brad brace contemporary culture scrapbook

March 8, 2011

RWANDA PIKININI GENOCIDE EXTRADITED ARMED SEX CHANGE CHILD-CANNIBAL BRIDES FROM JAPAN, UNLUCKY THAI TYPO DESERTIFICATION REBELS, SUPERBUG SMUGGLED STORM GENES, TOBAGO DEMON VACCINE STATUES, BHAGVAD GITA GREENHOUSE RECRUITED GAS EMISSIONS, LOST COCAINE-CLIMATE RAMPAGE MONEY, AND IVORY COAST EX-MANGA-COP KILL THREE BLOODY RIDGE GUINEA PIGS, WOUND 34 ROLL YOUR OWN INDIAN BILLIONAIRES, AS ARMOURED, ALLAHU AKBAR, PUBLIC DISSENT VEHICLE ROBBED AFTER TWO-MONTH PACIFIC EARTHQUAKE DOUBLE DRIFT PUPPET SATIRE TORMENTS FOOD CRISIS CORAL-DRUG GIANTS FROM SMOKED SOMALIA GOLD MINES OVER VENEZUELAN INDIGENOUS GANG RAPED MANAHUNE BORDER BRIDGES

The Late Pleistocene (approximately 141,000 years ago) glacial period came to an end because of changes to the obliquity, or tilt, of the earth. This is a possible climate change hypothesis “because of the relatively large and persistent increases in summer energy reaching the high latitudes of both hemispheres during times of maximum Earth tilt”. The warming of oceans, exacerbated by melting glaciers that flow into them, is causing “horizontal mass redistribution” of the world’s seas. Essentially, the weight and position of the world’s oceans have shifted, and this has literally caused the earth to shift its position on its axis! Indeed, Inuit observations seem tied to the technical science of long-term climate change, specifically the theory of the Milankovitch Cycles, which seem to predict natural planetary warming and cooling periods based on the position of the earth and its axis in relationship to the sun.

An estimated two-thirds of Papua New Guinea’s six million people cannot read or write – but the “Buk Bilong Pikinini” movement hopes to make a positive difference. In pidgin, it means children’s book. Some branches of Papua New Guinea’s public library system do not even have books. Many education institutions and schools have no libraries, and children find it hard to learn to read and write.

In recent decades, coral reef ecosystems around the world have declined dramatically. One-fifth have died, and human activity directly threatens another 24 percent. As atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide increase, higher temperatures and ocean acidification could kill 70 percent of the world’s coral reefs by 2050. By century’s end, they could be gone entirely.

A traditional indigenous practice is being taken up by different communities to fight a food crisis in the Chittagong Hill Tracts region. Bengalis and other ethnic groups have adopted the practice of the Mro tribe, of creating a Rice Bank, in their own communities. They say the Rice Bank can give them the chance to prepare as rodents threaten another spell of destruction of crops including paddy in the coming season.

Violence has broken out all over the country of Nicaragua. Armed again, but this time organized by Sandinista thugs. Beatings and brutal physical attacks against intellectuals, journalists and civil rights group members are frequent here now. There is currently no legal opposition allowed in the country against the policies of the Nicaragua government (FSLN), controlled by the Sandinistas. It was illegal for any opposition to the Sandinistas to paint anything on poles or walls, which is what students have been doing for weeks to declare the elections stolen. During the early hours of the morning vehicles carrying armed gangs erase any opposition on walls in the country’s capital, Managua.

A look at some other pests that are benefiting or could benefit from global warming: Ticks that transmit Lyme disease are spreading northward into Sweden and Canada, once too cold for them.

The Trinidad and Tobago police have found pages of the Hindu holy book Bhagvad Gita soaked in millions of dollars worth of liquid cocaine in a laboratory in Couva, Central Trinidad. A Venezuelan national and four citizens of Trinidad and Tobago – two men and two women – were arrested and investigations are now on into this innovative way to traffic cocaine.

Thailand has issued rules making sex change surgery more difficult — including a requirement that potential candidates cross-dress for a year — over fears that some patients are rushing into the operation. Transsexuals and transgender men are a common sight in Thailand, appearing
on soap operas and working at all levels of Bangkok society, from
department store cosmetics counters and popular restaurants to corporate
offices and red-light districts. A national transgender beauty pageant
draws thousands to the beachside town of Pattaya every year. But over the past two years, a rash of castrations, especially among young
men, has alarmed the medical establishment and prompted the new rules.

Giant Humboldt squid have reached waters as far north as British Columbia,
threatening fisheries along much of the western North American coast.

Battling with one of the world’s highest murder rates, Venezuela crushed more than 30,000 guns seized from the streets during police raids this year. Policemen used blow-torches to chop up some of shotguns and pistols. They compacted weapons including home-made pistols into a 5 ton block.

A typo tragically sent Queens firefighters barreling to the wrong address – as three men died in a fire a mere three blocks away. As trapped residents desperately tried to escape an illegally converted boardinghouse on 65th Street in Woodside, the nearest fire companies found themselves on “a wild goose chase” on 62nd Street – because a 911 operator had mistakenly entered a 2 instead of a 5. Two crucial minutes were lost during the rerouting of Engine Co. 292 and Rescue Co. 4. They got to the scene four minutes and 55 seconds after the 911 call.

The African version of “Spitting Image” has delighted big audiences by ridiculing corrupt politicians. A rapping president describes himself as “a real bad dude”; a prime minister and vice-president fight over lavatories; and a set of parliamentarians suffer from a brain disease called “corruptophaelia”. Welcome to Kenya, as seen and portrayed by Africa’s version of Spitting Image, a daring puppet satire that is steadily pushing the boundaries of free expression and outraging the Nairobi elite. The XYZ Show, now preparing for its second series, proved a huge hit. Its well-aimed barbs delighted a devoted and growing audience, while scandalising the politicians who are the show’s main target.

Nicaragua’s navy seized 2,400 kilos (5,286 lbs.) of cocaine in Caribbean waters and arrested five people linked to the consignment.This has been a heavy blow against drug trafficking, The five Hondurans were carrying in their boat more than 2,400 kilos (5,286 lbs.) of drugs, as well as fuel; the five in custody are of Honduran nationality. They were arrested 45 miles east of Puerto Cabezas.

Numerous accounts of rapes show a similar pattern at the Porgera Joint
Venture (PJV) mine in Papua New Guinea, partly owned by Toronto-based
Barrick Gold Corp. The guards, usually in a group of five or more, find a woman while they are patrolling on or near mine property. They take turns threatening, beating and raping her. In a number of cases, women reported to me being forced to chew and swallow condoms used by guards during the rape.

Malaria-carrying mosquitoes are now found in South Korea, the Papua New
Guinea highlands, and other places previously not warm enough for them.

A British tourist in Thailand had been raped after being dragged off the
street by two men. She was taken  to a hotel where she was raped and then robbed of her belongings. The woman, aged 25, said the attack happened early morning in the Thai resort of Pattaya, twenty metres from a police sentry box. The attack happened after she had been separated from friends.

Seven Papua New Guineans adrift in the Pacific Ocean for more than two months have been rescued but two have since died. A helicopter from the US-based fishing vessel “Ocean Encounter” spotted a 22-foot boat drifting near Nauru in the central Pacific. Seven men were onboard, they left Tabar Island in the New Ireland area of Papua New Guinea  to return home to Lihir Island, a distance of about 50 kilometres (30 miles). But they ran out of fuel during what was expected to be a daytime trip and drifted to the northeast.

Unusually heavy rain fell during the period needed to dry the land before burning, says a Bidayuh from Sarawak, Malaysia. New weeds grew quickly over the farms, making it impossible to burn and threatened to ruin the year’s harvest. In response, a Bidayuh-Krokong village held Gawae Pinganga, an almost-forgotten ritual to ask the ‘Pinyanga’, the village’s spirit guardians, for a dry season. The last time such assistance had been asked of ‘Pinyanga’ was during World War II and the elders were uncertain as to the exact composition of the offering.

Organized citizen gangs, called the CPC or Consejo del Pueblo Ciudadana work closely with some of the most dangerous criminal delinquent gangs in the city and region, mostly young disenfranchised and uneducated men, to prevent any opposition to Daniel Ortega and his government policies, while rumors fly that Ortega flies to Cuba for blood transfusions.

The number of Indian billionaires has almost doubled, from 27 to 52 in the
last year, despite one of the worst global recessions in history, In the last year the Indian stock market has gained more than 75 per cent and the economy has grown by almost seven per cent. Yet 42 per cent of the population still live below the poverty line.

The meaning of the Arabic phrase “Allahu Akbar”, shouted by the Fort Hood killer Major Nidal Malik Hasan before he opened fire, is known as the takbir and is used by Muslims to express a wide range of emotions.

The number of tobacco smokers currently in Thailand has reached 14.3
million. Meanwhile, the Public Health Ministry is considering a proposal to the Finance Ministry to increase the tax level on hand-rolled cigarette
products after finding over 7.4 million people smoke this style of
cigarette. The remainder smoke manufactured cigarettes.

Police in Uganda have arrested and extradited a man who is among the most wanted suspects from the Rwandan genocide. The 100-day killing rampage led to the loss of an estimated 10 percent of Rwanda’s population.

A corrupt former Philadelphia cop who used his badge to rob drug dealers
was sentenced yesterday to 30 years in a federal lockup. Malik Snell’s criminal acts had so tarnished the badge that he wore for 12 years that it would be removed from service and destroyed.

The Japan Meteorological Agency is planning to start monitoring levels of ‘’super’’ greenhouse gases, which have an enormous effect on global warming compared with carbon dioxide, at two observatories as part of efforts to combat global warming under the Kyoto Protocol.

Bark beetles reproducing more quickly in warming climates and expanding
their ranges have devastated forests across western North America. In
British Columbia they have laid waste to an area twice the size of Ireland.

Thailand’s main airport is to relocate 12 giant “demon statues” to boost the morale of staff who thought the figures brought bad luck. The statues at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport will move from the arrivals
area to the check-in zone at a cost of around 1.7 million baht (51,000
dollars.)

A gunman went on the rampage in the Northern Mariana Islands in the western Pacific, killing at least four people and wounding six,
including five Korean tourists. An Asian gunman killed four local people, including two children aged four and three, and critically injured a four-year-old girl in an apparent random shooting spree at a local shooting range. The man then drove in a van to Last Command Post Park, a popular tourist destination and opened fire on a group of South Korean tourists.

Before any pill reaches the pharmacy shelf, it must first pass through a
gauntlet of human guinea pigs: the ‘clinical subjects’ paid to take trial
drugs so specialists can observe their symptoms. But like call centers and high-end hospitals, drug trials too are rapidly shifting to India and Asia with Thailand as the region’s favored frontrunner.

Tokyo has banned the sale and lease of anime films and manga comics
depicting rape, incest and other sex crimes to under-18s. A bill,
introduced by the metropolitan assembly, calls on the industry to self
regulate by toning down graphic comics and films on general release.
Publishers and retailers breaking rules face fines up to JPY 300,000. A
group of publishers, complaining of censorship, have threatened to boycott
Tokyo International Anime Fair.

Students are now putting together El Libro Negro, the black book that proves the elections of 2008 were stolen. With this in mind coupled with the increasing pressure on the Ortega government, after one week of peaceful opposition protest met by brutal Sandinista violence, Daniel Ortega finally admitted there had been fraud in the elections.

The recruits assembled by moonlight at a watering hole. Hundreds of boys and young Kenyan men were herded onto trucks, which were covered with heavy canvas and driven through the night. It was so hot inside they could hardly breathe. One recruit, said they banged the sides of the truck for water but got none. Some had to urinate where they stood. Their destination: a secluded training camp deep in the Kenyan bush.

Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast faced a battering by high winds and heavy rains Friday, as remnants of hurricane Ida wrecked homes and officials warned as many as 40,000 could be affected by the storm. Despite being downgraded to a tropical depression, heavy rains from Ida swelled rivers, destroying an estimated 530 houses and decimating remote communities in one of Central America’s poorest nations.

When it comes to American policy in Pakistan or, for that matter, Afghanistan. It’s just the norm on a planet on which it’s assumed that American civilian and military leaders can issue pronunciamentos about what other countries must do; publicly demand various actions of ruling groups; opt for specific leaders, and then, when they disappoint, attempt to replace them; and use what was once called “foreign aid,” now taxpayer dollars largely funneled through the Pentagon, to bribe those who are hard to convince.

An armoured vehicle travelling between Wewak and Maprik has been held up by robbers armed with two AR15 rifles, a pistol, a Winchester and an axe.  The thieves escaped with an undisclosed amount of money.

The thousands of refugees arriving in Liberia had fled violence perpetrated by rebels who support Ouattara. At least 14,000 people have fled the violence and political chaos in Ivory Coast, some walking for up to four days with little food to reach neighboring Liberia. At least one child drowned while trying to cross a river.

“I had parked next to the Japanese Memorial and two of us went down the hill to the Pigs Tails with the Barbwire to record a video promoting the Solomon Islands, and left a female at my vehicle. Whilst we were down there recording, a person of Local Features walked past the vehicle and eyed the vehicle to see if anybody else was around, and just as he disappeared over the hill, 4 Youths, WITH BUSH KNIVES, approximate age of 20-25, approached the vehicle and DEMANDED MONEY, when they were told that she had no money, they went into the vehicle and STOLE THE TWO BACKPACKS from out of the vehicle and then ran down the hill towards the accommodation areas near the Lunga River…”

In the latest sign of deteriorating relations between the Andean
neighbours. Soldiers destroyed the walkways because they were being used by illegal militia and drug traffickers. They are two foot bridges that paramilitary fighters used, where gasoline and drug precursors were smuggled, subversive groups entered. They are not considered in any international treaty.

“The Head Shaman called for the spirits to come and show us if and how they wanted us to conduct the ceremony to ‘bring them home’. Sure enough they came and showed us. Of course I could not see because I am not the ‘sighted one’, but Aturn saw everything in a flash and told us exactly what the altar and offerings should look like. The ceremony was then held. After the Chief Priest finished, we sat and waited for the response. Within a minute, there was a sound from the east like an old man crying. It was a bird circling the small altar and then above the main altar three times. It is supposed to be a night bird but now it was in broad daylight. It was simply amazing!!! The omen is interpreted as saying ‘We thought that you have forgotten us … but now you come … we are happy. How nice for you to come.’ The rains stopped for seven days within the week after the ceremony.”

A microscopic parasite is spreading a deadly disease among salmon in
Alaska and British Columbia. Researchers say rising water temperatures are
partly to blame.

Thousands of people, including children, are being secretly recruited and
trained inside Kenya to battle Islamic insurgents in neighboring Somalia,
according to deserters, local officials, families of recruits and
diplomats. Most recruits are Somalis living in crowded refugee camps and
Kenyan nationals who are ethnic Somalis living nearby.

A magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Japan. A Pacific-wide tsunami is not expected. However, the Japanese Meteorological Agency has issued tsunami warnings for the Ogasawara Islands and a tsunami advisory for southern Japan. The quake, which occurred 3:19 a.m., is about 95 miles (155 km) from Chichi-shima, Ogasawara Islands. It is also 210 miles from Iwo Jima in the Volcano Islands, and 650 miles from Tokyo.

A Sri Lankan was arrested by the Solomon Islands police after he had
escaped from the airport where he was to be deported. The man, who had been illegally residing in the country, was allegedly at the departure lounge when a group of armed men had helped him escape the police. He had been arrested again while four others have been linked to the incident.

Gases such as sulfur hexafluoride and dinitrogen monoxide, which
respectively have 20,000 and 300 times more global warming effects than
CO2, will be monitored at the meteorological observatory in Minamitori
Island, Japan’s easternmost island, and the atmospheric environment
observatory in Ofunato, Iwate Prefecture.

A little loop of genes that give bacteria the power to resist virtually all known antibiotics is spreading quickly and likely to cause doctors headaches for years to come. They come on the equivalent of a genetic memory stick – a string of genes called a transmissible genetic element. Bacteria, unlike higher forms of life, can swap these gene strings with other species and often do so with wild abandon.

IIdephonse Nizeyimana was picked up at a hotel in Rubaga, a suburb of the
capital, Kampala, by the National Central Bureau of Interpol. He was transferred to a U.N. detention facility in Arusha, Tanzania, where the tribunal is based. Top officials who allegedly took part in the genocide, such as army generals and politicians, are tried by the tribunal.

Kenya has long feared that the conflict in Somalia, which has been bloodied by civil war since warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, will spill across the border into its own neglected northeastern region.The area is home to hundreds of thousands of ethnically Somali Kenyans.

Sixteen countries, home to more than half the world’s smokers and bearing
the highest tobacco use, were involved in the study: Bangladesh, Brazil,
China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland,
Russian Federation, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay and Vietnam.

Five armed men robbed the Big Rooster outlet in 4-Mile but three were captured by police as they tried to get away with an undisclosed amount of money. They were all armed with pistols as they entered the fast food outlet and held up the company employees, customers and security guards at about 9am. As they exited the building and made for their getaway vehicle, police closed in and captured three – two in front of Freeway Motors and one in front of Big Rooster while the other two managed to escape on foot.

Nizeyimana is one of the four top accused who are earmarked by the
prosecutor to be tried by the tribunal in Arusha after their arrest as part of the ICTR completion strategy. Of a list of 13 fugitives, he is the second to be arrested in less than two months.

Thousands of would-be fighters, some as young as 11, have been lured into the militia by promises of up to $600 a month, but many fled after they were not paid, were beaten or went hungry. Many recruits remain in the ranks and see the secret militia as their only way out of overcrowded refugee camps and the dusty, poor towns around them.

The U.S. government warns that such invasive plants as the common reed,
hyacinth and purple loosestrife are likely to spread to northern states.

Translated as “God is great”, it can be used to express delight and
euphoria or as a war cry during battles. It is also said during each stage of both obligatory prayers, which are supposed to be performed five times a day, and supererogatory prayers, which are said at will. The Muslim call to prayer, or adhan, and commence to the prayer, or iqama, also contains the phrase, which is heard in cities all over the Muslim world.

Directives have been given to homicide detectives to charge a man with the
murder of German national Peter Taut. The suspect is expected to appear before a Tobago magistrate tomorrow. Taut’s body was discovered on in a shallow grave at his Bacolet Crescent home where he lived. Taut, 56, an engineer, died as a result of asphyxia, an autopsy performed revealed.

For Western pharmaceutical giants such as Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline, Asia
offers a glut of people willing to accept less money for testing out trial
medicines. Softer regulation is another big draw, as are improvements in
Asian hospitals’ facilities and an increase in Western-educated doctors. Just eight years ago, only 6 percent of the world’s drug trial patients were tested in Asia and India. The figure is now 11 percent.

The gunman, believed to be aged in his late 30s to early 40s, apparently
killed himself following the shooting spree but his motive was unclear.
The injured South Korean tourists included a 39-year-old man critically
wounded when he was shot in the back, and two other men aged 38 who were
reported to be in a stable condition. Two Korean children aged eight and five were treated and released after receiving minor cuts during the rampage. After shooting the tourists, the gunman drove to the nearby Bonzai Cliffs area on the northern tip of Saipan island. Police found the gunman’s van with smoke pouring from it and three rifles inside. The body of the shooter was found nearby with a gunshot wound to the head and another rifle.

Since returning to the presidency in 2007, 17 years after being voted out
of office at the end of the Sandinista revolution in 1990, Ortega has
created a network of private businesses that operate under the auspices of
the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), an opaque cooperation
agreement of leftist countries bankrolled primarily by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Ortega’s “ALBA businesses” — known by an alphabet soup of acronyms, including ALBANISA, ALBALINISA, and ALBACARUNA — have cornered Nicaragua’s petroleum import and distribution markets, become the country’s leading energy supplier and cattle exporter, turned profits on the sale of donated Russian buses, and purchased a hotel in downtown Managua, among other lucrative investment moves.

It was unclear whether police had recovered the money and the firearms used in the robbery. They said that any information on this would have to come from their superiors. Cooperate Executive Guards’ Tom Vele was manning the door when the robbers burst in, beat him up and pointed their pistols at him. A shaken Vele, with blood on his head and face, said that he thought they were customers wanting to buy food but they were actually robbers trying to rob the company. They arrived in a blue Toyota RAV4 sports utility, believed to have been stolen. The robbery came two days after police superintendent of operations warned the public to be wary of criminals during the festive season as they were targeting owners of Honda CRV and Toyota RAV4 sports utility vehicles.

In the past the Nyando River basin experienced long rains from March to
June with very short rain spells in November. This trend has been rather irregular in recent years with floods occurring in August instead of April. Dry periods have increased in length and farm harvests are dwindling. The Wakesi community traditionally offers sacrifices to the gods for rain. These offerings are made under trees such as the Baobab, as they are associated with rain. The community revealed that they are increasingly offering sacrifices to the gods for rain. It appears climate change is catalyzing these practices.

Refugees are supposed to find safety in the camps, not a government that is trying to trick their sons into going back to fight in Somalia. The recruitment of children violates the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Kenya is a signatory. Kenya is eager to counter the influence of insurgents in Somalia who preach the spread of a pan-Islamic state into Kenya and Ethiopia, where many Somalis live due to borders drawn by former colonial powers. Somalia’s al-Shabab insurgents — some of whom have ties to al-Qaida –already cross into northern Kenya.

In the attacks that started in April 1994, Hutu militias and members of the general population sought out Tutsis and moderate Hutus, and went on a
100-day killing rampage. Civilians and children got incentives to take part in the atrocities, including promises of land belonging to their Tutsi neighbors.

Only six out of every 10 smokers said they planned or are thinking about
quitting, while five in 10 smokers had tried to quit in the last 12 months. The survey found that 3.3 million workers are exposed to tobacco smoke at the workplace and 20.5 million adults to tobacco smoke in their homes.

Fishermen are ruining Semporna’s rich heritage with fish bombing. During their 1,000 hours of diving, the scientists heard 15 fish bombs going off and came across four unexploded bombs. They have warned that conservation action is urgent because of high threats from overfishing, destructive fishing and pollution.

Two women who were walking along the road, after leaving their respective
vegetable gardens, were approached to enquire as to whether they had seen four youths running, and, they said that they had seen some youths running down the hill towards the river, but didn’t take any notice of what they were wearing. In the TV Crew Backpack was a 4 THOUSAND ENGLISH POUND (SBD$40,000), VIDEO CAMERA, and their HERITAGE PARK HOTEL ROOM KEY. And the immediate concern was for the Tens of Thousands of Dollars worth of Equipment in their room. So the chase had to be suspended to go to the Hotel and move rooms and to make sure nothing else was stolen.

40,000 people will be directly or indirectly affected by the hurricane in preliminary damage projections. Nineteen communities are expected to be affected by the storm, which was gusting at up to 35 miles (55 kilometers) per hour.

The shopkeepers are blaming the ‘demon statues’ for the problems they have faced at the airport, which was seized late last year by demonstrators and supporters of the People’s Alliance of Democracy” (PAD).The guardian spirit statues will be shifted from the inner zone of the passenger terminal to the check-in area to ‘improve morale’ of people working at the airport. The anti-government PAD seized two of the Thai capital’s airports in a crippling eight-day blockade late in 2008, which badly dented the kingdom’s tourist-friendly image.

Recruiters started openly operating in Kenyan towns and in nearby huts and tents of the refugee camps. Some recruiters even worked from a hotel fronting a heavily fortified U.N. Compound in the northern town of Dadaab, home to three overcrowded camps of about 275,000 refugees, most from Somalia. More than a dozen deserters said they were promised positions in the Kenyan or Somali armies or jobs with U.N. Security by men acting as recruiters. Some said they were told they would patrol the Kenya-Somalia border, but upon arrival at the training camp, they were told they were going to Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, or Kismayo, a key southern city under Islamist control.

President Obama said of Pakistan: “We want to respect their sovereignty, but we also recognize that we have huge strategic interests, huge national security interests in making sure that Pakistan is stable and that you don’t end up having a nuclear-armed militant state.” When it comes to U.S. Respect for Pakistan’s sovereignty, this country has more important fish to fry. A look at the historical record indicates that Washington has, in fact, been frying those “fish” for at least the last four decades without particular regard for Pakistani sensibilities.

Residents of the Ogasawara Islands are urged to evacuate coastlines
immediately. Evacuate from the seashore immediately to the safe places
near the above coasts. Scores of villagers on a remote Japanese island chain in the Pacific scrambled for higher ground after a major 7.4-magnitude offshore quake sparked a tsunami alert.

It was one of the most brutal genocides in modern history. Some figures put the number of dead at 1 million — 10 percent of the population of the
central African nation. Millions more were raped and disfigured. A whole
generation of children lost their parents.

In the Islamic world, instead of applause, often someone will shout
“takbir” and the crowd will respond “Allahu Akbar” in chorus.
It can also be used as a protest. In the aftermath of the 2009 Iranian
presidential election many people shouted it for an hour between 10pm and
11pm every day for nine days to show their anger at the result.

Desertification and land degradation is the greatest environmental
challenge of our time and a threat to global wellbeing. People must be paid via global carbon markets for preserving the soil. The top 20cm of soil is all that stands between us and extinction. Conflicts and food price crises all stem from the degradation of land.

The Cook Islands Health Ministry has announced the first HIV infection in
the country. Nothing is known about the person who has been diagnosed for privacy reasons, but follow-ups will be made with their previous sexual partners, to ensure the virus has not spread. With the large number of
tourists who arrive in the country each year, it’s no surprise that this
has finally happened.

The survey found that 74.4 per cent of adults noticed anti-cigarette
smoking information on television. Only one in 10 adults were aware of
cigarette marketing in stores where cigarettes are sold; seven in 10
smokers considered quitting because of warning labels; and 98.6 per cent of adults believed smoking causes serious illness. Most people mistakenly believe smoking hand-rolled cigarettes is less dangerous than manufactured cigarettes.

Nizeyimana was a captain the Rwanda Armed Forces, he is
accused of exercising authority over soldiers and personnel through a chain of command, and allegedly sent a section of soldiers to execute of Rosalie Gicanda, a former queen of Rwanda who was a “symbolic figure for all Tutsis.

She said she was unable to resist the two men who, after raping her, took
her Natwest bank and credit cards and 60 pounds in cash and a bracelet
worth 100 pounds. Last night police in Pattaya charged two men with rape and theft. They were named as Krajon Senkam, 29, and Surasak Kovekasan, 20, who were described as local ‘maeng da’ a Thai expression, literally translating as cockroaches, describing men who live off the earnings of local prostitutes. The men were arrested quickly as they were known in the area.

We naturally grasp the extremity of the Taliban – those floggings, beheadings, school burnings, bans on music, the medieval attitude toward women’s role in the world – but our own extremity is in no way evident to us. So Obama’s statement on Pakistani sovereignty is reported as the height of sobriety, even when what lies behind it is an expanding “covert” air war and assassination campaign by unmanned aerial drones over the Pakistani tribal lands, which has reportedly killed hundreds of bystanders and helped unsettle the region.

One typical test, which measures the speed of blood stream absorption, can require volunteers to consume a pill and submit to more than 35 blood draws throughout a weekend. Two weekends of testing, in the United States, would pay approximately $1,000. Volunteers in Thailand would more likely receive less than $50. Other disease-specific trials test experimental drugs on patients over a series of weeks or months. The ‘payment’ in these studies typically isn’t cash but rather the promise of cutting-edge treatment.

More than a third of the world’s child brides are
from India, leaving children at an increased risk of exploitation despite
the Asian giant’s growing modernity and economic wealth.

The police was informed so if you see any of the following items up for
SALE, please ring me on +677 747 6372, after you have detained, or delayed
the person offering it to you. I will come as soon as you have rang and
then they will be handed over to the police to face the consequences.
The list of items that were stolen and what they were contained in was:
One (1) Dark Blue Backpack belonged to the Film Crew, Jamie & Kim,
contained the following: 1 x Very Expensive Digital Video Camera containing a Digital Tape for Recording, 1 x Room Key to Room
112 of the Heritage Park Hotel, and 1 x some other items that I can’t
remember at the time of writing this statement.

The average amount of sulfur hexafluoride, frequently used as an insulator
in electronic devices, found in the atmosphere is relatively small at 6 to
7 parts per million compared with 380 ppm of CO2, but the level has doubled from the 1990s, mostly due to man-made emissions.the National Institute for Environmental Studies has been taking
samples and analyzing them four times a year on Hateruma Island in Okinawa
Prefecture. The agency plans to start monitoring levels once a week at the
observatories in Minamitori Island and Iwate.

The deserters all said they were taken to Manyani, a training center for
the Kenya Wildlife Service outside the port of Mombasa. They said their
cell phones were confiscated upon arrival and Kenyan citizens had to
surrender their identity cards. Kenyans of Somali descent can easily pass for Somalis. They share with Somali nationals the Islamic religion, a common language, and a tall, slender appearance, looking distinct from members of other ethnic groups from farther south.

Uniformed men, apparently from the Venezuelan army, arrived in trucks on
the Venezuelan side at two pedestrian bridges that link communities on both sides and then proceeded to dynamite them. The row renewed tensions that have bubbled for weeks, with Venezuela’s
president, Hugo Chavez, recently telling his armed forces “to prepare for
war” with their neighbour in order to ensure peace. Colombia’s decades-long civil war has for years spilled across its 1,375-mile border with Venezuela in the form of leftist guerrillas, right-wing militias and drug traffickers, a nexus made even murkier by contraband and corrupt local authorities.

Seventy thousand H1N1 vaccines valued at US$675,000 will be here in time
for this country’s hosting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. And while the safety and the efficacy of the vaccine is still being questioned,these vaccines have
been used in over 20 countries over the past several weeks and have proven
to be very safe. While the vaccines are a welcomed move in light of the
215 confirmed swine flu cases and five related deaths, they hope the
ministry has a plan to deal with the chaos that can ensue.

A jury convicted Snell of conspiracy, attempted robbery and a
weapons offense in connection with a botched home-invasion robbery in
Pottstown. Snell, 37, was also convicted of taking $40,000 in cash from a South Philadelphia drug kingpin during a bogus police car stop

The seabed tremor struck at 2:19 am local time jolting people out of bed as loudspeakers blared across the Ogasawara islands and authorities warned of the risk of a two-metre (six-foot) high local tsunami. The tsunami alert was later downgraded and all warnings were lifted five hours after the quake hit near the islands, some 1,000 kilometres (600
miles) south of Tokyo. No injuries or damage were reported.

Nearly 25 million women in India were married in the year 2007 by the age
of 18; children in India, Nepal and Pakistan may be engaged or even married before they turned 10. Millions of children are also being forced to work in harmful conditions, or face violence and abuse at home and outside, suffering physical and psychological harm with wide-reaching, and sometimes irreparable effects.

The takbir is also included on the flags of many Arabic nations. It is
written on the centre of the flag of Iraq, 22 times along the borders of
the central white stripe on the flag of Iran, and beneath the Shahadah in
the 2004 draft constitution of Afghanistan in white script on the central
red background.

The Chinese government has abducted and unlawfully detained large number of Chinese citizens in illegal prisons. State-run hotels, nursing homes and psychiatric hospitals in Beijing are being used as so-called “black jails”.  Many people
detained in these illegal prisons are citizens from rural areas who travel to Beijing and other provincial capitals to file complaints for abuses such as illegal land grabs, government corruption and police torture. In these “black jails” they are subjected to physical violence, theft, extortion, threats, intimidation, and deprivation of food, sleep and medical care,

The other Backpack, belonged to myself, was a Columbia Brand Backpack,
being a unique Backpack within the Solomon Islands as it was given to me by Patricks Defence Logistics whilst I was employed with them and told that it was a Prototype Backpack, which had a main pouch, a zipped opening at the top near the handle and a smaller front semi-attached pouch at the front with a zip for the main pouch and a smaller zip for an internal pouch at the front, and, was of sentimental value as it was the only thing that I got out of Patricks that I have left.

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, many governments around
the world are forced to support their private economy in the face of weak
global demand. The combination of higher spending and lower revenues
results in the deterioration the government’s fiscal health. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has such concerns for several Pacific
Island countries.

Hand-rolled cigarettes also cause serious illness for smokers such
as oral cancer and cancer of the aesophagus. In India, about
100,000 died from smoking hand-rolled cigarettes each year.
Most cigarette manufacturers are now producing more smokeless
cigarettes after noting an increasing trend in smokeless tobacco use among
teenagers worldwide.

New Delhi metallobeta-lactamase 1 or NDM-1 for short, will cause more trouble in the coming years. What makes this enzyme so frightening is not only its intrinsic ability to destroy most known beta-lactam antibiotics but also the company it keeps. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are nothing new — virtually all strains of the common Staphylococcus bacteria are now resistant to penicillin. Almost as soon as penicillin was introduced in the 1940s, bacteria began to develop resistance to its effects, prompting researchers to develop many new generations of antibiotics.

Tiny rations of dirty food, beatings and failure to pay promised salaries
caused widespread desertion, recruits said. Some who tried to flee were
caught and beaten, but many managed to return home through Tsavo, a vast
national park filled with dangerous animals that surrounds the training
camp. At least one boy who fled at night with a group of nine others was attacked and killed by lions, another group of deserters was chased by elephants. Some recruits called their families on phones smuggled into the camp and whispered tearful pleas for help.

A society cannot thrive if its youngest members are forced into early
marriage, abused as sex workers or denied their basic rights. Despite rising literacy levels and a ban on child marriage, tradition and
religious practices are keeping the custom alive in India, as well as in
Nepal and Pakistan.

A spike in violence on the Venezuelan side, including the abduction and
murder of an amateur football team, and the drive-by shooting of two border guards, prompted authorities to reinforce the border. Destroying the bridges was a “necessary and sovereign act to curb border
infiltration and drug smuggling,” the economy minister said. Colombian media reported that villagers on their side of the border
remonstrated and threw stones at the Venezuelan troops in a vain
effort to save the walkways. They were sighted at two rural spots, Las Naves and Chicoral, near the Colombian municipality of Ragonvalia.

One cabinet minister denounced the programme as “weird”, while another
complained that villagers were mistaking the puppets for the real-life
equivalents. But to the relief of viewers, the government decided not to
order it off the air, even after a clip entitled “What if Kenya was
perfect?”, which depicted President Mwai Kibaki and the prime minister,
Raila Odinga, in jail in The Hague for crimes committed during last year’s
election violence.

The cholera outbreak in Papua New Guinea’s Madang is still worsening with more than 300 people now being treated for the illness. Cholera is a diarrheal infection caused by ingesting bacteria in water or
food, and can kill healthy people within hours.

More than half the world’s child brides are in south Asia, which also
accounts for more than half the unregistered births, leaving children
beyond the reach and protection of state services and unable to attend
school or access basic healthcare.

Thailand’s people are largely healthy and eligible for testing thanks to a
90-cents-per-visit public healthcare scheme. Its hospitals are staffed by
English-speaking physicians and specialists educated abroad. There’s also no single Thai regulatory body responsible for approving
trials — both a convenience and source of frustration for pharmaceutical
firms. In a departure from Western standards, trial supervisors don’t have to report what the industry calls “Unexpected Suspected Adverse Drug
Reactions” — meaning worrisome side-effects of prototype drugs don’t have
to be documented.

Rains could produce flash floods and mudslides, as Nicaraguans waited for Ida to head north out to sea. One of the first areas affected were the Corn Islands, a tropical paradise popular with backpackers. Around 300 tourists were evacuated from the islands by civil defense forces.

But about 120 people temporarily evacuated to higher ground on Chichi-shima island and some 50 people on Haha-shima island overnight. “It was the biggest earthquake I have ever felt,” said Masae Nagai, a hotel
owner on Chichi-shima, part of the remote archipelago also called the Bonin islands, which has a population of about 2,300.

Only 6 percent of all births in Afghanistan and 10 percent in Bangladesh
were registered from 2000-08, compared to 41 percent in India and 73 percent in the tiny Maldives.

The contents of my backpack at the time were a follows: 1. In the Main Backpack Pouch: a) 1 x Yellow Coffee Table Insert Book with Coastwatchers Posters, Pricelist and other advertising material, including a Coastwatchers Memorial Information Sheet from the Coastwatcher Memorial Trust, and, other Coastwatchers Paperwork related to SCUBA Diving, approximate Value of SBD$1,500, and 2: In the Top Main Backpack Pouch near the Handle: a) A packet of Sinus Tablets, approximate Value of SBD$80. 3: In the Front Smaller Pouch: a) 1 x DC500 Sealife Underwater Camera with Land & Sea Underwater Program (unique and the only one (1) in the Solomon Islands) containing a 1 Gigabyte SD Memory Card in a Camera Case designed for the Camera approximate Value of AUD$1,500; b) 2 x DC500 Sealife Underwater Camera Batteries (unique to the camera) approximate Value of AUD$200; c) 1 x Solomon Islands Tourism Industry Association (SITIA) ANZ Cheque Book with either 20 or 40 Unsigned Blank Cheques in it, approximate value of SBD$10 or SBD$20; d) 1 x SITIA Receipt Book with approximately 70 blank receipts, approximate Value of SBD$12; e) 1 x Coastwatchers ANZ Cheque Book with 22 Unsigned Blank Cheques in it, approximate Value of SBD$11; f) 1 x Reading Glasses Case containing: i) Reading Glasses, approximate Value of AUD$250; ii) Writing Pen, approximate Value of SBD$5; iii) A laminated Honiara Recompression Chamber Contact Numbers Checklist, approximate Value of SBD$100. iv) 5 Coastwatchers Business Cards, approximate Value of SBD$100. v) 1 x Packet of Pall Mall Blue Cigarettes, approximate Value of SBD$22.

Land conflicts in Somalia, dust storms in Asia and the food price crises of recent years all stem from the degradation of land, due to overuse by humans and the impacts of global warming. Since the early 1980s, a quarter of the planet’s land has been despoiled and 1% a year continues to be lost.

