Morning Papers - It's Origins

 

The Rooster

"Okeydoke"

Russian diplomat warns against unipolar world

 

The conspiracy theorists will love this one. The Tri-Lateral Commission (click on) once called it 'One World Government.' The ultimate in Global Slavery. Then you wonder where Bush gets it from. The Tri-Lateral Commission has never put forward an effort to stem the dangers of Human Induced Global Warming. Their aspirations would not allow for it. One has to wonder the true intellect of people unable to grapple with the reality of Geophysics. The Tri-Lateral Commission is a 'Good Ole Boys Club.'


President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Hu Jintao of China spoke out against Bush's agenda for a unipolar world.



Global Realignment and the Decline of the Superpower (click on)

by Mike Whitney

Global Research, March 9, 2007

The United States has been defeated in Iraq. That doesn’t mean that there’ll be a troop withdrawal anytime soon, but it does mean that there’s no chance of achieving the mission’s political objectives. Iraq will not be a democracy, reconstruction will be minimal, and the security situation will continue to deteriorate into the foreseeable future.

The real goals of the invasion are equally unachievable. While the US has established a number of military bases at the heart of the world’s energy-center; oil output has dwindled to 1.6 million barrels per day, nearly half of post-war production. More importantly, the administration has no clear strategy for protecting pipelines, oil tankers and major facilities. Oil production will be spotty for years to come even if security improves. This will have grave effects on oil futures; triggering erratic spikes in prices and roiling the world energy markets. If the contagion spreads to the other Gulf States, as many political analysts now expect, many of the world’s oil-dependent countries will go through an agonizing cycle of recession/depression.

America’s failure in Iraq is not merely a defeat for the Bush administration. It is also a defeat for the “unipolar-model” of world order. Iraq proves that that the superpower model cannot provide the stability, security or guarantee of human rights that are essential for garnering the support of the 6 billion people who now occupy the planet. The mushrooming of armed groups in Iraq, Afghanistan and, now, Somalia foreshadows a broader and more violent confrontation between the over-stretched American legions and their increasingly adaptable and lethal enemies. Resistance to the imperial order is on the rise everywhere.

AT issue is this. When will all this 'corporate' jostling of the world end? When someone like Walker Bush and Cheney take office the world is forced to deal with war mongers seeking 'overwhelming WEALTH' through overwhelming force. The USA needs to speak about peace and pursuing a global strategy for all countries to participate in that will provide quality of life and environmental safety.

When countries are forced to deal with their national security due to the wrongful use of American military might, their priorities turn from quality of life to protecting borders and securing a nation for their citizens to live within. When assets of a country are taken from the people to strengthen a military, the corporate military contractors are satisfied. It's a vicious negative feedback loop that leads to poor quality of education, medical care, food and housing. We see it even in the USA whereby the newsprint is chronically turning up quality of life issues that have been sacrificed to fuel the illegal war in Iraq.

Russia is spending $190 billion for military equipment. I promise you this would never be an agenda for that country if the USA wasn't misbehaving globally and literally terrifying sovereign governments. Bush is little threat to terrorists but more an ally when governments have to focus on protecting themselves from the USA rather than the real bad guys, namely organizations such as al Qaeda.

The focus of the world has become hideous and dangerous. The troposphere of Earth is under assault as well by the elected Republicans in the USA government. It has to stop. Humanity cannot continue down this path.

This is the year 2007. Global domination? Hello?


RIA Novosti


Russian leader says $190 bln funding for military equipment
09/ 03/ 2007
MOSCOW, March 9 (RIA Novosti) - A total of 5 trillion rubles ($190 billion) will be earmarked to equip the army and Navy with modern arms until 2015, Russia's president said Friday.
Speaking at a military award ceremony in the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin said the global situation dictated the need to improve Russia's military structure.
"We cannot fail to notice the constant attempts to resolve international disputes by force, the threat of international conflicts, terrorism, the escalation of local conflicts and the spread of weapons of mass destruction," the president said
He said a considerable part of the funds will be allocated to buy state-of-the-art weapons and hardware, develop science and the defense industry.
"We are trying to integrate the defense industry with the civilian sector of the economy, primarily with the high tech sectors," the head of state said.
He set the top brass the task of focusing on combat training. "The Armed Forces once and for all must resume the [permanent] practice of large scale military exercises, missile launches and remote marine missions," Putin said.
He stressed that Russia consistently promoted the creation of a global security system.

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070309/61775591.html


Iran insists on timely nuclear fuel supplies to Bushehr - official
09/ 03/ 2007
TEHRAN/MOSCOW, March 9 (RIA Novosti) - The problem surrounding construction of Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant will stop being purely technical if Russia fails to supply nuclear fuel to Iran in March, an Iranian nuclear official said Friday.
Russian specialists are completing the construction of Iran's first NPP under a $1 billion contract signed in 1995, but Russia claimed last month that Iran had an unpaid debt for its construction services, and said that as a result construction might take longer than previously expected.
"As of today, the existing problems with the Bushehr NPP construction are financial and technical. But if Russia fails to deliver nuclear fuel to Iran in March, it will mean the problem is more than just technical," Mohammad Saidi, a deputy head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, told Iranian news agency IRNA in Moscow.
He said he hopes the remaining problems will be resolved next week during a Russian delegation visit to Tehran next week.

http://en.rian.ru/world/20070309/61778173.html


UN nuclear body suspends half of technical aid programs to Iran
08/ 03/ 2007
VIENNA, March 8 (RIA Novosti) - A 35-nation meeting of the UN nuclear agency moved Thursday to suspend nearly half of technical assistance programs to Iran over its defiance of international nuclear demands.
The Board of Governor of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) voted to shut down or freeze 23 out of 55 projects with the Islamic Republic suspected of pursing nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian program.
The decision falls in line with U.N. Security Council's December 23 sanctions to punish Iran for defying demands that it halt its uranium enrichment activities.
The five permanent Security Council members are discussing additional sanctions against Tehran, which ignored the deadline to end enrichment last month. They could include a travel ban, the freeze of companies' and individuals' assets, an arms embargo and trade restrictions.

http://en.rian.ru/world/20070308/61729189.html


Technical aid cuts may affect cooperation with IAEA - Iranian FM
09/ 03/ 2007
TEHRAN, March 9 (RIA Novosti) - A decision by the UN nuclear watchdog to suspend nearly half of technical assistance programs to Iran will not stop, but may affect Tehran's cooperation with the regulator, the foreign minister said.
The Board of Governor of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) voted Thursday to shut down or freeze 23 of 55 projects with the Islamic Republic, suspected of pursing a covert nuclear weapons program.
"Moves like this could affect our cooperation with the IAEA," Manouchehr Mottaki said.
He urged the agency to act within its jurisdiction and refrain from making politicized decisions.
The decision by the 35-nation Board of Governors fell in line with the UN Security Council's decision December 23 to introduce sanctions. Iran is defiant and has consistently claimed it is pursuing peaceful nuclear development since it resumed uranium enrichment in January 2006.

http://en.rian.ru/world/20070309/61762700.html


Iran to conduct air defense exercises
06/ 03/ 2007
TEHRAN, March 6 (RIA Novosti) - Iran will conduct air defense exercises Tuesday in preparation for a possible air strike on its uranium ore conversion center at Isfahan, the IRNA news agency said Tuesday.
The international press has in recent months actively discussed the possibility of U.S. and Israeli air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, but almost all key figures in the Bush administration have repeatedly refuted the existence of any plans to do so.
However, U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney has not ruled out a military strike, saying all options were on the table.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors convened Monday at its Vienna headquarters for a five-day session to discuss the possible suspension of at least 20 aid projects in Iran following a recent report by IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, which concluded that Iran has ignored a UN Security Council demand to halt its uranium enrichment program and was in fact seeking to expand it.
Iran has been at the center of international concerns since January 2006 over its nuclear program, which some countries, particularly the United States, suspect is geared toward nuclear weapons development. Tehran has consistently denied the claims, saying it needs nuclear power for civilian purposes.

http://en.rian.ru/world/20070306/61628603.html



Iran ready to cooperate with IAEA on nuclear dossier - minister>
06/ 03/ 2007
TEHRAN, March 6 (RIA Novosti) - Iran is prepared to answer any questions about its nuclear research posed by the international nuclear watchdog, the foreign minister said Tuesday.
"If the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has any questions [with regard to Iran's nuclear program], they should ask so that a resolution [for the current crisis] can be found through dialogue," Manouchehr Mottaki said.
The IAEA Board of Governors convened Monday at its Vienna headquarters for a 5-day session to discuss possible suspension of at least 20 aid projects in Iran following the recent report by IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei that Iran had ignored a UN Security Council demand to halt its uranium enrichment program and was seeking to expand it.
Iran has been at the center of international concerns since January 2006 over its nuclear program, which some countries, particularly the United States, suspect is geared toward nuclear weapons development. Tehran has consistently denied the claims, saying it needs nuclear power for civilian purposes.

http://en.rian.ru/world/20070306/61622013.html


Iran and the U.S.: a delicate balance between war and peace
21/ 02/ 2007
MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Pyotr Goncharov) - On February 23, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency will deliver a report to the UN Security Council on Iran's compliance with Resolution 1737, adopted last December.
The resolution instructed Iran to suspend all uranium enrichment activities by February 21. If the report says that Tehran has ignored these demands, the Security Council will take additional measures to toughen its sanctions.
Meanwhile the stand-off with Iran is developing beyond its nuclear program. The United States is forcing events. According to The New Statesman, the forces deployed in the northwest part of the Indian Ocean and in the Persian Gulf would allow the U.S. president to destroy Iran's political, economic and military infrastructure within a few hours.
Now it has become obvious that Iran's nuclear program is not the main problem in its relations with the U.S. Washington has made it clear that Tehran will not dominate the Middle East, will not control the Persian Gulf and that the U.S. will protect its interests in the region and will not abandon it under any circumstances. Washington has also made it clear that it is not going to tolerate Tehran's policies toward Iraq. All this has been announced as George W. Bush's new strategy.

http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20070221/61079202.html



Russia hails demolition of dividing wall in Nicosia - ministry
09/ 03/ 2007
MOSCOW, March 9 (RIA Novosti) - Russia approved the Cypriot authorities' decision to demolish a wall running through the heart of capital Nicosia dividing the Greek and Turkish parts of the island, a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry said Friday.
Cyprus has been divided into an internationally recognized Greek Cypriot south and a Turkish Cypriot north since 1974, when Turkey occupied the north.
"Moscow considers this decision a step toward building trust between the two sides," Mikhail Kamynin said.
The UN Cyprus mission was closed following the Greek Cypriots' rejection of the 2004 summer referendum to unite the two parts of the island according to Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary General, scenario.

http://en.rian.ru/world/20070309/61778969.html



NATO has yet to discuss U.S. missile shield in Europe - official
07/ 03/ 2007
BRUSSELS, March 7 (RIA Novosti) - NATO has not yet discussed U.S. plans to deploy elements of its missile defense system in Europe, a spokesman said Wednesday.
The United States recently announced plans to build a radar installation in the Czech Republic and a missile base in Poland in the next five years. The U.S. insists that the European missile shield is designed to counter possible attacks from "rogue states," including Iran and North Korea.
James Appathurai said that NATO would consider the political implications of the move in the near future.
He also said that the United States has shown "full transparency" in announcing the future deployment of its missile shield in Europe, and informed members of the Russia-NATO Council about its plans in advance.
Moscow has strongly objected to the proposed deployment of the shield in Central Europe and Central Asia, and has long been concerned about the further eastward expansion of NATO.

http://en.rian.ru/world/20070307/61706203.html


No U.S. missiles on Armenian soil - deputy FM
09/ 03/ 2007
YEREVAN, March 9 (RIA Novosti) - Armenia's deputy foreign minister said Friday the Caucasus state was not considering the possibility of deploying elements of a U.S. missile defense system on its soil.
A senior Pentagon official said March 1 that the United States would like to deploy a radar base in the post-Soviet Caucasus, without specifying in which country. The statement further strained relations with Moscow already unnerved by earlier reports of U.S. plans to deploy elements of a missile shield in Central Europe.
"I would like to make an official statement that we have not received any inquiries or proposals on that score from the U.S. or NATO commanders," Arman Kirakosyan said.
He said Armenia's Foreign Ministry was unaware whether such proposals had been made to Georgia and Azerbaijan, the ex-Soviet states in the region that Russia has singled out as the most probable sites for a U.S. radar.
Both Georgia and Azerbaijan have said they know nothing of the plans.

http://en.rian.ru/world/20070309/61762726.html


Foreign Ministry blasts U.S. human rights report on Russia
09/ 03/ 2007
MOSCOW, March 9 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's Foreign Ministry categorically rejects the U.S. State Department's annual country report on human rights practices that finds Russia backsliding on human rights, the ministry's official spokesman said Friday.
Among other conclusions, the report said that the Russian Federation has a weak multi-party political system and a poor human rights record, specifically in the continuing internal conflict in and around Chechnya.
In addition, it said prison conditions are severe and often life threatening, that law enforcement suffers from rampant corruption, arbitrary arrests and detention, that media freedom is on the decline, and that non-governmental organizations are systematically harassed
Mikhail Kamynin said the report's section regarding Russia is "biased, politicized and confrontational in many aspects."
"The politicization of human rights problems leads not to the resolution of existing problems, but to the devaluation of principles and goals of international cooperation in this sphere," he said.

