were fighting with the naval officers with guns. Next there was an explosion with big smoke,” he told The Associated Press news agency.

“I’ve never experienced that before … It was like a war between the militants and the naval officers.”

It took rescue workers around six hours to extinguish the fires that were apparently started after explosives were used to destroy part of the facility.

Until now, Mend has largely concentrated its campaign on oil facilities and government targets inside the delta region.

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World Population Day was July 11th. Yesterday, Colombia reached 45 million inhabitants. When I was born in 1960, there were 16 million Colombians. In 1900, there were 4 million Colombians. By standards in the developing world, Colombia is a success story.

For more information please visit UNFPA.

Investing in Women is a Smart Choice
No one knows yet what the full scale of this global economic crisis will look like. We do know that women and children in developing countries will bear the brunt of the impact. What started as a financial crisis in rich countries is now deepening into a global economic crisis that is hitting developing countries hard. It is already affecting progress toward reducing poverty.

Policy responses that build on women’s roles as economic agents can do a lot to mitigate the effects of the crisis on development, especially because women, more than men, invest their earnings in the health and education of their children. Investments in public health, education, child care and other social services help mitigate the impact of the crisis on the entire family and raise productivity for a healthier economy.

Protect the gains achieved
Investments in education and health for women and girls have been linked to increases in productivity, agricultural yields, and national income — all of which contribute to the achievement of the MDGs. Investments by governments worldwide have raised school enrolment rates, narrowed the gender gap in education, brought life-saving drugs to people living with AIDS, expanded HIV prevention, delivered bed nets to prevent malaria, and improved child health through immunization.

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After months of fighting with the Taliban in Pakistan’s northwest, the government says it is ready to resettle some of the millions of people displaced by the conflict.

Though many are happy to return, others fear the security situation in the hometowns they fled. They say they will wait to see if the Taliban returns once the army leaves.

Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan reports.

More from the New York Times:

Hundreds who fled a military offensive against the Taliban in the Swat Valley, a fraction of those displaced, began trickling back home on Monday after the Pakistani government announced the first stage of a three-phase plan to return them.

Elsewhere, at least nine people, including seven children, were killed when a blast ripped through a house in a farming village in the southern part of Punjab Province, police officials said.

Nearly two million refugees have been displaced by the fighting in Swat, which began after a February peace deal that had handed the Taliban effective control of the district collapsed, and a military campaign to uproot the militants began. The refugees, tens of thousands of whom have spent months in government camps, are eager to return home, but many have expressed trepidation about their safety.

In the first phase of the return, government-provided buses and trucks began shuttling hundreds of families to Swat on Monday from three camps in the Mardan and Charsadda districts south of Swat.

Mohammad Shumon Alam, the spokesman in Pakistan for the aid agency Oxfam, said many families were sending one or two members as scouts to check the area and their homes before loading all members, including children, into vehicles to go back. Many families were confused about the details of the return, such as whether they were eligible for assistance after they left, Mr. Alam said, and as a result, fewer people were returning.

“It’s not a big wave,” Mr. Alam said. “It’s limited. People want to go back, but they are extremely skeptical and concerned.”

The government of North-West Frontier Province had announced over the weekend that 23,040 displaced families would receive assistance returning to Swat in three phases. The provincial government plans to complete the process in two weeks.

Ahmad Rajwana, the government’s chief coordinator of refugee camps in Swabi district of North-West Frontier Province, said 800 families were scheduled to return to Bari Kot in Swat tomorrow as part of the first phase.

“To be honest, people in the camps wanted to go back for a long time,” he said when asked about the mood of the displaced people living in the camps. “The government is not forcing them. The refugees have signed a declaration that they are not being forcibly returned.”

He said some refugees had already started to return voluntarily: “Two weeks ago, some 4,000 people had left from Chota Lahore camp in Swabi,” he said, adding that returning refugees would be provided proper security.

Ishaq Khan, a resident of Saidu Sharif, a town in Swat, said that the military had divided the return by area, with those whose homes were closer to the camps returning first. Mr. Khan, a graphic designer, said July 17th was his scheduled date to depart.

“They said it was quiet, no shooting, no violence,” he said by telephone from Rawalpindi, where he has been living since early May, citing what others who had returned on Monday were finding. Early accounts of those who returned today were cautiously good, he said, but added that he was glad that he was scheduled to return later to be able hear the experience of others first.

The camps have been shrouded in stifling summer heat, and some aid agency officials have warned that keeping them in camps longer than absolutely necessary would only breed resentment of the government.

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Controversy over vehicles and government wastage is not a recent phenomenon after all. The first debate over the cost of a vehicle raged way back in 1966 when the Nairobi City Council sought to purchase a 4-litre Rolls Royce princess for the mayor. Robert Nagila traces its history and how the council finally got to buy a Rolls Royce similar to that of the Sultan of Brunei who owns about five thousand.

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Jason Calacanis moderates a conversation with bloggers Jeff Jarvis and Nick Denton on the future of the newspapers. This panel took place at the Aspen Ideas Festival in early July.

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