Friday
22nd
January
2010
India Issues Plane Hijack Alert
Vibhuti Agarwal - Wall Street Journal
India Friday issued a security alert to all airports and airlines following an intelligence notification that some terror groups planned to hijack a flight.
"We have advised the civil aviation ministry to take necessary steps," said Omkar Kedia, spokesman at the Indian home ministry in New Delhi Friday.
Mr Kedia said the ministry had reliable information of the planned plane hijack by terrorists.
"Following the home ministry input, the civil aviation ministry has issued a hijack alert, said Moushmi Chakraborty, press officer at the Indian Civil Aviation Ministry.
The alert comes two days after U.S. defense secretary Robert Gates, traveling in the region, warned of possible strike by al Qaeda and its affiliates to destabilize South Asia and trigger war between India and Pakistan.
London plot's India link: key suspect is Jaish man from Pak
Foreign Office mandarins pick up bonuses while intelligence budget is cut
Rosa Prince - Telegraph
Three-quarters of Foreign Office mandarins were given bonuses last year despite cuts in intelligence budgets made necessary by the plunging value of the pound.
In total, “exceptional performance” bonuses have cost the taxpayer more than £20 million in the last three years – nearly a quarter of the funds lost from intelligence budgets in the terrorist heartlands of Pakistan as a result of currency fluctuations.
Senior civil servants received an average of £8,420 in bonuses last year, while those at lower grades were awarded £1,164.
One top mandarin was given a total of £50,000 over a two-year period.
The figures were disclosed in a Parliamentary answer obtained by the Liberal Democrats, who questioned how bonuses, which were supposed to reward “exceptional” work, could be paid to the vast majority of staff.
They came as ministers admitted that Foreign Office budgets had badly been hit by the falling value of the pound against the dollar.
On Wednesday, hours after Gordon Brown told the Commons that the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan posed the greatest risk to Britain’s security, Baroness Kinnock, the Foreign Office Minister, admitted that there was a £110 million black hole in funding for intelligence in the region.
Ministers insisted that budgets were rising, but by less than had been "hoped" for.
Bob Ainsworth, the Defence Secretary, said that the plummeting value of sterling had forced him to take “hard decisions” over his departmental budget.
Chris Bryant, another Foreign Office Minister, was forced to deny claims by the Conservatives that a secret “hit list” of embassies had been earmarked for closure in order to save money.
Lord Oakeshott, the Liberal Democrats’ Treasury spokesman, called on the Government to cut mandarins’ bonuses rather than security budgets.
He said: “The Foreign Office wouldn’t have to slash its spending so much if it stopped spraying these back door pay rises far and wide.
“How can three-quarters of our embassy staff really be worth a bonus for exceptional performance?”
Figures released by the Labour minister Lord Brett show that at least three-quarters of Foreign Office civil servants have picked up a bonus every year since 2006, including 4,423 last year.
One individual was awarded £20,000 in 2007 and £30,000 in 2008 – £5,000 more than bankers are able to receive in bonus before being subject to the windfall tax announced by Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, in last month’s pre-Budget report.
Lord Brett said: “These payments are used to drive high performance and form part of the pay award for members of staff who demonstrate exceptional performances, for example by exceeding targets set or meeting challenging objectives.”
Separate figures released by Mr Bryant show that bonuses represented three per cent of the overall Foreign Office payroll last year.
He said: “We reward staff who are performing most effectively, frequently in dangerous and difficult posts.”
Last month, The Daily Telegraph told how civil servants across Whitehall were paid a total of £130 million in bonuses during the 2008/9 financial year, the equivalent of £350,000 a day or £2 for every man, woman and child in the United Kingdom.
During a visit to Hertfordshire, Mr Brown insisted that security remained the Government’s first priority, adding: "Counter-terrorism expenditure in Pakistan and generally is increasing this year and will increase next year."
Lady Kinnock said that the falling pound was having an impact on the Pakistan security budget, which would increase from £8.2 million in 2009/10 to £9.5 million in 2010/11. She said: "This is a smaller rise than we would have hoped."
Fluctuating currency levels are understood to have become an issue after a pricing mechanism designed to protect Foreign Office budgets was scrapped in 2007, soon after Mr Brown became Prime Minister, in a drive to encourage “currency management”.
