Hey, why not wait till everyone involved is really, really dead!?
FBI may reopen cold cases

By CHRIS TALBOTT, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 57 minutes ago

JACKSON, Miss. - The
FBI is considering reopening dozens of cold cases involving slayings suspected of being racially motivated in the South during the 1950s and '60s.

An announcement could come as early as Tuesday, according to a law enforcement official who spoke with the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the plans have not yet been finalized.

In addition to the FBI's own investigations, the Southern Poverty Law Center submitted its own list last week of 74 potential unsolved slayings that involved white-on-black violence.

Thirty-two of the deaths happened in Mississippi. The others were in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Kentucky and New York.

Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project for the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, said each case was researched in the late 1980s when the group was putting together a civil rights memorial. But it is unclear if each could be considered a civil rights case, he said.

"The truth is we don't know," said Potok, whose group investigates hate crimes. "In each case there was some evidence to suggest that these were racial murders, but it absolutely was not proven. Had we been able to nail them down, their names would've been literally chiseled into the civil rights memorial that sits outside our building here."

U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton in Jackson reviewed the list of Mississippi killings for the Associated Press on Friday and said based on the limited amount of information available that none would qualify for federal prosecution under civil rights statutes. But he said many could still be prosecuted on a local or state level as murders.

The deaths outlined by the center happened in a variety of ways, from police-involved shootings to trysts with white women broken up by gunfire.

In most cases, the statute of limitations under federal civil rights laws will have run out, Lampton said. In others, charges could not be brought because the accused already have faced charges and been cleared by a jury.

Last month, FBI Director Robert Mueller said the bureau was aggressively seeking to solve cold civil rights cases, vowing to "pursue justice to the end, and we will, no matter how long it takes, until every living suspect is called to answer for their crimes."

Most recently federal prosecutors brought kidnapping and conspiracy charges against James Ford Seale, 71, who allegedly participated in the 1964 kidnappings and murders of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee in southwest Mississippi.

Seale was arrested Jan. 24 after the U.S. Justice Department reopened its investigation and learned that he was still alive. He has pleaded not guilty and is due for trial in April. The case qualified for federal prosecution because the captors allegedly took Moore and Dee across the state line into Louisiana while they were still alive.

In 1994, Mississippi won the conviction of Byron de la Beckwith for the 1963 sniper killing of NAACP leader Medgar Evers.

In Alabama, Bobby Frank Cherry was convicted in 2002 of killing four black girls in the bombing of a Birmingham church in 1963. In 2001, Thomas Blanton was convicted.

Edgar Ray Killen, an 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman, was convicted last June of manslaughter in the killings of three civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964.

___

Lara Jakes Jordan in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

The high art of fashioning spears to kill Bush Babies, too easily translates into farming, storing grain, and standing armys...!
DeGeneres brings gentler tone to Oscars as host

By Steve Gorman Thu Feb 22, 8:10 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - After two years of ceremonies emceed by anti-establishment provocateurs, the
Oscars on Sunday turn to a kinder, gentler comic and TV talk show host with a flair for putting those around her at ease.

Ellen DeGeneres, who made broadcast history 10 years ago as the first openly gay lead character on U.S. prime-time television, is headed for one of Hollywood's most prestigious assignments as only the second woman to be solo host of the
Academy Awards.

She follows in the footsteps of
Whoopi Goldberg, who broke the Oscar-hosting gender barrier with emcee turns in 1994, 1996, 1999 and 2002.

But in terms of style, the easy-going DeGeneres, host of the weekday talk show "Ellen," could not be more different from Goldberg or her two immediate Oscar predecessors,
Jon Stewart and
Chris Rock, all of whom are known for a more edgy, irreverent brand of humor.

"It's the same thing I do when I do my show," DeGeneres, 49, told TV Guide magazine recently. "It's really just setting that tone, and for me, being funny without being condescending or mean-spirited."

And in keeping with her trademark preference for slacks and suits over dresses, DeGeneres plans to appear in a variety of tuxedos designed by the leading names in fashion.

DeGeneres already demonstrated a knack for striking that difficult balance between satire and sanctimony as host of the twice-delayed Emmy Awards in November 2001, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.

SETTING THE RIGHT TONE

She famously opened that show joking that terrorists "can't take away our creativity, our striving for excellence, our joy. Only network executives can do that." She went on to say she was an ideal host because: "What would bug the Taliban more than seeing a gay woman in a suit surrounded by Jews?"

This year's Oscar telecast producer, Laura Ziskin, called DeGeneres a "brilliant host" who can "keep the evening moving and play the night and play the room, which is critical."

Her choice also seemed to mark an end to Oscar producers' preoccupation with picking hosts -- such as Rock and Stewart -- thought to be especially appealing to younger TV viewers who have increasingly shied away from the Oscars.

Rock's performance two years ago struck many as too testy. He irked some academy members with a monologue in which he told the assembled movie elite that "there's only four real stars" and the rest were "just popular people." Stewart also drew mixed reviews last year, while the show's U.S. TV audience fell to a three-year low, 38.8 million viewers.

This year, Ziskin is reaching out to the under-50 crowd by featuring a greater number of young presenters, including Jessica Biel, Jack Black, Kirsten Dunst, Anne Hathaway, Tobey Maguire and the new James Bond, Daniel Craig.

