Top PLO Body Calls for End to Attacks
Sun Jan 16,11:09 AM ET Middle East - AP
By MARK LAVIE, Associated Press Writer

JERUSALEM - A top PLO decision-making body called on Palestinian militants Sunday to halt attacks against Israel, charging that the violence gives Israel an excuse to carry out military operations.

January 12, 2005

BY JIM RITTER Health Reporter

Eating lots of red meat and processed meat can increase the risk of colon cancer by as much as 50 percent, a major study has found.

But a separate study found eating lots of fruits and vegetables did not protect against breast cancer. Both studies are published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

In the meat study, American Cancer Society researchers examined surveys of nearly 150,000 adults. Men and women aged 50 to 74 were asked about their eating habits in 1982 and 1992-93, and were followed through 2001.

Those who ate at least three ounces of red meat per day in both surveys were 29 percent more likely to get cancer in the distal colon near the rectum than those who ate little or no red meat. Among those who ate the highest amounts of processed meat, the risk was 50 percent higher.

Red meat includes beef, pork, ham and liver. Processed meat includes bacon, sausage, hot dogs, ham, bologna, salami and lunchmeat. Three ounces is equivalent to a large fast-food hamburger

Sri Lanka Probes Alleged Child Trafficking

Wed Jan 12, 1:53 PM ET
By TINI TRAN, Associated Press Writer

BATAPOLA, Sri Lanka - Police have arrested a 63-year-old Sri Lankan man on charges of trying to sell his two young granddaughters after their home was destroyed and their mother killed by the Asian tsunami — a case that highlights the vulnerability of children in the wake of the disaster.

The United Nations (news - web sites) and international aid agencies have expressed concern that child traffickers are exploiting the chaos in countries hit hardest by the tsunami, and trying to abduct and then sell orphans into forced labor or the sex trade.

"There is definitely a danger. The opportunity is there. The situation will attract (traffickers)," said Udaya de Silva, a police inspector in charge of crimes against women and children in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo.

[...]

UNICEF said the disaster's aftermath could create a double tragedy — increasing the likelihood that people who have lost everything will be tempted to sell off children who are an economic burden.

"There is a clear danger that as time goes by, people will become more desperate," said Sajeeva Samaranayake, a UNICEF program officer for child protection. "They will have other needs."

LONDON (AFP) - Britain's Prince Harry apologized after he was pictured on the front page of The Sun newspaper in a Nazi soldier's uniform which he wore to a fancy dress party.

Thursday's edition of the Sun features Prince Harry, younger son of Britain's Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana, wearing the uniform with an armband showing a swastika, emblem of the Nazi Party.

A spokeswoman for the royal family who was contacted by AFP read a statement of apology.

"I am very sorry if I caused any offense or embarrassment to anyone. It was a poor choice of costume and I apologize," Prince Harry said in the statement.

A source close to the royal family said the party took place sometime after January 1.

Doug Henderson, Labour MP for Newcastle upon Tyne North and a former armed forces minister, said Prince Harry should not now be allowed to become a British Army officer.

"After the revelations this evening I don't think this young man is suitable for Sandhurst," the army officer training school, he said.

"If it was anyone else the application wouldn't be considered. It should be withdrawn immediately," he said.

[But wait...it gets better! --.ed]

The Board of Deputies of British Jews welcomed the apology, according to Sky television.

"We're gratified that the prince has apologized. The incident was in bad taste, especially in the runup to the holocaust memorial day, which the royal family will play a leading role in commemorating," it said.

Holocaust memorial day is marked on January 27, the day in 1945 when the Soviet army liberated Auschwitz, the most infamous of the Nazi World War II concentration camps.

BERLIN - Islamic extremists accused of plotting to kill Iraq's prime minister in Germany are smuggling battle-hardened fighters from Iraq to Europe, raising a potential new terrorist threat on the continent, according to German officials.

Report: U.N. Troops Exploited Congo Girls U.S. National - (AP)
By LEYLA LINTON, Associated Press Writer

UNITED NATIONS - United Nations peacekeepers in Congo sexually exploited women and girls, some as young as 13, a U.N. watchdog office said Friday in a new confirmation that efforts to curb abuses by U.N. troops are not working.

