At least 30 prisoners were injured and unconfirmed reports said seven others were killed in fighting after inmates took two female prison guards hostage in protest at new regulations requiring them to wear uniforms.

Bursts of gunfire could be heard throughout the day from Pulicharkhi prison after the Afghan police rapid reaction unit, armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers, entered the complex in an attempt to prevent a mass break-out. Prisoners were heard chanting “Allah ho Akhbar” in between the firing.

Pulicharkhi, which holds around 2,000 prisoners, became notorious during Afghanistan’s Communist era with allegations of torture and secret executions. About 110 detainees held by the US at Guantanamo Bay are expected to be transferred there later this year.

The prisoners had allowed 70 women inmates to be moved to another part of the prison after storming into the female wing from their own. As night fell, negotiations announced by the Interior Ministry to end the stand-off were suspended. Security forces had yet to gain access to parts of the jail under the prisoners’ control.

…General Mahboub Amiri, the chief of Kabul’s rapid reaction police force, said Taliban members triggered the riot in an attempt to break out of the prison. “They started the trouble and then tried to use that as cover to get away,”

…Meanwhile, a new controversy has broken out over an even more sinister Afghan prison – the secret detention centre at Bagram air base, north of Kabul, where some 500 terrorist suspects are being held in conditions at least as harsh as at Guantanamo Bay.

In the most detailed account of the facility yet, The New York Times has reported that many prisoners were held by the dozen in large wire cages, where they slept on the floor on foam mattresses. Inmates at Bagram are held for indefinite periods without charges, without legal representation, and without even disclosure of their names.

A US military spokesman defended practices at the jail, saying prisoners were treated humanely and given “the best possible living conditions.” But the numbers held at Bagram have increased considerably in the past two years, in part because “enemy combatants” captured in Afghanistan are no longer being transferred to Guantanamo.
independent.co.uk

The World Court is today due to start hearing Bosnia’s claim for billions of pounds in reparations from Serbia on the grounds that they was responsible for genocide against Bosnia in the 1992-95 war in former Yugoslavia.

Bosnia first lodged the claim in 1993. It has taken the panel of judges at the UN court, the International Court of Justice, 13 years to hear the case, a delay that has attracted criticism from human rights activists and international legal experts.

The Bosnian argument has to prove the war was an international conflict and not, as Serbia claims, a civil war within Bosnia.
guardian.co.uk

The IDF commander of the Gaza division, Brigadier General Aviv Kochavi, has cancelled plans to study in the U.K. after warnings from the military that he could be arrested for war crimes.
ynetnews.com

Gordon Brown today signals his support for lowering the age of voting to 16 as part of a radical programme to counter widespread alienation from modern politics. In an exclusive article in the Guardian, he says Labour must be prepared to reopen the debate on electoral reform for the House of Commons, a proposal he has previously opposed.

He says the executive must give up power, and again backs changes to the unelected House of Lords. Labour dropped the idea of voting at 16 after the proposal was rejected by the Electoral Commission, but Mr Brown’s aides say the chancellor is in favour, so long as it is part of a package of “citizenship education” in schools.
guardian.co.uk

Yeah, I can imagine…

SULU, Philippines – About 5,500 US soldiers are coming to the Philippines this month, the latest and reportedly the largest batch in the continuing and uninterrupted deployment of US troops to the country since the “global war on terror” was launched after September 11, 2001.
atimes.com

Protesters storm congress over coup charges
A hundred leftwing protesters barged into the Philippine congress today to protest at the charging of five members of the house of representatives for plotting to overthrow the presidency of Gloria Arroyo.

The five were among 16 implicated in a plot. Ms Arroyo declared a state of emergency on Friday after the military said it had foiled the alleged conspiracy.

The protesters, who were pushed back by police, claimed the arrests could be the start of a crackdown on political opposition.

LIMA, Peru – Teresa Avila says she found her brother-in-law floating in the Huallaga River, a bullet in his forehead and knife wounds in his chest, a week after soldiers dragged him and his wife from their jungle home. Her sister’s body never turned up.

