THE WAR ZONE
Report: Pakistani ISI backs Taliban
A report by a leading British institution claims that Pakistan's intelligence service has a direct link with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Published on Sunday by the London School of Economics, the report said that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) has an "official policy" of support for the Taliban.
It claims the ISI provides funding and training for the Taliban, and that the agency has representatives on the so-called Quetta Shura, the Taliban's leadership council, which is believed to meet in Pakistan.
The report is based on interviews with Taliban commanders in Afghanistan, and was written by Matt Waldman, a fellow at Harvard University.
Afghan project failing in a town called AliceGhan
A FLAGSHIP Australian housing project for refugees forced back to Afghanistan is at risk of failing - despite its near $10 million price tag - because the houses don't have running water and the Afghan government's land grab has sparked a turf war with a neighbouring village.
The project has foundered because of a poor location too far from work in Kabul, culturally inappropriate house designs that mean women can't go outside during the day because they will be seen and, most critically, a failure to secure running water.
Despite the Australian input and the $US7.5m ($8.8m) cost to Australian taxpayers so far, no failed asylum-seekers from Australia live in AliceGhan.
And Afghan officials say it is unlikely any failed asylum-seeker will be given land as most of the houses have already been assigned.
On the other hand, they could run a clinic in "how NOT to design an aid project."
US charity shuts offices in Pakistan
US-based charity Mercy Corps on Monday shut offices in two of Pakistan's four provinces, citing serious security concerns following the killing of one of its drivers.
Three Mercy Corps aid workers and their driver were kidnapped in February in Qila Saifullah district, about 200 kilometres (125 miles) northwest of Quetta, the capital of oil and gas rich Balochistan province.
The charity shut the offices hours after the kidnappers released a video of the killing of the driver, Habibullah.
"Mercy Corps has shut 40 offices in Baluchistan and four in Sindh in protest against insecurity and the government's failure to recover our kidnapped workers," provincial head of the charity Doctor Saeedullah Khan told AFP.
AROUND THE WORLD
Russia peers into Kyrgyz void
Eighteen is a difficult age to own decisions or assume responsibility - especially concerning the fortunes of wayward younger siblings. By a curious coincidence, Russia has been tasked with taking a monumental decision of assuming responsibility on the 18th anniversary of Kyrgyzstan's national day when on Saturday the Kremlin received a formal communication from the president of the interim government, Roza Otunbayeva.
Kyrgyzstan faces humanitarian crisis as Uzbeks flee slaughter
Kyrgyzstan was tonight in the grip of a humanitarian crisis after more than 100,000 minority Uzbeks, fleeing Kyrgyz mobs in the south of the country, gathered on the Uzbekistan border.
Uzbek community leaders said hundreds of Uzbeks had been slaughtered in five days of mob attacks, which began last Thursday in the city of Osh then spread rapidly to the nearby town of Jalal-Abad and other surrounding areas.
China, US angle for Mekong influence
The Mekong River is steadily emerging as a testing ground for China's public diplomacy. Beijing, it appears, wants to reach out to its southern neighbors who share the river more as a friendly giant than an imposing bully.
An unprecedented move to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding two of four Chinese built dams on the upper stretches of the river that snakes through southern China is only the latest in a diplomatic shift towards more openness that has been taking shape since mid-March.
On June 7, senior government officials from Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam were offered their first glimpse of the newly built Xiaowan dam and the older Jinghong dam as part of a fact-finding tour. It was a groundbreaking journey into the mountainous terrain of China's Yunnan province that had until this month been forbidden territory to officials from the Mekong River Basin countries.
The welcome mat was rolled out by Beijing in early April during the first summit of the Mekong River countries, including Myanmar, in addition to the four basin countries and China. That summit, held in the Thai resort town of Hua Hin, was to mark the 15th anniversary of the 1995 Mekong Agreement, which paved the way for the creation of the Mekong River Commission (MRC), an inter-governmental body of the four lower Mekong countries tasked to manage and develop the basin area.
Scientists to tackle scepticism
REPRESENTATIVES of scientific organisations including the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology will meet today to discuss better communication of the science behind man-made climate change, in the wake of crumbling political and public consensus on global warming.
The conference in Sydney, organised by the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies (FASTS), is part of a long-term bid to develop a ''national communication charter'' for major scientific organisations and universities to better spruik the evidence of climate change.
