Weekly Round Up: Stupid USA, "Not" Stupid, Hizbullah Used US Arms & Cobain Beats Elvis As Richest Artist!

The week started with a senior US official saying that the US were 'arrogant and stupid' in Iraq, then retracting the comment a day later. Midweek two British children were killed by a gas leak in a Corfu hotel and it has now been revealed that four staff at the hotel will face manslaughter charges. We also learnt that US contractors in Iraq were wasting a lot of money in so called administrative costs, Iraq was still paying Kuwait for its invastion, British journalits were being condemned for telling the truth! and Germany knew of CIA torture cells but did not tell anyone. The Week ended with Dick Cheyney saying that waterboarding was justified interrogation of prisoners and President Bush stating that the US did not torture its prisoners!

Here are all the other news from around the world...

North America
Schroeder suspicious of Bush's faith
Gerhard Schroeder, the former German chancellor, has described in his memoirs how he was suspicious of George Bush's constant references to his Christian faith.

"I am anything but anti-American," Schroeder told Der Spiegel in an interview to accompany the excerpt of the book which will go on sale on Thursday.

In the book, Schroeder, who led the Social Democrats to power in 1998, recalls that he had tears in his eyes as he watched television pictures of people jumping from the burning World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001.

He believed that Germany would have to react. He wrote: "It was important to me that Germany fulfill its requirements as an ally [of the US]".

While meetings with Bush at that time were friendly, Schroeder writes, he could not reconcile himself with the feeling that religion was the driving force behind many of the president's political decisions.

"What bothered me, and in a certain way made me suspicious despite the relaxed atmosphere, was again and again in our discussions how much this president described himself as 'God-fearing,"' Schroeder wrote, adding he was a firm believer in the separation of church and state.

"We rightly criticise that in most Islamic states, the role of religion for society and the character of the rule of law are not clearly separated," he added.

"But we fail to recognize that in the USA, the Christian fundamentalists and their interpretation of the Bible have similar tendencies".

Rumsfeld: 'Back Off' on Iraq Timeline Questions
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters yesterday to "just back off" and "relax" instead of looking for differences between U.S. and Iraqi officials on benchmarks for progress in Iraq toward political and security goals, and he rejected the idea of penalizing any failure to hit the targets.

In a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld sparred repeatedly with questioners over reported discord between U.S. officials and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on a timeline for Iraqi security forces to assume more responsibilities from U.S. troops. Rumsfeld disputed a characterization of Iraqi forces as chronically failing to meet benchmarks, saying this assertion was "flat wrong" and that the Iraqis have "done a darn good job."

In response, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, "Today a secretary of defense, who should have been fired a long time ago, lost even greater touch with reality."

The White House also jumped into the fray today, accusing the "mainstream media" of having distorted Maliki's remarks in a Baghdad news conference yesterday and taken his words "out of context." In a statement, the White House said Maliki was clarifying that the U.S. government is not pursuing a timeline for withdrawing American forces from Iraq and was making the point that discussions of such a timeline were being driven by U.S. election-year politics rather than Bush administration policy.

Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling Sentenced to 24 Years in Prison
At a hearing last Monday where Jeffrey Skilling continued to proclaim his innocence, U.S. District Judge Sim Lake of Houston sentenced Skilling, the former chief executive officer of Houston's Enron Corp., to more than 24 years in prison.

Lake denied Skilling's request to remain free on bail pending his appeal, but the judge allowed Skilling to remain in home confinement until the U.S. Bureau of Prisons orders him to report to prison. Lake granted a defense motion that Skilling serve his time in the Butner Federal Corrections Complex in Butner, N.C.

In May, a jury found Skilling guilty of 19 criminal charges stemming from the collapse of Enron, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December 2001. Skilling stood trial alongside former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay, but Lay died in July, and earlier this month Lake vacated Lay's conviction of 10 criminal charges because Lay's death made it impossible for him to appeal his conviction.

Lake sentenced Skilling to 292 months in prison, which was at the low end of the range of punishment dictated by the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. Lake said Skilling could have received up to 365 months in prison under the guidelines. Prosecutors and defense attorneys had stipulated the financial loss caused by Skilling's crimes at a minimum of $80 million, Lake said.

Mexico extradited 50 fugitives to U.S.
Mexico has extradited a record 50 fugitives to the United States this year, including several alleged drug traffickers, murders and rapists, U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza announced Tuesday.

Garza said the extraditions showed that Mexico is no longer a haven for U.S. criminals. "Fugitives allegedly committed crimes in the United States and thought they would enjoy free and unfettered lives south of the border," Garza said in a statement. "They were wrong."