She also hopes to make the Oscars more compelling by urging winners to avoid one of the show's great pitfalls -- acceptance speeches that sound like laundry lists of thank-yous.

To that end, Ziskin has asked prospective winners to use their 45 seconds on stage "to entertain, or to enlighten or move us." She encourages them to save their check-lists of gratitude for a new backstage feature, the "Thank-You-Cam," one of many new Oscar tie-ins this year to the Internet.

Another new feature, Ziskin said, will be a four-minute film prepared by documentary maker Errol Morris that pays tribute to this year's Oscar contenders with a montage featuring 140 of the 177 nominees.

"It's all about the nominees and winners, the recipients of the Oscars," Ziskin Said. "They make or break the show."

Behold, The Planet of The APES!
Hunting chimps may change view of human evolution

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor Thu Feb 22, 12:50 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chimpanzees have been seen using spears to hunt bush babies, U.S. researchers said on Thursday in a study that demonstrates a whole new level of tool use and planning by our closest living relatives.


Perhaps even more intriguing, it was only the females who fashioned and used the wooden spears, Jill Pruetz and Paco Bertolani of Iowa State University reported.

Bertolani saw an adolescent female chimp use a spear to stab a bush baby as it slept in a tree hollow, pull it out and eat it.

Pruetz and Bertolani, now at Cambridge University in Britain, had been watching the Fongoli community of savanna-dwelling chimpanzees in southeastern Senegal.

The chimps apparently had to invent new ways to gather food because they live in an unusual area for their species, the researchers report in the journal Current Biology.

"This is just an innovative way of having to make up for a pretty harsh environment," Pruetz said in a telephone interview. The chimps must come down from trees to gather food and rest in dry caves during the hot season.

"It is similar to what we say about early hominids that lived maybe 6 million years ago and were basically the precursors to humans."

Chimpanzees are genetically the closest living relatives to human beings, sharing more than 98 percent of our DNA. Scientists believe the precursors to chimps and humans split off from a common ancestor about 7 million years ago.

Chimps are known to use tools to crack open nuts and fish for termites. Some birds use tools, as do other animals such as gorillas, orangutans and even naked mole rats.

But the sophisticated use of a tool to hunt with had never been seen.

Pruetz thought it was a fluke when Bertolani saw the adolescent female hunt and kill the bush baby, a tiny nocturnal primate.

But then she saw almost the same thing. "I saw the behavior over the course of 19 days almost daily," she said.

PLANNING AND FORESIGHT

The chimps choose a branch, strip it of leaves and twigs, trim it down to a stable size and then chew the ends to a point. Then they use it to stab into holes where bush babies might be sleeping.

It is not a highly successful method of hunting. They only ever saw one chimpanzee succeed in getting a bush baby once. The apes mostly eat fruit, bark and legumes.

Part of the problem is this group of chimps is shy of humans, and the females, who seem to do most of this type of hunting, are especially wary. "I am willing to bet the females do it even more than we have seen," she said.

Pruetz noted that male chimps never used the spears. She believes the males use their greater strength and size to grab food and kill prey more easily, so the females must come up with other methods.

"That to me was just as intriguing if not even more so," Pruetz said.

The spear-hunting occurred when the group was foraging together, again unchimplike behavior that might produce more competition between males and females, she said.

Maybe females invented weapons for hunting, Pruetz said.

"The observation that individuals hunting with tools include females and immature chimpanzees suggests that we should rethink traditional explanations for the evolution of such behavior in our own lineage," she concluded in her paper.

"The multiple steps taken by Fongoli chimpanzees in making tools to dispatch mammalian prey involve the kind of foresight and intellectual complexity that most likely typified early human relatives."

Clovis points out...! Humans likely arrived in the "New World" as early as 25,000 yrs ago!
Experts doubt Clovis people were first in Americas

By Will Dunham Thu Feb 22, 6:42 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Clovis people, known for their distinctive spear points, likely were not the first humans in the Americas, according to research placing their presence as more recent than previously believed.

Using advanced radiocarbon dating techniques, researchers writing in the journal Science on Thursday said the Clovis people, hunters of large Ice Age animals like mammoths and mastodons, dated from about 13,100 to 12,900 years ago.

That would make the Clovis culture, known from artifacts discovered at various sites including the town of Clovis, New Mexico, both younger and shorter-lived than previously thought. Previous estimates had dated the culture to about 13,600 years ago.

These people long had been seen as the first humans in the New World, but the new dates suggest their culture thrived at about the same time or after others also in the Americas.

Michael Waters, director of Texas A&M University's Center for the Study of the First Americans, called the research the final nail in the coffin of the so-called "Clovis first" theory of human origins in the New World.

Waters said he thinks the first people probably arrived in the Americas between 15,000 and 25,000 years ago.

"We've got to stop thinking about the peopling of the Americas as a singular event," Waters said in an interview.

"And we have to start now thinking about the peopling of the Americas as a process, with people coming over here, probably arriving at different times, maybe taking different routes and coming from different places in northeast Asia."

Waters and co-author Thomas Stafford, a radiocarbon dating expert, tested samples from various Clovis archeological sites to try to get a more accurate accounting of their age. Technological advances enabled them to more precisely pinpoint dates for some Clovis sites excavated in North America.