She had already gone to the Madre Mia counterinsurgency base looking for them, Avila says, but the commander, known as “Captain Carlos,” denied they were there.

“He told me, ‘Your family is a scourge and if they were in my hands, I would kill them all,'” she recalls.

Nearly 14 years later, Avila has identified “Captain Carlos” as Ollanta Humala, now a retired army lieutenant colonel with a fighting chance of becoming Peru’s next president.

Avila is one of five people who filed criminal complaints this month accusing Humala and his soldiers of disappearances, torture and attempted murder during his 1992 command of the jungle base.
news.yahoo.com

KINGSTON, Jamaica – A Cabinet minister was positioned to become Jamaica’s next prime minister and first female head of government Saturday after narrowly beating a former Rastafarian in internal elections to head the country’s ruling party.

In the Jamaican system, the majority party’s president automatically becomes prime minister. About 3,800 delegates of the People’s National Party voted.
news.yahoo.com

OKERENKOKO, Nigeria (AFP) – The rebels are masters of the waterways around their base, confidently churning up the Niger Delta’s rivers in heavily-armed attack boats decked out in the banners of their god of war.

But when it comes to remembering the current name of their organisation, the ethnic Ijaw militants can seem a little less sure of themselves.

“We are the Niger Delta Volunteers,” barked the commander of one fast fibreglass skiff, packed to the gunnals with masked gunmen wearing body armour and brandishing belt-fed machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

From the back of the boat came a second, urgent voice: “MEND! We’re MEND!”

“That’s right,” continued the commander. “We’re the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta — MEND!”

“We’ve been suffering for a long time in this Niger Delta. The Nigerian government has enslaved us. They came to take oil from our villages. The federal government comes here to kill us,” he told a boatload of reporters.

The brief confusion of the war boat leader is understandable. In recent years many groups have arisen among the angry young Ijaw men living and fighting on the creeks of the delta, home to Africa’s largest oil industry.
news.yahoo.com

Uganda is in turmoil after its opposition leader refused to accept the result of the country’s general election which returned autocratic President Yoweri Museveni to power, claiming that fraud and intimidation hindered the poll.

Kizza Besigye, leader of the opposition Forum for Democratic Change, rejected the official results of the poll giving him 37 per cent of votes cast to Museveni’s 59 per cent, as violence flared between his supporters and security forces in the capital, Kampala. European Union and independent Ugandan observers said the campaign and ballot had been blighted by government interference, spurious criminal charges laid against Besigye and problems with voter registration, and could not be described as a fair and free contest.

Besigye said he would not accept the official outcome of the poll – Uganda’s first multi-party elections in 25 years – because of ‘widespread irregularities’.

His agents’ tallies at polling stations showed he had won 49 per cent of the votes to Museveni’s 47 per cent, he said.

The campaign ‘was marked by gross unfairness occasioned by the state which we did not consider to be an environment conducive to the free and fair expression of the Ugandan electorate’, said Besigye.

‘It is disgraceful that the government has chosen to abuse power and terrorise its opponents.’
guardian.co.uk

…U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday is expected to unveil his major overhaul for management reform for the United Nations.

Bolton on Saturday also described the U.N. as inept for not being able to stop Iran’s nuclear development and “devaluing the IAEA,” the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“Through all of this, the U.S. has been encouraged by Europe to pursue action through the U.N.,” Bolton said, adding that patience of the administration was wearing thin.

Bolton was given a recess appointment by President Bush as ambassador to the United Nations on Aug. 1 after failing to win confirmation in the U.S. Senate. Because of the recess appointment, Bolton’s term expires when the current Congress concludes on Jan. 3, 2007.

Bolton – who has a reputation for brilliance, obstinacy and speaking his mind – said in 1994 that it wouldn’t make a “bit of difference” if the United Nations lost the top 10 stories from its 39-story headquarters.
guardian.co.uk

Yeah, a real philosopher king…