In November, Mexico's Supreme Court removed an obstacle that had prevented many of the country's most notorious criminals from facing U.S. justice when it overturned a four-year ban on the extradition of suspects facing life in prison.

However, Mexico still refuses to extradite suspects who face the death penalty in other countries. Capital punishment is illegal here, and a 1978 treaty with the United States allows Mexico to deny extradition if the suspect could be executed.

Ottawa seeks to deport U.S. man "exiled" to Canada
An American sex offender who was sentenced by a U.S. judge to three years "exile" in Canada was arrested by Canadian border guards on Thursday and faces deportation, the government said.

Federal ministers and legislators had expressed deep unhappiness after a New York state judge allowed former teacher Malcolm Watson -- convicted of having sex with a 15-year-old girl -- to live in Canada on probation rather than spending time in a U.S. jail.

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said "We don't want to see Canada become a haven for pedophiles or any other person committing serious crime, we don't want U.S. courts getting the notion that we just take people here that they would have put in jail but they instead send to Canada."

U.S. authorities say Watson's relationship with the 15-year-old was consensual. The age of consent in Canada is 14 but it rises to 18 if the sex takes place within a relationship of trust or dependency, such as between a teacher and student.

Watson, a U.S. citizen, lives in southern Ontario near the U.S. border with his wife and children. He had commuted to work at a girls' school in nearby Buffalo, New York. The U.S. judge ruled that Watson could return to the United States only to report to his parole officer.

Protests erode law in Mexico's Oaxaca
With virtually no police in the streets, residents of this colonial town in rebellion are stepping in to fill the void — often with brutal consequences.

People accused of being thieves are tied to light posts and beaten, one home was torched and a man was stabbed to death with an ice pick as five months of protests erode the rule of law in what was once a major Mexican tourist destination.

Because there are no police patrols, masked and armed protesters roam the streets, seizing anyone they suspect of criminal activity. Often, they grab young men accused of trying to commit various crimes, tie them up for hours and beat them.

The conflict began in June, when police attacked striking teachers in the city's colonial center. Protesters rebelled, forcing police and other state authorities out of downtown, taking over television and radio outlets and scaring away tourists drawn to the region by its colonial architecture, Indian culture and handicrafts such as brightly colored wool rugs and black pottery.

Anthrax Attacks - New York Times Columnist Must Reveal Sources, Judge Rules
A federal judge has ordered the New York Times Co. to disclose the confidential sources used by Nicholas D. Kristof in columns that explored whether a former Army scientist was responsible for the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks.

The ruling, made public, came in a lawsuit filed by the former scientist, Steven J. Hatfill, contending that the paper defamed him in a series of Kristof columns in 2002 that identified him as a "likely culprit." Hatfill has been identified by authorities as a "person of interest" in the anthrax-spore mailings that killed five people and sickened 17. No one has been charged in the attacks.

The ruling is the latest in a series of court defeats for journalists trying to shield news-gathering activities from the legal process. Judges have ordered reporters covering issues ranging from baseball's steroid scandal to the investigation into the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity to disclose confidential sources. In the Plame case, former New York Times reporter Judith Miller spent 85 days in jail for refusing to comply.

But those were criminal cases; Hatfill's is a civil lawsuit. Legal experts said it is relatively common for judges to order journalists to reveal confidential sources in a libel lawsuit, but the journalist is rarely jailed for resisting.

Cobain beats Elvis as richest artist (deceased)
Death is not always the dumbest of career moves, especially if you are a rock star of enduring appeal. Kurt Cobain, the one-time frontman for Nirvana who committed suicide in 1994, earned $50m (£25m) over the past year, according to Forbes magazine's annual list of Top-Earning Dead Celebrities published yesterday.

That figure catapulted Cobain into first place, beating the most reliable of posthumous money-spinners, Elvis Presley, as well as a predominantly musical dozen of also-rans including John Lennon, Ray Charles and Bob Marley.

The list is a ghoulish, darkly humorous send-up of the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans, timed to coincide with Halloween, but it is also a reflection on the extraordinarily lucrative world of licensing and merchandising deals involving artists no longer with us.

Top 10 'rich dead' list
1 Kurt Cobain ($50m - £26.3m), 2 Elvis Presley ($42m - £22.1m), 3 Charles Schulz ($35m - £18.4m), 4 John Lennon ($24m - £12.6m), 5 Albert Einstein ($20m - £10.5m), 6 Andy Warhol ($19m - £10m), 7 Dr Seuss/Theodor Geisel ($10ms - £5.3m), 8 Ray Charles ($10m - £5.3m), 9 Marilyn Monroe ($8m - £4.2m), 10 Johnny Cash ($8m - £4.2m).

