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Canada: Murder charges against top CFB Trenton officer leave military community reeling
Bellevill, Ontario - The Canadian military was rocked to its core Monday following the bombshell allegation that the colonel in command of the country's largest air force base had killed two women and sexually assaulted two others.

Col. Russell Williams, a 46-year-old career member of the Canadian Forces, was charged Monday with first-degree murder in the deaths of Jessica Lloyd, 27, of Belleville, and Marie France Comeau, a 38-year-old corporal with CFB Trenton's 437 squadron who was killed last November.

"We're all shocked," said Lt. Annie Morin, a public affairs officer at CFB Trenton.

"The wing commander has been a man that's been respected and very much liked, so this news came as a very big shock for pretty much everybody on the base."
Seema Is a Human Rights Worker, Not a "Naxali": Letter to the National Human Rights Commission, New Delhi
Seema Azad, editor of the left-wing journal DASTAK published from Allahabad, was taken into custody by the police Saturday, 6th February, soon after she alighted from the train on her return from the Book Fair at Delhi. She, along with her husband and left-wing activist Vishwa Vijaya Azad, has been detained at the Khuldabad Police Station. Seema Azad just published a collection of articles criticizing the Indian government for its "Operation Greenhunt" -- the ongoing massive military attack by the government against the tribal inhabitants of central India. The booklet contains articles by noted authors and media-persons such as Arundhati Roy, Himanshu Kumar, Anil Chamaria, Punya Prasoon Vajpeyi, Sunita Narayan, and others. Although they were produced before a court in Allahabad, the details of the charges leveled against Seema Azad and Vishva Vijaya were not specified. Seema is the state secretary of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) for Uttar Pradesh. The PUCL has released the following letter addressed to the Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission in New Delhi.
Haiti awash in Christian aid, evangelism
© Fred Dufour / AFP - Getty Images file
Members of Idaho-based charity called New Life Children's Refuge are shown at a police station in Port-au-Prince on Jan. 31.
In quake crisis, there were sure to be some ungodly fumbles

The horrific destruction and human suffering in Haiti exert an almost irresistible pull on U.S. Christian missionaries eager to help. But as the jailing last week of 10 missionaries from a small Baptist church in Idaho illustrates, best intentions don't always translate into good deeds in the chaotic aftermath of the monster earthquake.

Many mission groups provide essential services for Haitians - indeed some have evolved into key service providers, working alongside nonprofit groups and the U.N. to fill gaps that the Haitian government can't fill.

But other missions, even when well-meaning, risk running afoul of Haiti's culture and laws.
Canada to Stop Selling Unlicensed Natural Health Remedies
Makers of natural-health products say they are bracing for widespread layoffs and millions of dollars in losses after Canada's pharmacy regulators issued a surprise directive recently urging druggists to stop selling unlicensed natural remedies.

The order affects thousands of herbal treatments, multi-vitamins and other products, most of them waiting for approval from Health Canada under a backlogged, five-year-old program to regulate natural-health goods.

The National Association of Pharmacy Regulatory Authorities (NAPRA) says pharmacists cannot be assured the products are safe until they are granted a government licence, and should not sell them in those circumstances. "Pharmacists are obliged to hold the health and safety of the public or patient as their first and foremost consideration," said the association's recently issued position statement.
Egypt To Build Its First Nuclear Power Plant
© RIA Novosti/Alexei Babushkin
Egypt will build its first nuclear power plant in the Mediterranean coastal town of El-Dabaa, reviving the country's civilian nuclear power program after more than two decades, the El-Ahram newspaper said on Monday.

Egyptian authorities announced in 2007 plans to build nuclear power facilities in the country to meet the increasing demand for electricity.

The north African state's nuclear program was originally suspended after the Chernobyl disaster in the former Soviet Union in 1986.

The paper quoted Egyptian energy minister Hassan Younes as saying the construction of the country's first nuclear power plant would take about 9 years. He said the decision to build the plant in El-Dabaa was based on a report by a team of international experts.
Dead man found in landing gear of US jet in Japan
Tokyo - Japanese authorities have found the body of a man in the landing gear of a Delta airliner that arrived in Tokyo from New York and said Monday they were seeking US help in identifying him.

The man, who was of dark complexion and dressed only in blue jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, was carrying no passport or personal belongings.

