Daily Kos

Overnight News Digest: War is Peace, To be Hungry is to be Full

by Magnifico

Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 08:58:47 PM PDT

Top Story: Food — Rising prices and shortages

Throughout tonight's OND, you will find stories about the world food crisis — the end of cheap food.

The world's food supply is dwindling because of drought, changing climate, and a move toward biofuels. People around the world are hungry and there have been food riots in countries around the world.

In Haiti, three days of food riots have ended. In Australia, farmers are choosing between watering rice crops or wine grape crops. In the U.S., families are trying to afford a rising grocery bill.

To be hungry is to be full.

Now on to the news...

World

  • Guardian - Poor go hungry while rich fill their tanks

    Rocketing global food prices are causing acute problems of hunger and malnutrition in poor countries and have put back the fight against poverty by seven years, the World Bank said yesterday.

    Robert Zoellick, the Bank's president, called on rich countries to commit an extra $500m (£250m) immediately to the World Food Programme, and sign up to what he called a "New Deal for global food policy".

    Zoellick said: "In the US and Europe over the last year we have been focusing on the prices of gasoline at the pumps. While many worry about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs. And it's getting more and more difficult every day."

    He said the price of wheat had risen by 120% in the past year, more than doubling the cost of a loaf of bread. Rice prices were up by 75% in just two months. On average, the Bank calculates that food prices have risen by 83% in the past three years.

    I think Zoellick's sincerity is dubious. For a neocon who advocated regime change in Iraq, his concern for the world's hungry lacks authenticity.

  • France 24 - Food prices could provoke economic crisis, says IMF chief

    In an exclusive interview with FRANCE 24, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), warned that the risk of inflation from rising food prices could be as damaging to world economies as the current subprime crunch.

    "The current economic crisis does not merely concern growth. There's a crisis developing that is at least as serious: the rise in inflation and the prices of raw materials, notably food," Strauss-Kahn said in FRANCE 24’s "The Business Interview."

    "Several countries, particularly in Africa, will not only see economic disruption, but also considerable individual suffering, because rising prices will destabilise the food supply in these countries," he added.

  • Independent - The other global crisis: rush to biofuels is driving up price of food

    This week crowds of hungry demonstrators in Haiti stormed the presidential palace in the capital, Port-au-Prince, in protests over food prices. And a crisis gripped the Philippines as massive queues formed to buy rice from government stocks.

    There have been riots in Niger, Senegal, Cameroon and Burkina Faso and protests in Mauritania, Ivory Coast, Egypt and Morocco. Mexico has had "tortilla riots" and, in Yemen, children have marched to draw attention to their hunger.

    The global price of wheat has risen by 130 per cent in the past year. Rice has rocketed by 74 per cent in the same period. It went up by more than 10 per cent in a single day last Friday – to an all-time high as African and Asian importers competed for the diminishing supply on international markets in an attempt to head off the mounting social unrest. The International Rice Research Institute warned yesterday that prices will keep going up.

    The buffers stocks of staple foods that governments once held are being steadily exhausted... The impact is beginning to be felt in the rich world, too.

USA

  • ABC News - Bush Aware of Advisers' Interrogation Torture Talks

    President Bush says he knew his top national security advisors discussed and approved specific details about how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated tortured by the Central Intelligence Agency...

    "Well, we started to connect the dots, in order to protect the American people." Bush told ABC News White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. "And, yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved." ...

    At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft...

    Bush said the ABC report about the Principals' involvement was not so "startling."

    Bush to Congress: So?

  • WaPo - Bush Backs Petraeus on Indefinite Suspension of Troop Pullout in Iraq

    Bush ordered an indefinite suspension yesterday of troop withdrawals from Iraq this summer but promised that the war "is not endless" as he braced for a new election-year showdown with Congress over the conflict's economic cost and long-term future.

    WAR IS PEACE.

  • LA Times - U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement put on hold

    The House on Tuesday refused... Bush's demand to ratify a free-trade deal with Colombia, voting to delay consideration of the pact until after the November election. The House's action effectively pushed debate on the politically sensitive trade deal into the next administration and averted a potentially embarrassing showdown for the Democratic presidential candidates.