The Conservatives released an internal Foreign Office memo suggesting that officials had been ordered to work on plans to introduce substantial cuts "which could be implemented soon after the election".
It stated that further cuts "should not be achieved by salami-slicing but instead by stopping activity, closing posts and reducing staff numbers".
In an emergency Commons statement, David Lidington, a shadow foreign office minister, said: "It frankly suggests that we have a Government, and in particular a Prime Minister, which is indifferent to the point of negligence towards the global interests of the UK.”
Mr Bryant acknowledged that the Foreign Office was facing "very significant challenges" but denied that there was a list of overseas posts facing closure.
William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, has written to David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, asking which counter-terrorism and counter-radicalisation programmes have been cut as a result of the currency fluctuations.
He said that he was concerned about the impact on countries such as Afghanistan, Yemen and Iraq, where a “serious risk” from al-Qaeda existed.
Obama names Clinton crony who's never worked in intelligence to head CIA
EU resists airport body scanners' introduction
The European Union is resisting United States pressure to introduce body scanners at airports. The EU will only come to a decision on the issue after research has been done into the possible effects on people's health and privacy.
The European position became clear at a meeting of EU ministers in Toledo in Spain on Thursday. They did agree, however, to increase the frequency of ‘sky marshals’ travelling on board passenger planes. Information, including credit card details, will also be collated about passengers travelling within Europe and not just, as at present, about travellers to the US.
Europe is under pressure to improve its airport security after the failed attempt to blow up a plane from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day. The Nigerian would-be bomber transferred onto the US-bound flight at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport.
The Netherlands has decided to introduce a trial of body scanners at Schiphol. The Dutch government hopes other EU countries will also start to use the scanners.
Digital Penetration - Invasion of the naked body scanners.
Edlington attacker 'watched porn films and smoked cannabis aged nine'
A schoolboy who tortured and sexually abused two innocent children watched pornographic films, drank and smoked cannabis by the age of nine, a court heard.
Over the next two years he carried out a series of assaults on adults and children, which culminated in the 90-minute attack, conducted with his brother, on two other boys.
The pair, aged 10 and 11 at the time, had a “toxic” home life, as two of seven brothers in a household with a history of domestic violence. At the age of nine, the older of the two was smoking 10 cigarettes a day, drinking vodka and using cannabis grown on his father’s allotment.
Peter Kelson QC, his counsel, said he also had access to his father’s pornographic DVDs and watched some of the Chucky horror films about a murderous doll, which, the court heard, were “gruesome in the extreme”.
Sheffield Crown Court was told that the brothers had committed violent offences, including butting a teacher and attacking a mother, before attacking the boys in a secluded area of Edlington, near Doncaster, last April.
The elder of their victims, aged 11, had told his injured friend, nine, “you go, and I’ll just die here” as he lay suffering in a ditch.
The victims had been punched, kicked, stamped on, beaten with sticks, stripped naked and forced to sexually abuse each other. Lumps of a ceramic sink were also dropped on to the head of the older boy.
The brothers, now aged 11 and 12, said they only stopped the sustained violence because their arms hurt. They admitted causing grievous bodily harm with intent, but denied attempted murder, which the Crown has accepted. They pleaded guilty to robbing the boys and intentionally causing a child to engage in sexual activity.
Mr Justice Keith will sentence them today
Judge's horror at drunken teenage torture
Europe calls on Egypt to protect its Christians
The European parliament is calling on Egypt to do more to protect its Christian citizens. The move was provoked by the recent gunning down of members of the Coptic Church in southern Egypt.
On 6 January, Christmas Eve in the Coptic calendar, six members of the congregation of Christmas midnight mass were killed as they were leaving church. A Muslim policeman also died in the attack.
The vast majority of Egypt's 80 million inhabitants are Muslim and about 10 percent are Coptic Christians. President Hosni Mubarak has said that religious conflict threatens the country's unity. He says he wants Egypt to be a modern society that does not distinguish between Muslims and Copts.
The EU parliament's call, which was the initiative of the Dutch Christian Union party (Christen Unie), the junior member of the ruling coalition in the Netherlands, is also intended to send a signal to Malaysia.
The Malaysian government recently ruled that Christians in the predominantly Muslim country should not use the word 'Allah' for God. Malaysian Christians have used the word in that way for centuries.