“Ocean Encounter” was expected to arrive in Majuro, capital of the Marshall Islands, to get medical treatment for the survivors, who are suffering from “overexposure and aggressive signs of
malnutrition.” After being picked up, crew spoon-fed small amounts of water and a rice-and-water mix to the survivors because “their systems could only accept small amounts under their condition.” It was not immediately known what the men had to eat or drink during their
two-month ordeal. The survivors said they saw several fishing
vessels during their two months at sea, but these “ignored their gestures
(calling for) assistance.”

Research on a “brain-eating tribe” may hold the key to understanding and
even treating mad cow disease: A genetic study of the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea has shown that certain members carry genetic mutations that protect them from a disease called kuru, which can be contracted by eating prion proteins in brain matter. The disease, which kills tribe members lacking the mutation, is similar to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), sometimes erroneously referred to as “mad cow disease.”

The better known issues of climate change and loss of biodiversity are both rooted in the global loss of fertile soil, as the soil
harbours a huge stock of carbon and the health of creatures living in the
soil underpins global food production and forest growth. The reason
desertification has not been a priority is because 90% of the 2.1 billion
people who live in drylands live in developing countries,

Also, about 44 million, or 13 percent of all children in south Asia, are
engaged in labour, with more than half in India.

Local authorities on the Ogasawara islands, near Iwo Jima, said they had
set up five shelters for residents but had closed them before sunrise in
the absence of damage reports. The jolts were relatively stronger than those we have felt in the past. But there was no panic as people acted in an orderly manner.

Children in the region have also been seriously affected by insurgency and
instability, as well as natural disasters. We were worried about our students as the jolt was quite strong and lasted very long. But we were relieved to confirm that none of our students were injured and no facilities were damaged. We were quite lucky, considering the size of the quake. The quake hit at a shallow depth of 14 kilometres, 153 kilometres (95 miles) east of Chichi-shima, and was followed by a series of aftershocks measuring between 5.3 and 5.6 which continued into the morning.

Kenyan politicians are not the only people to have suffered ridicule. A
jug-eared, foul-mouthed Barack Obama was shown debating with Osama bin
Laden, who wore a Nike turban and drank Pepsi while pledging to end western civilisation. After the death of Michael Jackson, his puppet equivalent was questioned by God about why he changed his skin colour and about “those little boys”. “Because I’m bad,” Jackson replied.

The Japanese government plans to tighten management of its mineral resources by demanding exploration permits and overhauling the granting of
mining rights.

Especially in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal, past or ongoing conflicts
have broken down most child protection systems, leaving children especially vulnerable.

As it turns out, reefs are quite valuable. Inferring from more than 80
studies, the economists found that, on average, 2.5 acres of coral reef
provide $130,000 worth of goods and services, and sometimes as much as $1.2 million. Here’s the monetary breakdown: Food, raw materials, ornamental resources: average, $1,100 (up to $6,000). Climate regulation, moderation of extreme events, waste treatment/water purification, biological control: average, $26,000 (up to $35,000). Cultural services (e.g., recreation/tourism): average, $88,700 (up to $1.1 million). Maintenance of genetic diversity: average, $13,500 (up to $57,000).

The vast bamboo growing areas, spreading over parts of India, Bangladesh
(taking in the hill tracts) and Myanmar, have been facing acute food
shortages since 2007 due to a rat plague, which occurs on regular basis
every 47 to 50 years. According to government, around 1.1 million people live in the hill districts of Rangamati, Khagrachari and Bandarban, with an area of over 13,000 square kilometres. Half belong to different indigenous groups and half are Bengalis who settled in the 1970s and 80s. Chakma, Bengali, Marma, Mro, Tenchunga, Pankho are the major communities. Mro farmers have traditionally deposited rice in a ‘bank’ during the
harvest period. Community members can take grain from it when necessary.
Non-farmers can also take food from the bank so the whole community
overcomes hunger together.

That’s why we see tanks full of bearded dragons at every shop (and not blue tongues) because bearded dragons have clutches and clutches of eggs many times during the year while the BTS only has 5-15 babies (on average) every 1-2 years. If you’re trying to make money in a reptile business or pet store, blue tongues are not the way to go! It’s much easier to snatch BTS out of the wild and sell them than wait on babies for months and years on end.

Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, and Tuvalu are maintaining their
government expenditures even as tax revenues have declined because of their weakened economies. The Cook Islands and Fiji Islands have expansionary fiscal policies because they are still subsidizing key industries, building their infrastructure, and trying to soften the impact of the global recession. The Samoan government has to cope with tsunami damages on top of the typical challenges that face Pacific Island countries.

About three hours after the quake, a 60 centimetre (two feet) wave was
monitored 700 kilometres away at Hachijo-jima, part of the Izu island chain that runs south of Tokyo. Waves of up to 20 centimetres also reached the southwestern Japanese main islands.

Full-scale war between Colombia and Venezuela was “unlikely” but there
remained the potential for a bloody border clash. Things are so tense it’s definitely possible. Alarm bells should
be ringing. Chavez, who says he is leading a socialist revolution against US hegemony, has protested against a deal that will extend US access to Colombian military bases. He accused Colombia’s conservative president, Alvaro Uribe, of being a Washington pawn. Venezuela has cut the $7bn annual bilateral trade between the two countries, sparking protests from businesses on both sides of the border.

Trafficking of children for labour, prostitution or domestic services is
widespread, especially within Bangladesh and India, and within the region,
as well as to Europe and the Middle East.

The world is driven by city dwellers: political leaders are setting agendas to satisfy people who live in the
cities, we therefore tend to perceive soil as just dust, or mud, or a
dumping place. But if we don’t preserve that first 20cm of soil, where will we get our food and water from? Half the world’s livestock are raised on drylands and a third of crops, especially wheat.

The impacts of climate change — rising temperatures and more erratic
rainfall — are here already from Latin America to the Sahel.
Adding to the pressure on land is rising global population, which is
expected to pass the 7 billion mark next year and reach 9 billion by 2050.
As well as the consequences for food and water, violent conflicts and
migration will also increase, affecting those living outside
drylands.

Last Command Post Park was the site where the Japanese military commanders
were based during the final advance of American troops during World War II. The nearby Bonzai Cliffs site is also popular with tourists and was where thousands of Japanese civilians living on the island threw themselves into the sea as the Japanese defeat loomed. The Northern Mariana Islands has a population of about 89,000 people, and
is a self governing commonwealth in union with the United States, lying
about three-quarters of the way from Hawaii to the Philippines.

Inequality is increasing and nothing has been done to curb “grotesque”
amounts of wealth building up in India. Mukesh Ambani, the head of Reliance Industries, remains the richest person in India with a net worth of 32 billion US dollars. India’s 100 richest people have a combined wealth of 270 billion US dollars.

Soldiers who witnessed the shooting rampage that killed 13 people at Fort
Hood military base in Texas have reported that gunman Major Nidal Malik
Hasan shouted “Allahu Akbar” before opening fire. Islamic groups have prepared for a public backlash after it emerged that
Hasan was a Muslim and have expressed fears about inter-faith relations,
already strained by the September 11, 2001 attacks, and wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan.

Most infections that people get while in the hospital resist at least one
antibiotic. For example, half of all Staphylococcus aureus infections in the United States are resistant to penicillin, methicillin, tetracycline and erythromycin. Methicillin-resistant staph aureus or MRSA killed an
estimated 19,000 people in the United States alone in 2005.

The Ogasawara chain, made up of more than 30 subtropical and tropical
islets some 240 kilometres north of Iwo Jima, were put under the control of the United States after World War II, and returned to Japan in 1968.
The remote islands have preserved their unique biological habitats and have been dubbed the Galapagos of the Orient. After sounding the
initial alert there was no threat of a destructive widespread tsunami and
no nearby islands were thought to be in the tsunami danger zone.

All villagers, irrespective of their livelihoods, would
get rice from the buffer stock during crisis periods. Rangamati inhabitants can cultivate rice during periods when the lake
waters recede from December to April. Their land goes under water during
the rainy season starting in May every year. They also depend on fishing, but for only eight to nine months a year as
the government bans fishing in Kaptai lake during the rainy season. Fishermen will be able to take rice from the bank provided that they give
more to the community stock when they earn more. About 300 villages throughout the hill tracts had accepted the Rice Bank concept.

Insufficient emphasis has been placed on protecting child victims of
trafficking and ensuring that any judicial proceedings brought against them are child sensitive.

According to 2009 data, Cook Islands and Fiji Islands had
their highest budget deficit as a percentage of GDP at 11.7 percent and 6.3 percent, respectively. The Cook Islands and Kiribati had the highest trade deficits at 92.7 percent.

Japan has abundant supplies of methane hydrate in deep-sea regions off its
coast. And sea floor hydrothermal deposits that contain copper, zinc, gold
and other metals are distributed off the coast of the Ogasawara Islands.

The situation is critical. Coral reefs are showing signs of stress from local pressures at the same time that climate change is starting to have a bigger and bigger impact on reefs. Overfishing has reduced the quality of many reefs. The people of Sabah should be very proud that they own such a top marine eco-system in the world. Semporna is not only a world-class diving spot. The expedition, encountered 844 species of fish,
including 756 species of reef fish, more than 90 coral shrimp species and
more than 100 algae species. The scientists also discovered some coral shrimp and gall crab species that were new to science and a rare mushroom coral species, the lithophyllon ranjithi.

Suspected insurgents killed three people, including a toddler,
and wounded at least 34 Tuesday in a grenade, gun and car bomb attack on
two restaurants and a hotel in Thailand’s south.

The two-family home had been converted to at least seven single-room units, according to the Department of Buildings, which yesterday issued three violations. The house had 10 residents, including the
owners and their two children. There were no smoke detectors in the
basement, and two elsewhere in the house had no batteries, fire inspectors
found. “I heard a huge bang; I heard screams, so I looked through the window and saw flames coming out of the basement. Blue, red – it was raging.”

4) In the Front Smaller Pouch Front Zippered Area: a) 1 x Bendigo Bank (Australia) Internet Banking Key Code Machine with “The
light is on but nobody is home” Neck Holder, approximate Value of AUD$50.
b) A plastic bag containing the following keys from my Laptop Keyboard
approximate Value of AUD$200: i) Shift Key, ii) Letter ‘A’ Key, iii) Letter ‘Z’ Key, and iv) Caps Lock key. c) Toe Nail Cutters attached by an Elastic (Rubber) Band to Finger Nail Cutters, approximate Value of AUD$25,
d) 1 x one (1) Gigabyte Memory Stick with World War II Photos on it (a
Folder name of “Extras for Jaime” on it, approximate Value of AUD$200, e)
2 x Parker Pen without ink sticks, approximate Value of AUD$12, f) 1 x
Nokia Phone Headphone Attachment, approximate Value of AUD$25, g) 1 x
Infra-red Mouse Pouch (with possible instruction sheet inside), approximate Value of AUD$15, h) Another battery for the Sealife Underwater Camera, approximate Value of AUD$100, 5) In one of the Mesh Side Pockets was the SITIA & Coastwatchers Post Office Box Keys on a series of Key Rings and Tags approximate Value of SBD$200.

The brutal violence brings the death toll over the past two days to four
and the number of casualties to more than 50 as a result of militant
attacks in the troubled Thai south, which is gripped by a bitter five-year
uprising.

Increased aridity is making the drylands the most conflict prone region of the world. If you really want to look at the root causes of the conflicts in Somalia and Darfur, and drylands of Asia, you will understand that people in their quest to have access to productive land and water for life, they end up in conflict. In nothern Nigeria, where increased aridity means lack of fodder is driving herders south into the areas farmed for corn. Conflict is almost inevitable.

With 13,000 murders in 2007, the last time figures were published, violent crime consistently registers as Venezuelans’ main concern in opinion polls.
Gun laws are lax in the South American oil exporter. The government estimates there are 6 million firearms circulating among the population of about 28 million. Venezuela’s murder rate is about 8 times that of the United States. Crime has risen under President Hugo Chavez, who has focused on poverty reduction to tackle violence in poor city neighborhoods.

But it warned in a bulletin shortly after the quake: Earthquakes of this
size sometimes generate local tsunamis that can be destructive along coasts located within 100 kilometres of the earthquake epicentre. When a massive 8.8-magnitude quake, one of the most powerful on record,
struck off Chile’s coast in February, Japan issued its top tsunami alert
and ordered more than half a million people to evacuate seaside areas. Authorities later apologised after a wave of 120 centimetres hit and caused no injuries.

After missing work for several days, Jose Emilio Galindo Robles, the
regional director for Radio Universidad de Guadalajara in Ciudad Guzmon,
was found dead inside his home. Authorities have given little information about the case but have confirmed that the journalist
was killed. A motive had not been confirmed. Galindo, 43, known as “Pepe Galindo,” had experience as a reporter and
researcher of environmental topics, especially environmental legislation.
He won the Second Biennial of Latin American Radio for a report about
political crimes in Mexico, El Informador adds. In 2004 he won first prize
in the Biennial of National Radio for a report about pollution of the
Santiago River caused by private companies.

The rebels, travelling by car and on three motorcycles, hurled a hand
grenade into a restaurant at lunchtime in Sungai Kolok, a border
town in Narathiwat province, wounding four people.

NDM-1 resists many different types of antibiotic. In at least one case, the only drug that affected it was colistin, a toxic older antibiotic.
Thus far, the majority of isolates in countries throughout the world can
be traced to subjects who have traveled to India to visit family or have
received medical care there. However, the ability of this genetic element to spread rapidly among Enterobacteriaceae means that there will almost certainly be numerous secondary cases throughout the world that are unrelated to travel to the Indian subcontinent.

They then opened fire on customers, shooting dead a Buddhist police officer and injuring another four people. A three-year-old boy who
suffered gunshot wounds later died at hospital. The gunmen then began shooting at another nearby restaurant, killing the owner, a 45-year-old Buddhist woman, and wounding four people. A car bomb exploded in front of one of the town’s hotels soon afterwards, wounding 23 people.

Around 20 percent of the world’s most powerful earthquakes strike Japan,
which sits on the “Ring of Fire” surrounding the Pacific Ocean. In 1995 a magnitude-7.2 quake in the port city of Kobe killed 6,400 people. But high building standards, regular drills and a sophisticated tsunami
warning system mean that casualties are often minimal.

“The most obscene thing I came across was a copy of the Bhagvad Gita,
the pages torn and soaked in liquid cocaine.” This oil-rich nation continues to be the transhipment point for cocaine coming from South America to the US and Canada. Special anti-drug officers have been trained both at home and abroad in the government’s fight against drugs. The accused are to appear in courts shortly. Trinidad and Tobago is home to a large Indian diaspora sourced from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar between 1845 and 1917. The immigrants were brought here during the British rule to work on the sugar and cocoa plantation.

The explosive weighed 30 to 50 kilograms and was hidden in a Honda Civic
with a fake licence plate, which had passed a screening by a bomb detection machine. The bomb was hidden in the passenger car and detonated by radio signal; two of the wounded were in a serious condition.

An explosive hidden in a motorcycle went off in Pattani
province close to where Buddhists were attending a festival, wounding 17 — five of them seriously.

Desertification and rising aridity were the ultimate cause of the food
price crisis of 2007-8, as it began with a drought in
Australia. This year’s price spike started with a drought in Russia.
Another example of desertification’s impact was the loss of land bordering
the Gobi desert leading to record dust storms that damage the health of
people in Seoul in South Korea, thousands of kilometres away. Combating
desertification and soil degradation requires better land management,
better equipment and new technology to manage water, drought resistant
seeds and payment to communities for preserving the soil.

Four gunmen on two motorcycles opened fire on a 34-year-old Muslim rubber worker as he travelled to work in Narathiwat province; he died at the scene. The bloody rebellion has claimed more than 3,900 lives since it erupted in Thailand’s Muslim-majority southern provinces, bordering Malaysia, in January 2004.

In the early morning the little broadcasting center of the community radio
station “Radyo Cagayano” was being burned
down completely. At about two in the morning, eight mummed soldiers
infiltrated the premises in the small town of Baggao in the Northern
Philippines, captivated and gagged the employees and ignited the entire
radio station with petrol. Radyo Cagayano had just started broadcasting a
few weeks ago and had especially stood up for the interests of local
farmers.

Experts have been warning for years that poor hospital practices and the
overuse of antibiotics spread dangerous bacteria, but practices are
changing only slowly. The fact that there is widespread nonprescription use of antibiotics in India, a country in which some areas have less than ideal sanitation and a high prevalence of diarrheal disease and crowding, sets the ideal stage for the development of such resistance.

The Tongan people were acquainted with the Manahune under the name Haa-Meneuli. but The Haa-Meneuli appear to be Tongans. The Mana’une people of Mangaia Island, Cook Group,are stated by Taniera, their chief, to have come originally to Mangaia from Rapa-nui or Easter Island, and that in appearance they resemble the people of the Tokerau Islands.

The shadowy rebels, who have never publicly stated their goals, target
Muslims and Buddhists alike and both civilians and members of the security
forces, usually with shootings and bombings. The attacks echoed a serious blast in August, which ripped through a restaurant in Narathiwat packed with government officials, wounding at least 42 people. Tensions have simmered since the region, formerly an autonomous Malay Muslim sultanate, was annexed by predominantly Buddhist Thailand in 1902.

While biodiversity is extremely high, the downside is that the population is glaringly low due to over-exploitation. Coral reefs provide a haven for fish and other creatures, and larger fish tend to congregate around reefs because they are good places to feed. Bleaching — a whitening of corals that occurs when symbiotic algae living within coral tissues are expelled — is an indication of stress caused by environmental triggers such as fluctuations in ocean temperature. Depending on many factors, bleached coral may recover over time or die. Semporna is within the 5 million sq km of sea straddling the waters of Sabah, the Philippines, Indonesia, Timor Leste, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea.

Irian Jaya Blue Tongue Skinks are from Indonesia, and are often what you see in the pet stores for $199.99. They are snatched from the wild and sold to pet stores for about $25. Irian Jaya’s are truly terrific BTS that are capable of shades of orange, brown, and red. These babies 100% captive bred. Irian Jaya (and Indonesians) are the easiest type of BTS to find, but keep in mind, finding a truly captive bred bluey can prove to be very difficult. Nearly ALL pet store blue tongues are wild caught. Very, very rarely do you see Northerns in pet stores because it’s simply not cost-efficient for reptile businesses to breed them.

A cheque, for over K1 million belonging to the Telefomin people in West
Sepik, lost in a taxi by a politician, has been found. The cheque was
returned to Telefomin MP Peter Iwei’s parliament office following
widespread publicity and public appeal. Telefomin has a population of about 40,000 people who share a common border with Indonesia.

The idea is one of the ways of sharing poverty in the villages. Their spirit is: they will eat together and starve together. A cyclical plague of rats was likely to continue destroying crops in the region in the coming season. The hill tracts are experiencing a severe infestation of rats, which occurs every 50 years or so, as bamboo flowers produce seeds high in protein, and rats breed four times faster than normal during this time. The rats destroy the paddy and vegetable fields resulting in severe food crisis among the communities. The rat infestation grew over the last two years and may continue for another two to three years. The rodent plague is also affecting at least 25,000 people in six villages along the Indian state of Mizoram.

The Inuit believe our world has tilted on its axis and this contributes to climate change. The elders in  Pangnirtung, Iqaluit, Resolute Bay and Igloolik – all believe this phenomenon to be true. It’s been very interesting to see elders and hunters across Nunavut make the same observation about the world having shifted on its axis. Elders across Nunavut have noticed that the sun and stars have changed their position in the sky. The sun is now rising higher and staying longer than it used to. Importantly, in the far north, you must remember that the sun goes below the horizon for a large part of the year, and therefore Inuit are very familiar with its celestial pattern. Indeed, Inuit are telling stories about how in the old days, during the dark months, they would travel the land by dog team using stars as their navigational tools. So, when Inuit talk about the sun and stars, they do so with an intimate knowledge of these systems.

November 9, 2009

AN ELDERLY BRITISH BANGLADESHI BORDER GUARD SEIZES NEW NICARAGUAN CURRENCY DEPICTING CHINA COCAINE CLIMATE CYCLONE CHANGED COUPLE, AS SOUTHWEST CARIBBEAN SAUDI LANKAN OVERTURNED TANKER TAX CHEATS VENEZUELAN ROBBERY REFUGEES — PNG COSTA EUCALYPTUS DEGLUPTA RICAN WOMEN, BANGLADESH ‘DEMON WORSHIPPER MATUTO` PAINTINGS FEAR MUHAMMAD YAMAHA MYANMAR MAY ATTACK THEIR SWINE COCOA POD BORER FORBIDDEN FLU FOOD VOUCHERS FOR FOUR MOTOR RIOT CITIES, OPIUM SEASON ISLANDS IN KENYAN LASHES SLUM TIGHT PANTS KILLING 330,000 INDIAN SNACKS, 22 PAKISTAN POUNDS, 510 KILOS OF AMAZONIAN BEACHGOERS — CALLS FOR 350 AWAKENING TROPICAL DIVALI DEPRESSIONS, READIES FLOOD-TOLERANT CORRUPTION AND OUTBOARD TORTURE IMMIGRATION SONGS

Bangladesh, which is currently engaged in a dispute with Myanmar over
border fencing, fears that Yangon may attack its St. Martin’s Island in the
Bay of Bengal. Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), which guards the land border, has
identified the St Martin’s Island as the “probable main target” of Myanmar
and has asked the government to immediately strengthen its defence by
constructing aircraft landing zones and concrete bunkers. This is contained
in a “strategic proposal” that came in the wake of constant military
build-up and intimidation by Myanmar. The St Martin’s Island, the only
coral island of the country and the main attraction for local and foreign
tourists for its panoramic beauty and pristine marine life, is under the
jurisdiction of the Bangladesh Coastguards. The island, which is located in
a mineral rich region in the Bay of Bengal, is 8 km west of Myanmar coast.
The BDR has submitted its proposal to the Ministry of Home Affairs, the
Prime Minister’s Office, the navy and air force headquarters and the
director general of Coastguards. It has also urged the government to
increase defence capability of land and sea borders to “repulse any
possible aggression by the neighbouring country”.

China has started the relocation of 330,000 residents to make way for a
canal bringing water from the south to the north of the country, in China’s
second-largest resettlement scheme. Families from Henan and Hubei provinces
are being moved to make way for a canal which will run from the Yangtze
River to Beijing. They are being moved to newly-built villages and will
receive an annual subsidy of around 88 US dollars. The scheme is part of an
expansion of the Danjiangkou reservoir. The government says it hopes to
have water flowing from the Yangtze and its tributaries to the arid north
part of the country by 2014. Around 1.3 million people have already been
relocated to make way for the Three Gorges Dam, which was completed last
year.

A high-profile coalition of artists — including the members of Pearl Jam,
R.E.M. and the Roots — demanded that the government release the names of
all the songs that were blasted since 2002 at prisoners for hours, even
days, on end, to try to coerce cooperation or as a method of punishment.
Dozens of musicians endorsed a Freedom of Information Act request filed by
the National Security Archive, a Washington-based independent research
institute, seeking the declassification of all records related to the use
of music in interrogation practices. The artists also launched a formal
protest of the use of music in conjunction with torture. “I think every
musician should be involved,” said Rosanne Cash. “It seems so obvious.
Music should never be used as torture.” The singer-songwriter (and daughter
of Johnny Cash) said she reacted with “absolute disgust” when she heard of
the practice. “It’s beyond the pale. It’s hard to even think about.” Other
musicians, including Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and Tom Morello,
formerly of the band Rage Against the Machine, also expressed outrage. “The
fact that music I helped create was used in crimes against humanity sickens
me,” Morello said in a statement. “We need to end torture and close
Guantanamo now.”

Approximately 57 small islands scattered around southern Trenggalek
regency, East Java, are still unnamed. Their natural potentials have not
been identified as well. The islands are scattered, starting from Panggul
water to Prigi, Watulimo sub district. The small islands could yet be used
maximally. The procedure of island identification and the mapping of
natural potentials of the 57 islands are also very complicated. Permission
from the Local Affairs Department and recommendations from the provincial
government is required. Also, because island naming is overseen by the
international law, PBB must also approve it. Another challenge in the
identification of the islands is the different perceptions between
Trenggalek local government and Tulungagung regional government on some of
the islands located in the borderline between the two regions. The
anonymous islands have a considerable amount of swallow nests. Due to the
absence of budget to optimize the resources, the swallow nests are
reportedly often stolen.

Many “matuto” paintings, as a kind of scratches from the pre-historic rock
arts, were found in a number of villages which belong to Kaimana District,
Provinice of Papua Barat. Matuto is a shape of a half-man lizard and
believed as the ancestor of heroes. A lot of matuto paintings were found at
niche surfaces made as canvas for the artists of the pre-historic time in
several archaeological sites. Matuto motif belongs to an anthropomorphic
group with religious meaning representing the people`s ancestors living in
Kaimana in the pre-historic time. Besides matuto, the anthropomorphic group
also includes a palm-print motif which means a protective power to prevent
from evil things, and a human motif. Matuto paintings were found in the
sites of Omborecena, Memnemba, Memnemnambe and Tumberawasi located in
Maimai village. Whereas in Namatota village, matuto paintings were also
found in the sites of Werfora I, Werfora II, Werfora III and Werfora IV.
The other pre-historic paintings which were scratched at the niche surfaces
are in the motifs of lizard, fish, tortoise, crocodile, cuscus, snake, bird
and sea horse which belong to the fauna group. In the geometrical motif,
there are the pictures of sun, direction mark, rectangular and circle. The
pictures of man`s cultural objects include those on the shapes of boat,
boomerang, spear, rock axe, sago hammer and mask. Pre-historic men
scratched paintings on niche surfaces with natural color substance and
their works were called rock arts which served as media to express ideas or
thoughts concerning certain events. These archaeological relics are sort of
civilization from the ancestor`s community in Papua, and have enriched the
national culture.

A new World Food Programme (WFP) pilot project plans to use text messages
on mobile phones to distribute food vouchers to Iraqi refugees in Syria.
The United Nations announced the scheme this week and said it will target
1,000 Iraqi refugee families living in Damascus. Families will be provided
with a special SIM card to receive a 22 US dollar voucher every two months,
which can be exchanged for rice, wheat flour, lentils, chickpeas, oil,
canned fish, cheese and eggs at selected shops. The WFP explained that all
the 130,000 Iraqi refugees currently receiving food aid in Syria already
have mobile phones. The project will initially run for four months, but
might be extended depending on its success.

Members of the protective services routinely muzzle sweep each other, along
with civilians. One IATF officer shot himself in the toe while on patrol in
a densely populated area of the capital city. These armed persons are a
potential menace. Another member of the public was ‘accidentally’ shot by a
cop while holding his five-year-old daughter on the roadside, while waiting
to cross the street. This occurred at a busy intersection, at Charlotte and
Duke Streets, in Port of Spain. Criminals arriving by, and leaving in small
fishing boats, have been targeting sea-bathers at Chagville Beach in
Chaguaramas. What makes this particularly frustrating is that this beach is
across the street from the TT Defense Force Headquarters. The TTDF has a
proud history of serving this nation, so it’s ironic that these violent
crimes occur within line-of-sight of their HQ. One may argue that the
classical role of a defence force is not law enforcement. True; but if that
is the case in our country, then why do we have police/army “joint
patrols”? Surely TTDF Chief of Defence Staff Brigadier Edmund Dillon is
taking this as a personal assault on the reputation of the TTDF. After all,
one of it’s stated responsibilities is, “cooperate with and assist the
civil power in maintaining law and order.” Additionally, every Chief of
Defence Staff has included these words (in one form or another) in their
speeches: “The Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force is fully prepared to
defend the sovereign good of our nation from all enemies, foreign or
domestic.” How about starting with enemies across the street? The primary
agency charged with the responsibility of policing the Western peninsula is
the Chaguaramas Development Authority Police. Inspector Abdul Singh, the
highest ranking officer of the CDA police, has many challenges, including
acute shortages of personnel, arms, ammunition and vehicles.

In Ecuador, the Shuar are blocking highways to defend their hunting
grounds. In Chile, the Mapuche are occupying ranches to pressure for land,
schools and clinics. In Bolivia, a new constitution gives the country’s 36
indigenous peoples the right to self-rule. All over Latin America, and
especially in the Andes, a political awakening is emboldening Indians who
have lived mostly as second-class citizens since the Spanish conquest. Much
of it is the result of better education and communication, especially as
the Internet allows native leaders in far-flung villages to share ideas and
strategies across international boundaries. But much is born of necessity:
Latin American nations are embarking on an unprecedented resource hunt,
moving in on land that Indians consider their own — and whose pristine
character is key to their survival. “The Indian movement has arisen because
the government doesn’t respect our territories, our resources, our Amazon,”
says Romulo Acachu, president of the Shuar people, flanked by warriors
carrying wooden spears and with black warpaint smeared on their faces. A
month ago, the Shuar put up barbed-wire roadblocks on highway bridges in
Ecuador’s southeastern jungles to protest legislation that would allow
mines on Indian lands without their prior consent, and put water under
state control. An Indian schoolteacher was killed in a battle with riot
police. “If there are 1,000 dead they will be good deaths,” says another
Shuar leader, Rafael Pandam. The Shuar won, at least this round. A week
after the killing, President Rafael Correa received about 100 Indian
leaders at the presidential palace and agreed to reconsider the laws.
Correa had earlier called the Indians “infantile” for their insistence on
being consulted over mining concessions. But he didn’t need to be reminded
that natives — a third of the population — have become an indispensible
constituent and helped topple an Ecuadorean government in 2000.

Mouth-watering Indian snacks like the spicy chaat, masala dosas and chicken
rolls are increasingly becoming popular in Bangladesh where the taste for
western fast food has been holding sway till now. A number of trendy
restaurants in metropolis Dhaka and other cities are now introducing the
snacks in their menu in a bid to attract not only the local food buffs but
international visitors as well. “No longer satisfied with hamburgers, hot
dogs and fries, Bangladeshi eating out habits, never to be left behind, has
also caught on to the trend. Indian items are fast replacing the European
menu as the favoured grab-and-go food of choice, not just because of the
taste but its healthier make-up, and has spread around the world. Popular
restaurants like ‘Dhaba’ are now selling chaat items like bhel puri and the
golgappa. It also has dahi papri, papri chaat, aloo chaat and aloo tikki.
These mouth-watering treats are all served up to you with a smile.

The Weather Office has warned the country to prepare for the cyclone season
in coming months. In a media advisory, the office said the tropical cyclone
season is between November and April. However, the month of January has
been predicted as the peak month for cyclone to hit. Cyclone can also occur
during other months before November and after April however, with lower
risks. On average, one or two cyclone forms in Solomon Islands each year.
Although, El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a significant contributor
to the year to year variability in tropical cyclone activity in the South
Pacific Ocean, it does not have great influence on the cyclone frequency
occurring here. With the typical El Nino conditions continue to persist in
the Tropical Pacific the outlook for Tropical Cyclone activity in the
Solomon Islands during November 2009 to April 2010 is likely to be average
due to the weak El Nino condition. In light of a likely cyclone occurrence,
local communities have been reminded to remain alert and prepared for any
cyclone hit during this season.

Bangladesh is set to officially release three flood-tolerant rice varieties
that would help farmers prevent up to a million tonnes of annual crop loss
caused by flash floods. These rice varieties with submergence-tolerant
gene, known as Sub1, can withstand two weeks of complete submergence. The
Seed Certification Agency has been asked to release the three
submergence-tolerant varieties, Swarna-Sub1, BR-11-Sub1, and
BR-11-Recombinant-Sub1. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation supports the
project. The flood-tolerant versions of the high-yielding varieties (HYVs),
popular with farmers and consumers, that are grown over huge areas across
Bangladesh are effectively identical to their susceptible counterparts but
those recover after severe flooding to yield well. The Sub1 varieties
withstood submergence quite well during this year’s flash floods in
Jamalpur’s Dewanganj, Kurigram’s Kachir Char, Mymensingh’s Dhobaura and
Sylhet’s Golapganj. The Sub1 varieties have been tested in six BRRI fields
and nine farmers’ fields over the last couple of years and all results show
positive signs.

Trinidad and Tobago joined millions of Hindus around the world to celebrate
Divali, also known as Diwali, Deepavali or Dipavali. Thousands of Hindus
and non-Hindus lined their homes and streets with deyas, a clay vessel
holding coconut oil and a wick. The illuminated streets, a reminder of why
Divali is called the festival of lights, are reminiscent of good triumphing
over evil. The deya is also meant to raise awareness in the believer of his
or her own inner light. The streets of many parts of Trinidad and Tobago
where Hindus make up the majority were beautifully lit. Curved bamboo
strips, walls and fences were used as stands for the deyas. A growing trend
in Trinidad and Tobago is also to see non-Hindus lighting deyas and placing
them on their walls and banisters. Roti shops, caterers and other places
selling Indo-Caribbean food also report a sharp incline in sales around
this time, as enthusiasm about local Indian food spurts, primarily among
persons without home access to the popular dishes. On these islands where
many celebrate everything, every last trimester the local celebratory
spirit ascends. The muslim celebration Eid-ul-Fitr, the Hindu festival
Divali, and the Christian season of Christmas often ensue in rapid
succession. Many who put up lights for Divali will leave up their electric
lights until the end of Christmas and the start of Carnival. In some
regards, it could be argued that the cultural calendar of Trinidad and
Tobago begins with either Eid or Divali – whichever comes first – because
thereafter one season flows into the next. As a result, ethnic groups in
Trinidad and Tobago demonstrate high levels of religious tolerance,
cultural cohabitation and racial harmony. The world should take note.

The recent conflict in the Pakistani region of South Waziristan has already
displaced at least 160,000 people and could rise to 260,000 in the next few
weeks. Local aid workers have registered 160,000 people in six IDP camps
around Dera Ismail Khan, a town on the southern fringe of the tribal area.
They expect a further 100,000 people to arrive in the next few weeks. The
total would amount to just over half of the area’s 500,000 population.
Fighting in South Waziristan has escalated since the government launched a
renewed military offensive against the Taliban. The move follows attacks by
Taliban militants across Pakistan that left at least 175 dead, including a
suicide bomb that exploded at Islamabad University, killing four people.

The musicians’ announcement was coordinated with the recent call by
veterans and retired Army generals to shut Guantanamo. It is part of a
renewed effort to pressure President Obama to keep his promise to close the
prison in Cuba in his first year in office. A White House spokesman said
music is no longer used as an instrument of torture, part of a shift in
policy on interrogations that Obama made on his second full day in office.
The president also formed an interagency group, called High-Value Detainee
Interrogation Group, to examine the techniques used during questioning, but
a White House spokesman said that the new group has yet to be fully
constituted. “The president banned the use of ‘enhanced interrogation
techniques,’ and issued an executive order that established that
interrogations must be consistent with the techniques in the Army Field
Manual and the Geneva Conventions,” a White House official said. “Sound at
a certain level creates sensory overload and breaks down subjectivity and
can bring about a regression to infantile behavior. Its effectiveness
depends on the constancy of the sound, not the qualities of the music.
Played at a certain volume, it simply prevents people from thinking.

The CIA Playlist includes:

AC/DC Aerosmith Barney theme song (By Bob Singleton) The Bee Gees Britney
Spears Bruce Springsteen Christina Aguilera David Gray Deicide Don McClean
Dope Dr. Dre Drowning Pool Eminem Hed P.E. James Taylor Limp Bizkit Marilyn
Manson Matchbox Twenty Meatloaf Meow mix jingle Metallica Neil Diamond Nine
Inch Nails Pink Prince Queen Rage against the Machine Red Hot Chili Peppers
Redman Saliva Sesame street theme music (By Christopher Cerf) Stanley
Brothers The Star Spangled Banner Tupac Shakur

Pins Depicting Muhammad Picture Circulating: The pins also incribe an
Arabian writing that reads ‘Prophet Muhammad SAW’. After receiving report
on the circulation of the pins, East Makassar police immediately arrest the
pin owners. According to East Makassar Police Head, his team has caught two
owners of the Prophet pin. “They are Bahanda, the resident of Samata sub
district, Gowa regency, and Anto, the resident of Tonro, Makassar.” From
Bahanda’s house, the police confiscated 5 pins and stickers with the
drawing of Prophet Muhammad printed on. The police also seized a laptop.
“Currently, the focus of the investigation is the ownership of the pins
which have been circulating in Makassar during the past two days. The two
suspects are still undergoing inquisitions at the police headquarters. “For
now, no charges have been laid, including the accusation of religion
outrage.”

The figures by the Tribunal Supremo de Elecciones (TSE) reveals that more
Nicaraguan men are more likely to marry Costa Rican women than Nicaraguan
women to marry Costa Rican men when the arrive in Costa Rica, with a total
of 12.515 Nicaraguan men marrying “ticas”, while only 934 Nicaraguan women
married “ticos” between 1950 and 2009. Nicaraguan men arrive in Costa Rica
single and without commitment, while the women leave behind children and a
significant other which to stay faithful to. Perhaps the reason is that
more Nicaraguan men come to Costa Rican than Nicaraguan women, explaining
the difference in the numbers. The man is looking to settle here, is more
irresponsible and not attached to theri children back in Nicaragua. The
woman are transitory, leaving children and partner behind with an eye to
returning. They marry for increased sexual potency, protection from
immigration and to have a Costa Rican child. One man said Costa Rican women
are pretty, while other say they don’t like Costa Rican woman because they
are “too liberal”, “like to go out a lot” and “are bossy”.

For the second year in a row, world grain production rose, with farmers
producing some 2.3 billion tons. The record harvest was up more than 7
percent and caps a decade in which only half the years registered gains.
Today, only 150 crops are cultivated, a sharp drop from the 10,000 used
over time, and three grains–maize, rice, and wheat–combined with potatoes
provide more than 50 percent of human energy needs.