  • NYT - Fewer Options Open to Pay for Costs of College

    Parents will have to navigate unfamiliar and difficult terrain when it comes time to pay for college this year, with student loan companies in turmoil and banks tightening their standards and raising rates on other types of borrowing.

    Lawmakers and the administration are trying to head off any crisis by making sure that "lenders of last resort" stand ready to take the place of companies that have left the federal loan program. And a growing number of colleges have applied to participate in the federal direct loan program, in which students borrow from the government.

    But families often use a combination of resources to pay for college, drawing on savings, federal loans, bank loans and home loans to plug the gap between college costs and financial aid.

  • LA Times - 3rd Guantanamo detainee to boycott trial

    A Sudanese prisoner with long ties to Osama bin Laden told the war-crimes tribunal here Thursday that the Sept. 11 attacks dealt heavy blows to U.S. security and exposed the "hypocrisy" behind American claims that it stands for equality and justice.

    Appearing at his arraignment, Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud Qosi refused to accept legal representation for his trial before the Pentagon's military commissions. After a rambling statement, he announced that he would boycott further proceedings...

    "The only war crime I committed and for which I'm being tried today before you and which I admit having committed is, in truth, my nationality," said the tall, slender Qosi. "My crime is that I'm a Sudanese citizen."

  • CNN - Economic woes hit American stomachs

    Steadily rising food costs aren't just causing grocery shoppers to do a double-take at the checkout line -- they're also changing the very ways we feed our families...

    Record-high energy, corn and wheat prices in the past year have led to sticker shock in the grocery aisles. At $1.32, the average price of a loaf of bread has increased 32 percent since January 2005. In the last year alone, the average price of carton of eggs has increased almost 50 percent...

    Overall, food prices rose nearly 5 percent in 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That means a pound of coffee, on average, cost 57 cents more at year's end than in 2006. A 12-ounce can of frozen, concentrated orange juice now averages $2.53 -- a 67-cent increase in just two years..

    Nationwide, a family of four on a moderate-cost shopping plan now spends an average of $904 each month for groceries, an $80 increase from two years ago, according to the USDA.

  • IHT - McCain reverses himself on mortgage position

    Senator John McCain, who drew criticism last month after he warned against broad government intervention to solve the deepening mortgage crisis, pivoted Thursday and called for the U.S. government to aid some homeowners in danger of losing their homes, by helping them to refinance and get federally guaranteed 30-year mortgages...

    In both tone and substance, McCain's speech was a departure from the remarks he made last month in California.

    Straight Flip-Flop Express.

  • The Hill - Democrats signal plan of attack on McCain

    DNC Chairman Howard Dean and Democratic pollsters said the presumptive GOP presidential nominee is vulnerable to charges he is not the independent voice he claims to be, criticized the Arizona senator for changing his position on key issues and claimed he is ignorant of the economy.

    Dean and the pollsters said McCain has been "wishy-washy" on both immigration and the Bush tax cuts. Their polls showed people do not think McCain is an independent voice when they are told of his relationships with lobbyists affiliated with his campaign...

    "He has damaged his own brand dramatically since 2000," Dean said. "Many of his wounds are self-inflicted."

  • LA Times - Oil firm, foes strike major deal

    A Houston oil company has agreed to shut down its offshore oil production off Santa Barbara County decades early in exchange for approval this year to drill into untapped undersea reserves and cash in on the nation's record oil prices.

    To sweeten the deal, Plains Exploration & Production Co. -- known as PXP -- also has agreed to donate about 200 acres of oceanview property along the sparsely populated Gaviota coast and an additional 3,700 acres in Santa Barbara's premier wine-growing region for public parkland. It would withdraw a proposed housing development on that land and pay millions to fund projects that offset carbon dioxide emissions, such as low-emission public buses.

    The unprecedented deal, announced Thursday by PXP and its fiercest environmental opponents, was designed to make a long-stalled drilling proposal more palatable to county and state officials in an area where a 1969 oil spill helped launch the modern environmental movement in California.

  • NYT - Sharp Curb on Salmon Season

    Faced with the collapse of the fall Chinook salmon run in the Sacramento River, the Pacific Fishery Management Council voted Thursday to cancel all commercial salmon fishing this year from the California coast to north-central Oregon. The season was to have begun on May 1.

