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Argos Media

BBC NEWS | Americas | WHO fears pandemic is 'imminent' - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/8025931.stm

Health Swine Flu Margaret Chan WHO

shared by Argos Media on 30 Apr 09 - Cached
  • The UN's World Health Organization has raised the alert over swine flu to level five - indicating human-to-human transmission in at least two countries. It is a "strong signal that a pandemic is imminent", the WHO says.
  • In Mexico, at the epicentre of the outbreak, people have been urged to stay at home over the next five days. There are numerous cases elsewhere - the highest number outside Mexico in the US - and Europeans have been told it is certain there will be deaths.
  • New cases were confirmed in Switzerland, Costa Rica and Peru European health ministers were set to meet for emergency talks to co-ordinate national efforts to contain the spread of the virus Ghana has become the latest country to ban pork imports as a precaution against swine flu, though no cases have been found in the West African country.
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  • Already, schools across Mexico have closed, public gatherings are restricted and archaeological sites have been placed off-limits.
  • Meanwhile in Mexico, President Felipe Calderon has announced the partial suspension of non-essential work and services from 1 to 5 May - a holiday period there. In a TV address, he urged people to stay in with their families - saying there was "no place as safe as your own home".
  • Ms Chan stressed on Wednesday that there was no danger from eating properly cooked pork. She advised hygiene measures such as hand-washing to prevent infection and said it was important "to maintain a level of calm".
  • Mexico is already being hit hard by the global economic slowdown, and the country's finance minister says swine flu could cut a further half-percent of GDP.
  • Officials have put the number of suspected deaths from swine flu in Mexico at 168, although just eight deaths have been confirmed, with 26 infections positively tested.
  • In Europe, the director-general of health and consumer protection, Robert Madelin, said the continent was well prepared but nonetheless deaths from the disease were expected. "It is not a question of whether people will die, but more a question of how many. Will it be hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands?", he said, speaking to Reuters news agency.
  • Spain has seen the first case of a person contracting swine flu without having travelled there.
  • After Mexico, the US has recorded the next highest number of confirmed cases, with 91 - and the first death of swine flu outside Mexico, after a visiting Mexican child died in Texas.
Pedro Gonçalves

Obama Admin: No Grounds To Probe Afghan War Crimes - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...in-no-grounds-to_n_229907.html

US Afghanistan War Crimes Rashid Dostum

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 11 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Obama administration officials said Friday they had no grounds to investigate the 2001 deaths of Taliban prisoners of war who human rights groups allege were killed by U.S.-backed forces. The mass deaths were brought up anew Friday in a report by The New York Times on its Web site. It quoted government and human rights officials accusing the Bush administration of failing to investigate the executions of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of prisoners.
  • U.S. officials said Friday they did not have legal grounds to investigate the deaths because only foreigners were involved and the alleged killings occurred in a foreign country. The Times cited U.S. military and CIA ties to Afghan Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, whom human rights groups accuse of ordering the killings. The newspaper said the Defense Department and FBI never fully investigated the incident.
  • Asked about the report, Marine Corps Col. David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said that since U.S. military forces were not involved in the killings, there is nothing the Defense Department could investigate. "There is no indication that U.S. military forces were there, or involved, or had any knowledge of this," Lapan said. "So there was not a full investigation conducted because there was no evidence that there was anything from a DoD (Department of Defense) perspective to investigate."
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  • The allegations date back to November 2001, when as many as 2,000 Taliban prisoners died in transit after surrendering during one of the regime's last stands, according to a State Department report from 2002.
  • Witnesses have claimed that forces with the U.S.-allied Northern Alliance placed the prisoners in sealed cargo containers over the two-day voyage to Sheberghan Prison, suffocating them and then burying them en masse using bulldozers to move the bodies, according to the State Department report. Some Northern Alliance soldiers have said that some of their troops opened fire on the containers, killing those within.
  • A former U.S. ambassador for war crimes issues, Pierre Prosper, told the Times that the Bush administration was reluctant to investigate the deaths, even though Dostum was on the payroll of the CIA and his soldiers worked with U.S. special forces in 2001.
  • Dostum was suspended from his military post last year on suspicion of threatening a political rival, but Afghan President Hamid Karzai recently rehired him, the Times reported.
Pedro Gonçalves

