The infiltration of gangs into the U.S. military is not only a growing concern in El Paso but is also considered a potential threat to national security and law enforcement.
Weapon thefts, homicides and even the appearance of U.S. street-gang graffiti on military equipment in Iraq are among crimes featured in a National Gang Intelligence Center report on gangs in the military.
The report mentions Fort Bliss.
The issue of gang members in the military was raised Friday by El Paso County Attorney José Rodríguez at a gang investigators seminar at Burges High School.
"We still have a gang problem here in El Paso (even if) it is not as serious as L.A. or San Antonio," said Rodríguez, whose office was behind the city’s civil injunction that targeted the Barrio Azteca gang.
Since 2004, the FBI and El Paso Police Department have identified more than 40 suspected military-affiliated members of the Folk Nation gang alliance stationed at Fort Bliss, stated the Jan. 12 report by the National Gang Intelligence Center.
"As far as gangs in the military, they do have gangs in the military. As far as Fort Bliss is concerned, we are trying to identify gang members in Fort Bliss," said Sgt. Reginald Moton of the El Paso Police Gang Unit.
A Fort Bliss spokeswoman referred questions to the Army Criminal Investigations Division in Washington, D.C., which could not be reached for comment late Friday.
According to police figures, 492 active street gangs, party crews and other groups in El Paso have 4,657 members.
The national intelligence center report, titled "Gang-Related Activity in the U.S. Armed Forces Increasing," lists a homicide that El Paso police gang investigators said on Friday could have links to the Chicago-based Folk Nation.
In December 2004, Jamal Ra shad Davis allegedly shot and killed 19-year-old Jurell Battles during a fight in Northeast El Paso.
Davis, now 23, was a Fort Bliss Army private with the 286th Signal Company of the 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade.
Investigators suspect Davis may also had ties to the Folk Nation. Davis’ trial is pending.
The Folk Nation is described as an alliance of gangs, though the group, according to member blogs, describes itself as a family dedicated to the improvement of its members.
The intelligence center report, which is labeled "unclassified/law-enforcement sensitive," mentions that members of rival gangs often put aside differences while in the military.
"Rival gang members stationed at Fort Bliss, for instance, have joined forces to commit assaults on civilian gang members," the document stated.
The report also states that some gang members join the military to escape the gang lifestyle but others keep gang connections intact.
"The extent of gang presence in the armed services is often difficult to determine, since many enlisted gang members conceal their gang affiliation. … The military enlistment of gang members could ultimately lead to a worldwide expansion of U.S.-based gangs," the document warned.
The report also cautioned that military-dependent children may be targeted by gangs for membership because "the transient nature of their families often makes them feel isolated, vulnerable and in need of companionship."
The influx of 20,000 new soldiers and their families to Fort Bliss in the coming years has local law enforcement watching for potential problems.
Some of the new soldiers are transfers from Fort Hood, Texas. El Paso police sent investigators to Killeen because it had seen problems with military-affiliated gangs from Fort Hood.
In 2005, the Temple Daily Telegram reported of a trial of an Army sergeant stationed at Fort Hood who was the reputed leader of the Gangsters Disciples Killeen chapter that was involved in armed robberies, drug dealings and identity theft. The Gangsters Disciples are part of the Folk Nation.
The huge number of new arrivals has El Paso authorities keeping watch for any potential problems.
"Obviously with all the troops coming in, the FBI has been collecting intelligence with what kind of gang activity may be coming in with those troops. We want to be prepared," said El Paso FBI office spokeswoman Special Agent Andrea Simmons.
"With the numbers of people coming to El Paso affiliated with Fort Bliss — not just soldiers but dependents and new businesses — with any group you will have a few folks who will be of the criminal mind-set," Simmons said.
A Romanian soldier of the 812th Infantry Battalion of the International Security Assistance Force adjust his helmet as he speaks to his colleague before leaving for on patrol in Qalat, in the southern province of Zabul, Afghanistan
HIGHWAY 1, Afghanistan (AP) — The Romanian soldier quietly makes the sign of the cross, then thrusts his rifle through the narrow slit of an armored vehicle as it rolls toward one of the most vital - and dangerous - highways in Afghanistan.
As night falls, machine gunners constantly rotate their turrets and searchlights on the four patrol vehicles and rake the passing countryside for possible ambush sites amid rocky outcrops, mud-brick farm houses and orchards of blossoming almond trees.
The Romanian presence, analyst say, is an example of what must be done to win the war in Afghanistan: convince NATO countries unwilling to put their soldiers in fighting situations that engaging in combat will pave the way for progress.
One of only six NATO nations willing to take on combat operations in the country, the Romanians are tasked with securing a stretch of Highway 1, the strategic and economic lifeline between the capital, Kabul, and the key southern city of Kandahar.
The Taliban were preparing to cut off the highway, isolate and then recapture their one-time stronghold of Kandahar before major NATO pushes blunted their advances late last year. Whether they can regain their momentum this spring is still uncertain.
"Cutting off Highway 1 would be a major information campaign victory for the Taliban. But it is almost impossible," says Maj. Ovidiu Liviu Uifaleanu, commander of the 500-member Romanian unit. "If they attack us, they have a problem."
Taliban insurgents, he says, now largely confine themselves to quick, shoot-and-retreat attacks against the 20 checkpoints manned by Afghan military and police in Zabul province. The Romanians bolster the Afghans with their mobility and firepower, rushing to threatened outposts and otherwise trying to reassure the local population that they can provide security.
"I feel that I am trying to swat a fly with a 40-pound hammer, and only with luck will the fly stay put," Uifaleanu says in fluent English.
"Our last unit in Zabul fell into two or three ambushes. But the Taliban learned. The machine guns we carry can demolish a mud building and anyone standing behind it," says the major, who commands the 812th Infantry Battalion. The unit, known as the "Carpathian Hawks," has seen service in Angola, Iraq and on an earlier Afghanistan tour.
The greater problem now faced by the Romanians appears to be Zabul’s inadequate and poorly equipped Afghan National Police.
Normally paid just $70 a month, they haven’t seen a paycheck for the past four months due to restructuring of the force. So some of the checkpoints along Zabul’s 93-mile stretch of the highway are abandoned, others manned by a handful of policemen, some of whom sleep on the job.
"It’s possible," says provincial police chief Gen. Abdull Ghafar, when asked if some of his men accept bribes. "If they don’t get a good salary they try to get money from other sources."
Maj. Christopher Clay, who commands the U.S. Army unit in Zabul, says the Taliban and drug traffickers pay off police to pass through checkpoints. "Some attacks are staged by traffickers against police units which refuse to accept the bribes. That’s how we can sometimes identify an honest ANP unit - it’s the one which gets hit," says the commander of B Company, 4th Infantry Regiment.
Clay, who serves under Uifaleanu within Task Force Zabul, gives the Romanians high marks and some of his officers say they’re a more finely honed fighting force than some American units. The Hawks trained with U.S. troops in Romania and Germany before being ordered to Afghanistan three months ago.