    "This is a complete disaster by any standard," said Don Hansen, the council chairman.

  • LA Times - Jenna Bush and husband-to-be buy a Baltimore home

    Real estate and property tax documents, though, confirm that Hager bought the house last month for $440,000. He turned over power of attorney to Jenna for the purpose of signing purchasing and financing documents in his name -- including an affidavit that stated this would be Hager's principal residence.

    And they said crime doesn't pay!

Europe

  • Guardian - Faulty army gear may breach human rights, court rules

    Sending British soldiers out on duty with defective equipment may breach their human rights, the high court ruled today.

    In a potentially significant verdict for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Mr Justice Collins ruled that a soldier "does not lose all protection simply because he is in hostile territory carrying out dangerous operations".

  • Independent - Court condemns Blair for halting Saudi arms inquiry

    Tony Blair's government broke the law when it abandoned a fraud investigation into a multibillion-pound arms deal between BAE Systems and Saudi Arabia, the High Court ruled yesterday.

  • Guardian - BAE row may lead to revolt over attorney general's powers

    Ministers were today warned that they may face a parliamentary revolt over plans to make it easier for the attorney general to halt a prosecution on the grounds of national security.

    MPs spoke out following yesterday's high court judgement saying the Serious Fraud Office was wrong to drop its criminal investigation into secret payments by the arms company BAE Systems to Saudi Arabia.

    The government is now under pressure to reopen the investigation. But ministers are also being urged to drop a proposal in the draft constitutional renewal bill that could allow the attorney general to halt a prosecution like the BAE one without having to worry about the decision being challenged in the courts.

  • Independent - Arid Barcelona forced to import water

    Barcelona is to take the unprecedented step of importing water by ship to prevent a water crisis prompted by extreme drought. The emergency measure, to start next month, indicates dramatically how climate change has affected one of Europe's most developed cities – a metropolis known for its efficient infrastructure.

    The Catalan Water Agency has chartered 10 tankers to ship water to Spain's second city from Marseilles in France, from the Catalan port of Tarragona, and from desalination plants near Almeria in Spain's parched south. Some water may be transported by rail. Water will be imported for at least six months, or until the resumption of normal rainfall ends the region's acute water shortage.

    The Sahara is moving north across the Mediterranean.

  • Guardian - Controversial US pollster talks to No 10 aides about reviving Labour's fortunes

    Gordon Brown's close political advisers have been in informal talks with the controversial American pollster Mark Penn, seeking advice to improve Labour's falling poll ratings.

    While there appears to be no move to appoint the global chief executive of the public relations and lobbying company Burson-Marsteller to the Downing Street team, the talks seem to confirm feelings in the Brown camp that new ideas are needed about how to promote the prime minister.

  • Telegraph - Serb prisoners 'were stripped of their organs in Kosovo war'

    Serb prisoners had their internal organs removed and sold by ethnic Albanians during the Kosovo war, according to allegations in a new book by the world's best known war crimes prosecutor.

    Carla Del Ponte, who stepped down in January as chief prosecutor at the Hague tribunal for crimes committed in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, said investigators found a house suspected of being a laboratory for the illegal trade.

    A senior adviser to Hashim Thaci, Kosovo's prime minister and a leading member of the Kosovo Liberation Army which is accused of benefiting from the trade, yesterday denied the allegations.

  • Spiegel - Berlin Threatens Project Pullout

    The German government has warned Turkey that it may pull out of the construction of the massive Ilisu dam because of Ankara's failure to comply with the international standards called for in the contract. Berlin says Turkey hasn't done enough to protect the environment or the area's cultural heritage.

  • Independent - The new age of the train

    Britain is witnessing the dawn of a new era of rail travel as an unprecedented demand for environmentally friendly transport encourages people to take more train journeys than at any time since the Second World War.

    Figures released yesterday revealed that the number of miles travelled on the rail network reached a record-breaking peacetime high of 30.1 billion during 2007, capping a huge rise in popularity in which passenger numbers have increased every year for the past 13 years.

    I wonder how much of the ridership increase is due to a rising population?