The theory has been that the Clovis people first migrated out of northeast Asia across the Bering land bridge from Siberia into Alaska and traveled through a ice-free corridor into North America, populating that continent while their descendants journeyed into South America.

Asked who were the first people in the Americas if not the Clovis, Waters answered, "That's a good question."

"I think that's what we've got to work toward -- a new model for the peopling of the Americas, and I think we need to create a coherent model that's based on genetic data, geological evidence as well as archeological data."

Rona answered questions about the bondage scene in graphic detail, casually complaining that she was bitten up by mosquitoes.
Brooklyn jury given graphic S&M lesson

By TOM HAYS, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 11 minutes ago

NEW YORK - The graphic color photo, flashed on a large video-screen stationed next to the jury, tested the decorum of a federal courtroom. It showed a nude woman named Rona tethered to a tree trunk in the wilderness. From the witness stand, Rona answered questions about the bondage scene in graphic detail, casually complaining that she was bitten up by mosquitoes.

The testimony came during a trial in Brooklyn that has given jurors lessons on the lifestyle of a man dubbed an "S&M Svengali" by the tabloids, the inner-workings of a sadomasochism Web site and the federal government's crackdown on obscenity.

The jury began deliberating Thursday.

In recent years, federal authorities have stepped up prosecutions of purveyors of hardcore adult pornography to "protect citizens from unwanted exposure to obscene material," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said.

One pending case in Pittsburgh — involving videos of simulated rape and murder — was initially thrown out before being reinstated on appeal by the
Department of Justice.

Under the Bush administration, at least 52 people or businesses have been convicted of violating federal obscenity statutes, and more than a dozen indictments are pending, federal officials said. By comparison, there were four such prosecutions during the eight years of the Clinton administration, they said.

In the Brooklyn case, Rona and the prosecution's star witness, named Jodi, gave conflicting accounts of an alleged campaign of sadism by Glenn Marcus, 53, operator of a Web site devoted to BDSM — shorthand for bondage, domination and sadomasochism. A judge allowed both women to testify using only their first names.

Marcus included Jodi and other women in thousands of photos posted on his Web site — a practice that prompted the government to bring obscenity charges along with sex trafficking and a forced labor count.

The most serious charge — forced labor — by statute carries a potential life sentence, although such a punishment is unlikely under federal sentencing guidelines.

Jodi told the jury that after meeting Marcus over the Internet in 1998, she agreed to become one of his "slaves." Over two years, he systematically degraded her by shaving her head, branding the initial "G" on her buttocks and carving "Slave" on her stomach during liaisons in homes in Maryland, Washington, D.C., New York City and on Long Island.

When the 39-year-old Jodi failed to properly perform tasks for the defendant's Web site in 2001, he punished her by putting a ball in her mouth, closing it shut with surgical needles and hanging her on a wall, she said. Other times, he tied her down and mutilated her genitals with a smoldering cigarette as she screamed out in pain, she said.

"I felt like I was literally in hell," she said. "I felt like I was on fire and I couldn't put it out."

Rona, 51, a longtime friend called as a defense witness, said that while living with Marcus and Jodi, the accuser was a willing participant in their sex games. She called the defendant harmless.

"I love being around Glenn," she said, even as prosecutors displayed photos of her breasts punctured with dozens of pins. "He's a lot of fun."

Jodi testified she built up enough courage to leave Marcus in late 2001, but also conceded she continued to have contact with him, even going camping. She decided to go to the
FBI when he refused to take her photos off the Internet.

By law, it didn't matter that the accuser wasn't always under lock and key, prosecutor Pam Chen said during closing arguments Thursday. "She was terrified. She was made captive by the fear."

Chen told the Brooklyn jury it must agree that Marcus' Web site was "patently offensive" to convict on the obscenity count, and argued the material was "so misogynist and so violent, it's offensive."

The defense has countered by arguing that Marcus and Jodi had a "contract" to engage in a master-slave relationship that, while potentially offensive to the general public, was consensual and even pleasurable to the participants.

"Cases like this test the very capacity of this society we live in for tolerance," defense lawyer Maurice Sercarz said in his closing argument.

Defense experts testified that the BDSM scene follows rules that purposely blur the line between pleasure and pain, but demand mutual consent. One said it draws from a "vast array of people," including judges; another said that Marcus' Web site had "serious scientific value" as a tool to study sexual behavior.

But Chen portrayed the defendant as a sadist who violated both the standards of a civilized society and of the S&M community.

"Glenn Marcus made his own rules," she said. "He thought he was God."

If the awards committee has the wit, they will enhance Gore's selfless mission!
Gore thought to be among Nobel nominees

By DOUG MELLGREN, Associated Press Writer Thu Feb 22, 5:37 PM ET

OSLO, Norway - Former vice president and environmental advocate
Al Gore is believed to be among 181 nominees for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

In releasing the final count Thursday, awards committee secretary Geir Lundestad would only give a total number — 135 individuals and 46 organizations — without listing any names, in keeping with the prize rules.

The five-member awards committee keeps its list of candidates secret for 50 years, and refuses to indicate who might be under consideration. However, those making nominations sometimes announce them.