Public scepticism and apathy towards climate change has reportedly risen in Australia in recent years. A recent Lowy Institute Poll showed the number of Australians who wanted action now on climate change had dropped from 68 per cent in 2006 to 46 per cent in 2010.
FASTS president Cathy Foley said although public scepticism was on the rise, scientific evidence of man-made climate change had not changed, and it was sad the community was less and less trusting of scientists.
Franco-German friction a worry for eurozone
Troubled by dysfunction in the Franco-German alliance, European leaders head towards a summit on Friday where they will face the next step in the challenge to cure their economies, defend the euro and restore Europe's global standing.
The one-day summit in Brussels will see the 27 nations of the European Union ponder how to tighten belts and boost revenues without sparking domestic unrest or launching the nightmarish task of revising EU treaties.
Ambitious proposals are on the table, including the idea of a European-wide levy on banks to make them bear the cost of financial crises, and policing the euro-zone so that its single currency is not undermined by spendthrift governments.
At least they're not bombing each other (see WW2, WW1, Franco-Prussian War, etc.).
China on verge of signing nuke deal with Pakistan: Expert
China is on the verge of unveiling a nuclear deal with Pakistan that will, in effect, be "cocking a snook" at the world as it will be outside the purview of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a noted security expert said on Monday.
After the exception the NSG accorded to India in 2008 to enable the implementation of its civilian nuclear pact with the US, Pakistan had sought a similar deal from Washington and after having been turned down, "it now appears that China will soon announce its deal with Pakistan to export two nuclear reactors", Commodore (retd) C. Uday Bhaskar, director of think tank National Maritime Foundation (NMF), said.
"This will be without NSG concurrence and despite the many misgivings about Pakistan's track record, its linkages to terror and radical ideologies," he said while addressing a seminar here on "Nuclear Arsenals post-2010", organised by the Indian Navy-funded NMF.
29 inmates, 10 officers killed in Mexican violence
A total of 29 inmates were killed Monday in a prison riot in the northwestern city of Mazatlan in Mexico's Sinaloa state, officials said.
Meanwhile, at least ten police officers died on the same day in two ambushes by unknown gunmen in the central city of Zitacuaro in Michoacan state.
Sinaloa State Public Security Secretary Josefina Garcia confirmed that 18 inmates were shot dead and 11 others were stabbed to death during clashes between rival drug gangs over the control of a prison in Mazatlan. At least three guards and other several prisoners were injured.
Zimbabwe's elites use violence to exploit diamonds
Zimbabwe's political and military elites are using violence and their links to companies to exploit the country's diamond wealth, a new report from campaign group Global Witness said Monday.
The campaigners also criticised the Kimberley Process (KP) certification scheme, created to prevent the sale of blood diamonds, for what they said was its weak response to Zimbabwe's diamond industry problems.
The report, released in London, came ahead of a Kimberley meeting next week in Israel where Zimbabwe is set to dominate talks.
"Over the past three years, the national army has visited appalling abuses on civilians in Marange's diamond fields," said Elly Harrowell, a Global Witness campaigner.
"Nobody has been held to account for these crimes, and now it turns out that the joint venture companies nominally brought in to improve conditions are directly linked to [President Robert Mugabe's] Zanu-PF and military elite."
Relatives seek Bloody Sunday truth
When Mickey Bridge closes his eyes, he can still see the scene, hear the bullets, and remember the screams.
He points, past the houses that have sprung up over the last 38 years; there is a slight grimace on his face, as if it happened that morning.
"The soldiers, the lieutenant that actually shot me was standing [at the] back of the wall that was there, there were three or four in front of him when he fired," he says.
Mickey was participating in a civil rights march in Londonderry on Sunday, January 30, 1972, when thousands of protesters took to the streets demanding equal rights for Catholics in Northern Ireland.
Claiming they had been shot at, British paratroopers opened fire on the demonstrators.
Bulgaria Lures China to Invest in Joint Industrial Zone near Sofia
Bulgaria has formally invited Chinese companies to participate in the creation of a joint industrial zone at Bozhurishte near Sofia.
The project for the Bozhurishte Industrial Zone was formally presented Sunday by Bulgarian Economy Minister, Traicho Traikov, who is on a visit to China for the Bulgarian Day at the Shanghai Expo, June 14.
"Bulgaria has a great potential to attract Chinese investments in the fields of telecommunications, IT, green energy, and electric cars equipment," Traikov stated.
How much luring did China really need?