Romania, which joined NATO in 2004, joined the United States, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Estonia and the Netherlands as one of the member nations willing to engage in combat. The notable "stand asides" among the 37-nation coalition are Italy, Germany, Spain, Turkey and France.
Analysts, offering recommendations on how the war in Afghanistan can be won, say that "national caveats" that prevent the "stand asides" from engaging in combat must be removed so that all NATO members can march to the same tune.
"NATO needs integrated operations with common rules of engagement," Anthony Cordesman, a terrorism expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the U.S. Congress last month. And the Brussels-based International Crisis Group think tank said in a recent report that "hard questions need to be asked of those who sometimes appear to put force protection, not mission needs, at the fore."
Uifaleanu declines to speak about decisions made in other NATO capitals, but says, "We are keeping our promises as a NATO nation and we are here based on a political decision and taking orders from our higher echelon."
From a coalition base on the edge of Zabul’s capital, Qalat, Uifaleanu launches more than 50 missions a week, most centered on Highway 1. It’s transformation from a potholed track to an asphalt highway, cutting travel time between Kandahar and Kabul from a full day to about five hours, is hailed as a key achievement in Afghanistan’s reconstruction.
The Romanian night patrol covers nearly 60 miles, the last stop a concrete blockhouse manned by a dozen Afghan soldiers along a desolate, lonely stretch of the highway.
A half moon casts an eerie glow over an arid plain and a jagged range of hills from which the insurgents emerge to attack the outpost almost weekly.
Sgt. First Class Gabi Sasalman, a 12-year-veteran of all Romania’s overseas missions, points to the distant peaks.
"It’s the same danger here as we faced in Iraq," he says.
DUBAI (AFP) - Iraqi former deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz wants to live in Rome after his release from jail, believing he will be welcomed in the Italian capital.
"I want to live in Rome. The Pope and Italian officials welcomed me," Aziz said in answer to a question about his future hopes delivered via his lawyer. [more]
Justice Minister Hashim al-Shebli, a Sunni Arab member of the secular Iraqi List, said he had presented his resignation to the Cabinet on Thursday but was still waiting for its approval of the decision.
"I have differences with the government on one side and with the my parliamentary bloc on another," al-Shebli told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
He did not elaborate on the differences, but al-Shebli has been involved in a dispute over the Cabinet’s recent endorsement of a decision to relocate and compensate thousands of Arabs who moved to the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk during "Arabisation" campaign in 1980s. The Iraqi List and several Sunni lawmakers have objected to the decision, saying it fails to address key issues, including property claims.
Al-Shebli said he was still acting as justice minister while awaiting the Cabinet’s response.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, could not immediately be reached for comment. Government adviser Sami al-Askari said he had no information about the resignation.
The Iraqi List, which is led by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, holds 25 seats in the 275-seat parliament.
Libyan Dick-tater says "Christianity meant only for sons of Israel, not faith for all peoples of the world".
Libyan leader Muammar Gathafi said on Friday that it was a mistake to believe that Christianity was a universal faith alongside Islam.
"There are serious mistakes — among them the one saying that Jesus came as a messenger for other people other than the sons of Israel," he told a mass prayer meeting in Niger.
"Christianity is not a faith for people in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. Other people who are not sons of Israel have nothing to do with that religion," he said at the prayer meeting, held to mark the birth of the prophet Mohammed.
Gathafi, who is seeking to expand his influence in Africa, said his arguments came from the Koran. He led similar prayers last year in Mali.
"It is a mistake that another religion exists alongside Islam. There is only one religion which is Islam after Mohammed," he said in the sermon, which was broadcast live on Libyan state television.
"All those believers who do not follow Islam are losers," he added. "We are here to correct the mistakes in the light of the teachings of the Koran."
Gathafi also said it was a mistake to believe that Jesus had been crucified and killed. "It is not correct to say that. Another man resembling Jesus was crucified in his place."
Libya grants financial aid to Islamic communities in Africa and elsewhere to build mosques, Islamic schools and facilities.
Libyan state television often shows Gathafi meeting groups of African men or women telling him they converted to Islam.
The mass prayers, chaired by Gathafi, came a day after Arab leaders wrapped up a summit in Saudi Arabia. Libya was the only Arab state to shun the gathering.
"Libya has turned its back on the Arabs … Libya is an African nation. As for Arabs, may God keep them happy and far away," Gathafi has said to explain his boycott of the summit.
BAGHDAD, March 30 — By early Friday night, families here were hunkered around their televisions, nervously awaiting the election results that would come hours later. In the northern Iraqi town of Irbil, thousands packed into a shopping mall courtyard and stood before a massive screen, shouting for the victory of their candidate: "Shada! Shada!"
The chestnut-maned object of their obsession was Shada Hassoun, Iraq’s contestant on the fourth season of the Lebanese talent show "Star Academy," the "American Idol" of the Arab world. She had made Friday’s finals, and a public vote, sent via cellphone, would decide her fate. And so Iraqis everywhere were in a Shada frenzy this week — causing many to observe that, win or lose, Hassoun, a 26-year-old who professes to love jet-skiing and Antonio Banderas, had managed to engender a sense of national cohesion that has eluded Iraq for years. [more]
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Israel on Friday and planned to visit Syria, a country the Bush administration has shunned, on her second fact-finding trip to the Middle East since taking the gavel in January.
Pelosi’s repeat trip to the Middle East indicates she has no intention of letting the White House have the sole province on foreign policy. She has already forced legislation through the House that would order all combat troops out of Iraq by September 2008, a measure that resembles a similar measure approved by the Democratic-run Senate.
The Bush administration has mostly refused to engage Syria diplomatically because of its ties to terrorist networks. U.S. officials held their first direct, high-level contact with Syrian representatives in years this month when they met with officials from several Middle East countries in Baghdad to discuss Iraq.
Others traveling with Pelosi were Democratic Reps. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, Henry Waxman and Tom Lantos of California, and Nick Rahall of West Virginia, and Ohio Republican David Hobson. Ellison is the first Muslim member of Congress. [more]
Astronomers might not have to search a galaxy far, far away after all to find a world with double sunsets like Luke Skywalker’s home planet Tatooine. A new study suggests the universe is filled with them.
Astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have found that twin-star systems are just as likely to be surrounded by dusty debris disks as ones with only a single star. Debris disks are made up of asteroid-sized rock chunks and other material that could be leftovers of planets that have formed in the system.
The majority of stars like our Sun have at least one stellar companion. Astronomers have theorized that planets could form with little trouble in two-star systems, called binaries, despite the more complex gravitational tugging. The new study provides strong observational evidence to support that idea.
“There appears to be no bias against having planetary system formation in binary systems,” said study leader David Trilling of the University of Arizona. “There could be countless planets out there with two or more suns.”
A planetary nursery
Trilling and his team looked for disks in 69 binary systems between 50 and 200 light-years away from Earth. All the stars are more massive and younger than our middle-aged Sun. The researchers found that about 40 percent of the binary systems they looked at had disks. This frequency is a bit higher than that for a comparable sample of single stars and suggests planets are at least as common around binary stars as they are around single stars.
