Former rebel takes over governing of West Darfur

Source: CNN:

KHARTOUM, Sudan (Reuters) -- West Darfur's new governor, a former rebel, arrived in the state capital on Wednesday welcomed by hundreds of supporters in a sign some aspects of an unpopular peace deal are being implemented.

Abu el-Gasim al-Hajj, 35, was appointed under a May 2006 accord which gave former rebels the governorship of one of the three states of Darfur, a junior ministry post in the central government and some parliamentary seats in Khartoum and Darfur.

"The wali (governor) said his first priority was to bring peace and stability to West Darfur," Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) official Mahjoub Osman Abdallah told Reuters from el-Geneina, the state capital.

Al-Hajj also pledged to ensure the safe return to their homes of all those languishing in Darfur's camps, Abdallah said.

Apart from the appointment, little else of the deal has been implemented and many of the 2.5 million Darfuris who fled their villages to makeshift camps reject it.

Violent state of West Darfur borders troubled Chad

West Darfur is the most lawless of all the Darfur states as it runs along the long and porous border with neighboring Chad, also in the throes of its own insurgency.

Chadian, Sudanese rebels, militias, bandits and government forces often cross the almost nonexistent frontier.

Al-Hajj's appointment has exacerbated tensions between the government and the leader of the only one of three rebel factions to have signed the May 2006 accord at the time, Minni Arcua Minnawi. Minnawi became the fourth-ranking member of the presidency as a result.

Al-Hajj is from a rival group to Minnawi, which signed up to the accord after the rebel groups splitered into a dozen factions. The Khartoum government also gave the junior ministerial position to a non-Minnawi supporter.

Minnawi has been sidelined in Darfur policy and has expressed frustration at President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's "lack of political will" to implement the deal.

Darfur, an area the size of France, has been beset by bloodshed since 2003 when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms accusing Khartoum of neglecting the arid region.

Opposing the rebels are the Janjaweed, the local name for militia forces drawn from the nomadic Arab tribes, who are blamed for much of the killing. Experts estimate 200,000 have been killed in rape, murder and pillage in the Darfur region.

The United States calls the violence genocide, a term rejected by the Sudanese government and one which European governments are also reluctant to use. The Sudanese government also denies accusations it backs the Janjaweed.

Minnawi complains a transitional authority he should head and which should direct development and reconstruction in the remote west is still not functioning almost a year after the signing of the accord which envisaged it.

The world's largest aid operation is under strain in Darfur because of banditry and attacks. Governmental restrictions have also hindered the almost 14,000 humanitarian workers.

The United States said on Wednesday it was planning new sanctions against Sudan, including restrictions on companies that do business there in U.S. dollars, because of Khartoum's refusal to allow United Nations peacekeeping troops into Darfur.

ElBaradei upbeat on N. Korea talks

Source: CNN.

TOKYO, Japan (AP) -- The chief U.N. nuclear inspector, after a one-day trip to Pyongyang, said Wednesday North Korea was "fully committed" to an agreement that requires it to shutter its main nuclear reactor and let in inspectors as soon as the U.S. drops financial sanctions against it.

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, described the talks on how North Korea will close its main atomic reactor as "quite useful."

"They said they are fully committed to the February 13 agreement, that they are ready to work with the agency to make sure that we monitor and verify the shutdown of the Yongbyon facility," he said, adding officials in Pyongyang also "reiterated they are committed to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula."

ElBaradei's trip comes ahead of international talks in Beijing on Monday that will look at progress after a milestone deal last month in which North Korea has 60 days to shut down and seal its Yongbyon nuclear reactor in exchange for economic aid and political concessions.

ElBaradei dismissed concerns that he had not meet Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, North Korea's chief nuclear negotiator, as originally scheduled, saying Kim was sick.

The IAEA is supposed to monitor and verify the shutdown. The reactor is believed to have produced the plutonium for the nuclear weapon North Korea detonated in a test blast on October 9.