India’s giant iron ore project in Bolivia stalled; China also interested
Pimentel said this would be the first step to have the document become a bill, which ‘should help solve all the problems and excuses for the lack of investments". Once the addendum is signed and becomes into law "the Bolivian government expects that Jindal will immediately begin" with the promised investments.
Relations with the Indian corporation froze when the Bolivian government decided to cash the 18 million US dollars guarantee deposit for the steel project in the eastern state of Santa Cruz, next to Brazil and home to one of the world’s largest unexploited iron ore deposits, alleging Jindal was behind its promised investments’ timetable.
Bolivia and Jindal singed in 2007 a contract for the exploitation of 50% of the Mutún deposits with estimated reserves of 40 billion tons of iron ore and manganese.
If I were Bolivia, I would not want to be caught between China and India.
AROUND THE COUNTRY
Ronnie Lee Gardner's commutation plea denied
The Board of Pardons and Parole on Monday denied Ronnie Lee Gardner's request for commutation.
The condemned killer's execution will still take place just after midnight Friday.
"Gardner makes no claim of innocence and admits that he is guilty of each of the crimes of which he has been convicted," the five-member board wrote in its unanimous decision. "Based upon the facts and circumstances of this case, including Gardner's criminal history, life history and the totality of information ... the board determines that the jury's verdict imposing a death sentence ... was not inappropriate."
Gardner, whose chains rattled last week as he asked the board to spare his life, was not present to hear the decision Monday. His attorney, Andrew Parnes, spoke briefly to reporters following the announcement so he could deliver the news to Gardner.
What a way to start a weekend. Details here: Executioners share motives, describe their roles in death by firing squad. Oh look, it makes international headlines: New Zealand Herald.
'One-in-a-million' electrical arc may have caused Red Butte spill
An electrical arc coming off a metal fence post just inches from a buried Chevron oil line may have punctured a quarter-size hole in the pipe, releasing 33,000 gallons of oil into Red Butte Creek last weekend.
The theory and the revised leakage volume -- more than 50 percent higher than the Salt Lake City Fire Department's previous estimate -- were revealed by Chevron refinery manager Mark Sullivan in a Monday news conference at Liberty Park.
How an arc might set off this "one in a million" event still is being investigated by a Chevron-led team, he said.
Sullivan said the leak was not detected by two separate monitoring systems on the line, which brings crude oil from northwestern Colorado to Chevron's North Salt Lake refinery.
But another Chevron system detected a power outage Friday about 10 p.m., an hour initially suggested as a potential leak starting point.
There is a town hall this evening, and there may be late-breaking news.
One-in-a-million! Ooooh Ahhhh! No one could have predicted! Oooh Ahhh!
How many other oil pipelines are running through the metro area?
Hansen: What will Des Moines look like in 100 years?
Editor's note: A copy of today's Des Moines Register will be placed today in a time capsule. The edition contains items taking stock of the city in 2010.
A hundred years from now, the cheapest bus ticket from Des Moines to Chicago will cost closer to $200, or maybe even $2,000, than $2.
Seeing how the average worker will make more than a million dollars a year - inflation has an upside - scraping together the fare won't be much of a problem.
Yes, it will be great to be alive in 2110, unless you live on a coast that gets washed away by the rising sea. Speaking of climate change, in 100 years, will the KCCI-TV weather beacon constantly flash red for "warmer weather ahead"?
I mention this because Des Moines leaders will gather today to seal a new time capsule inside City Hall, replacing the one they opened a few weeks ago from 1910. In 100 years, they'll repeat the process. That's the plan anyway. But what will Des Moines look like then?
Body of a 20th flood victim found near Arkansas campground
Crews on Monday found a 20th victim of a flash flood that swept through a popular campground, but they continued searching because authorities don’t know if body belonged to the last person thought to be missing.
State police say the 20th victim was a young girl, but authorities don’t yet know if she is the last person they were looking for.
Capt. Mike Fletcher says crews found the girl’s body Monday morning.
Officials had said earlier that they still were looking for a young girl missing from the campground at the Albert Pike Recreation Area. But Fletcher says searchers aren’t positive if the girl whose body they found was the same one reported missing by her family.
OTHER
Political Cartoons
Zapiro for the Mail & Guardian, South Africa
Sports Headlines
They'll Put a Spell on You: The Witchdoctors of African Football
World Cup 2010: Brick-by-brick fussball - England 1-1 USA Some people have too much time? Legos R. Us!!
Links
US wants to form a mini-army for Iraq security Interesting and tasty tidbit.