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070309/61760914.html


Moscow questions U.S. conviction of Russian diplomat in UN
19:19
08/ 03/ 2007
MOSCOW, March 8 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's Foreign Ministry questioned Thursday a New York court's conviction of a former UN official, Russian Vladimir Kuznetsov, for involvement in a money laundering scheme.
Official Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said the trial over Kuznetsov, "who has flatly denied his guilt, triggered a lot of questions."
Kuznetsov, who chaired the UN' Budget Oversight Committee, has been convicted by a New York court for laundering money he received from a UN procurement official, who had taken bribes from companies seeking UN contracts, through an offshore company in 2000.
Kamynin said then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had not had enough grounds for lifting diplomatic immunity from Kuznetsov before his arrest in the United States September 1, 2005. He said it had been done in several hours' time without counseling with the General Assembly and Russia.

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070308/61733726.html


Natalia Vodianova: the Cinderella of the Volga
08/ 03/ 2007
MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti commentator Anatoly Korolev) – Natalia Vodianova, one of the world’s top ten models, currently lives in New York City.
She is married to Justin Trevor Berkeley Portman, half-brother of the 10th Viscount Portman, a lord born and bred, and a millionaire to boot.
Therefore, her children—her son Lucas and baby daughter Neva—indisputably belong to the British aristocracy.
Unbelievably, this glamorous Russian lady was a provincial vegetable vendor a mere seven years ago. Her unmarried mother had a hard time raising three daughters, one of whom had cerebral palsy. Being hungry, sometimes on the verge of starvation, was Natalia’s lot in childhood and adolescence—something she took for granted. When she turned 16, she weighed less than 50 kilos with a height of 176 cm (five feet ten).
That was the garden in which the exotic orchid grew—a nymphet if there ever was one, in whose countenance delicacy blended with obstinacy.

http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20070308/61731032.html


China Daily

Storm tide affects 640,000 in E. China
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-03-09 20:10
JINAN -- The strongest storm tide to hit the northeast China coast since 1969 has left three people dead, seven missing and affected 640,000 people, government sources said Friday.
More than 60,000 people were evacuated ahead of the storm tide which hit the coast of Shandong Province on Sunday and Monday, said the provincial civil affairs department.
Three people were killed and seven are still missing in the storm tide in Weihai City.
The storm tide, with gusts of up to 100 kilometers per hour, also damaged more than 2,100 vessels and destroyed 600 houses in coastal areas of the province.
More than 35,000 hectares of crops were affected and losses of almost two billion yuan (US$250 million) were reported in the province.
The 4,360 fishermen marooned in the East China Sea by the storm tide have resumed work as conditions allowed, the Ministry of Communications said on its website on Friday.
The fishing crews were stranded in 559 vessels off the coast of Jiangsu Province when a strong storm tide appeared on Sunday. With winds gusting at up to 80 km per hour and waves six to seven meters high, the vessels were unable to return to harbor.
Vessels from the East China Sea Rescue Bureau and the East China fleet of the Navy of the People's Liberation Army, and passing ships, helped protect and guide the stranded fishermen. No casualties were reported.
The China Marine Rescue Center has officially announced end of the rescue operation.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-03/09/content_824260.htm


China warns distrust tests N.Korea nuclear talks
(Reuters/chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2007-03-09 19:15
BEIJING - Deep distrust is challenging progress towards ending North Korea's nuclear weapons programme, China's envoy to six-party disarmament talks said on Friday, following discussions with North Korea on a nascent deal.
North Korea's chief negotiator for the North Korea-Japan talks Song Il-ho (C) is surrounded by media as he arrives for departure at the Noi Bai airport in Hanoi March 9, 2007. [Reuters]

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei, ring-master in the talks on Pyongyang's nuclear future, said he had hopes of progress in implementing a February 13 agreement offering North Korea aid and improved security in return for first steps to dismantling its atomic facilities within 60 days.
But Wu warned that steps forward would not be easy as the two Koreas, China, the United States, Japan and Russia wrangle over how to proceed.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-03/09/content_824252.htm


Olympic tickets to go on sale in April
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-03-09 08:32
Tickets for the 2008 Olympics will go on sale next month, but the buyers of tickets for some hot events will have to be decided by random draw, organizers said.
A girl stands alongside a Beijing Olympic Games poster in Shanghai.[newsphoto]
Chinese nationals and foreigners residing in China can now register to book tickets online after the Beijing Organizing Committee (BOCOG) launched the official ticketing website (www.tickets.beijing2008.cn/) on Thursday.
BOCOG released full details on ticket prices on the site and said ticket sales would be in three phases starting from April 2007.
The most expensive tickets will be for the opening ceremony on the evening of August 8, which will cost 5,000 yuan (US$646). The cheapest tickets for that event will be 200 yuan (US$25.8).
Ticket prices for the closing ceremony will range from 150 yuan (US$19.4) to 3,000 yuan (US$388).
Tickets to competition events will cost from 30-1,000 yuan (US$3.88-129.3), with the men's basketball final the highest priced.
BOCOG said last year that more than seven million tickets will be available for sale, with at least half to go to local fans and 58 percent of all the tickets would cost 100 yuan (US$12.75) or less, in line with efforts to make the Olympics affordable to average Chinese citizens.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/2008/2007-03/09/content_823408.htm


China may relax limits on individuals investing abroad
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-03-09 16:57
BEIJING -- China is mulling over whether to allow individuals to make direct investments in overseas assets, the foreign exchange regulator disclosed on Thursday.
"More channels will be open to individuals to make overseas investment as the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) raised the annual quota for individuals buying foreign currency from US$20,000 to US$50,000 last year," said Hu Xiaolian, director of SAFE.
The administration will soon increase the total investment quota for qualified foreign institutional investors (QFII) as the current investment sum is only 50 million U.S. dollars short of the US$10 billion-limit, she said.
She gave no indication of the new quota figure, only saying that it should be in line with a balanced international payment.
Currently, Chinese individuals can only buy investment products provided by banks and fund management companies if they want to invest abroad under a Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor (QDII) scheme.
Hu said the product scope would be broadened this year to meet customer demand.
She also disclosed that the authority was researching the arbitrage system between the A-share and H-share markets, but a timetable had yet to be set due to its complexity.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-03/09/content_824184.htm


Paulson: Sino-US relations 'globally important'
By Wang Zhenghua (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-03-09 08:30
SHANGHAI: With China's double-digit growth leading the country to become a leader of the global economy, the Sino-US relationship has become more important than ever before.
This was the main theme of US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's address to the Shanghai Futures Exchange yesterday. Paulson's speech was a highlight of his two-day tour of China, which is intended to pave the way for the second round of Sino-US strategic economic dialogue in Washington in May.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2007-03/09/content_823406.htm


China to form state forex investment company
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-03-09 13:41
China is preparing for the establishment of a foreign exchange investment company directly under the cabinet, to make better use of its massive foreign exchange reserve, Finance Minister Jin Renqing said on Friday.
"We will draw from international successful experience, such as the Temasek Holdings of Singapore, in the management of foreign exchange investment," the minister said at a press conference on the sidelines of the ongoing parliament annual session.
The new company will be under the direct leadership of the State Council, or the cabinet, instead of the Finance Ministry as it was reportedly to be, Jin said.
China's foreign exchange reserve reached 1.066 trillion U.S. dollars at the end of last year. The State Council has decided to separate the management of foreign exchange reserve and foreign exchange investment, Jin said.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2007-03/09/content_823928.htm


Stocks drop for first day in four
(Shanghai Daily)
Updated: 2007-03-09 14:40
Shanghai's stocks fell for the first time in four days as some investors judged the gains excessive compared with earnings prospects. China Vanke Co paced the decline among stocks that had risen the most.
"It makes sense for the market to have a break after the recent rally," said Fan Dizhao, who helps manage the equivalent of US$1.8 billion at Guotai Asset Management Co in Shanghai, according to Bloomberg.
The Shanghai Composite Index, which tracks the bigger of domestic stock exchanges, lost 0.4 percent to 2915.95. The Shenzhen Composite Index, which covers the smaller one, dropped 0.5 percent to 759.41.
China Vanke, the nation's biggest property developer, lost 0.40 yuan (5 US cents), or 2.5 percent, to 15.42 yuan. The stock has more than tripled over the past year. China United Telecommunications Corp, which controls the nation's second-largest cell phone operator, fell 0.16 yuan, or 3 percent, to 5.19 yuan. The shares have gained 90 percent in the past year. Shanghai Automotive Co, the listed unit of China's largest automaker, retreated 0.58 yuan, or 4.3 percent, to 12.79 yuan, trimming its gain to 56 percent this year.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2007-03/09/content_824068.htm


Most people want interest rate to increase
By Zhang Yu (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-03-09 08:39
As China's economy faces mounting inflation, many believe that increasing the interest rate is the solution.
In a poll conducted on China Daily's website, www.chinadaily.com.cn, 61.33 percent of the 1,130 respondents said the central bank "should raise the interest rate to cope with inflation", 26.99 percent disagreed, and the rest did not know.
Although Yi Gang, assistant governor of the People's Bank of China, said in February that the central bank "is very concerned about the interest rate but hasn't taken it as a regulative target", many market researchers predicted the interest rate would be raised by 27 basis points and at least once in 2007.
Wang Zhihao, a senior economist with Standard Chartered, said the central bank is likely to raise the benchmark lending rate by 27 basis points in the second quarter.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2007-03/09/content_823430.htm


Iraq's al-Maliki tours Baghdad streets
(AP)
Updated: 2007-03-09 20:08
BAGHDAD - Iraq's prime minister strolled Baghdad's streets and visited police checkpoints Friday to showcase security ahead of an international conference aimed at stabilizing the war-torn country with help from its neighbors.
A woman passes by a vehicle checkpoint as an Iraqi policeman checks the identity of a driver in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, March 8, 2007. [AP]
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki toured a neighborhood and chatted with people, one of his advisers said. But the tour - during a weekly four-hour vehicle ban every Friday for the Muslim holy day - also pointed out Baghdad's inherent risks.
Al-Makiki's office did not release any advance details of the outing or even say where he visited because of safety concerns.
Security was heightened across Baghdad as international envoys prepared to arrive for Saturday's conference, which would be held at Iraq's Foreign Ministry just outside the heavily fortified Green Zone.
"Additional security measures have been taken to protect the officials participating in the conference and to secure the location of the meeting," said Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2007-03/09/content_824259.htm


UN: Rape widespread in Darfur conflict
(AP)
Updated: 2007-03-09 19:49
THE HAGUE, Netherlands - Women in Darfur continue to be subjected to rape by all sides in the brutal conflict in western Sudanese region, the UN human rights chief said Thursday - International Women's Day.
Louise Arbour said she has about 75 human rights officers monitoring abuses in Darfur, and that many women were being attacked as soon they ventured out of refugee camps to carry out essential chores.
"Women are forced to go out of the camp to collect firewood," Arbour said at a meeting in The Hague of female leaders in international law. "They believe, they tell us, that if the men went out they would be killed, and that's why it's the women who expose themselves and they get raped."

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2007-03/09/content_824255.htm


Delicacies from minorities
(sina.com.cn)
Updated: 2007-03-09 09:35
There are 55 minorities in all in China, which have their own cultures and life styles.
Things we talk most frequently are their delicacies made by unique methods, especially the household foods from southern minorities, they are very popular among Beijing and Shanghai, two China's big cities. Do you know where are those delicacies hiding?
Yi Ethnic Minority
Yi people like prepare big meals during the holidays and festivals. They usually put all attentions on their "Yi New Year" dinner. This is why their traditional foods are yummy and attractive. The reprehensive dishes of Yi food are Tuotuo Meat (salted meat), Mutton Sweetbread Soup, and Qiaoba (Baked buckwheat Pancak)

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/citylife/2007-03/09/content_823581.htm


Japan to probe WWII military brothels
(AP)
Updated: 2007-03-09 06:43
TOKYO - Under intense pressure from Asia and the United States, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday that ruling party lawmakers will conduct a fresh investigation into the Japanese military's forced sexual slavery of women during World War II.
Abe triggered outrage in China, North and South Korea and the Philippines last week by saying there was no proof the women were coerced. He said Monday that Japan will not apologize again for the Japanese military's "comfort stations."
Abe also faces pressure from the United States, where the House of Representatives is considering a resolution urging Japan to formally apologize for its wartime brothels. Japanese leaders apologized in 1993 for the government's role, but the apology was not approved by Parliament. Abe said Thursday that he "basically stands by the 1993 apology."
The government is ready to cooperate with the investigation, Abe said Thursday, amid calls for a review from conservatives who question many of the claims by victims and others who say the government kidnapped the women and forced them into sex slavery.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2007-03/09/content_823128.htm


Give up pursuit of 'Tibet independence'
By Li Fangchao (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-03-09 07:23
Chances for Dalai Lama's return to Tibet Autonomous Region are slim unless he totally abandons his secessionist activities of "Tibet independence", a senior Tibetan official said yesterday.
Qiangba Puncog, government chairman of Tibet, denounced Dalai Lama's staunch "pro-independence" stance, at a news conference on the sidelines of annual NPC session yesterday.
"Unless Dalai Lama completely gives up the pursuit of 'Tibet independence' both in idea and deed, the chance for him to return is slim," he said.
He said the central government had never shut the door to talks with Dalai Lama through his personal representatives.
"But we will never recognize his so-called government-in-exile," he said.
"The attitude of the central government is clear-cut. He must completely give up his pursuit of 'Tibet independence'; he must recognize that Tibet is an inalienable part of the Chinese territory since the ancient times, and he must also recognize that Taiwan is a part of China."

