Report reveals how the world’s poorer countries are forced to pay for the CO2 emissions of the developed nations.

Over 70 million Africans and an even greater number of farmers in the Indian sub-continent will suffer catastrophic floods, disease and famine if the rich countries of the world fail to change their habits and radically cut their carbon emissions.

The stark warning, contained in a private Government document commissioned by Gordon Brown, comes days ahead of an announcement that will show Tony Blair backing away from his promise to “lead internationally” on climate change. The Government has decided to delay setting targets for industry to cut carbon emissions until other EU governments set theirs. Previously, Mr Blair has made a virtue out of leading the way in Europe.

The bleak facts on how climate change threatens the third world were laid out in a briefing paper drawn up this month by the Department for International Development. It pointed out that a quarter of Africa’s population lives within 100km of the sea coast. As sea levels rises, when global warming melts the ice pack, the number of Africans at risk from coastal flooding will increase from one million in 1990 to 70 million in 2080.

In India, rising temperatures could drive down farm incomes by as much as a quarter, while the cost to Bangladesh of changes in the climate could be more than half the £58bn that country has received in foreign aid.

“It’s the poorest people in the world who suffer from climate change, but they are the least responsible for it.”
independent.co.uk

‘Glacial earthquakes’ warn of global warming
Dramatic new evidence has emerged of the speed of climate change in the polar regions which scientists fear is causing huge volumes of ice to melt far faster than predicted.

Scientists have recorded a significant and unexpected increase in the number of “glacial earthquakes” caused by the sudden movement of Manhattan-sized blocks of ice in Greenland.

A second study has found that higher temperatures caused by global warming could melt the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets much sooner than previously thought, with a corresponding rise in sea levels.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – Residents gave new details Monday about the shootings of civilians in a western Iraqi town, where the U.S. military is investigating allegations of potential misconduct by American troops last November.
The residents said troops entered homes and shot and killed 15 members of two families, including a 3-year-old girl, after a roadside bomb killed a U.S. Marine.

The military, which announced Friday that a dozen Marines are under investigation for possible war crimes in the Nov. 19 incident, said in a statement Monday that a videotape of the aftermath of the shootings in Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad, was presented in support of the allegations.

The charges against the Marines were first brought forward by Time magazine, which reported this week that it obtained a videotape two months ago taken by a Haditha journalism student that shows the dead still in their nightclothes.
startribune.com

TIME:Collateral Damage or Civilian Massacre in Haditha?

The bodies began to show up early last week. On Monday, 34 corpses were found. In the darkness of Tuesday morning, 15 more men, between the ages of 22 and 40 were found in the back of a pickup truck in the al-Khadra district of western Baghdad. They had been hanged. By daybreak, 40 more bodies were found around the city, most bearing signs of torture before the men were killed execution-style. The most gruesome discovery was an 18-by-24-foot mass grave in the Shi’ite slum of Kamaliyah in east Baghdad containing the bodies of 29 men, clad only in their underwear with their hands bound and their mouths covered with tape. Local residents only found it because the ground was oozing blood. In all, 87 bodies were found over two days in Baghdad.

The grisly discovery was horrible enough, the latest and perhaps most chilling sign that Iraq is descending further into butchery — and quite possibly civil war. But almost as disturbing is the growing evidence that the massacres and others like it are being tolerated and even abetted by Iraq’s Shi’ite-dominated police forces, overseen by Iraq’s Interior Minister, Bayan Jabr. On his watch, sectarian militias have swelled the ranks of the police units and, Sunnis charge, used their positions to carry out revenge killings against Sunnis. While allowing an Iranian-trained militia to take over the ministry, critics say, Jabr has authorized the targeted assassination of Sunni men and stymied investigations into Interior-run death squads.

Jabr’s and his forces’ growing reputation for brutality comes at a particularly inopportune moment for the Bush Administration, which would like to hand over security responsibilities to those same police units as quickly as possible. That has raised the distinct and disturbing possibility that the U.S. is in fact training and arming one side in a conflict seeming to grow worse by the day. “Militias are the infrastructure of civil war,” U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told TIME recently. Khalilzad has been publicly critical of Jabr and warned that the new security ministries under the next, permanent Iraqi government should be run by competent people who have no ties to militias and who are “non-sectarian.” Further U.S. support for training the police and army, he said, depends on it.
time.com

US blasted for creating terrorism “quagmire” on anniversary of Iraq war

…”Three years into the Iraq war, and with no end in sight, it looks as if the United States, in creating a quagmire for itself in the Middle East, has also created the ideal environment in which the terrorism bacillus can fester, and then infect the whole world,” said the Sydney Morning Herald.