  • AP - Russia signs a deal to tap Mongolia's uranium deposits

    Russia signed a deal Friday allowing it to take part in exploring Mongolia's rich uranium deposits, part of the Kremlin efforts to revive ties with the former Soviet satellite... Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Russia's Rosatom nuclear agency, said Mongolia's uranium reserves likely exceed 100,000 metric tons

  • AFP - Cosmonauts to abandon Soviet-era space base by 2020

    Russia will end manned space launches from Kazakhstan's Soviet-era Baikonur cosmodrome by 2020, replacing it with a launch pad in Russia, a top official said Friday, Interfax news agency reported.

    All cosmonauts will instead take off from the new Vostochny base, planned in Russia's southeast near the Chinese border, the head of the Russian space agency Roskosmos, Anatoly Perminov, was quoted as saying.

Africa

  • Guardian - Fear of unrest grows as soaring wheat prices strain Egypt's creaking economy

    It is an overcast morning in the Bulaq neighbourhood of Cairo, three hours after the muezzin's call to prayer. The streets are choked with honking cars, while goats - and a few ragged-looking people - pick at piles of stinking rubbish overflowing from metal wheelie bins.

    Tempers flare outside a government bakery as the smell of hot baladi (country) bread wafts out from the ovens. There is pushing and shoving as a worker appears at the window to hand out plastic bags of the rough, round flat loaves - each weighing a standard 160 grams (5.5oz)- to customers.

    "I've been here since before six and this is what I get," grumbles Umm Islam, her face contorted in fury. "My husband is retired and I have five children and it's not enough."

    Others complain of their pitifully small incomes and shortages. In the last two months 11 people have died in bread queues, either from exhaustion, heart attacks, brawls or accidents.

  • NYT - Ugandan Peace Deal Breaks Down

    The much anticipated peace process between the Ugandan government and the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army broke down on Friday after the rebel army’s chief negotiator quit and government officials left a remote jungle camp to return home to Uganda’s capital.

    Ugandan government officials had seemed tantalizingly close to signing a landmark peace deal with the Lord’s Resistance Army meant to end one of Africa’s longest, most brutal civil wars. Tens of thousands of people were slaughtered in the conflict, and thousands of children were kidnapped and turned into sex slaves and killers.

    More than 200 officials, diplomats and journalists had been camping out in a jungle clearing on the Sudan-Congo border waiting for Joseph Kony, the rebel movement’s fugitive leader who has been indicted on crimes against humanity, to emerge. But he didn’t.

  • Guardian - Zimbabwe opposition calls for general strike

    Zimbabwe's opposition today called for a general strike until the results of the presidential vote, held two weeks ago, are declared.

    The call for industrial action followed yesterday's announcement by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) that its candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, would boycott an election run-off because he had won the March 29 ballot against Robert Mugabe "hands down".

    "From Tuesday, let us all stay at home until the presidential result has been announced," pamphlets distributed by the MDC said.

  • NYT - Crackdown in Zimbabwe Intensifies

    A day before southern Africa’s leaders hold an emergency session on Zimbabwe’s disputed election, the government of the beleaguered nation appeared to tighten its control on Friday, banning political rallies, continuing its crackdown on the opposition and arresting the lawyer of its chief rival, Morgan Tsvangirai.

  • Guardian - New mapping technique offers hope for Madagascan wildlife

    Scientists have used pioneering technology to examine in minute detail one of the world's richest biodiversity "hot spots" and identify habitats that, if conserved, will protect the greatest number of species.

    High-resolution satellite images have been taken of the entire 226,657 square mile island of Madagascar, off the east coast of Africa, a renowned biodiversity "hot spot" where 80% of its 30,000 known species are endemic – that is, they are found nowhere else on the planet.

    Be sure to check out the picture gallery too!

Middle East

  • NYT - Gunmen Kill Aide to Shiite Cleric in Iraq

    A senior aide to the radical anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr was assassinated in Najaf as he returned home from Friday prayers, raising the likelihood that tensions would climb still higher between Mr. Sadr’s loyalists and the Iraqi government forces they have been battling.