Deepak Rhagavan, an astronomer at Georgia State University who was not involved in the study, says the new findings are exciting because they are the first evidence of a planetary nursery in a multiple star system. “Until now, we knew planets existed [in multiple star systems], but I think this is the first time that we’ve gotten a comprehensive study that looks at the debris disk where planets are born,” Rhagavan said.
Last year, Rhagavan’s team reported that many star systems known to harbor planets actually contained two, and in some cases, even three, stars.
Alan Boss, a planet formation theorist at Carnegie Institution of Washington, says the finding is encouraging news for planet hunters. “It’s pretty reassuring,” said Boss, who also was not involved in the study. “This really goes in the direction of making planets more frequent than they would be otherwise.”
Tight binaries
Surprisingly, most of the debris disks found in the new survey were around so-called tight binary systems, where the stars are separated by 500 AU or less. One AU is equal to the distance between the Earth and the Sun.
Scientists know of about 50 planets that have two Suns, but all of them belong to “wide” binary systems, where the stars are separated by about 1,000 AU.
“The fact that they’ve found some positive evidence of planet-forming disks being around close binaries is really a new step,” Boss said.
Some scientists had previously argued that planet formation would be stifled in tight binary systems because of the large gravitational interactions between the stars.
“The idea was that the extra star would stir up the stuff in the planet forming disk so much that you would never form a planet,” Trilling told SPACE.com.
Trilling said his team’s results might mean that planet formation favors tight binaries over single stars. However, it could also be that tight binaries are just dustier, and thus easier to spot. Further observations will be required to determine which of these explanations is correct.
A human gazing at a double sunset on a world with two Suns like Skywalker’s Tatooine might not find the scene so alien after all, Trilling said. “It would be kind of like what you see on Earth, but with an extra Sun following in the sky,” he said. “Maybe it’s a little hotter during the day.”
Illegal alien rights activists in Colorado have launched a week-long economic boycott, saying they want to show how big an impact illegal aliens have on the economy.”Illegal aliens have substantial buying power that is often taken for granted,” Julien Ross of the Denver-based Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition (CIRC) told OneWorld.
CIRC is calling on illegal aliens to refrain from buying anything but necessities this week. In addition, the group is urging supporters to pull most of their money out of bank accounts and take a week-long break before sending any money to relatives who live outside the United States.
“We need fair and just immigration reform now,” Ross said. “Families are being divided and children are being orphaned by illegal alien raids; women and children are dying in the desert crossing into this country. We have a labor crisis in Colorado where farms cannot find enough workers to tend their crops. By any measure, we have a crisis here.”
Last week lawmakers in Washington introduced the so-called STRIVE Act, which would allow illegal aliens to obtain legal residency in the United States after paying a fee and undergoing a background check. It would also create a program to allow nearly half a million people to enter the country each year to work low-skill jobs.
Some immigration reform proponents have already come out against the bill, which also includes a slew of measures to ratchet up security along the U.S.-Mexico border.
According to the American Friends Service Committee, “the STRIVE Act offers little to address the root causes of illegal alien and contains several troubling provisions,” including one that would require immigrants to leave the United States and re-enter before qualifying for legal immigration status.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization, which has supported efforts to organize immigrants living in Colorado, said the bill does not meet fundamental standards of human rights.
This week’s economic boycott in Colorado comes exactly one year after one the largest immigrant rights demonstrations in U.S. history.
Last March 25, more than half a million people took to the streets of Los Angeles to protest a Congressional measure known as HR 4437, which would have made it a crime to be an undocumented immigrant in the United States or to help those who remain in the United States without legal documentation. It also would have required churches and non-profit organizations to require proof of legal status before providing charity and it would have mandated construction of a giant fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Five weeks later, on May 1, millions of people took to the streets across the country, and Congress ultimately shelved the bill. Hundreds of thousands turned out in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami, and 75,000 protested in Denver.
But the scrapping of HR 4437 resulted in gridlock rather than a solution in Washington and the year since has not been kind to illegal aliens in Colorado.
Last November, Colorado voters approved two immigration measures. Referendum H, which denies a state tax credit to employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers, passed with 50.8 percent of the vote. Referendum K, which directs the state attorney general to sue the federal government to demand enforcement of immigration laws, got 56 percent of the vote.
The voter-approved initiatives came after then-Governor Bill Owens signed a law directing local police to ask about the immigration status of drivers they stop. The bill, SB90, also instructs police to pass that information on to federal authorities.
That, activists say, has created a climate of fear in illegal alien communities. The law took effect in January. Sylvia Martinez of the group Latinos Unidos in Greeley, Colorado told OneWorld that reports of police harassment and racial profiling have already been coming in.
“Police officers are not only asking people for their documentation to be in this country but also adding to that their own personal comments,” she said.
Martinez, who is a U.S. citizen, said, “unfortunately many people’s perception of what an illegal alien looks like is like me: Hispanic. How do I know that I’m not going to be either targeted or looked at differently as a citizen based only on my skin color?” she asked.
Farming interests in Colorado estimate that about 40 percent of illegal aliens have left the state in response to the new laws.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty about how these new laws that took effect in January 2007 will have an impact on the agriculture situation,” Martinez added. “We’re just getting into Spring and the planting season is only about to begin at the beginning of April. Even last year, there were several farmers that were not able to pick up produce from their fields: and we’re talking about hundreds of acres.”
Colorado officials are considering using prison labor to work in the fields if too few migrant workers can be recruited.
Julien Ross of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition believes problems in Colorado and other Western states are intractable without “comprehensive immigration reform” from Washington.
“The new Governor of Colorado doesn’t want to touch immigration,” he said. “So the best way to address mistakes made last year is for the federal government to fix our broken immigration system. Comprehensive immigration reform will make SB90 and other laws obsolete.”
Sudan has agreed to allow U.N. troops to join an African Union force in its troubled Darfur region, Saudi Arabia said on Thursday, but the United States voiced doubts as it readied tough new sanctions.
President Omar Hassan al-Bashir had long resisted the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers to the vast western province of Darfur, where Washington says a so called genocide has taken place through government support for nomadic militia groups.
"Sudan has now agreed for the U.N. to provide logistical support to help African forces," Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal told a news conference at a summit of Arab nations.
"This is a breakthrough that never happened before and we hope it leads immediately to a solution to the humanitarian tragedy in Darfur as soon as possible."
A senior Bush administration official said Washington would wait to see whether Khartoum had indeed reversed course.
"We are very skeptical that Bashir has agreed to any such thing. We must see the fine print," the official said.
Before the Saudi announcement, U.S. officials from the State, Defense, Treasury and other departments had said that Washington would "tighten the screws" on Sudan with fresh measures, likely within days.
That would include a further limit on dollar transactions, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Beyond slapping travel and banking restrictions on at least three more individuals, including a rebel leader, Washington wants to put more pressure on fragmented rebel groups.
"You have to squeeze them all," said a defense official.