Homoeopathy sceptics plan mass 'overdose'
Protesters to swallow pills in bid to prove treatments ineffective
Jeremy Laurance - The Independent
In what is being billed as "rationalism's Kool-Aid moment", a mass "overdose" is being planned next week in protest at the marketing of homoeopathic medicines.
More than 300 people who style themselves as "homoeopathy sceptics" will each swallow an entire bottle of homoeopathic pills in protest at the continued marketing of homoeopathic medicines by Boots, the high street chemist chain.
The protest is due to take place at 10.23am on Saturday 30 January. It is organised by the "10.23 Group", who take their name from Avogadro's constant, which they claim proves that homoeopathy cannot work.
Avogadro's constant – roughly 10 to the 23rd power – places an upper limit, broadly speaking, on the number of molecules in a given volume of liquid or gas.
Successive dilutions used in the preparation of homoeopathic remedies reduce the amount of the original ingredient beyond this number, with the result that not a single molecule remains.
This has always been the sticking point for scientists who express bafflement at the notion that a homoeopathic "tincture", which contains not a single molecule of the active ingredient from which it was made, can have any effect.
In response, homoeopaths describe the process of repeatedly diluting and shaking a remedy as "potentisation", in which the influence of the active ingredient is transferred to the tincture. The water thus retains a "memory" of the substance.
In an open letter to Boots last November, the 10.23 Group wrote: "The majority of people do not have the time or inclination to check whether the scientific literature supports the claims of efficacy made by products such as homoeopathy. We trust brands such as Boots to check the facts for us, to provide sound medical advice that is in our interest, and supply only those products with a demonstrable medical benefit. We don't expect to find products on the shelf at our local pharmacy which do not work."
The letter also warned that the products could be dangerous if they led patients to delay seeking proper medical assistance because they believed homoeopathy could treat their condition.
There is a long tradition in science of researchers experimenting on themselves to prove a remedy works. But this will be the first time volunteers have swallowed pills to prove they don't.
If it turns out that there is something in them, then the guinea pigs may get their comeuppance. But they say their "overdose" will demonstrate that "these remedies, prepared according to a long-discredited 18th-century ritual, are nothing but sugar pills."
In England, an estimated 470,000 people use homoeopathic remedies every year. Branches of Boots carry shelves of remedies including arnica, nux vomica, pulsatilla and rhus tox in the "complementary medicine" section. The Queen, David Beckham and Geri Halliwell are among those said to swear by them.
The British Homeopathic Association claims that heightened public awareness of the dangers of chemicals in the food chain, growing resistance to antibiotics through over-use, and concerns about the side effects of conventional drugs, are contributing to a rethink about the way we live and how we seek to regain health.
Boots said in a statement: "We know that many people believe in the benefits of complementary medicines and we aim to offer the products we know our customers want."
Muslim apostates threatened over Christianity
On Islamic Intolerance
Christians killed by firing squad in Indonesia
What is the Tea Party movement, and could it change US politics?
Rupert Cornwell - The Independent
Scott Brown, the shock Republican winner of this week's election in Massachusetts to choose a successor to the late Senator Edward Kennedy, is America's latest political sensation. But the most significant recent development in US politics is the emergence of the Tea Party movement, a populist organisation that contributed to Brown's victory, and which could reshape the country's political landscape at November's mid-term elections here.
How did the movement begin?
The name, obviously, derives from that most celebrated anti-government insurrection in American history, the Boston Tea Party of December 1773. But its re-emergence in the early 21st century is usually dated to the outburst of Rick Santelli, a commentator for the CNBC business news cable network, from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange a year ago this week. Railing at the new administration's plan to bail out mortgage owners who had taken out loans they couldn't afford, Santelli declared that the scheme "promoted bad behaviour by losers". Was President Obama listening, he asked. If not, "we're thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party".
Then what happened?
The name caught on, and Tea Party groups took root across the country. In April 2009, Tea Party-ers staged anti-tax protests across the country. During the summer they held rallies that often drew thousands of participants, aimed in particular at the Obama healthcare plan, the emblem of all they revile. The climax was a demonstration on the Mall in Washington on 12 September, described by supporters as the biggest conservative protest in modern American history.
So they are conservatives?