South America
Former Iran leader wanted in Argentina
Argentine prosecutors asked a federal judge on Wednesday to order the arrest of former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani and seven others for the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center that killed scores of people.

The decision to attack the center "was undertaken in 1993 by the highest authorities of the then-government of Iran," prosecutor Alberto Nisman said at a news conference. He said the actual attack was entrusted to the Lebanon-based group Hezbollah.

The worst terrorist attack ever on Argentine soil, the bombing of the Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires killed 85 people and injured more than 200 when an explosive-laden vehicle detonated near the building.

Iran's government has vehemently denied any involvement in the attack following repeated accusations by Jewish community and other leaders here.

The attack on the seven-story Jewish center, a symbol of Argentina's more than 200,000-strong Jewish population, was the second of two attacks targeting Jews in Argentina during the 1990s. A March 1992 blast destroyed the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 people in a case that has also been blamed on Hezbollah.

Although Jewish community leaders and others have suspected the involvement of Middle East terrorists, a lack of progress in tracking down the masterminds has made families of the victims increasingly bitter.

In 2004, about a dozen former police officers and an accused trafficker in stolen vehicles were acquitted of charges that they had formed a "local connection" in the bombing.

Venezuela, Guatemala to seek new U.N. candidate
Venezuela and Guatemala have agreed in principle to end their contest for a coveted seat on the U.N. Security Council but have yet to agree on an alternate candidate, diplomats said.

The U.N. General Assembly resumed repetitive voting on Wednesday, with Guatemala beating Venezuela 109 to 72 - less than the two-thirds need in the 192-member General Assembly.

The Venezuelan and Guatemalan foreign ministers intend to meet in New York on Thursday to try to agree on a consensus candidate for the seat, one of two earmarked for Latin America on the 15-nation council, the diplomats said.

Guatemala is backed by the United States for the two-year seat while Venezuela has painted the race as a battle against Washington and its U.N. ambassador, John Bolton.

The new developments emerged during a meeting of the 35 Latin American and Caribbean U.N. members, convened after neither Venezuela nor Guatemala was able to win in 35 ballots conducted last week in the General Assembly.

Report: Pinochet gold deposit discovered
A Hong Kong bank has a multimillion-dollar gold deposit registered to Augusto Pinochet, the government said Wednesday. Newspapers put the total at some $160 million, but a lawyer and spokesman for the former Chilean dictator denied it.

Foreign Minister Alejandro Foxley said the Chilean government received information about the account "through one of our diplomatic missions abroad several days ago."

A spokesman for Pinochet, retired Gen. Guillermo Garin, said he had no information on the alleged deposit at the HSBC bank in Hong Kong. "I had never heard anything about this before, so I have never talked about this with him (Pinochet)," Garin told The Associated Press by telephone. "But I have no doubt whatsoever that this report has no real basis at all."

The discovery was part of an investigation into Pinochet's fortune abroad that began in 2004 after a U.S. Senate investigative committee disclosed that the 90-year-old former ruler held millions of dollars at the Riggs Bank in Washington. Since then, Pinochet's fortune at several foreign banks had been estimated at $28 million. He allegedly used false passports to open some of the accounts. Pinochet is under indictment on tax evasion charges, and the money has been frozen.

Nicaraguan Congress bans all abortions
Nicaragua's Congress voted Thursday to ban all abortions, including those that could save a mother's life.

If signed into law by President Enrique Bolanos, the measure would eliminate a century-old exception to Nicaragua's abortion ban that permits the procedure if three doctors certify that the woman's health is at risk. Fifty-two lawmakers voted for the measure. Nine lawmakers abstained and 29 others did not attend the legislative session.

Bolanos has proposed increasing prison sentences for illegal abortions — currently around six years — to 10 to 30 years for women who have the procedure as well as those who assist them.

The bill has drawn protests from women's rights groups, and the Women's Autonomous Movement has said it was prepared to seek an injunction to block the measure if it passed. Congress approved the bill despite a letter from European Union diplomats and U.N. representatives asking lawmakers to hold off on voting on the issue until after the Nov. 5 presidential elections.

Aside from Cuba, which permits abortions in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, Latin America has some of the world's most restrictive anti-abortion laws. El Salvador and Chile also ban all types of abortions.