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-03/09/content_823175.htm

continued ...

The Bush conversion: how the president saw the light and changed foreign policy

 

It is being called George Bush's Come to Jesus moment. As in the midlife realisation that led Mr Bush to give up alcohol and embrace Christianity, the president in his sixth year in the White House has undergone another radical conversion, abandoning an ideological foreign policy for a more pragmatic approach, foreign policy experts say.

Within the space of two weeks, the Bush administration has made dramatic steps towards diplomatic engagement of two countries once shunned as part of the Axis of Evil - agreeing to contacts with Iran and opening the door to recognition of North Korea.

In Washington, the shift was seen yesterday as a belated acknowledgement that the administration's approach to the world - on Iraq, nuclear weapons proliferation, and Middle East peace - was not just ineffective, but dangerous.

"The main thing was that there was a sense that American foreign policy was spinning out of control. The administration was looking at one series of failures after another and these were really beginning to damage national security," said James Steinberg, who served as a deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration and now heads the Lyndon Johnson school of public affairs in Texas.

Libby lied, troops died

 

The Scooter Libby verdict is inextricably linked to Iraq: his lies were an attempt to cover up the disingenuous case for war.

Sidney Blumenthal

March 6, 2007 10:00 PM

The conviction of I Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, on criminal charges of obstruction of justice and perjury brings only a partial conclusion to the sordid political tragedy that is the Bush presidency. Yet the judgment on this matter goes to the heart of the administration. The means and the ends of Bush's White House have received a verdict from the bar of justice.

Foreign policy was and is the principal way of consolidating unchecked executive power. In the run-up to the Iraq war, professional standards, even within the military and intelligence agencies, were subordinated to political goals. Only information that fit the preconceived case was permitted. Those who advanced facts or raised skeptical questions about sketchy information were seen as deliberate enemies causing damage from within. From the beginning, the White House indulged in unrestrained attacks on such professionals. Revealing the facts, especially about the politically-driven method of skewing policy, was treated as a crime against the state.

Morning Papers

Michael Moore Today

Protests planned for anniversary of war
By Steve Cartwright / Kennebec Journal Morning Sentinel
Peace activists from Old Orchard Beach to Eastport will gather March 17 on town commons and city squares to demonstrate opposition to the war in Iraq.
Similar rallies are planned nationwide, including Washington, D.C., where activists are organizing what they hope will be a massive antiwar march to the Pentagon.
Robert Hayes of Winslow, a member of Waterville Bridges of Peace and Justice, said the United States shouldn't have gone to war in Iraq in the first place.
"The goal is to find a diplomatic and peaceful solution to the conflicts, not only in this area (Iraq), but also in the wider Middle East," he said.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=9381

No More Death

No More Dollar

Bring Them Home Now

http://www.everyvillage-me.us/


War protesters target lawmakers' offices
By Jennifer C. Kerr / Associated Press
Some opponents of the Iraq war are taking their protests straight to Congress — staging "occupations" in lawmakers' offices on Capitol Hill and in their home communities.
Rep. Rahm Emanuel's office in Chicago was targeted on Thursday.
A day earlier protesters were headed off before getting into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office in San Francisco.
In Washington, peace activists dressed in pink showed up recently at the Senate offices of presidential hopefuls John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The protesters haven't abandoned the larger, more familiar gatherings at college campuses, major cities and monuments in Washington. But in recent weeks, they have been turning up at congressional offices, vowing to stay until they get pledges that lawmakers will vote against more war funding — or until they are forcibly removed.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=9382


3,000 Christians from Across America Coming to D.C. Worship and Protest to End Iraq War
Christian Peace Witness Set for March 16th; Worship to be Followed by Procession to White House and Peaceful Protest
(ChristianPeaceWitness.org)
Thousands of Christians -- Evangelicals, mainline Protestants, and Catholics -- from more than 40 states will fill the Washington National Cathedral to capacity on March 16th to mark the fourth anniversary of the Iraq War. The worship service will be followed by a candlelight procession through the center of our nation's capital to the White House, which thousands of Christians will surround with the light of peace.
Organized by a broad cross section of Christian organizations, Christian Peace Witness for Iraq is expected to be the largest expressly Christian war protest to take place since the War in Iraq began four years ago. To date, more than 20 bus loads of Christians will travel to Washington from states across the country, including Texas, Ohio, Indiana, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. More than 150 Christian and interfaith peace vigils and actions will also be held around the country, including large-scale acts of moral civil disobedience organized by Christian Peace Witness coalition member group the Declaration of Peace.
WHAT: Christian Peace Witness for Iraq

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=9379


MarchOnPentagon.com

http://www.pephost.org/site/PageServer?pagename=m17_homepage


Events
Events listed are not necessarily endorsed or organized by UFPJ. This calendar is maintained as a resource for the entire peace and justice movement. For further information about any event listed, please click on the event listing and contact the person and/or email address listed as the contact for the specific event.
Listing 4th Anniversary of Iraq War Event(s)

http://www.unitedforpeace.org/calendar.php?sortby=&caltype=51


CODEPINK and Voices for Creative Nonviolence is organizing the Occupation Project, a campaign aimed at the offices of Representatives and Senators who won't stop funding the war. The campaign began the first week of February, 2007, when Bush introduced the new Supplemental Spending Bill. The Occupation Project encourages ongoing visits, sit-ins, and of sustained nonviolent civil disobedience to put the pressure on our elected officials to support our troops and stop funding war!

http://www.codepink4peace.org/article.php?list=type&type=192


March 9th, 2007 12:21 pm
Justice Dept.: FBI misused Patriot Act
By Lara Jakes Jordan / Associated Press
The FBI improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information about people in the United States, a Justice Department audit concluded Friday.
And for three years the FBI has underreported to Congress how often it forced businesses to turn over the customer data, the audit found.
FBI agents sometimes demanded the data without proper authorization, according to the 126-page audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. At other times, the audit found, the FBI improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances.
The audit blames agent error and shoddy record-keeping for the bulk of the problems and did not find any indication of criminal misconduct.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=9384


Local Soldier Declares War On Army Hospital; Takes Fight To Capitol Hill
VIDEO
WASHINGTON (WSOC-TV) -- A local soldier is declaring war on the country's biggest army hospital after he says he was mistreated there.
Corporal Dell McLeod, of Chesterfield, S.C., says he got the runaround at Walter Reed Army Medical Center after suffering a head injury in Iraq. He claims his doctors dismissed his brain injury as evidence of a prior learning disability, and he's not getting the treatment he needs.
On Tuesday both Dell and his wife Annette took their fight to Capitol Hill. On Monday Annette testified before Congress on Dell's behalf, describing the red tape and neglect wounded soldiers routinely face. They found a powerful ally in one of our own lawmakers, Congressman John Spratt (D-SC), who is a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee. Rep. Spratt told Channel 9 what happened at Walter Reed could be happening at VA hospitals in the Carolinas. He promises a full investigation.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=9385


New US commander says no military solution to Iraq conflict
By Bryan Pearson / AFP
The new US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, urged Iraq's leaders on Thursday to put aside sectarian rancour and warned there was no "military solution" to the nation's conflict.
At his first news conference since taking charge of US-led forces in Iraq, Petraeus said he had felt "shame, horror and sadness" on Tuesday when he heard of a suicide attack that killed more than 100 Shiite pilgrims.
"There is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq. Military action is necessary to help improve security... but it is not sufficient. There needs to be a political aspect," he said.
Petraeus was speaking inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone after three days of attacks by Sunni insurgents on Shiite pilgrims left more than 150 dead and dramatically increased political tensions.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=9374


Democrats want Iraq pullout by fall 2008
By David Espo / Associated Press
WASHINGTON - In a direct challenge to President Bush, House Democrats unveiled legislation Thursday requiring the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq by the fall of next year.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the deadline would be added to legislation providing nearly $100 billion the Bush administration has requested for fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
She told reporters the measure would mark the first time the new Democratic-controlled Congress has established a "date certain" for the end of U.S. combat in the four-year-old war that has claimed the lives of more than 3,100 U.S. troops.
The White House had no immediate reaction, although Bush has repeatedly rejected talk of establishing a deadline for troop withdrawals.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=9370


Iraq 'surge' may need 7,000 back-up troops
By Demetri Sevastopulo, Alim Remtulla and Edward Luce / Financial Times
US commanders in Iraq may need another 7,000 troops to support the military surge in Iraq, a senior Pentagon official told Congress on Tuesday.
Gordon England, the deputy defence secretary, said the troops would be necessary to support the 21,500 combat troops who are being sent to Iraq to help quell violence in Baghdad and al-Anbar province. Appearing before the House budget committee, Mr England rejected a recent estimate by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office that the surge would require an additional 15,000-28,000 support personnel.
"Our expectation is the number of support troops could go above 21,500 but about 4,000, maybe as many as 7,000, if the commanders on the ground request and they are all validated," said Mr England. "But it will be much lower, in my judgment, than what the CBO estimate is."

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=9373



Guardian Unlimited

EU agrees deal to reduce carbon emissions by 20%
Staff and agencies
Friday March 9, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
The EU today agreed an ambitious deal for tackling climate change, committing the bloc to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020 and to producing a fifth of its energy via renewable sources by the same date.

The agreement, thrashed out at a summit in Brussels despite a series of objections from some eastern European members and France, gives the EU "ambitious and credible" targets to tackle climate change, said the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/eu/story/0,,2030142,00.html



Sinn Féin and DUP start talks with Hain over power-sharing
Owen Bowcott, Ireland correspondent
Friday March 9, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
The leaders of Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist party have met the Northern Ireland secretary, restarting talks aimed at restoring power-sharing government even before the last seats were distributed in the assembly election.
Gerry Adams and his party's chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness, saw Peter Hain at his residence in Hillsborough during the morning.
They were followed in by the DUP's deputy leader, Peter Robinson. Mr Hain was due to travel to Ballymena later to see the Rev Ian Paisley, the DUP's leader.
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/northernirelandassembly/story/0,,2030466,00.html


Greek Cypriots begin razing wall that divides capital
Agencies
Friday March 9, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Greek Cypriots have brought down a wall forming part of a barrier that has divided Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus, for over 30 years.
Nicosia residents hailed the move as an important step and one compared it with the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
"This is what happened when the Berlin Wall came down, only in our case the police wouldn't let us take anything," said a woman who, after an altercation with police officers, retrieved a rotting plank of wood.
People grabbed chunks of mangled metal and concrete from trucks as they rumbled past.
"This is extremely symbolic ... The dynamism created by this move will lead to the opening of the crossing," Rasit Pertev, the chief adviser to the Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat, told Reuters.
The Greek Cypriot authorities had ceased overnight demolition work by dawn today on a concrete barrier in Nicosia's Ledra Street, exposing a corridor of crumbling buildings untouched for decades.
They quickly replaced the barrier with sheets of aluminium and put the area under heavy police guard. For security reasons the area would remain off limits to civilians until Turkey removed its troops from its side, they said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cyprus/story/0,,2030226,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=12


Campbell will publish diaries after Blair steps down
Michael White
Friday March 9, 2007
The Guardian
Alastair Campbell's long-awaited and potentially explosive account of the nine years he spent at Tony Blair's side will be published this year shortly after the prime minister leaves office, the former Downing Street spokesman confirmed last night.
Edited extracts from his 2m-word diaries will run to around 800 pages - or 350,000 words. He hopes eventually to publish the diaries in full as a serious contribution to the history of the Blair years.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,,2029817,00.html


'High value' hearings begin at Guantánamo Bay
Ewen MacAskill Washington
Friday March 9, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
The US opened military hearings at Guantánamo Bay today into the 14 suspects described as "high value", allegedly the most dangerous of all the inmates with direct links to al-Qaida.
Journalists were barred from the hearings for the first time since detainees began arriving at the US base in Cuba in 2001.
The 14 include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, who was arrested in Pakistan in 2003. Some of the 14 were transferred from secret CIA prisons worldwide.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,,2030568,00.html