Peacekeepers regularly had sex with Congolese women and girls, usually in exchange for food or small sums of money, investigators from the world body's Office of Internal Oversight Services found. [ie: prostitution. --.ed]

"We have had and continue to have a serious problem of sexual exploitation and abuse," William Lacy Swing, the United Nations' special representative to Congo, said at a news conference.

"We are shocked by it, we are outraged, we are sickened by it. Peacekeepers who have been sworn to assist those in need, particularly those who have been victims of sexual violence, instead have caused grievous harm."

Charges of sex abuse and other crimes have been lodged against U.N. peacekeeping missions around the world for decades. Officials have found it difficult to crack down because the United Nations doesn't want to offend the relatively small number of countries that are willing to provide peacekeepers. [What the...--.ed]

[...]

The abusive behavior in Congo continued even as the investigation was going on in Bunia between May and September, the report said. It also said some military officers tried to block the investigators' work.

The misconduct was "serious and ongoing" and investigators found it "disturbing" that there was no program in place to deter misconduct or protect civilians from abuses, the report added.

[...]

The investigators looked into 72 allegations against military and civilian U.N. personnel, which resulted in 20 case reports, all but one involving peacekeepers.

"In six cases, the allegations against the peacekeeper were fully substantiated, and underage girls were involved in all of them," the report said. It said none of the peacekeepers admitted to the allegations.

[...] The peacekeepers over the last year have been accused of gang rapes, sexual harassment and bribing children as young as 12 or 13 with eggs, milk and a few dollars to have sex in bushes, on the bare ground or under mango trees.

India's untouchables forced out of relief camps

KESHVANPALAYAM, India (AFP) - India's untouchables, reeling from the tsunami disaster, are being forced out of relief camps by higher caste survivors and being denied aid supplies, activists charged.

Kuppuswamy Ramachandran, 32, a Dalit or untouchable in India's rigid caste hierarchy, said he and his family were told to leave a relief camp in worst-hit Nagapattinam district where 50 more families were housed.

"The higher caste fishing community did not allow us to sleep in a marriage hall where they are put up because we belong to the lowest caste," Ramachandran said.

[...]

Vijaya Lakshmi, spokeswoman for South India Federation of Fishermen Societies, agreed and said one could not wish away a centuries-old caste system when a disaster struck.

UN Fears Gangs May Traffick in Tsunami Children
Tue January 04, 2005 05:46 PM ET
By Thomas Atkins

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Tuesday it was concerned children orphaned or separated from their parents by Asia's tsunami may be falling prey to criminal gangs bent on selling them into slavery.

The U.N. said it had received reports of adults posing as foster parents and children being shipped from Indonesia to Malaysia for sale, adding to worries about a "tsunami generation" of children also under threat of disease and hunger.

U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) officers were alarmed when a colleague in Kuala Lumpur received an unsolicited mobile phone text message offering children to order, UNICEF spokesman John Budd said by telephone from Jakarta.

"Three hundred orphans aged 3-10 years from Aceh for adoption. All paperwork will be taken care of. No fee. Please state age and sex of child required," the message read.

Although the message mentioned no fee, Budd said: "If you read that text message, and if it is true, then either they have 300 orphans for sale or they have the capacity to seize children according to orders received."

Children account for at least a third of the 150,000 people killed by the Dec. 26 tsunami. The killer waves ripped children from their parents' arms, battering some to death and leaving others to survive alone.

“The word is out that they’re going to be cold and miserable. Those guys who want to get their jihad on like it’s spring break won’t want to do that now,”

The Narco-Terrorist Who Came in From the Cold
By Sean Donahue,
Posted on Wed Dec 29th, 2004 at 03:18:55 PM EST
U.S. authorities have remained strangely silent regarding the Colombian government's decision to delay or cancel the extradition of AUC Chief Salvatore Mancuso on cocaine trafficking and money laundering charges.