Basically yes, though of a very fundamentalist and angry variety. They are defined less by what they are for, than what they oppose: runaway government spending, high taxation, and large deficits, epitomised by Obama's healthcare reform and the $787bn stimulus package in February. It is also a cry of fury by the average Joe – ordinary Americans suspicious of pampered elites, and disgusted by bailouts of the undeserving. These range from those who stupidly buy homes they can't afford to greedy Wall Street banks and incompetent, eternally loss-making car companies. As Santelli said on February 19 last year, far better "to reward the people who carry the water, rather than drink the water". Tea Party-ers also oppose immigration. But there's a powerful libertarian, anti-establishment streak in the movement as well. In that sense it appeals to independents, who refuse to align themselves with either established major party.
How big is the movement?
Since it's a movement and not a structured party, it's hard to say. But by any loose definition there must be millions of them. Indeed, an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll two months ago suggested the Tea Party might be the most popular political organisation in the land. Over 40 per cent of voters had a positive view of it, compared with 35 per cent for Democrats, and 28 per cent for Republicans. The picture will be clearer after the first Tea Party national convention in early February in Nashville, Tennessee.
Who is its leader?
It really doesn't have one, although the keynote speaker in Nashville will be Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee (for which she is reportedly being paid $100,000). Its activities are closely chronicled by the conservative Fox News cable network. Conservative talk radio provides a powerful echo chamber, not least via the vitriolic Rush Limbaugh. A few Republican right-wingers in Congress are identified with it. But there's no well-known specific national spokesman for the movement.
But it surely benefits the Republicans?
For the time being, absolutely. More than anything, the Tea Party is "anti-Washington" – and Washington right now is run by Democrats. Republican leaders reckon they can ride Tea Party energy and anger to big gains in November's mid-term elections, which could hand control of at least one chamber on Capitol Hill back to Republicans. After Massachusetts, Democrats are petrified that this grass-roots fury could topple dozens of their Congressional incumbents. In a message this week, the "Tea Party Express" – the closest thing the movement has to a national structure – issued an ominous warning. "To Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid [the last two the Democratic leaders in the House and Senate]: We here at the Tea Party Express want you to know that this is just the start. We'll see you and the candidates you back on the campaign trail."
But could Republicans be hurt?
Wiser heads in the party are alive to the danger. Right now, as one senior Republican Senator puts it, there is a "convergence of thought" between Republicans and the grass-roots activists "that will be a catalyst to send more conservatives to Congress". The danger, though, is that the Tea Party will push Republicans so far to the right that it will become unelectable. In a closely watched special election last November, Tea Party and other right-wing activists effectively split the Republican vote, handing Democrats a Congressional seat in upstate New York they hadn't won since the Civil War.
In Florida, Tea Party hostility could doom the quest of Charlie Crist, the state's popular governor, for an eminently winnable Senate seat this autumn. The risk is that across the country, moderate Republicans like Crist could face primary challenges from conservatives, pushing the party further right. And if, and when, Republicans do win power again, they will be in the incumbents' hot seat.
What happens now?
All eyes are on Nashville. If the Tea Party turns itself into an organised party, the omens are not good. Under America's winner-take-all electoral system, third parties do not fare well in national politics. Teddy Roosevelt took that course in 1912, and was defeated. Ross Perot, the most important third-party White House candidate of recent times, failed to carry a single state in 1992 – although he won a fifth of the popular vote riding a wave of resentment not dissimilar to today. In 2000, Ralph Nader's Green Party was a spoiler. Though it probably cost Al Gore the election that year, the Greens amassed only 2 per cent of the vote.
So the Tea Party will remain a movement?
That seems the most likely outcome. That way, it can portray itself as above the sordid political fray in Washington. Its lack of a detailed policy agenda will, if anything, broaden its appeal, while the establishment of a leader and an internal bureaucracy might create the impression that it is just another party – as corrupt, selfish and petty-minded as those that are so grievously failing the country now. Possibly, the Tea Party will end up like MoveOn.org, borne of left-wing anger at the impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998, but which is now a liberal ginger group – influential and important, but which does not run its own candidates at elections.
| So will the movement last? |
|
|
YES
|
NO
• American
voters are unprecedentedly angry and thus open to outsiders |
| • Sooner or later it will be co-opted into the Republican party | • The two major parties have lost touch with the national mood |
| • To survive in US politics, you need money, which the Tea Party lacks | • Populist movements have a long history in US politics |
Former British soldier denies being 'murdering psycho'
Kim Sengupta - The Independent
A former British soldier charged with
killing two security guards in
Iraq angrily denied during a court appearance that he was “murdering
psycho”.Daniel Fitzsimons was sent for psychiatric evaluation minutes after the start of his trial in Baghdad on charges shooting dead fellow Briton Paul McGuigan and Australian Darren Hoare after a drunken brawl while all three were working as private contractors in the Iraqi capital. An Iraqi, Arkan Mehdi Saleh was injured in the same incident.