A predator becomes more dangerous when wounded>
Washington's escalation of threats against Iran is driven by a determination to secure control of the region's energy resources
Noam Chomsky
Friday March 9, 2007
The Guardian
In the energy-rich Middle East, only two countries have failed to subordinate themselves to Washington's basic demands: Iran and Syria. Accordingly both are enemies, Iran by far the more important. As was the norm during the cold war, resort to violence is regularly justified as a reaction to the malign influence of the main enemy, often on the flimsiest of pretexts. Unsurprisingly, as Bush sends more troops to Iraq, tales surface of Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Iraq - a country otherwise free from any foreign interference - on the tacit assumption that Washington rules the world.
In the cold war-like mentality in Washington, Tehran is portrayed as the pinnacle in the so-called Shia crescent that stretches from Iran to Hizbullah in Lebanon, through Shia southern Iraq and Syria. And again unsurprisingly, the "surge" in Iraq and escalation of threats and accusations against Iran is accompanied by grudging willingness to attend a conference of regional powers, with the agenda limited to Iraq.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2030015,00.html


Complete poppycock
Tony Blair's campaign to stamp out opium production in Afghanistan is ill-informed and fanciful.
March 9, 2007 10:32 AM | Printable version
Tony Blair is to urge his Nato allies "to take the lead in fighting the growth of opium production," so I read in my Guardian yesterday. When it comes to opium and heroin, he adopts the approach of that great philosopher and strategic thinker, the late Tommy Cooper. His approach to all his failed tricks and twists of prestidigination, you may remember, was that it all could be put right "just like that".
Tony Blair committed Britain to lead the international effort to remove Afghanistan's dependence on the narcotics trade at the Bonn conference in the aftermath of the overthrow of the Taliban and expulsion of al-Qaida in late 2001.
Five-and-a-half years on, opium production has boomed. Today Afghans are garnering their greatest poppy harvest ever - overproduction now is actually driving prices down, much to the chagrin of the Taliban now in cahoots with the drug barons. The area cultivated is up a fifth on last year at around 120,000 hectares yielding a crops worth well over $3bn, even with marked deflated prices.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/robert_fox/2007/03/opium.html


Four men, five punches and a boot: A 19-year-old woman is arrested• Guardian obtains footage of Sheffield police incident
• PC who dealt blows says he acted in self-defence
Watch the CCTV footage here

Duncan Campbell and Eric Allison
Thursday March 8, 2007
The Guardian
According to the CCTV camera that recorded the incident, the first blow was thrown at 02.18.58. Seconds later, as she was pinned down by two police officers and two nightclub staff, the young woman was hit on five further occasions. A foot then appears to be placed on her body.
The 19-year-old seems limp, and may even have been unconscious. As the officers struggle to pick her up and drag her to a waiting police van, the teenager's trousers fall round her ankles.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2028849,00.html


Super-rich get richer
In pictures: the world's richest
The rich quiz

David Teather
Friday March 9, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
The rich just keep getting richer. There are now a record 946 dollar billionaires around the globe, according to the latest Forbes ranking; making their fortunes in everything from telecoms to steel to Chinese dumplings.
For the 13th year straight, the ranking was topped by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who is rapidly becoming as well known for giving his money away as he is for accumulating it. Mr Gates' fortune rose $6bn last year to $56bn (£29bn).

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2030259,00.html



High street highs
Designed by the hottest name in British fashion; modelled by Drew Barrymore; yours for a song. Jess Cartner-Morley on Giles Deacon's New Look collection
Friday March 9, 2007
The Guardian

Click here to view more pictures

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/gallery/2007/mar/09/fashion?picture=329740256

The dresses on the right were designed by Giles Deacon, toast of London Fashion Week and the reigning British Fashion Designer of the Year. They were tweaked and accessorised by Katie Grand, editor of Pop magazine, the stylist who works her magic for, among others, Louis Vuitton and Prada. Drew Barrymore, who modelled the dresses, liked them so much she took them home to LA with her. They go on sale on Monday. But don't bother looking for them on Bond Street; instead, head to New Look, where you will find them on sale for £30 each, in sizes 8-18.


http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/fashion/story/0,,2030019,00.html


I love the Dylan and Dr Seuss mash-up
An album of Dr Seuss classics performed by a Bob Dylan soundalike makes me think there's a market in mash-ups between musicians and children's books.
What a weird and wonderful week it has been for Bob Dylan. First there's the strangely appealing combination of Bryan Ferry greasing his way through some vintage back catalogue, then the pope has at a pop at him for a 1997 gig,and now there is the quite magnificent website album Dylan Hears a Who.
We are used to hearing mash-ups - Elvis suddenly appearing halfway through a Girls Aloud track like a Cadillac shunted on to the back of a Seat Ibiza - but this is something altogether more ambitious. Here, a Bob Dylan soundalike sings a selection of Dr Seuss classics, including The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham, to the tunes of Like a Rolling Stone, Tombstone Blues and Ballad of a Thin Man.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/03/indie_music_for_kids.html




The San Francisco Chronicle

ALICIA'S STORY
Cancer. Despair. Faith. And now, a blog.
Alicia R. Parlette, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, March 9, 2007
After I started chemo on Jan. 26 in an attempt to stop the growth of cancer in my lungs and hip, I knew I didn't want to write a piece chronicling the experience. Everyone knows chemo can be awful.
The difference was that no one expected my chemo experience to be awful. It was one of the "better" chemos, all the doctors and nurses said, and I shouldn't have much nausea or vomiting.
So they were humble and guilt-ridden when I told them I had spent 48 hours bedridden -- not a moment up even to go to the bathroom -- because my head and stomach were swimming with nausea.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/09/DDGLROA6C342.DTL


Bush Hails Biofuels Pact in Brazil
President Bush on Friday denied charges that the United States under his leadership has ignored Latin America's poverty and problems. "That may be what people say but it's certainly not what the facts bear out," Bush said. "We care about our neighborhood a lot."
Bush's eighth trip to the region was widely viewed locally as a counter to efforts by the president's nemesis, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, to use his vast oil wealth to court allies. After Brazil, Bush goes to Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico.
"I don't think America gets enough credit for trying to help improve people's lives," he said.
At a mega fuel depot for tanker trucks, Bush heralded a new ethanol agreement with Brazil Friday as way to boost alternative fuels production across the Americas. Demonstrators upset with Bush's visit here worry that the president and his biofuels buddy, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, really have visions of an OPEC-like cartel on ethanol.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/03/09/international/i073141S69.DTL


Justice Dept.: FBI Misused Patriot Act
By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer
Friday, March 9, 2007
The FBI improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information about people in the United States, a Justice Department audit concluded Friday.
And for three years the FBI underreported to Congress how often it forced businesses to turn over the customer data, the audit found.
FBI Director Robert Mueller said he was to blame for not putting more safeguards into place.
"I am to be held accountable," Mueller said. He told reporters he would correct the problems and did not plan to resign.
"The inspector general went and did the audit that I should have put in place many years ago," Mueller said.
The audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine found that FBI agents sometimes demanded personal data on individuals without proper authorization. The 126-page audit also found the FBI improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/03/09/national/w073548S43.DTL


Appeals Court Overturns D.C. Gun Ban
By BRETT ZONGKER, Associated Press Writer
Friday, March 9, 2007
A federal appeals court overturned the District of Columbia's long-standing handgun ban Friday, rejecting the city's argument that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applied only to militias.
In a 2-1 decision, the judges held that the activities protected by the Second Amendment "are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual's enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued intermittent enrollment in the militia."
The court also ruled the D.C. requirement that registered firearms be kept unloaded, disassembled and under trigger lock was unconstitutional.
In 2004, a lower-court judge had told six city residents that they did not have a constitutional right to own handguns. The plaintiffs include residents of high-crime neighborhoods who wanted the guns for protection.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/03/09/national/a105206S77.DTL


4 Killed in Hawaii Helicopter Crash
By JAYMES SONG, Associated Press Writer
Friday, March 9, 2007
The three passengers killed when their tour helicopter crashed on Kauai and the three survivors were from Arkansas, California and New York, authorities said Friday.
None of the victims' names or ages was released.
The helicopter went down at Princeville Airport on Thursday shortly after its Heli-USA Airways pilot radioed that he was having problems with the hydraulics.
Witnesses reported hearing a loud boom as far as a mile away and the sound of crunching metal as the helicopter hit the ground about 200 yards from its normal landing pad. Two men and two women died, three in the crash and one on the way to a hospital.
The three survivors were flown to Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu in critical condition. The pilot didn't survive, Kauai County spokeswoman Mary Daubert said.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/03/09/national/a121157S94.DTL


Reaction to Coulter's slur hints at shift in view of gays
Wyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, March 9, 2007
When conservative commentator Ann Coulter called former Vice President Al Gore a "total fag" on national television nearly a year ago, it barely caused a stir.
Coulter's recent labeling of presidential candidate John Edwards as a "faggot," however, has triggered a huge response, including a campaign initiated today by a gay rights group and media watchdog to persuade mainstream media outlets to dump her for good.
At least four newspapers have dropped Coulter's syndicated column, and 40,000 people signed an online petition to Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes her column, demanding that it release her. Three corporations, including Verizon, stopped advertising on Coulter's Web site after she made the comment.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/09/MNGF9OID9J1.DTL


BAY AREA
BART losing revenue through ticket scams
Recent fraud find: Manipulation of magnetic strip
BART officials said Thursday that passengers who defraud the system have become increasingly creative, resulting in the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in fare-box revenue.
The latest scam that surfaced involved magnetic strips on the cards; in short, the counterfeiters took the magnetic strip on one card, cut it into smaller strips, and created multiple new cards.
Step-by-step instructions on how to create the illegitimate BART tickets were making the rounds on the Internet.
The strips determine the value of a ticket and are read by automated fare gates as passengers enter and exit BART. In January, BART engineers figured out a way to prevent the fare gates from accepting the illegal cards -- many of which were being sold on the street for less than face value.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/09/BAGREOIB221.DTL


Marin County residents, religious leaders protest immigration arrests
Chronicle Staff Report
Friday, March 9, 2007
(03-09) 09:48 PST SAN RAFAEL -- Marin County religious leaders and residents gathered today to hold a candlelight vigil in support of the large immigrant community here and to protest recent raids by federal authorities.
The early morning protests, held in Novato as well, were in response to raids earlier this week in San Rafael and Novato that led to the arrests of 30 alleged illegal immigrants, according to federal authorities.
The raids are part of an ongoing campaign, "Operation Return to Sender," to arrest illegal immigrants who are convicted criminals or have ignored deportation orders. Since it began last spring, however, many other immigration violators also have been arrested in the course of the operation.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/09/BAGRGOIGU24.DTL


Refinery profit margins double in West
It's one reason price of gas in state is up 44 cents since Feb. 1
David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, March 9, 2007
Profit margins at California's gasoline refineries are soaring. And they're taking pump prices along for the ride.
Refinery profit margins have more than doubled since last fall, according to one rough measurement, and now stand at $39 per barrel on the West Coast. That's more than double their average of $17 for the last five years.
Bulging refinery margins are one of the reasons Californians now pay $2.96 for a gallon of regular, up 44 cents since the start of February. And they play a part in record multibillion-dollar profits of major oil companies.
Californians also pay far more than drivers in other states do. The state's average now is 45 cents higher than the national average. Usually, the difference is more like 25 cents.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/03/09/MNGF9OID9N1.DTL&type=business


Can Democrats stop the war?
Friday, March 9, 2007
DEMOCRATS who control Congress are beginning to call President Bush's bluff.
Sort of.
Ever since the Democrats swept the November elections, Republicans have dared them to force a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq by cutting off funds for the war.
Now, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders have found a middle ground -- not threatening to cut off funds for the war, but linking a massive spending bill to benchmarks on the Iraqi government.
In order to get Congress to appropriate $100 billion for spending on defense and veterans, Bush would have to agree to withdraw all troops by Aug. 31, 2008 -- even if the Iraqi government were to meet a series of U.S. imposed benchmarks.
Democrats have yet to agree, however, on a unified plan. There is still a danger that this latest push to force a change in Bush's strategy in Iraq will collapse in a mess of competing Democratic strategies.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/03/09/EDGRJN7AU01.DTL


No premature pardons
Friday, March 9, 2007
PRESIDENT BUSH is coming under increasing pressure from certain conservative quarters to pardon Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who faces up to 25 years in prison after being convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice.
Bush is in no position to be granting a pardon for a simple reason: The White House has a big conflict of interest in this case.
As Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald observed during the trial, the proceedings on the relatively narrow questions of whether Libby told the truth to a grand jury was accompanied by "a cloud" over Vice President Dick Cheney's actions in an apparent attempt to discredit war critic Joseph Wilson. Juror Denis Collins suggested Libby was "the fall guy" for Cheney and White House political guru Karl Rove.
Neither Cheney nor Rove was called to testify by the defense team -- fueling suspicions that it was protecting them from harsh questioning in an effort to curry favor for a possible presidential pardon. Libby has yet to offer either the justice system or the American people a forthright account of the role of his superiors in this smarmy affair.
A pardon will assure Libby's eternal loyalty and silence on behalf of those who let him twist in the legal wind. A pardon would close a chapter on unseemly official behavior that remains woefully incomplete. It must not happen.