This year, those include Gore, for campaigning to draw attention to the threat of global warming, Irena Sendler, a Polish woman who saved the lives of Jewish children during World War II, and American TV host
Oprah Winfrey.

Other announced nominees include Canadian Intuit environmentalist Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Bolivian President Evo Morales and U.N.
AIDS envoy to Africa Stephen Lewis.

Those with nomination rights include former peace laureates, the awards committee and its staff, members of national governments and legislatures, selected university professors and others.

The winner is usually announced in October. The prize always is presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of its creator, Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel.

___

On the Net:

http://www.nobel.no

If US Americans weren't so shallow, selfish, spineless, and stupid, Carter would have beaten Reagan!
Carter says majority in U.S. support views in book

By Matthew Bigg Thu Feb 22, 5:36 PM ET

ATLANTA (Reuters) - Jimmy Carter defended his new book on the Middle East on Thursday against sharp criticism from Jewish groups and said a majority of U.S. citizens including many Jews supported its main proposals.

Letters he received since the publication in November of "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid" were largely supportive and included support from many readers who described themselves as U.S. Jews, said the former president.

Jewish groups have expressed outrage at the book, arguing that its title and contents could undermine perceptions of
Israel's legitimacy.

Carter, 82, was addressing a forum at Atlanta's Emory University in which he detailed his involvement in the Middle East culminating in the Camp David Accords in 1978. He gave a robust defense of the book and responded to written questions.

"Israel will never find peace until it is willing to withdraw from its neighbor's land and to permit the Palestinians to exercise their basic human and political rights," he said.

Repression of Palestinians and taking of Palestinian land by Israel resulted from policies pursued by a conservative minority within Israel, he said.

Carter said he condemned all violence and he repeated an apology for a passage that critics said could be interpreted as supporting suicide bombings as a negotiating tactic. The passage would be removed from future editions, he said.

Carter denied accusations that he had said Jews controlled the U.S. media, but said the strength of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States, whose aims he described as legitimate, acted to stifle debate.

For any member of Congress to call for Israel to withdraw to internationally-recognized boundaries would be "politically suicide," he said.

REACTION

Asked what he had learned from reaction to the book, Carter said he was surprised at the "intensity of feeling and genuine concern that some American Jewish citizens have when anyone questions the current policies of the ... Israeli government.

"I can understand the reasons ... that any shaking of almost unanimous support in America for Israel might weaken Israel's position ... as they struggle for their own safety and their own existence," he said.

The book's main points were that Israel should stop persecuting and abusing Palestinians, withdraw to internationally-recognized borders and conduct intense negotiations with its neighbors to bring peace, Carter said.

"Those premises, which are the major premises in my book, have a strong support of American citizens," including many Jews, he said. He added that he guessed the majority of Jews in Israel also agreed with the book's proposals.

A Public Agenda poll last October with the journal Foreign Affairs found that 70 percent of Americans expressed at least partial support for the view that U.S. policies were too "pro-Israel" for the U.S. to be able to broker a Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, received several standing ovations during the forum. Outside, some people criticized his remarks and the book.

"It seems from what he said today that Israel's occupation is at the root of the problem. But I would argue that Palestinian terrorism is at the root of the problem," said Benjamin Braun, 21, a student at Emory of Middle East studies.

If seniors are unable to fear death, they have nothing to lose, which means they have already won. Don't screw with the AARP!
U.S. tourist in Costa Rica kills mugger

By MARIANELA JIMENEZ, Associate Press Writer 1 hour, 5 minutes ago

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica - An American senior citizen killed an alleged mugger with his bare hands, and his traveling companions aboard a tour bus fended off two other assailants in the Atlantic coast city of Limon, police said.

A retired member of the U.S. military aged about 70 put suspect Warner Segura in a head lock and broke his clavicle after the 20-year-old and two other men armed with a knife and gun held up their tour bus, Luis Hernandez, the police chief of Limon, 80 miles east of San Jose, said Thursday. Segura was later declared dead, apparently from asphyxiation.

The two other men fled when the 12 senior citizens started defending themselves during the Wednesday attack. Afterward, the tourists drove Segura to the Red Cross where he was declared dead. The Red Cross also treated one of the tourists for an anxiety attack, Hernandez said.

The tourists left on their Carnival cruise ship after the incident and Hernandez said authorities do not plan to press any charges against them.

"They were in their right to defend themselves after being held up," he said.

Hernandez said Segura had previous charges against him for assaults.

In a media statement, Miami, Fla.-based Carnival Cruise Lines said the Wednesday incident occurred during an outing at a Limon beach which a group of a dozen passengers had arranged on their own.

"According to witnesses, while sightseeing at a local beach, the group of guests were approached by three assailants, one of whom was armed," the statement said.

"The victims struggled with the armed perpetrator, and were able to disarm him. During this process, the gunman's two accomplices fled the scene. In the course of disarming and restraining the assailant, he died from apparent asphyxiation."

Neither the Costa Rican police nor Carnival identified the man involved in the struggle with the mugger.

The cruise line said the guests were questioned by local law enforcement and then returned to the ship. The ship's departure from Limon was slightly delayed to await their return.

"All of the guests involved, who had booked the cruise together as a group, have opted to continue with their vacation plans. Carnival is providing full support and assistance to the guests," according to the statement.

