KINSHASA, Congo — A rare form of plague has killed at least 61 people at a diamond mine in the remote wilds of northeast Congo, and authorities fear hundreds more who fled into the forests to escape the contagion are infected and dying, the World Health Organization said Friday.

Eric Bertherat, a doctor for the U.N. health agency, said the outbreak has been building since December around a mine near Zobia, 170 miles north of Kisangani, the capital of the vast Oriental province.

Nearly all the 7,000 miners have abandoned the infected area and sought refuge in the world’s second-largest tropical rain forest, all but cut off from the outside world.
Full Article: newsday.com

WASHINGTON – A victims support group said members of the military have reported 307 sexual assaults that took place while they were stationed in Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan or Bahrain.

A statement from the Connecticut-based Miles Foundation, which first raised concerns about assaults on women serving in Iraq and Kuwait last year, said the alleged assailants included other members of the military, allies and foreigners. Most of the victims were women.

About one-third of the cases reported to the Miles Foundation also have been reported to military officials, the statement said.

Thirty-nine women have reported being assaulted while preparing to go overseas, the foundation said.
Full Article: news.yahoo.com

Scientists have determined that human fossils found in Ethiopia in 1967 are 195,000 years old, 65,000 years older than first thought. The revised date, they said, makes the skulls and bones the earliest known remains of modern Homo sapiens.

The research reinforces the theories of an African origin for modern humans, and the earlier date gives the species more time to have evolved the cultural attributes that probably supported its spread out of Africa to Asia and Europe. The new date appears to be near the early boundary for modern human emergence, as suggested in recent genetic studies.
Full Article: nytimes.com

A huge explosion halfway across the galaxy packed so much power it briefly altered Earth’s upper atmosphere in December, astronomers said Friday.

No known eruption beyond our solar system has ever appeared as bright upon arrival.

But you could not have seen it, unless you can top the X-ray vision of Superman: In gamma rays, the event equaled the brightness of the full Moon’s reflected visible light.

The blast originated about 50,000 light-years away and was detected Dec. 27. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers).

The commotion was caused by a special variety of neutron star known as a magnetar. These fast-spinning, compact stellar corpses — no larger than a big city — create intense magnetic fields that trigger explosions. The blast was 100 times more powerful than any other similar eruption witnessed, said David Palmer of Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of several researchers around the world who monitored the event with various telescopes.

“Had this happened within 10 light-years of us, it would have severely damaged our atmosphere and possibly have triggered a mass extinction,” said Bryan Gaensler of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).
Full Article: www.space.com

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraq’s interim prime minister cautioned the winning Shiite alliance against banning members of Saddam Hussein’s former party from government, saying Thursday that it would “throw the country into problems.”

In an interview with The Associated Press, Ayad Allawi urged the incoming government to focus on national unity and reconciliation rather than hit at those Iraqis — mainly Sunni Muslims — who dominated Iraq until their abrupt removal from power following the U.S.-led war in 2003.

The Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, which took 48 percent of the vote in the Jan. 30 national elections, has made weeding out Baath Party members part of its platform. The policy has raised concerns among Sunnis, who see it as a way to make sure they have no positions in a new government.
Full Article: news.yahoo.com

MEXICO CITY – Central American politicians and human rights activists issued stinging criticism Thursday of John Negroponte, nominated to become America’s first intelligence director, citing the career diplomat’s active backing for the Contra rebels and support for a government involved in human rights abuses.

John Negroponte, now U.S. ambassador to Iraq (news – web sites), served as ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, a time of intense conflict in Central America in which the United States played a central role. The Reagan administration feared that leftist rebels were leading Central American countries toward totalitarian regimes.

Negroponte assisted the U.S.-backed Contra rebels in their attempt to overthrow Nicaragua’s left-wing Sandinista government. In the process, activists claim, he ignored human rights abuses by the rebels and their Honduran hosts.

The effort to oust Daniel Ortega’s Moscow-leaning Sandinista regime produced a huge scandal in the United States when it was learned the United States secretly sold arms to Iran and used the money to fund the Contra operation.

“What an outrage!” said Bertha Oliva, the coordinator of the Committee for Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras, an independent group representing civilians believed to have vanished while in government custody. “The United States has invented a position to reward someone who was a dangerous person.”

In Nicaragua, Tomas Borge, former interior minister for the Sandinista regime and a current leader of the Sandinista opposition party, said Negroponte “is the most efficient and ideal representative for the Bush administration’s primitive international security policy.”

“He is faithful to Bush’s excessive and ultra-right policy in Iraq and other parts of the world,” he said.

Borge is the only surviving founder of the Sandinista movement, and was in charge of domestic political control as the Sandinistas battled U.S.-backed opponents.

The new U.S. intelligence chief has denied accusations that his reports to Washington dramatically underplayed human rights problems in Honduras.

During 2001 confirmation hearings for his U.N. ambassadorship — an appointment that was delayed for six months because of the controversy over his tenure in Honduras — Negroponte testified that he did not believe death squads were operating in Honduras.

However, a 1993 Honduran government human rights report said 184 suspected leftists had disappeared in government custody, many of them at the hands of a U.S. trained Honduran army battalion.

“It was obvious that he knew what was happening,” said Leo Valladeres, a law professor in Honduras who wrote the report. “They used outlaw methods to kill … and it is absolutely impossible to believe that a diplomatic mission such as that of the United States was unaware of the situation faced by Honduras and Central America.”

In neighboring Guatemala, a U.S.-supported government that was engaged in battle with left-wing rebels trained paramilitary squads that were found later to have committed large-scale civilian massacres.