THE NARCO-TERRORIST WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD:
Why Isn’t Mancuso being Extradited?
On December 11, Stewart Tuttle, head of the Political Affairs division of the U.S. Embassy in Bogota looked on as Salvatore Mancuso, commander of Colombia’s largest and most brutal network of right-wing death squads, ceremonially surrendered his Berretta to Colombian Peace Commissioner Carlos Luis Restrepo.

But Tuttle and his superiors were strangely silent a week later when the government of President Alvaro Uribe announced that it would not extradite Mancuso to the U.S. to face cocaine trafficking and money laundering charges as long as the death squad leader agreed to “cease all illegal activities” and encourage other paramilitaries to take part in the government’s demobilization process. While the U.S. hasn’t formally dropped its extradition request, neither the U.S. Embassy nor the U.S. State Department has issued a public statement about Uribe’s decision to delay or cancel Mancuso’s handover to U.S. authorities – which is highly unusual to say the least, given that Mancuso is the head of a terrorist organization and is accused of conspiring to smuggle over seventeen tons of cocaine to the U.S. and Europe. [yet...they gladly accepted a F.A.R.C. terrorist, instead.--.ed]

THE CHARGES AGAINST MANCUSO

The U.S. State Department has classified Mancuso’s organization, the “Self Defense Forces of Colombia” (AUC,) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization – the same legal designation that it applies to groups like Ansar al-Islam, al-Qa’ida, and Hamas. According to its website, the policy of the State Department’s Counterterrorism Office, which compiles the list of terrorist organizations, is to “make no concessions to terrorists and strike no deals” and to “bring terrorists to justice for their crime.”

Involvement in the operation of a Foreign Terrorist Organization is a capital offense under the PATRIOT Act.

According to the State Department’s 2004 Human Rights Report on Colombia, compiled under Tuttle’s supervision, the AUC remains actively involved in terrorist operations throughout Colombia:

“Despite cease-fires declared in the context of demobilization negotiations conducted by the AUC--an umbrella organization of different paramilitary terrorist groups--with the Government, these terrorists continued to commit numerous unlawful and political killings, including of labor leaders, often kidnapping and torturing suspected guerrilla sympathizers prior to executing them. They also conducted kidnappings for ransom and committed ‘social cleansing’ killings of homosexuals and other supposedly ‘undesirable’ elements. The AUC terrorists often interfered with personal privacy in areas where they exercised de facto control, and regularly engaged in military operations in which they endangered civilian lives by fighting in urban areas and using civilian dwellings as combat shelter. AUC terrorists displaced thousands through both terror-induced forced displacements of suspect populations and military operations that drove peasants from their homes. AUC terrorists regularly threatened and attacked human rights workers and journalists who criticized their illegal activities. They also recruited child soldiers. Important strategic and financial areas continued to be heavily contested, especially as the Government eradicated coca crops, and created anti-kidnapping task forces.”

Mancuso has been the main public face of the AUC since the disappearance of the organization’s founder, Carlos Castano last year. Sources in the Colombian human rights community allege that Castano is currently in hiding in Israel. [Why Israel, I've yet to find out.--.ed]

Mancuso’s role in massacres, disappearances, and assassinations would be sufficient grounds for his prosecution for war crimes and crimes against humanity. But the U.S. also claims that Mancuso was involved in a major cocaine trafficking operation designed by Castano to fund the AUC. In a September 24, 2002 press conference announcing the indictment of Castano, Mancuso, and a third AUC leader, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said:

“Today's indictment charges AUC leaders, not as the anti-FARC freedom fighters they claim to be, but as criminals - violent drug traffickers who poison our citizens and threaten our national security. According to the indictment, Carlos Castaño directed cocaine production and distribution activities in AUC-controlled regions of Colombia, including protecting coca processing laboratories, setting quality and price controls for cocaine, and arranging for and protecting cocaine shipments both within and outside of Colombia. Castaño and his co-defendants used violence, force and intimidation to maintain this authority over cocaine trafficking activities. For example, the indictment alleges that Castaño resorted to kidnaping and threats, and that Salvatore Mancuso caused the brutal murder of another Colombian drug trafficker as retribution for failing to pay a drug debt.”