The United States also aims to pressure Bashir militarily by helping rebuild the forces of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army which was at war with the north until a 2005 peace deal.
The defense official said military options like a no-fly zone over Darfur — which Britain wants — or a forced intervention had been ruled out for now but the Pentagon had done "back of the envelope" estimates on what might be needed.
Experts say at least 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced in Darfur since 2003, when rival groups took up arms against the government, accusing it of neglect.
Khartoum says 9,000 people have died and denies the allegations of genocide.
The Saudi announcement came after Bashir met U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Arab League chief Amr Moussa, Saudi King Abdullah and Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki, who heads an East African body, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development.
Bashir had told Arab leaders at the summit’s opening on Wednesday that the United Nations could have a role in providing logistical support for African troops.
A U.N. plan foresaw a small force of U.N. military and civilian forces moving into Darfur, followed in the second phase by about 2,500 more U.N. troops and then a further 10,000 soldiers to form a hybrid force.
Sudan, which has been accused of hindering aid to Darfur, signed an agreement with the United Nations this week to boost humanitarian work in the region.
A New York art gallery has decided to cancel an exhibit of a chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ after protests by a US Catholic group.
The six-foot (1.8m) sculpture, entitled "My Sweet Lord", depicts a naked Jesus Christ with his arms outspread.
The sculpture, by artist Cosimo Cavallaro, was to have been displayed from Monday at Manhattan’s Lab Gallery.
The timing, over Easter Holy Week - the most important part of the Christian year - provoked an outcry.
The Roger Smith Hotel housing the Lab gallery decided to cancel the exhibition after the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights called for a boycott.
‘Strong-arming’
"We’re delighted with the outcome," said Kiera McCaffrey, spokeswoman for the League.
Ms McCaffrey had called the exhibit "an assault on Christians".
"They would never dare do something similar with a chocolate statue of the Prophet Mohammed naked with his genitals exposed during Ramadan."
The Lab gallery’s artistic director, Matt Semler, has offered his resignation, saying the decision to cancel the exhibition was a result of "strong-arming from people who haven’t seen the show, seen what we’re doing.
"They jumped to conclusions completely contrary to our intentions," he said.
Mr Semler said the timing of the exhibition - when Christians mark the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ - was coincidental.
Canadian-born Mr Cavallaro is known for using food ingredients in his art, on one occasion painting a hotel room in mozzarella cheese.
He used 200 pounds (90 kg) of chocolate to make the sculpture which, unusually, depicts Jesus without a loincloth. It showed him suspended in air with his arms spread wide, as if crucified. Source
Fury in Russia
In Russia, Orthodox Christians protested outside a Moscow museum on Friday over an exhibition of provocative images, including pictures portraying Mickey Mouse as Jesus Christ and close-ups of male and female genitals.
"You are going to be tried. Are you still at large?" the angry protesters shouted at the museum’s director.
They tried to break into the exhibition hall but the director quickly locked the door, a Reuters photographer at the scene said. They also tried to attach stickers with the words "This is filth" on the building but police stopped them.
The Russian Orthodox Church denounced the exhibition, entitled "Forbidden Art 2006" as pornography and said it propagated religious hatred, Reuters reported.
The museum, named after late Soviet dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov, says it is hitting back at what it calls the rebirth of censorship under President Vladimir Putin. Many other galleries have refused to show the works.
Some exhibits were discreetly hidden behind high, white partitions with tiny holes left for visitors to peep through.
The works, spanning more than 30 years, range from icons of faithful worshipping Mickey Mouse instead of Jesus Christ to a silhouette of the Virgin Mary and son filled with black caviar.
There are several close-up photos of men and women’s genitals. A photograph entitled "Glory to Russia!" pictures a smirking Russian army general raping a male private in front of other servicemen.
Critics say the exhibition insults the religious feelings of Christian Orthodox believers.
"All this is beyond the boundaries of morality and law," Father Vsevolod Chaplin, deputy head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s external relations department, told Reuters.
"The organisers of this exhibition should understand that to believers religious symbols mean no less than, for instance, a person’s untarnished reputation or a state symbol."
In what the U.N. human rights chief called an unprecedented show of support to empower the physically and mentally impaired, 80 countries signed a U.N. convention enshrining the rights of the world’s 650 million disabled.
The United Nations held a ceremony Friday on the first day the convention opened for signatures and not only did 80 countries and a representative of the European Union sign it but Jamaica announced that it had also ratified the convention. That means only 19 more ratifications are needed before the convention comes into force, and speaker after speaker urged speedy approval.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour announced the huge level of support at a news conference afterward.
"It’s certainly unprecedented in terms of support for a human rights instrument, but it’s apparently setting records for the signature of any convention in the United Nations," she said.
The convention is a blueprint to end discrimination and exclusion of the physically and mentally disabled in education, jobs, and everyday life. It requires countries to guarantee freedom from exploitation and abuse for the disabled, while protecting rights they already have - such as voting rights for the blind and wheelchair-accessible buildings.
The convention guarantees that the disabled have the inherent right to life on an equal basis with the able-bodied and requires countries to prohibit discrimination on the basis of disability and guarantee equal legal protection. Countries must also ensure the equal right of the disabled to own and inherit property, to control their financial affairs, and to privacy over their personal lives. [more]
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Gunmen apparently trying to seize a smugglers’ truckload of drugs attacked a pickup hauling 23 suspected illegal immigrants early Friday, killing two people and wounding another, authorities said.
Within hours, Border Patrol agents tracking footprints found two men along with three high-powered weapons near a campsite south of where the shooting occurred, a Border Patrol deputy chief and Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said.
The men were questioned Friday afternoon and admitted to having fired high-powered weapons into the truck and were charged with two counts each of homicide and 21 counts each of attempted homicide, sheriff’s Criminal Investigations Chief Richard Kastigar said.
Rosario Humberto Araujo-Monarrez, 21, and Martin Esrain Flores-Gaxiola, 18, from the Mexican state of Sinaloa, were being processed before being booked into the Pima County Jail and other charges could be pending, he said. Police also were seeking two other suspects.
The shootings occurred about 5 a.m. on a rural road west of Interstate 19 near Green Valley, a retirement community about 25 miles south of Tucson.
A man and a woman were killed and one person was hospitalized for wounds in the upper torso and an ankle, Kastigar said.
"The vehicle is riddled with bullets," and was hit from the front and both sides, Dupnik said. He said the bullets appeared to include a .223, one fired from an AK-47 and one an apparent shotgun slug.
Children ages 6 and 7 and a 6-month-old baby were in the truck’s cab, where one of the adults killed was sitting, but no child was injured.
The group had crossed into the U.S. on foot the night before near Sasabe and were picked up by two or three smugglers, or coyotes, with a Ford pickup registered in Henderson, Nev., Dupnik said.
Dupnik said one witness inside the pickup heard the driver yell at the shooters: "’I don’t have any drugs, I have people.’"
"So we’re assuming from that at least the driver - probably the coyote - believed that the suspects were after drugs," Dupnik said.