Cars that make hybrids look like gas guzzlers
Plug-in versions can go 100 miles on a gallon of gasoline
Sherry Boschert
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Toyota Prius owners tend to be a proud lot since they drive the fuel-efficient hybrid gas-electric car that's the darling of mainstream environmentalists and one of the hottest-selling vehicles in America. A few, however, felt that good was not good enough. They've made "improvements" even though the modifications voided parts of their warranties.
Ron Gremban of Corte Madera did it. So did Felix Kramer of Redwood City, and Sven Thesen of Palo Alto. Why? Five words: one hundred miles per gallon.
"We took the hybrid car to its logical conclusion," Kramer says, by adding more batteries and the ability to recharge by plugging into a regular electrical socket at night, making the car a plug-in hybrid.
Compared with the Prius' fuel efficiency of 50 mpg, plug-in hybrids use half as much gasoline by running more on cleaner, cheaper, domestic electricity. If owners forget to plug in overnight, it's no big deal -- the car runs like a regular hybrid.
These trendsetters monkeyed with the car for more than their own benefit. They did it to make a point: If they could make a plug-in hybrid, the major car companies could, too. And should.
Kramer, Gremban and a cadre of volunteers formed the California Cars Initiative (online at calcars.org), and in 2004 converted Gremban's Prius to a plug-in hybrid in his garage. They added inexpensive lead-acid batteries and some innovative software to fool the car's computerized controls into using more of the energy stored in the batteries, giving the car over 100 mpg in local driving and 50 to 80 mpg on the highway. The cost of conversion is about $5,000 for a do-it-yourselfer.
CalCars' efforts to publicize plug-in hybrids were so successful that in January 2006 the Bush administration lifted a photo of the car peeking out from Gremban's garage and featured it on the White House Web site as a harbinger of good cars to come. Do-it-yourselfers in Illinois and elsewhere converted their hybrids to plug-ins. Several small companies like EnergyCS in Southern California started doing small numbers of conversions for fleets and government agencies using longer-lasting, more energy-dense lithium-ion batteries.
Kramer hired EnergyCS to convert his Prius and reported on a typical day of driving. He traveled 51 miles, mostly on the highway, at fuel efficiencies of 124 mpg of gas and about a penny's worth of electricity per mile. Compared with driving his Prius before the conversion, he used 61 percent less gas and spewed out two-thirds less greenhouse gases at a total cost of $1.76 for electricity and gasoline, instead of the $3.17 it would have required on gasoline alone.
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. acquired an EnergyCS plug-in Prius conversion, too. It so impressed Thesen, a PG&E supervisor in the clean air transportation group, that he offered his privately owned Prius to CalCars as a guinea pig. Back in Gremban's garage, CalCars and the Electric Auto Association converted it in November to a plug-in with lead-acid batteries as part of a video and educational package to guide do-it-yourselfers (www.eaa-phev.org).
Support for plug-in hybrids from a utility like PG&E, which still produces 45 percent of its electricity from polluting fossil fuels, makes some environmentalists nervous. The data on plug-in hybrids, however, have calmed their fears. On the U.S. electrical grid, which gets more than half of its power from dirty, nasty coal, plug-in cars produce fewer overall emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants than do other cars.
California's grid uses less coal, which makes plug-in cars even cleaner. As more wind and solar power get added to the energy mix, driving on electricity gets cleaner still. Driving on gasoline will only get dirtier as conventional sources dry up and we desperately turn to hard-to-extract oil that requires lots of energy to get at, producing lots more pollution.
Enthusiasm over plug-in hybrids has created strange bedfellows. Perched somewhat uneasily alongside PG&E and the former oil man in the White House, Sierra Club leaders representing 13 chapters in California and Nevada adopted a resounding endorsement of plug-in hybrids in the past year.
Former Sierra Club President Larry Fahn has been looking for a mechanic to convert his Prius for more than a year. Therein lies the problem. People want plug-in hybrids but can't get them. Dealers don't sell them yet, and the few conversion services cater to fleets.
There are only a few dozen plug-in hybrids in the world, while demand for them is growing rapidly. The city of Austin, Texas, which uses more renewable power than any other U.S. city, started a Plug-in Partners Campaign and gathered more than 8,000 advance orders for plug-in hybrids. In the Bay Area, San Francisco, Alameda, Berkeley and Marin County signed on as Plug-in Partners.
Are the automakers listening? Maybe.
Several showed plug-in hybrid prototypes in the 1990s but cast them aside during their battle to weaken California's Zero-Emission Vehicle Mandate. Stung by bad publicity from the 2006 documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?", General Motors reversed course and showed the prototype plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt at a January auto show. In the past year, at least six major car companies have said they're developing plug-in vehicles, including Toyota officials, who seem none too happy about amateurs messing with the Prius.
Plug-in hybrids won't hit the market, though, until better batteries are developed, the automakers say. That doesn't sit well with drivers like Marc Geller of San Francisco, who co-founded the nonprofit group Plug In America (www.pluginamerica.org). The nickel-metal hydride batteries in Gellers' all-electric 2002 Toyota RAV4-EV give the compact SUV plenty of power, take him all over the Bay Area, and are expected to last the life of the car, based on utility company fleet tests.
Consumers appear to have three options to hasten the arrival of plug-in hybrids: Demand them ("Tell the automakers that you won't buy a new car unless it has a plug on it," Geller says), or push for government incentives or interventions. (The California Air Resources Board is planning to revise the zero-emissions mandate this year.)
Or, build your own plug-in hybrid.
Sherry Boschert is the author of "Plug-in Hybrids: The Cars That Will Recharge America" and a member of Plug In America. She will speak about renewable energy and plug-in cars at a free public event on Thursday at 7 p.m. at Sierra Club headquarters, 85 Second St., third floor, San Francisco. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/03/04/ING44OD4AS1.DTL




Vote Online for Oddest Book Title

(03-09) 10:36 PST LONDON, United Kingdom (AP) --
"How Green Were the Nazis?" could be the title to beat this year for the Bookseller/Diagram Prize for oddest book title.
The book by Thomas Zeller, Franz-Josef Bruggemeier and Mark Cioc is billed as the first to examine the environmental policies of the Third Reich. It is published by Ohio University Press.
Other nominees announced Friday:
"The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: a guide to field identification," by Julian Montague.
"Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan," by Robert Chenciner, Gabib Ismailov, Magomedkhan Magomedkhanov and Alex Binnie.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/03/09/entertainment/e103618S50.DTL&type=entertainment

continued ...

 

March 8, 2007

 

March 8, 2007

The Franz Josef Glacier is a temperate glacier leading to rainforests

 

"South West New Zealand World Heritage Area, where you'll find the ancient Franz Josef Glaciers nestled amidst primeval rainforest. Here the lakes, rivers, forests and beaches of an untamed, yet accessible wilderness, are as pure as you will find anywhere."

The photo above was taken in 2001.

What is the difference between this picture and the picture below?

The people in the picture below would be standing at the base, also called terminus, of the glacier in the picture above.

 

The subtly of Human Induced Global Warming

March 8, 2007

New Zealand's South Island, Franz Josef Glacier

Photographer states :: Trekking to the Franz Joseph Glacier.

THE DIFFERENCE between the two pictures is the amount of recharge at the top of the glacier. The noted amount of exposed rock above the 'plateau' is greater in 2007 than in 2001. Why? Because the amount of snow the glacier is receiving at it's origins or peak is less and hence over time there is far less glacier.

Ice is frozen water. Ice flows just like water but over a longer period of time. Therefore, gravity has pulled and the weight of the ice has pushed the terminus to the same location, but, the entire mass of the glacier is less due to the lack of new snow (recharge) to the glacier.

To the average person, Franz Joseph Glacier doesn't really appear to be affected. But, in actuality when closely inspected, even without detailed scientific measurements over time, it is clear Franz Joseph Glacier is very different.

If there were pictures from decades ago, the difference would be remarkable.

Morning Papers - continued

New Zealand Herald

Australian stocks: Close down on back of Asian weakness
9:10PM Thursday March 01, 2007
PERTH - The Australian stock market closed in negative territory, with falls on Asian markets again dragging the bourse into the red.
The benchmark S&P/ASX200 index shed 22.3 points to 5810.2 while the all ordinaries lost 18.1 points to 5798.4.
At 1620 AEDT on the Sydney Futures Exchange, the March share price index contract gained 13 points to 5815 on a volume of 29,926 contracts.
It came after yesterday's sell-off, the biggest one-day drop on the Australian share market since the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
Man Financial broker Anthony Anderson said the market recovered some ground early but falls on the Asian markets again weighed on the local bourse.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/3/story.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10426566


NZ shares weather China storm
5:00AM Thursday March 01, 2007
By Liam Dann  and Christopher Niesche
New Zealand shares dropped sharply when the market opened yesterday, falling as much as 3.3 per cent. Photo / Kenny Rodger
The New Zealand market stood firm in the wake of the Chinese equity slump which sent shockwaves around the world yesterday, but market players warn more volatility is likely.
Indeed, the 1.5 per cent fall in the NZX50 index - one of the smallest drops around the world - could be a healthy dose of medicine for a market which, while fundamentally sound, was in danger of getting ahead of itself, NZX watchers say.
"This is a non-panic situation and that's reflected in the fact that stocks are starting to recover," the head of equities at ABN Amro, James Miller, said yesterday afternoon. "In actual fact, a small correction to bring valuations back to more prudent levels is probably a good thing."
Miller said New Zealand stocks were likely to be shielded from the worst of any falls in China.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/3/story.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10426396


Currency: NZ dollar regains stability after dive
Email this storyPrint this story 6:40PM Thursday March 01, 2007
The New Zealand dollar regained stability today after a volatile session yesterday when it lost heavily to the yen and greenback.
Currency markets took their lead from equity markets which settled after the turmoil precipitated by Tuesday's 9 per cent fall in the Shanghai sharemarket.
Comments by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke that it was "reasonable" to expect stronger growth later in the year helped soothe markets despite a spate of weak economic US data.
The kiwi closed in the local market on US70.05c, virtually unchanged from yesterday. It was steady against the yen on 82.80 and a touch firmer against the Australian dollar on A89.15c.
Although there was a world swing against carry trade currencies such as the kiwi on Tuesday and yesterday, it proved to be short-lived.
Demand for uridashi bonds - issued in Japan but denominated in the New Zealand dollar - was as rampant as ever with $812 million of new issues announced overnight.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/3/story.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10426523


China reins in rich and famous on one-child policy
Email this storyPrint this story 9:00PM Thursday March 01, 2007
BEIJING - China plans to punish celebrities and wealthy Chinese who breach the world's most populous country's "one-child" policy by paying to have more children, a newspaper said on Thursday.
The rich and famous would face "double punishment" -- fines and a ban from accepting any "future awards" if they broke the law, the Beijing News said. It did not elaborate.
"We found out that most celebrities and rich people have two children, and 10 per cent of them have three," it quoted Yu Xuejun, a senior official at the National Population and Family Planning Commission, as saying.
"The phenomenon must be stopped."
China launched the controversial one-child policy in the early 1980s to curb its population, now over 1.3 billion.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10426533


Bill sets out to overhaul military prosecutions
Email this storyPrint this story 7:00PM Thursday March 01, 2007
Legislation overhauling courts martial for military personnel has been introduced to Parliament.
The Armed Forces Law Reform Bill says it intends to overhaul all existing legislation relating to military prosecutions to follow international developments and make sure it complies with the Bill of Rights Act.
Many of the pieces of legislation governing military prosecutions predate the 1990 Act.
Among its provisions the legislation would set up a Court Martial of New Zealand to try serious cases across the armed forces.
The court would have a chief judge and six other judges.
The bill also allows for the appointment of a director of military prosecutions who would decide on whether someone should be committed for trial and on what charges.
The bill would also line up the "summary disposal" regime among the different arms of the military.
Summary disposals are hearings for less serious offences.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10426508



Tornado death toll hits 20 in USA
9:00AM Saturday March 03, 2007
A television still shows people sifting through damage caused by tornadoes that swept across the southern United States. Photo / Reuters
ATLANTA - Tornadoes across the southern United States killed at least 20 people as they tore up a hospital and high school where students huddled for shelter, authorities said today, a day after the rampage.
The toll from the severe weather could rise. The US Coast Guard said six people were missing Friday after their 23-foot (7-metre) vessel began taking on water in stormy seas off Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, on Thursday night.
The tornadoes killed nine people in Georgia, where a hospital was hit, and 10 people in two southern Alabama towns, officials said.
The powerful storms, which levelled scores of homes while flipping cars into the air and leaving thousands stranded without power, also killed a young girl in a mobile home in Missouri, the officials said.
In Georgia, two died in the town of Americus when the Sumter Regional Hospital was hit by a tornado, and six died, including two children, in hard-hit Baker County. The ninth fatality was in Taylor County, a north of Americus, said state emergency management official Michael Parker.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10426826