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Amnesty details Gaza 'war crimes' - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8128210.stm

Israel Palestine Gaza Amnesty International War Crimes

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 02 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Israel committed war crimes and carried out reckless attacks and acts of wanton destruction in its Gaza offensive, an independent human rights report says.Hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed using high-precision weapons, while others were shot at close range, the group Amnesty International says.
  • Its report also calls rocket attacks by Palestinian militants war crimes and accuses Hamas of endangering civilians.
  • Amnesty says some 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the 22-day Israeli offensive between 27 December 2008 and 17 January 2009, which agrees broadly with Palestinian figures. More than 900 of these were civilians, including 300 children and 115 women, or non-combatant police, it says. In March, Israel's military said the overall Palestinian death toll was 1,166, of whom 295 were "uninvolved" civilians.
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  • The 117-page report by Amnesty International says many of the hundreds of civilian deaths in the conflict "cannot simply be dismissed as 'collateral damage' incidental to otherwise lawful attacks - or as mistakes".
  • "All of those things occurred on a scale that constitutes pattern - and constitutes war crimes," Donatella Rovera, who headed the research, told the BBC. The document also gives details of several cases where it says people - including women and children posing no threat to troops - were shot at close range as they were fleeing their homes in search of shelter.
  • Lives were lost because Israeli forces "frequently obstructed access to medical care," the report says. It also reiterates previous condemnations of the use of "imprecise" weapons such as white phosphorous and artillery shells.
  • The destruction of homes, businesses and public buildings was in many cases "wanton and deliberate" and "could not be justified on the grounds of military necessity", the report adds.
  • It says "disturbing questions" remain unanswered as to why children playing on roofs and medical staff attending the wounded were killed by "highly accurate missiles" whose operators had detailed views of their targets.
  • The Amnesty report says no evidence was found that Palestinian militants had forced civilians to stay in buildings being used for military purposes, contradicting Israeli claims that Hamas repeatedly used "human shields". However, Amnesty says Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups had endangered Palestinian civilians by firing rockets from residential neighbourhoods and storing weapons in them. It says local residents had in one case told researchers that Hamas fighters had fired a rocket from the yard of a government school.
  • In the cases it had investigated, Amnesty said civilian deaths "could not be explained as resulting from the presence of fighters shielding among civilians, as the Israeli army generally contends". However, Amnesty does accuse Israel of using civilians, including children, as human shields in Gaza, forcing them to remain in houses which its troops were using as military positions, and to inspect sites suspected of being booby trapped. It also says Palestinian militants rocket fire from the Gaza Strip was "indiscriminate and hence unlawful under international law", although it only rarely caused civilian casualties.
  • Thirteen Israelis were killed, including three civilians, during the offensive, which Israel launched with the declared aim of curtailing cross-border rocket attacks.
Pedro Gonçalves