At least two people died and 100 people were injured when Bangladesh police
fired rubber bullets at thousands of garment factory workers rioting over
unpaid wages. The two people were killed after around 15,000 workers began
hurling stones and rocks, prompting officers to retaliate, in the worst
industrial violence to shake Bangladesh as it struggles to cope with the
fallout from the global recession. The protesters, who worked for
Bangladeshi-owned Nippon Garments, were demanding three months’ back pay
from owners who had shut down the factory, blaming a lack of orders. The
law-enforcers had to fire rubber bullets from shotguns to disperse the
workers who hurled stones and bricks at the cops; two people had died. At
least 100 workers and a number of cops were hurt in the clashes in the
Tongi Industrial Area, 40 kilometres (25 miles) north of Dhaka. Nine of the
injured were admitted to Dhaka Medical College Hospital « with wounds
caused by live ammunition and some are in serious condition. The cops said
they used only rubber bullets to quell the unrest. The angry workers became
unruly and violent this morning. They threw up barricades on the roads and
suddenly attacked police. The workers also damaged vehicles, torching some,
and blockaded road links between Bangladesh’s northern districts and Dhaka.
The clashes were the most severe since the global downturn began to affect
Bangladeshi apparel factories, which accounted for 80 percent of the
country’s 15.56 billion dollars worth of exports in the last financial
year. Some 50,000 workers protesting wage cuts and unpaid salaries clashed
with police, leaving scores injured. The global slowdown had forced many
factories in the country to lay off workers or shut down. Western retailers
who are our top buyers have cut orders and squeezed prices. The big
factories have somehow coped, but most of the small- and medium-sized
factories are facing very tough times. Overseas shipments fell by three
percent. Unions said factories have cut wages to compete for orders with
other apparel-producers, such as Vietnam, China and India.The owners of
Nippon Garments were due to pay the wages and had asked employees to
collect their money. But they shut down the factory in the night and sent
police to guard the factory. The workers became angry when they saw the
owners had left without paying the salaries. Forty percent of Bangladesh’s
industrial workforce is employed in the garment sector.

Indians make up one in 10 of Latin America’s half-billion inhabitants. In
some parts of the Andes and Guatemala, they are far more numerous. Yet they
remain much poorer and less educated than the general population. About 80
percent live on less than $2 a day — a poverty rate double that of the
general population — while some 40 percent lack access to health care. The
threats to Indian land have grown in recent years. With shrinking global
oil reserves and growing demands for minerals and timber, oil and mining
concerns are joining loggers in encroaching on traditional Indian lands.
Indians have been progressively losing control and ownership of natural
resources on their lands. The situation isn’t very encouraging. Hence the
revolt rippling up and down the Andes. In Peru, south of the Shuar’s lands,
the government has divided more than 70 percent of the Amazon into oil
exploration blocks and has begun selling concessions. Fearing contamination
of their hunting and fishing grounds, Indians last year began mounting
sporadic road and river blockades. Riot police opened fire on Indians at a
road blockade outside the town of Bagua, where jungle meets Andean
foothills. At least 33 people were killed, most of them police. The Indians
were unapologetic for resisting. “Almost everything we have comes from the
jungle,” says one of the protesters, a wiry elementary school teacher from
the Awajun tribe named Gabriel Apikai. “The leaves, and wood and vines with
which we build our homes. The water from the streams. The animals we eat.
That is why we are so worried.” Farther south along the world’s longest
mountain chain, Chilean police are protecting 34 ranches and logging
compounds that Mapuche Indians have targeted for occupations or sabotage.
The Mapuche, who dominated Chile before the Spanish conquest, now account
for less than 10 percent of its people and hold some 5 percent of its land
— among the least fertile. Mapuche activists agitating for title to more
lands and greater access to education and health care stepped up civil
disobedience this year. Riot police mounting an eviction killed one
Mapuche, and eight were injured. “If the government and the political class
doesn’t listen to our demands the situation will get a lot more difficult,”
Mapuche leader Jose Santos Millao said. He rejects as a “smoke screen”
President’s creation of an Indian Affairs Ministry.

The crime upsurge cannot be ignored despite the absolutely gracious
approach of the British couple who sent a letter of assurance to the
Minister of Tourism and to the THA about their undying love and affection
for the island and its people even after the vicious attack they suffered.
The killing and burying of a German, whose body was found in a shallow
grave, is the latest setback. Bringing the number of murders on the island
to 11, this latest incident also flies in the face of the attempts by the
police to demonstrate that they have the situation well under control.
After every such major crime, the police pledge to take stronger measures,
to increase patrols and to maintain a more visible presence in what they
themselves identify as vulnerable areas. The discovery of the body of the
German at what was his home in Bacolet Crescent does indeed present a new
feature to the murder picture in Tobago. It suggests that criminals are
employing even more grisly methods of perpetrating these offences, further
fouling the environment in which all concerned must respond. Sensing that
he was indeed in some danger, with death threats having been issued to him,
the man was reportedly in the process of making arrangements to leave
Tobago for good. That he was a German-the nationality that has had such a
long and deeply ingrained association with Tobago-is bound to send further
shock waves through that community many of whom have shared their hitherto
wonderful experiences with others who have been making regular trips to
Tobago. Much work is going to be needed to continue the repair job on the
island’s image occasioned by this and the other serious offences. But the
multiplier effect of another gruesome incident such as this on the island’s
profile cannot be underestimated, no matter what the manner of the media
coverage may be, no matter what means may be employed to colour the
presentation.

Try telling Brother Jerry Smith that the recession in America has ended. As
scores of people queued up at the soup kitchen which the Capuchin friar
helps run in Detroit, the celebrations on Wall Street in New York seemed
from another world. The hungry and needy come from miles around to get a
free healthy meal. Though the East Detroit neighbourhood the soup kitchen
serves has had it tough for decades, the recession has seen almost any hope
for anyone getting a job evaporate. Neither is there any sign that jobs
might come back soon. Some in the past have had jobs here, but now there is
nothing available to people. Nothing at all. The hungry, the homeless and
the poor crowded around tables. Many were by themselves, but some were
families with young children. None had jobs. Indeed, the soup kitchen
itself is now starting to dip into its savings to cope with a drying up of
desperately needed donations. This is an area where times are so tough that
the soup kitchen is a major employer for the neighbourhood, keeping its own
staff out of poverty. Officially, America is on the up. The economy grew by
3.5% in the past quarter. On Wall Street, stocks are rising again. The
banks – rescued wholesale by taxpayers’ money last year – are posting
billions of dollars of profits. Thousands of bankers and financiers are
wetting their lips at the prospect of enormous bonuses, often matching or
exceeding those of pre-crash times. The financial sector is lobbying
successfully to fight government attempts to regulate it. The wealthy are
beginning to snap up property again, pushing prices up. In New York’s
fashionable West Village a senior banker recently splurged $10m on a single
apartment, sending shivers of delight through the city’s property brokers.
But for tens of millions of Americans such things seem irrelevant. Across
the country lay-offs are continuing. Indeed, jobless rates are expected to
rise. Unemployment in America stands at 9.8%. But that headline figure,
massaged by bureaucrats, does not include many categories of the jobless.
Another, broader official measure, which includes those such as the
long-term jobless who have given up job-seeking and workers who can only
find piecemeal part-time work, tells another story. That figure stands at
17%.

Darshona Sub1 at Darshona remained unharmed despite being completely
submerged for nine to 16 days this year. 65 percent of farmers cultivate
BR-11 during aman season, which is susceptible to flash floods or rainwater
over 10 days. So the Sub1 varieties now hold the potential to become a good
replacement for BR-11. There are four different Sub1 varieties, IR-64-
Sub1, Samba Mahsuri-Sub1, BR-11-Sub1, and Swarna-Sub1, at the Darshona
trial site. Of these four, the former two are relatively shorter-duration
rice while the later two takes a long time to harvest. The new varieties
were made possible following the identification of a single gene that is
responsible for most of the submergence tolerance. The gene is found in a
low-yielding traditional Indian rice variety known to withstand floods. The
potential for impact is huge. In Bangladesh, for example, 20 percent of the
rice land is flood prone and the country typically suffers several major
floods each year. Submergence-tolerant varieties could make major inroads
into Bangladesh’s annual rice shortfall and substantially reduce its import
needs. As water inundates rice fields, Sub1 gene helps rice plants remain
‘metabolically inert’ for up to two weeks; thereby, keeping the plants
unaffected. But if the water remain stagnant for a longer duration, it will
not be possible for the crop to withstand.” Farmers would be benefited if
the submergence tolerant rice varieties are released soon. The Philippines
released its first submergence-tolerant rice variety, Submarino 1,
recently.

They form the single biggest mass of refugees today, and they face an
uncertain fate as a factor in a geopolitical game involving two Asian
giants and allied players. For the about 400,000 fugitives from tiny Sri
Lanka’s Tamil-speaking areas of less than 18,000 square kilometers
together, the outlook has only become more unsettling. The tide of Tamil
refugees from the island-state’s northern and eastern provinces represents
a twin issue. About 100,000 of them are inmates of rather inhospitable
refugee camps in India’s southern State of Tamilnadu. They have been
languishing there for varying lengths of time, with the influx starting way
back in 1984. The population in the camps includes a generation of Sri
Lankan Tamils who have known no home but India but are not made to feel
quite at home in the country. The rest – as many as 300,000 – have been
held in camps behind barbed wires as internally displaced persons (IDPs) in
the war-ravaged parts of Sri Lanka since Colombo declared total victory
over Tamil rebels seeking a separate state. The inmates have been told to
be prepared to stay put for a period of one to three years. The population
of these camps consists of divided families, with mothers looking for
separated children and women for lost husbands. The plight of these
uprooted people of both categories poses a humanitarian problem of huge
proportions. That, however, would not appear to be how it is viewed in
quarters which matter in India and could make a difference in the
increasing distress of the displaced. New Delhi is under pressure to look
upon the tragedy, if not as a trump card, at least as a useful lever in the
Indian Ocean region where its influence is seen to be under threat from
China with Pakistan in tow. The debate rages in the media over the role
India should play in this perspective, even as the refugees await an
aggravation of their conditions in the camps. The north-eastern monsoon,
which brings most of the rains for this region for about three months until
December, is round the corner. The wet season threatens to prove a time of
terrible woes, particularly for the IDPs in their tarpaulin tents in
overcrowded camps. Unless people are moved from these areas, … an
inundation of water … will make it impossible to live…. The latrines
will overflow, water supplies will be unusable and access by wheeled
vehicles impossible. It will be pretty unbearable. More intolerable to some
security analysts will be India’s failure to use this fresh opportunity to
counter the influence of China and allies allowed to grow in its own
backyard over the past two decades. India has had its share of refugee
problems, but the spillover from Sri Lanka’s civil war falls into a special
category. The most politicized of the problems has been Bangladeshi
immigrants, estimated at 10 million (against the country’s population of
about 1.15 billion). India’s far right has always called them
“infiltrators” and sought to fuel pseudo-religious hatred against them as
Islamist fifth columnists. But this has remained an internal political
issue, with rather poor returns for its inventors.

The Seventh Summit of the ALBA, the Venezuela-led trade and economic bloc,
ended with a decision to implement a single currency for transactions among
member states. The leaders of Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica and St Vincent
and the Grenadines were among those who approved the Single Regional
Payment Compensation System (SUCRE). A multidisciplinary team from the ALBA
nations will begin technical operations for its implementation. However, it
is not yet clear how the introduction of the SUCRE will impact the
governments in St John’s, Roseau and Kingstown, since all three are members
of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union that uses the EC dollar as its
common currency. The meeting also signed a special resolution condemning
the Honduras coup. The text demands the immediate reinstatement of Jose
Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted in a military coup. Zelaya sneaked back into
the Central American country and has been holding negotiations with the
newly-installed government on the way forward. Antigua and Barbuda,
Dominica and St Vincent and the Grenadines are the only Caribbean Community
countries that are also members the bloc that was formed in 2004 as an
alternative proposal to the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

Actions and events are planned in every Pacific Island nation for the 350
International Day of Climate Action. In the last 24 hours, events from the
Federated States of Micronesia and Kiribati have been registered with
www.350.org, completing the entire list of Pacific countries. Pacific
communities, many of whom are already affected by climate change, are
uniting to create actions that will raise awareness of impacts in the
Pacific. Each country’s call for action on climate change will be broadcast
through a global network, including on a huge screen in Times Square, New
York. In Kiribati, the 350 action involves over 2000 students and the
President, Anote Tong, in a beach clean up. In FSM, 350 coconut trees are
being planted after a celebration of the use of coconuts in traditional
society. Inhabitants of Cartaret Island will be some of the first people in
the world to be displaced by climate change. The 350 action will be located
at their proposed relocation site to highlight the massive implications of
climate change on their future. Cartaret Islanders will be transported by
boat in a flotilla to the relocation site where church gongs will ring 350
times and 350 mangrove seedlings will be planted. There will also be live
contemporary and traditional song and dance performances. Many of the
Pacific events involve peoples aggregating in traditional dress, and
performances of traditional song and dance. In Fiji, the Econesians are
staging a giant procession in Suva with song, dance, poetry and
entertainment. The Pacific Council of Churches is organising lalis
(traditional wooden gongs) 350 times to show their support for a safe
climate future. In the Solomon Islands a public march will culminate with
traditional Kastom dance and music in the ‘Cultural Village’. Traditional
song and dance will also be a major part of events in Papua New Guinea.

Ten men who belonged to the same soccer team were slain execution-style
after being abducted in a crime that could be the work of warring factions
in neighboring Colombia. Venezuelan troops stepped up security patrols in
the area near the Colombian border after the bodies of 10 men, most of them
Colombians, were found in multiple spots in western Tachira state. The
victims were among a group of 12 men who were kidnapped from a field where
they were playing soccer. The victims’ relatives reported the abduction of
10 Colombians, a Peruvian and a Venezuelan. The kidnappers, described as
armed men dressed in black, were thought to have called out the names of
the team’s members one by one before taking them away in vehicles. The
killings occurred near a porous border where Colombian rebels, paramilitary
fighters and drug smugglers are often able to move about with ease.
Venezuelan officials also have struggled in recent years with frequent
kidnappings and murders blamed on common criminals in various parts of the
country. The motive behind the latest slayings remains unclear. The single
known survivor, 19-year-old Manuel Cortez of Colombia, was shot in the
neck, said Orlando Lopez, one of his brothers. Lopez said that his brother
didn’t know his abductors. “They had them tied up for 14 days in the sun,”
Lopez said. “They tied them up to some trees, with chains on their necks
and with their hands locked up.” Lopez said his brother recalled the men
saying the hostages “didn’t have anything to do with it but that they were
going to kill them because they had seen their faces.” As for Cortez, “they
put him on his knees and they shot him,” Lopez said by phone from the
military hospital in Caracas where his brother was moved after being afraid
for his safety at a hospital in San Cristobal in the border region. A
stranger arrived at the first hospital asking to see Cortez and was
detained by authorities, Lopez said. “We don’t know what group” was behind
the killings, Lopez said. A list of names released by Venezuelan
authorities showed the victims ranged in age from 17 to 38, and several
were from the Colombian town of Bucaramanga, about 90 kilometers (55 miles)
from the border. Investigators suspect the bloodshed may be tied to a
confrontation between irregular groups as part of the Colombian conflict.
Venezuelan troops in the area had been ordered to “act forcefully” against
any armed Colombian group. Colombian officials in the past have accused
Venezuela of allowing leftist rebels to take refuge across the border.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe condemned the killings and said they “show
that terrorism is international, that it has no borders.” He offered help
in the investigation and expressed confidence Venezuelan authorities will
act promptly to “take those terrorists to jail.” Relations have been tense
recently between Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Uribe’s U.S.-allied
government. Colombian officials have been critical of Venezuela’s efforts
to police its territory and reduce the flow of Colombian cocaine. Venezuela
charges Colombia and the U.S. are trying to use the drug issue to unfairly
discredit Chavez’s government.

A demon worshipper killed four members of his family before killing himself
on remote Misima Island in Papua New Guinea’s Milne Bay province. Milne Bay
police described the gruesome murder-suicide on October 10 as a massacre on
Misima, an island 200km east of mainland PNG. The killer was said to be a
demon worshipper who believed in a black Jesus and worshipped on
mountaintops before dawn. Rodney Sinod, from Eaus village on the south
coast of Misima Island, had on numerous occasions told his family that he
was going to kill them so the world would be free. Police reports indicated
that on the fateful morning, after his usual worship on a mountain, Sinod
returned to the family home and, without warning, attacked his father with
an axe. The victim, who was feeding chickens outside, died instantly. Sinod
then ran past his shocked mother into the house where his niece and nephew,
aged two and five years, were playing and killed them with the axe, before
mowing down his sister-in-law. Sinod later turned on his 17-year-old niece,
who had just finished grade 10 at Misima High School a day earlier and had
come home to spend the holidays with her family. Sinod chopped off part of
the teenagers lower left hand with the axe and struck her on the head. The
girl survived the attack and is recovering from her wounds at the Misima
district hospital. Sinod then ran to a mountain where he stabbed himself in
the chest with a knife.At least six villages were engaged in such
activities and reported that even a police officer had established a church
on the island with similar beliefs. Bizarre cults spring up frequently in
PNG. Police in Morobe province were hunting a cult leader who was coercing
followers to take part in public sex with promises of a bumper banana
harvest.

The Government Accountability Office likes to point its finger at
Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands for sheltering tax cheats. But according
to the U.K.-based Tax Justice Network, the United States is the biggest tax
shelter of ’em all, thanks to the great state of Delaware. Delaware, says
the Tax Justice Network, is “the most secretive financial jurisdiction in
the world.” That’s based on an analysis of 60 financial jurisdictions
according to level of secrecy and cooperation with foreign tax authorities.
Luxembourg comes in second, followed by the Switzerland, the Cayman
Islands, and the United Kingdom. Here are some fun facts about Delaware: *
According to the Delaware Secretary of State’s office their operating
budget was $12 million in 2007 and they made $24 million in the fees for
expedited incorporation filings alone. * There are currently some 695,000
active entities registered in Delaware, including 50 percent of the
corporations publically traded on the U.S. stock exchange. * New business
formations in Delaware are currently running at about 130,000 per annum. *
The growth of private individual deposits by non-residents was most robust
in the United States outranking other popular financial jurisdictions such
as the Cayman Islands, United Kingdom, and Luxembourg with total
non-resident deposits equalling $2.6 trillion in 2007. Nicole Tichon of
U.S. PIRG, probably the foremost homegrown tax-haven basher, said the
United States needs to get its tax act together. “If the U.S. wants to be
taken seriously by the international community and try to get their
cooperation, then we’ve got to crack down on what’s going on here at home.
We can’t have it both ways,” said Tichon. “Bank secrecy breeds the same
problems, the same criminal behavior, and puts up the same roadblocks to
law enforcement regardless of where it occurs. As long as the U.S.
government looks the other way, it diminishes our credibility on this
issue.” The Obama administration talked a good game at first about clamping
down on U.S. corporations that abuse tax shelters, but the administration
has since waffled.

Streaks of brilliant colors — red, purple, yellow, blue, green — are
splashed across the trunk of this eucalyptus, which also goes by the name
of rainbow eucalyptus. The Mindanao gum is one of the few non-Australian
eucalypti. It is native to tropical rainforests in the Philippines,
Indonesia and Papua New Guinea and named for the Philippine island of
Mindanao. As such it likes regular water and cannot take drought. That and
the usual eucalyptus ills make it unlikely for it to be planted much
anymore, but its colorful decorations make it a prized specimen where it
does occur. Gum The tree is grown in tropical areas for pulpwood production
for paper and harvested at an early age. Sometimes it is allowed to develop
for construction lumber, but the wood is only moderately strong and not
durable. The Mindanao gum is a fast-growing, rather open, erect evergreen
tree that may reach a height of 75 to 200 feet and a width of 30 to 75
feet. The smooth bark peels off to display the bright colors underneath.
The oval, 6-inch-by-3-inch leaves are bright green. They contain only a
little aromatic oil. The tree may bloom when it is 2 years old. Flowers are
clustered together and not very conspicuous. When in bud the white to pale
yellow stamens that give blooming flowers a fluffy look are hidden in a
covered cap, known as an operculum. The stamens push this cap off at
flowering. The genus name, based on the Greek eu kalyptos, or well-covered,
refers to this hidden quality. Woody cone-shaped capsules appear after
flowering. The Mindanao gum will take a wide variety of soils, but likes
full sun. It is frost hardy down to 24 degrees Fahrenheit. Just like other
eucalyptus trees, it is susceptible to aphid-like psyllids and borers. The
genus Eucalyptus was named by the 18th century French botanist Charles
Louis l’Heritier. The tree is part of the myrtle family, or Myrtaceae.

Nowhere is Indian power so evident as Bolivia, which elected its first
indigenous president, Evo Morales, in 2005. Morales dissolved the Ministry
of Indigenous Affairs and Original Peoples, calling it racist in a country
where more than three in five people are aboriginals. Voters approved a
constitution that creates a “plurinational” state and accords Bolivia’s
natives sovereign status. Time-worn models of aboriginal government,
community justice and even traditional healing are now legally on equal
footing with modern law and science. In the capital of La Paz, “cholitas” —
Indian women in traditional bowler hats and embroidered shawls — now
regularly anchor TV newscasts. “Miss Cholita” beauty pageants are in vogue
and native hip-hop stars headline at nightclubs. At the presidential
palace, Morales — a former Aymara coca farmer who knew hunger as a child —
makes a point of lunching periodically with the lowliest of palace guards.
Morales is ensuring that profits from natural gas and mineral extraction
are distributed equitably and that water — whose privatization in the city
of Cochabamba spurred an uprising in 2000 — is never again privatized. He’s
also pushing to make electrical utilities public. Morales has founded three
indigenous universities, formalized quotas for Indians in the military and
created a special school for aspiring diplomats with native backgrounds.
And he is promoting a campaign to demand that all public servants be fluent
in at least one native tongue. “There is no way to return to the past,”
says Waskar Ari, an Aymara who changed his name to Juan in the 1970s so he
would be accepted to a private high school in La Paz. Now a University of
Nebraska professor, Ari likens his country’s “rebirth” to the casting off
of apartheid on another continent two decades ago. “Finally,” he says
proudly, “Bolivia is no longer the South Africa of Latin America.”

The warlords that the USA champions in Afghanistan are as venal, as opposed
to the rights of women and basic democratic freedoms, and as heavily
involved in opium trafficking as the Taliban. The moral lines we draw
between us and our adversaries are fictional. The uplifting narratives used
to justify the war in Afghanistan are pathetic attempts to redeem acts of
senseless brutality. War cannot be waged to instill any virtue, including
democracy or the liberation of women. War always empowers those who have a
penchant for violence and access to weapons. War turns the moral order
upside down and abolishes all discussions of human rights. War banishes the
just and the decent to the margins of society. And the weapons of war do
not separate the innocent and the damned. An aerial drone is our version of
an improvised explosive device. An iron fragmentation bomb is our answer to
a suicide bomb. A burst from a belt-fed machine gun causes the same terror
and bloodshed among civilians no matter who pulls the trigger. We need to
tear the mask off of the fundamentalist warlords who after the tragedy of
9/11 replaced the Taliban. They used the mask of democracy to take power.
They continue this deception. These warlords are mentally the same as the
Taliban. The only change is physical. These warlords during the civil war
in Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996 killed 65,000 innocent people. They have
committed human rights violations, like the Taliban, against women and many
others. In eight years less than 2,000 Talib have been killed and more than
8,000 innocent civilians has been killed. We believe that this is not war
on terror. This is war on innocent civilians. Look at the massacres carried
out by NATO forces in Afghanistan. Look what they did in the Farah
province, where more than 150 civilians were killed, most of them women and
children. They used white phosphorus and cluster bombs. The United States
and NATO eight years ago occupied Afghanistan under the banner of woman’s
rights and democracy. They put into power men who are photocopies of the
Taliban. Afghanistan’s boom in the trade in opium, used to produce heroin,
over the past eight years of occupation has funneled hundreds of millions
of dollars to the Taliban, al-Qaida, local warlords, criminal gangs,
kidnappers, private armies, drug traffickers and many of the senior figures
in the government of Hamid Karzai. The brother of President Karzai, Ahmed
Wali Karzai, has been collecting money from the CIA although he is a major
player in the illegal opium business. Afghanistan produces 92 percent of
the world’s opium in a trade that is worth some $65 billion. This opium
feeds some 15 million addicts worldwide and kills around 100,000 people
annually. These fatalities should be added to the rolls of war dead.

Added to that shocking statistic are the millions of Americans who remain
at risk of foreclosure. In many parts of the country repossessions are
still rising or spreading to areas that have escaped so far. In the months
to come, no matter what happens on the booming stock market, hundreds of
thousands of Americans are likely to lose their homes. For them the
recession is far from over. It rages on like a forest fire, burning through
jobs, savings and homes. It will serve to exacerbate a long-term trend
towards deepening inequality in America. Real wages in the US stagnated in
the 1970s and have barely risen since, despite rising living costs. The gap
between the average American worker and high-paid chief executives has
widened and widened. The richest 1% of Americans have more financial wealth
than the bottom 95%. It seems the American hope of a steady job, producing
rising income and a home in the suburbs, has evaporated for many. A
generation of aspiring middle-class homeowners have been wiped out by the
recession. Poor people just don’t have the political clout to lobby and get
what they need in the way Wall Street does. There is little doubt that
Detroit is ground zero for the parts of America that are still suffering.
The city that was once one of the wealthiest in America is a decrepit,
often surreal landscape of urban decline. It was once one of the greatest
cities in the world. The birthplace of the American car industry, it
boasted factories that at one time produced cars shipped over the globe.
Its downtown was studded with architectural gems, and by the 1950s it
boasted the highest median income and highest rate of home ownership of any
major American city. Culturally it gave birth to Motown Records, named in
homage to Detroit’s status as “Motor City”. Decades of white flight,
coupled with the collapse of its manufacturing base, especially in its
world-famous auto industry, have brought the city to its knees. Half a
century ago it was still dubbed the “arsenal of democracy” and boasted
almost two million citizens, making it the fourth-largest in America. Now
that number has shrunk to 900,000. Its once proud suburbs now contain row
after row of burnt-out houses. Empty factories and apartment buildings
haunt the landscape, stripped bare by scavengers. Now almost a third of
Detroit – covering a swath of land the size of San Francisco – has been
abandoned. Tall grasses, shrubs and urban farms have sprung up in what were
once stalwart working-class suburbs. Even downtown, one ruined skyscraper
sprouts a pair of trees growing from the rubble. The city has a shocking
jobless rate of 29%. The average house price in Detroit is only $7,500,
with many homes available for only a few hundred dollars. Not that anyone
is buying. At a recent auction of 9,000 confiscated city houses, only a
fifth found buyers.

A tropical depression has formed in the southwestern Caribbean, prompting
storm warnings for the coast of Nicaragua and two Colombian islands. The
National Hurricane Center in Miami said the 11th tropical depression of the
season formed Wednesday morning. It had maximum sustained winds near 35 mph
(55 kph) and is expected to strengthen into a tropical storm later in the
day or Wednesday night. The depression’s center is about 125 miles (200
kilometers) east-southeast of Bluefields, Nicaragua. It is moving toward
the northwest near 8 mph (13 kph). Colombia issued tropical storm warnings
for the islands of San Andres and Providencia.

China figured once in the issue of Tibetan refugees, too, but it bears no
comparison to the problem of their Sri Lankan counterparts. The island’s
refugees enjoy a measure of ethnic solidarity in Tamilnadu, and their cause
has a certain constituency there. The State’s ruling party, the Dravida
Munnetra Kazhagam (Party for Dravidian Progress) or the DMK, cannot ignore
the issue. And the DMK is an important part of Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh’s coalition in New Delhi, headed by his Congress Party. Pressures of
local politics have prompted the DMK-led State government recently to press
for citizenship for the refugees in the camps under its less-than-adequate
care. The demand has elicited opposition charges that it is designed to
help the Sri Lankan government by keeping the refugees from returning to
their homeland. New Delhi has not yet revealed its response to the demand.
Nor is it known whether it is listening to lectures from experts about the
role it should play in postwar Sri Lanka. The time has come for India to
once again play an activist role … India should assume the leadership
role in helping Sri Lanka in its relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction
tasks. India has “strategic interest” in the island. The Sri Lankan
Government has been cultivating China and Pakistan to keep India in check.
It has good political and economic relations with China. It has invited
China to construct a modern port in Hambantota in southern Sri Lanka. It
has invited the Chinese to help it in gas exploration in areas which are
closet to India. Similarly, there is a growing military-military
relationship between Sri Lanka and Pakistan, which worries India. The
strategic conflict in Sri Lanka is part of a wider power struggle in South
Asia. China has developed strategic assets like the Gwadar port in
Pakistan, besides the Hambantota port. Sri Lanka sits next to shipping
lanes that feed 80 percent of China’s and 65 percent of India’s oil needs.

The Spanish Civil Guard seized 510 kilos of cocaine hidden in the engine
room of a tanker from Venezuela when it was in the north-east port of
Tarragona. The tanker, whose registration was not identified, had sailed
mid-September from Maracaibo (Venezuela) for Egypt but had to stop at
Tarragona to enable the captain to be permuted. The route of the tanker
aroused the suspicions of police, who then decided to conduct an
inspection. The 510 kilograms of cocaine were hidden in a room which
communicated with the axle of the rudder which was reached from inside the
boat through a small hatch or by the sea. An organized group of drug
traffickers, aboard a zodiac and equipped with diving suits, had brought
the 14 bales of drugs from the sea in this inaccessible cache and had to
recover them by the same method on arrival of the tanker. Spain is one of
the gateways to the European drugs problem in Europe, whether of hashish
from North Africa, or Latin American cocaine.

Customs agents have seized 22 pounds of opium after two packages at an
Oakland delivery facility from Thailand aroused the suspicions of agents.
After a closer search, the drugs were found wrapped in plastic and
concealed inside the false walls of large musical drums. The shipment was
bound for a location somewhere in Northern California before it was
intercepted. Opium is made from poppies. It contains morphine, which can be
used to make heroine. Authorities say the drug is often linked with gang
activity.

A female journalist in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to 60 lashes over a
TV show in which a Saudi man described his extra-marital sex life. The
programme, made by Lebanese satellite network LBC, caused a huge scandal in
conservative Saudi Arabia when it was shown several months ago. The
journalist is one of two female LBC employees who have been arrested. Mazen
Abdul Jawad, the Saudi man who talked about how he picked up Saudi women
for sex, has already been jailed. The original programme was part of a
series called Red Lines, made by the popular LBC network. It examined
taboos in the Arab world. Unmarried sex in Saudi Arabia amongst Saudis –
rather than expatriates – is one of the biggest. Mazen Abdul Jawad provoked
outrage by describing his techniques for meeting and having sex with Saudi
women. He tearfully apologised but was jailed for five years and sentenced
to 1,000 lashes. Three of his friends who appeared on the show got two
years each. Mr Abdul Jawad blamed LBC producers for tricking him. The
station’s offices in Saudi Arabia were closed down and two of its producers
– both female – put on trial. LBC has made no comment about the cases. It
has long been attacked by Saudi religious leaders for being at the
forefront of Arab satellite stations broadcasting programmes into the
kingdom featuring scantily clad Arab singers and actresses. Ironically,
however, LBC is part-owned by the Saudi media mogul and billionaire Prince
Alwaleed bin Talal.

Muslim women would be banned from wearing tight pants in a devoutly Islamic
district of Indonesia’s Aceh province under proposed regulations to take
effect Jan. 1. It is the latest effort to promote strict moral values in
the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, where most of the roughly
200 million Muslims practice a moderate form of the faith. Any Muslim
caught violating the dress code, which also prohibits shorts for men, will
be told to put on government-issued full-length skirts or loose pants.
Patrolling Shariah, or Islamic police, will determine if clothing violates
the dress code. Wearing tight jeans exposes their bodies, which is strictly
banned under Islam. Civil servants are told to go beyond the rules and
refuse government services to women wearing the banned clothing. Islamic
law is not enforced across the vast island nation. But bans on drinking
alcohol, gambling and kissing in public, among other activities, have been
enforced by some more conservative local governments in recent years.
Opinion polls show that a majority of Indonesians oppose the restrictions
on dress and behavior that are being pushed by a small fringe of hardliners
in the secular democracy. Aceh, a semiautonomous region, made news when its
provincial parliament passed a Shariah law making adultery punishable by
stoning to death. It also imposed prison sentences and public lashings
against homosexuals and pedophiles. Rights groups say the law violates
international treaties and the Indonesian constitution.

Here are the Countries who HIDE 100% from the TAX Collectors Exactly what
you would think was true!

Jurisdiction HIDING SCORE
Switzerland 100
Malaysia (Labuan) 100
Barbados 100
Bahamas 100
Vanuatu 100
Belize 100
Dominica* 100
Brunei* 100
Turks & Caicos Islands* 100
St Lucia* 100
Samoa* 100
St Vincent & Grenadines* 100
Seychelles* 100

Second Tier of Hidden From Tax Collectors (Range from 90% to 96%)
Also Secondary Sort on Financial Secrecy Index Value

Mauritius 96
USA (Delaware) 92
Cayman Islands 92
Bermuda 92
Bahrain 92
British Virgin Islands 92
Portugal (Madeira) 92
Panama 92
United Arab Emirates (Dubai) 92
Costa Rica 92
Antigua & Barbuda* 92
Gibraltar* 92
St Kitts & Nevis* 92
Cook Islands* 92
Nauru* 92
Marshall Islands* 92
US Virgin Islands* 92
Grenada* 92
Austria 91
Lebanon 91
Israel 90
Liberia* 90

Tax is the foundation of good government and a key to the wealth or poverty
of nations. Yet it is under attack. These places allow big companies and
wealthy individuals to benefit from the onshore benefits of tax – like good
infrastructure, education and the rule of law – while using the offshore
world to escape their responsibilities to pay for it. The rest of us
shoulder the burden. Tax havens offer not only low or zero taxes, but
something broader. What they do is to provide facilities for people or
entities to get around the rules, laws and regulations of other
jurisdictions, using secrecy as their prime tool. We therefore often prefer
the term “secrecy jurisdiction” instead of the more popular “tax haven.”
The corrupted international infrastructure allowing élites to escape tax
and regulation is also widely used by criminals and terrorists. As a
result, tax havens are heightening inequality and poverty, corroding
democracy, distorting markets, undermining financial and other regulation
and curbing economic growth, accelerating capital flight from poor
countries, and promoting corruption and crime around the world. The
offshore system is a blind spot in international economics and in our
understanding of the world. The issues are multi-faceted, and tax havens
are steeped in secrecy and complexity – which helps explain why so few
people have woken up to the scandal of offshore, and why civil society has
been almost silent on international taxation for so long. We seek to supply
expertise and analysis to help open tax havens up to proper scrutiny at
last, and to make the issues understandable by all.

An awareness campaign on the cocoa pod borer (Conopomorpha cramerella) has
begun. Cocoa pod borer is a cocoa pest, which can cause extensive damage to
cocoa pods and thus destroying the cocoa industry and is now present in
neighboring Bougainville. As such the cocoa industry is under serious
threat, in that currently, frequent movement of people to and from the
boarder is not controlled and there is a high possibility that this pest
can be easily spread to the nearest Islands of Choiseul or the Shortlands
through infected cocoa pods or other infected planting materials from
Bougainville. Since cocoa is an important commodity in the Solomon Islands,
the Government will try to implement the awareness program as quickly as
possible to help prevent the pest to come into the country through the
common border between PNG and Solomon Islands. Cocoa has earned the country
$71 million in 2008 with a total of 4,000 tons and about $60 (CEMA Report
2009) million actually goes back to the cocoa producers and that’s why
cocoa is important to the SI economy. The MAL staff led by Quarantine
officers will soon be deployed to Choiseul and Western Provinces to carry
out an extensive surveillance on all cocoa projects to find out whether the
pest is here already or not. The public has been clearly advised not to
bring cocoa pods or any plant parts from Bougainville as is also a
Quarantine regulation to be adhered to.

The legal groundwork for the empowerment drive by Latin America’s Indians
was crowned by a U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Though nonbinding, it endorses native peoples’ right to their own
institutions and traditional lands. It has been almost universally embraced
by Latin American governments. It has also helped Indians win some major
legal victories. * The Supreme Court of Belize ruled in favor of Mayan
communities that challenged the government’s right to lease their lands to
logging interests. * A similar ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human
Rights on behalf of the forest-dwelling Saramaka maroons in Suriname
reinforced that indigenous groups must give consent to major development
projects. * Nicaragua’s government finally granted collective land titles
to the Mayagna people, complying with a landmark ruling by the
Inter-American Court of Human Rights that it had no right to sell logging
concessions on Indian land. * Colombia’s Constitutional Court deemed more
than 1 million indigenous people “in danger of cultural and physical
extermination” and told the government to protect them. * Brazil’s Supreme
Court ordered rice farmers to leave the long-disputed Raposa Serra do Sol
reservation — 4.2 million acres (1.7 million hectares) inhabited by 18,000
Indians in the Amazon’s northernmost reaches.

Despite the legal rulings, Indians remain second-class citizens. Only one
indigenous representative has ever been elected to the national congress in
Brazil. Indians, occupy vast areas of the Amazon though they account for
less than 5 percent of the population. In Guatemala, where nearly half the
population is of Mayan descent, not a single Indian has ever made it to
national office. Educational disadvantages perpetuate the inequity. In
Guatemala, three in four indigenous people are illiterate. In Mexico, where
6 percent of the population is illiterate, 22 percent of adult Indians are.
Even in Bolivia, only 55 percent of indigenous children finish primary
school, compared to 81 percent of other children.