Mr Fitzsimons had been treated for PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) in the UK before he went to Iraq as a security guard. His family back in England said he will be entering a ‘not guilty’ plea on grounds of self-defence.
After the hearing Mr Fitzsimons, 29, told journalists “When my side of the story gets out, the people who have labelled me as a murdering psycho will be eating humble pie.” He claimed that he had been goaded and threatened by the men and opened fire to protect himself. “They came in to wind me up??Those fuckers came to my room to do me in and they tried to do me in."
Mr Fitzsimons’ family and legal team are attempting to have his case heard in Britain. But the former paratrooper said that the British embassy had made little effort to have him transferred back home. “ I accept I will be tried here but I expect to serve my time in the UK where my trial can be looked at and I can be offered some support.”
Mr Fitsimons’ stepmother, Liz Fitzsimons, said “We know that Daniel faces the death penalty and we were very shocked when the British citzen was executed in China. We have started a support group and we have written to the Ministry of Justice to make sure that it is not all left until the last minute as happened with the Chinese case.
“Daniel was defending himself when the shooting took place and we believe that when the court hears how his life was under threat they would see he was left with no choice.
Mr McGuigan, 37, a former Royal Marines commando from Peebles-shire in the Scottish Borders, had a son and was about to become a father for a second time. Father-of-three Mr Hoare, 37, from Queensland, served in Iraq as a member of the Royal Australian Air Force before starting work as a private security contractor.
Mercenary-Industrial Complex: Imperialism and Private Armies
The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army
Tiger Woods attempts to get back on course at sex clinic
Jacqui Goddard - The Times
There is no golf course or cocktail lounge and the nurses are strictly off-limits. But for Tiger Woods, the Pine Grove sex addiction centre in Mississippi is the place he will have to call home as he attempts to get his life and career back on track.
After avoiding the paparazzi for nearly two months, the world’s No 1 golfer was snared by a photographer for The National Enquirer at the rehabilitation clinic in Hattiesburg, which is reputed to be one of America’s leading treatment centres for psychiatric and addictive diseases.
The facility offers therapy programmes for people with sex, drug and alcohol addictions and for “professionals struggling with interpersonal difficulties”.
“Spend a little time in this living temple and you’re sure to emerge a different person,” it promises, adding: “We’re committed to being a leader in healing and changing lives. . . . For one life with many seasons, Pine Grove is one place with many solutions.”
The whereabouts of Woods had been unknown since he crashed his car outside his home in Orlando, Florida, on November 27, during a row with his wife over his infidelities. The scandal intensified as more affairs were revealed.
He issued two statements later admitting that he had been unfaithful to his wife, Elin Nordegren, 30, and announcing that he would take a break from professional golf while he worked on saving his marriage.
“I have let my family down and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart. I have not been true to my values and the behaviour my family deserves.
“I am not without faults and I am far short of perfect. I am dealing with my behaviour and personal failings behind closed doors with my family,” he said last month.
His retreat from the public eye made him a target for photographers, with the first pictures likely to earn a seven-figure sum.
Dressed as if he had spent a session in the rehabilitation centre’s gymnasium, Woods was snapped as he roamed Pine Grove’s 22-acre campus. The clinic offers a range of programmes, courses and workshops for patients as well as individually tailored care plans.
The facility is headed by Dr Patrick Carnes, a world-renowned speaker and author of several books on sexual addiction. He is considered a leading figure in his field and is the primary architect of Pine Grove’s Gentle Path programme for sex addicts, which starts with a one to two-day assessment followed by a six-week stay.
Patients undergo personal and group therapy sessions, psychological testing, and can take lessons in coping skills and stress management. Other activities include yoga, art therapy, taekwondo and swimming. A full course of in-patient treatment at Pine Grove is reported to cost about $40,000 (£25,000).