The weekly news magazine, Time, wrote two parties ruling the autonomous Kurdistan region in northern Iraq restrict freedoms and the democratic process.

The magazine focusing on the region reported corruption and repression prevail in the region ruled by the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). The two parties’ despotic tendencies repress their opponents, it was underlined, and that the KDP and PUK rule the region by “force and fear.”

The parties led by Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani function almost as a police state and views that, “Instead of one big Saddam, we have a hundred small Saddams in Kurdistan,” Time reported.

Access to education, jobs and career advancement is often determined by party affiliation and there is no independent media in the region, Time wrote.
The weekly news magazine handled the problems in northern Iraq in the story titled “Trouble in Kurdistan.” The frustration at this “dual monopoly” appear to have been behind a violent outburst last week at Halabja, the town on which Saddam Hussein inflicted a barbaric chemical attack in 1988, killing 5,000 people.
zaman.com

Widespread bread rationing has been introduced in the Gaza Strip because Israel has cut off deliveries of flour and other foodstuffs to the Palestinian territory for most of the past two months.

The military reopened the main cargo crossing into Gaza yesterday under US pressure to allow in humanitarian supplies, but the UN said the terminal was working at only a fraction of capacity. The Israelis say that the closure has been forced by security warnings but the Palestinians accuse them of using the crossing as a political tool after the Hamas election victory, and in breach of pledges to the US.

“The bakeries are rationing bread,” said John Ging, director of UN operations in Gaza. “People queue and they’re given a coupon and a rationed amount … The shelves are quite empty. There’s no sugar, oil, milk, the basics. The shops are really depleted on those essential items.”

The Palestinian deputy economy minister, Nasser Sarraj, said about two-thirds of Gaza bakeries had closed due to lack of flour, and many restaurants have shut. Fuel shortages have also contributed to sharply rising commodity prices.

On Monday, Israel allowed Karni crossing to open for less than an hour to permit deliveries of wheat, Coca-Cola and crisps. Before that it was operating only intermittently for almost two months.

Mr Ging said yesterday’s deliveries of wheat were limited because the terminal was working at only 10% of capacity.

“This is the first time that bread has been rationed,” he said. “Palestinians are very resilient people and they would always have their reserves. However, as the crossing has been closed for 60% of the time since January 1 this year, this is unprecedented. Last year the crossing was closed for 18% of the time.”

Amos Gilad, a senior Israeli defence ministry official responsible for liaising with the Palestinians on Karni, said the closures were entirely a matter of security.

“The shortage of basic foodstuffs was weighed against the terror threat, and the logical decision to open it for a limited amount of time was made with the hope the Palestinians will uphold their commitments,” he told Israel radio.
guardian.co.uk

The Israeli’s ability to evoke the Warsaw Ghetto is astonishing.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – The FBI agent who arrested Zacarias Moussaoui in August 2001 testified Monday he spent almost four weeks trying to warn U.S. officials about the radical Islamic student pilot but “criminal negligence” by superiors in Washington thwarted a chance to stop the 9/11 attacks.

FBI agent Harry Samit of Minneapolis originally testified as a government witness, on March 9, but his daylong cross examination by defense attorney Edward MacMahon was the strongest moment so far for the court-appointed lawyers defending Moussaoui. The 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan descent is the only person charged in this country in connection with al-Qaida’s Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

MacMahon displayed a communication addressed to Samit and FBI headquarters agent Mike Maltbie from a bureau agent in Paris relaying word from French intelligence that Moussaoui was “very dangerous,” had been indoctrinated in radical Islamic Fundamentalism at London’s Finnsbury Park mosque, was “completely devoted” to a variety of radical fundamentalism that Osama bin Laden espoused, and had been to Afghanistan.

Based on what he already knew, Samit suspected that meant Moussaoui had been to training camps there, although the communication did not say that.