The drug trade has permitted the Taliban to thrive and expand despite the
presence of 100,000 NATO troops. The Taliban’s direct involvement in the
opium trade allows them to fund a war machine that is becoming
technologically more complex and increasingly widespread. The Taliban
earned $90 million to $160 million a year from taxing the production and
smuggling of opium and heroin, as much as double the amount it earned
annually while it was in power nearly a decade ago. The Afghan-Pakistani
border is the world’s largest free trade zone in anything and everything
that is illicit, an area blighted by drugs, weapons and illegal
immigration. The “perfect storm of drugs and terrorism” may be on the move
along drug trafficking routes through Central Asia. Profits made from opium
are being pumped into militant groups in Central Asia and “a big part of
the region could be engulfed in large-scale terrorism, endangering its
massive energy resources. Afghanistan, after eight years of occupation, has
become a world center for drugs. The drug lords are the only ones with
power. How can you expect these people to stop the planting of opium and
halt the drug trade? How is it that the Taliban when they were in power
destroyed the opium production and a superpower not only cannot destroy the
opium production but allows it to increase? And while all this goes on,
those who support the war talk to you about women’s rights. We do not have
human rights now in most provinces. It is as easy to kill a woman in my
country as it is to kill a bird. In some big cities like Kabul some women
have access to jobs and education, but in most of the country the situation
for women is hell. Rape, kidnapping and domestic violence are increasing.
These fundamentalists during the so-called free elections made a misogynist
law against Shia women in Afghanistan. This law has even been signed by
Hamid Karzai. All these crimes are happening under the name of democracy.”
Thousands of Afghan civilians have died from insurgent and foreign military
violence. And American and NATO forces are responsible for almost half the
civilian deaths in Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of Afghan civilians have
also died from displacement, starvation, disease, exposure, lack of medical
treatment, crime and lawlessness resulting from the war. Karzai and his
rival Abdullah Abdullah, who has withdrawn from the runoff election, will
do nothing to halt the transformation of Afghanistan into a narco-state.
NATO, by choosing sides in a battle between two corrupt and brutal
opponents, has lost all its legitimacy in the country.

The city has become such a byword for decline that Time magazine recently
bought a house and set up a reporting team there to cover the city’s
struggles for a year. There has been no shortage of grim news for Time’s
new “Assignment Detroit” bureau to get their teeth into. Recently a
semi-riot broke out when the city government offered help in paying utility
bills. Need was so great that thousands of people turned up for a few
application forms. In the end police had to control the crowd, which
included the sick and the elderly, some in wheelchairs. At the same time
national headlines were created after bodies began piling up at the city’s
mortuary. Family members, suffering under the recession, could no longer
afford to pay for funerals. Incredibly, despite such need, things are
getting worse as the impact of the recession has bitten deeply into the
city’s already catastrophic finances. Detroit is now $300m in debt and is
cutting many of its beleaguered services, such as transport and street
lighting. As the number of bus routes shrivels and street lights are cut
off, it is the poorest who suffer. People like TJ Taylor. He is disabled
and cannot work. He relies on public transport. It has been cut, so now he
must walk. But the lights are literally going out in some places, making
already dangerous streets even more threatening. “I just avoid those areas
that are not lit. I pity for the poor people who live in them,” he said.
The brutal truth, some experts say, is that Detroit is being left behind –
and it is not alone. In cities across America a collapsed manufacturing
base has been further damaged by the recession and has led to conditions of
dire unemployment and the creation of an underclass. There is a grim roll
call of cities across America where decline is hitting hard and where the
official end of the recession will make little difference. Names such as
Flint, Youngstown, Buffalo, Binghamton, Newton. Feldman sees a relentless
decline for working-class Americans all the way from Iowa to New York. He
sees the impact in his own family, as his retired parents-in-law have
difficulties with their gutted pension fund and his disabled son stares at
cuts to his benefits. The economic changes going on, he believes, are a
profound de-industrialisation with which America is failing to come to
terms. “We are going to have to face the end of the industrial age,” he
said. “This didn’t just happen lately either. It’s been happening here in
Detroit since the 1980s. Detroit just got it first, but it could happen
anywhere now.”

A judicial council in Belize has thrown out the convictions of three men
serving life sentences for allegedly bludgeoning a fisherman to death.
Sixty-two-year-old Justo Jairo Perez was killed in San Pedro on Ambergris
Caye seven years ago. Francis Eiley, Ernest Savery and Lenton Polonio were
convicted two years later but always maintained their innocence. The
London-based Death Penalty Project represented the men in their appeal. It
said in a statement that they do not face further legal action and will now
go free. The group said the council ruled the conviction was based on
uncorroborated evidence from a single man, who was discovered at the murder
scene with bloody clothing and later turned state’s witness.

Beijing provided Colombo not only the weapon systems that decisively tilted
the military balance in its favor, but also the diplomatic cover to
prosecute the war in defiance of international calls to cease offensive
operations to help stanch rising civilian casualties. Through such support,
China has succeeded in extending its strategic reach to a critically
located country in India’s backyard that sits astride vital sea-lanes of
communication in the Indian Ocean region.” Chellaney also wants India to
intervene in the issue of refugee rehabilitation. This is linked to the
larger strategic objective of replacing China in Colombo’s affections. If
the end influences the means, the refugees must realistically curtail their
expectations of India’s intervention on their behalf. A delegation of
Indian members of Parliament asked for an early release of the refugees
from the camp so that they can return home. Earlier, Colombo had argued
that it needed to screen the IDPs to “weed out” former Tamil militants.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa, however, reportedly told the delegation that
the inmates could not be released before the entire region was de-mined.
According to official figures, 10,593 people had returned to their homes
and another 22,668 had been released from the camps. The vast majority,
thus, continues to live in conditions of internment. Hope for the refugees
has not been heightened, meanwhile, with the announcement that Sri Lanka
will hold both its presidential and parliamentary elections two years ahead
of schedule. The president is taking the plunge to cash in politically on
the military victory over the Tamil rebels. Rajapaksa hopes to reap a
two-thirds parliamentary majority that would enable him to change the
country’s constitution. The speculation is that the statute will be amended
to give him more than two successive presidential terms. Few expect him to
undertake the exercise in order to make Sri Lanka more federal and find a
political solution to the ethnic problem. Fewer still expect his electoral
victory to spell early relief for the refugees.

Prisoners at a Papua New Guinea jail attempted to escape because they were
not fed for two consecutive days. Prison guards successfully stopped the
487 prisoners from escaping. The prison break would have been the country’s
biggest mass break-out in history. The Baisu prison, located near Mount
Hagen in the Western Highland Province of Papua New Guinea, only has
capacity for 300 inmates, yet it holds 800 inmates. A warder stated that
the prison is extremely overcrowded and the facilities are “rundown.” The
800 inmates were starving and left without food because a contract with the
prison’s food suppliers had expired. The chief superintendent of Baisu jail
explained that the prisoners had nothing to eat since Sunday because of a
dispute between rival food suppliers over the contract with the prison. As
a result of the lack of food, three of the inmates fell ill. Fellow inmates
were furious and demanded that the ill inmates be taken to the hospital.
Soon after, 487 of the prisoners attempted to escape the prison. The
inmates were able to get pass three layers of fencing. Many of the watch
towers at the prison had been pulled down because they were rotten and in
extremely poor condition. Thus, the prisoners were able to pass the fencing
more easily. The prison guards had to fire shots at the escapees to stop
them, but no one was killed. This incident would not have happened had the
ongoing ration problem been resolved. The police commissioner has asked the
former contractor to return to feed the inmates, and will continue to
supply food until the dispute over the contract is resolved. A
representative of the prisoners stated that the next time the prisoners
“were made to go hungry, they would simply walk out and risk being shot
dead.” The representative further stated that “while they were lawbreakers,
they had a right under the law to be fed.”

Nearly 5,000 people have died from swine flu infections since the A(H1N1)
virus was uncovered. The death toll marked an increase of about 265 over
the 4,735 deaths reported a week ago. Most of the fatal cases — 3,539 —
have been recorded in North and South America. Iceland, Sudan, and Trinidad
and Tobago reported their first fatal cases over the past week. Mongolia,
Rwanda, and Sao Tome and Principe also recorded pandemic influenza cases
for the first time, as the virus continued to spread. However, A(H1N1)
influenza was declining in tropical areas of the world, with the exception
of Cuba and Colombia. There was also no significant pandemic related
activity in temperate areas of the southern hemisphere, the WHO said.
Meanwhile respiratory disease activity continues to spread and increase in
intensity in the northern hemisphere, mainly in North America.

Two people died and 15 others were seriously wounded after machete-wielding
rioters broke into violence over ethnic tensions in Nairobi’s largest slum.
The violence began after a dozen youths from the Nubian ethnic group were
hired to demolish trading stalls in the Kibera slum on behalf of a church
that believed the stalls were blocking its path. Later, Luhya tribesmen and
traders retaliated by hacking to death a Nubian man in his mid-20s. Nubian
youths then attacked people indiscriminately despite pleas from religious
leaders for calm. A second person was killed. Four victims of machete
violence had been brought to clinics. Several shacks were set on fire.
Nubians and Luhya have clashed before. Paramilitary police were patrolling
the slum, but officials feared the violence could flare into a larger
conflict.

The fight against tax havens is one of the great challenges of our age. Our
approach challenges basic tenets of traditional economic theory and opens
new fields of analysis on a diverse array of important issues such as
foreign aid, capital flight, corruption, climate change, corporate
responsibility, political governance, hedge funds, inequality, morality –
and much more. How big is the problem, and what is its nature? Assets held
offshore, beyond the reach of effective taxation, are equal to about a
third of total global assets. Over half of all world trade passes through
tax havens. Developing countries lose revenues far greater than annual aid
flows. The amount of funds held offshore by individuals is about $11.5
trillion – with a resulting annual loss of tax revenue on the income from
these assets of about 250 billion dollars. This is five times what the
World Bank estimated in 2002 was needed to address the UN Millenium
Development Goal of halving world poverty by 2015. This much money could
also pay to transform the world’s energy infrastructure to tackle climate
change. In 2007 the World Bank has endorsed estimates by Global Financial
Integrity (GFI) that the cross-border flow of the global proceeds from
criminal activities, corruption, and tax evasion at US$1-1.6 trillion per
year, half from developing and transitional economies. The annual
cross-border flows from developing countries alone amounts to approximately
US$850 billion – US$1.1 trillion per year. Offshore finance is not only
based in islands and small states: `offshore’ has become an insidious
growth within the entire global system of finance. The largest financial
centres such as London and New York, and countries like Switzerland and
Singapore, offer secrecy and other special advantages to attract foreign
capital flows. As corrupt dictators and other élites strip their countries’
financial assets and relocate them to these financial centres, developing
countries’ economies are deprived of local investment capital and their
governments are denied desperately needed tax revenues. This helps capital
flow not from capital-rich countries to poor ones, as traditional economic
theories might predict, but, perversely, in the other direction. Countries
that lose tax revenues become more dependent on foreign aid. Sub-Saharan
Africa is a net creditor to the rest of the world in the sense that
external assets, measured by the stock of capital flight, exceed external
liabilities, as measured by the stock of external debt. The difference is
that while the assets are in private hands, the liabilities are the public
debts of African governments and their people. Globalisation and
international trade and finance have got a bad name of late. Each brings
opportunities, and risks. We must now start to address seriously what may
be the biggest risk of all: tax abuse, and tax havens and everything they
stand for.

In eastern Bolivia — where the United Nations says several thousand Guarani
Indians, including children, work as virtual slaves on large estates —
Morales has promised autonomy. But the area’s elite, Morales’ fiercest
opponents, won’t let that happen without a fight. Obtaining autonomy should
be less contentious for Indians in western highlands towns like Jesus de
Machaca, in part because the land in question yields so little. Jesus de
Machaca is a hardscrabble farming town near Lake Titicaca that is more than
96 percent Aymara Indian. It is among 12 Bolivian municipalities, mostly
Aymara and Quechua, whose inhabitants will vote on becoming autonomous.
Under self-rule, they would legalize governing practices that precede the
Inca empire. Local leaders called mallkus are democratically elected by
their communities in public votes, then choose senior town officials. Terms
in office are restricted to a year. The system is closer to socialism than
capitalism. Deputy mayor Braulio Cusi says autonomy will hugely benefit a
community where nearly all the 13,700 residents live in adobe brick homes
and use cow manure as cooking fuel, where most homes lack running water and
babies are born at home because there’s no hospital or clinic. “Dairy
cooperatives, cheese processing. There will be jobs,” says Cusi, who slings
a white leather whip over his poncho as a symbol of authority. He envisions
a slaughterhouse, and hopes to attract a veterinarian. The town’s more than
900 square kilometers (350 square miles) are devoted mostly to cattle,
llamas and sheep grazing, potatoes and quinoa. Purchased in the 16th and
17th century by natives who refused to become tenant farmers, they are
communally owned but parceled out. Selling to outsiders is prohibited.
Jesus de Machaca took its first step toward autonomy when it became an
independent municipality. It later elected its first mayor, also a mallku.
The national government more than doubled the town’s budget. More than 70
percent of homes now have electricity — up from one in ten in — and
construction just ended on a three-story municipal building with parquet
floors and oak doors. The town is even building a soccer stadium — with
astroturf, one councilman proudly notes. “Before, we were forgotten,” Cusi
says after watching the Wiphala banner of the Andes’ indigenous peoples
raised up a flagpole in the shadow of an imposing Spanish colonial church.
“Now we’re going to define, in our way, how we live — according to our own
customs and practices.” U.N. Declaration on Indigenous Rights:
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/drip.html

Karzi’s government is filled with “glaring corruption and unabashed graft.”
Karzi is a president whose confidants and chief advisers comprise drug
lords and war crimes villains who mock our own rule of law and
counter-narcotics effort. Where do you think the $36 billion of money
poured into country by the international community have gone? This money
went into the pockets of the drug lords and the warlords. There are 18
million people in Afghanistan who live on less than $2 a day while these
warlords get rich. The Taliban and warlords together contribute to this
fascism while the occupation forces are bombing and killing innocent
civilians. When we do not have security how can we even talk about human
rights or women’s rights? This election under the shade of Afghan
war-lordism, drug-lordism, corruption and occupation forces has no
legitimacy at all. The result will be like the same donkey but with new
saddles. It is not important who is voting. It is important who is
counting. And this is the problem. Many of those who go with the Taliban do
not support the Taliban, but they are fed up with these warlords and this
injustice and they go with the Taliban to take revenge. Most of the people
are against the Taliban and the warlords, which is why millions did not
take part in this tragic drama of an election. The U.S. wastes taxpayers’
money and the blood of their soldiers by supporting such a mafia corrupt
system of Hamid Karzai,” said Joya, who changes houses in Kabul frequently
because of the numerous death threats made against her. “Eight years is
long enough to learn about Karzai and Abdullah. They chained my country to
the center of drugs. If Obama was really honest he would support the
democratic-minded people of my country. He is going to start war in
Pakistan by attacking in the border area of Pakistan. More civilians have
been killed in the Obama period than even during the criminal Bush.” “My
people are sandwiched between two powerful enemies,” she lamented. “The
occupation forces from the sky bomb and kill innocent civilians. On the
ground, Taliban and these warlords deliver fascism. As NATO kills more
civilians the resistance to the foreign troops increases. If the U.S.
government and NATO do not leave voluntarily my people will give to them
the same lesson they gave to Russia and to the English who three times
tried to occupy Afghanistan. It is easier for us to fight against one enemy
rather than two.”

The busy highway of Eight Mile Road marks the border between the city of
Detroit and its suburbs. On one side stretches the city proper with its
mainly black population; on the other stretches the progressively more
wealthy and more white suburbs of Oakland County. But this recession has
reached out to those suburbs, too. Repossessions have spread like a rash
down the streets of Oakland’s communities. Joblessness has climbed, spurred
by yet another round of mass lay-offs in the auto industry. The real impact
of the recession will continue to be felt in those suburbs for years to
come. For decades they stood as a bulwark against the poverty of the city,
ringing it like a doughnut of prosperity, with decrepit inner Detroit as
the hole at its centre. Now home losses and job cuts are hitting the middle
classes hard. Recovery is going to take a generation. The doughnut itself
is sick now. But what do you think that means for the poor people who live
in the hole? That picture is borne out by the recent actions of Gleaners
Community Food Bank. The venerable Detroit institution has long sent out
parcels of food, clothing and furniture all over the city. But now it is
doing so to the suburbs as well, sometimes to people who only a year or so
ago had been donors to the charity but now face food shortage themselves.
Gleaners has delivered a staggering 14,000 tonnes of food in the past 12
months alone. Standing in a huge warehouse full of pallets of potatoes,
cereals, tinned fruit and other vitals, Gleaners’ president, summed up the
situation bluntly: “People who used to support this programme now need it
themselves. The recession hit them so quickly they just became
overwhelmed.”

The Yanomami live in the border region between Venezuela and Brazil. Swine
flu has killed seven members of this endangered Amazonian tribe. Several
hundred members of the Yanomami tribe in Venezuela could be infected. An
outbreak among the isolated tribes of the Amazon could spread among the
indigenous population very quickly and kill many, campaigners fear. It may
already be happening among the Yanomami in the border region between
Venezuela and Brazil. The situation is “critical” and Venezuela and Brazil
must take immediate action to halt the epidemic. An estimated 32,000
Yanomami Indians remain, living in communities up to 400. Venezuelan
Yanomami live in a 8.2 million hectare (20.2 million acre) forest reserve.
Thousands of illegal gold miners have infiltrated the reserve. They also
need to radically improve the Yanomami’s access to healthcare; swine flu
was the suspected cause of the deaths of a pregnant woman and three small
children. The Yanomami have been hurt by epidemics in the past,
particularly when influenza and malaria were brought by miners in the
1980s. As much as a fifth of the community was killed during that period
and that the Yanomami population has fallen to about 32,000.

An elderly British couple was stabbed to death in a robbery while
vacationing in Kenya. Tony Joel, 70, was stabbed 17 times and his
67-year-old wife, Rita, 11 times. The couple from Southend, Essex were
killed while staying in Mombasa on the Kenyan coast. A police investigation
was launched following the deaths. A source close to the investigation said
two people had been arrested as a result.

Hello, I Live In Tobago And Would Like To Be An Agent For Yamaha Outboard
Parts How Can That Be Setup? Tobago’s main source of income is tourism and
taking the tourist to the Buccoo Reef in the glass bottom boat is part of
showing them parts of Tobago. The boats here have outboard engines. Parts
are very hard to come by and it’s not always at your fingertips when
something goes wrong with the engine. I need good information like contact
person and number preferrable from Yamaha. Information that will help me
start up that business. Thank you

In Detroit many people see the only signs of recovery as coming from
themselves. As city government retreats and as cuts bite deep, some of
those left in the city have not waited for help. Take the case of Mark
Covington. He was born and raised in Detroit and still lives only a few
yards from the house where he grew up in one of the city’s toughest
neighbourhoods. Laid off from his job as an environmental engineer,
Covington found himself with nothing to do. So he set about cleaning up his
long-suffering Georgia Street neighbourhood. He cleared the rubble where a
bakery had once stood and planted a garden. He grew broccoli, strawberries,
garlic and other vegetables. Soon he had planted two other gardens on other
ruined lots. He invited his neighbours to pick the crops for free, to help
put food on their plates. Friends then built an outdoor screen of
white-painted boards to show local children a movie each Saturday night and
keep them off the streets. He helped organise local patrols so that
abandoned homes would not be burnt down. He did all this for free. All the
while he still looked desperately for a job and found nothing. Yet Georgia
Street improved. Local youths, practised in vandalism and the destruction
of abandoned buildings, have not touched his gardens. People flock to the
movie nights, harvest dinners and street parties Covington holds. Inspired,
he scraped together enough cash to buy a derelict shop and an abandoned
house opposite his first garden. He wants to reopen the shop and turn the
house into a community centre for children. To do it, he needs a grant. Or
a cheap bank loan. Or a job. But for people like Covington the grants have
dried up, the banks are not lending, and no one is hiring. There is no help
for him. It is hard not to compare Covington’s struggle for cash to the
vast bailout of America’s financial industry. “We just can’t get a loan to
help us out. The banks are not lending,” he said. On an unseasonal warm day
last week, he stood in his urban garden, tending his crops, and gazed
wistfully at the abandoned buildings that he now owns but cannot yet turn
into something good for his neighbourhood. He does not seem bitter. But he
does wonder why it seems so easy in modern America for those who already
have a lot to get much more, while those who have least are forgotten. “It
makes me wonder how they do it. And where is that money coming from?” he
asked.

The Parliamentary Bipartisan Committee investigating the anti-Asian rioting
in Papua New Guinea is allegedly shocked at reports of corruption and
bribery in the Foreign Affairs and Immigration Department. Senior
immigration officials told the committee that officers receive bribes and
are involved in other corrupt practices to allow foreigners into Papua New
Guinea. Several officers have been penalised for being involved in such
illegal activities. The committee was told more than 15,000 foreigners are
estimated to be living illegally in PNG and the immigration department
lacks the funding, staffing and technology to be able to deal with them.
The committee will travel around the country for the next two weeks
gathering public feedback and then present its findings to Parliament.

October 19, 2009

ONE-THIRD OF DENGUE CALIFORNIA COFFEE CHILD BRIDES AND MASSIVE MADAGASCAR IVORY TEA FARMER COPS KILL SEVEN NEW GLOWING ‘FORCED ACQUISITION’ EARTHQUAKES, MONKEYS, MOSQUITOES, MUSHROOMS, TOBAGO MURDERS, SOUTH PACIFIC MALARIA, SECRETIVE RITUALS AND DERAILED PASSENGER TRAINS WITH BURMESE MIGRANT WORKERS HARASSED BY GANGS, PREFER HILTON HOTEL HORROR, ILLEGAL XINHUA FISHING, MALAYSIAN MALARIA MAYHEM, OVER BANGLADESH BORDER FENCING, POACHER BOATS, AND ALARMING NICARAGUAN CLIMATE CHANGE FOOD CRISIS AS RWANDA GENOCIDE’S GREENLIGHT RADIO STOCK EXCHANGE SURGES KILL THREE, WOUND 34 — HUNDREDS OF VENEZUELAN FOLK CORPSES TRAPPED FOR 100 YEARS IN KERMADEC, EASTER ISLANDS PONZI PRISON RAT-KILLING, ADMINISTRATIVE BUNGLED THAILAND TSUNAMI UNDERPANTS THIEF’S $60 MILLION PNG PATROL LOCK-UP

Kenyan authorities have seized almost 700kg of ivory worth millions of
dollars in a night-time raid at the country’s main airport. The Kenya
Wildlife Service says a similar amount was intercepted in the Ethiopian
capital, Addis Ababa. Both consignments – with a potential value of more
than $1.5m (£938,000) – were reportedly headed for Thailand. Poaching is on
the increase mostly owing to high demand for ivory in Asia. It is not yet
clear whether the ivory, recovered at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta Airport, had
been trafficked from other parts of the continent or was from East Africa.
Twenty years ago the world’s elephant population was plummeting and the
trade in ivory was banned. But over the past decade the ban has been
periodically relaxed and occasional supervised ivory auctions have been
allowed.

A powerful earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale struck the remote
Kermadec Islands region. The quake occurred at a depth of 62 km and its
epicentre was about 260 km north east of Raoul Island. There were no
immediate reports of any damage or injuries. No tsunami warning was issued
following the quake. The islands, which are often hit by severe quakes,
have no permanent population except a small New Zealand Department of
Conservation team on Raoul Island.

Madagascar’s rival political parties have agreed on key posts in a
transitional government. Andry Rajoelina, who led a military coup that
ousted President Marc Ravalomanana, will remain as president. However, Mr
Rajoelina will not be allowed to run for the post in Madagascar’s next
elections, which must be held by November 2010 under the deal. The newly
appointed prime minister is Eugene Mangalaza, who is a member of the same
political party as another former president, Didier Ratsiraka, who was
ousted himself by Mr Ravalomanana in 2002. The deal is expected to end the
political crisis that has enveloped Madagascar since Rajoelina took power.
The political struggle has led to the deaths of more than 100 people and
hampered the island’s tourism industry.

The disasters this week show people on Pacific shores still lack basic
protection from tsunamis The official responses to this week’s double
disaster – first, the Samoan tsunami, and then the Sumatran earthquakes –
again reveal worrying flaws in the early warning systems that are the
first, and usually only, lines of defence against the natural hazards that
regularly afflict the world’s most seismically unstable regions. When the
8.3 magnitude undersea earthquake struck, 190km south of the Samoan
islands, it was registered instantly at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre
on Ewa Beach, Oahu, which then issued tsunami warnings to a number of
Pacific island groups, including New Zealand and Samoa.

The fencing project of India – Bangladesh border is expected to complete by
March 2010. The development of fence had been put off due to issues like
harsh topography and pending land acquisition case, cites a home ministry
statement. The other factors which delayed the fencing of the India –
Bangladesh border include need for realignment of fencing, presence of
human life within 150 yards of border, objections from Bangladesh Rifles
for the development of fences within 150 yards etc. The working season
available for the construction of the fence was also a very restricted one.
Approximately 2,649.74 km of the total 3,436.56 km have been fenced till
now. The project is now expected to reach completion by March, 2010, it
said. About 3,326.82 km of border roads of the sanctioned 4,326.24 km have
also been constructed. The 2,840 km India – Bangladesh border will be
floodlighted, which is expected to cost about Rs.1,327 crore. This is
expected to get over by 2011-2012. The work is being carried out by CPWD,
NBCC and NPCC.

With no outside help in sight, villagers used their bare hands to dig out
rotting corpses, four days after landslides triggered by a huge earthquake
obliterated four hamlets in western Indonesia. At least 644 people were
buried and presumed dead in the hillside villages in Padang Pariaman
district on the western coast of Sumatra island. If confirmed it would
raise the death toll in the 7.6-magnitude earthquake to more than 1,300,
with about 3,000 missing. The extent of the disaster in remote villages was
only now becoming clear. So far, aid and rescue efforts have been
concentrated in the region’s capital, Padang, a city of 900,000 people
where several tall buildings collapsed. But the quake was equally
devastating in the hills of Pariaman, where entire hillsides were shaken
loose, sending a cascade of mud, rocks and trees through at least four
villages. Vice President Jusuf Kalla said there was little hope of finding
anyone alive. “We can be sure that they are dead. So now we are waiting for
burials.”

Police in Uganda have arrested and extradited a man who is among the most
wanted suspects from the Rwandan genocide. The 100-day killing rampage led
to the loss of an estimated 10 percent of Rwanda’s population. The 100-day
killing rampage led to the loss of an estimated 10 percent of Rwanda’s
population. IIdephonse Nizeyimana was picked up at a hotel in Rubaga, a
suburb of the capital, Kampala, by the National Central Bureau of Interpol.
He was transferred to a U.N. detention facility in Arusha, Tanzania, where
the tribunal is based. Top officials who allegedly took part in the
genocide, such as army generals and politicians, are tried by the tribunal.
Nizeyimana is one of the four top accused who are earmarked by the
prosecutor to be tried by the tribunal in Arusha after their arrest as part
of the ICTR completion strategy. Of a list of 13 fugitives, he is the
second to be arrested in less than two months.

Three major earthquakes struck within an hour and 10 minutes near Vanuatu
in the South Pacific, prompting a tsunami warning that was quickly lifted.
The quakes struck near Vanuatu in the South Pacific. They were part of
series of nine moderate-to-major quakes that rattled the region in just
over four hours. The first quake, with a magnitude of 7.8, struck at 9:03
a.m. at a depth of 35 km (22 miles) and an epicenter 295 km (180 miles)
north-northwest of Luganville, Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu. A second quake,
with a magnitude of 7.7, struck 15 minutes later at the same depth and an
epicenter of 340 km (210 miles) north-northwest of Luganville. The third
quake, with a magnitude of 7.1, struck at 10:13 a.m. at about the same
depth and an epicenter of 280 km (175 miles) north-northwest of Luganville.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued and then quickly lifted a
regional tsunami warning and watch for parts of the Pacific near the first
earthquake’s epicenter. The first data from a buoy at Luganville on Vanuatu
detected a tsunami wave of 4 centimeters (1.6 inches) at Luganville on
Vanuatu.

One of the suspects in the killing of two Tobago teenagers was shot dead by
police officers in Moruga. Gary Mohammed was killed around 10.15 p.m. A
party of police officers approached a wooden structure in a forested area
in St Mary’s, Moruga, and were fired upon, officers said. In returning
fire, Mohammed was shot several times and died at the scene. The
32-year-old, of Ste Madeleine, San Fernando, last lived in Tobago. The
search continues for a second suspect, who was also shot. The battered
bodies of Kolen Salandy, 16, and Rondell Thomas, 15, were found in French
Fort, Scarborough, Tobago. Their bodies bore marks of violence to the neck
and throat, and both were found with their underpants and trousers pulled
down to their knees. Autopsies revealed the teens died as a result of
broken necks. A manhunt was launched for the suspects after they were
spotted in Princes Town. The men fled to Trinidad by boat after the
teenagers’ bodies were found, investigators said. They believed the men
were seeking assistance to leave the island by sea. As officers search for
the second suspect, medical institutions have been informed to be on the
alert for anyone needing attention for gunshot wounds.

Stepping off the plane, tourists are welcomed to Easter Island with a
garland of flowers. They find themselves on a tiny dot in the Pacific
Ocean, 3,700km west of Chile, to which the island belongs, and 2,000km east
of Pitcairn Island. All around are the white-flecked waves of the Pacific.
“What perfect peace,” exclaimed Thor Heyerdahl, a Norwegian explorer and
author when he arrived in the mid-1950s. He might not say so today. Some
70,000 visitors now arrive each year, up from just 14,000 in the mid-1990s.
Apart from the island’s utter remoteness, what attracts the tourists are
the moai, the mysterious giant stone statues erected by the ancestors of
the indigenous Rapa Nui people. They are testament to a complex society of
up to 20,000 people which later shrank to a shadow as a result of
calamitous environmental stress and deforestation, a cautionary tale
narrated in “Collapse”, a book by Jared Diamond, a polymath at the
University of California, Los Angeles. Today Easter Island once again faces
environmental threats. Food comes from Chile, either by ship or on the
seven weekly flights from Santiago (there are also two from Tahiti). The
visitors “all pull the chain,” Luz Zasso, the mayoress, notes acidly. The
absence of a sewage system is threatening the cleanliness of the island’s
underground water sources. But it would be hard to install one without
damaging archaeological sites. Electricity comes from diesel-powered
generators. Power cuts are frequent. Rubbish is piling up. Many Easter
Islanders are worried. Tourists should be limited to 50,000 a year and be
preferably well-heeled, argues Marcelo Pont, the vice-president of the
Council of Elders, an advisory body. Visitors from the Chilean mainland
attract particular resentment. “They’re interested in sun, sand and
swimming pools, not the island,” says Edgard Herevi of the local chamber of
tourism. Tourism has brought migrants from the mainland, too. The
population is now 5,000, up from 3,300 in 2002, of whom only half are now
of Rapa Nui descent. Locals complain that the incomers are competing in the
handicrafts trade, carving wooden moai and selling shell necklaces.

Thousands of Venezuelans congregated for candlelit rituals on a remote
mountainside where adherents make an annual pilgrimage to pay homage to an
indigenous goddess known as Maria Lionza. Along with Santeria, Venezuela is
home to other folk religions, such as the sect surrounding the Indian
goddess Maria Lionza, an indigenous woman who according to tradition was
born on Sorte Mountain and whose cult has spread to Colombia, Panama,
Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and Central America.

The Global Hunger Index placed Kenya among the world’s most food deficient
countries. The report by International Food Policy Research Institute
(IFPRI), Concern Worldwide and Welt Hunger Hilfe ranks countries on a
100-point scale with 0 being the best score, but Kenya had only 20.1 per
cent. In ranking the country is placed 29th in the world among the
countries with poor food security. Kenya is a hotspot on hunger
vulnerability because of the perennial droughts and insecurity. The world
has been dealing with the food security since 1976. But today close to 900
million people are still food insecure and Kenya is placed among the dark
section of the report. Democratic Republic of Congo was ranked the worst
followed by Burundi, Eritrea, Sierra Leone, Chad and Ethiopia. Egypt,
Tunisia, Algeria and Libya were identified as the countries in Africa that
have shown consistency in food security.

In “Law Abiding Citizen,” a sociopath goes on a rampage, killing major
officials in Philadelphia and holding the entire city hostage. He
essentially is a character elevated out of the ranks of horror films who
instead of killing teenagers reacting to hormones or other socio-biological
imperatives destroys adults reacting to career dictates. As the title
insists, this is a law-abiding citizen who is irate with a justice “system”
that allowed one of the killers of his wife and daughter to get off with a
light sentence. Does a social message lurk within the context of rapes,
dismemberment, bomb explosions and political assassinations? No, of course
not. That’s just the cover for filmmakers F. Gary Gray and writer Kurt
Wimmer to indulge in calculated genre mischief that mixes horror elements
with a suspense thriller. The script does create sufficient tension and
intrigue to hook viewers, along with a photogenic, hard-working cast, so
“Citizen,” should stir some mid-October box-office action. Gerard Butler
(who also is a producer) plays a supposedly average guy who witnesses the
slaughter of his wife and daughter by home-invasion robbers. Curiously,
this pair seems more interested in being outrageously sadistic than in
grabbing anything worth fencing, but that’s so an audience will understand
these really are bad people who deserve to die. Jamie Foxx plays a Philly
assistant D.A. without much hard evidence who plea-bargains an agreement
with one sleaze ball to testify against the other to win at least a death
verdict against one and a murder plea from the other.

Incidents of Thai gangs harassing and robbing Burmese migrant workers in
Southern Thailand are on the rise, claim several migrant workers. A Mon
migrant worker, employed at a rural rubber plantation in Hat Yai district
in Trang Province in Southern Thailand, said that he and his wife were
robbed of by a gang of three Thai teenagers. The gang stole 440 baht and a
cell phone. Nai Myint Aung, aged 30, said that he and eight of his friends
are already paying 50 baht per month to a different Thai gang, and have
been doing so for the past eight months. Nai Myint Aung said that if he or
his friends fail to pay the monthly extortion fee, the gang follows them
back to their homes and harasses their families. Nai Myint Aung also said
that he left his boss’s home, where he had received his paycheck of 7000
baht, and entered the local market. The gang of Thai teenagers followed him
from the marketplace to his neighborhood. Nai Myint Aung claimed that the
gang stopped his motorbike and seized his wife who accompanied him,
threatening the pair with a knife. The gang then searched his wife’s body
and stole 440 baht and her cellular phone. A Thai neighbor of the pair,
a-35 year-old man, saw the Nai Myint Aung and his wife being attacked, and
phoned the police, causing the gang to scatter. Nai Myint Aung said that
his wife had luckily had the foresight to stow his paycheck in her
brassiere, and thus the pair managed to escape the attack without losing
the 7000 baht he’d just received.

Officials say the sales have fuelled demand for ivory in Asian countries,
especially China, contributing to a sharp increase in elephant poaching. So
far this year poachers in Kenya have killed 128 elephants for their ivory;
last year 98 were killed. In July, Kenyan authorities intercepted 16
elephant tusks and two rhinoceros horns being illegally exported to Laos
from Mozambique. Some wildlife experts have attributed the increase in
elephant poaching to the presence of Chinese workers in Africa. With demand
for ivory products increasing back home, some Chinese workers on low
salaries in Kenya are reported to have become middlemen in the ivory trade.
And because of the high demand for ivory across Asia, the price of ivory
has shot up and can fetch more than $1,000 a kilo.

A magnitude-5.8 earthquake struck central Italy, causing buildings to
collapse in the historic centre of L’Aquila and raising fears of
fatalities. Rome, Abruzzo and other parts of central Italy were hit by the
quake, whose epicentre was in the area of Abruzzo’s capital, L’Aquila, at a
five-km depth. L’Aquila residents were shaken from sleep and ran out in
panic onto the city’s streets. Emergency services authorities said the
quake struck at 3.32 a.m. with a magnitude of 5.8 on the Richter scale. The
US Geological Survey initially reported the strength of the quake at 6.7
before lowering it to 6.3. In the hours before the earthquake, two tremors
had occurred with magnitudes of 3.5 and 3.9.

Once such warnings are received, it is up to local authorities to pass them
on to their coastal inhabitants by whatever methods have been agreed, with
instant automated text messaging among the most widely used techniques.
Text messaging is of particular value in the event of locally generated
tsunamis, when the window of warning is usually a matter of minutes, rather
than hours. But those Samoans who felt the tremor and waited for the text
that would tell them whether to head inland waited in vain, for no message
was sent out. And had anyone turned down the radio or television so as not
to miss the incoming text alert, they would have missed the islands’ only
warning – given out on local radio just as the first of two giant waves
began battering the islands’ southern shores. On New Zealand’s North
Island, meanwhile, several hundred people received their “instant” text
alert some three hours late, by which time the tsunami warning had already
been cancelled. The messaging service has now been suspended, and an
inquiry is already under way. But technological failure is not the only
factor that contributed to the death toll, which currently stands at 169.
Many of those killed were caught by the morning’s second wave as they
headed to the beaches to pick up the fish that had been washed ashore by
the first wave. Given that tsunamis usually take the form of a series of
powerful waves, sometimes even hours apart, such a fatal lack of awareness
speaks of a wider failure to pass on even basic tsunami knowledge and
preparedness to the islands’ coastal inhabitants. Education remains the
only truly effective means of reversing the effects of disaster amnesia,
but the last island-wide safety drill took place in October 2007, in
response to a tsunami earlier that year that killed 22 people on the nearby
Solomon Islands. Ironically, a similar tsunami safety drill had been
scheduled for American Samoa but the real thing arrived unannounced
instead.

Where the villages once stood, there was only mud and broken palm trees —
the mountainsides appeared gouged bare as if by a gigantic backhoe. The
villages “were sucked 30 meters deep into the earth. Even the mosque’s
minaret, taller than 20 meters disappeared. In Jumanak village, some 200 to
300 wedding guests at a restaurant were buried alive, including the bride.
Ichi, 19, had come back to the village for her wedding. “When the landslide
came, the party had just finished. I heard a big boom of the avalanche. I
ran outside and saw the trees fall down,” said Iseh, who like many
Indonesians uses only one name. “I tried to get in front of the house with
my brothers. We were so afraid. Landslides started coming from all
directions. I just ran and then I waited,” he said. Iseh says he knows of
only 10 people from the village who survived. He doesn’t know the fate of
his parents or brothers. The adjacent villages of Pulau Aiya, Lubuk Lawe
and Limo Koto Timur were also swept away. Survivors in the area said no
government aid or search teams had arrived, even four days after the quake.
Only about 20 local policemen had come with a power shovel and body bags.
“My relatives were all killed, washed away by the landslide,” said Dola
Jambak, a 48-year-old trader, picking through the rubble of his house. “I
lost seven relatives. Now all I can do is wait for the search teams. But
they don’t come.” The landslides cut off all roads, and the villages were
accessible only by foot. Jumanak is reached after walking about four miles
(six kilometers) for 1 1/2 hours.