    The police declared a curfew in Najaf, the holiest Shiite city in Iraq, and deployed reinforcements on the streets, fearing a backlash after the murder of the aide, Riyadh al-Nuri...

    Within hours of Mr. Nuri’s killing, Mr. Sadr’s office in Najaf issued a statement laying blame at "the hands of the occupiers and their tails," meaning the United States and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government.

  • AP - Gates: Iran Boosts Support for Militias

    Iranian support for militias in Iraq has grown, top U.S. defense leaders said Friday, asserting that recent battles in Basra gave the Iraqis an eye-opening view of Iran's increased negative role there. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the U.S. will be as aggressive as possible to counter that increase, adding that the Iraqis "are in a position themselves to bring some pressures to bear on Iran."

    Speaking after he and his commanders spent three days on Capitol Hill mapping out progress in Iraq, Gates also acknowledged that future troop withdrawals will go more slowly than he had initially hoped last year.

    Shorter Gates: It's all Iran's fault!

  • Reuters - Iran cleric rejects Bush's accusations on Iraq

    In a speech at the White House on Thursday, Bush repeated long-standing U.S. accusations against Iran and warned the Islamic republic to stop interfering in Iraq. He characterized Iran and al Qaeda as "two of the greatest threats to America."

    "Iran has never interfered in Iraq ... such claims are sheer lies made by Iraq's occupiers to continue Iraq's occupation," Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a senior advisor to Iran's top authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told worshippers in a Friday prayers sermon at Tehran University.

  • NYT - As Militias Roam Alleys, Iraqi Army Takes Brunt

    The struggle for control of Sadr City is more than a test of wills with renegade Shiite militias. It has also become a testing ground for the Iraqi military, which has been thrust into the lead.

    Iraqi soldiers, suffering from a shortage of experienced noncommissioned officers, have often been firing wildly, expending vast quantities of ammunition to try to silence militias that are equipped with AK-47’s, mortars and rockets. But pulling back from their positions earlier, they now appear to be holding their ground — albeit with considerable American support.

  • NYT - Israeli Incursion in Gaza Kills 5

    At least five Palestinians were killed Friday by Israeli tank and gun fire in central Gaza, two of them boys ages 12 and 13, local Palestinian hospital officials said. Three more Palestinians, all militants from Hamas, were killed in Israeli airstrikes.

  • Independent - Israel warns troops of Facebook security risk

    The use of Facebook by off-duty soldiers is a security threat, say Israeli military authorities. They have imposed rules to stop Israeli soldiers and the military's civilian employees revealing security-sensitive information on Facebook and other social networking sites.

South Asia

  • LA Times - Afghanistan attack aimed at NATO convoy kills 8 civilians

    A suicide bomber targeting a NATO convoy killed eight Afghan civilians Thursday and wounded about two dozen others, authorities said. Three Canadian soldiers were slightly wounded in the blast, military officials said.

    The attack, in a crowded district of Kandahar city, followed a pattern of suicide bombings carried out by insurgents against coalition forces. The strike was typical in that it killed bystanders rather than soldiers, who patrol the city in heavily armored vehicles.

    Three of those killed were children, the Interior Ministry said. Of the Afghans injured, two were policemen, said the provincial police chief, Sayeed Agha Saqib.

  • NYT - Pakistan Government Proposes Lifting Media Restrictions

    Pakistan’s newly elected government introduced a bill in Parliament on Friday to lift the controversial curbs on the independent media imposed by President Pervez Musharraf last year.

    "This is a gift of a long struggle jointly launched by the media, democratic forces and the entire nation," said Sherry Rehman, the information minister, during a press briefing after introducing the bill at Parliament House.

    "The draconian laws that threatened coercive action against the press will be removed via this bill to begin the process of providing a free press in Pakistan," she said, adding that she hoped it would soon become law.

  • Times of India - India, Pak keen to settle dispute over Nizam's wealth

    The 60-year-old dispute over the fabulous wealth of the Nizam of Hyderabad lying locked up in a London bank is now being sought to be resolved out of court between the interested parties — India, Pakistan and the Nizam's heirs. The Cabinet on Friday endorsed this decision at a meeting chaired by PM Manmohan Singh.