It was not clear if the two men who were charged had attorneys.
Escalating violence on and near the border that has victimized illegal immigrants in recent months has reached crisis levels, Dupnik said.
"The violence associated with the problem of migration and narcotics and other contraband going both north and south has reached epidemic proportions, and the safety of everyone in this state if not in this country is in some way affected by what’s occurring," the sheriff said.
A similar attack in February on a vehicle carrying a group of illegal immigrants northwest of Tucson killed two men and a girl and left two others wounded.
The illegal immigrants attacked Friday included members of at least three families from the southern Mexico state of Chiapas, Dupnik said.
The driver apparently sped through the shooting spree, then stopped and those inside ran into the desert.
Deputies and Border Patrol agents launched a ground and air search for survivors. They located 20 uninjured migrants, in addition to the dead and wounded. They are being held by the Border Patrol.
Dupnik said law enforcement resources on the federal, state and local levels have been taxed to their limits. "We are literally overwhelmed by the problem," he said - and he criticized the federal Department of Homeland Security for devoting most of its grants to state and local agencies for what he called reactionary purposes, including training exercises for disaster response that could cost $2 million each.
He said his department has been asking for communications help and would like to institute a program to cut down on stolen vehicles being driven south to Mexico.
"If we had the money for the kinds of resources that we need we could make a huge impact on the border violence and crime," Dupnik said.
The European Union has drawn up guidelines advising government spokesmen to refrain from linking Islam and terrorism in their statements.
Brussels officials have confirmed the existence of a classified handbook which offers "non-offensive" phrases to use when announcing anti-terrorist operations or dealing with terrorist attacks.
Banned terms are said to include "jihad", "Islamic" or "fundamentalist".
The word "jihad" is to be avoided altogether, according to some sources, because for Muslims the word can mean a personal struggle to live a moral life.
One alternative, suggested publicly last year, is for the term "Islamic terrorism" to be replaced by "terrorists who abusively invoke Islam".
An EU official said that the secret guidebook, or, "common lexicon", is aimed at preventing the distortion of the Muslim faith and the alienation of Muslims in Europe.
"The common lexicon includes guidance on a number of frequently used terms where lack of care by EU and member states’ spokespeople may give rise to misunderstandings," he said.
"Careful usage of certain terms is not about empty political correctness but stems from astute awareness of the EU’s interests in the fight against terrorism.
"Terrorists exploit and augment suspicions."
Details on the contents of the lexicon remain secret, but British officials stressed that it is there as a helpful aid "providing context" for civil servants making speeches or giving press conferences.
"We are fully signed up to this, but it is not binding," said one.
However, Conservative MEP Syed Kamall hit out at the lexicon. "It is this kind of political correctness and secrecy that creates resentment among both the mainstream in Europe and in Islam," he said.
Meanwhile, UK Independence Party MEP Gerard Batten claimed that the EU was in denial over the true roots of terrorism.
"This type of newspeak shows that the EU refuses to face reality," he said. "The major world terrorist threat is one posed by ideology and that ideology is inspired by fundamentalist jihadi Islam."
PHOENIX (AP) — Actor Alec Baldwin was so moved by the story of an 18-year-old Army soldier who is scheduled to serve in Iraq, he’s going to help pay for her college education after she leaves the military.
The story of Pvt. Resha Kane of Needles, Calif., was on the front page of the New York Times on March 4 and was written as a narrative about the day Kane said goodbye to her friends and family on Feb. 27 in Mohave Valley, Ariz., six miles northeast of Needles. Accompanying the article was a large photo of a teary-eyed Kane looking into her father’s eyes as he tenderly held her shoulders.
Soon after, Baldwin - not Baldwin’s people - phoned several dollar stores in Mohave Valley looking for Kane’s mother, Patricia Kane. He finally tracked her down at Family Dollar.
"I didn’t know what to say," Kane said. "And then I asked him if he could send me his autograph. I’ve never met a star, let alone talked to one on the phone."
Baldwin, who appeared in "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "The Departed" and most recently won a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild award for his performance in the weekly NBC comedy "30 Rock," was vacationing in London and could not be reached for comment.
Baldwin spokesman Matthew Hiltzik said when Baldwin read the New York Times article, it made him think of his own daughter, 11-year-old Ireland.
Hiltzik said the actor will meet the Kane family in Mohave Valley and give them a check, which will be in addition to the $37,000 the Army will give Kane for college. Hiltzik said the date for Baldwin’s visit should be decided next week.
Although Baldwin, 48, has been a vocal critic against the war in Iraq, Hiltzik said supporting the troops who are fighting there is important to the actor.
"He himself tried to find the family, and he was very happy he was able to connect with them," Hiltzik said. "It’s a great example that people of different backgrounds can agree on the importance of supporting our troops."
Patricia Kane said when she heard Baldwin’s voice on the other line, she didn’t know what to think.
"I said, ‘No way. You’re lying.’ I was just blown away," she said. "I am totally shocked and awed this has happened."
Resha Kane said she was just as dumbfounded when her mother told her the news.
"It’s very generous," she said from Fort Hood in Texas, where she is undergoing further training before her unit is deployed to Iraq in September. "Actors have all this money, and it’s a good thing to see them do something other than for themselves and show some character and use their money wisely."
Kane, a chemical operations specialist in the Army, said she wants to be a biochemist but is not sure what university she wants to attend once she leaves the military in three years.
Although her mother is terrified for her daughter, Resha Kane said she’s not afraid to go to war.
"To tell you the truth, I’m not really worried about it," she said. "It’s our duty to go over there, do our job and come back."
The following is the text of an Iranian Foreign Ministry letter handed to the British ambassador in Tehran, according to IRNA, Iran’s state news agency.
"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran presents its compliments to the British Embassy in Tehran and draws the attention of the latter to the following:
According to the information received from relevant authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran, two British naval vessels manned by 15 fully equipped crews trespassed on Iran’s territorial waters on 3 Farvardin 1386 (March 23, 2007). Since similar acts had taken place in the past and prior warning had been given against the repetition of such acts, the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran protests strongly against this illegal act in violating Iranian territorial waters, emphasizes the respect for the rules and principles of international law concerning the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states, underlines the responsibility of the British Government for the consequences of such violation, and calls for the guarantee to avoid the recurrence of such acts.
It will be appreciated if the esteemed embassy conveys this note to the relevant authorities of its government and informs this Ministry of any explanation in this regard.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran avails itself of this opportunity to renew to the British Embassy the assurances of its highest considerations."
The Autodrome was packed. The crowds started chanting her name, "Shakira, Shakira". And suddenly the music started. The 25,000-strong crowd roared.
And there she was. As beautiful as ever and with a great smile she greeted the audience. After singing her first song, Estoy Aqui, she spoke to the crowd, thanking Dubai for giving her the opportunity to perform here, her first time in the Middle East.