Bush gets first-hand look at tornado damage
8:16AM Sunday March 04, 2007
By Tabassum Zakaria
President Bush walks through the tornado-damaged Enterprise High School in Alabama. Photo / Reuters
ENTERPRISE, Alabama - US president George Bush got a first-hand look this morning (NZ time) at the damage from deadly tornadoes in the southern United States and said while buildings could be rebuilt the biggest impact was on shattered lives.
Bush got an aerial view of the region by helicopter and walked over glass-strewn rubble at Enterprise High School where eight students were killed when the storms struck on Thursday. Enterprise was in the area of Alabama that was hardest hit.
"Today I have walked through devastation that is hard to describe," Bush said after touring the school, including the hallway where the students were killed.
He pointed to the twisted metal remains of the science wing where 100 students were trapped but survived, and said, "One hundred kids got out of here alive, which is a miracle."
Bush approved a disaster declaration for the county where Enterprise is located which allows victims to apply for up to US$28,200 in federal assistance per household.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10426930


Select committee to hold inquiry into housing affordability
4:40PM Thursday March 01, 2007
Parliament's commerce select committee has decided to hold an inquiry into housing affordability.
National's housing spokesman, Phil Heatley, wrote to the committee last week asking for an inquiry.
Property prices throughout the country were demoralising for young people, and the relationship between incomes, prices and interest rates should be investigated, he said.
Prime Minister Helen Clark said an inquiry was not needed, and the Government was already doing what it could to ensure housing was affordable.
But Labour does not have a majority on the nine-member committee, and the decision to hold the inquiry was made at a meeting today.
Chairman Gerry Brownlee said terms of reference had not yet been determined, and the committee had not decided whether it would call for public submissions.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10426496


Prodi wins confidence vote, remains Italian PM
12:45PM Thursday March 01, 2007
By Silvia Aloisi
ROME - Romano Prodi won a confidence vote in Italy's upper house today to stay on as prime minister, but an opinion poll suggested his grip on power would remain weak.
Prodi resigned last week after only nine months in office when some members on the left of his coalition, ranging from Roman Catholics to communist, voted against him in the Senate over foreign policy.
He was given a second chance by President Giorgio Napolitano after he rallied his fractious allies, playing on their fears that his premature political demise would clear the way for former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to return to power.
To stay on, Prodi had to prove he could command enough support in the upper house, where his bloc has a flimsy majority.
He won today's vote by 162

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10426445


IBM to pipe Google gadgets into company sites
9:35AM Thursday March 01, 2007
By Eric Auchard
SAN FRANCISCO - IBM has reached a deal with Google Inc. to bring the consumer internet into the office by piping YouTube and thousands of other Web programs into IBM software used by millions of office workers.
The pact brings together Google, one of the world's most popular consumer Web technology companies, and IBM, the biggest supplier of employee portal software which big businesses use to offer a kind of personalised home page for office workers.
In coming months, millions of users of IBM WebSphere will be able to choose from 4,000 existing Google Gadgets services -- mini-Web applications that users can add with the click of a button onto public sites or internal office intranets.
These include practical business applications such as maps, language translators, package delivery trackers or instantly updating weather and news services, audio search or Wikipedia.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10426446


Scientists develop new ultra-thin material
10:20AM Thursday March 01, 2007
Scientists in Europe have developed an ultra-thin material only one atom thick, which they believe could be used to make super fast electronic components.
The new material could also pave the way for medical breakthroughs helping speed up the development of drugs.
Science journal Nature today released the findings of a team of researchers from the University of Manchester and the Max-Planck Institute in Germany.
The physicists have successfully created a membrane only one atom thick that is capable of existing in a free state.
Two years ago, scientists discovered a new class of material called two-dimensional atomic crystals, essentially a sheet of single atoms.
However, there was some doubt over whether the membrane could exist in a free state without the support of other materials.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10426451


NZ women close the gap
5:00AM Sunday March 04, 2007
By Nicola Shepheard
New Zealand is among the top 10 countries in narrowing the gender gap, says a major new report. But we're still some way off true equality of the sexes.
The Gender Gap Index 2006, a collaboration between Harvard University, London Business School and World Economics Forum, said New Zealand had the seventh-smallest gap between men and women out of 115 countries.
The index measured gaps in economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival and political empowerment.
Our overall score was 0.714, where 1 represented total equality.
We were particularly strong in political empowerment and education, and had relatively more women in high-skilled professions than any other country.
Predictably, Scandinavian countries dominated the top five, with Sweden coming first with a score of 0.813. The United Kingdom came ninth, Australia 15th and the United States 23rd. No country scored a perfect one.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10426903



Teacher-student affair all over the internet
5:00AM Sunday March 04, 2007
By Miles Erwin
Schoolgirl Chelsea Havard and her drama-teacher lover Luke McIndoe
A 16-year-old student who ran off with her drama teacher after their four-month affair was discovered by students has been playing out the drama on the internet.
Luke McIndoe, a 24-year-old drama teacher at Wairarapa College, fled Masterton with Chelsea Havard, a student from his drama class, on February 21. The pair's relationship was discovered by other students - but, unwilling to face the music, they moved to Wellington where she's enrolled at Wellington High and he's playing in a band.
It is the fifth case of a teacher-student relationship made public in the past seven months - a number parent groups say is unacceptable.
Left in the wake of the modern-day elopement are Chelsea's family, her furious boyfriend Daniel Nixon and McIndoe's career. He's quit his job and it's unlikely he will ever teach again.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10426928


Condom care urged
Email this storyPrint this story 5:00AM Sunday March 04, 2007
NEW YORK - Many young men could use more instruction on proper condom use, according to the lead author of a new study that found nearly one in three experienced recent condom breakage.
Dr R Crosby of the University of Kentucky said men should also be instructed to avoid letting teeth, nails or other sharp objects to come in contact with a condom, and should never use scissors to open a package. He said sexually transmitted disease clinics should provide a range of sizes and brands so men can find the best fit.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10426876


They do it for the love of dancing - yeah right
5:00AM Sunday March 04, 2007
By Jonathan Marshall
Greer Robson with Dancing with the Stars partner, and last year's winner, Aaron Gilmore. Photo / Doug Sherring
For Greer Robson, Dancing with the Stars was to be a waltz in the park.
But the former Shortland Street actress stumbled on day one of the job when faced with the question: "Why do you like ballroom dancing?"
Enter publicist Corey Cooper, who said the Herald on Sunday's question line was too tough for Robson, of Celebrity Treasure Island fame. Cooper also said Robson would not be able to discuss her two children as an exclusive deal had been done with glossy women's magazine, Next.
Robson - who has chosen the family advice service Parents Inc as the charity to benefit from her appearance - said she hoped to take away some "great friendships" and "an amazing experience" from working on the show.
"I'm really, really, looking forward to learning to dance, I've always been interested in ballroom," she told the Herald on Sunday.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10426918


Here come the Bryde's whales
Email this storyPrint this story 5:00AM Sunday March 04, 2007
By Michelle Coursey
Auckland's own local whale variety - the little known Bryde's whale - is making a comeback to the Hauraki Gulf.
The Bryde's whale, which is a member of the same group as the humpback and blue whales, is being seen more frequently in the waters around Auckland.
Bryde's are some of the least-studied whales in the world. However, a new study has shown there are many living in the oceans around the north of the North Island, and particularly in the Hauraki Gulf.
British researcher Nicky Wiseman has spent the past four years studying Bryde's whales for her PhD thesis at Auckland University.
After travelling out with Auckland's Dolphin and Whale Safari almost every day for the first year, and several times a week for the past two years, she has identified 67 adult whales in the gulf, but says there are more she has not been able to identify.
Wiseman has become "quite fond" of her large subjects.
She has a photo identification system, cataloguing the whales according to their unique dorsal fins, and has even named some. One is called Tin Tin, and another, whose fin has a tear in it, she calls Ripper.

There have been more frequent sightings of the whales since Wiseman started her research in the Hauraki Gulf in 2003. She says this is probably a combination of rising whale numbers and the team becoming better at finding them.
William Goodfellow, managing director of Explore NZ which runs the dolphin and whale safaris and which partially funded Wiseman's research, says they have been seeing more whales.
"One of the biggest battles is convincing locals the whales are there. There is a misconception in Auckland that you have to go to Kaikoura to see whales, but we see them just as often here."
The whales were once hunted from the Great Barrier Island whaling station, but only when other species had disappeared from the area. The station closed in 1962 when the animals ran out.
The Bryde's whale is still targeted by Japanese whalers for their scientific research programme.
Associate director of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University, Scott Baker - who was Wiseman's academic superviser - says the research she has carried out "is beginning to shed light on the feeding behaviour, diet, social organisation and reproduction of this poorly known species".
He points out the whales are vulnerable to being struck by ships or entangled in nets.
Wiseman says the busy nature of the gulf means that Bryde's whales face threats, particularly as many fishermen don't realise they are there.
Bryde's whale
* Pronounced broo-das, the Bryde's whale was named after Johan Bryde, who set up the whaling station in South Africa where they were first noted and described.
* Bryde's whales can grow up to 15m, and weigh up to 20 tonnes.
* They can be seen in the Hauraki Gulf in spring, summer and often in winter and autumn.
* They live in the oceans between 40 degrees north or south, and do not perform long migrations, unlike other baleen whales.
* They are similar to Sei whales, but can be identified by three prominent longitudinal ridges on the rostrum - the head behind the blowhole - which are evident when the whale surfaces.
* They feed on schools of sardines, anchovies, herring or mackerel. They travel as solitary animals, or in small groups of two or three.
* They are listed with the World Conservation Union (IUCN) as "data deficient".

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10426904


British diplomats captured in Ethiopia
2:00PM Saturday March 03, 2007
By Cahal Milmo
Local women walk along a street in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia . Photo / Reuers
Three British officials were among 15 Western tourists being held yesterday by kidnappers in a remote corner of Ethiopia dubbed the "land of death" because of its extreme climate.
The Britons, who have links to the British embassy in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, were in one of two convoys intercepted on Wednesday in the barren Afar region close to the border with Eritrea roamed by separatist rebels and bandits.
Whitehall sources said last night that there was a "national security dimension" to the kidnappings and that the government's emergency committee, Cobra, had met over the incident.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10426834


Smoking warning
5:00AM Sunday March 04, 2007
WASHINGTON - Women who smoke while pregnant may cause permanent cardiovascular damage to their children that could heighten the offspring's risk of a stroke and heart attack, researchers said yesterday.
The new Dutch study showed that, as young adults, these children tended to have thicker walls of the carotid arteries in the neck, which can be used to determine a person's susceptibility to hardening of the arteries.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10426875


14 Iraqi police dead, Qaeda claims kidnapped
2:20PM Saturday March 03, 2007
IBAGHDAD - Iraqi police found the bodies of 14 policemen on Friday, all shot in the head, and an al Qaeda-linked group said it had killed them to avenge the alleged rape of a woman last month.
Police said the bodies were discovered close to Baquba, the provincial capital of Diyala province, not far from where the men disappeared on Thursday.
A group called the Islamic State in Iraq said in an internet statement it had kidnapped 18 men working for the Shi'ite-dominated Interior Ministry following "the rape of our sister ... Sabreen Janabi".
The group later said it had killed them all after the government ignored demands it made for their release.
Janabi has said she was raped by officers from the Shi'ite-dominated police force. The government says medical records show she was not raped.
In Baghdad, where US and Iraqi troops are engaged in a major security crackdown, police said a car bomb killed 10 people and wounded 17 when it ripped through a used car market in Sadr City, a stronghold of the Mehdi Army, a Shi'ite militia.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10426837


US Army secretary quits in veterans scandal
11:00AM Saturday March 03, 2007
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Photo / Reuters
IWASHINGTON - US Army Secretary Francis Harvey has resigned after reports that troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan were being poorly treated at the Army's top hospital, Defence Secretary Robert Gates said today.
The resignation of Harvey, the top civilian at the Pentagon overseeing the army, was announced a day after the head of the Walter Reed Medical Centre hospital was fired.
Gates said problems at the Washington hospital were due to leadership.
"I am disappointed that some in the Army have not adequately appreciated the seriousness of the situation pertaining to outpatient care at Walter Reed," Gates said.
"Some have shown too much defensiveness and have not shown enough focus on digging into and addressing the problems."
Gates said a new permanent chief of the medical centre would be announced later today.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10426829


Recovering Castro 'Much stronger'
Email this storyPrint this story 9:15AM Saturday March 03, 2007
Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque says the country's ailing leader is mending so well he may retake the reins of the Americas' only communist country.
Fidel Castro "has gained weight, is much stronger", Roque said.
Castro, 80, underwent intestinal surgery in July and handed over power to his brother Raul Castro, 75.
- Agencies