In the attacks that started in April 1994, Hutu militias and members of the
general population sought out Tutsis and moderate Hutus, and went on a
100-day killing rampage. Civilians and children got incentives to take part
in the atrocities, including promises of land belonging to their Tutsi
neighbors. It was one of the most brutal genocides in modern history. Some
figures put the number of dead at 1 million — 10 percent of the population
of the central African nation. Millions more were raped and disfigured. A
whole generation of children lost their parents. Nizeyimana was a captain
the Rwanda Armed Forces. He is accused of exercising authority over
soldiers and personnel through a chain of command, and allegedly sent a
section of soldiers to execute of Rosalie Gicanda, a former queen of Rwanda
who was a “symbolic figure for all Tutsis.” This marks the second time
Uganda has cooperated to make an arrest. The tribunal has commended the
Interpol and the Ugandan authorities for their close cooperation.”

Malaria in the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu has been dramatically reduced
through an effective control strategy. There were 50,000 fewer cases of
Malaria in the Solomon Islands in 2008 compared with 2003. An effective
prevention and control strategy comprising of long lasting insecticide
treated bednet distribution, focal point indoor residual spraying, early
diagnosis and treatment and active case detection has had dramatic impact
on the annual incidence rate of malaria in both the Solomon Islands and
Vanuatu. The annual incidence rate (which is a measure of number of
confirmed cases of malaria per 1,000 population) has been reduced from 198
/1,000 to 84/1,000 in the Solomon Islands over the five year period ending
December 2008, while in Vanuatu it has decreased from 74/1,000 to 14 /
1,000 in the same period. Both countries had now been able to move from
control to pilot elimination as a result of the success of the Global Fund
financed programs. The capacity of both countries to scale up interventions
has further been improved as a result of AusAID’s support to the national
malaria strategies, particularly in the area of elimination and treatment.
The measures in place resulted in a significant decrease in the number of
confirmed malaria cases in the Solomon Islands compared to 2003, easing the
burden on the national health systems and budget, and reducing production
time lost due to malaria, which is a contributing factor that constrains
economic growth. A particular emphasis will be on strengthening health
systems in Pacific Islands countries and territories (PICTs).

A second pulse of the wave was 10 centimeters. It looked like a very small
wave. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The two major
quakes that followed the first one were aftershocks. When there’s a big
quake, the pattern they follow is after the first quake, a second and then
a third. Those are obviously related. At the Hotel Le Paris in Noumea, the
capital of New Caledonia, the manager said that she felt the shake but had
not seen any damage. On Espiritu Santo Island in Vanuatu, dive-shop owner
Rehan Syed said he was aware of no reports of damages or injuries. “We have
the sun out and winds are pretty normal. Pretty cloudy skies but nothing
more than that.” “We felt the quake (my chair and my keyboard moved) but
did not take too much notice as we live with shakes every week,” said John
Nicholls of Vanuatu Hotels in an e-mail. At the New Caledonia Hotel, guests
were evacuated to higher ground, General Manager Torani George said, adding
that he had felt “nothing, nothing at all.”

Greenpeace today called for the arrest of the captain of the Japanese ship
Koyu Maru 3, which Greenpeace caught fishing illegally in the Exclusive
Economic Zone of the Cook Islands. “The Koyu Maru 3 and other pirate
fishing vessels are stealing fish for their own profit, depriving the
people of the Cook Islands of a vital source of income,” said Josua
Turaganivalu, Oceans Campaigner of Greenpeace Australia Pacific on board
the Esperanza. “These pirates of the Pacific must be stopped from
plundering ocean life and robbing local communities.” The Greenpeace ship
Esperanza, campaigning to end the destruction of the world’s oceans,
encountered the Koyu Maru 3 hauling in its longline and catching tuna
within Cook Islands waters, where they have no license to fish. Greenpeace
provided the Cook Islands Ministry of Marine Resources and the Fisheries
Agency of Japan with photographic evidence of the illegal activity.
Greenpeace demands the Japanese government order Koyu Maru 3, which is
owned by Tokyo-based World Tuna Co Ltd, to stop its illegal fishing
activities and sailto the nearest port for further investigation. Globally,
more than US $9 billion dollars is lost each year to pirate fishing fleets.
Pirate fishers, who reap their profits in European, American and Asian
markets, are threatening fish stocks as well as depriving Pacific
communities of much-needed income. Pirate fishing in the Pacific accounted
for an average of 36% of its total fisheries, much higher than the global
average of 19%. “The government of Japan must show leadership in tackling
illegal fishing by its vessels in the Pacific. Japan must also take the
lead among major fishing nations and support efforts by Pacific countries
to reduce fishing activities in the region by half and close all four
pockets of international waters to fishing to allow tuna stocks to
recover,” added Wakao Hanaoka, Oceans Campaigner of Greenpeace Japan.
Long-liners like the Koyu Maru 3 mainly target bigeye, yellowfin and
albacore tuna, destined for sashimi markets in Japan and other countries
where this food has become popular. Some Pacific tuna stocks, such as
bigeye and yellowfin tuna, are being fished beyond their limits.

There is almost no unemployment, and thanks to tourist revenues and
government spending, living standards are similar to those on the mainland.
But locals worry about the future. In response, Chile’s government is
proposing laws that would beef up the island’s government, give the Rapa
Nui more say in it and allow them to control immigration. It also plans to
raise the entrance fee to the Rapa Nui National Park, where most of the
main sights are, from $10 to $60 for foreigners. The Rapa Nui Parliament, a
radical group that split from the Council of Elders, is calling for
independence. Its supporters blocked the airport’s runway for two days in
August. It wants to expel Chileans, even those who have lived much of their
life on the island, unless they have a longstanding relationship with a
Rapa Nui or are the parent of a child with Rapa Nui blood. The group also
dreams of ditching Chile’s peso and forming a Polynesian currency union,
including Australia and New Zealand. Such claims are merely a sign of
economic frustration, argues Sergio Rapu, an archaeologist and former
governor of the island. Perhaps. But the question they raise is whether
greater autonomy to run their own affairs would help the Rapa Nui to avoid
a repeat of the ecological collapse they failed to prevent centuries ago.
Sometimes one has to take drastic steps in Chile (or elsewhere) to get
noticed. The protest entirely is about the Islanders wishing to control who
arrives and who does not, and their model is the Galapagos control, also
for eco reasons. The Interior Minister pushed through an on arrival
registration system after the protest, but the Supreme Court disallowed
that as unconstitutional. The problem is the number of Chileans from
poverty stricken – yes, very poor – Chile who see Rapanui as a place with
lots of money to be made. And it is. So, go to Rapanui, take up with a
local girl, produce a child and stay until things don’t work out and, then,
abandon the island, partner and child. Why would a local girl be interested
in a “roto chileno”, Chilean slang for any-old-common-bastard (rough
translation)? Simple: older islanders make it very difficult for Rapanui to
marry Rapanui since all are “related”, even if people really are not sure
what that kinship might be, which is when I get the odd pleading email for
advice. Not very nice what the Chileans do and you can see why the Rapanui
don’t like those “weeds”, as such Chileans are called. Normal tourists from
anywhere are fine, budget or rich: there is accommodation for all types.

Many smoked cigars in purification rituals, while others closed their eyes
lying face-up surrounded by candles and elaborate designs drawn on the
ground with white powder. Some calling themselves the “Vikings” pricked
their tongues with razor blades, drawing blood that ran down their chins
and chests. They said they could not reveal the esoteric secrets that
govern their traditions. The rituals are held every year in the name of the
indigenous goddess Maria Lionza, who according to legend came from the
mountain at Sorte, near the northwestern town of Chivacoa. Some repeated
the word “strength” while dancing atop flaming embers in a ceremony
honoring the goddess at the start of the annual rituals. Many camped in
tents while dedicating several days to the spiritual ceremonies. The
traditions centered on Maria Lionza are hundreds of years old and draw on
elements of the Afro-Caribbean religion Santeria and indigenous rituals, as
well as Catholicism. Believers often ask for spiritual healing or
protection from witchcraft, or thank the goddess for curing an illness.
Venezuela is predominantly Roman Catholic. The church disapproves of the
folk religion but has long since abandoned its attempts to suppress it. A
statue on a Caracas highway divider honors Maria Lionza, depicting her
naked and sitting astride a wild tapir. Followers of the sect regularly
leave offerings of flowers, liquor, coins or fruit at shrines honoring the
goddess or other folk saints.

Conflicts, climate change and poor policies are blamed for the hunger in
countries with food insecurity. The index ranks countries based on child
malnutrition, child death rates and calorie deficient population. High
rates of hunger are strongly linked to gender inequalities, especially in
terms of literacy and access to education. In Kenya, the report gives
special mention of the rural residents and the urban poor in the slums. Two
groups need nutritional interventions because of droughts and the global
financial crisis. There is no term to describe the water scarcity in Kenya
although it receives sufficient rains. Only four per cent of rainwater is
used while 96 per cent is left to flow to the ocean. The Government needs
to do much more to correct this. In Korogocho, about 150,000 people live in
an area of 1.5km2, making it one of the most densely populated slums in the
city. As a result, 3.5 per cent of children suffer from acute malnutrition
and 37.9 per cent from chronic malnutrition. Gender inequality In addition
to inadequate access to affordable foods, a poor health environment, and
low coverage of health services, the survey showed poor childcare practices
were underlying cause of malnutrition in the slum. Hunger is also related
to gender inequality. In rural Kenya, 75 per cent of women are doing much
work but with the ongoing drought, they have been weakened from looking for
water. Furthermore, men are able to move to towns leaving their wives
behind making them vulnerable. Women were encouraged to acquire education
and look for work to earn their own income. This would increase their
influence in making decisions about buying of food, health care, and other
essential needs for their children. The silent hunger crisis — affecting
one sixth of all of humanity — poses a serious risk for world peace and
security.

The audience is not allowed to understand much about the legal case — the
evidence or the pretrial rulings. Nor does one know much about either key
character, the attorney who agrees to the deal or the father and husband
who feels that justice is not served. But because the audience does witness
selected parts of the murder scene, they will understand that the greater
villain eventually will walk free. Tellingly, no judge, lawyer nor anyone
else — not even the husband who blacked out — has this God-like
perspective. Ten years roll by, and Butler’s revenge-minded victim is ready
for action. Oh, by the way, Butler is not an average guy, after all. He
actually is a secret weapon — no, better than that, he is a “Brain,” whom
U.S. spy agencies employ to kill people anywhere around the globe in a
ghostlike fashion. He’s going after anybody connected with the decade-old
case, which more or less means anybody who happened to be living in Philly
at the time. If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen everything you need to
know about the murderous havoc this man rains down on the city. No attempt
is made to make either combatant credible. Foxx’s character goes along with
SWAT teams as they hunt bad guys. And Butler’s nut job couldn’t care less
about his dead wife and child. He’s having too much fun killing people. The
film is smoothly produced, though Brian Tyler’s score is too much like an
excitable cheerleader. Jonathan Sela’s photography and Alex Hajdu’s design
sustain a noirish Philadelphia that works well with the criminal mayhem.

Nai Myint Aung claimed that he fears that the gang will continue to cause
problems for his family, as the group likely remembers his motorbike
number. His Thai neighbor, who came to his rescue the day of his attack,
allegedly urged him to report the incident to the police, but Nai Mynit
Aung says he fears that reporting the gang to the Thai police will only
result in more violence. Reportedly, his fellow workers at the rubber
plantation where he is employed have heard rumors of a Thai gang killing a
family in the area who reported them to the authorities, and he does not
want his family to meet a similar fate. Mi Hlaing, Nai Myint Aung’s wife,
said, “The Thai gangs know that most of the Mon migrant workers go to the
market [once a week] to buy goods. That’s why the gangs perform a robbery
every week on the way [to the market].” Mi Hlaing added that she and her
family previously lived in Thailand’s Phanga Province, but that after an
incident 2 months ago where a 50-year-old Thai man attempted to rape her,
she and her husband decided to move to the Hat Yai area. A Mon worker named
Mi Mee, from Pattaya, also in Southern Thailand, claims that during the
last ten days, Thai gangs have stolen a gold necklace, 2000 baht, and three
mobile phones from migrant workers in the Pattya area; the rape of a
migrant woman in the area has also been attributed to gang activity. Mi Mee
explained that migrant workers in Southern Thailand feel that they must
face the abuse of Thai gangs in the area with patience, because the Burmese
workers need their jobs in Thailand too much to cause trouble.

Bangladesh rewarded a farmer who killed more than 83,000 rats, and the
government launched a nationwide campaign to kill millions more in an
effort to reduce destruction by the rodents and thus cut food imports.
Mokhairul Islam, 40, won first prize of a 14-inch color television for
killing 83,450 rats in the past nine months in the Gazipur district near
Dhaka, the capital. Islam said he used mainly poison to kill the rats at
his poultry farm, collecting their tails for proof. “This is an exciting
moment,” he said. “I will continue to kill them.” Bangladesh imports 3
million tons of food annually, and the Ministry of Agriculture estimates
that rodents destroy 1.5 million to 2 million tons of food annually. The
import of food can be cut by at least half if this year’s campaign is
successful.

Geoscientists have said that the 2007 Solomon Island earthquake may point
to previously unknown increased earthquake and tsunami risks because of the
unusual tectonic plate geography and the sudden change in direction of the
earthquake. On April 1, 2007, a tsunami-generating earthquake of magnitude
8.1 occurred East of Papua New Guinea off the coast of the Solomon Islands.
The subsequent tsunami killed about 52 people, destroyed much property and
was larger than expected. This area has some of the fastest moving plates
on Earth. It also has some of the youngest oceanic crust subducting
anywhere. Subduction occurs when one tectonic plate moves beneath another
plate. In this area, there are actually three plates involved, two of them
subducting beneath the third while sliding past each other. The Australia
Plate and the Solomon Sea/Woodlark Basin Plate are both moving beneath the
Pacific Plate. At the same time, the Australia and Solomon Sea/Woodlark
Basin Plates are sliding past each other. The Australia Plate moves beneath
the Pacific Plate at about 4 inches a year and the Solomon Sea Plate moves
beneath the Pacific Plate at about 5.5 inches per year. As if this were not
complicated enough, the Australia and Solomon Sea plates are also moving in
slightly different directions. The earthquake crossed from one plate
boundary – the Australia-Pacific boundary – into another – the
Solomon/Woodlark-Pacific boundary. The event began in the Australia Plate
and moved across into the Solomon Sea Plate and had two centers of energy
separated by lower energy areas. Normally we think earthquakes should stop
at the plate boundaries. Seismologists do not expect young sections of the
Earths crust to be locations of major earthquakes, so the Solomon Island
earthquake was unusual from the beginning. Other places along subduction
zones had this type of geography in the past and might show up
geologically. At present, there are locations along the margins of Central
America and southern South America that could potentially host similar
earthquakes. A better understanding of earthquakes zones like the Solomon
Islands may help residents along other complex plate boundaries to better
prepare for localized regions of unusually large uplift and tsunami
hazards.

More than a third of the world’s child brides are from India, leaving
children at an increased risk of exploitation despite the Asian giant’s
growing modernity and economic wealth. Nearly 25 million women in India
were married in the year 2007 by the age of 18. Children in India, Nepal
and Pakistan may be engaged or even married before they turned 10. Millions
of children are also being forced to work in harmful conditions, or face
violence and abuse at home and outside, suffering physical and
psychological harm with wide-reaching, and sometimes irreparable effects,
the report said. A society cannot thrive if its youngest members are forced
into early marriage, abused as sex workers or denied their basic rights.
Despite rising literacy levels and a ban on child marriage, tradition and
religious practices are keeping the custom alive in India, as well as in
Nepal and Pakistan. More than half the world’s child brides are in south
Asia, which also accounts for more than half the unregistered births,
leaving children beyond the reach and protection of state services and
unable to attend school or access basic healthcare. Only 6 percent of all
births in Afghanistan and 10 percent in Bangladesh were registered from
2000-08, compared to 41 percent in India and 73 percent in the tiny
Maldives. Also, about 44 million, or 13 percent of all children in south
Asia, are engaged in labour, with more than half in India. Children in the
region have also been seriously affected by insurgency and instability, as
well as natural disasters. Especially in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal,
past or ongoing conflicts have broken down most child protection systems,
leaving children especially vulnerable. Trafficking of children for labour,
prostitution or domestic services is widespread, especially within
Bangladesh and India, and within the region, as well as to Europe and the
Middle East. Insufficient emphasis has been placed on protecting child
victims of trafficking and ensuring that any judicial proceedings brought
against them are child sensitive.

The situation in Indonesia is just as bad. Although neither of this week’s
Sumatran earthquakes proved tsunami–genic, the authorities have to work on
the assumption that any powerful undersea earthquake is liable to generate
tsunamis (the epicentre of the 7.6 magnitude quake was around 50km offshore
from the city of Padang). This is, after all, the same faultline that
caused 2004’s Boxing Day disaster, and produces regular local tsunamis
every year. But there are only 22 detection buoys to monitor all 6,000
inhabited islands in the Indonesian archipelago, and none of those cover
northern Sumatra, Indonesia’s most vulnerable region and the scene of the
highest loss of life in 2004, where the death toll in Aceh province alone
exceeded 130,000. And even where there is detection equipment in place,
there are no guarantees it will stay there. In July 2006 a local tsunami
off the Javanese coast killed nearly 700 people; it later transpired that
the two detection buoys that monitor that stretch of coast had been removed
from the sea some months before, and were awaiting repairs in a dockside
warehouse. Given that these buoys cost about $250,000 each, and require at
least $125,000 worth of annual maintenance per unit, tsunami preparedness
is proving a costly undertaking for developing nations such as Indonesia.
This week’s earthquakes were severe enough – the official death toll is
715, though estimates put it closer to 1,100 – but had either been
tsunamigenic, the city of Padang would have been as unprotected as it was
in December 2004, despite the $30m that has been spent in developing the
region’s interim warning system. Sumatra will have to wait until 2010 for
its own detection buoys to be installed, but as the pantomime across the
far wealthier south Pacific demonstrated, installing the equipment is one
thing; getting it to do its job is quite another.

In what is believed to be the longest sentence ever handed down in a
white-collar case in this district, the mastermind of a Riverside-based
Ponzi scheme that collected well over $60 million from hundreds of
investors—and caused more than $39 million in losses—was sentenced to 100
years in federal prison. Richard Monroe Harkless, 65, who lived in
Riverside when he ran the scheme through a company he called MX Factors
from 2000 until late 2003, was sentenced by United States District Judge
Virginia A. Phillips in federal court in Riverside. During today´s hearing,
Judge Phillips said that Harkless caused “every kind of grief and loss
imaginable” and that the defendant demonstrated that he “would commit his
crimes all over again if given the chance.” In addition the prison term,
Judge Phillips ordered Harkless to pay $35,479,310 in restitution to the
approximately 600 victims who lost money as a result of the scam. Harkless
was sentenced after being convicted in July of three counts of mail fraud,
three counts of wire fraud and one count of money laundering. Harkless and
a team of salespeople at MX Factors raised funds by telling potential
investors that MX Factors provided short-term loans to commercial
construction companies that had guaranteed, government-backed contracts.
Harkless created the company, controlled its bank accounts, hired and paid
agents to solicit investors and created MX Factors promotional literature.
Investors were promised returns of up to 14 percent every two or three
months, at which time investors could either receive their investments back
or roll over their investments into the next investment period. The vast
majority of MX Factors investors were “reloaded,” meaning that they were
convinced to invest money more than once. At trial, several victims
testified that Harkless and his co-conspirators encouraged potential
investors to try out the MX Factors program, investing in one 60- or 90-day
cycle and then withdrawing their money to see if it worked. Once victims
felt more comfortable with the program, Harkless and his co-conspirators
encouraged them to invest even more and to get their families and friends
to invest as well.

Villagers gathered as men used their bare hands to slowly and cautiously
pull corpses from a tangle of roots and grit. The bodies were bloated and
mutilated, some unrecognizable. One man’s body was found because his hand
was sticking out of the mud. Women wept silently as bodies were placed in
bright yellow bags. Aid also had not reached Agam district, which is much
closer to Padang. Laila, a villager in Agam district, said she and hundreds
of others had no food, clothes and clean water. “Our house is gone …
everything is gone,” she sobbed. She said a helicopter dropped some instant
noodle packets. “But we need clean water to cook it,” said Laila, who also
uses one name. She said the local river had become dirty as people were
using it to wash. In Padang, rescuers have all but given up hope of finding
any survivors in the rubble of the 140-room, Dutch-colonial style Ambacang
Hotel. Some 200 people were in the hotel when it collapsed. Search teams
have found 29 bodies so far, and no one alive. “After four days … to find
survivors is almost impossible,” said Lt. Col. Harris, the chief of the
50-member rescue team, which comprises military, police and Red Cross
personnel. “The smell of decomposing bodies is very strong,” said Harris,
who uses one name. According to the National Disaster Management Agency,
83,712 houses, 200 public buildings and 285 schools were destroyed. Another
100,000 buildings and 20 miles of road were badly damaged, and five bridges
had collapsed. Meanwhile, hundreds of doctors, nurses, search and rescue
experts and cleanup crews arrived Saturday at the Padang airport from
around the world with tons of food, tents, medicine, clean water,
generators and a field hospital. But with no electricity, fuel shortages
and telecommunication outages, the massive operation was chaotic.

Suspected insurgents killed three people, including a toddler, and wounded
at least 34 in a grenade, gun and car bomb attack on two restaurants and a
hotel in Thailand’s south. The brutal violence brings the death toll over
the past two days to four and the number of casualties to more than 50 as a
result of militant attacks in the troubled Thai south, which is gripped by
a bitter five-year uprising. The rebels, travelling by car and on three
motorcycles, hurled a hand grenade into a restaurant at lunchtime in Sungai
Kolok, a border town in Narathiwat province, wounding four people. They
then opened fire on customers, shooting dead a Buddhist police officer and
injuring another four people. A three-year-old boy who suffered gunshot
wounds later died at hospital. The gunmen then began shooting at another
nearby restaurant, killing the owner, a 45-year-old Buddhist woman, and
wounding four people. A car bomb exploded in front of one of the town’s
hotels soon afterwards, wounding 23 people.

Rates of sexually transmitted infections in the Pacific remain as high as
they were in 2004. A programme to prevent mother to child transmission had
substantially reduced the risk of an unborn child being infected with HIV
from his/her mother during delivery. The SPC public health team had
responded to the H1N1 pandemic in 2009 in partnership with the World Health
Organisation (WHO) and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC), and played a critical role in providing technical advice, services
and capacity building to Pacific Islands countries and territories (PICTs).
It was also involved in the response to the recent cholera outbreak in PNG.
TB control supported PICT’s in implementing the regional Stop TB strategy
in close collaboration with WHO and CDC. The HIV and STI section was
responsible for coordinating and monitoring the implementation of the
Pacific Regional strategy on HIV and STI’s in close collaboration with
multiple other agencies and countries. The very high prevalence of
noncommunicable disease risk conditions – diabetes, high blood pressure and
obesity – is amongst the highest in the world. Hypertension is the most
common condition leading up to cardiac arrest which is the leading cause of
death in the Pacific. The risk factors of smoking, alcohol, low levels of
physical activity and consumption of fruits and vegetables were the perfect
recipe for NCDs.

Climate change is already wreaking havoc on the livelihoods of small-scale
tea and coffee farmers in some of the world’s poorest countries. Research
across four countries – Kenya, Mexico, Peru and Nicaragua – showed that
growers are already being forced uphill to higher altitudes, at a rate of
three to four metres a year on average, as temperatures rise. A huge number
of growers are now experiencing increased instances of pestilence and
disease from rises in temperature. They are also facing prolonged drought
and changing weather patterns. The priority for developed countries should
be helping the world’s poor to protect themselves against climate change.
What’s crucial is that there’s an option of sustainable adaptation to
safeguard the supply chain. Climate change is affecting those least able to
deal with it. We can’t underestimate that. Smaller producers, who are
reliant on a single crop and often cannot afford to install costly
irrigation equipment as temperatures rise, are worst affected. Some farmers
could see their incomes fall by up to 90% in the next fifteen years;
worldwide 30 million farmers will be affected.

Lying injured in Vaiola Hospital, 65-year-old Sulifa Losalu mourns the loss
of her beloved husband Heneli Losalu (69) who died helping her to escape
the September 30 tsunami wave they saw rushing toward their Hihifo,
Niuatoputapu, home engulfing everything in its path. The mother of eight
children said the couple had just returned to their home after attending an
early morning church service when the earthquake struck around 6:00 am.
Sulifa heard her husband yelling for her to get out and she hurried out of
the house, but then remembered her little statue of Mary, the mother of
Jesus, and she ran back inside to get it with her handbag. Sulifa vividly
remembered she then heard a strong roaring sound “like a machine” and
Heneli shouting from outside to “run, there is a huge wave coming!” “My
husband waited for me and as I ran out I saw the wave, which was above the
coconut trees coming towards us. It was a horrifying sight and I ran, and
my husband kept yelling for me to run fast. As I looked back at him that
was the last I saw of him as the wave struck him, then me. “I was
underwater swallowing water and was thrown around like a thin stick,
hitting debris, trees that came in my way. I just remembered praying to
Mary to please help me.” Sulifa said she was then flung onto a rooftop and
held tightly onto it and managed to get up from below the surging wave to
breathe. “I felt the wave subsiding and I remained there until my son
‘Osika, who was in the bush when the tsunami hit, rescued me. “He carried
me down and the ocean was still up to our waist but the waves had subsided.
It was not until 4:00 pm that my husband was found dead, kneeling down, at
another area. I was shattered,” she said. “I feel this aching hole in my
heart after loosing my husband because I know he could have made it but he
waited for me to come out of the house before running. I love him so much
and being apart from him is devastating.” The village children later found
Sulifa’s statue of Mary and her handbag and returned them to her.

The primary objective of the people is to stage a peaceful sit in at the
Mataveri International Airport on Easter Island. No airplanes will be
allowed to depart or arrive to Rapa Nui until discussions are held and
resolutions are made. The parliament of Rapa Nui is asking for the
following: 1. To regulate the entrance of all Chilean persons from the
mainland as well as foreigners to the territory of Rapa Nui. 2. For Rapa
Nui to become an independent nation. The Rapa Nui people are asking for
these regulations due to a recent surge of immigration to the island
resulting in depletion of resources, weakening of the infrastructure and
rapid destruction of one of the world’s most treasured archeological sites.
The island is part of Chile’s national territory belonging to the
Valparaiso region which is over 3,500km away. Chile annexed the Polenesian
island in 1888 by way of some treaty at a time when a newly independent
Chile joined the fashion of having its own overseas colony. At this stage
there were very few Rapa Nui natives left, only a little over 100 as
between 1862 and 1871 some 97 per cent were either killed through smallpox,
TB and slavery or were moved off the island by Christian missionaries. Just
as well because that meant more room for sheep and so the remaining
survivors were herded into Hanga Roa, the only town on the island while the
Williamson-Balfour sheep company ran the show until 1953. (The Chileans
graciously allowed the natives walk their own island in the 1960s.)
According to Pamela Hucke, a native doctor, as late as the 1950s the
Chilean authorities actively discouraged contact with the outside world by
claiming the island was a leper colony, making this claim credible by
injecting some natives with the disease. This has never been reported in
the Chilean press as far as she knows. Locals also point out that the
airport was built by the US government while it was a Japanese firm which
resurrected the moais on the island which had been toppled. Perhaps as a
result of the general economic downturn or some other reasons, more
Chileans are coming to live on the island which is now only 60 percent
native. Islanders point to the increase in crime such as burglaries which
never happened before and the increase in hard drugs being smuggled on to
the island. Locals place full blame on the Chilean immigrants and they want
this regulated. Of course they stress that they have nothing against
tourists, Chilean or otherwise, who are welcome to stay temporarily and
enjoy the “open air museum” that the island is.

Cases of both hemorrhagic dengue and classic dengue have been on the rise
in Nicaragua. A total of 1,706 cases of classic dengue and 46 of the
hemorrhagic variety have been registered in the Central American nation.
The figures were up sharply from the 1,480 classic dengue cases and 25
hemorrhagic dengue cases detailed in an earlier report. Eight people have
died in Nicaragua from dengue so far this year. Dengue is a serious viral
disease transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito that is characterized by
high fever, intense headaches, muscle pain, gastro-intestinal problems and
rashes. Hemorrhagic dengue, in addition to having symptoms associated with
classic dengue, like fever, headaches and joint pain, can also produce
internal bleeding. Children between the ages of 5 and 14 have been the
group most affected by the disease, with the outbreak being especially bad
in Boaco, Leon, Managua, Masaya and Rio San Juan provinces. Public health
officials are working to prevent the mosquitoes that spread the disease
from breeding. A door-to-door dengue prevention campaign is being conducted
in Nicaragua’s 153 municipalities.

Another ship, the Alakrana, was recently captured in the Indian Ocean.
Somali pirates have seized a Singapore-flagged container ship in the Indian
Ocean. The MV Kota Wajar was headed to the Kenyan port of Mombasa when it
was commandeered 300 nautical miles north of Seychelles. Twenty one crew
are on board the 24,637-tonne container ship. At least five vessels are now
in the hands of Somali pirates. Pirate attacks around the world more than
doubled to 240 during the first six months of 2009 compared with the same
period in 2008. The rise in overall maritime hijacking is largely due to
the increase in Somali pirate activity.

A ground breaking ceremony to redevelop the Anuha Island resort in the
Central Province is being scheduled as well as announcing a tender for the
design and construction of a four star resort. “The island is a jewel of
the pacific and we want to build a resort that does Anuha and the Solomon
Islands justice,” the SITC said while working with local authorities,
international partners and key stakeholders to develop a resort that drives
tourism development and also takes into account local needs. As part of the
development, the runway on the island will shortly be cleared as the first
part of the early construction works process. Following on from the success
to date with developing a world class resort on Anuha Island, Solomon
Islands Tourism Company is now seeking an additional land site for its next
development in the Solomon Islands. Anuha Island is located 54 kilometers
or 12 minutes flying north-east of the international airport at Honiara.

The House of Representatives passed the fishery bill into law, effectively
allowing marine patrol boats to shoot at vessels poaching in Indonesian
waters. The ministry required the harsh law to legitimize a “shoot and
sink” policy against poachers to deter any future poaching. “*Shoot and
sink’ can now be ordered under certain conditions, and we will immediately
draw up standard operation procedures to enforce the measure,” said Aji,
who also chaired the government’s working committee for the fishery bill.
However, for human rights reasons, Marine patrols would only be allowed to
shoot at ships, not sailors, he said. Indonesian waters in North Sulawesi,
Maluku, Papua and West Papua have been prone to illegal fishing by foreign
fishing ships. “The implementation of the ruling should not breach human
rights or international laws,” Aji said at a press conference on the newly
endorsed law. The policy was needed to protect Indonesia’s sovereignty, he
said. Poaching has been a chronic problem for Indonesia, which loses an
estimated Rp 30 trillion (US$3.26 billion) to poaching each year. In the
past five years, Indonesia has seized more than 700 vessels, most of them
from Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia, with a few from
further afield, including Taiwan and China.

At least 1000 people were killed and hundreds were trapped under collapsed
buildings after a powerful earthquake struck Indonesia’s West Sumatra
province. Vice President Jusuf Kalla said the mayor of Padang, the capital
of West Samatra, told him that the quake left at least 75 people dead. “The
number may increase because many are still trapped in buildings and
hotels,” Kalla said. Rustam Pakaya, the head of the Health Ministry’s
disaster centre, said hundreds of people were trapped under rubble in
Padang, where a hospital among other structures had also collapsed. The
state-run Antara news agency reported that hundreds of people were believed
to have been trapped in collapsed buildings and shops in Padang’s business
district and Chinatown. A hospital official in nearby Pariaman district
said that eight people in the district had been killed and hundreds more
hospitalized with serious injuries. The quake, measuring 7.6 on the Richter
scale, struck off the western coast of Sumatra at about 1016 GMT. A 6.2
magnitude aftershock followed about 22 minutes later. A medical team was
being dispatched to West Sumatra, the region worst-hit by the quake.
Telephone communications to Padang and nearby Pariaman district were cut
off following the quake.

As the scheme began to collapse, Harkless diverted millions of dollars of
investor money to Belize and Mexico. In the final months of the scheme,
once Harkless knew that he was under investigation by various state
regulators, he accelerated his fundraising and accelerated the transfer of
funds to his own accounts in Belize. During the scheme, the bulk of the
money raised from investors was used to pay off earlier investors, to pay
agent commissions, to fund Harkless´ crabbing business in Ensenada, Mexico
and to pay for various personal expenses. Over the course of the scheme,
approximately 600 victims invested and lost money with MX Factors. Harkless
fled to Mexico shortly after the Ponzi scheme collapsed and federal
authorities executed search warrants in February 2004. Harkless was
arrested by special agents with IRS-Criminal Investigation two years ago
when he traveled to Phoenix. At this summer´s trial, Harkless represented
himself in court. Three of Harkless´ sales agents—Daniel Berardi, Thomas
Hawkesworth, and Randall Harding—pleaded guilty and received sentences of
up to six years in federal prison. The investigation into MX Factors was
conducted by IRS-Criminal Investigation, the United States Postal
Inspection Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Deliveries came on C-130 cargo planes from the United States, Russia and
Australia. Japanese, Swiss, South Korean and Malaysian search and rescue
teams scoured the debris. Tens of millions of dollars in donations came
from more than a dozen countries to supplement $400 million the Indonesian
government said it would spend over the next two months. The U.N. said
there are sufficient fuel stocks in the area for four days, but with the
road to a major depot cut off by landslides, gasoline prices had jumped
six-fold. Areas with “huge levels of damage to infrastructure were in need
of basic food and tents for temporary shelter,” it said. The quake
originated on the same fault line that spawned the 2004 Asian tsunami that
killed 230,000 people in a dozen nations. A 5.5-magnitude earthquake shook
the eastern province of West Papua. There were no reports of casualties.
The quake’s epicenter was 128 kilometers northwest of the provincial
capital of Manokawar, the only major center of inhabitation. The region is
about 3,500 kilometers from Sumatra.

The explosive weighed 30 to 50 kilograms and was hidden in a Honda Civic
with a fake licence plate, which had passed a screening by a bomb detection
machine. The bomb was hidden in the passenger car and detonated by radio
signal. Two of the wounded were in a serious condition. An explosive hidden
in a motorcycle went off in Pattani province close to where Buddhists were
attending a festival, wounding 17 — five of them seriously. Earlier in the
day, four gunmen on two motorcycles opened fire on a 34-year-old Muslim
rubber worker as he travelled to work in Narathiwat province. He died at
the scene. The bloody rebellion has claimed more than 3,900 lives since it
erupted in Thailand’s Muslim-majority southern provinces, bordering
Malaysia, in January 2004. The shadowy rebels, who have never publicly
stated their goals, target Muslims and Buddhists alike and both civilians
and members of the security forces, usually with shootings and bombings.
Recent attacks echoed a serious blast in August, which ripped through a
restaurant in Narathiwat packed with government officials, wounding at
least 42 people. Tensions have simmered since the region, formerly an
autonomous Malay Muslim sultanate, was annexed by predominantly Buddhist
Thailand in 1902.

The Healthy Pacific Lifestyle (HPL) section at SPC provides an integrated
approach in the promotion of tobacco and alcohol control, physical activity
and good nutrition. The SPC-WHO joint 2-1-22 (two organisations, one
programme, 22 countries) approach funded by AusAID and NZAID was being
implemented under the Pacific Framework for the prevention and control of
NCDs. In January to June 2009, grants amounting to 23 million CPF
(approximately US$270,000) were provided to three PICT’s in support of NCDs
national strategy implementation. It will feed into a high-level,
multi-sectoral regional food security summit in early 2010. Meanwhile,
relatively neglected diseases in the Pacific were dengue and other vector
borne diseases like leptospirosis (except malaria), rheumatic heart
disease, mental health and environmental health. There were also funding
gaps for secondary prevention for noncommunicable diseases such as
diabetes, cancer and high blood pressure. Gaps were also emerging in
maternal and child health, sexual and reproductive health, on the
consequences for health of climate change, urbanisation and poor housing,
and on infant diarrhoea, water and sanitation.

Small-scale growers in Peru have seen yields fall by 40% since last year,
compared to 30% across the country as a whole; small producers in Mexico
have seen yields halve, against a national decline of 7%. Tea and coffee
are on the climate change front line because they only grow in a relatively
narrow temperature range. All four of the countries involved would see the
quantity and quality of their crops decline sharply over the coming years.
In Kenya, growers diversify into new crops such as passion fruits; in Peru,
farmers were able to use their land to sell carbon credits; and elsewhere
they planted native tree species to help bind the soil and prevent
mudslides. The government said that it will donate £12m to the Fairtrade
Foundation, with the hope of doubling the number of developing country
farmers who are awarded the Fairtrade mark. Fairtrade products pay a
premium to relatively small-scale growers, helping to protect them from the
vicissitudes of global commodity markets and the buying power of vast
multinationals. The Fairtrade mark is celebrating its 15th birthday, and
now covers a wide range of products, from bananas to chocolate. Sales of
Fairtrade products were up by 43% in 2008. The Fairtrade market as a whole
is expected to treble, to £9bn, by 2013. In the current economic climate,
it’s the poorest communities who are hit the hardest, and so positive
business models like Fairtrade, which deliver increased development
benefits from trade, are more important than ever.