Analysis - The power behind the throne in North Korea | Reuters - 0 views

uk.reuters.com/...th-power-idUKTRE7BJ0HK20111220

North Korea Jang Song-thaek

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 22 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Real power in North Korea now probably belongs to a coterie of advisers following the death of Kim Jong-il, not his youngest son, an untested man in his 20s who has been anointed the "Great Successor."
  • These advisers will decide whether North Korea launches military action against South Korea to strengthen the succession around Kim Jong-un -- or seeks a peaceful transition.
  • The most powerful adviser is Jang Song-thaek, 65, brother-in-law of Kim Jong-il.
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  • "Jang has played a considerable role during Kim Jong-il's illness of managing the succession problem and even the North's relations with the United States and China," said Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies."Jang is in overall charge of the job of making it formal for Kim Jong-un to be the legal and systematic leader by pulling together the party and the military."
  • Jang had the full backing of his brother-in-law, who named him to the National Defence Commission in 2009, the supreme leadership council Kim Jong-il led as head of the military state.That appointment was part of a flurry of moves Kim Jong-il made following a stroke in 2008 which probably brought home the reality that, unlike his father at his death in 1994, he was unprepared for a trusted son to take over.
  • The commission has been the pinnacle of power in North Korea and which Kim had used to preach his own version of political teaching called Songun, or "military first."
  • The naming of Jang as a vice chairman of the commission effectively catapulted him to the second most powerful position in the country.It also put him in line to become caretaker leader of the dynastic state in the event Kim was unable to orchestrate a gradual transition of power and the grooming of Jong-un.
  • Jang, who also holds the humble title of a department chief in the ruling Workers' Party, disappeared from public for two years before returning in 2006, widely believed to have been purged then rehabilitated as part of a power struggle involving backers of Kim's second and third wives.He is considered a pragmatist who earned Kim Jong-il's trust because of his understanding of domestic politics and economic policy.
  • Few observers believe either Jang or his wife will try to push the junior Kim out and grab power for themselves."That would kindle a power struggle that will get out of control, and they will know better than to do that," said Yang of the University of North Korean Studies.
  • With the military already very powerful, there appears to be little risk of a coup or the kind of regime change seen in the Arab world this year.
  • Ri Yong-ho, the rising star of the North's military and its chief of staff, is ranked fourth on the list of funeral committee officials, an indication of the power he wields not only in the army but as Kim Jong-il's confidante in domestic politics.Ri, despite being on good terms with Jang, provides an ideal balance to the power of Kim's brother-in-law.
  • Parliament is headed by Kim Yong-nam, a loyal but passive figurehead who analysts say poses no threat to the transition
  • "The North Korean leadership is united," said Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University in Seoul. "They understand that they should hang together in order not to be hanged separately."
  • Jang, his wife Kim and Vice Marshal Ri are expected to make sure Jong-un survives as the third generational leader and that North Korea holds together at least through the centenary of Kim Il-Sung's birth in 2012.
Argos Media

Call to prosecute officials after Iranian blogger dies in prison | World news | The Gua... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...rsayafi-iran-blogger-rouznegar

Iran Bloggers Evin Prison

shared by Argos Media on 20 Mar 09 - Cached
  • An Iranian blogger convicted of insulting the country's religious leaders has died in jail after taking a drug overdose.Omidreza Mirsayafi, 29, died in Tehran's notorious Evin prison on Wednesday, just over a month after a judge gave him a two-and-a-half year sentence for posting comments on his blog about figures including the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini .
  • Human rights campaigners called for prison officials to be prosecuted after Mirsayafi took extra doses of tranquilisers prescribed by prison doctors. He was suffering from depression and had previously attempted to commit suicide, according to a fellow inmate.
  • His death followed that of Amir Hossein Heshmatsaran, founder of an Iranian opposition group called the National Unity Front, who died on 6 March while serving an eight-year sentence. Heshmatsaran's family alleged that he had died because of negligence, after suffering a stroke.
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  • News of Mirsayfi's death emerged as officials announced the arrest of 27 people they said were involved in pornographic and erotic websites allegedly created by foreign powers aiming to foment a "soft revolution" against the Islamic regime.
Argos Media

'Merchant of Death', Viktor Bout, denies arming terror | World news | The Observer - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...viktor-bout-merchant-of-death

Arms Trade Igor Sechin Russia US Viktor Bout

shared by Argos Media on 15 Mar 09 - Cached
  • The UN has accused him of arming the alleged war criminal Charles Taylor in Liberia, as well as rebels in Sierra Leone and the Congo. He was arrested in a five-star hotel last March while allegedly discussing the sale of shoulder-launched missiles with US agents masquerading as Colombian rebels from FARC. The request to Thai authorities to arrest Bout says the US feared he was travelling on a British passport, number K163077. UK officials have declined to comment.
  • Bout's supposed client list reads like a Who's Who of the world's nastiest warlords but also includes Americans, Britons, Frenchmen and Russians. A former US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, has admitted that planes connected to his department did fly supplies into Iraq to aid the US occupation. Bout said it was possible that these deliveries were made by a company run by his brother, Sergei. He denied earlier reports that he shipped armoured cars into Iraq for Britain. He said the French government did hire him to fly its troops into the Congo in 1994 for Operation Turquoise, a relief mission after the Rwanda genocide.
  • Some analysts suspect that Bout's activities were linked to Russian intelligence. He denies this, but, asked if he worked for the Russian state, he said: "Sometimes, yeah. We did the flights." His battle against extradition has now become intensely political. Some observers have speculated that he is of high value to the US because of his alleged links to Igor Sechin, a deputy to Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin and one of the Kremlin's most powerful figures. He denied any such links or ever meeting Sechin, saying that the two men did not – as is claimed – serve as intelligence officers in Mozambique at the same time.
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  • one estimate had his wealth at $6 billion
Pedro Gonçalves