    Soon after partition, over £1 million was surreptitiously transferred by Nizam's finance minister Moin Nawaz Jung and deposited in National Westminster Bank, London, in the name of the then Pakistan high commissioner H I Rahimtoola.

  • BBC News - 'Dozens hurt' in Dhaka protests

    Hundreds of people campaigning for Islamic rule in Bangladesh have clashed with police over a new policy advocating more rights for women.

    Police used teargas and batons to break up the protests after members of the Islamic Constitution Movement (ICM) threw rocks in the capital, Dhaka.

    Mokarram Hossain of Dhaka Metropolitan Police said there were more than 500 protesters and dozens were hurt.

  • NYT - Nepalis Await Election Results and Brace for Major Changes

    The fruits of this vote, no matter the winners and losers, will bring exceptionally big changes to Nepal, as the special 601-member Constituent Assembly that it chooses goes about forming a new government, rewriting the Constitution and, in all likelihood, bringing an end to a 240-year-old monarchy.

    Nepal may be small, poor and relatively insignificant, but this new assembly will have to tackle some of the thorniest questions facing any modern nation, compounded by the challenge of rebuilding the country after 10 years of guerrilla war. The Constituent Assembly will have to deliberate everything from minority rights to exploiting Nepal’s hydropower potential to war crimes.

Asia-Pacific

  • BBC News - Asian states feel rice pinch

    Asian countries have been struggling to cope as the cost of rice has reached record levels.

    The price of the staple crop has risen by as much as 70% during the last year, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), with increases accelerating in recent weeks.

    Shortages have begun to hit some importing countries.

  • NYT - Ex-Party Boss in China Gets 18 Years

    The former Communist Party boss of Shanghai, Chen Liangyu, was sentenced on Friday to 18 years in prison for taking bribes and abusing power.

    Mr. Chen, who before his arrest in late 2006 was also a member of China’s ruling Politburo, is the highest ranking government official to be stripped of power here in over a decade. His sentence was handed down Friday at the No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court in the northern city of Tianjin, where he had recently been on trial.

    Prosecutors accused Mr. Chen, 62, of helping siphon hundreds of millions of dollars out of the city’s pension fund, and also of enriching himself, friends and relatives through shady financial and real estate deals beginning as early as 1988.

  • Xinhua - Shanghai upgrades railway station security level

    Shanghai on Friday upgraded the security level at its two main railway stations, requiring passengers to X-ray their luggage when entering ticket offices. Previously, passengers only needed to have their luggage X-rayed before boarding trains at the Shanghai Railway Station and Shanghai South Railway Station...

    The Ministry of Railways had ordered all major stations to install security check machines to ensure passenger safety.

  • Bangkok Post - Russia summons Thai envoy over Viktor Bout's detention

    Russia's foreign ministry said yesterday it had summoned Thailand's ambassador to discuss what it called violations of the rights of Viktor Bout, an alleged Russian arms dealer in prison in Thailand...

    Earlier this week Mr Bout sent an open letter from a Thai prison, appealing to Russia for help in his release and saying charges against him were fabricated by the US government.

  • SMH - Nationalists threaten violence over film

    The award-winning documentary film Yasukuni - about Japan's notorious shrine for the war dead - is expected to draw a furious response from ultra-nationalists at its big-screen premiere. Militant groups have sent death threats to the Chinese-born director, Li Ying, and vowed to attack cinemas, where management and police are preparing for protests...

    A history of the war on the shrine's walls alleges the conflict was started by the United States, and lauds the "valiant" efforts of Japanese troops. Of the Nanking Massacre, during which Japanese soldiers slaughtered more than 100,000 Chinese civilians, it makes only one mention: "Chinese soldiers disguised in civilian clothes were severely prosecuted." ...

    At the heart of the film is the recurring motif of the Yasukuni sword, considered the embodiment of the shrine. The filmmaker interviewed the last living Yasukuni swordsmith, Naoji Kariya, who helped forge some of the 8100 swords used to decapitate Japanese war victims, as seen in the film's archival footage. The reticent craftsman has since asked for his appearances to be deleted and said he hopes the movie will not be shown.