She spoke of her Arab heritage, "of which I am very proud" and ended by whispering into the microphone, "Tonight I’m all yours". [more]
Mexico City: Mexico’s attorney general on Wednesday demanded US authorities do more to stop guns and drug money from heading south and fuelling the drug violence in Mexico that left more than 2,000 dead last year.
Eduardo Medina Mora told a business forum that the vast majority of arms used by the soldiers of drug cartels, including assault rifles and grenades, are smuggled from the United States.
"It’s truly absurd that a person can get together 50 to 100 high powered arms, grenade launchers, fragmentation grenades, and can transport this cargo to our country," Medina Mora said. "It’s a task that needs a much more decided and determined effort from the US government, and it’s one of the demands we have put on the table."
President Felipe Calderon, who took office on December 1, has waged a major offensive against the cartels, sending more than 24,000 troops to regions ravaged by drug-related beheadings and execution-style slayings. He has also extradited several alleged kingpins to the United States, winning the praise of the US Drug Enforcement Agency.
But drug gangs have hit back, killing police officers across the country. Sometimes notes threatening the federal government have been left near the corpses.
Even Calderon has said that he has received threats, although he has said he can’t be sure if they are from cartels.
Tattoo artist Jerry Layton (right) inks a tattoo of the grim reaper on the arm of a Marine in Oceanside, California.
Oceanside, California: Five tattooed skulls stretch from Marine Cpl Jeremy Slaton’s right elbow to his wrist, spelling out the word "Death".
He planned to add a tattoo spelling "Life" on his left arm, but that is on hold because of a Marine policy taking effect on Sunday.
The Marines are banning any new, extra-large tattoos below the elbow or the knee, saying such body art is harmful to the Corps’ spit-and-polish image.
Slaton and other grunts are not pleased.
"I guess I’ll get the other half later," grumbled the 24-year-old. "It’s kind of messed up."
For many Marines, getting a tattoo is a rite of passage. They commonly get their forearms inscribed to remember fallen comrades, combat tours or loved ones, and often ask for exotic designs that incorporate the Marine motto, Semper Fi, short for Semper Fidelis, or "Always faithful".
Dozens of Marines from Cape Pendleton, the West Coast’s biggest Marine base, made last-minute trips to tattoo parlours in nearby Oceanside before the ban kicked in.
"This is something I love to do," said Cpl David Nadrchal, 20, who made an appointment to get an Iraqi flag and his deployment dates etched onto his lower leg.
"The fact I can’t put something on my body that I want - it’s a big thing to tell me I can’t do that."
For many Marines, getting a tattoo is a rite of passage. They commonly get their forearms inscribed to remember fallen comrades, combat tours or loved ones.
In taking 15 British service members hostage last week, Iran’s militant government is following a tactic begun at the birth of its Islamic revolution in 1979, when it took 63 Americans hostage at the U.S. embassy.
And if history is a judge, Tehran often gains some concessions from the West, either arms or money, or some diplomatic offering that it believes enhances its image in the region.
“They’ve been trying to take American hostages all along,” said Michael Ledeen, a military analyst at the American Enterprise Institute who advocates fomenting a democratic revolution in Iran. “You can be sure they are constantly trying to take hostages, whether it’s in Lebanon or Israel or Afghanistan or Iraq. It’s what they do.”
Ledeen, who is writing a book on Iran, said the regime often gains something by kidnapping Westerners.
The 444-day hostage situation at the American embassy in Tehran brought the new regime a sought-after standoff with President Jimmy Carter, the failed U.S. rescue mission known as Desert One and Carter’s ultimate re-election defeat in 1980. The revolutionaries also won a U.S. commitment not to interfere in its internal affairs.
Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist group set up by Iran, took Americans hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s. President Ronald Reagan ended up approving arms shipments to Iran in a failed hostage exchange that embroiled the administration in scandal.
Hezbollah took two French hostages in Lebanon in 1986. Paris promptly evicted an Iranian opposition group, which re-established in Iraq, and paid a ransom. The hostages were freed.
The terrorist group snatched two Israeli soldiers last July in a border incursion that triggered a ground invasion and air assault by Israel. It remains to be seen whether Hezbollah wins any type of concession before releasing the two.
Iran seized eight British sailors in the same Shatt al Arab waterway in 2004. But unlike the current crises, Iran quickly released the eight. Britain so far has refused Iran’s demand to admit the 15 service members were operating in Iranian waters.
A U.S. government official, who asked not to be named, said Iran’s exact motives are not clear at this point.
“What appears to be the case is they saw a target of opportunity and they seized upon it,” the official said. “They could very well be trying to use this as leverage to get concessions from the West, like possibly to try to secure the release of some of the Iranians being held in Iraq.”
Syed Hasnat, a Pakistani-educated scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said that so far Iran has not demanded anything other than the admission of a mistake. He said with sanctions imposed on Iran by the United Nations and a U.S. military buildup in the Persian Gulf, Iran is actively defending its borders.
“It is a message that it will not allow anyone to cross its borders,” Hasnat said. “Iran will very jealously guard its borders.”
DETROIT (AP) — Federal prosecutors have charged 17 people in a seven-year crackdown on a multistate cocaine trafficking ring known as the Black Mafia Family.
The indictments, issued Dec. 15 but not made public until Thursday, brings to 58 the number of people charged in the case, the U.S. attorney’s office in Detroit said in a news release.
Charges in the latest indictment include money laundering and conspiracy to distribute cocaine.
The Black Mafia Family dealt cocaine in the Detroit metropolitan area beginning in the early 1990s, extending across the country.
Authorities pursuing the ring have seized about 1,100 pounds of cocaine and about $19 million in money and other assets since 2000, according to the statement.
Jacob Arabov, a New York celebrity jeweler known in the hip-hop world as "Jacob the Jeweler," is awaiting trial in Detroit on accusations that he helped launder about $270 million in drug profits for the group. He has pleaded not guilty. Source
This undated photo released by the Fayette County Sheriff’s Department shows marijuana plants discovered growing in a home in Newton County, Ga. Around the country, investigators are increasingly seeing suburban homes in middle-class and well-to-do neighborhoods turned into indoor marijuana farms. Typically investigators find an empty home, save a mattress, a couple of chairs, some snacks in the fridge and an elaborate setup of soil-free growing trays. (AP Photo/Fayette County Sheriff’s Department)
LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. - In Coldwater Creek, a middle-class housing development outside Atlanta, the neighbors mind their own business and respect each other’s privacy — ideal conditions, it turns out, for growing marijuana in the suburbs. [more]
WASHINGTON - As if you needed reminding: It’s dangerous out there. And if your parents’ warnings that the world is full of malevolent people and mishap-prone places didn’t stick, the State Department is ready to fill the void.
From the spectacular to the mundane, while terrorism grabs headlines, most problems faced by Americans abroad have nothing to do with al-Qaida but rather cutthroat con artists, corrupt officers and dismal drivers.
The colorful quirks of foreign lands, be they unscrupulous cabaret girls in Cyprus or the arbitrary enforcement of unwritten laws in Laos, are laid bare each year in safety and security reports compiled by State Department analysts for every country on Earth.