Academic claims Israeli school textbooks contain bias | World news | The Observer - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...israeli-school-racism-claim

Israel Palestine Education

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 07 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • The Arab with a camel, in an Ali Baba dress. They describe them as vile and deviant and criminal, people who don't pay taxes, people who live off the state, people who don't want to develop," she says. "The only representation is as refugees, primitive farmers and terrorists. You never see a Palestinian child or doctor or teacher or engineer or modern farmer."
  • Peled-Elhanan, a professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has studied the content of Israeli school books for the past five years, and her account, Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education, is to be published in the UK this month. She describes what she found as racism– but, more than that, a racism that prepares young Israelis for their compulsory military service.
  • "One question that bothers many people is how do you explain the cruel behaviour of Israeli soldiers towards Palestinians, an indifference to human suffering, the inflicting of suffering. People ask how can these nice Jewish boys and girls become monsters once they put on a uniform. I think the major reason for that is education. So I wanted to see how school books represent Palestinians."
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  • The killing of Palestinians is depicted as something that was necessary for the survival of the nascent Jewish state, she claims. "It's not that the massacres are denied, they are represented in Israeli school books as something that in the long run was good for the Jewish state. For example, Deir Yassin [a pre-1948 Palestinian village close to Jerusalem] was a terrible slaughter by Israeli soldiers. In school books they tell you that this massacre initiated the massive flight of Arabs from Israel and enabled the establishment of a Jewish state with a Jewish majority. So it was for the best. Maybe it was unfortunate, but in the long run the consequences for us were good."
  • Children, she says, grow up to serve in the army and internalise the message that Palestinians are "people whose life is dispensable with impunity. And not only that, but people whose number has to be diminished."
  • The family produced a poster, calling for a peaceful settlement to the conflict, featuring Peled-Elhanan's only daughter, Smadar. It's message was that all children deserve a better future.Then, in 1997, Smadar was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber while shopping in Jerusalem. She was 13. Peled-Elhanan declines to talk about her daughter's death apart from once or twice referring to "the tragedy".At the time, she said that it would strengthen her belief that, without a settlement to the conflict and peaceful coexistence with Palestinians, more children would die. "Terrorist attacks like this are the direct consequence of the oppression, slavery, humiliation and state of siege imposed on the Palestinians," she told TV reporters in the aftermath of Smadar's death.
  • "University professors stopped inviting me to conferences. And when I do speak, the most common reaction is, 'you are anti-Zionist'." Anybody who challenges the dominant narrative in today's Israel, she says, is similarly accused.
  • Asked if Palestinian school books also reflect a certain dogma, Peled-Elhanan claims that they distinguish between Zionists and Jews. "They make this distinction all the time. They are against Zionists, not against Jews."But she concedes that teaching about the Holocaust in Palestinian schools is "a problem, an issue". "Some [Palestinian] teachers refuse to teach the Holocaust as long as Israelis don't teach the Nakba [the Palestinian "catastrophe" of 1948]."
shane wistley

background criminal record check - 0 views

backgroundcriminalrecord.org

criminal record check

shared by shane wistley on 03 Oct 11 - Cached
  • shane wistley on 03 Oct 11
     
    Some may wonder what these checks consist of, and the following will detail what a background check will accomplish State and County Records, Nationwide Criminal Records, Over 300 Million Criminal Files, State Inmate Database, Sex Offender, Database Arrests, Convictions, Misdemeanors, Felonies and DUI's Neighbors and Relatives Marital Status and Aliases Death Index and Date of Birth Police Records Background Criminal Records! Report May Include: Felonies, Misdemeanors & Sex Offenses, National Arrest & Court Warrants, National Federal & State Tax Liens, National Federal & Civil Judgments, National Federal & State Bankruptcies, Distinguishing Bodily Marks, Roommates and Associates, Age/Date of Birth, Alias/Maiden Name, Possible Neighbors, Property Ownership, Marriages/Divorces, Death Index Check, Work Licenses To Begin Your Background Criminal Records Check Now, CLICK HERE! One Of The Most Important Clicks You Will Ever Make!
Pedro Gonçalves