Sulifa was one of the first four patients that were first flown down to
Nuku’alofa for urgent treatment. “Most of my children live here in
Tongatapu and some overseas, they are all here now and we are having a
memorial for my husband tonight in Puke where my son lives.” The mother
said when she gets better she is going back to Niuatoputapu. “Although
there is nothing there with no house left, I want to be with my husband who
is buried there,” she said. Sulifa is doing very well in the hospital and
can manage to sit up and stand up on her own for a few minutes. But she
mainly uses the wheelchair to get around while her knees are healing.

Greenlight Radio is a pirate radio station that has been broadcasting in
Boulder for just over a year. G-Girl arrives at the interview. She looks
tiny with her arms so full: a laptop, a hand mic, a notepad and pen. She
leans over the keyboard and begins pecking the keys, her cell phone stuck
to her ear. She speaks with a relaxed, almost surfer-girl accent. She
doesn’t look like a criminal. And she’s not, as far as she’s concerned;
she’s one of the last free American radio journalists. But as far as the
Federal Communications Commission is concerned, she’s an airwave thief.
Unregulated and against the law. A pirate. “Connected,” G-Girl announces to
a mysterious voice on the other line. It’s a bit “Charlie’s Angels;” we’ll
never know who this voice is. We won’t know G-Girl’s real name either, or
the names of the other KGIR radio personality “Helix” interviews Ian Nissen
about unlicensed radio at Bart’s CD Cellar. They hope they don’t have to
hide forever. After all, they say the ultimate goal of their illegal
Boulder radio station is to connect the community, and that’s hard to do
when you’re a shadow. But for now, they hide. Greenlight is still young.
This month marks its first birthday. Boulder’s airwaves aren’t new to
poaching. Boulder Free Radio, KBFR, has been stirring up the scene since
2000, in between the FCC occasionally shutting down the signal. KBFR,
started by a notably more antagonistic voice known as Monk, touted “B.S.
Free Radio,” with unedited, uncensored — and uncommercialized — music and
opinions. KBFR’s radio waves are once again static. But Boulder Free
Radio’s ship hasn’t sunk. The station has a live stream at
boulderfreeradio.com, and active Myspace, Facebook and Twitter pages.
Greenlight Radio isn’t associated with KBFR — or Boulder’s third
occasional techno-music pirate who pops up occasionally on 103.9 FM.
Greenlight is also not connected with a Fort Collins-based religious pirate
— who sometimes steals Greenlight’s stolen airwaves during the day.

Tired of not being listened to, they occupied the airport runway to grab
the attention of Santiago, causing all flights between the mainland and
Tahiti to be postponed for two days. During the protest there were many red
and white Rapa Nui flags visible, symbolising their desire of independence
for the island. Whether the island could actually survive full independence
with a population of under 4,000 is open to debate. Listening to the
locals’ concerns but also seeing the standard of life on the island we are,
however, reminded of the Monty Python satirical comedy Life of Brian where
the character Reg, urging resistance against the Roman occupation, admits:
“All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine,
public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health,
what have the Romans ever done for us?” For a start the Rapa Nuis don’t pay
tax – so don’t expect a receipt for anything you buy. They also get
generous grants to study on the mainland at any university of their
choosing. The island also does not know poverty and the gap between rich
and poor is minimal. In part this is because almost all of them own land
(Chileans are not allowed buy land here), while the state provides a large
number of administrative jobs and wages are high. For example a Chilean
teacher said that she could make almost three times as much on the island
as in Santiago. But on the cultural front, they probably do have to worry a
little more. Their own language Rapa Nui is spoken about 50 50 alongside
Spanish and while most can speak the native tongue there are some younger
people who can not. Many of these people too prefer the sights and sound of
the mainland and prefer the new to the old. The island is also not immune
to the effect of globalisation which may be more of a threat than the
Chilean State in the long run. Plastered all along the main street is Coca
Cola’s image of the moais as part of its marketing strategy for the island
or the sight of Jennifer Tuku, a cultural ambassador for the island
sporting two mobile phones around her neck. Agriculture and fishing remain
strong on the island, although tourism provides some 80 percent of the
local economy and the sheer numbers of tourists arriving every day has
ensured that the modern world is firmly entrenched in Rapa Nui.

The Papua New Guinea stock exchange again surged, this time by huge 11 per
cent, as two big firms – probably responsible for the rise in confidence –
had big wins. Papua New Guinea’s biggest gold company, Lihir Gold, is
suggesting the precious metal could rise to $US1,500. And the Bank of South
Pacific took over Fiji’s 130-year-old Colonial National Bank and associated
firms.

The central bank of Bangladesh has relaxed its rules and allowed money
changers to sell a maximum US$350 to a Hajj pilgrim this year. Under the
existing regulations, each pilgrim, who will go to perform Hajj through
both public and private agencies, can take a maximum US$350 or equivalent
of other foreign currencies, if he wants. “The money changers, for the
first time, are allowed to sell the foreign currencies to pilgrims that
will help achieve their annual transactions limit, fixed by the central
bank earlier. The central bank re-fixed yearly transaction limit to
US$350,000 from $500,000 earlier for the money changers, which are
operating business across the country, excluding Dhaka and Chittagong
metropolitan areas. However, the annual transactions limit of money
changers, located in two metropolitan areas, remain unchanged at $500,000.
The money changers license will not be renewed for the next tenure if they
fail to fulfill the yearly transactions limit. Currently, 240 money
changers are operating across the country.

The fisheries ministry has been working with the Navy and the National
Police to keep poachers out of Indonesian waters. The ministry had long
sought legal endorsement for the “shoot and sink” policy, saying poachers
had shown a clear disdain for Indonesia’s outnumbered and poorly equipped
marine patrol boats. Aji added that shooting and sinking poachers’ vessels
while at sea would be more feasible than seizing their boats and towing
them to land. “Can you imagine these small, plastic patrol boats dragging
large fishing vessels to shore?” he said. “Sometimes the vessels are made
of wood and are in very poor condition, bringing with them diseases; the
locals protest against having them near their beaches.” The newly revised
law also authorizes the ministry’s civilian patrols to investigate alleged
poaching in Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone. That task previously fell
under the Navy’s authority. The need for fishing vessels to secure
operating permits before sailing is another new aspect of the law. While
lawmakers had previously rejected the policy fearing illegal fees, the
government had managed to convince them that the ruling was necessary to
control fishing activities in Indonesia’s sea waters, which were suffering
from declining fish stocks as are other parts of the globe. The law
provided clearer time limitations for investigation, prosecution and trial
processes for poaching cases, and allowed the ministry to make use of
confiscated vessels.

Fires also broke out in Padang. Padang’s Minangkabau airport was ordered
closed because roofs were damaged. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center
issued an Indian Ocean tsunami alert after the quake, but later cancelled
it. The quake was also felt strongly in North Sumatra, Riau in eastern
Sumatra as well as Bengkulu province in southern Sumatra, residents.
Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago, sits on the so-called Pacific
‘Ring of Fire’, the edge of a tectonic plate prone to seismic upheaval. A
major earthquake and subsequent tsunami struck in December 2004, leaving
more than 170,000 people dead or missing in Indonesia’s Aceh province and
half a million people homeless. This quake occurred along the same fault
line. Geologists have said that Padang, a low-lying city of 900,000 people,
risks being swallowed by a tsunami in the event of an earthquake similar in
size to the one that triggered the giant waves of 2004.

In a case of “serious administrative error”, an Australian resident was
locked up in a detention facility for three years. An egregious error
highlights the need for a revamping of federal laws, which have unlawfully
deprived this man of his liberty. Wrongful detention for over three years
is a matter of grave concern, and it is equally a matter of concern that
the legal framework does not confer powers necessary to address problems
and disadvantage of this kind. In 1989, Vietnamese-born Van Phuc Nguyen was
granted refugee status as an 18 year old, after fleeing Vietnam and
spending four years in a refugee camp in the Philippines. Sydney airport
immigration officials failed to recognize his visa in 2002. As a result,
he was detained from November 2002 to February 2006 in Villawood
Immigration Detention Centre. Nguyen’s residency was inadvertently
cancelled upon his return to Australia from a trip to Vietnam in 1995, when
an immigration official issued him a one month visa. Located in the suburbs
of Sydney, Villawood serves mainly as a facility for any individual who has
over-stayed his visa, failed to comply with his visa, or has been denied
entry to Australia. It has been at the center of controversy over human
rights abuses over the last several years. The Human Rights and Equal
Opportunity Commission found the Centre’s conditions deplorable and
“inhospitable” and recommended that it be closed immediately.

Malaria in the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu has been dramatically reduced
through an effective control strategy. There were 50,000 fewer cases of
Malaria in the Solomon Islands in 2008 compared with 2003. An effective
prevention and control strategy comprising of long lasting insecticide
treated bednet distribution, focal point indoor residual spraying, early
diagnosis and treatment and active case detection has had dramatic impact
on the annual incidence rate of malaria in both the Solomon Islands and
Vanuatu. The annual incidence rate (which is a measure of number of
confirmed cases of malaria per 1,000 population) has been reduced from 198
/1,000 to 84/1,000 in the Solomon Islands over the five year period ending
December 2008, while in Vanuatu it has decreased from 74/1,000 to 14 /
1,000 in the same period. Parr said both countries had now been able to
move from control to pilot elimination as a result of the success of the
Global Fund financed programs implemented co-jointly by both countries’
national vector borne disease control programs, WHO and SPC. The capacity
of both countries to scale up interventions has further been improved as a
result of AusAID’s support to the national malaria strategies, particularly
in the area of elimination and treatment. The measures in place resulted in
a significant decrease in the number of confirmed malaria cases in the
Solomon Islands compared to 2003, easing the burden on the national health
systems and budget, and reducing production time lost due to malaria, which
is a contributing factor that constrains economic growth.

Greenlight started as Internet radio, which is not regulated. The two
Boulder brothers who founded it eventually built their own transmitter and
figured out how to poach one of the few unoccupied frequencies in the area.
Their belief: The broadcast spectrum belongs to the public — not
corporations and media conglomerates shaped by strangers who know nothing
about Boulder. By nature, radio waves are only strong enough to span a
small geographic community. So the station founders said that it only seems
logical that each community has control over what appears on its waves.
They’re not talking about anarchy, or even about the desire to spout curse
words on the radio without being bleeped out. They’re talking about
“relocalization.” “Bringing resource and regulation control back to the
local community,” says one DJ and Boulder native who goes by the on-air
name Rocky Flats. He says a community radio compliments the trend of
increasingly more people growing their own food, shopping at local farmer’s
markets and co-ops and setting up online blogs and personal Web pages. “The
world is going through a huge shift right now. Boulder is doing well in
this recession because we localize a lot,” Rocky Flats says. “Localization
is the key to survival.” Rocky Flats thinks it’s also the key to overcoming
what he calls the current “media crisis,” where Paris Hilton gets
precedence over political turmoil in Pakistan, and a handful of
corporations control the news and views that Americans are fed. Rocky Flats
says he’s passionate about politics, as well as music and information. When
he’s not volunteering at Greenlight — none of the 30 DJs and members are
paid — he works in a customer service job. Rocky Flats looks clean-cut and
well put-together, and his tone is focused and professional. “Our direction
is for the community to believe the airwaves are a local resource,” he
says. “We try to provide an example of that. Eventually through enough
actions, we can take the airwaves completely back.”

Oceanic Airlines is the fictional airline that operated Flight 815 which
crashed on the Island. According to Oceanic Airlines’ website, the company
was founded in 1979 and served other destinations such as Costa Rica,
London, and Seoul. After the events of Flight 815, it ceased operations due
financial difficulties. But the company was returning to the airways. It
was established that Oceanic Airlines had cancelled all flights whilst
conducting an investigation into Flight 815’s disappearance. After failing
to find anything, the company was pushed to close the case so that they
could resume flights and recover from loss of business. This decision to
conclude all passengers dead with no solid proof resulted in opposition
from individuals such as Sam Thomas, the main protagonist in the second
Lost alternate reality game that focused specifically on Oceanic Airlines,
Find 815. A video advertisement aired at Comic-Con 2009 ostensibly stated
that Oceanic Airlines had been running since 1979 with a 30 year perfect
safety record. The canonical status of this video, and how it contradicts
all previously established fact, is presently unclear.

President Hugo Chavez’s government has begun taking over management of a
Hilton-run hotel on Venezuela’s Margarita Island. A 20-year concession
granted to the company had expired and the government “has taken legitimate
control of an asset that belongs to all the people of Venezuela”. Mr Chavez
issued a decree last week ordering the “forced acquisition” of the
Margarita Hilton & Suites and its marina. A Hilton Worldwide spokeswoman
said the company was analysing the move to determine how its interest in
the hotel would be affected.

It now seems that passengers flying in and out of Papua New Guinea are
being terrorized by an underpants thief. Women travelers who are flying
with the national carrier Air Niugini are fed up with one or more baggage
handlers taking their underwear. Four women, who do wish to remain nameless
due to the nature of the event, said that some of their best undergarments
have been stolen from their luggage while traveling on domestic flights
when leaving the capital Port Moresby. It may come at no surprise that some
reports point out that only “attractive” women have been hit by this so
called thief, and the ones that are hit only have their sexier
undergarments stolen. Another tourist that was on a brief stay in Papua New
Guinea said that her bag has a lock on it; however, when she got it back
the lock bad been broken. The only items that she found missing from her
bag were her lace hipster briefs and her g-strings. She went on to say that
she just could not believe it. She noted that she has traveled all over the
world, and this is the very first time something like this has ever
happened. In a different case, a woman that was visiting her mother in
Papua New Guinea was shocked to find that her favorite pair of pink panties
were missing. She went on to say that what is so weird about the whole
thing is that she had much more valuable items in her bag besides her
underpants, and those remained untouched. Despite all of this, Air Nigugini
said that they will get to the bottom of the women’s undergarments thief.
One spokesperson said that they were unaware that such particular items
were being targeted.

Travelers to Southeast Asia beware: there’s a new strain of malaria in
town. Researchers have recently figured out that the Plasmodium knowlesi
strain of malaria, which used to be confined to Malaysian macaque monkeys,
can kill humans too. The especially nasty part about this new human strain
of malaria is that doctors have a hard time recognizing it. Symptoms and
disease progression look scarily similar to other less serious forms of
malaria, so you might end up dead before the doctors realize they should’ve
done something differently. You can pick up this malaria from mosquito
bites across the region, but especially in Borneo and Malaysia. You should
be extra sure to use mosquito repellent in these areas to prevent bites,
and head straight to the doc if you get fever and body aches and pains.

The world’s eighth largest economy is still finding its feet after
suffering multiple economic shocks, including a housing slump, mortgage
crisis and recession. Employers in California, the most populous US state,
are expected to keep cutting staff in 2010 as the wider US jobs market
recovers. As industries in other US states prepare to rehire on signs of
recovery, firms in California are still waiting for their economy to
rebound. The state has 12.2 percent unemployment, above the national US
level of 9.8 percent, and at odds with California’s image as an oasis of
opportunity in hard times. California’s economic engines – Silicon Valley,
Hollywood and gateway ports to Asia – remain the envy of other US regions
but seem incapable of reducing Rust Belt-like unemployment rates. That is
largely because of the Golden State’s housing and home building crisis. In
the 12 months through August, California’s construction industry shed
142,000 jobs, or 18.5 percent of its work force, marking the largest
decline on a percentage basis over the period of surveyed industry groups.
Those workers are struggling to find new jobs in construction or other
trades, according to analysts. House prices soared higher in California
than in most other US states earlier this decade and have crashed harder
amid the credit crunch. Developers are trying to unload unsold new homes
and real estate agents are relying on selling foreclosures for a large
share of business. Tight credit and steep job losses have slimmed ranks of
prospective home buyers, with many waiting for prices to drop further. At
the same time, a number of other states are beginning to see home prices
stabilize.

Featuring old Papua New Guinea necklaces of human teeth and ivory
nose-rings as well as the extravagant designer suits paraded in poor Congo
by today’s “sapeur” movement, a show opening in Paris revisits men’s finery
through the ages. In Brazzaville and Kinshasa, as well as in the slums of
Paris and Brussels, men who barely eke out a living have been forking out
their savings since the 80s on the most luxurious, elegant and expensive
menswear on the market. The craze known as “Le Sape” was introduced by pop
star Papa Wemba’s throwback at the time to a look of 1930s elegance —
tapered trousers, brogues, trimmed hair and tweed hats worn at a rakish
angle — but in a wider brighter range of colours.

Nguyen’s is the longest case of wrongful detention in recent history. This
“bureaucratic bungle” caused Nguyen to suffer unnecessarily, as he is now
burdened with severe mental health issues. He witnessed many traumatic
events, from stabbings and suicide attempts to widespread drug abuse, while
inside Villawood. The situation was a “very bad event, a serious
administrative error and a terrible circumstance”. In its settlement
discussions, the government has offered Nguyen’s $70,000, a sum which would
be reduced to $58,000 once the Government’s legal fees are taken out. This
amount breaks down to less than $50 a day for each day that Nguyen spent in
Villawood. A attorney for this Sydney resident, has rejected the
Commonwealth’s offer as inadequate. The Government admits only that
officials made a mistake with respect to 108 of the 1137 total days that
Nguyen spent in detention.

Responding to the needs of Pacific Islands countries and territories and
recognising that there are wide social determinants in health, SPC’s health
division is modifying its strategy from a disease-based approach to a
whole-of-health approach. A particular emphasis will be on strengthening
health systems in Pacific Islands countries and territories (PICTs). Rates
of sexually transmitted infections in the Pacific remain as high as they
were in 2004 and a comprehensive review of the strategies was being
commissioned. A programme to prevent mother to child transmission had
substantially reduced the risk of an unborn child being infected with HIV
from his/her mother during delivery. The SPC public health team had
responded to the H1N1 pandemic in 2009 in partnership with the World Health
Organisation (WHO) and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC), and played a critical role in providing technical advice, services
and capacity building to Pacific Islands countries and territories (PICTs).
It was also involved in the response to the recent cholera outbreak in PNG.
TB control supported PICT’s in implementing the regional Stop TB strategy
in close collaboration with WHO and CDC. There is a very high prevalence of
noncommunicable disease risk conditions – diabetes, high blood pressure and
obesity – being among the highest in the world.

Pirating unregistered radio waves is surprisingly simple. All DJs need is a
microphone, Internet connection and computer. They broadcast their reports
and stream their tunes online, to greenlightradio.com, according to another
DJ, who goes by an especially pirate-y name, Treeson Bloodbeard. “Anyone
can do Internet radio. Anyone can listen to Internet radio,” he says. “In
our case, a separate computer is also listening, with a headphones jack
plugged into the transmitter.” Of course, he can’t disclose where this
transmitter is stationed. Rumor was that Boulder Free Radio used to
broadcast out of a van, but Treeson says that’s unlikely because the signal
would fluctuate too much. “We have a hot air balloon,” he says with a
smirk. Treason, who has lived in Boulder for eight years, calls himself a
“techno-shaman, actively trying to bring spirituality to the new punk,
now-apathetic generation.” Greenlight typically broadcasts FM 4 p.m.-4 a.m.
weekdays and wall-to-wall weekends, with no commercials. When the station
isn’t shut down, that is. In its first year, the FCC has already canned
Greenlight three times. When the FCC triangulates Greenlight’s signal, the
FCC leaves a warning saying Greenlight must shut down because it’s not
registered. But the DJs aren’t hostile about it. They say it’s part of the
game. “We don’t hate the FCC,” Treeson says. “The laws they’re going by are
just outdated, and they need help changing them. The FCC was created in
1934.” Treeson believes there should instead be a modern Boulder
Communications Commission, to distribute and protect the airwaves. DJ Rocky
Flats agrees there is a need for a radio regulation commission; the FCC
finds out what is wrong with signals and helps stations clean up. In fact,
the FCC has helped Greenlight improve its signal each time before shutting
it down. “Instead of fighting fire with fire (like Boulder Free Radio),”
Rocky Flats says, “when the FCC pushes, we pull and redirect their energy
where we want it to go.”

Photos and video clips of rival sapeurs doing battle, flashing labels and
stripping down to their silks socks and underwear, are on view at the show
at Paris’ Dapper museum, titled “The Art of Being A Man, Africa, Oceania.”
The sapeurs underline contemporary man’s taste for finery. They revisit the
western suit through African eyes. One non-sapeur fashionista visitor, a
tall poney-tailed African in a red tartan skirt carrying a helmet, was
stunned by an old Dinka corset from Sudan, a torso-sized piece made of red
beads, metal and fibre. “It just shows,” he said. “Men’s corsets are now
coming back in fashion yet existed long ago.” From corsets to penis sheafs
from the Pacific, as well as pendants, ear-rings, nose-rings and bracelets,
the exhibition brings together some 150 pieces from specialist museums from
across the world. These objects help show how men develop their male
identity. Some were used in sexual and social rituals or to provide
protection, others were worn to show a man’s status, or underline his
position through finery. The porcupine hat from Cameroon accessorises a
porcupine tunic, highlighting the sacred impact of different animals or
materials in different societies. Other show-stopper head-pieces include
hats in cat-teeth, tiny antelope horns or scaly anteater and leopard-skin.
Hair-cuts too vary from place to place as does body art practised to
accompany mutilation and circumcision rites.

In another instance of wrongful detention, the Commonwealth paid
German-born Australian Cornelia Rau $2.6 million. She was locked up in 2004
for 10 months. Even more recently, the Supreme Court of the Australian
Capital Territory last month awarded $55,000 to a man who was wrongfully
detained for 29 days. Nguyen’s situation has prompted officials to consider
an overhaul of the system, acknowledging there are major deficiencies with
current legislation. The Migration Act lacks a “safety net provision”.
Accordingly, the Department of Immigration lacks the express power to
remedy earlier decisions. In Nguyen’s case, the Department engaged in heavy
legal debate, thus causing significant delay in resolving the matter.

Hypertension is the most common condition leading up to cardiac arrest
which is the leading cause of death in the Pacific. The risk factors of
smoking, alcohol, low levels of physical activity and consumption of fruits
and vegetables were the perfect recipe for NCDs. The SPC-WHO joint 2-1-22
(two organisations, one programme, 22 countries) approach funded by AusAID
and NZAID was being implemented under the Pacific Framework for the
prevention and control of NCDs. Grants amounting to 23 million CPF
(approximately US$270,000) were provided to three PICT’s in support of NCDs
national strategy implementation. Meanwhile, relatively neglected diseases
in the Pacific were dengue and other vector borne diseases like
leptospirosis (except malaria), rheumatic heart disease, mental health and
environmental health. There were also funding gaps for secondary prevention
for noncommunicable diseases such as diabetes, cancer and high blood
pressure. Gaps were also emerging in maternal and child health, sexual and
reproductive health, on the consequences for health of climate change,
urbanisation and poor housing, and on infant diarrhoea, water and
sanitation.

The Greenlight DJs make great effort to present themselves in a
non-confrontational light. So why break the rules at all? Why not just be a
donor-funded community radio station, like Boulder’s KGNU, 88.5 FM? Beyond
simply the principle belief that the FCC needs reshaped, DJ Treason says a
station like Greenlight is even more independent than KGNU. A donor-funded
station can’t upset too many listeners, because the station needs their
donations. “They do a necessary part of the battle by playing by the rules,
so they can do things we can’t do because we don’t have money or
licensing,” Treason says. “But we are doing our part of the battle by not
playing by the rules, and there are things we can do because we don’t rely
on donors.” Like Greenlight’s newest show, “Reefer Madness,” all about the
positive aspects of pot. Plus, as another DJ who goes by The Hair puts it:
“There’s too much going on out there to not need multiple stations.” The
Hair gets his name because he has long blond hair. He says Greenlight has
its own unique music tastes and opinions. “And we’re pirates, so we have to
speak like sailors,” The Hair says with a laugh. It’s true, DJ Treeson
admits. Greenlight is “raunchier” than KGNU. “But there is a distinction
between free speech and responsible speech. Responsibility comes with the
consequences,” he says. And he accepts that. “There’s a level of danger in
what we do,” Treason says. “But no American has ever been sent to jail for
this.” The real crime is turning on the transmitter, he says. When the FCC
shut down Boulder Free Radio, the warning was shut down or be punished by
up to $11,000 per day and one year in jail. Greenlight has never been
fined. So Treason says he refuses to be clouded by fear. “Fear distracts
you from your ultimate goal,” he says. “If you define yourself in
opposition to something, you’re not defining yourself, period.” Yet still,
he hides.

Another home invasion, this time in Belize City. It is getting apparent
that burglars are getting more abrasive and their new trend is to invade
while the victims are still inside. There were home invasions in San Pedro
and another in Hattieville where an elderly Canadian woman was also raped.
Two African men living in Belize City were the next victims to experience
the terrifying ordeal. Twenty-six year old Samuel Benguna and twenty-four
year old Ismail Conteh, both of Nigeria, were at their apartment on the
Northern Highway when they were surprised by three men with rags covering
their faces. These two African gentlemen were at home when they heard a
knock on their door and they were accosted by three men who robbed them at
gunpoint. Stolen from them were computer accessories and cell phones and an
amount of cash in both US and Belize currency. There are no suspects yet as
police investigations continue into this matter. With the increasing number
of Aggravated Burglaries that we are witnessing is concerning and the
police will be delivering pamphlets shortly advising residents on measures
to protect themselves. The ultimate protection is the neighbourhood watches
and the community policing that the police department is trying to promote.
The cash stolen from the men totaled four thousand, two hundred dollars.

A passenger train bound for Bangkok derailed in Thailand’s Hua Hin coastal
resort district in heavy rain, killing at least five people and injuring up
to 50. About six of the train’s 16 cars went off the tracks and some people
were believed trapped.

Seven new glowing mushroom species have been discovered in Belize, Brazil,
Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Japan, Malaysia and Puerto Rico. Four of the
species are completely new to scientists, and three previously known
species were discovered to be luminescent. All seven species, as well as
the majority of the 64 previously known species of luminescent mushrooms,
are from the Mycena family. Within Mycena, the luminescent species come
from 16 different lineages, which suggests that luminescence evolved at a
single point and some species later lost the ability to glow. The new
discoveries might help scientists understand when, how and why mushrooms
evolved the ability to glow. Luminescence might attract nocturnal animals,
which would then help the mushrooms spread their spores. Mycena
silvaelucens (forest light) was collected in the grounds of an Orangutan
Rehabilitation Center in Borneo, Malaysia and was found on the bark of a
standing tree. The mushrooms are tiny with each cap measuring less than 18
millimeters in diameter. Mycena luxaeterna (light eternal) was collected in
Sao Paulo, Brazil and was found on sticks in an Atlantic forest habitat.
These mushrooms are tiny with each cap measuring less than 8 millimeters in
diameter and their stems have a jelly-like texture. The species’ name was
inspired by Mozart’s Requiem. Mycena luxarboricola (light tree dweller) was
collected in Paraná, Brazil and was found on the bark of a living tree in
old growth Atlantic forest. These mushrooms are tiny with each cap
measuring less than 5 millimeters in diameter.

The Solomon Islands police chief and his wife have been robbed in a
frightening home invasion by 12 young men in the capital Honiara, where a
spate of similar burglaries has occurred recently. New Zealander Peter
Marshall, the Solomon Islands police commissioner, and his wife Pamela
barricaded themselves in their bedroom after being woken by the thieves at
1am. They were not targeted for political reasons. “It was pretty
frightening,” he said. “We barricaded ourselves into the bedroom with a
cupboard and wardrobe against the door. There was a fair bit of commotion
and kicking against the door,” he said. “There has been four similar
robberies like this in the last six weeks,” he said. Laptops, cash, a
digital camera and other personal effects were taken but most of the goods
had been returned. “The suspects were arrested shortly afterwards and are
now in police custody.” The attack is part of a growing trend among
unemployed youth in the lead up to Christmas. “We’ve identified who it is,
there is a trend of robberies by the same unemployed youths who live in
squatter settlements.” Honiara mayor Andrew Mua said he feared rising crime
and unemployment was a threat to peace and security in the city. But
Marshall rejected those claims, adding that crime rates had dropped 12 per
cent during 2009 and most crime in the Solomons was petty. “We’ve had no
firearm incidents in two and a half years, we’ve had a scattering of
burglaries,” he said. The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomons Islands
(RAMSI) is made up of Australian, New Zealand and Pacific Islands police,
troops and public officials, who arrived in 2003 to restore law and order
and good governance following years of ethnic unrest.

June 6, 2009

INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE AID RISING, BUT EXTREME POVERTY DESTROYS CASH SCAM, LOOTING, KWASO, TARGETING CHINESE WITH OPERATION HIGH VISIBILITY AND 13FT CROCODILE WITH NEW INFLUX OF MYANMAR MUSLIMS AND PAPUA PRISONERS’ WATER MARK LAW AMID CORAL TRIANGLE FISH POISONING

The National Council of Women in Papua New Guinea says people of all ages
are dying from starvation, despite the government’s comments that nobody is
lacking food or water.

A haul of skulls and other body parts has been linked to five shipping
containers on the sea bed off the southern Chon Buri province.

A central bank worker in the Solomon Islands may have netted millions of
dollars by depositing old currency notes he was responsible for destroying
into his own bank account. Philip Bobongi was to destroy old and dirty
banknotes but instead had used them to fill his own accounts and accumulate
property and other assets.

A huge crocodile responsible for the deaths of at least seven people has
been caught and put on display on the front of a car in a small Papua New
Guinea town.

The Royal Solomon Islands Police have warned they will be targeting the
illegal trade and drinking of kwaso as well as people going armed in public
without lawful cause.

Bangladesh stepped up vigilance at its border with Myanmar after a fresh
influx of Rohingya Muslims was reported.

US-based Human Rights Watch called on Indonesia to look into the reported
torture and abuse of prisoners in a jail in the province of Papua. Human
Rights Watch singled out brutality by prison guards at the state jail in
Abepura, near the Papua capital of Jayapura.

Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare stated that people in Papua New Guinea
are not short of food or water. The President of the National Council of
Women Scholla Kakas disagrees, saying Catholic Bishops, who work closely
with the community have spoken of how people are actually dying from
starvation. “This is spreading all over the country where there is urban
drift from the rural villages into the urban areas into the towns of Papua
New Guinea. And what is happening in Port Moresby is true; there are people
dying of poverty.”

Some believe the containers hold the bodies of pro-democracy protesters
killed by the army in 1992. Police have said that their divers will examine
them. Rumours have suggested that the bodies were scattered by aircraft
over the jungle or buried at a remote army camp. According to the official
tally, 52 people died when troops opened fire on protesters in Bangkok
during “Black May” in 1992. But victims’ groups say that 357 people are
still missing.

Although police were unable to determine how much had been stolen, the scam
occurred over three years and the total could amount to millions of
dollars. Police also seized cash from the home of Mr Bobongi, who has been
charged with larceny, false pretences and money laundering.

The astonishing ‘trophy’, secured to the vehicle by ropes, was driven
through the town of Madang after it was caught by a team of local youths.
But while the bizarre trip around the town, amid a carnival atmosphere, was
intended to put at ease locals who feared more attacks, the warning went
out that the croc’s mate was still at large.

The commissioner said Operation High Visibility will run again this
weekend. “This operation will feature traffic management, foot and mobile
patrols with a strong focus on black market outlets in Central Honiara,
Point Cruz, the Ba’hai and White River areas. General duties officers and
supporting personnel from other Police units will continue to routinely
target disorderly and criminal behaviour, drinking in public and illegal
trading in kwaso.”

Rohingya refugees have presented problems for several other countries in
the region in recent months, with reports of Thailand putting those who
come by boat back to sea, and others reaching Malaysia and Indonesia and
trying to work illegally. Local residents and media said about 1,000
Rohingya Muslims entered Bangladesh in just the past three days, alleging
increased persecution by Myanmar’s military junta.

“How can the government turn a blind eye to beatings and torture in one of
its prisons? Jakarta needs to put an end to this disgraceful behavior,
punish those responsible and start keeping a close eye on what is happening
there.” Reports of more than two dozen cases of beatings and physical abuse
since Anthonius Ayorbaba, became the prison warden.

The government should send out officers to investigate people’s living
conditions and confirm for themselves that people really are starving to
death. The land below high and low water mark are the beaches or
foreshores, reefs and seabed. “This area of land is significant because it
is where many developments like wharfs and tourist facilities are taking
place.”

“Seventeen years on no significant progress has been made in searching for
the people reported missing,” The military government responsible was
forced to step down but the issue of the killings remains extremely
sensitive in Thailand because they were never fully investigated. “The
person who ordered the mass killing has not been punished, nor have the
others involved … who are still living a happy life, playing golf,
sipping wine and making comments to the media.”

The case was uncovered after central bank workers noticed that large
numbers of old notes were still in circulation. Police are applying to the
courts to freeze Mr Bobongi’s bank accounts and seize several vehicles and
properties. Chinese nationals in Papua New Guinea have been subjected to
attacks and protests for a third straight day, leading police to use tear
gas against rioters.

It is known that seven people have been killed by the 13ft captured croc
but there are fears there were other victims who have vanished from their
villages without trace. The latest victim was a 17-year-old girl who was
grabbed by the crocodile from the banks of the Gum River. Her body was
never found. Fearing that the attacks would continue unless the man-eater
was captured, Madang businessman Samuel Aloi called together a group of
youths whose families had learned the art of capturing crocodiles from
earlier generations.

Police officers will also be checking people they suspect to have concealed
weapons and identifying if they are going armed in public without lawful
cause. “Under existing Statute Law, officers of the RSIPF already have the
right to confiscate weapons from people and seize on suspicion on unlawful
activity, at any time. This is not a new power, our officers will simply be
reinforcing their focus on street crime.”

“They forced us from our homes and threatened to treat us even worse if we
go back,” said Syed Alam, who crossed the Naf river on the border in a
small boat with five family members. “The eviction of Muslims in Rakhine
state … increased in recent weeks after the (Myanmar) military started
clearing space to build an army garrison.” Rakhine borders Bangladesh’s
Cox’s Bazar district. Alam said about 120 families were evicted from his
village, and more were being forced out. “I chose to leave my country as a
last resort.”

The government should replace the prison administration, open the
penitentiary to international monitoring and set up an independent team to
probe the reports of abuse in Abepura prison, which currently has about 230
prisoners, including more than a dozen incarcerated because of their
political activities. Human Rights Watch cited cases that included the
alleged beatings of prisoners for trivial offenses often with the offending
prison guards in a drunken stupor and sometimes leading to serious
injuries.

“Equally because of the significance of this area of land, it is one of the
most contested lands among people. The law that applies to this area of
land is not clear. The ownership and other rights that the people and the
Government may have over this area of land is not clear.”

Relatives presented a letter to the prime minister, who has promised to
investigate. “We ask that the government act quickly on this for the sake
of clarity, We don’t hope for much apart from claiming the bones of our
relatives.” The fishermen have reportedly been making their grisly haul for
several years but were initially reluctant to report it for fear that
organised criminals were involved.

Chinese-owned stores were ransacked in the capital Port Moresby and then in
PNG’s second largest city, Lae. Police intervened in another anti-Chinese
protest in Port Moresby, using tear gas to disperse a riot in a popular
market directed at Chinese businesses. Chinese nationals and businesses in
Port Moresby have beefed up security, some hiring off-duty police as
guards, while many have shut their shops as advised by their embassy. The
trouble in the capital began when an anti-Chinese march attended by 100
people ended in violence and looting.

The team of young men attached a large piece of lamb to a hook and hung it
about 2ft above the surface of the river. Then they lay in wait. At 5am the
crocodile suddenly leapt from the water to grab the meat  – and was snared
on the large hook. The youths hauled it to shore where they managed to kill
it, before it was tied to a four-wheel-drive vehicle. “We decided to put it
on display to show everyone that this big crocodile which has killed so
many people has finally been caught,’ said Mr Aloi as he posed for
photographs with the trophy. It’s a very unusual icon to have on the front
of my car, but I wanted the whole town to see it.”

“Weapons are any item capable of causing injury to another person and
include any small knives, bush knives, clubs, firearms or explosive.
Wrecking implements, screwdriver, iron bars, stones and timber qualify as a
weapon if misused on another.” The punishment for going armed in public – a
misdemeanour offence – was up to the courts but generally fines or prison
terms up to 2 years can apply depending on the circumstances. Long jail
terms apply when serious assaults are proven by the courts.

Bangladeshi officials said some of the Rohingyas stated they feared torture
as they supported the democracy movement of Aung San Suu Kyi, charged with
allegedly harbouring a U.S. citizen in her home while under house arrest.
Bangladesh and Myanmar share a 320 km (200 mile) border, partly demarcated
by the Naf, with frontier guards on both sides keeping an eye on illegal
immigration. Yet the flow of Myanmar refugees has been unabated. The army
had pushed back nearly 300 new entrant Rohingyas recently, increasing
vigilance at the border to prevent the influx of Rohingyas.”

Although the country has the 1995 Law on Rehabilitation, setting out
procedures for prisoners to complain about mistreatment in prison, efforts
to lodge complaints so far have been fruitless and Ayorbaba has been
unwilling to address any abuse complaints. Prisoners and their relatives
often reported incidents of abuse by guards to the Ministry of Justice and
Human Rights, but no action was ever taken. Prisoners say they have stopped
reporting abuses because they lack faith in the system and because they
fear retribution.

Laws introduced and court decisions made before and after independence have
not clarified the position. Neighbouring countries in the region have
diverse laws relating to this area of land. In Samoa this area of land
belongs to the Government. In Vanuatu this area of land is customary land.
In some countries of the region like Fiji, Kiribati, Tuvalu and New Zealand
this area of land belongs to the Government except where customary rights
can be proved to have existed.

Although there are about five containers on the sea bed, they may simply
have fallen off a passing ship. “We have the same curiosity. Why doesn’t
somebody open up these containers and do away with this myth?”  The
director of the National Forensic Science Institute, has been ordered to
investigate but required official clearance before beginning her work.