In El Salvador, U.S.-trained army squads hunted down leftist rebels in offensives fraught with human rights abuses.

Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst at the National Security Archives in Washington, said declassified documents on the Iran-Contra scandal also showed that Negroponte was involved in seeking more guns for the Contras — “the role that normally would be reserved for the CIA station chief.”

Kornbluh also said the documents he cited showed that Negroponte helped clear the way for a secret agreement under which the United States would provide more CIA money to Honduran army generals and additional military and economic aid to the country. In exchange, he said, Honduras agreed to allow the Contras to continue operating on Honduran soil.

Ironically, Kornbluh said, the controversy surrounding Negroponte’s past helps qualify him for the job.

“Someone who is a career diplomat … on paper doesn’t seem to have the intelligence background needed,” he said. “The fact that he certainly departed from his diplomatic role and was involved in paramilitary operations against Nicaragua … means he has had a relationship with covert operations in the past.”
Full Article: news.yahoo.com

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush named John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, as the government’s first national intelligence director Thursday, turning to a veteran diplomat to revive a spy community besieged by criticism after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Ending a nine-week search, Bush chose Negroponte, who has been in Iraq for less than a year, for the difficult job of implementing the most sweeping intelligence overhaul in 50 years.

Negroponte, 65, is tasked with bringing together 15 highly competitive spy agencies and learning to work with the combative Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the brand new CIA Director Porter Goss and other intelligence leaders. He’ll oversee a covert intelligence budget estimated at $40 billion.

Negroponte, a former ambassador to the United Nations and to a number of countries, called the job his “most challenging assignment” in more than 40 years of government work.

His U.N. nomination was held up for half a year in 2001 over criticism regarding his record as ambassador in Honduras from 1981 to 1985, the time of the Iran-Contra scandal.

He was widely believed not to have been Bush’s first choice for the new job, but officials denied the president had had trouble filling the position.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

Do You Know What Your Kids Are Watching on “Educational” TV at School?

By Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
I learned something new yesterday. Channel One News, the “educational” TV show that my daughter Isa and millions of other American kids watch every morning at school, is busy recruiting our teenagers into the military.

“Mom, they’re really aiming at the black kids, and the Hispanic kids too. I’m so sick of seeing those military ads everyday. “The Power of One”, and all that lots of my friends are falling for it!”

This is especially upsetting to Isa because several of her black friends, 18, 19 and 20 years old, have been shipped to Iraq. Some were promised they wouldn’t have to be in combat, but would be doing “mechanical work”, “communications”, or “wiring”.

It seems doubtful that, when push comes to shove, kids who’ve been promised such jobs will be allowed to avoid combat. One of her friends has already been shot “in an embarrassing place”; he’s being treated overseas instead of the US so that he can be sent quickly back into combat in Iraq. Mr. Bush’s military needs warm bodies, able or not.

I stopped the car and asked, “Wait a minute. What do you mean when you say you’re “seeing those military ads every day”?”

“We have to watch this short thing every morning in homeroom called “Channel One News”,” Isa explained with a weary tone. “It’s educational, supposedly. You know, the day’s news, so we’ll be up on current events. But in between the stories, there are more and more ads for the Army and the Marines.”

I thought about “No Child Left Behind” and the malignant purpose behind that sweet-sounding act that Mr. Bush and his men (and at least one journalist paid $250,000 by the White House) have continuously promoted to trusting parents across the US. After catching my breath I asked,

“Are you saying you’re being recruited through the TV you watch during homeroom?” She nodded. I asked again, “What do your teachers think about this? What about Mr. Hitchens (not his real name), who told you privately that he’s antiwar? Doesn’t he say anything against it?”
Full Article: counterpunch.org

by Robert Fisk
They will bury Rafik Hariri today beside the city he rebuilt and next to the ruins of the Roman columns that made ancient Beirut famous. But his violent death on Monday has repercussions that go far further east than Lebanon or the Roman empire; for his killing is intimately linked to the insurgency in Iraq–and President Bush’s belief that Syria is encouraging the guerrilla war against US troops in the country.

American pressure on Syria to withdraw its military forces from Lebanon–a cause that Mr Hariri, for quite different reasons, supported–is part of Washington’s attempt to smother Syria’s supposed sympathy for the bloody and increasingly efficient insurgency in Iraq.

Last night, Washington announced the withdrawal of its ambassador to Damascus. It was the clearest sign so far that the US is going to accuse Syria of Mr Hariri’s murder.

Israel, predictably, chose the same moment to add new pre-conditions for any peace talks with Syria: expulsions of “terrorist headquarters” from Damascus, “allow the Lebanese Army to deploy its forces along the border with Israel”, and “end the Syrian occupation of Lebanon”.

Israel, which occupied part of Lebanon for 24 years, then demanded the “expulsion” of Iranian Revolutionary Guards–who in reality left Lebanon more than 15 years ago. In harness with the Americans, the Israeli threat–especially the specious references to Iranians no longer in Lebanon–represents a grave deepening of the crisis.
Full Article: counterpunch.org

The director of the US Central Intelligence Agency has warned that China’s military modernisation is tilting the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait and increasing the threat to US forces in the region.

Delivering the agency’s annual assessment of worldwide threats on Wednesday, Porter Goss, a former Republican congressman who was named in September to head the CIA, dropped any mention of the co-operative elements of the US-China relationship that characterised recent CIA statements. Instead, he said China was making determined military and diplomatic efforts to “counter what it sees as US efforts to contain or encircle China”.
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