Iranian envoy: CIA involved in Neda's shooting? - CNN.com - 0 views

edition.cnn.com/...iran.ambassador

Iran Iran Elections 2009 CIA Hassan Ghadiri

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 26 Jun 09 - Cached
  • The United States may have been behind the killing of Neda Agha-Soltan, the 26-year-old Iranian woman whose fatal videotaped shooting Saturday made her a symbol of opposition to the June 12 presidential election results, the country's ambassador to Mexico said Thursday.
  • "This death of Neda is very suspicious," Ambassador Mohammad Hassan Ghadiri said. "My question is, how is it that this Miss Neda is shot from behind, got shot in front of several cameras, and is shot in an area where no significant demonstration was behind held?" He suggested that the CIA or another intelligence service may have been responsible. "Well, if the CIA wants to kill some people and attribute that to the government elements, then choosing women is an appropriate choice, because the death of a woman draws more sympathy," Ghadiri said.
  • Though the video appeared to show that she had been shot in the chest, Ghadiri said that the bullet was found in her head and that it was not of a type used in Iran. "These are the methods that terrorists, the CIA and spy agencies employ," he said. "Naturally, they would like to see blood spilled in these demonstrations, so that they can use it against the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is of the common methods that the CIA employs in various countries."
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  • But, he added, "I am not saying that now the CIA has done this. There are different groups. It could be the [work of another] intelligence service; it could be the CIA; it could be the terrorists. Anyway, there are people who employ these types of methods."
Pedro Gonçalves

Egyptians angry over German court slaying - CNN.com - 0 views

edition.cnn.com/...index.html

Germany Egypt

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 07 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Hundreds of Egyptians took part Monday in the funeral of Marwa Sherbini, an Egyptian woman who was stabbed to death last week in the German city of Dresden in a crime believed to be racially motivated.
  • Sherbini, 33, was stabbed to death Wednesday in a courtroom as she prepared to give testimony against a German man of Russian descent whom she had sued for insult and abuse.
  • The man, identified in German media as Alex A., 28, was convicted of calling Sherbini, who wore a headscarf, "terrorist," "bitch" and "Islamist" when she asked him him to leave a swing for her 3-year-old son Mustafa during an August 2008 visit to a children's park.
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  • He was fined and appealed the ruling. The two were in court Wednesday for that appeal when Alex A. attacked, pulling out a knife and stabbing Sherbini 18 times. He also stabbed her husband three times and attacked another person.
  • According to Arab media, police officers tried to intervene to end the fight, and a number of shots were fired. One hit the husband, who fell unconscious and is currently in intensive care in the hospital of Dresden University.
  • Hundreds attended Sherbini's funeral in Alexandria, Egypt, her hometown, among them government officials, including Egyptian Manpower Minister Aisha Abdel Hadi and Telecommunications Minister Tariq Kamel, Egyptian media reported.
Pedro Gonçalves

Death toll in Xinjiang riot rises to 140, still climbing_English_Xinhua - 0 views

news.xinhuanet.com/...content_11661325.htm

China Xinjiang Uighurs

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 06 Jul 09 - Cached
  • The death toll has risen to 140 following Sunday night's riot in Urumqi, capital of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the regional government said Monday.
  • At least 828 people were injured in the deadly violence that erupted Sunday night.     Rioters burned 261 motor vehicles, including 190 buses, at least 10 taxis and two police cars, said Liu.     As of 9 am, several vehicles were still seen ablaze on Urumqi's streets he said.
Argos Media