  • IHT - South Korean priests push Samsung corruption inquiry

    The police beat, kidnapped and jailed them. But the Roman Catholic priests continued to march and rally as the most daring spokesmen for the downtrodden in the darkest era of the South Korean military dictatorship in the 1980s. The annals of the South Korean struggle for democracy cannot be written without their name: the Catholic Priests' Association for Justice.

    Now, the priests are fighting what they consider a more elusive Leviathan than the past dictators: Samsung, the country's largest conglomerate, which faces allegations of large-scale bribery. Since last October, the clergymen have held a series of nationally televised news conferences, citing biblical quotations about "evil spirits" and "penitence" and urging South Koreans to join them in their effort to fight presumed corruption at Samsung.

    On Friday, their effort appeared to bear fruit. Samsung's chairman, Lee Kun Hee, was questioned for a second time by an independent counsel investigating the corruption charges.

  • Guardian - 54 Burmese migrants suffocate in packed lorry

    Fifty-four illegal Burmese migrants being smuggled by traffickers in southern Thailand suffocated in the sweltering confines of a tiny seafood container lorry yesterday after the air-conditioning system failed.

    Some of the 67 survivors told how they were 30 minutes into the journey to the resort island of Phuket, where they hoped to find work, when conditions became unbearably stifling.

    But the driver warned those trying to alert him by banging on the container's walls and calling on mobile phones to be quiet for fear of tipping off police as they passed through checkpoints along the route. He turned on the air-conditioning, but it failed after a few minutes. When the driver finally stopped on a quiet road running along the Andaman Sea 90 minutes later many, mostly women, had already collapsed. After discovering the horrific scene, he fled.

    Update from BBC News: Jail for Burmese lorry survivors.

  • AFP - Indonesia apologises for YouTube blockade

    Indonesia ended its blockade of websites carrying a controversial anti-Islam film and apologised to the public on Friday after a string of angry complaints and accusations of censorship. Access was restored to YouTube, MySpace and other prominent sites by the country's main Internet service providers, who barred them this week at the government's request.

  • SMH - Secret files expose the sway of developers

    The State Government dismissed advice from its own planners and allowed developers to clear valuable bushland to build housing estates away from existing towns and transport, after months of aggressive lobbying by developers.

    Documents seen by the Herald - some withheld from Parliament - reveal details of an unprecedented land swap in which some of the state's most generous donors to the NSW Labor Party were given the go-ahead to build on sensitive woodland and coastal areas in the Lower Hunter. In return they handed over 12,000 hectares of land for national parks.

  • SMH - Farmers' dilemma: wine for rich or rice for poor

    There is a well-tested proverb that says "when the price of rice rises, governments fall".

    Luckily for the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, it is not an Australian proverb, but his hosts in China this week would know it and possibly fear it.

    The price of rice has soared to record levels due to an international shortage of the world's most important food crop and the drought-dry plains of southern NSW are part of the predicament...

    When there was water, he said, the Riverina was a perfect place to grow rice and Australian rice farmers were the world's best... This season, with water that would normally sell for less than $100 a megalitre fetching more than $1000, some rice farmers chose to sell what water they had to thirsty wine grape growers rather than plant a crop.

  • Southland Times - Beer prices set to rise as increases impact

    A pint at the pub could soon cost a bit more, with international demand pushing up the price of some ingredients by as much as a quarter.

    Invercargill Brewery owner Steve Nally said he expected the average beer price for consumers could increase by about 7 or 8 percent because of increased demand for barley and hops. At present international demand exceeded supply, which impacted the price, he said.

    The cost of the base malt used at the brewery had risen by 20 percent, while the price of the other malts it used had risen by about 25 percent. There was also an indication that a world shortage of hops could push up that price by 25 percent.

    In the United States, the world's biggest hops supplier, poor weather, disease and a fire had wiped out crops, which would be short by about 30 percent.

Americas

  • Merco Press - Brazil is promoting South American Defence Council

    Brazil’s Minister of Defence Nelson Jobim announced visits to neighboring countries to promote the Brazilian initiative for a South American Defence Council. Addressing the Defence and Foreign Affairs committees of the Brazilian Congress Mr. Jobim said next Monday he would be traveling to Venezuela, Surinam and Guyana the first leg of the regional tour.

