ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistan Saturday successfully test-fired a long-range, nuclear-capable ballistic missile, the latest in a series of tests in one of the world’s flashpoints.

“Today, we carried out a successful test-firing of the indigenously developed Shaheen II missile,” a military official told Reuters.

The missile could travel up to 2,000 km (1,200 miles) and carry all kinds of warheads, he said.

The military said Pakistan had informed neighboring countries about the test in advance — a practice also observed by nuclear-armed rival India, which regularly tests its own nuclear-capable missiles.

Pakistan first successfully tested a nuclear weapon in 1998.

President Pervez Musharraf, who watched the missile test, said the country’s nuclear program had broad public support and was a matter of the highest national importance.

“The nation’s nuclear capability … was developed for Pakistan’s own security and will continue to receive the highest national priority,” Musharraf was quoted as saying in a statement issued by the military.

“The capability was here to stay, will continue to go from strength to strength and no harm will ever be allowed to come to it,” he was quoted as saying.
Full Article: nytimes.com

Well that’s ok. They are our ‘staunch allies.’

WASHINGTON, March 18 – The top Marine officer in Iraq said Friday that the number of attacks against American troops in Sunni-dominated western Iraq and death tolls had dropped sharply over the last four months, a development that he called evidence that the insurgency was weakening in one of the most violent areas of the country.

The officer, Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, head of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, said that insurgents were averaging about 10 attacks a day, and that fewer than two of those attacks killed or wounded American forces or damaged equipment. That compared with 25 attacks a day, five of them with casualties or damage, in the weeks leading up to the pivotal battle of Falluja in November, he said.
Full Article: nytimes.com

WASHINGTON, March 18 – The Central Intelligence Agency said Friday that all interrogation techniques approved for use by agency personnel in questioning terrorism suspects were permissible under federal laws prohibiting torture.

“All approved interrogation techniques, both past and present, are lawful and do not constitute torture,” the agency said in a statement.
Full Article: nytimes.com

Well now that’s a relief, now isn’t it? But hold on: “approved for use by agency personnel”? This is why of course they use proxies.

At the same time that Kevin Benderman’s unit was called up for a second tour in Iraq with the Third Infantry Division, two soldiers tried to kill themselves and another had a relative shoot him in the leg. Seventeen went awol or ran off to Canada, and Sergeant Benderman, whose family has sent a son to every war since the American revolution, defied his genes and nine years of military training and followed his conscience.

As the division packed its gear to leave Fort Stewart, Sgt Benderman applied for a discharge as a conscientious objector – an act seen as a betrayal by many in a military unit considered the heart of the US army, the “Walking Pride of Uncle Sam”.

Two years ago today, the columns of the Third ID roared up from the Kuwaiti desert for the push towards Baghdad. When the city fell, the Marines controlled the neighbourhoods on the east side of the Tigris and the Third ID had the west. It was, according to the army command, an occasion for pride.

Some of the men and women who were there remain unconvinced. Like Sgt Benderman, who served six months in Iraq at the start of the war, they were scarred by their experience, and angry at being called again to combat so soon.

They may not be part of any organised anti-war movement, but the conscientious objectors, runaways, and other irregular protesters suggest that, two years on, the war is taking a heavy toll. “They can’t train you for the reality. You can’t have a mass grave with dogs eating the people in it,” Sgt Benderman told the Guardian. “It’s not like practising for a football game, or cramming for a test in college. You can go out there and train, but until you actually experience war first hand you don’t know what it’s like.”
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

Kabul was a grim, monastic place in the days of the Taliban; today it’s a chaotic gathering point for every kind of prospector and carpetbagger. Foreign bidders vying for billions of dollars of telecoms, irrigation and construction contracts have sparked a property boom that has forced up rental prices in the Afghan capital to match those in London, Tokyo and Manhattan. Four years ago, the Ministry of Vice and Virtue in Kabul was a tool of the Taliban inquisition, a drab office building where heretics were locked up for such crimes as humming a popular love song. Now it’s owned by an American entrepreneur who hopes its bitter associations won’t scare away his new friends.

Outside Kabul, Afghanistan is bleaker, its provinces more inaccessible and lawless, than it was under the Taliban. If anyone leaves town, they do so in convoys. Afghanistan is a place where it is easy for people to disappear and perilous for anyone to investigate their fate. Even a seasoned aid agency such as Médécins Sans Frontières was forced to quit after five staff members were murdered last June. Only the 17,000-strong US forces, with their all-terrain Humvees and Apache attack helicopters, have the run of the land, and they have used the haze of fear and uncertainty that has engulfed the country to advance a draconian phase in the war against terror. Afghanistan has become the new Guantánamo Bay.

Washington likes to hold up Afghanistan as an exemplar of how a rogue regime can be replaced by democracy. Meanwhile, human-rights activists and Afghan politicians have accused the US military of placing Afghanistan at the hub of a global system of detention centres where prisoners are held incommunicado and allegedly subjected to torture. The secrecy surrounding them prevents any real independent investigation of the allegations. “The detention system in Afghanistan exists entirely outside international norms, but it is only part of a far larger and more sinister jail network that we are only now beginning to understand,” Michael Posner, director of the US legal watchdog Human Rights First, told us.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

Ukraine has sold nuclear-capable cruise missiles to both China and Iran, the prosecutor-general’s office said but stressed that the deals were illegal and under criminal investigation.

“This is not about exports of missiles but rather illegal sales which are being investigated by the SBU (security service) which has opened a criminal investigation of the director of the company Ukraviazakas,” the office said in a statement confirming a report by the London-based Financial Times.