He said North Korea "was very clear they are ready to implement the February 13 agreement once the other parties implement their part of the deal."

He said that included the lifting of sanctions against a Macau bank, adding once that happens North Korea will allow the return of inspectors from his watchdog agency.

The frozen accounts in the Banco Delta Asia, including $24 million (€18.2 million) in North Korean assets, have been a sore spot for the North Korean government.

A U.S. government official said Monday the Treasury Department is expected to make an announcement this week that could help overseas regulators identify highest-risk and lower-risk account holders. This risk assessment in turn could be used by Macau to release money that has been frozen. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The U.S. alleged the bank helped North Korea distribute counterfeit currency and engage in other illicit activities. Banks around the world, meanwhile, severed ties with North Korea for fear of losing access to the U.S. financial system.

ElBaradei's trip was a significant first step toward renewed relations between the IAEA and the North, which kicked out the agency's inspectors in late 2002, but he cautioned "the agreement is still quite fragile, precarious, so I hope all parties will see to it we continue to solidify that agreement."

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the top American nuclear negotiator, told reporters after arriving in Beijing that ElBaradei's trip was a "good sign."

Hill said he was likely to meet ElBaradei in Beijing on Thursday.

Besides the United States and North Korea, the talks also include South Korea, Japan, Russia and host China.

Delegates from those countries were set this week to meet with their counterparts to discuss economic and energy cooperation, peace and security in Northeast Asia and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula as part of working group sessions established under the landmark pact. Those meetings were to take place through the weekend.

South Korea's chief nuclear negotiator Chun Yung-woo said after flying into Beijing Wednesday that the talks were not aimed "at producing any breakthrough" or a new agreement.

The North Korean nuclear crisis began in 2002, when Washington alleged that Pyongyang had a uranium enrichment program in addition to its acknowledged plutonium program. North Korea then withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and expelled ElBaradei's inspectors.

The North is to eventually receive 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil for abandoning all its nuclear programs. U.S. officials have stressed this must include an alleged uranium enrichment program, which the North has never publicly admitted having.

U.S. prepares to sanction Sudanese companies

Source: CNN:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush's envoy to Sudan said Wednesday the administration is preparing to impose new economic sanctions because of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir's refusal to allow U.N. peacekeepers to deploy to Sudan's war-torn Darfur region.

Pending Bush's final approval, envoy Andrew Natsios said, Sudanese companies will be subject to sanctions, and international transactions involving U.S. dollars will be blocked.

"I don't want to presuppose the decision that the president is going to make," he said. "It is pretty clear the president is angrier than anyone else. He gets very upset when he talks to me about the situation. He gets very frustrated by it."

Later, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the world will have to consider new options, possibly further action by the United Nations.

"Of course the international community is going to have to look at other options. We are, indeed, looking at other options, including options that might require further U.N. action," Rice told reporters after a discussion at the State Department with Israel's foreign minister, Tzipi Livni.

"It's simply the case that the Sudanese government needs to recognize that the international community can't stand idly by while people suffer, while we're unable to deliver humanitarian assistance to people and while the violence against innocent civilians continues," Rice said.

Natsios spoke during a telephone conference call in which officials from humanitarian groups and other non-governmental organizations participated.

Al-Bashir made known his disapproval of the U.N. plan in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, details of which emerged earlier this week. Under the plan, a hybrid U.N.-African Union force totaling 22,000 military and civilian personnel would be deployed in Darfur.

"I was stunned by the letter," Natsios said, adding it was practically an invitation by al-Bashir to "sanction us, come after us."

Over the past four years, some 200,000 Darfurians have died and more than 2.5 million been displaced from their homes because of civil strife. The United States blames mostly the Sudanese government and government-backed militias for the "genocidal" situation.

Scenes of suffering in the region have produced an outpouring of concern and demands for international action to protect and provide for the victims.

The humanitarian situation is so grave that some members of Congress have recommended U.S. military action. But that idea appears to have scant support.