Europe
Germany suspends 2 soldiers over photos
Germany's military has suspended two soldiers from duty in connection with photos of service members posing with skulls in Afghanistan, Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung said Friday.

The pictures published in the top-selling Bild daily provoked widespread expressions of disgust among politicians, and calls to improve training for foreign deployments.

Bild says the pictures were taken in early 2003; they show soldiers posing with the skull on the hood of their vehicle and one soldier holding the skull next to his exposed genitals.

Jung said that three other soldiers were under investigation in connection with more photos published by the RTL television channel and reportedly taken in 2004.

The military's top training official was being sent to Afghanistan to review the motivation and discipline of the German soldiers there, Jung said at a press conference.

"Our interest is in getting clarity as soon as possible," he said.

EU, U.S., to share criminal investigation information
The European Union endorsed an agreement with the United States to facilitate the exchange of information between EU and U.S. prosecutors on terrorism and cross-border criminal cases, it said on Tuesday.

The deal, endorsed by EU ministers on Monday, will allow the EU-wide prosecutors' office Eurojust to exchange information with U.S. counterparts on cases under investigation, said Maarit Loimukoski, a member of Eurojust representing the Finnish EU Presidency.

"It will facilitate the cooperation," said Loimukoski, one of the 25 prosecutors and judges who work at Eurojust's headquarters in The Hague.

The deal, to be signed between the European Union and the United States on November 6, follows a series of post-9/11 EU-U.S. agreements, including one on sharing of transatlantic air passenger data clinched this month after tough negotiations.

EU lawmakers and rights groups have been increasingly worried about protection of data privacy in such agreements.

Local councils are offered millions to bury nuclear waste
Tenders are to be invited from town halls to site nuclear waste bunkers in their areas in return for multimillion-pound investment in local services.

David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, confirmed yesterday the long-expected decision to bury the waste from Britain’s ageing civil nuclear power stations up to 1,000 metres (3,280ft) from the surface. The plan, which will cost £10 billion over several decades, will not involve nuclear waste being imposed on any community, Mr Miliband told the Commons.

Local authorities will be asked to volunteer to have dumps in their area, and the inducements will be attractive. The construction project could take 40 years to complete.

In July the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management recommended burying radioactive waste deep underground as the best option. It recognised that public resistance would be an obstacle — as it had been to proposals for deep disposal in the 1980s, which were abandoned.

Duncan McLaren, of Friends of the Earth, said: “Dumping nuclear waste in the ground is no solution to the problem of this country’s deadly radioactive waste legacy. Solving the problem should not begin with bribes but with a pledge not to create any more waste.” Nathan Argent, of Greenpeace, said: “There’s already enough nuclear waste in this country to fill the Albert Hall five times over.

“It could take several generations to find a so-called suitable disposal site, if indeed at all. Therefore a period of interim storage will be inevitable, meaning nuclear waste will continue to be trundled around the country for decades.”

Exodus of Iraqi spilling into Europe
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have fled the unrelenting violence in their homeland since the U.S. invasion in 2003 — a mass exodus directed primarily to neighboring Arab countries. But a growing tide of Iraqis is seeking shelter and a new start in Europe, where Sweden is emerging as the destination of choice due to relatively lax immigration laws.

The number of Iraqis applying for asylum in the 25 countries of the European Union rose by nearly 50 percent to 7,300 in the first six months of the year, bucking a downward trend in the total number of asylum-seekers, U.N. statistics show.

One-third of them came to Sweden, a country of 9 million people with an Iraqi immigrant community of more than 70,000 which has so far resisted clampdowns on immigration seen elsewhere in the EU.

The latest immigration figures in Sweden show the surge has intensified in recent months. By October, nearly 5,000 Iraqis had sought asylum in the Scandinavian country this year — more than double the total in 2005. Unlike Sweden, other European countries "are becoming increasingly restrictive," said Migration Board expert Krister Isaksson, noting Denmark and Britain as examples.

Britain has seen a steady drop in asylum-seekers in recent years, as the government has tightened immigration laws and stepped up border controls. Britain and Poland are the only EU countries to have forcibly returned Iraqis whose asylum applications were rejected, according to the European Council on Refugees and Exiles.

Middle-East
Israel admits using phosphorus bombs during war in Lebanon
Israel has acknowledged for the first time that it attacked Hezbollah targets during the second Lebanon war with phosphorus shells. White phosphorus causes very painful and often lethal chemical burns to those hit by it, and until recently Israel maintained that it only uses such bombs to mark targets or territory.