The ship, The Carnival Liberty, continued on its scheduled itinerary, with a port call scheduled in Colon, Panama.

OUR BEST WEAPON AGAINST NUT-JOB RIGHT-WING RELIGIOUS-ZEALOTS!
Atheist group takes on Bush initiative

By RYAN J. FOLEY, Associated Press Writer Thu Feb 22, 4:20 AM ET

MADISON, Wis. - Annie Laurie Gaylor speaks with a soft voice, but her message catches attention: Keep God out of government.

Gaylor has helped transform the Freedom From Religion Foundation from obscurity into the nation's largest group of atheists and agnostics, with a fast-rising membership and increasing legal clout.

Next week, the group started by Gaylor and her mother in the 1970s to take on the religious right will fight its most high-profile battle when the
U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments on its lawsuit against
President Bush's faith-based initiative.

The court will decide whether taxpayers can sue over federal funding that the foundation believes promotes religion. It could be a major ruling for groups that fight to keep church and state separate.

"What's at stake is the right to challenge the establishment of religion by the government," Gaylor said.

The 51-year-old once donned a nun's habit as a college student in 1977 to protest a judge who blamed rape on women who wear provocative clothing.

She uses different tactics these days, though her activism remains strong.

Among its victories, the group has stopped funding for a Milwaukee charity that Bush visited during the 2000 campaign and an Arizona group that preached to children of prisoners.

The case in front of the high court claims White House conferences to promote the faith-based initiative turn into unconstitutional pep rallies for religion.

The initiative helps religious organizations get government funding to provide social services.

George Washington University law professor Ira Lupu called the Madison-based foundation "by far the most aggressive litigating entity against the faith-based initiative."

"When they can prove there's religious content in those programs, they've been quite successful and they've won a few cases," Lupu said. "When they've tried to go after the initiative as a whole, they've been less successful."

Critics say the group imposes such an extreme view of the First Amendment that religious groups can't receive tax dollars for even laudable purposes.

"They are successful in the sense that they have disrupted government funding for faith-based initiatives," said Jordan Lorence of the Alliance Defense Fund, which defends religion in the public arena. "But real people with real problems are no longer getting help because of some of their lawsuits."

The group has grown as its legal challenges mount. It claims 8,500 members in 50 states, with the most coming from California, after adding a record 400 in December.

Members consider themselves freethinkers who form opinions based on reason, not faith.

Gaylor is hoping an advertising campaign on progressive talk radio, the Internet and in liberal magazines helps the group reach 10,000 members this year.

She and husband Dan Barker, a former fundamentalist minister who turned against religion, are co-presidents. Her mother, Anne Nicol Gaylor, founded the group in 1978 to counter religious influence in government after clashing with religious leaders over abortion.

Its leaders say the surge in membership reflects a U.S. population that is becoming less religious and growing liberal alarm since Bush's re-election.

"There was a feeling that there was almost a near religious-right takeover of our government and that we better speak up now," Gaylor said.

The American Religious Identification Survey in 2001 estimated that 29 million Americans had no religion, double the number from 1990. The survey, which was conducted by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, estimated that 1.9 million identified themselves as atheist or agnostic.

Before its battle against the faith-based initiative, the group stopped prayers during the University of Wisconsin's commencement and overturned Good Friday as a state holiday in Wisconsin.

"We've applied some very needed pressure through going to court on keeping state and church separate," said the elder Gaylor, 80. "We hope we've done some educating that will be lasting."

Oh, Look! All the World's bullies didn't show up!
48 nations gather to fight cluster bombs

By DOUG MELLGREN, Associated Press Writer 45 minutes ago

OSLO, Norway - Representatives from 48 nations on Thursday launched a global effort to ban the use, production and stockpiling of cluster bombs by the end of next year, despite the opposition of several of the world's major military powers.

A draft declaration, obtained by The Associated Press, said these weapons — which can linger on former battlefields for years — cause "unacceptable harm." It calls for a treaty banning them by 2008, despite concerns that some countries would not agree to act that quickly.

Norway hopes the treaty would be similar to one outlawing anti-personnel mines, negotiated in Oslo in 1997.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said advocates should push for a treaty by the end of 2008, despite concerns. "I believe any other target will be a wrong signal," he said.

The U.S., China and Russia oppose the ban and did not send representatives to the meeting. Australia,
Israel, India and Pakistan also did not attend.

Cluster bombs are small devices packed with high explosives and loaded into artillery shells, bombs or missiles. When the larger munition explodes, it scatters hundreds of the mini-explosives — called bomblets — over large areas.

A percentage of these bomblets typically fail to explode immediately, but may still detonate if they are picked up or struck — endangering civilians, often children, years after conflicts end.

The draft declaration calls for a treaty that would "prohibit the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of those cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians."

The treaty, the declaration said, should also create a framework for helping victims of cluster bombs, clearing the munitions and "destruction of stockpiles of prohibited cluster munitions," the document said.

It also urged countries to consider banning such weapons before the treaty takes effect. Norway, which is spearheading the initiative, has already done so. Austria announced a moratorium on cluster bombs at the start of the conference.

"This is a critical juncture," Steve Goose of Human Rights Watch told delegates. "Let us hope this meeting will be remembered as the meeting where a large number of countries decided that cluster munitions are not just another weapon."