Though Darfur has seen repeated civil strife over the years, the violence of the past four years has been extraordinary.

U.S. to bar banks from business with Macau's BDA

Source: CNN. Also an earlier CNN report.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The U.S. Treasury Department will bar U.S. banks from doing business with a Macau bank holding frozen North Korean assets believed connected to illegal activities, a U.S. official said on Tuesday.

The move would clear the way for Macau authorities to decide whether to release some of the frozen accounts -- an estimated $8 million to $12 million -- Pyongyang has demanded as a condition of negotiations on its nuclear program, other U.S. officials said.

Releasing the funds could take weeks and Washington's prohibition on U.S. banks will continue to complicate the North's access to the international financial system. This is expected to irritate Pyongyang and could shake efforts to denuclearize the Korean peninsula, officials and experts said.

For the past 18 months the Treasury Department has been investigating the Banco Delta Asia bank, known as BDA, over charges the institution for years accepted proceeds from North Korea's counterfeiting, drug-smuggling and money-laundering operations.

As a result, Macau authorities who oversee the bank froze $24 million in North Korean accounts, causing Pyongyang to boycott six-country talks on its nuclear program for more than a year.

The figure is a fraction of the $500 million to $1 billion Pyongyang earns annually from criminal activity, according to the Library of Congress' Congressional Research Service.

Some $15 million to $25 million is from high-quality counterfeiting U.S. currency, according to a report by the office of Republican Rep. Ed Royce of California.

Under a limited nuclear agreement reached with North Korea on February 13, the United States promised to resolve the BDA issue and the decision will be announced this week.

Announcement soon

"We plan to finalize the rule on BDA this week, most likely Wednesday or Thursday," a U.S. official told Reuters on condition on anonymity. "Finalizing the rule means that U.S. banks can no longer open or maintain correspondent accounts for or on behalf of BDA."

The decision to release any funds rests with the China-administered enclave of Macau. U.S. officials have said they expect between one-third and one-half of the $24 million to be released, reflecting accounts determined not to be connected to illicit activity.

The United States is expected to transmit results of its investigation, highlighting high-risk North Korea-related clients, to Macau authorities, who could take several weeks or longer to decide what funds to release.

China is concerned about the cloud of suspicion the U.S. decision will leave over BDA. Some U.S. officials say North Korea likely will reject the way Washington has chosen to interpret its promise to resolve the case.

The officials acknowledge Macau has taken steps to clean up its jurisdiction by tightening banking requirements and promoting transparency but say BDA's shortcomings were systemic largely involving U.S. concerns about the bank's ownership.

"Our concerns about the bank's ownership have not been resolved," another U.S. official said.

In 2005, the Treasury Department designated BDA as a "primary money-laundering concern [because it was a] willing pawn for the North Korean government to engage in corrupt financial activities."

Some U.S. officials and experts have long wanted to resolve the dispute so Pyongyang would come back to six-party negotiations and the focus could be on persuading the North to abandon its nuclear program, rather than counterfeiting.

A shutdown of North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear plant by mid-April is the centerpiece of the February 13 accord reached in six-party talks grouping North and South Korea, Japan, Russia, the United States and host China.

From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype

Source: New York Times.

By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: March 13, 2007.

Hollywood has a thing for Al Gore and his three-alarm film on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” which won an Academy Award for best documentary. So do many environmentalists, who praise him as a visionary, and many scientists, who laud him for raising public awareness of climate change.

But part of his scientific audience is uneasy. In talks, articles and blog entries that have appeared since his film and accompanying book came out last year, these scientists argue that some of Mr. Gore’s central points are exaggerated and erroneous. They are alarmed, some say, at what they call his alarmism.

“I don’t want to pick on Al Gore,” Don J. Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told hundreds of experts at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. “But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data.”