The announcement that the Israel Defense Forces had used phosphorus bombs in the war in Lebanon was made by Minister Jacob Edery."The IDF holds phosphorus munitions in different forms," Edery said. "The IDF made use of phosphorous shells during the war against Hezbollah in attacks against military targets in open ground." Lebanon's President Emile Lahoud also claimed that the IDF made use of phosphorus munitions against civilians in Lebanon.

Edery also pointed out that international law does not forbid the use of phosphorus and that "the IDF used this type of munitions according to the rules of international law."

Some experts believe that phosphorus munitions should be termed Chemical Weapons (CW) because of the way the weapons burn and attack the respiratory system. As a CW, phosphorus would become a clearly illegal weapon.

The International Red Cross is of the opinion that there should be a complete ban on phosphorus being used against human beings and the third protocol of the Geneva Convention on Conventional Weapons restricts the use of "incendiary weapons," with phosphorus considered to be one such weapon.Israel and the United States are not signatories to the Third Protocol.

Russia says Hizbullah used US arms
Moscow believes it has settled its differences with Israel over concerns that Hezbollah militants used Russian missiles during their recent fighting in southern Lebanon, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said last Friday, and hinted that the guerrillas favored US and Israeli-made weapons.

Israel's claims that Hizbullah guerillas used Russian missiles during their 34-day war this summer have clouded improving relations between Israel and Russia, and were discussed by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during his visit to Moscow this week.

"In my view, this subject in general is closed," Ivanov said in televised comments. He said that he could not reveal details, but that "exhaustive answers were given to the Israeli side," the Interfax news agency reported.

He also suggested that Russia believes Hizbullah guerillas used more US - and Israeli-made weapons than Russian ones, saying a report Thursday in the Russian daily Kommersant asserted that Russia gave Israel documents proving that claim was "in many ways close to the truth."

Israel does not accuse Russia of directly supplying Hizbullah, but maintains Russian arms were sold to Syria and Iran, which sent them on to their Hizbullah proxies. Ivanov had said in August that Israel had provided no evidence that Hizbullah had Russian-designed missiles.

Israel prisoner treatment condemned
An Israeli human rights group has accused the government of violating international law by moving Palestinian prisoners out of the occupied territories.

B'Tselem, a body that monitors human rights in the West Bank and Gaza, said in a report released on Thursday that most of the 9,000 Palestinians being held by Israel were illegally imprisoned inside the Jewish state.

"The vast majority of Palestinian prisoners are held in prisons inside Israel, and not in the occupied West Bank,in contravention of international humanitarian Law," said B'Tselem's communications director, Sarit Michaeli.

"In order to guarantee basic human rights, they should be transferred to prisons in the West Bank where Palestinians are allowed to travel," she said.

In a response sent to B'Tselem in August, the Justice Ministry said it did everything possible, within the constraints of security, to facilitate visits and said that it had denied only 41 of 4,616 visits requested since December 2005.

"The state has been acting relentlessly, despite the many security and administrative difficulties involved, to enable the existence of these visits," it said. The ministry did not directly address the allegation of the illegality of holding the prisoners in Israel.

Education minister instructs schools to mark Kafr Qasem massacre anniversary
Israeli Education Minister Yuli Tamir has instructed schools to devote time to mark the 50th anniversary of the Kafr Qasem massacre, in which border patrol troops killed 47 Arab citizens who were returning to their village from work. The anniversary will be marked on Sunday, October 29.

Tamir has instructed schools to address the massacre itself and the events that occurred following the massacre, including the court ruling that a command can be termed "blatantly illegal," and in such a case, a soldier must not obey it.

According to the minister's directive, "The massacre and the trial that followed it have become milestones in the national psyche of Israeli society and have instilled in generations of commanders and soldiers a moral border one should abide by."

Tamir decided to address the massacre in schools following a petition by the education committee within the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee.

On October 29 1956, during the first day of the Sinai war, three border patrol troops received a command to shoot anyone who broke the curfew imposed on Kafr Qasem.

The troops shot and killed 47 of the village's residents as they were making their way home from work, unaware of the newly imposed curfew. Among the dead were women and children. The soldiers involved in the massacre were sentenced to lengthy prison terms, but received pardons. The brigade commander was sentenced to pay the symbolic fine of 10 pruta (old Israeli cents).

Ahmadinejad opposes finger-print bill
Iran's fiercely anti-U.S. president has come out against a bill that would require Americans to be fingerprinted on arrival in Iran.

Speaking to a crowd in the northern Tehran suburb of Shemiranat, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he had asked Iranian legislators to set aside a bill that would require immigration officials to take fingerprints of all U.S. passport holders.