Europe's 'Special Interrogations': New Evidence of Torture Prison in Poland - SPIEGEL O... - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...0,1518,621450,00.html

US CIA Torture Polan Szymany Stare Kiejkuty Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

shared by Argos Media on 28 Apr 09 - Cached
  • The current debate in the US on the "special interrogation methods" sanctioned by the Bush administration could soon reach Europe. It has long been clear that the CIA used the Szymany military airbase in Poland for extraordinary renditions. Now there is evidence of a secret prison nearby.
  • Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, also known as "the brains" behind al-Qaida. This was the man who had presented Osama bin Laden with plans to attack the US with commercial jets. He personally selected the pilots and supervised preparations for the attacks. Eighteen months later, on March 1, 2003, Sheikh Mohammed was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan by US Special Forces and brought to Afghanistan two days later. Now the CIA was flying him to a remote area in Poland's Masuria region. The prisoner slept during the flight from Kabul to Szymany, for the first time in days, as he later recounted:
  • A large number of Polish and American intelligence operatives have since gone on record that the CIA maintained a prison in northeastern Poland. Independent of these sources, Polish government officials from the Justice and Defense Ministry have also reported that the Americans had a secret base near Szymany airport. And so began on March 7, 2003 one of the darkest chapters of recent American -- and European -- history.
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  • It was apparently here, just under an hour's drive from Szymany airport, that Sheikh Mohammed was tortured, exactly 183 times with waterboarding -- an interrogation technique that simulates the sensation of drowning -- in March, 2003 alone. That averages out to eight times a day. And all of this happened right here in Europe.
  • What the CIA did back then to prisoners in the Polish military airbase of Stare Kiejkuty, north of Szymany, had been authorized by the president. According to witnesses, Stare Kiejkuty housed a secret CIA prison for "high value detainees" -- for the most prominent prisoners of the war on terror.
  • There is now no doubt that the Gulfstream N379P landed at least five times at Szymany between February and July, 2003. Flight routes were manipulated and falsified for this purpose and, with the knowledge of the Polish government, the European aviation safety agency Eurocontrol was deliberately deceived.
  • Stare Kiejkuty military base, known as a training camp for Polish intelligence agents.
  • Sheikh Mohammed said that they cut the clothes from his body, photographed him naked and threw him in a three-by-four-meter (10 x 13 ft) cell with wooden walls. That was when the hardest phase of the interrogating began, he claims. According to Sheikh Mohammed, one of his interrogators told him that they had received the green light from Washington to give him a "hard time":
  • "They never used the word 'torture' and never referred to 'physical pressure,' only to 'a hard time.' I was never threatened with death, in fact I was told that they would not allow me to die, but that I would be brought to the 'verge of death and back again.'"
  • He says he was questioned roughly eight hours a day. He spent the first month naked and standing, with his hands chained to the ceiling of the cell, even at night.
  • the al-Qaida operative described how he was strapped to a special bed and submitted to waterboarding: "Cold water from a bottle that had been kept in a fridge was then poured onto the cloth by one of the guards so that I could not breathe. This obviously could only be done for one or two minutes at a time. The cloth was then removed and the bed was put into a vertical position. The whole process was then repeated during about one hour. Injuries to my ankles and wrists also occurred during the waterboarding as I struggled in the panic of not being able to breathe."
Argos Media

BBC NEWS | Americas | 'Too late' to contain swine flu - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8021827.stm