The communication arrived Aug. 30, 2001. The Sept. 11 Commission reported that British intelligence told U.S. officials on Sept 13, 2001, that Moussaoui had attended an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan. “Had this information been available in late August 2001, the Moussaoui case would almost certainly have received intense, high-level attention,” the commission concluded.

But Samit told MacMahon he couldn’t persuade FBI headquarters or the Justice Department to take his fears seriously. No one from Washington called Samit to say this intelligence altered the picture the agent had been painting since Aug. 18 in a running battle with Maltbie and Maltbie’s boss, David Frasca, chief of the radical fundamentalist unit at headquarters.

They fought over Samit’s desire for a warrant to search Moussaoui’s computer and belongings. Maltbie and Frasca said Samit had not established a link between Moussaoui and terrorists.
guardian.co.uk

A powerful new militia dubbed “the Pakistani Taliban” has effectively seized control of swaths of the country’s northern tribal areas in recent months, triggering alarm in Islamabad and marking a big setback in America’s “war on terror”.

The militants are strongest in North and South Waziristan, two of seven tribal agencies on the border with Afghanistan. Strict social edicts have been handed down: shopkeepers may not sell music or films; barbers are instructed not to shave beards. Yesterday a bomb blew up a radio transmitter in Wana, taking the state radio off the air.

Militants collect taxes from passing vehicles at new checkpoints, and last week an Islamic court was established in Wana to replace the traditional jirga, or council of elders. Rough justice has already been dispensed elsewhere. A gang of seven alleged bandits were executed in Miran Shah in December and their bodies were hung from a post in the town centre.
guardian.co.uk

LAGOS, Nigeria — Militants in the Niger Delta have blown up a pipeline belonging to Nigeria Agip Oil Co., cutting off 65,000 barrels per day of crude oil production.

The incident occurred Saturday near the town of Yenagoa, in southern Nigeria, the Vanguard newspaper reported Monday. Some 65,000 bpd were cut off in the attack that damaged the Tebidaba-Brass crude oil trunkline, raising to 621,000 bpd the total amount of Nigeria’s output currently shut in.

The pipeline, owned by Italy’s Agip, gathers crude from flowstations in the swamp region and delivers it to the Brass Terminal for export, Vanguard said.

The militant group Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, which is seeking a greater share of the oil resources, had threatened to increase attacks on Nigeria’s oil facilities.

Frequent attacks have cut Nigeria’s oil exports by 20 percent.
wpherald.com

Unknown even to many Mexicans, Africans helped build their country–toiling in silver mines, fighting alongside Zapata’s guerrillas during the 1910 revolution and shaping cultural traditions such as Carnaval, which sprang from African roots.

Africans in Mexico also have suffered some of the same brutality and bias as their kinsmen north of the border.

Now, as Mexicans migrate to Chicago, some find themselves competing with African-Americans for aldermanic seats, factory jobs, even gang turf.

That shared heritage and intertwined future are at the heart of a new exhibition at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, “The African Presence in Mexico,” the most ambitious and potentially controversial project ever for the Pilsen institution.
meridainsider.com

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela agreed Monday to sell fuel under preferential terms to an El Salvador association created by a group of leftist mayors.

Details of the amount of fuel that will be sold to the Intermunicipal Energy Association for El Salvador were not immediately available but shipments were to begin “as soon as possible,” said Violeta Menjivar, mayor-elect of San Salvador.

It was not immediately clear what kind of fuel was covered by the agreement, but local Salvadoran officials said they hoped for diesel and gasoline.

The Venezuelan state oil firm subsidiary PDV Caribe reached the agreement with the El Salvador association, formed by mayors belonging to the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front party.

Under the agreement, cities headed by the FMLN will pay 60 percent of their oil bill within 90 days while paying for the rest in-kind through agricultural products and locally made goods, said Soyapango Mayor Carlos Ruiz.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, whose country is a major world oil producer, has broadened his influence with generous oil deals to countries across Latin America and the Caribbean. The program has also extended to the United States where the leftist leader has shipped cheaper heating oil to low-income people in New York and Massachusetts via its company Citgo Petroleum Corp.

Chavez, a frequent critic of U.S. policy, used Monday’s signing occasion to criticize U.S.-backed free trade agreements such as the one El Salvador joined March 1.

“They’re making deals with the devil, the devil himself,” Chavez said.
nydailynews.com