The bill, which passed a preliminary reading in the Iranian parliament earlier this month, was drafted by conservatives who sought to retaliate for the U.S. requirement that Iranian visitors be fingerprinted.

The U.S. measure, which also applies to nationals of some other countries, was implemented in 2002, in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

Small numbers of American passport holders visit Iran, mostly academics interested in Persian history and culture. However, some U.S. basketball players play for Iranian teams and U.S. wrestlers occasionally take part in tournaments in Iran.

U.N. Says Iraq Seals Data on the Civilian Toll
The United Nations office in Baghdad says that Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, has ordered the country’s medical authorities to stop providing the organization with monthly figures on the number of civilians killed and wounded in the conflict there, according to a confidential cable.

The cable, dated Oct. 17 and sent to United Nations officials in New York and Geneva by Ashraf Qazi, the United Nations envoy to Iraq, says the prohibition may hinder the ability of his office to give accurate accounts in its bimonthly human rights reports on the levels of violence and the effect on Iraqi society.

Concern over the numbers of civilians who have died in Iraq has risen sharply at a time when organized attacks by insurgents are swelling the numbers of victims and when a new report from a team of Iraqi and American researchers shows that more than 600,000 civilians have died in violence across Iraq since the 2003 American invasion.

Mr. Qazi, a former Pakistani diplomat, says that the order to let the prime minister’s office take over the release of the numbers came down a day after a United Nations report for July and August showed a serious upward spike in the number of dead and wounded. The leader of the Health Ministry in Iraq appealed to be allowed to continue supplying the figures to the United Nations but was turned down according to a subsequent letter from the prime minister’s office, Mr. Qazi’s cable said.

The most recent United Nations report, published in September, showed that 3,590 people were killed in July and 3,009 in August in violence across the country. Compiled by statistics from Baghdad’s central morgue and from hospitals and morgues countrywide, the report posited an average death rate of 97 people per day.

Poll: 30 percent of Israelis support pardon for Yigal Amir
On eve of 11th anniversary of Rabin's murder – about third of Israeli public believes that his killer should be pardoned. Figures jump to over 50 percent among right-wingers and religious public.

According to the poll data – five percent of the Israeli public supports pardoning the killer already at this point in time, while 25 percent believes that he should be pardoned in 25 years from now. Some 69 percent of respondents replied that they oppose a future pardoning. This marks a significant change compared to a similar poll conducted last year by the newspaper. Figures in 2005 showed that 76 percent of Israelis opposed any pardoning, while 18 percent believed the killer should be set free.

Rabin's son Yuval granted an interview to the newspaper in the week leading up to the 11th anniversary of his father's assassination. "On the inside I'm furious," he said when asked about the conjugal visit granted to Amir.

Then why did you remain silent when your father's murder was allowed by the state to bring Larissa into his cell?

"Why am I silent? I'll tell you why. I have no intention to address the killer or the conduct of the authorities. It is a national issue, not me and my family against the killer. It would be a mistake to face off one family against the other, it's a matter for the authorities. I'm not young anymore, it took me many years to get to where I am, but these days I try not to get angry over things that I am powerless over. I don't see a situation where if I say or do something it will change the outcome of things."

Rabin sees Amir's pardoning as almost unavoidable. "It's not that I don't know where the killers' story is expected to go from here. It's been spoken of in the media. It started with a conjugal visit, from there it will move on to the Briss for the child and his Bar Mitzvah and his wedding, and more children… and this is how this vile man's road to freedom will be paved. On the other hand, if I had spoken up there would be offensive comments asking: 'Is their family's blood redder?', this cannot be an argument between us and them, the state should deal with it, and here, it has. I don't see how an announcement made by myself or Dalia (Rabin's daughter) would have changed the atmosphere, certainly it wouldn't have changed the reality of the situation."

Asia
UN fears N Korea food crisis
North Korea faces desperate food shortages now that aid contributors are withholding donations after the country's nuclear test, according to the UN.

Viti Muntarbhorn, the UN human rights investigator for North Korea, said on Monday that the number of people getting UN food aid had dropped to 13,000 from 6.5 million a year ago. Much of this decline could be attributed to Pyonyang's restrictions on access.

North Korea tested seven missiles in July and then announced an underground nuclear test on October 9, which Muntarbhorn described as a "serious waste of resources". The UN Security Council responded by imposing sanctions but exempted humanitarian assistance.