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10426738


Climate change leaves wildlife confused and under the weather
5:00AM Friday March 09, 2007
By Terry Kirby
Britain's wildlife is sending out a clear message about the seriousness of climate change as its life cycles are thrown into confusion, often with fatal results.
Across the country mammals, reptiles, birds and insects have been prompted by the very mild winter, so far the second mildest on record, into emerging from shelter and starting their breeding seasons long before they should.
As a result they are getting caught out when the weather turns cold again, or just as harmfully, wet - and the young of many species are dying. Baby hedgehogs, baby squirrels, even baby grass snakes are being found in distressed conditions in many places.
The disturbing trend is emerging as climate change once again moves to the political centre stage.
The Government's long-awaited climate change bill will be published next week, Environment Minister Lord Rooker announced yesterday.
Delays in the preparation of the bill have led to questions being asked about the Government's commitment to tackling global warming.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10427839


Cyclone George death toll climbs to three
2:30PM Friday March 09, 2007
By Adam Gartrell
PERTH - At least three people are believed to have died when category four Cyclone George slammed into Western Australia's north overnight, says Premier Alan Carpenter.
Category four cyclone George crossed the coast east of Port Hedland at about 10pm (WDT), tearing off roofs, mangling fences, downing trees over power lines and cutting off power and phone services to most local towns.
Emergency services said they were expecting "lots of injuries" and were preparing to fly rescuers to the Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) rail construction camp.
But rescue attempts were being hampered by continuing strong winds as the cyclone moved south.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10427914


Huge river cut to a trickle in Australia
5:00AM Friday March 09, 2007
Australia's longest river has lost half its natural water and it is predicted to dry up by a further 20 per cent because of climate change by 2030.
The 2739km Darling River, the lifeblood for some important farmlands, loses the equivalent of four Sydney Harbours worth of water, or a quarter of its flow, each year through evaporation, according to a report.
The State of the Darling, released yesterday, paints a picture of a river under threat from global warming-induced drought, lower rainfalls and decades of poor water management.
"The result is that average [Darling River] outflows to the Murray [River] are now less than half the volume they would be under natural conditions," said the report. Australia is in the grip of the worst drought in 100 years and Prime Minister John Howard announced plans in January to spend more than A$10 billion ($11.5 billion) to restore ailing rivers.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10427836


Howard urged to tackle whaling on Japan visit
4:35PM Friday March 09, 2007
By Vincent Morello
SYDNEY - Greenpeace and federal Labor have urged Prime Minister John Howard to try to pressure Japan to end its whaling program when he visits the country next week.
Greenpeace also will take the fight to Japan, sending its anti-whaling ship Esperanza from Sydney to Tokyo next week.
The Japanese whaling fleet cut short a whale hunt in the Southern Ocean late last month after a fire broke out on its processing ship, the Nisshin Maru.
One crew member died and the ship was temporarily disabled, forcing its departure a month earlier than scheduled.
Greenpeace estimates the ships' early departure probably saved 500 minke whales.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10427956


Australian stocks: Close slightly higher, lacks drive
8:30PM Friday March 09, 2007
The Australian stock market managed a slightly higher close today despite falling away in afternoon trading.
The major banks and key resources stocks were mixed.
CMC Markets senior dealer James Foulsham said the local bourse had a solid lead from United States markets overnight.
But given recent volatile trading, investors were awaiting the release of more economic data from the US before making any firm commitments.
"Trading was quiet," Mr Foulsham said.
"Traders are holding the largest positions in both the finance sector and resources.
"Though we have seen a bit of a flight to security, there is still a great deal of interest in lots of the miners."

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/3/story.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10427997


Rescue teams hunt for survivors of Indonesia quake
5:00AM Thursday March 08, 2007
PADANG - Aid began to flow to survivors of deadly earthquakes in Indonesia's West Sumatra as rescue teams searched frantically for victims who may still be trapped beneath the rubble of collapsed buildings.
Officials said that between 70 and 100 people were killed by Tuesday's two quakes, which were also felt in neighbouring Singapore and Malaysia, but many more were injured and thousands spent a night in the open, frightened of further tremors.
The disaster management agency in West Sumatra province, where the 6.4 magnitude quake and another measuring 6.3 were centred, put the confirmed death figure at 72.
Thousands of people in Sumatra were camped in tents outside their homes or in open fields.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=68&objectid=10427665


Photos: Indonesia quake toll rises to 70
A boy walks through the wreckage of a restaurant in Solok. Photo / Reuters
7:10AM Wednesday March 07, 2007
By John Nedy
PADANG, Indonesia - The death toll from a strong earthquake and a powerful aftershock that hit Indonesia's Sumatra island yesterday has risen to about 70.
Hundreds of people have been forced to camp out in tents or open fields after their homes were flattened.
As night fell, authorities said dozens were feared still trapped under the rubble in West Sumatra province.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=68&objectid=10427399


350 insurance claims made after Auckland earthquake
5:00AM Friday March 09, 2007
By Martha McKenzie-Minifie
Around 350 insurance claims from as far south as the Western Bay of Plenty have been lodged following the earthquakes that rocked Auckland late last month - and more are expected.
The value of the claims to date total about $1.3 million, with the majority for damage to interior walls, floors or ceilings. Others included claims for damage to exterior walls and foundations.
Earthquake Commission claims manager Keith Long said the largest claim was estimated to cost $25,000.
He said claims continued to be made, with around a dozen new ones lodged yesterday.
Auckland was rocked by three earthquakes on February 21, the strongest measuring 4.5 on the Richter scale.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=68&objectid=10427862


Rise in domestic tourism
2:24PM Friday March 09, 2007
Domestic tourists within New Zealand spent $7.2 billion in the past year -- a 7.5 per cent boost -- the Tourism Ministry has estimated.
Tourism Minister Damien O'Connor welcomed the rise, which was for the year ending September 30, 2006.
"This really is great news for local businesses after a couple of patchy years of growth in domestic spend."
However, he said some of the rise would be due to increased fuel costs being passed on to tourists.
The Tourism Ministry figures are based on a telephone survey of 15,000 New Zealand residents.


Banks lift floating mortgage rates
2:42PM Friday March 09, 2007
Three of the main trading banks lifted their floating mortgage lending rates today in response to the Reserve Bank's lift in the cash rate yesterday.
ANZ, National and Westpac lifted their rates, in line with the Reserve Bank's quarter point rise, to 9.8 per cent.
That's the highest level floating rates have been at since the Labour Party came to power in 1999.
Kiwibank said it was inevitable it would have to raise its variable rate, currently on 9.0 per cent, while ASB said it was keeping its rate on hold at 9.55 per cent for the meantime.


Video: World's 20 richest revealed
12:58PM Friday March 09, 2007
Once again, Bill Gates of Microsoft sits atop the list.
NEW YORK - The world's richest are getting younger and richer with more Russians and Indians cropping up among the 946 people on Forbes magazine's 2007 billionaires list unveiled today.
The number of billionaires is 19 per cent higher than last year when there were 793, and their total net worth grew 35 per cent to $3.5 trillion, the magazine said.
The average billionaire's age fell by two years to 62, and 60 per cent started with very little. Two-thirds of those on the list were richer, with net worth up for nearly everyone in the top 50.
"This is the richest year ever in human history," said Forbes Chief Executive Steve Forbes. "Never in history has there been such a notable advance."

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/3/story.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10427933



Water cooler legionella case may be world first
5:25PM Friday March 09, 2007
CHRISTCHURCH - Legionella bacteria detected in a Christchurch Hospital office-type water cooler filter may be the first case of its type in the world, health officials say.
They are warning businesses to check office water cooler filters after the find.
Testing was done at the hospital last October after a patient showed symptoms of legionnaires disease and one of 14 office-style water coolers was found to have a "significant level" of legionella bacteria in a filter.
Canterbury District Health Board spokeswoman Michele Hider told NZPA the bacteria found in the water filter was different to the type that had affected the female patient and the testing had been done as a precaution.
She said there was no evidence to suggest the water cooler was linked to any hospital patients or visitors becoming unwell.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10427961



Bush should be given 'gold medal for hypocrisy' - Chavez
5:15PM Friday March 09, 2007
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Photo / Reuters
BUENOS AIRES - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said today George W. Bush should be given "the gold medal for hypocrisy" as the US president embarked on a tour of Latin America aimed at making new friends.
Leftist Chavez, Washington's leading foe in the region, is on a one-day visit to Buenos Aires, where he will lead thousands of leftists on Friday in a soccer stadium rally that will coincide with Bush's arrival in neighboring Uruguay.
"You've got to give the US president the gold medal for hypocrisy, because he's said now he's worried about poverty in Latin America," Chavez told reporters soon after landing in Buenos Aires.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10427960


'Demonising' drugs does more harm than good
10:25AM Friday March 09, 2007
What do you think? Should drug laws be relaxed because drugs are prevalent and, at times, "harmless".
Drug laws are driven by "moral panic" says a new study which concludes that most drugs have been wrongly "demonised".
An independent study also recommended the setting up of "shooting galleries" where users can inject drugs safely.
The two year study by the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, or RSA argued that "whether we like it or not, drugs are and will remain a fact of life".
"On that basis, the aim of the law should be to reduce the amounts of harms caused to individuals, their friends and families, their children and their communities."

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10427906


Sex makes women sexier, finds study
12:50PM Friday March 09, 2007
Having sex makes women feel sexier, according to new Canadian research showing intercourse raises their testosterone levels.
Sexual activity boosts levels of the hormone in everyone -- men, women, gay or straight -- but in women it also fuels their desire for more sex, increases their chance of orgasm and heightens belief in their own sexiness.
The findings are among the first to suggest that men and women can alter their own hormone levels based on how often they cuddle or copulate.
The team from Simon Fraser University came to their conclusions by examining testosterone levels in 49 women before and after cuddling, intercourse and exercise.
Subjects experienced higher levels of the hormone just before and after cuddling and intercourse.
And the bigger the rise, the greater the likelihood that the woman experienced an orgasm and felt more sexually attractive the next day, researchers found.


Anne Frank diary burners sentenced by German court
11:15AM Friday March 09, 2007
BERLIN - A German court gave five far-right supporters in eastern Germany nine-month suspended sentences today for ceremonially burning a copy of the diary of Holocaust victim Anne Frank.
The five men, aged between 24 and 29, were found guilty of incitement and desecration of the dead by a court in the eastern town of Schoenebeck. Two other defendants were acquitted for lack of evidence.
The incident took place in February of last year during a summer solstice celebration in the eastern German village of Pretzien near Magdeburg.
According to news reports, one of the men cast the diary into the flames and said: "I commit Anne Frank to the fire," borrowing words used by the Nazis in 1933. They also burnt an American flag.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10427898


Ex-minister found guilty over arming East Timor hit squads
8:40AM Thursday March 08, 2007
DILI - A stern message from a Dili court for former interior minister and strongman Rogerio Lobato has relieved political tension in the East Timor capital.
Lobato was sentenced to 7-1/2 years in jail for arming civilians during last year's violence, which has left East Timor chronically unstable and divided.
The court's front seats were lined with leaders of Lobato's governing Fretilin party, including ex-prime minister Mari Alkatiri and his former Finance Minister Madalena Boavida.
With presidential party elections only a month away, Lobato's standing as deputy leader of the party was of keen interest. It is fielding parliamentary speaker Francisco Guterres as its candidate.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=171&objectid=10427710


Fijian women have been sexually molested, says US report
6:10PM Wednesday March 07, 2007
Fijian Army personnel walk the streets of Suva. Photo / Greg Bowker
Fijian women have been sexually molested for speaking out against the country's military coup, while other protesters have been beaten and intimidated, the United States says in a scathing report.
In its latest human rights report on Fiji, the US Department of State (DoS) said human rights had deteriorated sharply since the December 5 coup.
The report released yesterday painted a picture of dramatic change in Fiji since the coup, in which Fiji's military leader Commodore Frank Bainimarama took power.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=171&objectid=10427608


US polygamist sect leader Jeffs faces new charge
2:20PM Thursday March 08, 2007
SALT LAKE CITY - A federal grand jury in Utah has indicted US polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs on an additional charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.
Jeffs, arrested in August after two years on the run, is the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or FLDS, which split from the mainstream Mormon Church when it banned plural marriage more than a century ago.
Jeffs was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List for four months until his capture in a routine traffic stop outside of Las Vegas in August 2006. He is in jail awaiting trial on felony rape charges.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=301&objectid=10427758


Jordan's king urges US to work on peace
10:15AM Thursday March 08, 2007
By Susan Cornwell
King Abdullah told US lawmakers regional division was due to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. Photo / Reuters
WASHINGTON - King Abdullah of Jordan has urged the United States to exert new leadership in the Middle East and said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is still the core problem.
Speaking to a joint session of the US House of Representatives and Senate, Abdullah noted that 11 US presidents and 30 Congresses had already wrestled with the dispute and said it could not be left once more to a future generation.
"Let us say together: 'No more!' Let us say together: 'Let's solve this!' Let us say together: 'Yes, we will achieve this!'" he declared.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=171&objectid=10427726


