Around the World
Rory Carroll
Guardian.co.uk
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:57 EST
© National Police Of Peru/EPA
The remains of victims that were allegedly kidnapped and killed by a criminal gang in the jungle of Peru for human fat trafficking.
Peruvian police have arrested a gang which allegedly killed scores of peasants, drained their bodies of fat and sold the liquid abroad as an anti-wrinkle cosmetic.
Three suspects have confessed to killing five people for their fat, said Colonel Jorge Mejia, chief of Peru's anti-kidnapping police, but the number of victims was believed to be much higher and to date back decades.
Two of the suspects were arrested at a bus station in the capital, Lima, carrying bottles of liquid fat which they claimed were worth up to £36,000 a gallon.
At a news conference police displayed two bottles of fat, which laboratory tests confirmed were human. "The fat was extracted from the thorax and thighs," said Eusebio Felix Murga, chief of police of Dirincri district. Police also showed a photo of the rotting head of a 27-year-old male victim discovered last month in a coca-growing valley.
Rory Carroll
Guardian.co.uk
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:48 EST
© Stringer/colombia/Reuters
Colombians walk next to a bridge used by Colombian paramilitaries to infiltrate Venezuela
Venezuela has blown up two pedestrian bridges on its border with Colombia in the latest sign of deteriorating relations between the Andean neighbours.
Soldiers destroyed the walkways because they were being used by illegal militia and drug traffickers, said Eusebio Aguero, an army general based in the border state of Táchira.
"They are two foot bridges that paramilitary fighters used, where gasoline and drug precursors were smuggled, subversive groups entered. They are not considered in any international treaty."
However Colombia denounced the action as a violation of international law that would worsen the diplomatic crisis between the two countries.
Al Jazeera
Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:51 EST
© Reuters
An increased security presence in southern Thailand has not put a stop to the violence
Thai security forces say they have killed six suspected separatist fighters in a gun battle in southern Thailand.
The shooting broke out after police and soldiers surrounded a house in Pattani province occupied by a suspect.
Two police officers were injured in the gunfight on Tuesday.
Government forces numbering about 200 surrounded the house and told those inside to surrender but received no response, they said.
Skye Wheeler
Reuters
Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:36 EST
Twelve people were killed and a government minister wounded in clashes in south Sudan, which is preparing for a referendum on whether to split off as an independent state.
A surge of ethnic violence has killed more than 2,000 people this year, the United Nations estimates, raising fears for the stability of the oil-producing territory which secured the referendum and a semi-autonomous government in a 2005 peace deal that ended more than two decades of civil war with the north.
The conflict, which also set southern tribe against southern tribe, left lingering resentments in a region already riven by traditional disputes over territory and cattle.
Alan Gray
NewsBlaze
Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:00 EST
The government of Sri Lanka has imprisoned over a quarter million men, women and children, since the end of the 33 year civil war.
A humanitarian crisis is unfolding due to the deteriorating living conditions for the families held in the Sri Lankan government internment camps.
The Sri Lankan government interned approximately 280,000 innocent civilian survivors, about 10-percent of the Tamils in Sri Lanka, following the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in May of this year.
To control press coverage and suppress a public outcry for the inhumane treatment of the surviving Sri Lankan Tamil civilians, the government barred media from the camps.
Jon Boone
The Guardian
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:29 EST
© Shah Marai/AFP/Getty Images
Hamid Karzai passes an honour guard in Kabul
Hamid Karzai has said he is determined that the Afghan army should be built up so it can take over responsibility from foreign troops for securing the entire country within five years. Speaking after being sworn in for a second term as president, Karzai said he wanted Afghanistan's security forces to be improved in "quantitative and qualitative terms".
Currently only one of the 34 provinces, the capital, is controlled by the country's own security forces. Karzai said that by "accelerating the training and equipping" of the army and police, more provinces could be handed over.
"It is only through this process that Afghanistan's hope with regard to a quick return of our friends' soldiers to their countries will be realised," he told a packed hall of Afghan and foreign dignitaries.
In another ambitious deadline, Karzai gave foreign and national private security companies two years notice before their activities are handed over to the Afghan security forces. Although the private security industry is highly controversial in Afghanistan, the many private companies play a major role in securing everything from military compounds to embassies.
Xinhua
Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:29 EST
In fresh offensive against Taliban fighters in a border town in Paktika province east of Afghanistan the troops eliminated nearly two dozen insurgents, a private television channel reported Wednesday.
"Afghan and the Coalition forces killed 23 Taliban fighters in Barmal district Tuesday," Tolo broadcast in its news bulletin.
Anna Mehler Paperny and Ingrid Peritz
The Globe and Mail
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:46 EST
© Mario Tama/Getty Images
A package of Tamiflu at a pharmacy New York
Peggy Verhoef's children were devastated earlier this month to learn their suicide support group had been put on hold. The social workers who lead the group near Montreal were reassigned to work as greeters at H1N1 vaccination centres.
Ms. Verhoef's children, 13 and 15, who attend because their father committed suicide last year, were "extremely upset," she said Monday.
"The bureaucrats didn't stop to think about how it would affect the kids."
Across the country, public health programs ranging from support groups to sexual health clinics to food-safety inspections are being postponed or suspended as officials redirect nurses and other staff to vaccinating Canadians against the H1N1 influenza.
Xinhua
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:48 EST
More than 43,000 children work in mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), UNICEF reported here Thursday on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the convention on the children's rights.
The child laborers include 20,000 in the southeastern province of Katanga, 12,000 in the central province of Kasa-Occidental and more than 11,000 in the central-south province of Kasa-Oriental.
According to UNICEF, a growing number of children are living and working in the DRC towns. Among them, more than 8,000 have been identified in Kinshasa alone since the beginning of 2009, and more than 1,400 have been integrated either in families or in communities with the help of partners.
UNICEF disclosed that out of the 2 million displaced people in the country, more than 100,000 are children, whose childhood, education and other rights are threatened.
Helen Pidd
The Guardian
Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:47 EST
Sherri and Tom Milley's children are now exempt from completing school assignments outside the classroom
Usually it is the children, not the parents, who are loath to spend their evenings practicing spelling and learning times tables. But a Canadian couple have just won a legal battle to exempt their offspring from homework after successfully arguing there is no clear evidence it improves academic performance.
Sherri and Tom Milley, two lawyers from Calgary, Alberta, launched their highly unusual case after years of struggling to make their three reluctant children do school work out of the classroom.
After waging a long war with their eldest son, Jay, now 18, over his homework, they decided to do things differently with their youngest two, Spencer, 11, and Brittany, 10. And being lawyers, they decided to make it official.
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