North Korea has still not recovered from a brutal famine in the 1990s that experts believe killed about 2.5 million people, or 10 per cent of the population. Deadly floods earlier this year have also worsened food shortages.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) also said last month that it had received only eight per cent of the $102 million it needs to provide 150,000 tonnes of food to North Koreans for the next two years.

Sri Lanka Tigers: Bombing their way to Swiss talks
Sri Lanka's Tiger rebels, who are in Geneva for peace talks, have been outlawed by the European Union, the United States and several other countries, but the international community still wants them at the negotiating table.

The United States describes Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers as "reprehensible terrorists," and the 25-member EU banned them in May. The group's trade mark suicide bombings regularly put them in news headlines.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) carried out their biggest suicide bombing less than two weeks before their meeting with government representatives this weekend in Geneva, killing 116 people, mostly sailors, in Sri Lanka's northeastern region of Habarana on October 16.

The truck bombing stunned the military establishment which had been riding on success for several months.

"It is difficult to negotiate with them because if they don't like something, they simply threaten to go back to fighting," a member of the Sri Lankan government delegation said.

"We are talking to them because of their firepower."

Until the Al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001 in the United States, the Tigers held the world record for the most devastating strike against civil aviation.

In ’97, U.S. Panel Predicted a North Korea Collapse in 5 Years
A team of government and outside experts convened by the Central Intelligence Agency concluded in 1997 that North Korea’s economy was deteriorating so rapidly that the government of Kim Jong-il was likely to collapse within five years, according to declassified documents made public on Thursday.

The panel described the isolated and impoverished country as being on the brink of economic ruin and said that “political implosion stemming from irreversible economic degradation seems the most plausible endgame for North Korea.” The majority among the group argued that the North’s government “cannot remain viable for the long term” and could fall within five years.

Nearly a decade later, the assessment has not been borne out, and its disclosure is evidence of past American misjudgments about the internal dynamics of North Korea’s closed society. American intelligence agencies still regard North Korea as among the toughest of intelligence targets and have made little progress inserting human spies into the country to steal secrets about the government.

The assessment was produced by a group that included senior intelligence analysts, Pentagon war gamers and independent academic experts. It was made public on Thursday by the National Security Archive, a research group.

Nato forces kill 'up to 85' civilians in Afghan attack
Nato forces in Afghanistan have killed scores of civilians in a single operation, bombing them in their own homes as they celebrated the end of Ramadan.

Nato commanders were facing serious questions yesterday as the Afghan government said it had confirmed that at least 40 civilians were killed in Nato bombing raids in Panjwayi district, near Kandahar.

Nato said its own initial investigation found that only 12 "non-combatants" were killed, but it had no explanation for the discrepancy with the government's figures. Local Afghan officials said they believed as many as 85 civilians died - which would make the incident the worst single atrocity committed by Western forces in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban.

The attack came as Afghans celebratedEid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan. In 2002 a US air strike killed 46 civilians at a wedding party in Oruzgan.

The UN's Afghanistan mission said it was "very concerned" at the reports. It said in a statement: "The safety and welfare of civilians must always come first and any civilian casualties are unacceptable, without exception."

Nato will co-operate with an inquiry by the Afghan Defence Ministry. But Mr Afghanmal, of the provincial council, said: "An investigation has no meaning. These kinds of things have happened several times, and they only say: 'Sorry'. How can you compensate people who have lost their sons and daughters? The government and the coalition told the families that there are no Taliban in the area anymore. If there are no Taliban, then why are they bombing the area?"

Australasia
Australia Muslim cleric suspended
Australia's top Muslim cleric has been barred from preaching for up to three months, after comparing immodestly dressed women to "uncovered meat".

Sheikh Taj el-Din al-Hilali's comments, suggesting that women who did not wear a headscarf attracted sexual assault, have caused a storm of protest. Sheikh Hilali has since apologised for his comments, which he said had been misinterpreted and taken out of context.

Sydney's mosque association said the suspension would give the cleric time to consider the impact of his words. "I unreservedly apologise to any woman who is offended by my comments. I had only intended to protect women's honour," he said in a statement published in The Australian. "Women in our Australian society have the freedom and the right to dress as they choose," he added. But Australian Premier John Howard said the action was insufficient.

Many people - including some Muslim leaders - have called for the cleric to be dismissed from office. Sheikh Hilali sparked more controversy on Friday when, asked by reporters if he would resign, he responded: "After we clean the world of the White House first."