A mechanic found the body in the landing gear bay of the Boeing 777 after Delta Flight 59 landed at Tokyo's Narita International Airport at about 6:05 pm local time Sunday, a Chiba prefecture police spokesman said.

"Doctors say he probably froze to death and that he suffered a shortage of oxygen at an altitude of more than 10,000 metres (about 30,000 feet)," said another police official, Narita airport station spokesman Yoshimi Ichihara.
Operation Breakfast Redux: Could Pakistan 2010 Go the Way of Cambodia 1969?
An Introduction by Tom Engelhardt:

Almost every day, reports come back from the CIA's "secret" battlefield in the Pakistani tribal borderlands. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles -- that is, pilot-less drones -- shoot missiles (18 of them in a single attack on a tiny village last week) or drop bombs and then the news comes in: a certain number of al-Qaeda or Taliban leaders or suspected Arab or Uzbek or Afghan "militants" have died. The numbers are often remarkably precise. Sometimes they are attributed to U.S. sources, sometimes to the Pakistanis; sometimes, it's hard to tell where the information comes from. In the Pakistani press, on the other hand, the numbers that come back are usually of civilian dead. They, too, tend to be precise.

Don't let that precision fool you. Here's the reality: There are no reporters on the ground and none of these figures can be taken as accurate. Let's just consider the CIA side of things. Any information that comes from American sources (i.e. the CIA) has to be looked at with great wariness. As a start, the CIA's history is one of deception. There's no reason to take anything its sources say at face value. They will report just what they think it's in their interest to report -- and the ongoing "success" of their drone strikes is distinctly in their interest.

Then, there's history. In the present drone wars, as in the CIA's bloody Phoenix Program in the Vietnam era, the Agency's operatives, working in distinctly alien terrain, must rely on local sources (or possibly official Pakistani ones) for targeting intelligence. In Vietnam in the 1960s, the Agency's Phoenix Program -- reportedly responsible for the assassination of 20,000 Vietnamese -- became, according to historian Marilyn Young, "an extortionist's paradise, with payoffs as available for denunciation as for protection." Once again, the CIA is reportedly passing out bags of money and anyone on the ground with a grudge, or the desire to eliminate an enemy, or simply the desire to make some of that money can undoubtedly feed information into the system, watch the drones do their damnedest, and then report back that more "terrorists" are dead. Just assume that at least some of those "militants" dying in Pakistan, and possibly many of them, aren't who the CIA hopes they are.
U.S.-Supported Night Raids Bring Terror to Afghanis
© paymanemali
An assortment of American military, security contractors from the U.S., and Afghani security and police organizations that likely answer to U.S. military leaders engage in war on a daily basis and, as Anand Gopal recently detailed, are subject to targeted assassinations, night raids, secret detention centers, disappearances, and other acts of "counterterror."

Many Americans have heard stories seep into corporate media's news coverage of the Afghanistan War (or, in general, the "war on terror"). Americans know detention has been a common tool used against "terror suspects" and that certain "suspects" have in many cases been held secretly.

Who knows how many Americans are aware of disappearances which terrify a population along with targeted assassinations that come from foreign military or security forces that are seeking to enforce "counterterror" measures.

Targeted assassinations are to be expected in any war from any invader seeking to control a country. And, America has perfected the art of detaining civilians or "suspects" for indefinite detention. But, what about the night raids on Afghanis that have come into focus in the past few months? What purpose do the raids serve?
Video: Displaced Afghans face harsh winter




Nato and Afghan troops are preparing for a major offensive against Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan.

Ahead of the operation, thousands of civilians have fled their homes near the Marjah area of Helmand province. Many will be going to displacement camps near the capital, Kabul.

But as Al Jazeera's David Chater reports, conditions there are dismal.
Karzai wants Afghanistan security handover to begin this year
© Getty Images
Afghanistan is prepared to begin taking over security from international forces in some parts of the war-torn nation by the end of the year, President Hamid Karzai said Sunday.

By the end of his five-year term in 2014, Karzai said, "conditions permitting ... Afghan forces will have full responsibility for security throughout the country, with international forces continuing to serve in the capacity of providing backup and assistance."

Speaking at the Security Conference in Munich, Germany, Karzai said he planned to build up the army and the national police to some 300,000 by 2012.

   

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