Northern Ireland votes in assembly election
12:45PM Wednesday March 07, 2007
By Anne Cadwallader
Ian Paisley's Protestant DUP party is expected to do well as is the IRA's Sinn Fein. Photo / Reuters
BELFAST - People in Northern Ireland are due to vote in an election that could allow the return of a government shared between Protestants and Catholics and help cement a lasting political settlement after decades of conflict.
Britain and Ireland hope the assembly election will lead to a power-sharing agreement by March 26 and have threatened to impose indefinite direct rule from London with more input from Dublin if there is no deal by the deadline.
The last 108-member assembly did not even manage to sit for a whole day after it was elected in 2003.
A 1998 peace deal ended 30 years of conflict in which 3600 people were killed, but there is still no agreement on how the province should be run between Protestants who want to maintain union with Britain and Catholics seeking a united Ireland.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=171&objectid=10427452


Attacks kill more than 100 Shi'ite pilgrims in Iraq
10:10AM Wednesday March 07, 2007
By Habib al-Zubaidi
A wounded pilgrim lies in hospital in Baghdad. Photo / Reuters
Hilla, Iraq - Insurgents killed 149 Shi'ite pilgrims heading for the holy Iraqi city of Kerbala overnight, including 115 when two suicide bombers blew themselves up in one of the deadliest attacks of the four-year war.
The attacks, just over a year after the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in the city of Samarra on Tuesday local time, are likely to increase sectarian tensions between majority Shi'ites and Sunni Arabs that are pushing the country to the brink of all-out civil war.
Two suicide bombers strapped with explosives detonated themselves almost simultaneously in a busy street lined with tents in the city of Hilla, south of Baghdad, killing 115 people, local hospital officials said.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=301&objectid=10427422


Pilgrims undeterred by bombers' carnage
5:00AM Friday March 09, 2007
The United States' Baghdad battle plan has not been able to prevent almost daily bombings. Photo / Reuters
More than a million Shiite Muslim pilgrims have poured into Iraq's holy city of Karbala, defying sectarian attacks that have killed about 200 people in two days of bloodshed.
A suicide bomber killed at least 26 people in a cafe north of Baghdad in Diyala province, which has seen frequent sectarian violence.
The bomber targeted a neighbourhood in the town of Balad Ruz where Shiite Kurds live.
And at least 25 Shiite pilgrims were killed as they streamed into Karbala, including 10 by a car bomb in southern Baghdad that also left 12 Iraqi police dead.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10427856


Scientology could have saved Anna Nicole, says Travolta
1:18PM Friday March 02, 2007
John Travolta (left) says he wishes he had helped Anna Nicole battle her addictions. Photos / Reuters
John Travolta says Scientology could have saved Anna Nicole Smith.
The actor insists the late Playboy Playmate may still be alive if she had checked into the controversial Scientology drug and detox programme Narconon.
John, who worked with Anna Nicole on Be Cool, said: "It's so sad. We could have helped her with Narconon but didn't get the chance to. I wish we had."
Narconon has been widely criticised for its unorthodox methods which are inspired by the teachings of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.
The treatment includes taking large doses of vitamins, an intensive running programme, and long sauna sessions which "run out" drugs and "radiation" from the body.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=301&objectid=10426673


Russian orthodox priest stabbed outside church
10:15AM Monday March 05, 2007
MOSCOW - A Russian Orthodox priest was stabbed in the neck outside his church in the city of Voronezh today, Itar-Tass news agency reported.
The attack in the south-western Russian city follows two violent deaths of Russian priests in recent months, which local media ascribed to a decline in moral standards.
The attacker stabbed Father Pyotr several times as he approached a church where he had been due to perform an evening service, Tass quoted local police as saying. The priest was taken to hospital in a serious condition.
In January, thieves killed a priest on the eve of the Russian Orthodox Christmas and stole religious artworks. In December, a priest and his children were burnt alive in their home.
- REUTERS


India's police try fighting rampant crime with faith
5:00AM Thursday March 01, 2007
By Rahul Bedi
NEW DELHI - A police officer in India's lawless eastern Bihar state is seeking divine help to control crime in a province where 16 people are killed, kidnapped or robbed every hour.
Rita Kumari, officer in charge of the Hajipur police station, 24km from the state capital, Patna, organised a special "yagna" or fire ritual.
"I performed the rituals according to the Hindu priest's advice, asking for God's blessings to change the mindset of criminals and to check the crime graph here," she said after the religious event that lasted many hours.
Police and locals continued singing hymns and dancing for hours after the formal prayers were over.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=301&objectid=10426397


Vandals desecrate Jewish cemetery in Bavaria
9:15AM Monday March 05, 2007
BERLIN - Vandals have knocked over some 60 gravestones at an 18th-century Jewish cemetery in Bavaria, destroying more than half of them, police in the southern German state said.
The vandals, who scaled a cemetery wall, also toppled 11 memorials to Jews who fought for Germany in World War 1, police in Mittelfranken said in a statement posted on their website.
"Because no graffiti or symbols with a political message were found, pure vandalism could have been the motive," the statement released yesterday said, adding that the crime could have been committed at any time since the end of January.
"Several tens of thousands of euros damage was caused, according to first estimates, but the loss of these historic cultural possessions weighs far more heavily," it said.
The cemetery is near the village of Diespeck between Nuremberg and Wuerzburg. There is a reward of 3500 euro ($6780) for information about the incident, police said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel last week condemned an arson attack on a Jewish nursery school in Berlin, calling it a horrifying attempt to disrupt Jewish life.
A leader of the Jewish community told Reuters anti-Semitic violence had reached a new and worrisome level with the attack, in which the building was defaced with anti-Semitic slogans.
- REUTERS


Irfan Yusuf: Bigots shield behind conservative facade
5:00AM Wednesday February 28, 2007
By Guest Columnists
Liberty and xenophobia don't make comfortable bedfellows. In a community consumed by grossly irrational hatred - including racism and sectarianism - economic and political freedom will never flourish.
This simple fact was taken for granted 140 years ago by American anti-slavery activist Wendell Phillips, who spoke the famous words that are now part of political folklore of Western liberal democracies: "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."
Even after the abolition of slavery in the United States and much of Western Europe, paranoid xenophobia has reared its ugly head at times.
Seventy years ago, mainstream newspapers in parts of Europe sought to make Europe's small Jewish minority responsible for economic and political woes.
By 1945, Hitler's regime had massacred millions on the basis of ethnic and religious identity.
Today, irrational hatred is again endangering our fragile liberal democracies. The paranoid rants of Osama bin Laden and his ilk against the Crusader West and against Jews and Hindus, have led to horrific atrocities such as Americans saw on September 11 and that Iraqis see every day.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=301&objectid=10426110


Enjoying the limelight after life undercover
5:00AM Friday March 09, 2007
By Andrew Buncombe
The way Joe Wilson tells it, the first time he met the woman who would become his third wife the world went into slow motion. He smiled at Valerie Plame at a reception at the Washington home of the Turkish Ambassador.
"Suddenly I saw nobody else in a throng that must have numbered 200 people," he recalled.
Yet if their first meeting was the stuff of fairytales, the last four years of their lives have been anything but. Rather the couple have found themselves at the centre of a bitter controversy linked directly to the American and British Governments' use and manipulation of faulty intelligence to make the case for war against Iraq.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10427842


Garuda crash blamed on speed
5:00AM Friday March 09, 2007
By Greg Ansley
The scene of the accident. Photo / Reuters
The Garuda airliner that smashed into a bank and exploded into flames as it ran off the end of the runway at the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta on Wednesday almost certainly landed too fast, expert witnesses have told investigators.
The landing was so hard the jet's front wheels snapped off.
The crash killed 22 and seriously injured many more.
Yesterday severely burned victims were flown to Darwin and one of Australia's top burns experts, Fiona Woods, flew to Indonesia to help treat others.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10427858


Garuda blackbox due to arrive in Australia today
11:55AM Friday March 09, 2007
Related nzherald links:
SYDNEY - The black box from the Garuda plane that crashed in Indonesia killing at least 21 people is expected to arrive in Canberra today.
Four Australians have been confirmed dead after the Boeing 737-400 overshot the runway at Yogyakarta and burst into flames on Wednesday morning.
One of the bodies recovered from the crash is believed to be a fifth Australian, Jakarta embassy spokeswoman Liz O'Neill.
Her body could be formally identified today, Indonesia's Sardjito Hospital forensic doctor Ida Bagus Surya Putra said.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10427919



New British spymaster is Islamic expert
5:15AM Friday March 09, 2007
The British Government has announced as the new head of MI5, an official who has specialised in tracking the threat of Islamist terrorism.
Jonathan Evans, currently the deputy head of the security service, will take over from Eliza Manningham-Buller, the outgoing director-general, who caused surprise in Whitehall by announcing that she was stepping down early from the job.
Evans previously worked on counter-terrorism, dealing mainly with the Irish republican movements. Since 1999 he has been directly involved in dealing with Muslim fundamentalist groups.
- INDEPENDENT


Terror case on track for court after five years
5:00AM Saturday March 03, 2007
Australian terror suspect David Hicks will face a US military court within a month charged with providing material support for terrorism, but a charge of attempted murder against him has been dropped.
The United States laid the charge against Hicks yesterday, making him the first detainee in the war-on-terror era to be charged under the new US law for military commissions.
Once Hicks, 31, is notified of the charges he will be arraigned within 30 days and a military judge will have 120 days to form the military commission.
Judge Susan Crawford dismissed a second charge of attempted murder against Hicks after concluding there was no "probable cause" to justify it, said Commander Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=340&objectid=10426706



Guantanamo inmate's father may be prosecution witness in son's trial
12:00PM Tuesday March 06, 2007
By Peter Mitchell
Protesters in Australia have called for Hicks' release. Photo / Reuters
LOS ANGELES - The father of Guantanamo Bay inmate David Hicks may become a key prosecution witness in the Australian terror suspect's trial.
Chief prosecutor at the US Office of Military Commissions Colonel Morris Davis said he has evidence of Terry Hicks referring to his son as a "terrorist".
Terry Hicks is a vocal supporter of his son and has been a key figure in the campaign to have him released from the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and returned to Australia.
Col Davis, however, said Terry Hicks referred to his son as a "terrorist" in an interview soon after it became public Hicks had been picked up in Afghanistan in December 2001 and placed in US custody.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=340&objectid=10427252


Karzai slams US troops over Afghan deaths
11:05AM Tuesday March 06, 2007
By Sayed Salahuddin
Hamid Karzai. Photo / Reuters
KABUL - Afghan President Hamid Karzai has condemned US troops for shooting dead 10 civilians at the weekend as officials said nine more -- five women, four children and an old man -- had been killed in an air strike.
The nine were killed on Sunday local time in Kapisa province, barely 90 minutes' drive northeast of the capital Kabul, the deputy provincial governor, Sayed Dawood Hashimi, said on Monday. That strike followed a rocket attack on a US base.
Both Nato and the US-led coalition force which also operates in the area said they were investigating.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=340&objectid=10427239


Sydney terror group 'had bomb components'
5:00AM Wednesday March 07, 2007
SYDNEY - A Sydney court has been told nine terror suspects possessed the ingredients and instructions to construct explosive devices capable of killing and causing massive damage.
The committal hearing for the nine Sydney men heard yesterday that they had all conspired to prepare for an act of terrorism.
In her opening address, prosecutor Wendy Abraham, QC, told Penrith Local Court the men were Islamic extremists determined to carry out violent "jihad" to protect Islam.
"They believed Islam was under attack," Abraham told the court. "Violence was the primary tool of their jihad."

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=340&objectid=10427376


Madrid train bombers may have had more help, police say
10:20AM Thursday March 08, 2007
MADRID - Spanish police investigating the 2004 Madrid train bombings have not ruled out the possibility that more people were involved in the deadly attacks than those identified, the trial heard on Wednesday.
A police witness said that after finding fragments of 10 rucksacks and three bags which did not explode, police believe 13 people planted the bombs.
Each bag was packed with 10 to 13kg of explosives which the bombers detonated on four rush-hour trains on the morning of March 11, 2004, killing 191 people and injuring 1800.
Seven suspects blew themselves up almost a month after the attacks and four are on the run, one of whom police suspect died in a suicide attack in Iraq. A total of 29 people are on trial for involvement in the bombings.
Investigators have no evidence that more people were involved in the attacks, but cannot rule out that possibility, said the police witness, not named and giving testimony from behind a curtain for security reasons.
Investigators have previously said they found DNA from two or three people in cars and houses used by the plotters which is still unidentified.
The trial is expected to last until July.
- REUTERS


Car bomb kills 26 in Baghdad book district
10:30AM Tuesday March 06, 2007
By Claudia Parsons and Aseel Kami
Three witnesses said a suicide bomber was behind the blast. Photo / Reuters
BAGHDAD - A suicide car bomber devastated Baghdad's historic booksellers' district overnight, killing up to 26 people and setting shops and cars ablaze in defiance of a US-backed crackdown on violence in the Iraqi capital.
A thick plume of choking black smoke rose over the city after the attack, the deadliest to hit Baghdad in a week.
US and Iraqi forces extending a major push into the key Shi'ite militia haven of Sadr City met little resistance. American troops arrested a leading figure in the Mehdi Army militia and three of his aides, the militia said.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/search/story.cfm?storyid=0006C31D-9F28-143D-9B2683027AF1031B

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