Health Swine Flu

shared by Argos Media on 28 Apr 09 - Cached
  • The swine flu virus first detected in Mexico can no longer be contained and countries should focus on mitigating its effects, a top UN official said. World Health Organization deputy chief Keiji Fukuda was speaking as the WHO raised its alert level to four, or two steps short of a full pandemic.
  • The number of probable deaths from the virus there has risen to 152. The US, Canada, Spain and Britain have confirmed cases of the virus, but not deaths have been reported outside Mexico.
  • Alert level four means the virus is showing a sustained ability to pass from human to human and is able to cause community-level outbreaks.
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  • Mr Fukuda said this was a "significant step towards pandemic influenza" but a pandemic should not be considered inevitable. Experts did not recommend closing borders or restricting travel, he stressed. "With the virus being widespread... closing borders or restricting travel really has very little effects in stopping the movement of this virus," he said.
  • The first batches of a swine flu vaccine could be ready in four to six months' time but it will take several more months to produce large quantities of it, Mr Fukuda said.
  • Health experts say the virus comes from the same strain that causes seasonal outbreaks in humans but also contains genetic material from versions of flu which usually affect pigs and birds.
  • The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation is sending a team to investigate allegations that industrial pig farms in Mexico were the source of the outbreak.
  • In almost all swine flu cases outside Mexico, people have been only mildly ill and have made a full recovery.
  • In Canada, six cases have been recorded at opposite ends of the country, in British Columbia and in Nova Scotia.
  • Swine flu officially arrived in Europe on Monday, when tests confirmed that a young man in Spain and two people in Scotland - all of whom had recently returned from Mexico - had the virus. They were said to be recovering well.
  • Several countries have banned imports of raw pork and pork products from Mexico and parts of the US, although experts say there is no evidence to link exposure to pork with infection.
  • Shares in airlines have fallen sharply on fears about the economic impact of the outbreak.
Argos Media

BBC NEWS | Americas | World 'well prepared' for virus - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8019566.stm

Health Swine Flu

shared by Argos Media on 27 Apr 09 - Cached
  • The international community is better prepared than ever to deal with the threatened spread of a new swine flu virus, a top UN health chief has said
  • As the UN warned the outbreak might become a pandemic, Dr Keiji Fukuda said years of preparing for bird flu had boosted world stocks of anti-virals. Canada is the latest country to confirm cases after as many as 81 deaths in Mexico and 20 cases in the US. Washington has warned the flu may yet claim American lives.
  • Eight cases have been confirmed among New York students, seven in California, two in Texas, two in Kansas and one in Ohio. Several countries in Asia and Latin America have begun screening airport passengers for symptoms. There is currently no vaccine for the new strain of flu but severe cases can be treated with antiviral medication.
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  • Officials said most of those killed so far in Mexico were young adults - rather than more vulnerable children and the elderly. It is unclear how effective currently available flu vaccines would be at offering protection against the new strain, as it is genetically distinct from other flu strains.
  • Only a handful of the Mexican cases have so far been laboratory-confirmed as swine flu, while in the US confirmed cases had only mild symptoms. Health experts want to know why some people become so seriously ill, while others just get a bit of a cold, the BBC's Imogen Foulkes reports from Switzerland.
  • Speaking in Geneva, an expert from the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN's health agency, expert said the swine flu virus could be capable of mutating into a more dangerous strain but that more information was needed before raising the WHO's pandemic alert phase.
  • H1N1 is the same strain that causes seasonal flu outbreaks in humans but the newly detected version contains genetic material from versions of flu which usually affect pigs and birds.
  • It is spread mainly through coughs and sneezes.
  • Ten New Zealand students from a group which visited Mexico have tested positive for Influenza A, making it "likely" they are infected with swine flu In France, a top health official told Le Parisien newspaper there were unconfirmed suspicions that two individuals who had just returned from Mexico might be carrying the virus Spain's health ministry says three people who returned from a trip from Mexico with flu symptoms are in isolation and being tested In Israel, medics are testing a 26-year-old man who has been taken to hospital with flu-like symptoms after returning from a trip to Mexico Two people in Queensland, Australia, are being tested in hospital after developing flu-like symptoms on returning from Mexico
  • Officials in Mexico confirmed that 20 people had died from the virus while another 61 deaths were suspected cases of swine flu. More than 1,300 people have been admitted to hospital with suspected symptoms since 13 April. With Mexico City apparently the centre of infection, many people are choosing to leave the city, the BBC's Stephen Gibbs reports.
  • Dr Fukuda said on Sunday there was no proof that eating pork would lead to infection. "Right now we have no evidence to suggest that people are getting exposed, or getting infected, from exposure to pork or to pigs, and so right now we have zero evidence to suspect that exposure to meat leads to infections," he said.
Argos Media

BBC NEWS | Africa | Pirates attack second US vessel - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...7999350.stm