The Port Moresby police chief has been criticised for allowing the protest
to go ahead, blamed the violence on hooligans. “It was just hooligans
taking advantage of the situation with an emotional build-up. There is
nothing to worry about, as we will continue our patrols and increase
presence on the streets.” In Lae, on the northwest coast, hundreds of men
attacked Chinese nationals and their small businesses across the city.
There were unconfirmed reports of one death and serious injuries to several
looters.

‘We’re planning to operate on it to check for the remains of the young girl
who was killed recently, but we’ll also be sending tissue samples to
Australia for DNA testing in the hope of determining how many other people
it has eaten over the years.’ Mr Aloi said that the crocodile had been seen
in various parts of the Madang waterfront in recent times but no-one had
been able to catch it. ‘This one’s a female and we know that the “husband”
is still at large. We’ve got a warning out to people to remain vigilant and
not to rest on their laurels just because this one’s been caught.’

“Police seek the public’s cooperation and understanding in these random
searches for weapons and enquiries. We are trying to reduce the risk of
drunken fights turning into fatalities. If someone has fair cause to be
carrying a bush knife around town and are not intending harm to others,
they have nothing to fear from police. If you are out to cause trouble,
that’s another matter.”

The Rohingyas might be trying to use the recent turmoil in Myanmar over Suu
Kyi’s trial as a pretext to leave. More than 21,000 Rohingyas have been
living in two Cox’s Bazar camps, run by the U.N. High Commissioner for
Refugees, since early 1992, when some 250,000 Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh.

“The Indonesian government needs to replace the Abepura prison management.
But this is not just a failure of one prison warden. It’s a failure of
Jakarta to set proper standards and enforce them.” Access to Papua has been
strictly limited. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has also ordered the
International Committee of the Red Cross to close its field office in
Jayapura. The ICRC ran sanitation projects in Papua and also visited
detainees, including political prisoners, in Abepura prison.

The review will consider how the law could deal with the competing rights
of land owners and the public benefits that any sustainable development
will bring to the people. The Commission encourages people, offices, and
institutions to make submissions or have their say on how the law should
change to deal with this area of land.

Australia’s foreign aid program will focus on health, education and food
security in the region to alleviate the “enormous human cost” of the global
financial crisis. The Government affirmed it would raise aid levels to 0.5
per cent of gross national income by 2015-16, though next year’s rise will
be minuscule, from 0.33 to 0.34 per cent – amounting to spending of $3.8
billion. These levels keep Australia in the bottom half of aid donors among
developed countries and fall far short of a long-held promise to raise aid
to 0.7 per cent of GNI.

Unnamed youths involved in the Lae attacks complained Asian small-business
owners were “ripping us off”. “Who is allowing these Asians to come into
our country and own small businesses which should be owned by Papua New
Guineans? They are ripping us off and investing their money in their
country.” Earlier in the week, PNG workers clashed with management at the
Chinese-run Ramu nickel mine in Madang Province, on the northeast coast,
after a tractor injured a worker. PNG’s Chinese community began with
immigration in the late 19th century, but local resentment has grown as an
influx of “new Chinese” have slowly taken over small businesses like trade
stores and food shops in the past 15 years. Many in PNG feel squeezed out
and complain about working for ruthless Chinese bosses who impose tough
conditions. Allegations of a rise in Chinese organised crime and corruption
involving PNG officials has also added to community anger. It is estimated
the Chinese population in PNG now outnumbers Australians by more than two
to one.

Scientists have come up with a theory that attributes the historic
migrations of the Polynesians from the Cook islands to New Zealand, Easter
Island and Hawaii in the 11th to 15th centuries, to fish poisoning. Based
on archeological evidence, paleoclimatic data and modern reports of
ciguatera poisoning, some theorize that ciguatera outbreaks were linked to
climate and that the consequent outbreaks prompted historical migrations of
Polynesians.

Threatening violence, challenging another person to a fight, fighting in a
public place, and going armed in public are all existing offences under the
Penal Code of the Solomon Islands. The Police officers would continue to
work closely with government and community leaders to reduce kwaso-related
crime in Honiara and other communities. “Recent stabbings at the weekend
are not an indication that crime is one the rise in the Solomon Islands.
Statistics on reported crime to the RSIPF actually show a significant drop,
with crime down 20% across the Solomon Islands.”

The Rohingyas allege persecution by the military in what was then Burma,
but the UNHCR managed to send most of them back within a short time. The
rest refused to return and the U.N. agency says they cannot force anyone to
go back against their will. Cox’s Bazar officials say more then 200,000
Rohingyas live outside the camps, mixing with local Muslims who have an
almost common language. Muslims are a minority in Myanmar, where most of
the population is Buddhist.

Human Rights Watch said that international monitors such as the ICRC and
independent human rights groups should be able to visit prisoners in
Abepura to investigate reports of abuse. Papua has seen a low-level
separatist movement since the 1960s but pro-independence sentiments have
been on the rise in the face of perceived injustice in the economy and
alleged abuses by security forces in their drive to rid the province of
separatism. The UN special rapporteur for torture visited Indonesia and
found that police used torture as a “routine practice in Jakarta and other
metropolitan areas of Java.”

About 100 million people living on Australia’s doorstep could be forced to
leave their homeland due to climate change this century. Australia will
have a key role in avoiding ecological and humanitarian disaster in what is
called the Coral Triangle – the marine area including Indonesia, Malaysia,
the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and East Timor.
Failure to take effective action on climate change will diminish the food
supply drawn from the area’s coasts by up to 80 per cent.

The federal budget paper on aid, A Good International Citizen, said the
economic slowdown would reverse a four-year reduction in the number of
people living in extreme poverty. An extra 90 million people – including 62
million in Asia – are expected to live in extreme poverty this year.
Countries that will receive the largest aid allocations are Indonesia ($453
million), Papua New Guinea ($414 million) and the Solomon Islands ($246
million). The Pacific will surpass East Asia as the biggest regional
recipient as the Rudd Government focuses on assisting the neighbourhood and
preventing an outbreak of failing island states.

The Indigenous Resistance dub attitude can be, by turns, either a
burn-down-Babylon fiery dub or a self-reflexive, meditative dub. The label
releases Bogota’s DJ Rodrigo’s new take on crucial tracks from the IR
archive in two formats; the full 48 minute head-tripping mix and as
individual tracks-all available through iTunes and Believe digital of
France.

Ciguatera poisoning is a food-borne disease that can come from eating
large, carnivorous reef fish, and causes vomiting, headaches, and a burning
sensation upon contact with cold surfaces. It is known that the historic
populations of Cook Islanders was heavily reliant on fish as a source of
protein, and the scientists suggest that once their fish resources became
inedible, voyaging became a necessity. Modern Cook Islanders, though
surrounded by an ocean teeming with fish, don’t eat fish as a regular part
of their diet but instead eat processed, imported foods. In the late 1990s,
lower-income families who could not afford processed foods emigrated to New
Zealand and Australia. Past migrations had similar roots. The heightened
voyaging from A.D. 1000 to 1450 in eastern Polynesia was likely prompted by
ciguatera fish poisoning. There were few options but to leave once the
staple diet of an island nation became poisonous. This approach brings us a
step closer to solving the mysteries of ciguatera and the storied
Polynesian native migrations. It will lead to better forecasting and
planning for ciguatera outbreaks.

Under the worst-case scenario the ecology of the region would be destroyed
by rises in ocean temperature, acidity and sea level. Poverty increases,
food security plummets, economies suffer and coastal people migrate
increasingly to urban areas. Tens of millions of people are forced to move
from rural and coastal settings due to loss of homes, food resources and
income, putting pressure on regional cities and surrounding developed
nations such as Australia and New Zealand. Even under a best-case scenario,
the region will lose coral and have to deal with higher seas, more frequent
storms, droughts and less food from coastal fisheries. Large cuts in
greenhouse emissions and international financial support for the region’s
environment are needed. It is in Australia’s interest to invest early to
help avoid the worst-case scenario.

Woven throughout this new mix you will hear indigenous voices and chants
collected by Indigenous Resistance from all over the world: the Malaitai
from Solomon Islands, the Krikati indians from Brasil, traditional Cree
chants from Turtle Island, traditional instruments from Sosolakam and
Solomon Islands embedded into tracks recorded in Jamaica, the U.K, Germany,
Solomon Islands, Sosolakam, Brasil, Colombia, Cuba & Turtle Island. IR’s
eclectic production techniques pulls together producers with different
styles and methods to create their releases. This is especially evident on
the full IR18 where DJ Rodrigo deftly maneuvers successfully through the
many genres, which include: Drum N Bass, Jungle, Detroit Techno, Electro,
Big Beat, Dub, Reggae, House and the multi-ethnic stew (breakbeat, dub,
dancehall, ragga) of Dr Das and Asian Dub Foundation (which some pile
together into the term of World Beat) and the punk and hardcore sound of
knob-twirler extraordinaire, Ramjac. As a matter of course, IR travels the
globe working with pockets of Indigenous Resistance in the Fourth World to
get their messages out from behind the propaganda machines that deny them
the freedom of the press. Through free releases and downloads, and funded
by sales of albums through CD Baby, iTunes and Believe Digital, IR has set
up a campaign to send these tracks back into the indigenous communities as
well as back out to the world to fall on sympathetic ears. IR utilizes any
means necessary to get the music and messages heard passed the restrictive
regimes that keep the indigenous down and disenfranchised.

$464 million will be spent over the next four years on food security to
alleviate the impact of shortages, volatile prices, increased consumption,
climate change and the use of crops to produce bio-fuels. Programs will
focus on helping communities to improve their farming and fisheries
management. The biggest boost is to education, which will receive $690
million this year and focus on improving participation rates and teaching
quality. The Government will also extend links between aid and the
performance of partner countries.

Four looters were shot as Papua New Guinean (PNG) police was on high alert
to clamp down on the Anti-Asia sentiment across the country. Since the
weekend, four men were shot as police tried to stop the ongoing violence
directed at Asian-run stores in the Highlands region. One Southern
Highlands man was shot in Mount Hagen. Another Southern Highlander, who was
shot by police, could lose one of his legs after being smashed by a bullet.
Police in Goroka shot a 20-year-old man who was also likely to lose a leg,
as police tried to control thousands of people that went on a rampage and
looted several shops in the town. In Lae, one man was shot in the leg by
police. Police in the Highlands have gone on full alert, keeping
surveillance over Goroka, Mount Hagen, Kainantu and Wabag as hundreds of
people converged in the region and broke into shops operated by families of
Korean and Chinese origins. Most Asian-run shops remained closed in the
Highlands with armed security guards. Meanwhile, trouble makers on streets
attempted to loot those shops again.

April 25, 2009

SOLOMON TSUNAMI SOMALI PIRATES’ LONE GUNMAN LEAVES 13 DEAD IN LAWLESS PAPUA BEGGARS’ LONGEST CROP WAR

Papua was on high alert as a range of incidents, including attacks on
police stations, claimed 11 lives to mar voting day in the country’s
easternmost province, still plagued by separatist threats.

Kenya, with nearly a quarter of its 38 million people facing severe hunger,
is now reporting a rapid spread of diseases affecting the country’s vital
wheat and banana crops. The crisis is being exacerbated by plummeting
public confidence in the country’s year-old coalition government.

To wage today’s battles against pirates who took control of 42 ships and
captured 815 sailors last year, the Royal Navy is combining machines and
methods forged during the Cold War with centuries-old naval warfare skills.
The Royal Navy is also hitting back at pirates by using some of the
pirates’ own tricks.

A lone gunman shot and killed at least 13 people in a “premeditated” attack
at an immigrant centre in upstate New York, before turning his weapon on
himself. The gunman first used his car to barricade the back door of the
American Civic Association in Binghamton, 140 miles north of New York City.

The South Asian nation of Bangladesh wants to do something about the
increasing number of beggars migrating into its cities from the
countryside. Legislation has been approved that could send many of the
country’s most destitute to jail for openly asking for charity. Some aid
agencies are skeptical this approach will solve the problem.

Mobile-phone users in Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, and Nakuru will be able to
access Google Maps and search up-to-date online maps, look up businesses,
advertise free via Google Maps Local Business Centre, create their own maps
and even check locations while on the move.

It began with British betrayal after the Second World War and has
stubbornly outlived every other conflict. But now, as it marks its diamond
jubilee, the world’s longest-running war is nearing its endgame. The
guerrilla army of the Karen ethnic group, which has been fighting since
1949 for independence from Burma, is facing the greatest crisis in its
history. If Karen resistance collapses, as some believe is likely, it will
be a triumph for the Burmese junta as it consolidates its hold on power.

The incident is, by Port Moresby standards, neither here nor there. Coming
off an overpass and you notice people scattering in light rain. Blocking
traffic is an urban response-style light police truck, with a two-sided
troop seat in the back. A woman is running, followed by two police. One of
the officers punches her hard in the face, then she doubles over from what
appears to be a truncheon in the guts.

Now tsunamis won’t be able to catch you unaware, thanks to a mathematics
formula worked out by scientists that will give advance warnings and an
idea of their destructive might.

The incidents, however, did not prevent most Papuans from voting on
election day. According to National Police data, 75 percent of Papuans
voted at more than 6,000 polling stations across the province. The polls
had to be delayed in Yahukimo and Paniaki, with bad weather obstructing the
delivery of polling material to the two regencies.

Recent reports from Kenya’s breadbasket region of the Rift Valley have
confirmed what the country can ill-afford – the spread of a deadly strain
of a parasitic fungus called stem rust that is threatening to wipe out the
country’s wheat fields.

Most of the other warships deployed to fight pirates in the region are
concentrated north of Somalia, close to the Suez Canal, through which 10
percent of the world’s sea trade passes. Northumberland was the first
warship on the scene from a new European Union task force, charged with
patrolling the southern flank of the 2-million-square-mile piracy zone,
near Mombasa. It was here that pirates scored their biggest victory seizing
the supertanker Sirius Star, laden with $100 million in crude oil.

He calmly walked into the front of the building armed with two pistols and
began shooting, killing one receptionist and wounding another. Moments
later he marched into a nearby classroom and began spraying bullets into
people reportedly undergoing citizenship tests.

Ragged beggars are a common sight on the streets of Dhaka and other cities
in Bangladesh. The government wants to make their presence a rarity, if not
eliminate it totally. To that end, a new law curtailing begging in the open
and on crowded streets will be strictly enforced. Violators will face up to
three months in jail.

Google has maps for Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda, but the level of detail is
not what it is for Kenya. “Google Maps is not just searchable digitized
maps helping you to find a local place, service or product. Our goal is to
make information with a geographical dimension available to everyone and to
allow users to update the maps and develop.”

After a three-year offensive by the junta, the Karen National Liberation
Army (KNLA) has been forced into increasingly small pockets of resistance.
Deprived of funds and equipment, it is able to do little more than slow the
advance of the Burmese Army as it lays waste to hundreds of villages,
driving thousands of terrified civilians before it.

We go through a roundabout and come back. The woman is running now, arms
crazy above her head as the police truck pursues her over gutters. Soon
after, we find the woman and a group of her friends standing by the
roadside, panting and bleeding heavily. One man has a deep gash running
across his left cheek. The bashed woman is half-laughing, half-crying. They
are drunk on “steam”, the local metho-rated liquor cooked in secret stills,
flavoured with orange cordial and sold dirt cheap in the markets.

The research, led by a maths professor, was prompted by the 2004
post-Christmas tsunami that devastated coastal communities in Indonesia,
Sri Lanka, India and Thailand. In this instance, an earthquake in the ocean
depths triggered a long surface wave which resulted in six massive wave
fronts, one after the other.

The disruptions began when homemade bombs exploded under a bridge on the
border between Papua and Papua New Guinea. No one was killed, but police
found two unexploded bombs while sweeping the area. Unknown assailants
stabbed five ojek (motorcycle taxi) drivers in Wamena, leaving four of them
dead and one in critical condition. A fuel storage tank at a state oil
company depot in Biak exploded during refilling, instantly killing a
bystander.

The strain was first detected in East Africa a decade ago. But it has
spread to other wheat producing areas in the world, largely because poor
farmers here have not been able to afford the fungicide needed to combat
the problem. “It started spreading very fast. We have it in Kenya. We have
it in Ethiopia, spreading toward the north [to] Egypt and it probably
reached India. It is a serious concern. Stem rust, of course, is
controllable with chemicals, but it is damn expensive. The only solution is
to bring in new varieties that are resistant to stem rust. We are at a
quite advanced stage.”

Somali sea bandits hijacked more than 40 large vessels last year, ransoming
about 30 of them for a million U.S. dollars or more. Sirius Star was
released in January after an estimated $3 million ransom was paid, but the
other ships, and about 200 crew, remain in pirates’ hands. The rise in
piracy, and consequent rise in the cost of shipping insurance, drove up the
cost of shipping petroleum, electronics and food.

In seconds, a dozen people were dead, another five were wounded, and more
than 30 had fled amid pandemonium. The gunman, believed to be a 42-year-old
Vietnamese American from nearby Johnson City, had recently lost his job
with IBM in his home town. “It was premeditated,” said the Binghamton
police chief. “The suspect had put a car against the back door blocking any
exit for victims.”

Parliament approved a bill cracking down on beggars and it will take about
a month to draft guidelines on how authorities will enforce the new law.
They note that some beggars seek pity by pretending to be ill or displaying
a disability. Sympathizers say most of those in such a condition on the
streets really have no alternative.

“We believe more accurate, representative local information can greatly
improve the breadth of information available about a given area, and in
turn can help efforts to bolster tourism and business investment.” Google
Maps is available in 23 African countries, but the company is providing
more detailed maps that go beyond the capital cities and include other
aspects of life. The company will divulge more information once the team
finalizes its plans.

Most serious of all, the Karen leadership is losing the support of
neighbouring Thailand, where it was formerly able to organise, arm and –
when necessary – retreat. Trapped between the Burmese Army to the west and
an increasingly unfriendly Thailand to the east, with hundreds of thousands
of their people in wretched refugee camps, the Karen are experiencing a
humanitarian and military catastrophe.

The man with the cut face is leaning through the window, spraying bloody
protestations of innocence. Asked why they didn’t just run away, all they
can repeat is: “It wasn’t our fault; we didn’t do anything.” Papua New
Guineans will stand before they fall. “The trouble is, they are Goilala,
which means they probably did do something, anything from holding up a car
to illegally selling betel nut by the side of the road.”

Of these waves it was the third and largest one that caused the most
devastation, hitting the beaches with terrifying speed. Reaching a height
of 20 metres or 65 feet, it hefted a train from its tracks as it travelled
along the Sri Lankan coastline, killing almost 1,000 people.

Police security posts at the Skaw Wutung border between Indonesia and Papua
New Guinea were attacked by unknown gunmen, with no casualties reported.
About 50 men armed with homemade bombs, spears, cleavers, bows and
cassowary bones attacked the Abepura Police station in Jayapura. The police
shot into the crowd, killing one attacker and injuring eight others.

In Kenya, most of the fields affected by the stem rust strain belong to
small-scale farmers, who grow 20 percent of the wheat consumed annually.
Although maize is the staple among most Kenyans, wheat flour has grown
crucial to the country’s overall food supply. Drought and post-election
violence in maize-producing areas of the country prevented many farmers
from planting crops. Domestic maize production was so poor, the government
had to begin importing corn to help feed some 10 million Kenyans facing
starvation.

To beat pirates in potentially violent showdowns, the Navy has adopted the
pirates’ tactics of using “mother ships” carrying fast boats to spring on
opponents. In the early days of Somali piracy, pirates ranged only a few
miles from their hometowns and threatened just a few thousand square miles
of ocean. The reason was simple: Most pirates were former fishermen and had
only the tools of a typical fishermen. Their personal firearms and their
small, motor-propelled wooden fishing boats, called skiffs. The skiffs were
too slow and too flimsy to catch anything but the most rickety of vessels.

The surviving receptionist, lying bleeding on the floor, alerted police
with her mobile phone and survived the ordeal. “After he shot her she
pretended she was dead. As he exited down the hallway she crawled
underneath the desk and sometime after that she called us.” Some of those
fleeing hid in the basement. More than a dozen hid in a cupboard. At least
five were wounded.

The Bangladesh Finance Ministry says it wants to emulate some neighboring
countries that have implemented plans to rehabilitate urban beggars by
providing them with employment training programs. Imprisonment and brief
training schemes will not solve the problem.

The company has boosted the popularity of the maps by including content
from local celebrities such as Wangari Maathai (Nobel Peace Prize winner),
Julie Gichuru (TV presenter), Churchill (comedian) and Humphrey Kayange
(Kenya Rugby 7’s team captain). Google Maps will help create a greater
understanding of the socio-economic situation in different regions.

“The military situation is as bad as it’s been at any time in the past 60
years. The Karen have less territory, fewer soldiers and fewer resources to
sustain resistance. The Burmese have them more and more surrounded, and
their backs are up against the wall.” A Karen leader on the Thai border
said that the KNLA and Burmese Army were fighting near the town of
Kawkareik, close to the Thai border. All year there have been reports of
Karen villagers being driven into the jungle by marauding soldiers.

Goilala are conspicuously short street dwellers originally from the Central
Province. They are branded Moresby’s most prolific troublemakers, first
suspects in any crime. Programs to rid PNG’s capital of crime are earnestly
afoot. It won’t be easy because criminal behaviour is not confined to
street people. Moresby’s police wield a brutal form of shoot-first,
ask-later justice, and some people see PNG’s politicians as notorious
pork-barrellers. When street people are asked to clean up their act, they
ask: What about them?

If we could understand more about how these long waves behave we could
predict where they might hit and how devastating they might be. The number
and height of the tsunami waves hitting the shoreline depends critically on
the shape of the initial surface wave in deep water.

At daybreak, the rector’s building at Cendrawasih University – about 5
kilometers from the Abepura Police station – was set ablaze by unknown
people. The fire razed important documents and badly damaged one of the
building’s three floors, but claimed no casualties. All the incidents,
except the explosion at the Pertamina depot, were intended to disrupt the
elections in Papua. The depot explosion was simply an accident.

Meanwhile, residents in western Kenya’s Nyanza province, hit hard by last
year’s poor maize harvest, are now reporting the outbreak of a disease that
is destroying banana trees there. Many Kenyans rely on bananas to
supplement their diets. But the once-plentiful fruit is prematurely
ripening and rotting on trees infected with a disease called banana
bacterial wilt. On some plantations, yield losses of 90 percent are being
reported.

Then the pirates innovated. They began capturing trawlers and small
freighters for use as motherships. When about a dozen armed Somalis
intercepted a ship, the pirates had no interest in its cargo. Instead, they
commandeered the harmless-looking freighter to launch their next attack. It
was more than three months before the pirates released the ship and her
crew.

Police arrived within two minutes and surrounded the centre, deploying FBI
hostage negotiators and a heavily armed Swat team. They established mobile
phone contact with 27 survivors barricaded in the basement and relayed
instructions about how to block the door against their attacker.

Every day thousands of beggars are coming to Dhaka city and other cities.
So it is not the solution by putting them in jail for three months or a
rehabilitation center for one month, two months. It is not the solution.
The government should focus on creating jobs in rural areas to stem the
internal migration by the poor into the cities.

One local company, KenyaBuzz, a community events, business and tourism
site, is already making use of the Google Maps API (application programming
interface), on its Web site. “Google Maps serves as a great platform
helping to provide accurate, comprehensive, location-based information for
our audience.”

“It’s a cat-and-mouse kind of struggle. The Burmese burn down villages and
relocate the people close to their own camps.” The Karen conflict has its
origins in the Second World War, when many Karen fought alongside the
British Army against the invading Japanese. The seven million Karen were
promised their own state by the British but when independence came in 1948
the promise was forgotten. A year later, in January 1949, the Karen began
the armed struggle that has continued ever since.

Trust between the citizens of PNG and the authorities is broken. That
explains why almost half of Australia’s annual $358 million in aid to PNG
goes to improving law and justice. Reinstating trust is crucial. Yumi
Lukautum Moresby (“You, me, look out for Moresby”) is making a difference
by building a bridge between the people of the notorious crime-breeding
urban settlements – in which there is no electricity, no toilets, and a few
shared taps for up to 5000 people – and the authorities.

From this it is possible to work out whether a ‘trough’ or a ‘peak’ is the
leading wave. In the case of a trough then the familiar sight of the tide
suddenly going out is the precursor to an approaching tsunami.

The Vice President said he had received a report from Papua Police
indicating efforts and a conspiracy to disrupt the elections. But the
National Police chief said the attack on the Abepura Police station had
nothing to do with the polls, adding it was a random attack aimed at
undermining security officers.

Wheat and banana farmers say they need the government to urgently release
funds to help fight the diseases threatening to impoverish them and to
leave east Africa’s largest economy in even greater need of food aid.
Middle-class workers say they, too, are struggling to put food on the table
because of persistent high inflation, mostly due to rising food costs.

It appears the killer turned one of his guns on himself. Police took nearly
an hour to search the building, amid concerns there may have been more than
one gunman, and then had to persuade 27 immigrants that it was safe to
leave the basement. A total of 37 people were hidden in various sections of
the building. The American Civic Association is a charity that helps
immigrants with naturalisation applications.

It is believed that several hundred thousand Bangladeshis live off begging.
A survey several years ago in relatively prosperous Dhaka found that the
average beggar there managed to collect about $1.5 a day. Approximately 40
percent of Bangladeshis get by on less than $1 per day.

The tourism sector, which has faced a slump because of the worldwide
economic crisis, is also looking to Google Maps for a boost. “Adding
tourism locations on Google Maps creates a free marketing channel and will
drive more people to our Web site and ultimately to the tourist locations.”

In the early decades of the war, the KNU dominated the Irrawaddy Delta,
close to the former Burmese capital Rangoon, as well as areas north of the
city and all of Kayin State. But in the 1990s an increasingly well-armed
Burmese Army made steady gains and in 1995 the KNU was driven out of its
capital, Manerplaw. Buddhists in the Christian-dominated KNU broke away to
form the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), which now fights alongside
the Burmese Army. Formerly, the KNU had operated as a quasi-government,
providing schools and clinics and receiving income from tax, as well as
from a profitable trade through Thailand in timber, gold, zinc and
antimony.

Overcrowded Moresby routinely features in top 10 lists of the world’s most
dangerous cities. These rankings are decided by business or travel
magazines, which see Moresby through the prism of tourists or expats, who
live safely guarded in hotels or behind razor wire with all-night security
guards. The real test should be whether Moresby is safe for locals.

‘If a peak is the leading wave, there is no warning except a
fast-approaching wall of water. Potentially this could provide vital
information for areas facing an impending disaster.’

“This was purely an act of violence committed by armed guerillas.” Police
have named six people as suspects in the attack and are questioning eight
others as witnesses.

The country’s growing crisis comes on the heels of allegations that top
politicians on both sides of the coalition government have been involved in
scandals aimed at enriching themselves at the expense of Kenyan taxpayers.

Warships assigned to piracy patrols rarely engage pirates on their own.
They deploy specialized search-and-seizure teams, which consist of marines
armed with rifles and machine guns, traveling in raider craft.

Two women and a man suffering gunshot wounds were being treated at Wilson
Medical Centre in nearby Johnson City. Binghamton, a quiet university town
with a population of 47,000, is the home of IBM and has a low crime rate,
enjoying the nickname Parlour Town for the handsome front parlours of its
elegant villas.

An official report from the Commission of Inquiry into the Solomon Islands
riots found there was no conspiracy behind the violence, blaming police
incompetence instead. Riots erupted after Snyder Rini was elected prime
minister by legislators. Dozens of Chinese-owned businesses were looted and
burned in the riots. Chinese businesses were targeted at least partly
because of allegations they had helped fund the unpopular Mr. Rini to bribe
legislators for support. The damage was estimated at $180 million Solomon
Island dollars but a commission warned that compensation would only trigger
more anger against the Chinese community.

Google is also working with local software developers by providing APIs for
Google Maps to help programmers, Web masters and designers to incorporate
the functionality of Google Maps on their sites and develop new services
based on local information.

The loss of territory brought a loss of funds, which made it harder to arm
and equip itself. The KNU claims to have 10,000 soldiers, including village
militia men, but the number of active fighters is probably between 3,000
and 5,000.

It is women who suffer most. Domestic and sexual violence is described by
Amnesty International as endemic. Women fear reporting domestic violence
partly because of their husbands, partly because police have a reputation
for raping female complainants.

Later the same day, a small aircraft operated by a local airline crashed in
Wamena, killing all six crew on board. The cause of the crash is currently
being investigated.

An opinion poll was released showing that 70 percent of Kenyans believe
that the coalition government, formed to help the country heal from the
ethnic bloodletting that followed the disputed presidential elections, has
achieved nothing since it took power.

A naval engagement with pirates often begins with a commercial ship
reporting an attack, using a radio frequency set aside for emergency calls.
Other times, a maritime patrol plane, usually flying from Djibouti, spots a
potential mothership or pirate skiff, identifiable not by its appearance,
but by its vector. A trawler speeding away from Somalia, toward a
slow-moving tanker ship, just might have hostile intentions.

President Barack Obama said last night: “Michelle and I were shocked and
deeply saddened to learn about the act of senseless violence. Our thoughts
and prayers go out to the victims, their families and the people of
Binghamton.”

The Royal Solomon Islands Police had failed to do its duty in containing
the violence. There was confusion between local police and Regional
Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) police, who have access to
superior resources. RAMSI police and Solomon Islands police were not clear
on who was to take responsibility for containing the violence. It
catalogued a series of failures by the police that resulted in a security
breakdown, including a lack of credible intelligence information,
equipment, and organizational ability.

The KNU suffered another blow when its respected and charismatic leader,
Pado Mahn Shar, was assassinated at his home in Thailand by unidentified
gunmen. Among many Karen there was a suspicion that the ease with which the
killers escaped, and the failure to apprehend them, reflected a cooling of
the welcome afforded by Thailand. Last month Karen military commanders were
ordered out of Thailand and back across the border. This probably reflects
the Thai Government’s increasing dependence on Burma for raw materials and
energy – the two governments are jointly planning ambitious hydroelectric
dams along the Salween River which forms part of their border.

Chamber of Commerce members are encouraged to give street people jobs. They
go through short skills courses and are placed with companies for work
experience. AusAid, pays the wages. “Some are the kids straight out of jail
and we’re always up-front with employers. But it doesn’t seem to bother
many of them. Last year we found 70 per cent of them were retained.”

Naval commanders, in touch with each other by phone, e-mail and satellite
network, sort through the roster of warships in the region to figure out
who might respond fastest. They call this “deconfliction.” When the
responding ship is close enough, it launches a helicopter to scout ahead
and confirm that the suspect seafarers are indeed armed, while preparing to
lower the boarding teams’ boats into the water.

The New York State governor called it a “senseless killing”, adding: “When
are we going to be able to curb the kind of violence that is so fraught and
so rapid? We all have a profound sadness.”

A spokesperson from the RAMSI police force in the Solomon Islands says the
policing problems in the report have been fixed. The Assistant
Commissioner, Commander of the Participating Police Force in RAMSI says his
officers acted professionally and properly in discharging their
responsibility. The Royal Solomon Islands Police Force has improved their
capacity to deal with riots, has more trained officers and equipment, and
has developed a call out system.

The border is a valuable conduit not only for the Karen but for Burmese
struggling to overthrow the military dictatorship. After the junta cracked
down on large pro-democracy demonstrations of monks and activists, many of
them escaped into Thailand.

Measures such as this are making Moresby safer. “We definitely think so.
There are perceptions and everyone’s got them. But right now as we drive
through one of the roughest areas of Port Moresby, Kaugere, and we don’t
see any rocks coming towards us. A safe place is good for all of us. It’s
incumbent upon us to get involved.”

The ship’s presence alone was often enough to prevent pirate attacks.
Beyond that, the helicopter might deter pirates simply by “flying close to
demonstrate the aircraft’s machine gun and giving the pirates warning of
their serious intentions.”

The attack is the third massacre in the US in a month. A gunman in Alabama
killed ten people and then himself. Another lone gunman killed eight in a
North Carolina nursing home.

“It’s a crucial route for information. If that’s closed down the whole
country will become much more isolated.” The United Nations has ruled that
the continued detention by Burma of the pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu
Kyi violates domestic and international laws. The latest one-year detention
period of Ms Suu Kyi, who has spent 13 of the past 19 years under house
arrest, expires in May.

YLM (Yumi Lukautim Mosbi) hunts corporate sponsorship, runs awareness
campaigns, gets kids playing sport and works with government. It has
organised a toll-free number to evacuate women and children from violent
situations using a private security company. In PNG, people can’t rely on
police to respond to 000. In Australia, this would be seen as a spectacular
failure by police. Two private companies, Protect Security and phone
company Digicel, donated the service, so we are not interested in exploring
the point. In PNG, do it however you can.

If the pirates persist, the boarding teams deploy, flanking the pirates’
boats to approach from both sides, moving fast with weapons at the ready.
If the pirates lay down their weapons, they are taken into custody without
a shot fired. If they shoot, the boarding teams fire back, then climb
aboard.

Not all art is strictly about the aesthetic, some pieces provide an
important function in the community like the large black and white
photographs installed this week on rooftops across Kibera, Kenya. The
intimate photos, taken by photographer JR, act as a second roof, protecting
the village’s delicate structures from water damage, a vital job in one of
Africa’s worst slums.

Everyone is saying Moresby is safer than five years ago, but you’ll still
hit the accelerator hard through the several well-known trouble spots. One
explanation for the lessening crime rate is that so many leading criminals
– they don’t much call them raskols these days, it’s seen as too cute – are
dead.

February 25, 2009

SEA TURTLE SLUMP FLOODS POVERTY BORDERS AS ELEPHANTS PLAGUE CROPS AND DIVERSE ANTS DROWN RATS

Hundreds of dead turtles were found washed ashore along the coastal lines
from Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar to St Martin’s island with bruises all over
their bodies.

A herd of 70 to 75 elephants of the Dalma forest have strayed into five
villages of West Midnapur district and damaged large tracts of crops and
destroyed several houses.

The World Bank warned that up to 53 million more people around the world
could fall into poverty in 2009 as a result of the global economic slump,
and up to 400,000 more children could die each year as a result of rising
infant mortality. The statistics highlight the worldwide character of the
social catastrophe being caused by the deepening crisis.

Armies of ants from Solomon Islands have invaded Papua New Guinea and are
threatening to wipe out the economy in at least one part of the country. A
report from Bougainville says the ants from across the border in the
Solomon Islands are destructive to plants and human beings.

Tonga’s Government has elected to renew emergency powers in parts of capital city.
The acting chief secretary and the secretary to the cabinet, confirmed that the Public
Safety and Public Security Regulations had been extended. The regulations were
renewed based upon the recommendation by the Minister of Police.

More than 700 people in Papua New Guinea’s Western Highlands province have
been left homeless after a river burst its banks following weeks of heavy
rain.

Over 400 female dead turtles have floated ashore over the last two weeks
alone, locals claimed.

A District Forest Officer said the pachyderms damaged
paddy and sugarcane in about 45 hectres in Tarrui, Gopalbar, Pundra, Sinda,
Mohanpur villages. They also destroyed five mud houses.

The rescuers recovered at least 27 bodies and over 10 people still remained
missing as a passenger launch capsized in the country’s southern Barisal
district. The incident took place in Kirtonkhola River when a sand-laden
cargo ship SM-Selim hit the Mehendiganj-bound launch ML-Happy from Barisal,
with over 100 passengers on board, locals and survivors said.

In Vanuatu, a volcanic archipelago in the South Pacific, root and tuber
crops ensure the subsistence and self-sufficiency of the islands’
inhabitants. Be they taro (Colocasia esculenta) or the greater yam
Dioscorea alata, which are traditional crops introduced by the first
sailors to have travelled to the islands some 3500 years ago, or other
plants that have been grown for some time or were introduced more recently,
root and tuber crops, which are propagated vegetatively, replanted and
propagated by cuttings, are the mainstay of the Melanesian diet. However,
it is the maintenance of the diversity of these plants that lies behind the
food security strategy adopted by the islands’ inhabitants. Melanesian
gardens are a prime example of this: by mixing crops, they provide
protection against pathogens, ensure better use of soils and sunlight, make
certain plants more drought-resistant, allow harvests to be spread over
time, and provide a more varied diet.

“I don’t think the government has understood the gravity of the crisis or
figured out how to tackle such an unprecedented situation.” A British
rodent ecologist — in Bangladesh studying the impact of the rat
infestation — said the rodent population was doubling in size every three
weeks. This means, of course, they must spread into new areas in search of
food. “In addition to destroying nearly all field crops in the region, the
rats get into people’s houses, eating stored food and damaging all sorts of
personal possessions and biting people while they sleep.”

The ants are believed to have transferred during the Bougainville crisis
when there was no quarantine service. The ants from Solomon Islands are
attacking and killing the local PNG ants, vegetables and cash crops.

The World Bank released its forecast to coincide with the Group of Seven
(G7) summit of finance ministers and central bank governors in Rome.
Anti-poverty organisations from the UN Millennium Campaign joined the bank
in lobbying for the establishment of a “Vulnerability Fund” in which each
developed country would devote 0.7 percent of its stimulus package to aid
impoverished “developing” countries.

The body of a woman named Dipti Dey, 30, was first recovered shortly after
the disastrous ferry accident. Later, bodies of 26 other launch passengers
were retrieved from inside the sunken launch after it was salvaged, raising
the death toll to 27, officials confirmed. The Prime Minister has
condoled the death of people and asked the officials to take necessary
steps for treatment of survivors.

The root and tuber species grown in Vanuatu were inventoried in ten
villages representative of the communities in the archipelago. Five
primarily grow taro, the other five yam, for both cultural and climatic
reasons. With more than 1000 varieties of thirteen species, the inventory
confirmed the varietal diversity of the crops grown. The archipelago’s
agro-biodiversity comprises three types of plants: plants that arrived
naturally, for instance on the wind, those imported by the first immigrants
– taro and greater yam in this case – and those introduced recently, also
by man, in particular cassava.