His English is poor, and it was difficult at times to make out precisely what he was saying.
"Sexual violence knows no ethnic, no race, no religious bounds,"

Africa
Rwanda opens probe of alleged French role in genocide
A Rwandan government-appointed commission launched a probe on Tuesday into allegations French troops supported soldiers behind Rwanda's 1994 genocide and helped facilitate mass murder.

Rwanda's Tutsi President Paul Kagame, whose government came to power after the genocide, has accused France of training and arming Hutu militias who were the main force behind a 100-day slaughter that killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

France had replaced ex-colonial power Belgium as Rwanda's main Western backer. When Kagame's Tutsi-dominated rebel army launched its war against the Hutu authorities in the early 1990s, France sent soldiers to Kigali.

France helped stop the advance of Kagame's forces and then stayed on, as military advisers, up to the start of the genocide.

Kigali says France backed the government of Rwanda's former President Juvenal Habyarimana, providing military training for government forces, despite knowing that some within the leadership were planning to use the troops to commit genocide. France, which sent in soldiers under a U.N.-authorised operation, has always denied any involvement in the killings.

Justice for many perpetrators in the genocide is still being meted out through the U.N.'s International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Tanzania and village courts known as gacaca. The ICTR has indicted more than 80 people for genocide-related crimes since its establishment in 1994.

Tunisia closes embassy over Aljazeera
Tunisia has closed its embassy in Qatar in protest against what it described as a hostile campaign by Aljazeera.

A Qatari diplomat said on Wednesday that all Tunisian embassy staff left the country last Thursday. Aljazeera, which has its headquarters in the Qatari capital, Doha, had aired two interviews with Moncef Marzouki, an opposition activist based in Paris who called for a "civil resistance" movement against the Tunisian government.

The Tunisian foreign ministry released a statement on Wednesday accusing Aljazeera of waging a "hostile campaign aimed at hurting Tunisia" and "turning its back on truth and objectivity every time it deals with news in Tunisia".

"By taking deliberately malicious positions vis-a-vis Tunisia, Aljazeera has broken all limits and transgressed the moral rules on which journalism is based," the statement said. It said that the embassy closure was directed at Aljazeera and did not reflect on Tunisia's relations with Qatar, which it called a "brother nation".

Correspondents banned: In the past, Arab governments in Libya and Morocco have also briefly recalled their ambassadors from Qatar to protest against Aljazeera broadcasts. Other Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have banned the station's correspondents. In August 2004, the Iraqi government closed Aljazeera's Baghdad office. The office remains closed, but the station operates in the Kurdish-ruled area of the north.

Reporter blacklisted 'for being Jewish'
A Jewish South African reporter has been 'banned' by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) from providing news coverage from the Middle East, after her managing director said he did not want a "white Jewish girl" covering the region, the reporter told Ynetnews.

"I was a reporter and newsreader, and Snuki Zikalala was head of TV and radio news, so he was my line manager. He was not that great to work with," Paula Slier, the reporter, told Ynetnews.

In 2004, Slier went to Ramallah to cover Arafat's illness. While in the West Bank, Slier said she was informed that the SABC had "received a directive: 'No more reports from Paula.'"

"I tried to find out why they were not using my work anymore, and I was told by a senior manager in SABC, which obviously I can't name, that Zikalala said they don't want a white Jewish girl reporting from Ramallah, though the implication was from the whole of the Middle East," Slier said.

After it emerged that SABC's blacklist included a range of sources, including some critical of the South African government, SABC launched an investigation of itself. "When the investigation came out, Zikalala told the inquiry: 'From the movement I come from, we support the PLO.' And then he went on to call what was happening in the Middle East a 'Jewish war,' and then he said: We know Paula, we know the position which she holds," Slier said, quoting from the investigation.

The full investigation was published by South African newspaper the Globe and Mail, though SABC had initially tried to get a court order to ban the newspaper from publishing the full report.

Oil and gas discovered in Zambia
Zambia has announced its first discoveries of oil and gas reserves and is planning to invite foreign firms to conduct exploratory drills.

Samples taken over the weekend at a dozen sites in the northwestern provinces of Zambezi and Chavuma, near the border with Angola, confirmed gas and oil residues in the southern African country. The announcement of the discoveries was contained in a statement from the office of Levy Mwanawasa, Zambia’s president, who visited the area on Sunday.

"The microbial analysis showed that 12 sites were positive for oil and six for gas," Mwanawasa was quoted as saying during his field trip. "These results confirm the presence of oil and gas in the sub-surface of the two districts of Chavuma and Zambezi," Mwanawasa added.

Zambia has previously looked to its copper reserves as the main source of foreign currency. "This will be a long-term investment which will require a lot of money"