He went on to emphasize the seriousness of the charges, saying

“The men named in the indictment are accused of selling one of the most dangerous and addictive drugs: cocaine. Cocaine, including its derivative form crack, remains the most frequently mentioned drug in 14 of the 20 cities in the Drug Abuse Warning Network. In addition, cocaine accounted for 50 percent of all drug-related episodes in emergency rooms between 1999 and 2000. Today, we see more clearly than ever the interdependence between the terrorists that threaten American lives and the illegal drugs that threaten American potential. As today's indictment reminds us, the lawlessness that breeds terrorism is also a fertile ground for the drug trafficking that supports terrorism. To surrender to either of these threats is to surrender to both.”

Tough words. But the U.S. has not followed them up with action. Earlier this year, the Colombian government suspended its own arrest order against Mancuso and allowed him to address the Colombian legislature – the U.S. remained silent. And military aid has continued to flow to Colombia even though the State Department admits that there are widespread ties between the Colombian military and the AUC and human rights groups have documented the role of the AUC in the election of President Uribe.

TALKING WITH TERRORISTS

Despite the State Department’s stated policy of refusing to negotiate with terrorists, both the Colombian and the U.S. press reported that U.S. Embassy officials met with representatives of the AUC in May 0f 2003 to discuss the indictements against Castano and Mancuso. (See Luis Gomez’s report) Colombian sources place Stewart Tuttle, and his deputy, Alex Lee at these meetings, and it seems clear that neither man would have jeopardized his career by meeting with terrorists in possible violation of the PATRIOT act without authorization from somewhere much higher in the chain of command.

In the weeks that followed the revelations about these meetings, Tuttle and Lee, who had previously met frequently with U.S. visitors to Colombia disappeared from the Embassy’s briefing room.

During this time, an Embassy official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged that the meetings had taken place, but insisted that the Embassy was merely trying to reiterate its desire to have Mancuso and Castano surrender themselves to U.S. authorities. (Does this mean that if they were stationed in Afghanistan or Pakistan, Tuttle and Lee would meet with representatives of al Qu’aida to reiterate their desire to see Osama bin Laden surrender for prosecution.)

Apparently, however, Tuttle no longer sees the need to reiterate the U.S.’s desire to put Mancuso behind bars. And its hard to believe that the Colombian government would cancel its plans to extradite Mancuso without consulting the Bush administration. What remains to be seen is who in the U.S. decided to let Salvatore Mancuso get away.

So much for the “war on terror.”

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - Peruvian police and troops on Monday launched an offensive to retake a police station in a southern Andean town and end a three-day siege by ex-soldiers demanding the resignation of unpopular President Alejandro Toledo.

COLOMBO (AFP) - Women activists urged Sri Lankan authorities to step up protection for tsunami survivors amid unconfirmed reports some had been molested or even gang raped at refugee shelters.

The rights group, Women and Media Collective, urged stepped up protection for women and children who were more vulnerable after they were driven out of their homes by last week's tsunamis that killed more than 30,000 people.

"We have received reports of incidents of rape, rang rape, molestation and physical abuse of women and girls in the course of unsupervised rescue operations and while resident in temporary shelters," it said in a statement.

BOSTON - A Kentucky widow, moved by the cries of grief she heard in reports about the tsunami disaster in south Asia, invited her entire town to a New Year's Eve bash to raise money for the victims. In California, a college offered free basketball tickets, with a gift for relief efforts the only price of admission.

A group of children in a Seattle suburb stood out in the rain offering "Hot Chocolate for Tidal Wave Relief!" and raised $255.

In ways large and small, people around the country have found ways to help victims of one of history's worst natural disasters.

[...]

Oxfam said Friday it had received almost $6 million in unsolicited donations since the disaster on Dec. 26 [THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS! After most "stingy" Americans have spent their fair share on gifts!--.ed]. The American Red Cross reported almost $44 million in donations from Americans by Thursday evening.