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As planned, Taliban now governs openly in Nuristan province

Bill Roggio
The Long War Journal
Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:54 EST

One month after US forces abandoned outposts in the Kamdesh district in Afghanistan's eastern province of Nuristan, the Taliban are operating in the open, without fear of retaliation.

The Taliban and their commander Dost Mohammed recently flaunted their control of the district to Al Jazeera. Dost, who some had claimed was killed during US and Afghan raids in Nuristan, granted an interview with the news organization from Kamdesh. Coalition forces attacked the Taliban in mid-October after the battle of Combat Outpost Keating and the subsequent US withdrawal. Mullah Abdul Rahman Mostaghni, a district-level Taliban commander, was thought to have been killed in the raid.

The Taliban have created "administrative units and the officials have been appointed," an unnamed commander told Al Jazeera.

"We also established the judiciary department and the commission for the promotion of virtue and the prevention of vice section," the commander told the news agency. "We are working on providing people's basic needs."

The promotion of virtue and the prevention of vice section will enforce the Taliban's strict, repressive brand of sharia, or Islamic law.

CBC News
Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:33 EST

The huge investments governments made in swine flu pandemic planning might not have been justified, an Ontario health official said Thursday.

"It's really not causing - and is not going to cause and nowhere has caused - significant levels of illness or death," said Dr. Richard Schabas, Ontario's former chief medical officer of health.

"But governments moved ahead regardless. They ramped up their response, spent a huge amount of money on vaccines and other things. I'm not sure the $1.5 billion includes the cost of new ventilators, the cost of Tamiflu stockpiles ... the huge investment that's been put into planning for what has ultimately turned out to be, from a pandemic perspective, a dud."

The Jerusalem Post
Sat, 14 Nov 2009 21:52 EST

A banner of an Israeli flag with a swastika and the wording "Shimon Hitler" was waved in the face of President Shimon Peres Thursday evening as he was arriving at a conference in Sao Paolo.

The president was accompanied by Israeli industrialists and was entering a parley focusing on Israeli-Brazilian economic cooperation.

The demonstrators, around 40 pro-Palestinian locals, also chanted anti-Israel slogans and waved Lebanese and Palestinian flags, according to sources in the president's entourage.

The protest contrasted the warm welcome Peres received in Brazil, after the House of Representatives there ratified the Mercadu Comun del Sur (Mercosur) agreement, which outlines a framework for free trade between Israel and four South American countries.

Afghan opium fuels 'global chaos'

BBC
Sat, 14 Nov 2009 21:41 EST

Afghanistan has a monopoly on illegal opium production that has devastating global consequences, a UN report says.

UN findings say an opium market worth $65bn (£39bn) funds global terrorism, caters to 15 million addicts, and kills 100,000 people every year.

The UN says corruption, lawlessness and uncontrolled borders result in only 2% of Afghan opiates being seized locally.

The UN says more Russians die annually from Afghan drugs than Soviet soldiers were killed during its Afghan conflict.

Patrick Cockburn
Counterpunch
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:35 EST

Meet Our Afghan Ally

Just when President Barack Obama looked as if he might be railroaded into sending tens of thousands more US troops to Afghanistan the American envoy to Kabul has warned him not to do so. In a leaked cable to Washington sent last week, the US ambassador to Afghanistan, Gen Karl W. Eikenberry, argues that it would be a mistake to send reinforcements until the government of President Hamid Karzai demonstrates that it will act against corruption and mismanagement. General Eikenberry knows what he is talking about because he has long experience of Afghanistan. A recently retired three star general, he was responsible for training the Afghan security forces from 2002 to 2003 and was top US commander in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007.

There is a dangerous misunderstanding outside Afghanistan about what 'corruption and mismanagement' mean in an Afghan context and a potentially lethal underestimation of how these impact on American and British forces. For example, the shadow British Defense Secretary Liam Fox argued that though 'corruption and establishing good governance' are not unimportant, 'we need to recognize that Afghan governance is likely to look very different from governance as we knows it in the West.'

Richard Shears
Daily Mail
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:04 EST

Bandit: Ned Kelly (left), who was hanged in 1880, wore this armoured suit (right) on his raids. A farmer claims to have handed over Kelly's skull to scientists

For years while he was on the run, robbing banks and holding up stage coaches, police were determined to have bushranger Ned Kelly's head.

Now a farmer claims to have handed over his skull to forensic scientists in Australia, asking them to determine if it really is the head of the notorious highwayman who to this day remains an iconic figure in the country's history, literature and film.

Kelly was hanged in Melbourne on November 11, 1880, but just what happened to his remains has been a mystery down through the decades.

Indian eunuchs given separate IDs

BBC
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:40 EST

India's Election Commission has given eunuchs an independent identity by letting them choose their gender as "other" on ballot forms.

The commission said it had received representation from various individuals and interest groups on the subject.

So far, eunuchs were forced to put down their gender as either male or female.

There are about 500,000 eunuchs in India. Known as hijras, they comprise the hermaphrodite, transvestite and transsexual communities.

Reuters
Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:31 EST

Chile's government said on Thursday any eventual purchase of U.S. missiles and radar equipment will be "infinitely lower" than a possible $665 million purchase the Pentagon has disclosed.

The Pentagon on Thursday advised the U.S. Congress of the possible sale of stinger missiles worth about $455 million, AIM medium-range missiles worth $145 million and Sentinel radar systems worth $65 million.

Yonhap News Agency
Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:48 EST

At least 10 people, some of them believed to be Japanese tourists, were killed and seven others injured on Saturday in a fire that swept through a second-floor indoor shooting range in this southern port city, police said.

The blaze broke out at about 2:26 p.m, and was extinguished about 40 minutes later, police said, adding that most of the dead were believed to have died from severe burns.

Zee News
Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:44 EST

The Delhi-bound Mandore Express derailed with some portion of the track piercing its AC compartment, leaving six passengers dead and 19 others injured in the wee hours in Bassi town near here on Monday.

Eleven coaches of the train derailed at 1:30 am near Banshkov Railway station, 40 kms from here, after the train left the Pink City, North West Railway sources said.

Following the derailment, a portion of the tracks pierced the AC compartment and probably hit the passengers, they said.

Welders are being used to remove the iron rods.

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