The department puts them online, mainly for employees of U.S. firms doing business abroad but are available to anyone. According to this year’s updates:
_"Driving in Qatar is (like) participating in an extreme sport."
_"Police involvement in criminal activity is both legendary and true in Mexico."
_"Be aware of drink prices" in Croatia’s gentlemen’s clubs, where tourists can "unknowingly run up exorbitant bar bills, sometimes in the thousands of dollars."
These little publicized assessments venture beyond the bland, carefully worded travel advice the State Department is normally known for, and are often downright undiplomatic.
The Mexican Embassy in Washington, for example, objected to the characterization of police corruption, calling it an "unfortunate cliche." "Things are changing in Mexico for the good," spokesman Rafael Laveaga maintained.
But unflattering descriptions of countries are not uncommon.
"The tragedy of Haiti is that Haitians have become great leaders in every profession and in every country, with the exception of Haiti," says the report for the impoverished Caribbean nation, warning that trained personnel are lacking to respond to any emergency.
In deadpan fashion, another report praises Maltese authorities at the expense of the Mediterranean island’s closest neighbor. "Despite Malta’s geographic proximity to Italy, organized crime is almost nonexistent," it says.
Although deadly, the Mafia, along with natural disasters and terrorists, should be the least of your worries outside the United States.
Automobile accidents cause the biggest portion of non-natural, non-combat deaths of Americans abroad, accounting for nearly a third of the more than 2,000 cases reported to the State Department between 2004 and 2006.
Thus, the department’s Overseas Security Advisory Council places heavy emphasis on local motoring mores in the reports.
In the oil-rich Gulf nation of Qatar, the population of fewer than 900,000 racks up an astounding 70,000 traffic accidents per year, its report says.
"Drivers often maneuver erratically and at high speed, demonstrate little road discipline or courtesy, fail to turn on their headlights during hours of darkness or inclement weather, and do not use seat belts," it says.
Sound bad? Well, it may be worse in Tunisia.
"Among their many traits, local drivers rarely use lanes designated for turns, often cut across multiple lanes of traffic, rarely look before changing lanes, do not yield the right of way when merging, commonly run through red lights without stopping, and generally drive oblivious to other vehicles on the road," the Tunisia report says.
"Driving in Egypt," meanwhile, "can be a harrowing experience and not for the faint-hearted," the analysts opine.
In the historic center of the French city of Strasbourg, cars face nonmoving threats as "vehicle arson has come into vogue here with an unofficial New Year’s Eve competition" among vandals wrecking numerous autos each December 31, the report for France says.
After accidents, assaults, suicides and drownings are the next leading causes of U.S. civilian deaths overseas, according to the State Department. Terrorist attacks claim far fewer American lives, it says.
Yet there are perhaps less well-known dangers lurking beyond U.S. borders.
Even the staid environs and clockwork efficiency of Switzerland can be risky, the analysts say.
"Being surrounded by the majestic, snow-covered Alps, combined with a pervasive sense of orderliness, it is understandable that travelers might forget that the city of Geneva and the adjacent cantons are not immune from crime," the report on Swiss security says.
Elsewhere, the lacing of drinks with date-rape drugs is common, but even without such adulteration, visits to watering holes far from home can be perilous, the reports say.
The U.S. embassy in Cyprus has ordered staff to avoid "cabaret girls," or "artistes," who work with unscrupulous bar owners to overcharge patrons in search of female companionship, the analysts say.
They add that the usually diligent Cypriot police are generally unsympathetic to victims.
But at least Cyprus has capable and respected law enforcement officers.
In nearby Greece, "police have limited ability to deter criminals" and "receive little support from the Greek government and even less respect from the Greek population," the analysts say.
In Laos, authorities may simply make up the rules, the analysts say, noting that "while the country does have published laws forming the basis of its law enforcement mechanism, the population is also beholden to unpublished laws and proclamations."
Closer to home, Mexico is not a place to rely on the local constabulary, they say.
"Reporting crime is an archaic, exhausting process in Mexico, and is widely perceived to be a waste of time."
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) - Local Taliban militants seeking to impose Islamic law blew up two video shops and torched a cable television operator’s office in northwestern Pakistan, officials said Friday. There were no casualties in the blasts which happened late Thursday in Kohat, a town close to Pakistan’s troubled tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.
The attackers forced people out of the local office of World Cable 2000 and sprinkled kerosene over it before setting it on fire, the officials said.
Later they detonated crudely-made bombs at the video shops, which were empty at the time. Both shops were badly damaged.
Residents said the attacks followed threats to the owners to shut down their business because they were un-Islamic.
Northwestern Pakistan has seen previous attacks on video and music shops blamed on extremists emulating the ultra-orthodox Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.
A homemade bomb in a market in the main northwestern city of Peshawar on March 18 damaged four music and video shops weeks after their owners refused an order to close down from Islamic hardliners.
There has been growing concern about the "Talibanisation" of Pakistan, with heavy fighting in the tribal areas and another northwestern town under curfew for the last three days following clashes between militants and security forces. Source
Folks, to say I’m proud of my co-bloggers at The Gun Toting Liberal would be an understatement. Shortly after reading some mighty chest thumpin’ by the far-right c0nservative blog, RedState, who claimed to have been “invited” to travel to Iraq by the Pentagon, our co-blogger, Mr. Alexander Paul Melonas, immediately took exception to a couple of points raised by the “RedStaters”.
A) The suggestion by the good folks at RedState that liberal bloggers apparently, lacked the “cohonies” to join with them on such a “brave and treacherous” journey into a war zone -
B) The fact CLAIM by the good folks at RedState that they were invited by the Pentagon to embed in Iraq while our co-blogger, Mr. Melonas, would have been delighted to receive that very same invitation to embed and report from his own, admittedly, progressive point of view -
Not only was Mr. Melonas perplexed by these developments, our co-editor and co-author, Ms. Megan Donovan, took clear exception to the suggestion that liberal bloggers had the stigma of being “cowardly” and afraid of venturing into “dangerous” circumstances in order to bring the truth back to the Citizens. By the way, Mr. Melonas has officially contacted the Pentagon to seek permission to travel to Iraq to report back to the Citizens from his progressive perspective, which, if approved, would make Alexander the FIRST liberal blogger to travel to Iraq as an embedded journalist.
In its entirety, here is a glance at Ms. Donovan’s SPIRITED rebuttal to the good folks of RedState (Cross-Posted at The Gun Toting Liberal): [more]
States that commit acts of torture should be forced to pay for victims’ rehabilitation, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak has said.
Mr Nowak said torture victims required long and costly treatment, and usually rich nations footed the bill rather than the offending states.
Mr Nowak said the EU was the biggest donor to torture rehabilitation centres, providing $29m (22m euros).
He was presenting his annual report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
"Countries where torture is widespread or even systematic should be held accountable to pay," the UN rapporteur said.
Mr Nowak suggested that such states could then even pass the bill on to the individual torturers.