Goose called cluster bombs "a humanitarian disaster waiting to happen" since they continue to kill long after a conflict has ended.

The Cluster Munition Coalition, an advocacy group co-hosting Wednesday's civilian forum, said the weapons have recently been used in
Iraq,
Kosovo,
Afghanistan and Lebanon.

The U.N. has estimated that Israel dropped as many as 4 million of the bomblets in southern Lebanon during last year's war with Hezbollah, with as many 40 percent failing to explode on impact.

Activists say children can be attracted to the unexploded weapons by their small size, shape and bright colors or shiny metal surfaces. As many as 60 percent of cluster bomb victims in Southeast Asia are children, the Cluster Munition Coalition said.

The U.S., Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Japan say the weapons can be dealt with under the 1980 U.N. Convention on Conventional Weapons.

However, treaty advocates say those talks are stalled, and a new avenue is needed.

Gahr Stoere said advocates should push for a treaty even without the support of big countries like the U.S. and China.

"I think we learned from the experience from the anti-personnel mine campaign in the '90s that if we were to wait for those countries to take the lead it will be a long wait," he said at a news conference.

"What we do here hopefully will engage those countries and that they will see merit to create rules and regulations to handle this issue. I'm not pessimistic in that regard."

On Wednesday, Simon Conway, of the Britain's Landmine Action group, said some countries attending the conference may seek to weaken the one-page draft declaration by demanding postponement of its treaty target date of 2008.

___

On the Net: http://www2.norway.or.jp/policy/news

One of yours, Squidward?
New Zealand fishermen catch rare squid

By RAY LILLEY, Associated Press Writer Thu Feb 22, 7:41 AM ET

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - A fishing crew has caught a colossal squid that could weigh a half-ton and prove to be the biggest specimen ever landed, a fisheries official said Thursday.

The squid, weighing an estimated 990 lbs and about 39 feet long, took two hours to land in Antarctic waters, New Zealand Fisheries Minister Jim Anderton said.

The fishermen were catching Patagonian toothfish, sold under the name Chilean sea bass, south of New Zealand "and the squid was eating a hooked toothfish when it was hauled from the deep," Anderton said.

The fishing crew and a fisheries official on board their ship estimated the length and weight of the squid: Detailed, official measurements have not been made. The date when the colossus was caught also was not disclosed.

Colossal squid, known by the scientific name Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, are estimated to grow up to 46 feet long and have long been one of the most mysterious creatures of the deep ocean.

If original estimates are correct, the squid would be 330 pounds heavier than the next biggest specimen ever found.

"I can assure you that this is going to draw phenomenal interest. It is truly amazing," said Dr. Steve O'Shea, a squid expert at the Auckland University of Technology. If calamari rings were made from the squid they would be the size of tractor tires, he added.

Colossal squid can descend to 6,500 feet and are extremely active, aggressive hunters, he said.

The frozen squid will be transported to New Zealand's national museum, Te Papa, in the capital, Wellington, to be preserved for scientific study.

Marine scientists "will be very interested in this amazing creature as it adds immeasurably to our understanding of the marine environment," Anderton said.

Colossal squid are found in Antarctic waters and are not related to giant squid found round the coast of New Zealand. Giant squid grow up to 39 feet long, but are not as heavy as colossal squid.

Those who stubbornly suport the war still disavow accountability for the horror, because they are crud.
Iraqis eke out living in Baghdad rubbish dump

By Ross Colvin - Feature Thu Feb 22, 8:01 AM ET

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Sitting amid mounds of rotting garbage in a rubbish dump in Baghdad, 13-year-old Huda Hamdan is the human face of a new U.N. report that says a third of war- torn
Iraq's 26 million people live in poverty.

The teenager, wearing a black veil, is taking a break from scavenging for aluminum cans and glass bottles that she sells for a few Iraqi dinars. She tries not to gag from the stench of the decomposing household refuse surrounding her.

She and her six brothers and sisters compete with scores of other diggers, many children and women, made homeless by sectarian violence that has forced them to flee their homes and seek refuge in the sprawling Shi'ite slum of Sadr City.

Scores of displaced Shi'ite families have made the rubbish dump their home -- living in unsanitary conditions in tents, crude shacks made from oil cans or squatting in an empty building -- and trying to eke out the barest of livings.

A report by the
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and an Iraqi government agency released on Sunday found that 5 percent of Iraqis live in extreme poverty, with Baghdad the least deprived area, and the southern provinces the worst.

The report said a third of Iraqis overall were living in poverty. It gave no comparison with previous years.

But the UNDP said the study "showed a deterioration in the living standards of Iraqis" since Iraq was a thriving middle- income country in the 1970s and 80s. Four years of war, following a decade of U.N. sanctions in the 1990s, has paralyzed the economy and fueled soaring unemployment.

"It shows the failure of the state authorities to provide adequate services to the population," UNDP said in a statement that also blamed Western-backed efforts to transform the economy into a free market for "exacerbating deprivation levels."

Hamdan said she and her siblings fled Falluja, a Sunni insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, after a U.S. sniper shot dead her mother, leaving them orphaned. Now they live with her grandparents and uncles in Sadr City.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees estimates there are 1.6 million Iraqis displaced inside the country, including 425,000 who fled their homes after the bombing of the Samarra shrine in February 2006 unleashed a wave of sectarian violence.