    Later on Minister Jobim is planning to meet with officials from Colombia, Peru and Ecuador and sometime in the second half of the year he would be traveling to meet with the governments of Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile and Bolivia.

  • AP - Mexico Lawmakers Vow to Keep Up Protest

    Leftist lawmakers who seized both chambers of Mexico's Congress said Friday they will not move until a national debate is held on an oil reform bill backed by President Felipe Calderon.

    Legislators from the Democratic Revolution Party and two minor parties stormed the podiums of both the Senate and the lower house of Congress on Thursday to protest the bill, which they say would open the door to selling off parts of the state-run industry.

    A small group of lawmakers spent the night there in blankets and sleeping bags and took turns guarding the podiums, which were covered in signs accusing Calderon of trying to privatize the industry. Mexico's oil reserves were nationalized in 1938.

  • LA Times - Cuba reforms bring shrugs and expectations

    President Raul Castro's decision to rescind prohibitions against Cubans owning high-tech and energy-consuming appliances has sparked expectations here, and abroad, that more fundamental change is on the horizon aimed at freeing Cubans from the shackles of a planned economy that imposes on most a daily struggle for subsistence.

    But for workers..., a $300 microwave represents a year and a half's income and is another reminder that those without U.S. currency are second-class citizens here. About one-third of Cuban households benefit from monthly remittances from relatives abroad, and growing numbers get dollars from tourist tips or joint-venture employment, but state employees are no more likely to buy the newly available baubles than when the items were forbidden.

    Urban workers unable to afford the long-banned luxuries contend that the government is just eliminating the foreign middlemen who have long obtained cellphones and other electronics for Cubans -- for a fee.

    How can consumerism save communism when it can't even save capitalism?

  • Miami Herald - Renters in Cuba will soon get titles to their properties

    Cuban state workers who have been paying rent to the government for years will get a chance to own their properties, the Cuban housing ministry announced in an official decree Friday.

    The move came on the heels of a broadcast announcement that salary caps would also be lifted, raising the speculation that even more broad reforms could be coming.

  • AP - Protesters Retreat in Haiti - for Now

    Peacekeepers cleared roadblocks and businesses reopened in Haiti's debris-littered capital Thursday, but protesters warned that chaos will return quickly if the government fails to rein in soaring food prices.

    Three days of protests and looting in the capital brought a swift political response, with 17 of Haiti's 27 senators calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis. Protesters said President Rene Preval should be replaced as well if he does not find a solution.

  • MercoPress - Chile intervenes foreign exchange mart to weaken Peso

    Chile's central bank, under pressure from Congress and exporters to weaken the peso, announced Thursday it will buy 8 billion US dollars in currency markets this year to increase reserves and in response to the sharp appreciation against the dollar.

  • AP - Melting Causes Lake in Chile to Empty

    Melting ice in southern Chile caused a glacial lake to swell and then empty suddenly, sending a "tsunami" rolling through a river, a scientist said Thursday. No one was injured in the remote region.

    Glacier scientist Gino Casassa said the melting of the Colonia glacier, which he blamed on rising world temperatures, filled the Cachet Lake and increased pressure on the ice sheet.

  • Canadian Press - New cracks suggest largest remaining Arctic ice shelf destined to disappear

    New cracks in the largest remaining Arctic ice shelf suggest another polar landmark seems destined to break up and disappear.

    Scientists discovered the extensive new cracks in the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf earlier this year and a patrol of Canadian Rangers got an up-close look at them last week.

    "The map of Canada has changed," said Derek Mueller of Trent University, who was amazed to find how quickly the shelf has deteriorated since he discovered the first crack in 2002. "These changes are happening in concert with other indicators of climate change."

  • Globe and Mail - Ontario's greenbelt a model for the world

    The loss of prime agricultural land near cities due to urban sprawl is bemoaned the world over as a modern blight.

    But a solution may be at hand, for which Toronto should be recognized as a world leader: greenbelts, or farmland and environmentally sensitive land that has been officially made off limits to developers.

    A study being released today says the zone of protected land around Toronto is not only one of the largest greenbelts in the world, but is also superior to ones in North America and Europe.

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