Mr. Gore, in an e-mail exchange about the critics, said his work made “the most important and salient points” about climate change, if not “some nuances and distinctions” scientists might want. “The degree of scientific consensus on global warming has never been stronger,” he said, adding, “I am trying to communicate the essence of it in the lay language that I understand.”

Although Mr. Gore is not a scientist, he does rely heavily on the authority of science in “An Inconvenient Truth,” which is why scientists are sensitive to its details and claims.

Criticisms of Mr. Gore have come not only from conservative groups and prominent skeptics of catastrophic warming, but also from rank-and-file scientists like Dr. Easterbook, who told his peers that he had no political ax to grind. A few see natural variation as more central to global warming than heat-trapping gases. Many appear to occupy a middle ground in the climate debate, seeing human activity as a serious threat but challenging what they call the extremism of both skeptics and zealots.

Kevin Vranes, a climatologist at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, said he sensed a growing backlash against exaggeration. While praising Mr. Gore for “getting the message out,” Dr. Vranes questioned whether his presentations were “overselling our certainty about knowing the future.”

Typically, the concern is not over the existence of climate change, or the idea that the human production of heat-trapping gases is partly or largely to blame for the globe’s recent warming. The question is whether Mr. Gore has gone beyond the scientific evidence.

“He’s a very polarizing figure in the science community,” said Roger A. Pielke Jr., an environmental scientist who is a colleague of Dr. Vranes at the University of Colorado center. “Very quickly, these discussions turn from the issue to the person, and become a referendum on Mr. Gore.”

“An Inconvenient Truth,” directed by Davis Guggenheim, was released last May and took in more than $46 million, making it one of the top-grossing documentaries ever. The companion book by Mr. Gore quickly became a best seller, reaching No. 1 on the New York Times list.

Mr. Gore depicted a future in which temperatures soar, ice sheets melt, seas rise, hurricanes batter the coasts and people die en masse. “Unless we act boldly,” he wrote, “our world will undergo a string of terrible catastrophes.”

He clearly has supporters among leading scientists, who commend his popularizations and call his science basically sound. In December, he spoke in San Francisco to the American Geophysical Union and got a reception fit for a rock star from thousands of attendees.

“He has credibility in this community,” said Tim Killeen, the group’s president and director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a top group studying climate change. “There’s no question he’s read a lot and is able to respond in a very effective way.”

Some backers concede minor inaccuracies but see them as reasonable for a politician. James E. Hansen, an environmental scientist, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a top adviser to Mr. Gore, said, “Al does an exceptionally good job of seeing the forest for the trees,” adding that Mr. Gore often did so “better than scientists.”

Still, Dr. Hansen said, the former vice president’s work may hold “imperfections” and “technical flaws.” He pointed to hurricanes, an icon for Mr. Gore, who highlights the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and cites research suggesting that global warming will cause both storm frequency and deadliness to rise. Yet this past Atlantic season produced fewer hurricanes than forecasters predicted (five versus nine), and none that hit the United States.

“We need to be more careful in describing the hurricane story than he is,” Dr. Hansen said of Mr. Gore. “On the other hand,” Dr. Hansen said, “he has the bottom line right: most storms, at least those driven by the latent heat of vaporization, will tend to be stronger, or have the potential to be stronger, in a warmer climate.”

In his e-mail message, Mr. Gore defended his work as fundamentally accurate. “Of course,” he said, “there will always be questions around the edges of the science, and we have to rely upon the scientific community to continue to ask and to challenge and to answer those questions.”

He said “not every single adviser” agreed with him on every point, “but we do agree on the fundamentals” — that warming is real and caused by humans.

Mr. Gore added that he perceived no general backlash among scientists against his work. “I have received a great deal of positive feedback,” he said. “I have also received comments about items that should be changed, and I have updated the book and slideshow to reflect these comments.” He gave no specifics on which points he had revised.

He said that after 30 years of trying to communicate the dangers of global warming, “I think that I’m finally getting a little better at it.”