"We are poor people. We have nothing," Hamdan says softly.

Holding up her right hand, she takes off a blue and white woolen glove that helps protect her injured hand against the filth and carefully unwraps a surprisingly clean bandage.

Her little finger was severed by the tailgate of a rubbish truck as scavengers crushed around it, desperate to search it before it dumped its load on to the rubbish heap.

Illness and infections among the diggers are common. Looking around the dump it's not hard to see why. Men, women and children, their clothes caked in thick grime, wade through fetid pools of water or climb mountains of garbage, poking through the rubbish with long, curved metal rods to hook the cans.

Fifteen-year-old Saif has struck lucky. "I found these," he said, holding up four flat breads. "We'll clean them and then eat them for breakfast. We have no money to buy food."

DANGER LURKS

Nearby, Ali al-Yateem, who looks older than his 10 years, heaves a large white canvas sack of cooldrink cans on to the scale of a local scrap merchant, who pays him 2,000 dinars ($1.50) after checking he has not weighted the bag with bricks.

Jawad Habib, 21, was forced from his home in
Abu Ghraib, a Sunni stronghold on the western outskirts of Baghdad. He took a job as day laborer in construction, but when a suicide bomber blew up among a group of laborers he came to the dump.

Even there he has found danger lurking in the rotting debris. "I found a grenade and called the police." He was lucky. Other diggers say a young girl was killed in an explosion.

The plight of Ali, Huda, Saif and Jawad is the result of a "deeply complex political and security crisis with no quick apparent solution," the UNDP said in its report.

"I've been in conflict zones for 22 years. Iraq is unlike anything else on earth," UNDP country director Paolo Lembo told Reuters in an interview from Amman.

He said the
Iran-Iraq war, the 1991
Gulf War, international sanctions and the chaos that followed the 2003 U.S.-led invasion had delivered a series of hammer blows to Iraq's economy that had created "a kind of deprivation that is unique."

"Will the situation improve in the immediate future? No, I don't think so, but that does not mean I am not optimistic. This country has an enormous wealth of resources."

(Additional reporting by Ross Colvin)

An era ending, imagine if Malcom had lived to lead it...!
Farrakhan to make his last major address

By JEFF KAROUB, Associated Press Writer Wed Feb 21, 10:39 PM ET

DETROIT - Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan is heading into what's billed as his final major address Sunday, and some Muslims are wondering if the fiery orator — now slowed by poor health — will try to repair old divisions between his movement and mainstream Islam.

Farrakhan's scheduled appearance at Ford Field, home of the NFL's Detroit Lions, will be his first since ceding leadership last year to an executive board because of illness.

The 73-year-old Farrakhan was released last month from the hospital after undergoing a 12-hour abdominal operation to correct damage caused by treatment for prostate cancer. A statement from the Nation at the time said Farrakhan "doesn't see himself coming before the public on such a major stage as we are preparing in Detroit." He might, however, honor lesser engagements.

The event will be a homecoming of sorts for the Nation of Islam movement, which promotes black empowerment and nationalism. It was founded in Detroit by Wallace D. Fard in 1930.

Fard attracted black Detroiters on the margins of society with a message of self-improvement and separation from whites, who he said were inherently evil because of their enslavement of blacks.

Farrakhan rebuilt the movement in the late 1970s after W.D. Mohammed, the son of longtime nation leader Elijah Muhammad, moved his followers toward mainstream Islam.

Farrakhan angered many Americans in the process.

He became notorious for his provocative comments, calling Judaism a "gutter religion" and suggesting crack cocaine might have been a
CIA plot to enslave blacks. He met with foreign leaders at odds with the United States — Moammar Gadhafi,
Fidel Castro and
Saddam Hussein — prompting the State Department in 1996 to accuse him of "cavorting with dictators."

His closest brush with the political mainstream probably came in 1995, when he attracted hundreds of thousands of black men to Washington for the Million Man March.

Now, back in the Nation's birthplace, there's speculation about what Farrakhan's last major address could tackle. The topic of Sunday's speech, capping a series of meeting that start Friday, is "One Nation Under God."

"We have been told that Minister Farrakhan is going to be making a big announcement at this meeting," though it's not known what he will say, said Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The Nation and orthodox Islam diverge on several key beliefs. While mainstream Islam holds that Muhammad was God's last prophet, Nation of Islam had taught that God came in the form of Fard decades ago in Detroit.

Farrakhan has downplayed many of those teachings in recent years, adopting some mainstream Muslim traditions and embracing W. D. Mohammed on stage in 2000 after years of discord. Mohammed also visited Farrakhan recently during his recovery, a Nation of Islam official said.

Farrakhan has credited his mollified outlook to what he called a "near death" experience related to his prostate cancer, which he began battling in 1991. A sign of his softer approach came in 2005, at a Washington rally for the Millions More Movement. Unlike the Million Man March a decade earlier, which was for black men only, the rally was open to men and women of all races.

"In the course of his career, I have to say, the external gaze of others generally has not been at the top of the list of what he's worried about," said Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton University. But, "it's late in his life, he's ill. There are questions of legacy. All of that tends to soften a leader, encourages them to think beyond self-aggrandizing choices."