As with all patients Woods, alleged by one of his mistresses to have indulged in sex while on the sleeping drug Ambien, will also be kept under the watchful eye of Sam, Pine Grove’s resident drug-sniffing dog.
There could also be opportunities at the clinic for the golfer’s wife, should she be inclined. “Mending a shattered heart” is a four-day workshop for the spouses of addicts, which offers “tools to guide them through the myriad of feelings and decisions they are confronting”.
Previous celebrities who have been treated for sex addiction include Russell Brand and David Duchovny.
Woods has not indicated if he will return to golf. But his presence at the clinic and a new article posted on his website last week, which reminds readers of his sporting accomplishments and celebrates him as the dominant golfer of the past decade, might be considered an indication that he and his managers are finally taking his crisis in hand and are seeking to restore his public image.
Geoff Ogilvy, a former US Open champion, suggested that Woods should speak publicly about his problems before any return to the sport.
Speaking at the Abu Dhabi Championship, he said: “I think he should come out away from the golf course.
I think that would be the best thing for him and for every other player and for the tournament. I don’t believe a lot of tournaments want all the tabloid media floating around.”
Sex addiction: The facts from the fruity fiction
The return of rickets:
Victorian disease on the rise due to poor diet and lack of exercise
Jenny Hope - Daily Mail
Modern
children' s lifestyles are putting them at risk of developing
rickets, doctors have
warned.The bone disease, which was the scourge of Victorian Britain, is making a comeback because poor diets and the decline in outdoor play have led to a vitamin D deficiency.
Factors such as more time spent inside playing on computers have reduced the amount of outdoor activity children get compared with previous generations.
The consequent reduction in exposure to sunlight causes vitamin D levels to drop, raising the risk of the disease.
In addition, children are not taking cod liver oil - a rich source of the vitamin - in the same amounts as they did 50 years ago.
Two medical specialists called yesterday for the vitamin to be added to milk and other food products - as it was during the Second World War - to ensure children are getting enough.
Professor Simon Pearce and Dr Tim Cheetham, of Newcastle University, called for a change in public health policy in a clinical review in the British Medical Journal.
Prof Pearce, a professor of endocrinology, said: 'Kids tend to stay indoors more these days and play on their computers instead of enjoying the fresh air.
Rickets
'This means their Vitamin D levels are worse than in previous years. A change in public health policy is required. Health professionals have been slow to deal with this problem, even though we have known about it for a while.'
He added: 'We believe that a more robust approach to statutory food supplementation with vitamin D, for example in milk, is needed in the UK, as this measure has already been introduced successfully in many other countries in similar parts of the world.'
Vitamin D is often called the ' sunshine vitamin' because it is made by the action of sunlight on the skin, which accounts for 90 per cent of the body's supply.
Doctors used ultraviolet lamps as early as 1919 to cure rickets in children, as a medical alternative to direct exposure to sunlight which helps the body to manufacture missing vitamin D.
Children have to be outdoors to get the benefits of UV light as it does not pass through glass.
Many people thought rickets had virtually been eliminated after the war, although children in developing countries still suffer from the bowed legs and fragile bone structure associated with the disorder.
Health workers are seeing more children than ever with vitamin D deficiency - more than 20 new cases a year in Newcastle alone - which can cause seizures and failure of the bones to grow properly.
Since 2008, Birmingham Primary Care Trust have had a programme giving extra supplements to pregnant women to try and stem the problem there.
Half of all adults in the UK have vitamin D deficiency in the winter and spring, with one in six having severe deficiency.
The condition has been linked to cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, several cancers, and autoimmune conditions.
• A study published in the British Medical Journal of 520,000 Europeans shows that those with the highest levels of Vitamin D have a 40 per cent lower risk of developing colon cancer compared with those with the lowest levels.
Vitamins and minerals
Osteoporosis : Boost your bone bank
Zimbabwe's constitutional reform on hold
Moses Mudzwiti - Times Live
Zimbabwe has suspended its plans to draw up a new constitution because of political bickering over funding, dealing a blow to hopes of free and fair elections next year.
Arch rivals President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, who formed a unity government last February, agreed to write a new constitution within 18 months.
Many Zimbabweans hope that a new charter will strengthen the role of parliament, curtail the president's powers and guarantee civil, political and media freedoms.
Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change has said that Mugabe's Zanu-PF is not committed to the drafting of a new constitution, and had repeatedly sought to frustrate the process in a bid to delay elections.