Somalia Pirates

shared by Argos Media on 15 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Pirates have used rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons to attack another US merchant ship off the coast of Somalia. The pirates damaged the Liberty Sun, which was carrying a cargo of food aid, but were not able to board it.
  • Pirates have vowed to avenge the deaths of those killed in recent rescue operations by US and French forces.
  • Somali pirate leaders - who have generally treated captives well in the hope of winning big ransom payouts - said they would avenge the deaths.
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  • The operation to free Captain Richard Phillips, who was held captive in a lifeboat for five days, ended with three pirates being shot dead by marksmen from the USS Bainbridge on Sunday.
  • "No-one can deter us from protecting our waters from the enemy because we believe in dying for our land," Omar Dahir Idle told AP by telephone from the Somali coastal town of Harardhere.
  • Shipping companies last year handed over about $80m (£54m) in ransom payments to Somali pirates.
Pedro Gonçalves

US heading for point when 'military pursuit of al-Qaida should end' | World news | The ... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...us-war-against-al-qaida

Al-Qaeda

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 01 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Jeh Johnson suggested the group would become so degraded that a time would come when the legal authority given to the White House by Congress should no longer be used to justify waging the war that has been fought since 2001.Johnson said that when this happened, America had to "be able to say ... that our efforts should no longer be considered an armed conflict against al-Qaida and its affiliates".Instead, the responsibility for tackling al-Qaida should pass to the police and other law enforcement agencies.
  • Congress had authorised the president to use "all necessary and appropriate force" against the nations, organisations and individuals responsible for the 9/11 attacks; the US supreme court had endorsed this in 2006 by ruling "our efforts against al-Qaida may be properly viewed as armed conflict".
  • A fortnight ago the US defence secretary, Leon Panetta, claimed America had "decimated core al-Qaida" and that the group was "widely distributed, loosely knit and geographically dispersed".
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  • Johnson insisted the US was applying conventional law to an unconventional enemy, and justified detaining prisoners indefinitely and using "targeted lethal force" – such as drones – to kill suspects. He conceded these techniques would be questionable "viewed in the context of law enforcement or criminal justice, where no person is sentenced to death or prison without an indictment, an arraignment, and a trial before an impartial judge and jury".
Pedro Gonçalves

'Killer robots' pose threat to peace and should be banned, UN warned | Science | The Gu... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...killer-robots-ban-un-warning

Drones Military Automated Weapons

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 30 May 13 - No Cached
  • "Machines lack morality and mortality, and as a result should not have life and death powers over humans,"
  • "States are working towards greater and greater autonomy in weapons, and the potential is there for such technologies to be developed in the next 10 or 20 years,"
  • Unmanned aerial vehicles were intended initially only for surveillance, and their use for offensive purposes was prohibited, yet once strategists realised their perceived advantages as a means of carrying out targeted killings, all objections were swept out of the way.
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  • Drone technology has already moved a step closer to a fully autonomous state in the form of the X-47B, a super-charged UAV developed by the US Navy that can fly itself, and which last week completed the first takeoff from an aircraft carrier. The drone is billed as a non-combat craft, yet its design includes two weapons bays capable of carrying more than 4,000lbs.Britain is developing its own next generation of drone, known as Taranis, that can be sent to tackle targets at long range and can defend itself from enemy aircraft. Like X-47B it has two in-built weapons bays, though is currently unarmed.
  • South Korea has set up sentry robots known as SGR-1 along the Demilitarized Zone with North Korea that can detect people entering the zone through heat and motion sensors; though the sentry is currently configured so that it has to be operated by a human, it is reported to have an automatic mode, which, if deployed, would allow it to fire independently on intruders.
  • the Pentagon is spending about $6bn a year on research and development of unmanned systems, though in a directive adopted last November it said that fully autonomous weapons could only be used "to apply non-lethal, non-kinetic force, such as some forms of electronic attack".
  • The possibility of "out of the loop" weapons raises a plethora of moral and legal issues, Heyns says. Most worryingly, it could lead to increasing distance between those carrying out the attack and their targets: "In addition to being physically removed from the kinetic action, humans would also become more detached from decisions to kill – and their execution."
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