In Detroit, some blacks who practice mainstream Islam say a shared history and personal ties with the Nation have united the groups in worship and work. Mitchell Shamsud-Din, a founding member of the orthodox Muslim Center in Detroit who runs its community service programs, is like thousands of Detroit-area Muslims who came to orthodox Islam through the Nation.

"There's a friendship and brotherhood between our two groups," said Shamsud-Din, whose projects include Nation of Islam volunteers.

"We work with Christians, and they believe Jesus is God," he said. "Why wouldn't we work with a Muslim brother who has another difference?"

Nation leaders won't say how many members the movement, now based in Chicago, has locally or nationally — though the Council on American-Islamic Relations and others have estimated it has between 10,000 and 50,000 followers in the U.S. and no more than 1,000 in southeastern Michigan, according to Sally Howell, a University of Michigan researcher who specializes in the local Islamic and Arab-American communities.

Jimmy Jones, a religion professor at Manhattanville College, who is Muslim and studies Islam, was skeptical about Farrakhan's willingness to change. While the Nation of Islam has adopted some mainstream Muslim practices, it remains essentially a race-based movement, he said.

"I think this is an organization that consistently, in my observation, has tried to have it both ways — that is, gain legitimacy with the broader Muslim world and spread a message that is essentially about race," Jones said. "It is not a program that represents what most of the more than 1 billion Muslims in the world would recognize."

___

On the Net:

http://www.sd2007.com

Carry Harry above the frey!
Decision near for Harry's regiment

By TARIQ PANJA, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 15 minutes ago

LONDON - Britain's defense secretary will announce Thursday whether Prince Harry's regiment will be sent to
Iraq, amid speculation that the third-in-line to the throne might be deployed.


The Defense Ministry has previously confirmed Harry could go to Iraq if his unit was deployed there, but said he might be kept out of situations where his presence would jeopardize his comrades.

Defense Secretary Des Browne is expected to tell Parliament whether Harry's regiment — the Blues and Royals — will be sent to Iraq near the southern city of Basra.

Defense officials refused to disclose Wednesday whether Harry would be among those going to Iraq.

"We are not going to reveal (which regiments)," said a Ministry of Defense spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with department policy. "You will have to wait for the announcement in Parliament."

The 22-year-old prince, known as Troop Commander Wales by his regiment, has trained to command 11 soldiers and four Scimitar tanks.

Harry, who graduated last year from Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, said in a 2005 interview that he wanted to fight for his country.

In joining the military, Harry followed a royal tradition: Charles was a pilot with the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy, and a ship commander, and Harry's grandfather, Prince Philip, had a distinguished career in the Royal Navy during World War II.

Harry's uncle, Prince Andrew, was a Royal Navy pilot and served in the Falklands war against Argentina in 1982.

Microcosmically speaking, how is Zimbabwe different from the US?
Zimbabwe: Teachers, Students, Doctors, Nurses All on Strike

, OneWorld US Wed Feb 21, 1:58 PM ET

Zimbabwe's education and healthcare sectors are lying almost completely dormant this week, and government repression of political opponents continues.


A strike looms as the nation's teachers and government officials remain far apart on salary negotiations. The government's latest offer is still less than half the so-called Poverty Datum Line, and a 1600-percent inflation rate has turned most of the country's 180,000 civil servants into paupers, according to the Zimbabwe Standard newspaper.

University lecturers are already on strike, as are the country's higher education students.

Last week, some 74 students and their leaders were rounded up, assaulted, and detained, according to the International Union of Students, which released a statement supporting its Zimbabwean peers.

More than 40 were arrested following a meeting to discuss "issues of the ever deteriorating standards of education, the astronomical hikes in tuition fees, and broader socio-economic and political pandemonium in Zimbabwe." The Zimbabwe National Students Union says that "more than 600 innocent, unarmed, and hungry students who had gathered on campus for the Extraordinary General Meeting were violently and brutally dispersed by the ruthless riot police and the non-uniformed state security agents."

But students are not the only Zimbabweans to have faced the truncheons in recent days.

A Valentine's Day march sponsored by the group Women of Zimbabwe Arise was met by police with tear gas outside the Parliament building in Harare.

And as one of the country's main opposition parties attempted to launch its presidential campaign with a public rally in the capital Monday, police fired tear gas and water cannons containing irritating chemicals and beat opposition supporters with batons.

A spokesperson for the opposition party claimed that more than 500 of its supporters had been beaten and severe injuries were sustained. There were unconfirmed reports of three deaths.

But perhaps the most difficult problem facing both the Zimbabwean government and its estranged citizens is the near-total collapse of the national health system.

Many of the country's doctors and nurses have quit working in recent weeks to demand higher wages and better conditions.

"Hundreds of people are dying every week due to lack of healthcare since the doctors' industrial action began on December 21 last year, bringing the health delivery system, already battered by a collapsing economy, to a near-total halt," reports Florence Cheda for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.

One province recently reported that it had only one doctor to service 4 million people--and that was before the strike.

While government officials fly to South Africa and other countries for their own medical treatment, says Cheda, "Zimbabweans are left wondering how much longer the nation and international community [will] continue to watch so many of their relatives, friends, and others die unnecessarily."