While reviewers tended to praise the book and movie, vocal skeptics of global warming protested almost immediately. Richard S. Lindzen, a climatologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, who has long expressed skepticism about dire climate predictions, accused Mr. Gore in The Wall Street Journal of “shrill alarmism.”

Some of Mr. Gore’s centrist detractors point to a report last month by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that studies global warming. The panel went further than ever before in saying that humans were the main cause of the globe’s warming since 1950, part of Mr. Gore’s message that few scientists dispute. But it also portrayed climate change as a slow-motion process.

It estimated that the world’s seas in this century would rise a maximum of 23 inches — down from earlier estimates. Mr. Gore, citing no particular time frame, envisions rises of up to 20 feet and depicts parts of New York, Florida and other heavily populated areas as sinking beneath the waves, implying, at least visually, that inundation is imminent.

Bjorn Lomborg, a statistician and political scientist in Denmark long skeptical of catastrophic global warming, said in a syndicated article that the panel, unlike Mr. Gore, had refrained from scaremongering. “Climate change is a real and serious problem” that calls for careful analysis and sound policy, Dr. Lomborg said. “The cacophony of screaming,” he added, “does not help.”

So too, a report last June by the National Academies seemed to contradict Mr. Gore’s portrayal of recent temperatures as the highest in the past millennium. Instead, the report said, current highs appeared unrivaled since only 1600, the tail end of a temperature rise known as the medieval warm period.

Roy Spencer, a climatologist at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, said on a blog that Mr. Gore’s film did “indeed do a pretty good job of presenting the most dire scenarios.” But the June report, he added, shows “that all we really know is that we are warmer now than we were during the last 400 years.”

Other critics have zeroed in on Mr. Gore’s claim that the energy industry ran a “disinformation campaign” that produced false discord on global warming. The truth, he said, was that virtually all unbiased scientists agreed that humans were the main culprits. But Benny J. Peiser, a social anthropologist in Britain who runs the Cambridge-Conference Network, or CCNet, an Internet newsletter on climate change and natural disasters, challenged the claim of scientific consensus with examples of pointed disagreement.

“Hardly a week goes by,” Dr. Peiser said, “without a new research paper that questions part or even some basics of climate change theory,” including some reports that offer alternatives to human activity for global warming.

Geologists have documented age upon age of climate swings, and some charge Mr. Gore with ignoring such rhythms.

“Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet,” Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook University in Australia, said in a September blog. “Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change.”

In October, Dr. Easterbrook made similar points at the geological society meeting in Philadelphia. He hotly disputed Mr. Gore’s claim that “our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this” threatened change.

Nonsense, Dr. Easterbrook told the crowded session. He flashed a slide that showed temperature trends for the past 15,000 years. It highlighted 10 large swings, including the medieval warm period. These shifts, he said, were up to “20 times greater than the warming in the past century.”

Getting personal, he mocked Mr. Gore’s assertion that scientists agreed on global warming except those industry had corrupted. “I’ve never been paid a nickel by an oil company,” Dr. Easterbrook told the group. “And I’m not a Republican.”

Biologists, too, have gotten into the act. In January, Paul Reiter, an active skeptic of global warming’s effects and director of the insects and infectious diseases unit of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, faulted Mr. Gore for his portrayal of global warming as spreading malaria.

“For 12 years, my colleagues and I have protested against the unsubstantiated claims,” Dr. Reiter wrote in The International Herald Tribune. “We have done the studies and challenged the alarmists, but they continue to ignore the facts.”

Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton who advised Mr. Gore on the book and movie, said that reasonable scientists disagreed on the malaria issue and other points that the critics had raised. In general, he said, Mr. Gore had distinguished himself for integrity.

“On balance, he did quite well — a credible and entertaining job on a difficult subject,” Dr. Oppenheimer said. “For that, he deserves a lot of credit. If you rake him over the coals, you’re going to find people who disagree. But in terms of the big picture, he got it right.”

Zimbabwe Opposition Leader Appears in Court

Source: New York Times.