“The whole region has been affected by localised famine, forcing people to
depend on food aid. Food shortages will be a permanent feature here for
many years. We have captured 2,000 big rats from one hectare (2.47 acres)
of land. I can tell you the situation is worsening as rats are invading new
territories.” The WFP will begin a 2.6-million-dollar programme to help the
thousands of people who have lost their livelihoods because of the rats.

Even this utterly inadequate proposal received short shrift from the G7
ministers. In their final communiqué, a single one-sentence reference to
poorer economies said: “The G7 also stresses the need to support emerging
and developing countries’ access to credit and trade financing and resume
private capital flows, and is committed to explore urgently ways, including
through multilateral development banks, to enhance this support.” In other
words, the plight of hundreds of millions of destitute people must be left
in the hands of the same financial system and “private capital flows” that
have broken down, producing the worst global collapse since the 1930s.

A worried cocoa farmer on Buka Island, Aloysius Sammy, said the ants were
also attacking people and the victims were developing swollen bodies from
the ant bites. The ants were found in decaying biscuits and other food
items on cargo storage compartments on banana boats.

The bank’s new estimates for 2009 suggest that lower economic growth rates
will force 53 million more people to exist on less than $2 a day than was
expected prior to the downturn. This is on top of the 130-155 million
people pushed into poverty in 2008 because of soaring food and fuel prices.

An estimated 25 hectares of land was inundated when the Waghi River
flooded, swamping vegetable gardens, cash crops and livestock.

Experts said these turtles met their death as they travelled the stretch of
nearly 120km from Sonadia Island in Cox’s Bazar to St Martin’s island to
lay eggs on the shore.

Villagers alleged that the forest department, despite repeated requests,
did not take any steps to drive out the elephants. Four “Hulla Parties” had
been deployed to push the elephants to the Nayagram forest.

The bank’s extremely low benchmark for poverty—$2 a day—suggests that its
figures vastly underestimate the actual number of people around the world
who are barely able to feed, clothe and house themselves.

Under these renewed powers the police have the authority to stop and search
any vehicle without a warrant, as well as to seek evidence inside of any
vehicle. The powers also allow officers wider authority to make arrests.
These powers have been criticized by international rights organizations
for being an abuse of power and an attempt to frustrate the pro-democracy
movement.

Mr Sammy, who owns a two-hectare cocoa block, said half of his crop had been
destroyed by the ants. He said in south and central Bougainville, there
were no longer any signs of Papua New Guinea ants. Mr Sammy said he placed
some PNG tree ants on his cocoa trees and in just five seconds they were
attacked by Solomon ants.

The country’s National Disaster Centre committed $50,156 to the Western
Highlands provincial government to help more than 700 displaced villagers
in the Dei region, it said. The works department and two local construction
companies were partly to blame for failing to build adequate drainage.

The turtles get entangled in the fine fishing nets used indiscriminately by
fishing trawlers. The fishermen, instead of releasing them back to the sea,
beat them to death with sticks and dumped their bodies in the sea, experts
alleged.

Bangladesh’s remote Chittagong Hill Tracts region faces a serious risk of
prolonged famine and bubonic plague unless a ballooning rat population is
brought under control, experts say.

Preliminary estimates for 2009 to 2015 forecast that an average 200,000 to
400,000 more children a year, a total of 1.4 to 2.8 million over the
six-year period, may die if the crisis persists.

The emergency powers were originally put into place in November 2006 after
a riot broke out in the heart of the capital city of Nuku’alofa. The riot
began when a group broke away from a political reform rally and began
looting local businesses. Throughout the course of the riot 150
businesses, mostly owned by people of Chinese origins, were destroyed.

A disabled gunsmith has been arrested in Papua New Guinea for manufacturing
guns and ammunition in his backyard shed. The 39-year-old wheelchair bound
man known as “Harzem” was also reportedly found with numerous books on
Islam, terrorism and war.

Some fishermen from Sonadia, preferring anonymity, confirmed this saying
it’s a tedious task to release the turtles back into the waters.
Organisations working for the protection of sea turtles have recovered 62
carcasses from Cox’s bazaar area. They have expressed
concern about the environmental pollution caused by such large number of
carcasses.

The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) began distributing three million
dollars of emergency food supplies to some 120,000 people in the
southeastern tribal area bordering India and Myanmar, after the rat
population exploded.

This is a very serious problem and the Autonomous Bougainville Government,
especially the Department of Primary Industry (DPI) and Agriculture, should
do some serious research on how to get rid of these ants, Mr Sammy said.
With the absence of mining on Bougainville the economy was predominantly
agriculture-based, which meant cash crops like copra and cocoa were the
ones driving the economy. And without control, the Solomon Islands ants are
destroying cash crops, the farmer said.

In addition, millions of people already living in poverty “will be pushed
further below the poverty line,” according to the World Bank policy
note,”The Global Economic Crisis: Assessing Vulnerability with a Poverty
Lens.” The note states: “Almost all developed and developing countries are
suffering from the global economic crisis. While developed countries are
experiencing some of the sharpest contractions, households in developing
countries are much more vulnerable and likely to experience acute negative
consequences in the short- and long-term.”

People residing at Shortland borderline between Papua New Guinea and
Solomon Islands have raised grave concern over increased border crossing by
foreigners into Solomon Islands and vice versa. The people fear this might
lead to allowing terrorists to enter Solomon Islands illegally or drug
smuggling.

Most of the turtles found in this area are of the Olive Ridley, one of the
smallest species of sea turles. This species weighs between 10 to 20kg, 63
to 70cm length and 60 to 67cm in breadth.

Police made the arrest at Dami village in PNG’s West New Britain Province,
an island region in northern PNG, as part of an operation to reduce gun
proliferation. The area has been experiencing ongoing local clashes fuelled
by homemade weapons and firearms. Harzem is believed to be the main weapon
supplier in the tribal conflict.

The rats — some weighing as much as 1.5 kilogrammes (3.3 pounds) — feed
on bamboo forests in the hilly region. A Dhaka University zoology professor
recently visited the hill tracts and sounded the alarm over the
“devastating” impact of the year-long rat plague.

Almost 40 percent of 107 developing countries are “highly exposed” to the
poverty and hardship effects of the crisis and the remainder are
“moderately exposed,” according to the report. The bank warns that three
quarters of these countries will be unable to raise funds domestically or
internationally to finance job-creation, the delivery of basic
infrastructure and essential services—including health, education and core
public administration—and safety net programs for the vulnerable.

Borderline representatives appearing before the Committee alleged that
foreigners illegally entered Solomon Islands through Bougainville. Recent
past crossings happened because Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea did
not have borderline check points where Immigration, Customs and Quarantine
officials manned the posts.

The West New Britain Police Commander said Harzem was in police custody and
would appear in court as soon as possible. “I have given instructions to
fast track his case because of his condition,” he said. Police confiscated
several weapons and ammunition and are continuing their operation in a
neighbouring areas.

The root and tuber crop panel of ten villages in Vanuatu comprises more
than 1000 varieties of thirteen species. the primary aim of farming in this
volcanic archipelago in the South Pacific is to ensure food
self-sufficiency.

The threats of a famine-fuelled conflict are real as the rats are
destroying everything in the hills. Adding to the urgency of the situation,
authorities must act fast to avoid an outbreak of deadly bubonic plague.

The statistics provide only a pale outline of the impoverishment,
malnutrition and misery caused by the global recession. These outcomes are
an indictment of the anarchy of the private profit system. First, the
speculative escalation of food and fuel prices of 2007-08 threw up to 155
million people into poverty; and now the financial crash is threatening
many millions more. These forecasts make a mockery of the United Nation’s
Millennium Development Goals, which set targets to overcome poverty by
2015.

Solomon Islands and PNG have cross-border entries like a traditional
practice before, but people from other countries who came with yachts
abused this privilege. The Foreign Relations Committee also met with
people of Choiseul in Taro.

In most of the villages, notably those attached to their traditions,
ancestral crops are predominant. However, in villages subject to severe
environmental constraints (acid rain or ash showers due to active
volcanoes, cyclones, etc), there are more either local or newly introduced
crops. These crops bolster food security by making the cropping systems
more resilient. In other Pacific archipelagos, such as New Caledonia and
the Solomon Islands, the introduction by the Europeans of new root and
tuber species, combined with the arrival of a market economy, has totally
disrupted the existing systems. Ancestral species have disappeared and food
crop production has become uniform, making the production systems more
fragile and reducing the quality of the local diet. Conversely, in Vanuatu,
while the local populations are increasingly accepting and growing new
plants, those plants have had to fit into the existing agro-biodiverse
systems without adversely affecting the other species grown. In the most
fragile zones, they even help to overcome the shortages resulting from the
seasonal nature of traditional crops. The food production strategy in
Vanuatu is not yet under threat, as culturally speaking, owners set great
store by their Melanesian gardens, which is continuing to maintain their
characteristic agro-biodiversity, despite the growing role played by cash
crops grown for export.

“I have approached certain people in the DPI division and reported this
case but my case has fallen on deaf ears.” Mr Sammy also said when a border
post was set up, every boat whether traditional border crossers or not,
must still be quarantined and customs checks should be enforced. A lot of
ants have also been brought into Bougainville by plant hunters or
collectors, especially for flowers like roses and orchids from Solomon
Islands, which are regarded as some of the most beautiful and rare in the
world. Bougainvilleans are appealing to the Government to do something
before cash crops are wiped out in Bougainville.

February 12, 2009

ANAGRAM WITCHCRAFT TORTURE ROBBERS DECLINE COCA-COLA

The government of Papua New Guinea must act now to end a rash of more than
50 killings related to allegations of sorcery, Amnesty International said.

It was a black day for the Nigerian Police Force as seven policemen met
their untimely deaths in three separate incidents as bandits went on the
rampage in Benin City, Edo state and in Abeokuta, Ogun State. The first
incident occurred along the Benin-Lagos road, with two policemen shot dead
while two others sustained gunshot injuries in a gun battle with armed
robbers.

Two rights commissions jointly called for the government to take steps to
halt torture in the country, including ratifying an international
convention against the practice.

Coca-Cola Amatil Ltd., Australia’s biggest soft-drink maker, increased
second-half profit 26 percent on higher soda sales and new drinks such as
Glaceau Vitamin Water.

The murder of a father and son in Ban village, a few kilometres from Mount
Hagen is the latest sorcery-related killing to come to light.

But the Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), in charge of Zone 5, Benin
City, said that only one policeman died; however an eye-witness said that
two policemen were shot dead on the spot by the robbers who caught them
unawares.

“It has been 10 years since Indonesia adopted the Convention against
Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment [CAT]
but there has not yet been any significant progress,” said the National
Commissions on Human Rights, or Komnas HAM.

Net income rose to A$213.7 million ($140 million) in the six months ended
December from A$169.8 million a year earlier. The result was calculated by
subtracting first-half earnings from the A$385.6 million full-year profit
the Sydney-based company reported.

Local men shot dead 60-year old Plak Mel Doa and threw his body into a fire
whilst his son, Anis Dua, was dragged from his home and burnt alive. Local
people accused them of causing the death of a prominent member of the
community by sorcery.

His commission and the National Commissions on Violence Against Women, or
Komnas Perempuan, said in a joint statement that they were now waiting for
the government to ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention against
Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, or
OPCAT, because it represented a more effective way to prevent torture in
the country.

The robbers who were said to be armed with AK-47 rifles also escaped with
gunshot injuries, but it was learnt that the policemen who were on patrol
could not withstand the firepower of the armed robbers when they attacked
the patrol van.

Takeover talks with brewer Lion Nathan Ltd. ended, raising prices by 5
percent as record summer temperatures in southeastern Australia stoke
demand. New drinks in Australia and revamped packaging in Indonesia are
boosting sales and limiting the impact of a recession in New Zealand.

When dozens of people have been killed after literal witch hunts, it’s
clear that the government is not doing enough to protect its own citizens
and maintain the rule of law.

They were on patrol to the Benin-Lagos express road after they got a
distress call that robbers were operating. They exchanged fire with the
robbers, who escaped with bullet wounds. One of the men was shot dead while
others sustained injuries and are currently receiving treatment at an
undisclosed hospital.

The country’s many human rights violation cases are well known, especially
those involving torture in areas far from public view, such as prisons,
state detention centers and social rehabilitation centers.

The result highlighted the underlying defensiveness of Coca-Cola Amatil’s
business, which is further characterized by strong domestic performance.
All segments delivered profit growth, with Indonesia a stand out, rating
the stock “hold.”

The police and judicial authorities have to step in immediately before
another person faces this kind of vigilante violence.

But we are on the trail of the robbers because we know they will still be
around with the wounds. It is a sad day for us but we are happy that our
men put up a spirited fight and we must get all of them.

Torture mostly happens in closed areas, and it is hard to prove it.

Coca-Cola Amatil shares rose 1.6 percent to A$8.51 at the close in Sydney.
The company is 30 percent owned by Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Co., the world’s
biggest soft drink maker.

The Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary (RPNGC) is often unable to enforce
the law. For instance, after the killings, police reported they wanted to
visit the crime scene and confirm the men’s deaths, but heavily armed
locals prevented them from removing the bodies to hospital for autopsies.

Four police officers attached to the Ikpoba Hill Police Station were shot
dead when armed robbers attacked a bullion van along Ugoneki, Benin-Asaba
road, Benin City. Their rifles were also taken away by the dare-devil
robbers.

“We’re concentrating on torture of political detainees in some areas of
Papua [Province], such as Manokwari and Jayapura, and in Maluku. There are
a lot of political detainees in those areas, and torture is even more
intense against these types of detainees.”

Lion Nathan scrapped its A$7.5 billion offer after Coca-Cola Co., which has
the capacity to block the offer, ended talks on a deal. The offer valued
Amatil shares at A$10.21 each based on closing prices.

People often don’t trust the police or the judiciary and instead blame
events on supernatural causes and punish suspected sorcerers.

“Torture like physical and mental abuse, such as intimidation, have been
common practice in many prisons in Indonesia. It is difficult to control
unless the government pays more attention to this human rights violation.”

It was another case of a distress call, but the robbers laid an ambush for
them. We are in a mourning mood; we know that it is a syndicate. We must
get them. They are trying to get rifles to carry out other operations but
no matter what they do, we must get them.

“The price was unrealistically low. The CCA board was presented with a
proposal that was just not capable of being accepted.”

The Constabulary, the Public Prosecution Office and other relevant
authorities should step up efforts to curb vigilante violence and raise
awareness in communities about ways in which people can legitimately seek
justice.

CAT was an effective tool for responding to torture cases, while the OPCAT
was more of a preventive tool.

Meanwhile, the office of the Assistant Inspector-General of Police (AIG),
Zone 5, has described the day as a dark day for the police in the state.

Earnings before items totaled A$404.3 million, beating the A$400.9 million
average of ten analyst estimates. The company boosted its second-half
dividend to 22 cents from 20 cents earlier.

Amnesty International calls on the RPNGC to vigorously pursue
investigations of all cases and ensure that the perpetrators are brought to
justice.

It was learnt that the officers who were escorting a bullion van ran into
the robbers who attacked the bullion van with three vehicles, armed with
sophisticated weapons.

The government should list torture as a punishable crime in the Criminal
Code.

Earnings before interest and tax in Australia, where Coca- Cola Amatil gets
almost two-thirds of sales, rose 9.1 percent to A$269.3 million in the
second half after adding Vitamin Water and relaunching its Mother energy
drink.

There has been an increase in reports of sorcery related killings in Papua
New Guinea. A village court, comprising church pastors and local officials,
found a 40 year old man from a village in Unggai-Bena district in the
Eastern Highland province guilty of sorcery and sentenced him to death. A
group of local men then hacked him to death with bush knives. A group of
men stripped a woman naked, gagged and burned her alive at Kerebug rubbish
dump in Mount Hagen after she was suspected of practising witchcraft.

“There are many kinds of torture that the commissions should explain
further, such as ethnic cleansing, the cleansing of anti-social
individuals, military terror and discrimination against minority religions.
There is a lot of torture at several detention centers and prisons. But we
have no exact number regarding the cases. We only investigate some of the
important cases.”

“Our men are on the red alert now and we are advising everybody to be
careful. Some people are on a mission but we must stop them. You will
recall that some police officers were shot early this morning. One died
while others were hospitalized. This makes it five police officers to be
killed in one day. That is sad for us but we must get the killers no matter
where they run to.”

The company’s pre-mixed spirit drinks, which include Australian rights to
Jim Beam & Cola, had a “material decline” in sales as higher government
taxes pushed the retail price up more than 20 percent. Coca-Cola Amatil’s
nearest soda rival in Australia is Cadbury Schweppes Plc., the domestic
bottler of Pepsi. Asahi Breweries Ltd., Japan’s top-selling beer maker,
agreed to buy Schweppes in Australia. The purchase is subject to a
so-called right of negotiation granted to Coca-Cola Co., which gives the
world’s biggest soft-drink maker rights to negotiate a purchase of the
unit.

February 9, 2009

FLOODED POPPIES MINIMIZE SECURITY DROUGHT CRISIS

The Solomon Islands declared a national disaster after torrential rain and
flooding in the South Pacific nation killed eight people and left another
13 missing, destroying homes and bridges.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)
is reporting that populations in large areas of Kenya and the Horn of
Africa are now facing an exceptional humanitarian crisis that requires
urgent food assistance. The combined effect of high worldwide food prices
and a crippling drought are seriously jeopardizing the lives, livelihoods,
and dignity of up to 20 million people in rural and urban communities.

Opium poppy cultivation inched up by 3 percent last year in Myanmar,
according to a United Nations report, the second consecutive annual
increase that appears to signal a reversal of years of declining opium
production in the so-called Golden Triangle.

Indonesian security forces attacked a group of one hundred tribal people
who were peacefully protesting about delays to local elections in Nabire,
West Papua.

“Containment of the problem is under threat. Opium prices are rising in
this region. It’s going to be an incentive for farmers to plant more.”

Twelve communities on the Solomons’ main island of Guadalcanal had been
assessed as disaster-hit and appealed for international assistance.
Australia and France have already promised emergency aid.

Papua New Guinea’s law and order problem is set to get worse if a
recommendation to increase the national minimum wage is approved by the
government.

The Golden Triangle, the area where the borders of Thailand, Laos and
Myanmar meet, once produced two-thirds of the world’s opium, most of it
refined into heroin. But pressure by the Chinese government to eradicate
opium in Myanmar helped lead to steep declines, with a low point of 21,500
hectares, or 53,000 acres, of poppies planted in Myanmar in 2006. Since
then, opium cultivation has bounced back by around 33 percent, to 28,500
hectares last year.

For the past 17 years Papua New Guinea’s lowest income earners, like
security guards, have brought home just $US13 a week. Government plans to
increase that to $US43 has business owners worried.

When police began attacking the crowd, the demonstrators called for Mr
Yones Douw, a respected human rights worker, to document the violence. When
Mr Douw arrived, the police attacked him – witnesses said he was kicked,
beaten on the side the head and punched in the face before being arrested,
along with seven protesters. The police also beat other protestors, and
fired rubber bullets into the crowd. Five people were seriously wounded,
and many others received minor bullet wounds.

Since December, flooding has also hit the Pacific island nations of Fiji,
Papua New Guinea, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands, with tens of
thousands of islanders abandoning homes.

UN officials warn that the global economic crisis may fuel an increase in
poppy production because falling prices for other crops may persuade
farmers to switch to opium. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said corn
prices had fallen by half over the past year. The price of opium, by
contrast, has increased 26 percent in Laos and 15 percent in Myanmar over
the same period.

Heavy rain and flooding on Guadalcanal and nearby Savo Island has caused
widespread damage and forced the evacuation of more than 70 villagers to
the capital Honiara.

The PNG Manufacturers Council said the economy cannot accommodate a higher
salary. “It’s not the fact that the private sector doesn’t want to pay, its
whether the economy can accommodate that high level of salary.”

“In Kenya 80 percent of the territory is affected, with the northern and
lower eastern Kenya the most affected. We’re talking of a target population
of 1.6 million for the Red Crescent.”

Farmers in the isolated highlands of the Golden Triangle are also hampered
by bad roads and difficulties getting their crops to market. They often
find that small parcels of opium are easier to carry across the rough
terrain.

The Solomon Islands Red Cross had sent emergency staff and volunteers to
distribute relief supplies to communities in West Guadalcanal and Longu, in
the island’s east. The Solomon Islands is a nation of about 500,000 mainly
Melanesian people, spread across hundreds of islands, which gained
independence from Britain in 1978.

The global economic crisis is only just starting to short-change Papua New
Guinea, with the wage set to further undermine the local economy. “We
become less competitive, our prices go up and we don’t sell any goods.” It
could lead to thousands of workers being laid off, adding to the country’s
already high unemployment and crime rates.

Other areas are Djibouti with 50 thousand people in dire need. Ethiopia is
affected with an estimated 5 million need of food. The Red Cross is moving
in to start assisting the first 150 thousand people. The Red Cross and the
Red Crescent are also active in southern Somalia, as well as Somaliland and
Puntland.

Although opium is still grown in parts of Laos, Vietnam and Thailand, UN
officials say that about 94 percent of the region’s opium comes from
Myanmar. Most of the Golden Triangle heroin is sold within the region, but
small amounts also reach the United States and Australia. Recent seizures
of heroin thought to come from the Golden Triangle have been made on the
Thai resort island of Phuket, Ho Chi Minh City and Yangon, Myanmar’s
commercial capital.

“The key issue for PNG is more people working and that basically improves
the lifestyle of people and that without a doubt helps law and order
because when people can put food on the table there is harmony, you take
that opportunity away and you have unrest. Or, employers could head to the
labour black market, choosing instead to pay workers their current wage
under the table.”

Eyewitnesses say that a range of security forces were involved in the
attack, including Brimob, Indonesia’s notorious para-military police, plus
soldiers and Indonesia’s Intelligence Service.

The alarming spread of HIV by heroin users in southern China several years
ago persuaded the Chinese authorities to crack down on opium and heroin
trafficking. Western intelligence officials say Chinese spies are active in
anti-narcotics operations in Myanmar, especially in northern areas where
central government control is weak. “There’s strong collaboration with
Chinese intelligence.”

Last month 11 Fijians died and more than 9,000 people were forced into
evacuation centres after the worst floods in decades. Sugar is Fiji’s
second major industry following tourism and sugar farms in the west have
been devastated by the flooding, with damages estimated to be in the tens
of millions of dollars.

The UN report on opium poppy cultivation is based on surveys taken from
helicopters and on the ground. The United States relies more heavily on
satellite images to calculate opium cultivation, and its reports are
sometimes at odds with those of the United Nations. The UN report did not
cover methamphetamine production and distribution, which among some
criminal syndicates has displaced opium and heroin in the region.

“We have launched an appeal seeking 95 million dollars, now we have
received only 6 percent in the two months since we launched and this is not
enough to run an operation.”

In Thailand, methamphetamines remain a problem but longstanding efforts by
the royal family to substitute opium production with vegetables, coffee and
macadamia nuts have virtually wiped out opium production among the northern
hill tribes.

Floods ravaging northern Australia have washed crocodiles onto the streets,
where one was hit by a car. More than 60 per cent of the vast northeastern
state of Queensland has been declared a disaster area, and flooding after
two recent cyclones has affected almost 3,000 homes. The army has been
called in to help with rescue and recovery efforts, while three reports of
large crocodiles washed up from flooded rivers have come in from homes in
the Gulf of Carpentaria region.

The incident fuels concerns that repression and violence against the Papuan
people is increasing.

“Many employers are doing the right thing, but there are many unscrupulous
employers who will exploit their workers to gain maximum profit out of the
cheap labour.”

Afghanistan remains the world’s premier source of opium, producing more
than 90 percent of global supply. Afghan soil is also remarkably more
fertile than the rocky, unirrigated opium fields in the Golden Triangle.
The UN estimates in its 2008 report that one hectare of land yielded an
average of 14.4 kilograms, or 31.7 pounds, of opium in Myanmar but 48.8
kilograms in Afghanistan.

“The damage bill is estimated at $76 million and growing. But we won’t
really know the full extent of the damage until the water subsides, so that
figure could double, it could treble.” It was the worst flooding seen in 30
years. Fresh food supplies were flown into the westerly townships of
Normanton and Karumba, which had been cut off by flood waters. The flooding
comes amid a heatwave over in south-eastern Australia.

The situation has been exacerbated by the global and financial crisis.
However a small fraction of the billions of dollars being spent by
governments to bail out banks and financial institutions could help save
millions of lives in the Horn of Africa.

The death toll in Australia’s worst-ever bushfires has risen to 128 people,
as hundreds more flood community shelters after losing everything they own.
The state government in Victoria, where the fires have raged since
Saturday, is being advised to prepare for 230 fatalities. Police confirmed
128 deaths from the fires, many which officials suspect were deliberately
lit.

February 1, 2009

GRISLY FOOTAGE OF BURNING SHOE FUELS REPRESSION

Filed under: irian jaya,kenya,media,thailand,usa — admin @ 9:16 am

A huge sculpture of the footwear hurled at President Bush during a trip to
Iraq has been unveiled in a ceremony at the Tikrit Orphanage complex.

Graphic television footage of violent and cruel acts should be banned, a
group of angry parents says. Members of the Network of Family Watch and
Creative Media are demanding that television stations put a stop to
repeated images of horror that could harm children and instill violent
tendencies.

There is mounting evidence that violence and repression in West Papua are
intensifying. Lately, there were several reports of killings and
shootings, and a rise in ‘accidental deaths’ of Papua’s tribal people at
the hands of the Indonesian military and police.

Rescuers combed a tanker crash site in Kenya where around 100 people were
killed when oil they were scrabbling for caught fire in one of the east
African nation’s worst accidents of recent times.

Assisted by children at the home, sculptor Laith al-Amiri erected a brown
replica of one of the shoes hurled at Bush and Prime Minister Nuri
al-Maliki by journalist Muntadhir al-Zaidi during a press conference in
Baghdad.

Network leader Anya-orn Panichpuengrat said parents were concerned
children watching the news would be disturbed by horrific scenes being
played and re-played. She said footage aired in recent weeks showing
people being beaten and even shot dead should not have been broadcast.
Most of the offending footage was obtained from surveillance cameras. She
said ugly scenes were broadcast repeatedly during news segments and “it
felt as though the violence was never ending”.

At least four Papuans have been ‘accidentally’ shot dead by police in West
Papuan towns and four bodies have been found dumped by the side of the
road or in rivers.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga said the disaster, in which 178 people were
burned and injured, showed the desperation of poor Kenyans and the
nation’s lack of preparedness for accidents. “Poverty is pushing our
people into doing desperate things just to get through one more day,”
Odinga said during a visit to victims of the blaze, which took place on
Saturday evening on a road near Molo town in the central Rift Valley.

Al-Zaidi was jailed for his actions, and a trial is pending. But his angry
gesture touched a defiant nerve throughout the Arab and Muslim world. He
is regarded by many people as a hero. Demonstrators took to the streets in
the Arab world and called for his release.

The network plans to visit television stations to inquire into their
reasons for running such footage. While the broadcasts could help track
down suspects, showing the entire tape was unacceptable, she said. Ms
Anya-orn said one case involved the shooting to death of a security guard
and then a woman by her jealous boyfriend in Prachin Buri. Another showed
a vocational student being gunned down during a fracas connected to
inter-school rivalry near Kasetsart University. Footage of a teenage boy
being brutally beaten by a gang of teenagers in Ayutthaya was aired on
television repeatedly.

A 13 year-old boy was ‘accidentally’ killed when police fired over the
heads of a crowd after a dispute in a local market. In another incident,
police fired on a group of Papuans celebrating New Year, killing one man.
In retaliation for a violent response to this killing, police shot dead an
eight year-old boy and destroyed local people’s houses.

“This being a rural area, there was no response by any disaster team
because there is no such team.” Regional authorities revised the death
toll to 94 from 111 after difficulties counting the bodies in darkness.
“We counted 89 bodies last night and five have died this morning,” Rift
Valley provincial commissioner Hassan Noor Hassan told reporters. The Red
Cross said up to 110 had died, a health minister said 97, and police gave
a toll of 91.

The shoe monument, made of fiberglass and coated with copper, consists of
the shoe and a concrete base. The entire monument is 3.5 meters (11.5
feet) high. The shoe is 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) long and 1.5 meters (4.9
feet) wide. The orphans helped al-Amiri build the $5,000 structure —
unveiled Tuesday — in 15 days, said Faten Abdulqader al-Naseri, the
orphanage director. “Those orphans who helped the sculptor in building
this monument were the victims of Bush’s war,” al-Naseri said. “The shoe
monument is a gift to the next generation to remember the heroic action by
the journalist.”

“Is it right that children are watching this?” Ms Anya-orn asked. “The
children will slowly build a tolerance to violence and could even imitate
those acts.” She said television stations must stop running grisly footage
and the broadcast regulatory body must step in and impose stricter
controls. The government should establish a rights protection agency to
receive complaints and seek prosecution of irresponsible media outlets,
she said.

Papua’s High Court extended the sentences of 11 Papuans who had been
arrested for peacefully displaying the banned West Papuan flag, from eight
months to between three and three and a half years. There are also reports
of renewed activity, supported by the Indonesian army, of the notorious
Islamic militia group, Merah Putih (Red and White), in the highland town
of Wamena.

When the oil tanker careered off the road, hundreds of locals began
pouring to the scene with jerrycans to try to scoop up some free fuel.
Suddenly, the oil caught light and the blaze engulfed the crowd. Many
bodies were burned beyond recognition. Rescuers said someone may have
accidentally dropped a cigarette, although there was also suspicion
someone angered at being blocked by police may have started the fire on
purpose.

January 20, 2009

MIGRANTS ADRIFT WITH POWERFUL QUAKES SEIZING KILINOCHCHI KINGDOM

A series of powerful earthquakes killed at least four people and injured
dozens more in remote eastern Indonesia, cutting power lines and destroying
buildings.

The loss of Kilinochchi, its capital, is a major blow to the Tamil Tiger
movement fighting for autonomy in the Sinhalese-dominated country. But the
army’s success in capturing the town does not mark the death of the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Thailand’s new prime minister was under pressure to answer allegations that
hundreds of Burmese and Bangladeshi migrants were set adrift at sea with
little food and water by the armed forces.

One of the quakes — a 7.3-magnitude tremor — sent small tsunamis into
Japan’s southeastern coast, but there were no reports of damage there and
no tsunami in Indonesia’s impoverished Papua area.

Kilinochchi was the LTTE’s political headquarters, strung out on the main
tarmac road from Colombo to Jaffna. The government could always strike it
at will by air, as it did when aircraft bombed the offices of SP
Thamilselvan, the man with whom foreign diplomats as well as the government
had frequently negotiated.

Abhisit Vejjajiva met with officials from the country’s human rights
commission amid claims that up to 1,000 migrants, mostly from the Rohingya
ethnic minority from western Burma, were towed out to sea and abandoned on
boats without engines. At least 300 remain unaccounted for. Human rights
groups allege four migrants were thrown into the sea to encourage others to
climb aboard the vessels.

The first 7.6-magnitude quake struck on land about 85 miles (135
kilometers) from Manokwari, Papua, at a depth of 22 miles (35 kilometers),
the U.S. Geological Agency said. It was followed by 10 aftershocks.

By advancing into the town by land the army has forced any remaining LTTE
politicians to withdraw altogether. But the movement’s military HQ and its
logistical bases are hidden well to the east near its coastal stronghold of
Mullaitivu. The whereabouts of the Tiger’s ruthless leader, Velupillai
Prabhakaran, has never been clear.

Vejjajiva stressed the alleged abuse of the migrants ran counter to
government policy, and that the military had confirmed to him that it
respected all migrants.

At least four people died in Papua, and the airport runway nearest the
epicenter was cracked, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told reporters.
Commercial flights to the area were canceled.

Seizing Kilinochchi was done at a fearful human cost. Comparisons with Gaza
are not amiss, down to the censorship that prevented journalists entering
the area while the fighting was underway. Several days of unopposed
airstrikes and artillery fire killed civilians as well as Tiger militants,
and forced tens of thousands of families to flee into the jungle en masse.
Hundreds of troops have died on both sides in the offensive, which has
taken months to reach its goal.

However, Thailand’s foreign ministry has launched an inquiry into the
damning allegations that the navy and the army had imprisoned and
mistreated the migrants on the southern Thai island of Koh Sai Daeng before
abandoning them to die in the Indian Ocean.

“I’ve instructed emergency steps be taken to help our brothers and to
restore power and other vital utilities,” he said without commenting on how
widespread the damage might be.

Among the dead was a 10-year-old girl whose head was crushed, said local
hospital director Hengky Tewu.

If the survivors’ tales prove correct the expulsions are a reversal of a
policy Thailand followed for years, allowing the impoverished and stateless
Muslim Rohingya to land on their way to Malaysia. Many were said to have
been turned over to human traffickers.

“We have our ambulances picking up two more,” he said. Another 19 patients
at the hospital were treated for broken bones, cuts, crushed fingers and
other injuries.

Like Gaza too, this is asymmetrical warfare and the Tigers were quick to
take the shine off the government’s victory by sending a suicide bomber
into the heart of Colombo to kill two airmen at the air force headquarters.
This has always been the Tiger tactic in extremis, and they will probably
revert to more of it in the aftermath of losing Kilinochchi.

Indian authorities on the Andaman Islands say they have rescued 446
refugees lately.

Papua police chief Maj. Gen. Bagus Ekodanto said he received reports that a
hotel and rice warehouse had been “destroyed,” but he did not know if
anyone had died. A search for possible victims was under way.

Several stories of the Mutiara Hotel in the main city Manokwari collapsed,
said Ina, a nurse at a navy hospital treating 20 quake patients. Like many
Indonesians she goes by a single name.

In one incident, the Thai navy allegedly set adrift an open-topped,
engineless barge loaded with 412 people. Those aboard had just four barrels
of water and two sacks of rice.

Meanwhile, the government hopes to move on to capturing the Elephant Pass,
the last Tiger bastion on the road to Jaffna. If it falls, this will make
it easier to re-supply the island’s second largest town, which at the
moment has to get its provisions by sea and air. The army boasts of seizing
the ultimate prize, Mullaitivu.

Electricity was cut off and people in the coastal city of 167,000 fled
their homes in the dark fearing a tsunami, said Hasim Rumatiga, a local
health official. The Indonesian Meteorology and Seismology Agency issued a
tsunami alert, but it was revoked within an hour after it was determined
the epicenter of the main quake was on land.

After they drifted at sea for 15 days, the Indian coastguard rescued 107
people near the Andaman Islands, where they are being held in camps. But up
to 300 are missing after they tried to swim ashore.

Capturing it would certainly weaken the Tigers severely. But guerrilla
movements have the capacity to go underground and reemerge, as long as they
remain popular in their own communities. The government calls the LTTE
terrorists, and they have been designated as such by the European Union.
But the EU also recognises that they speak for many, if not most, Sri
Lankan Tamils in denouncing the discrimination that Tamils suffer on the
multiethnic and multicultural island. The Tamil diaspora is unlikely to end
its funding for the Tigers any time soon.

Japan’s Meteorological Agency said tsunamis of 4 inches (10 centimeters) to
16 inches (40 centimeters) in height splashed ashore in towns along the
coast. It also warned that bigger tsunamis were possible later.

In another incident just before new year, three overcrowded fishing boats
loaded with 580 Burmese migrants were intercepted off the Thai coast, but
were towed back out to sea after their engines had been removed, according
to minority rights group the Arakan Project.

The damage in Indonesia was still be being assessed.

Sri Lanka needs a just political settlement. There is no military solution.
Yesterday’s army success is producing a triumphalist mood in Colombo, and
President Mahinda Rajapakse, who already holds the portfolios of defence,
finance and nation-building, has just made himself minister of the media as
well – an apparent sign that he wants even tighter control over the
country’s reporters. Sinhalese politicians will be in no mood for
concessions for many months to come. Sri Lanka faces a grim new year.

Two of the boats reached the shore; one with 152 people aboard landed on
the Andaman Islands while another reached Aceh in Indonesia. One boat is
missing. Another boatload of 46 migrants arrived on Thailand’s southern
coast was seized by the military along with the occupants.

“My son’s head was wounded when a cabinet fell on him,” said Ferry Dau, a
father of two who said the walls in his house were cracked. “It was very
strong and scary. The power and phones went dead after the utility lines
fell down.”

A Thai court sentenced Mr. Nicolaides, an Australian, to three years in
jail for offending the monarchy, a criminal offense in the Kingdom of
Thailand. He had pleaded guilty, earning a sentence at the lower end of the
prescribed range for lèse-majesté.

Rahmat Priyono, a supervisor at the National Earthquake Center, said there
was no immediate information on casualties or damage. “But since the
epicenters were on land, they have a potential to cause significant
damage.”

The Rohingya are stateless and mostly have no rights in Burma, where they
are at the mercy of the military junta that curtails their movement while
using them as forced labor.

Quakes centered onshore pose little tsunami threat to Indonesia itself, but
those close to the coast can still churn up large waves emanating out to
other countries like Japan.

The crime was committed in a single paragraph in “Verisimilitude,” a 2005
novel set in Thailand that is salted with social commentary. At the
sentencing, the judge read out the offending section to the court, which
was packed with foreign reporters. The judge said the author had insulted
the king and crown prince in the passage.

Relief agency World Vision Indonesia was flying in 2,000 emergency
provision kits, including canned food, blankets and basic medical supplies,
said spokeswoman Katarina Hardono.

Papua is the Indonesian portion of New Guinea island, located about 1,830
miles (2,955 kilometers) east of the capital Jakarta. It is among the
nation’s least developed areas, and a low-level insurgency has simmered in
the resource-rich region for years. It is off limits to foreign reporters.

Indonesia straddles a chain of fault lines and volcanoes known as the
Pacific “Ring of Fire” and is prone to seismic activity. A huge quake off
western Indonesia caused the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed about
230,000 people, more than half of them on the western Indonesian island of
Sumatra.

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