A parliamentary committee is leading the drafting process.
"The management committee has suspended the outreach programme for now, mainly because of financial constraints," Douglas Mwonzora, who co-chairs the committee, said.
Mwonzora, a legislator from Tsvangirai's MDC, said his party disagreed with Zanu-PF about who should be collecting views on the constitution.
The party offices of Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara have been burgled.
Though Mutambara's break-away wing of the MDC yesterday refused to shed any light on the burglary, sources said computers and documents were stolen.
Though the police are treating the break-in as a normal burglary, party insiders said there was more to it than met the eye.
Agents from the Central Intelligence Organisation visited the premises after the burglary.
"They ransacked our offices and turned everything, including papers, upside-down in search of evidence,'' said a party official.
Al-Qaida may use Sudanese refugee influx to infiltrate Israel
Herb Keinon - Jerusalem Post
If the border with Egypt is not closed, then al-Qaida may use Sudanese refugees making their way into the country as cover to infiltrate and set up terrorist cells in Israel, senior IDF officials told Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during a tour on Thursday of two observation posts along the Sinai border.
Netanyahu went to take a look at the border some two weeks after announcing that a physical barrier needed to be built there, and two weeks before the initiative is to come before the cabinet for approval.
Building an effective barrier along the 240 km. border with Egypt is expected to cost NIS 1.3 billion and to be completed in two to three years.
During the tour, the prime minister - accompanied by Deputy Chief of General Staff Maj.-Gen. Benny Gantz and OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Yoav Galant - was briefed on the porous nature of the border, and told that the most frightening scenario was al-Qaida enlisting some of the estimated 2 million Sudanese refugees in Egypt to infiltrate Israel and set up terrorist cells.
Netanyahu's first stop was at Mount Sagi, in the southwestern Negev on the border with Egypt.
"We cannot allow ourselves not to build the barrier," he said, looking down at Egypt and a large Beduin encampment which is a center of smuggling in the area. The barrier was needed to keep out terrorists, drug smugglers and illegal migrants, he said.
Netanyahu said that he discussed the matter with the Egyptians when he visited Cairo earlier this month, and that the Egyptians did not voice any opposition.
"We need to do what we need to do," he said. "They have no objections."
While it was impossible to hermetically seal the border, it would be possible to significantly cut down on the smuggling, the prime minister said.
"There is no fence without a hole in it," Netanyahu said, quoting a commander from his days in the General Staff's Sayeret Matkal commando unit. "But if you complement it with technological devices, you can clog most of the holes."
He was told that last year some 5,000 people, 160 kg. of heroin, and 1.1 tons of hash were smuggled into Israel through the 200-km. stretch of border that the IDF position on Mount Sagi is responsible for. The smugglers receive $2,000 for each person brought across the border.
At Mount Sagi a number of members of the mixed male-and-female Karakal infantry unit that is responsible for the border surprised the prime minister by popping up from their camouflaged position just below where he was speaking, to demonstrate how they wait for smugglers.
"It is a different army," Netanyahu said, talking to a number of women, their faces smeared with camouflage paint, who took part in the exercise.
He also saw an exhibit of various methods used by the smugglers to cover up their tracks, from using leaf blowers to deposit sand over their footprints, to special shoes that leave no mark.
Netanyahu said that, because of the topography, there are areas where it is not necessary to build a physical fence, but rather what is needed is to deploy more advanced technological surveillance means. However, he said, in some areas, such as a 40-km. stretch south of Gaza, a physical barrier would definitely be erected.
The IDF would decide where a physical fence needs to be built, and there is currently debate within the army over whether a fence is needed around Eilat, or whether the mountainous topography provided sufficient protection, he said.
At another outpost Netanyahu visited, about 10 km. south of Gaza, IDF officers told him that around 3,000 people were smuggled through a 60-km. stretch from Gaza southward last year. Fewer than 1 percent, he was told, get through a 10-km. stretch that has been closed in with a rudimentary fence.
The Egyptians often shoot those trying to sneak into Israel, and he was shown a film clip of one such case.
This
report
is
in
part summarised from Radio
Netherlands.
Visit their site to enjoy further informative writing and multimedia
Visit their site to enjoy further informative writing and multimedia
Readers
please
email
comments to: editorial AT
martinfrost.ws including full name
Return to Home Page
Return to Home Page