His stops included Egypt, Ghana, the Republic of Congo, Angola, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda, Xinhua news agency reported.
His trip follows African visits earlier this year by Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing and President Hu Jintao, who clinched important oil exploration deals in several states.

Li described the premier’s trip as ‘fruitful’ and said it had deepened friendship, enhanced trust and broadened cooperation, Xinhua reported.

The tour to the world’s poorest continent has aroused concern that Beijing’s diplomatic offensive was aimed at countering the United States and sparked criticism that China’s hunt for natural resources was in disregard of human rights.

Wen rejected those criticisms and stressed that China followed a policy of non-interference in other countries’ affairs.
mmorning.com

GAZA, Thursday, July 6 Large numbers of Israeli tanks and troops moved deeper into northern Gaza early this morning to take up new positions near former Israeli settlements, abandoned and destroyed a year ago.

The deeper incursion, by tanks and armored personnel carriers with their headlights off, began just before 2 a.m., hours after the government ordered the military to expand its operations against Hamas in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
nytimes.com

Professor Mordechai Ravid and five other doctors and interns at Meir Hospital in Kfar Sava conducted an illegal medical experiment on some 60 women, most of whom were Arab.

The experiment was conducted without obtaining the requisite approval of the hospital’s Helsinki Committee for human experiments, and without the patients’ signed consent.

The experiments were conducted between 2001 and 2003, on diabetic patients aged 45 to 70.
haaretz.com

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The U.S. military is investigating whether the kidnapping, killing and mutilation of two soldiers was carried out in retaliation for an alleged rape and killing of an Iraqi woman by another member of the same unit three months earlier, a military official said yesterday.

The incidents occurred in nearby towns, and the soldiers involved were from the same unit. Both the bodies of the two U.S. soldiers and at least one Iraqi were brutalized.

The official, citing the results of a preliminary military investigation, also said yesterday that military officers had forced the chief suspect in the rape case out of the Army before the accusation against him came to light because they believed he could pose a threat to Iraq civilians.
post-gazette.com

RAMADI, Iraq, July 4 „ The Government Center in the middle of this devastated town resembles a fortress on the wild edge of some frontier: it is sandbagged, barricaded, full of men ready to shoot, surrounded by rubble and enemies eager to get inside.

The American marines here live eight to a room, rarely shower for lack of running water and defecate in bags that are taken outside and burned.

The threat of snipers is ever present; the marines start running the moment they step outside. Daytime temperatures hover around 120 degrees; most foot patrols have been canceled because of the risk of heatstroke.

The food is tasteless, the windows boarded up. The place reeks of urine and too many bodies pressed too close together for too long.

“Hey, can you get somebody to clean the toilet on the second floor?” one marine yelled to another from his office. “I can smell it down here.”

And the casualties are heavy. Asked about the wounded under his command, Capt. Andrew Del Gaudio, 30, of the Bronx, rattled off a few.

“Let’s see, Lance Corporal Tussey, shot in the thigh.

“Lance Corporal Zimmerman, shot in the leg.

“Lance Corporal Sardinas, shrapnel, hit in the face.

“Lance Corporal Wilson, shrapnel in the throat.”
nytimes.com

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has announced there is no military spending cap for troops in Afghanistan battling the Taliban and opium production.

After days of headlines in the British press that commanders in Afghanistan needed more manpower and helicopters, Blair and Treasury officials intervened after military figures suggested that spending in Afghanistan had been limited to $1.75 billion over three years by Des Browne, now the defense secretary but formerly chief secretary to the Treasury.

Blair made the announcement speaking to the House of Commons Liaison Committee Tuesday, The Times of London reported.

“Anything they (the military) need to ask for in order to protect our troops, I will make sure they get,” Blair said. “Our obligation to them is to get them what they need to do the job.”
washtimes.com

…The preliminary results issued by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) gave Mr Calderon 36.38% of the vote compared with 35.34% for Mr Lopez Obrador.

But Mr Lopez Obrador said he would not accept the results, which he believed had “many inconsistencies”.

His party claimed some voting places were counted twice while others were not counted at all.

If Mr Calderon’s win is confirmed, the victory will halt the rise of the so-called left in Latin America, and the US will continue to have a like-minded administration on its southern border, the BBC’s Duncan Kennedy in Mexico City said.
bbc.co.uk

There’s a Riot Going On
…Despite outgoing president Vicente Fox’s avowal that Mexico is “at` peace”, it doesn’t really look that way. As the tightest presidential election in its 196-year history comes down to the wire, the nation is wracked by a spasm of violent social confrontation.

Item–On April 21st, a thousand elite state and federal police descended upon a striking steel plant in Lazaro Cardenas Michoacan, firing tear gas and live ammunition wildly. But 600 strikers fought back with slingshots and iron ore pellets and drove the police off with heavy machinery. Two young workers were killed in the melee, inflaming a usually quiescent Mexican labor movement. The strike at the Villacero steel plant, Latin America’s largest steel bar manufacturer, continues in its fourth month.

GAZA (Reuters) – An Israeli airstrike hit the pro-Hamas Islamic University in Gaza City on Tuesday, Palestinian witnesses said.

The army said it was checking the report.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

The airstrike came several hours before the expiry of a deadline set by Palestinian militants for Israel to agree to free hundreds of prisoners in exchange for a captured soldier.
reuters.com

Iran President slams UN over Mideast violence
TEHRAN (AFP) – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has slammed the United Nations for its slowness to act against violence in the Palestinian territories that followed the abduction of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants.

“If the international organizations forget their duties in utmost irresponsibility, world nations will lose their hope in them,” the state television quoted him as saying Monday.

Palestinian poll: Faith in Hamas government is on the rise

Nearly five years after George Bush vowed to bring Osama bin Laden to justice “dead or alive”, it’s the end of the line for the CIA’s Alec Station, the unit dedicated to the hunt for the al-Qaida leader.

The unit, named after the son of a counter-terror official, was disbanded last year, it emerged this week, and its agents reassigned in what intelligence officials described as a recognition of the changing nature of al-Qaida.

“The reorganisation just reflects the understanding that the Islamic jihadist movement continues to diversify,” an intelligence official said.
guardian.co.uk

Oh. Okay.

…“I was strongly urged by colleagues not to undertake this project, for two reasons,” Caroline Elkins said in an interview at her home, not far from the campus. “One, they felt it was too politically sensitive. Two, they said there wouldn’t be enough information. So, me being me, I decided those were good enough reasons to undertake the project.”

…She began her research as a graduate student at Harvard in 1993, continuing for several years and receiving her doctorate in 2001. “I was going to write on the success of British liberal reform in the detention camps of Kenya,” she said. British official records suggested that there were only a few “one-offs” — bad apples — in an otherwise-enlightened program of reeducation. But by 1998, after an early visit to Kenya and after reading accounts of horrors in private collections and interviewing former colonial officers in London, she had become suspicious.

“I remember distinctly, I was in my flat in London,” she said, “trying to write up a portion of what I had found. And it wasn’t adding up. Then I said, after days of frustration, `What if I turn this upside down? What if this is a story of extreme violence and repression, more systematic over time, and about coverup?’ It was an `oh-good-God’ moment. It all began to fall into place. The purging of files was extraordinary. The British were meticulous record keepers, but there wasn’t a single file that said how many camps there were, their names and functions. I had to piece it all together.”
boston.com