"If individual torturers would have to pay all the long-term costs, this would have a much stronger deterrent effect on torture than some kind of disciplinary or lenient criminal punishment.
"In reality, it’s almost never the state that tortures, but other states who provide asylum, who take victims of torture and who are then providing in state institutions rehabilitation."
Mr Nowak said the UN Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture was the second biggest financier of torture rehabilitation, providing $17m (13m euros).
He also called for the application of a provision for universal jurisdiction within the UN convention against torture, which obliges countries to arrest alleged torturers who arrive on their territory. Source
Occupied Palestinian Territories will host a collaborative Arts Festival featuring over 200 local and visiting musicians between March 31st and April 14th.
One of the largest performing arts projects ever staged in the Occupied Territories, the Palestine Mozart Festival will feature over 25 events staged in Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus and East Jerusalem.
The Festival programme includes orchestral and choral concerts, educational workshops, a touring opera, academic lectures, film screenings, and a series of recitals by internationally-renowned Palestinian and European soloists.
In total, the events will bring together over 120 Palestinian participants - including professional performers, music teachers, and students - with more than 80 European professional singers and instrumentalists.
The Palestine Mozart Festival brings together over 200 musicians and students from the Middle East and Europe to celebrate the genius of Mozart in a series of over 25 public and educational events, in Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Nablus and Ramallah.
The concert programme includes three performances of Mozart’s sublime Requiem, a new production of The Magic Flute – the first ever fully-staged professional operatic production in the West Bank – and two recitals by internationally-acclaimed pianist Saleem Abboud Ashkar.
The Festival is the result of the collaboration between a number of Palestinian organisations working to promote musical education in the Occupied Territories (including the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, the Kamandjati Foundation, Nablus the Culture, and the International Centre of Bethlehem) and the acclaimed British professional ensemble the Choir of London, whose debut CD on the Naxos label reached the top of the UK classical chart in 2006.
The sculpture is due to be exhibited in the run-up to Easter
A New York gallery has angered a US Catholic group with its decision to exhibit a milk chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ.
The six-foot (1.8m) sculpture, entitled "My Sweet Lord", depicts Jesus Christ naked on the cross.
Catholic League head Bill Donohue called it "one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever".
The sculpture, by artist Cosimo Cavallaro, will be displayed from Monday at Manhattan’s Lab Gallery.
The Catholic League, which describes itself as the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organisation, also criticised the timing of the exhibition.
"The fact that they chose Holy Week shows this is calculated, and the timing is deliberate," Mr Donohue said.
He called for a boycott of the gallery and the hotel which houses it.
‘Overwhelming response’
The gallery’s creative director, Matt Semler, said the gallery was considering its options in the wake of angry e-mails and telephone calls.
"We’re obviously surprised by the overwhelming response and offence people have taken," he said. "We are certainly in the process of trying to figure out what we’re going to do next."
Mr Semler said the timing of the exhibition was coincidental.
Mr Cavallaro, the Canadian-born artist, is known for using food ingredients in his art, on one occasion painting a hotel room in mozzarella cheese.
He used 200 pounds (90 kg) of chocolate to make the sculpture which, unusually, depicts Jesus without a loincloth. Source
BAGHDAD - The U.S. military announced the capture Friday of a suspected militant linked to the import into Iraq of sophisticated roadside bombs that the Americans have asserted are coming from Iran.
The suspect, who was detained by U.S. and Iraqi forces during a raid in the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City, was believed to be tied to networks bringing the weapons known as explosively formed projectiles, or EFPs, into Iraq, the military said.
The suspect was believed to be involved with several violent extremist groups responsible for attacks against Iraqis and U.S.-led forces, according to the statement.
It did not name the suspect or the groups, but the U.S. military has asserted in recent months that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Quds force have been providing Shiite militias with weapons and parts for sophisticated armor-piercing bombs. The EFPs are responsible for the deaths of more than 170 American and coalition soldiers since mid-2004, the military says.
Residents claimed the man arrested was a 58-year-old father of six children who was unemployed. They said the raid began at 2 a.m. and targeted four houses, and the American and Iraqi troops seized money, a computer and several cell phones.
Armando "Jun" Ducat, left, and Cesar Augustus Carbonell, the two men who held 26 children hostage on a bus but released them after a 10-hour standoff, talk to visitors inside their detention cell at the Manila Police Department Thursday March 29, 2007 in Manila, Philippines.
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The parents of 26 children held hostage aboard a bus by two men demanding better education for the youngsters have refused to press charges, praising the captors as champions of the poor.
Authorities, unmoved by the campaign on behalf of Armando "Jun" Ducat Jr. and his accomplice, prepared preliminary charges Friday of illegal detention and possession of firearms and explosives, punishable by 40 years in prison. The president denounced the publicity stunt as "prank terrorism."
Police said Friday that Ducat’s lawyers have asked prosecutors to review the evidence against him within 15 days.
Ducat - a businessman-philanthropist who runs a 145-student day care center in Manila’s Parola slum community - remains a hero to parents who watched their children from the center being held in a bus in front of City Hall for 10 hours Wednesday, as the drama unfolded live on TV.
The parents have affectionately dubbed him "Sir Ducat." Interviewed extensively by local media, they said they have agreed among themselves not to press charges against Ducat and Caesar Carbonell, leaving it to the government to pursue the case.
"My wish is that … what Sir Ducat had worked so hard for be realized, because we from the squatter area know the hardship he went through to help us poor people," said Shiela Malabo, whose 7-year-old son, Fred, was among the hostages.
"We will demand the release of Sir Ducat. We want him out of jail," said Helen Cabunayan, whose daughter was taken hostage.
"We owe him a lot. He gave our children free education, free food and clothing. He is always there to help," said another parent, Rosita Osita.
Senior Superintendent Danilo Abarzosa said police have discovered that two grenades Ducat held during the hostage drama did not have detonators and would not have exploded, but that the guns and bullets the captors used were real.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, embarrassed by the incident as she tries to woo more investors and tourists to the country, ordered the suspects treated "with the full force of the law."
She said she wants to prevent Ducat - who has a history of attention-grabbing stunts - from pulling off more, and to send a warning to possible copycats.
"The end does not justify the means," Arroyo said. "Despite the seemingly noble issues being raised in this bizarre drama, this government shall not stand for prank-terrorism."
Meanwhile, the Philippines’ interior secretary ordered the removal of Abarzosa, the Manila police chief, and two of his staff for serious breaches of police protocol during the hostage-taking.
Ronaldo Puno said police failed to control the crowd of onlookers near City Hall, allowed unauthorized people into the area and permitting contact between the hostage-takers and other people, including media, without proper clearance.
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Even with some of its members old enough to collect retirement pay, a party at Hells Angels headquarters is no celebration for the police.
As the club planned to mark the 50th anniversary of its founding this weekend, police put extra officers on duty Thursday, even as they downplayed the chance of trouble from a club with a long history of run-ins with the law.
"I anticipate it’s going to be one of the biggest events the club has had," said George Christie, the group’s Ventura chapter president. "I just think everybody’s in a festive mood."