Svyatoslav Piskun, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, earlier told the daily that 18 Soviet-era X-55 cruise missiles were exported in 2001 — 12 to Iran and six to China.
Full Article: sg.news.yahoo

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Paul Wolfowitz, whose nomination as World Bank (news – web sites) president has stirred controversy, discussed poverty and development issues with Irish rock star Bono in two phone conversations on Thursday, an adviser said.

Wolfowitz adviser Kevin Kellems told Reuters the deputy U.S. defense secretary initiated the lengthy conversations with the lead singer of the rock group U2, whose name had been bandied about for the World Bank presidency.

President Bush on Wednesday named Wolfowitz, a key architect of the Iraq war, to be the next World Bank president, but the choice has been controversial, especially in Europe.

An endorsement by Bono, who campaigns extensively for African aid and debt relief, could defuse some of the criticism of Wolfowitz.

Kellems said the discussions “were incredibly substantive about reducing poverty, about development, about the opportunity to help people that the World Bank presidency provides and about charitable giving and social progress around the world.
Full Article: news.yahoo.com

Well Thank God.

…The selection of Mr Wolfowitz, who as deputy defence secretary was a prime mover of the president’s decision to go to war, was greeted with incredulity in Europe and the development community, and by Democrats in Washington.

“It’s a very surprising and in many ways an inappropriate nomination,” said Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University economist and economic adviser to the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan.

“Hundreds of millions of people depend for their lives and livelihood on the efforts of professionals to fight extreme poverty,” he said, adding that he was speaking as a development expert and not as a United Nations official.

Mr Bush tried to beat back some of the criticism yesterday, telephoning world leaders to lobby for his choice.

“Paul is committed to development. He is a compassionate, decent man who will do a fine job at the World Bank,” he told a press conference.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

Eating certain types of fish can increase the risks of having a heart attack, a study suggests.

A team of international researchers has found a direct link between mercury and heart disease.

High levels of mercury are found in shark, swordfish, king mackerel and marlin. It is also found at lower levels in fresh or frozen tuna.

The researchers have suggested that people should consider eliminating fish with high mercury levels from their diet.

The UK’s Food Standards Agency recently advised pregnant women and children against eating this type of fish.

There are fears that mercury can damage the nervous system of unborn infants and can increase the risks of poisoning in young children.
Full Article: bbc.co.uk

Bush administration issues first U.S. controls on toxin from coal plants, but critics say rule falls short
ALBANY — The nation’s first controls on mercury from coal-burning plants do not go far enough to clean up tainted fisheries in wild areas like the Adirondacks, environmentalists and researchers said.

The Bush administration’s Clean Air Mercury Rule issued Tuesday uses a “cap-and-trade” approach to cut power plants’ mercury emissions from 48 tons per year currently to about 15 tons by 2025.

Power plants that burn coal are the nation’s biggest source of mercury, a potent neurotoxin that retards brain development in fetuses and small children. Discoveries of high levels of mercury have resulted in bans on eating fish in 50 New York state lakes, rivers and reservoirs.

Critics say the new rule is a huge step back from the Clinton administration’s mercury proposal, which would have cut power plant emissions by 90 percent by the end of this decade. They also point to new evidence that mercury is not only bad for pregnant women and developing children who eat contaminated fish, it also damages animal and bird populations in the Northeast’s wild areas.

The mercury plan also drew fire from Gov. George Pataki’s acting commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Conservation, Denise Sheehan. The Republican governor’s staff has rarely criticized Bush administration proposals.

In a letter Monday to acting Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson, Sheehan called the rule “unacceptable and unwarranted” and wrote that it “will prove to be detrimental to the public health and the natural resources of New York state.”

The EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation said the rule achieves because the technology that scrubs mercury from smokestacks is still in development.

“We believe that the Clean Air Mercury Rule will protect all Americans, especially pregnant women and their unborn children, from the harm of mercury,” said Jeff Holmstead, the office’s assistant administrator.

“The rule will also help maintain coal as a viable energy source, keeping jobs in the United States and keeping energy prices down.”

The cap-and-trade system lets companies that fail to meet targets for reducing mercury pollution make up their deficits by purchasing “allowances” issued by the government to those that exceed targets.
Full Article: timesunion.com

WASHINGTON (AP) – Amid the backdrop of soaring oil and gasoline prices, a sharply divided Senate on Wednesday voted to open the ecologically rich Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling, delivering a major energy policy win for President Bush.

The Senate, by a 51-49 vote, rejected an attempt by Democrats and GOP moderates to remove a refuge drilling provision from next year’s budget, preventing opponents from using a filibuster – a tactic that has blocked repeated past attempts to open the Alaska refuge to oil companies.

The action, assuming Congress agrees on a budget, clears the way for approving drilling in the refuge later this year, drilling supporters said. The House has not included a similar provision in its budget, so the issue is still subject to negotiations later this year to resolve the difference.

The oil industry has sought for more than two decades to get access to what is believed to be billions of barrels of oil beneath the 1.5 million-acre coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the northern eastern corner of Alaska.
Full Article:apnews.myway.com

What a shame, and worse, not a single politician on the planet willing to challenge the ideology of growth at any cost even if it means environmental catastrophe. Nobody should be burning fossil fuels, and instead of acknowledging that obvious fact, we are fighting wars for the right to render the planet unliveable.

Oil Prices Jump to New High Above $56 Mark
Full Article: news.yahoo.com