Around the World
Hai Kakar
BBC
Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:25 EST
© Unknown
Maulana Fazlullah
One of the most wanted Taliban leaders in Pakistan has escaped to Afghanistan and is planning new attacks on Pakistani forces,
he has told the BBC.
Maulana Fazlullah founded the Swat Taliban to enforce a hardline version of Islamic law.
The government at first accepted his demands, but later accused the militants of reneging on a peace deal and sent troops into the valley.
Maulana Fazlullah was said by officials to have been wounded or killed in July.
PressTV
Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:30 EST
© AP Photo
Operating on board the guided missile destroyer USS Bainbridge.
A US-flagged vessel has been saved from the clutches of Somali pirates who attacked the ship for the second time.
The bandits on Wednesday came dangerously close to
Maersk Alabama but were scared off by US security contractors on board the vessel,
The New York Times reported. Gunshots, sonic devices and clever evasions were used to head off the attack, the
Daily added.
The ship was on its way to the Kenyan port of Mombasa at the time of the attack. No casualties or damages were reported.
"Due to
Maersk Alabama following maritime industry's best practices such as embarking security teams, the ship was able to prevent being successfully attacked by pirates," said Vice Adm. Bill Gortney, the commander of Central Command.
Xinhua
Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:00 EST
© Xinhua/Reuters Photo
The Spanish tuna fishing boat Alakrana sails near a Spanish warship in the Indian ocean after it was freed from Somali pirates.
Somali pirates on Tuesday released a Spanish trawler with 36 crew on broad after receiving more than three million U.S. dollars in ransom, a pirate commander said.
"The crew and the ship were released after our demands were met. They paid more than three million U.S. dollars for the freedom of the fishermen and their fishing boat who were caught looting our resources," Omar Ali, a pirate commander with the gang holding the released Spanish trawler told Xinhua by phone from Harardheere, a pirate stronghold in north central Somalia.
The Spanish fishing ship, the
Alakrana, had been seized early last month off Somalia coast by Somali pirates who demanded the payment of a ransom and the release of detained pirates in Spain.
During the holding of the
Alakrana, Somali pirates have threatened to harm the hostages if their colleagues currently on trial in Spanish courts were not released, a move that triggered a wave of protests in Spain demanding the Spanish government to help secure the release of the hostages.
Xinhua
Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:00 EST
Armed Somali pirates have hijacked a chemical tanker with 28 North Koreans on board in the latest attacks along the world's most dangerous waters, a regional maritime official said on Tuesday.
Andrew Mwangura, the coordinator of the East Africa Seafarers Assistance Program (SAP), said Kiribati flagged-MV Theresa VIII was seized on Monday 618 nautical miles North West of the Seychelles on its way to the Kenyan port of Mombasa.
"She was taken on Monday at 1053 hrs some 618 nautical miles north west of Seychelles. All 28 crew members on board are North Korean nationals. The vessel is Bulgarian owned," Mwangura told Xinhua by telephone.
He said the Singaporean-operated chemical tanker was seized in the south of the Horn of African nation which has been without an effective central government for more than two decades.
Toni O'Loughlin
Guardian.co.uk
Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:05 EST
© Unknown
Church of Scientology in Melbourne
The Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, has said he would consider an inquiry into the Church of Scientology after a senator tabled allegations against the organisation including forced abortions, assault, torture, imprisonment, covering up sexual abuse, embezzlement of church funds and blackmail.
Senator Nick Xenophon tabled letters from former officials and staff of the Church of Scientology alleging criminal activity, and demanded a review of the organisation's tax exempt status.
"Scientology is not a religious organisation, it is a criminal organisation that hides behind its so-called religious beliefs," he told the senate.
Among the letters tabled was one written by Aaron Saxton, from Perth, who said he engaged in torture and blackmail while working for the church in Australia and at its American headquarters between 1989 and 1996.
Gul Rahmi Niazmand
Telegraph.co.uk
Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:25 EST
War-weary villagers in northern Afghanistan are taking up arms against insurgents, sick of having the Taliban encroach on their once-peaceful patch of the country.
In villages across Kunduz province, where a misdirected Nato air strike killed 90 civilians in September, tribal elders say that they have had enough of being caught in the middle of an escalating war.
So they are grabbing their guns, forming their own armies and getting rid of the Taliban insurgents who took control of their region.
"We were fed up with the Taliban," Abdul Jalil Tawakal, a tribal elder from Qala-i-Zal district said.
He and other local leaders have formed a militia with one aim: to get rid of the Taliban and the Nato forces that have been battling them for months.
"Both the Taliban and international forces were killing us, this was too much. So we picked up our guns and forced the Taliban out of our village," he said. "Now we are living a peaceful life."
The area came to the Taliban's attention with the opening earlier this year of a supply route for US and Nato troops funnelling fuel and other materiel from Tajikistan over the border to military bases in Afghanistan.
Fidel Castro
OpEdNews
Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:35 EST
Anyone with some information can immediately see that the sweetened 'Complementation Agreement for Defense and Security Cooperation and Technical Assistance between the Governments of Colombia and the United States' signed on October 30, and made public in the evening of November 2, amounts to the annexation of Colombia to the United States.
The agreement puts theoreticians and politicians in a predicament. It wouldn't be honest to keep silence now and speak later on sovereignty, democracy, human rights, freedom of opinion and other delights, when a country is being devoured by the empire as easy as lizards catch flies. This is the Colombian people; a self-sacrificing, industrious and combative people. I looked up in the hefty document for a digestible justification and I found none whatsoever.
Muhammad Saleh Zaafir
The News
Sun, 15 Nov 2009 03:49 EST
Pulitzer prize winning American journalist Seymour Hersh has claimed that an elite US special forces squad which operates covertly and includes terrorism and non-proliferation experts from the US intelligence community - the Pentagon, the FBI, and the DOE - is already present in Pakistan and could well be housed in the US embassy in Islamabad.
The startling disclosure was made in Hersh's candid interview with Pakistan's most popular TV channel Geo News' widely viewed current affairs programme Meray Mutabiq, hosted by Dr Shahid Masood. The programme was aired on Saturday late evening.
Seymour Hersh said that the Americans had been constituting such crack teams for various purposes and the team in question here was to deal with any eventuality including any fear of takeover by Taliban or any other 'development' with regard to Pakistani nukes.
Michael Evans
The Times
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:22 EST
© Reuters
British forces should buy off potential Taleban recruits with "bags of gold", according to a new army field manual published yesterday.
Army commanders should also talk to insurgent leaders with "blood on their hands" in order to hasten the end of the conflict in Afghanistan.
The edicts, which are contained in rewritten counter-insurgency guidelines, will be taught to all new army officers. They mark a strategic rethink after three years in which British and Nato forces have failed to defeat the Taleban. The manual is also a recognition that the Army's previous doctrine for success against insurgents, which was based on the experience in Northern Ireland, is now out of date.
José Adán Silva
IPS News
Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:08 EST
Managua- Gender-based violence and sexual abuse are serious public security problems in Central America, and Nicaragua is no exception, according to reports by United Nations agencies and women's organizations.
The Central American Human Development Report 2009-2010, released on October 20 by the United Nations Development Program's (UNDP) Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean, says violence against women, adolescents and children is the "hidden" and "most invisible face" of public insecurity in the region.
According to the study, entitled "Opening Spaces for Citizen Security and Human Development", two out of three women murdered in Central America are killed for gender-related reasons, a phenomenon that is known as femicide.
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