By MICHAEL WINES
Published: March 13, 2007.

JOHANNESBURG, March 13 — Limping and missing part of his hair, apparently because of a head wound, the Zimbabwe political opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai appeared in a Harare court today after being jailed and beaten for his role in a banned anti-government meeting.

He was later taken from the court to a hospital under police guard, The Associated Press reported.

Mr. Tsvangirai was joined in court by scores of other opposition activists and leaders, some also injured, who had been swept up by the authorities on Sunday when riot police violently broke up the planned meeting in a poor southern Harare neighborhood called Highfields. One man was shot and killed by police.

The European Union and the secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, joined the United States today in condemning the crackdown on the activists.

In a written statement, the United Nations human rights commissioner, Louise Arbour, cited “shocking reports of police abuse” and called for an inquiry by Zimbabwe’s government into the violence.

The State Department earlier had called the violence brutal and unwarranted.

The Zimbabwean government of President Robert G. Mugabe did not immediately respond to the criticism.

Its crackdown on political dissent spread today to one of Mr. Mugabe’s sharpest critics, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, whose offices were raided by the government secret police, the Central Intelligence Organization.

Mr. Mugabe’s authoritarian regime has come under increasing pressure in recent months, as inflation has soared and staple commodities have vanished from store shelves. According to the official estimate, which some economists say is conservative, the annual inflation rate in Zimbabwe now exceeds 1,700 percent.

On Monday, police officers remained present in force in the Highfield neighborhood of Harare, the capital, where the rally was to have taken place on Sunday, as well as in the city’s center, witnesses said.

The heavy police presence underscored the government’s determination to contain what many opposition figures and analysts say is growing unrest in the face of economic collapse.

The court appearance by opposition leaders and activists today came after the government ignored an earlier order by the nation’s High Court to allow lawyers and doctors to talk to and examine the imprisoned activists.

A second High Court order issued late on Monday demanded that the activists either be charged with offenses or released by midday today.

Mr. Tsvangirai and a second opposition leader, Arthur Mutambara, stood side by side in the courtroom today, news agencies reported, before the police cleared spectators from the building and sealed it off.

The two men lead rival factions of the Movement for Democratic Change, the only substantial and active opposition party in a nation dominated by Mr. Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front.

Mr. Tsvangirai’s lawyer, Innocent Chagonda, told reporters that his client was seriously injured and in need of medical care, news agencies reported.

Mr. Tsvangirai appeared to have a head wound, and one of his eyes was swollen nearly shut, according to journalists who saw him in the courtroom before being expelled.

Another prominent civic leader, Lovemore Madhuku of the National Constitutional Assembly, was reported to be in serious condition in a Harare hospital with a fractured arm and head injuries.

Zimbabwe government officials called for the public to remain calm and accused the activists of plotting violence against the police and ordinary citizens alike.

The spokesman for Zimbabwe’s national police, Wayne Bvudzijena, said on Monday that he did not know how many people were arrested when the meeting was broken up, nor whether anyone was injured. If there were any injuries, he said, they probably stemmed from efforts to resist arrest.

“We’ve got confirmation that they are hired to go about and commit violence,” Mr. Bvudzijena said of the arrested activists in a telephone interview. “I wouldn’t know about their being injured in police custody, but the situation yesterday was that whether they were M.D.C. youths or others, they were attacking the police, resisting arrest.”

The rally in Highfield on Sunday, a rare joint effort by Zimbabwe’s feuding opposition groups, had been billed as a prayer meeting, apparently to bypass a government ban on rallies. Three weeks earlier, riot police had crushed a much larger antigovernment demonstration, but only after widespread street violence and injuries.

The police took few chances this time, cordoning off all routes into Highfield as early as two days before the meeting. Protesters who tried to enter the neighborhood were arrested, and the 200 or so who managed to gather near the rally site, a sports field, were arrested or driven away.

The police shot and killed one protester. Mr. Bvudzijena said the man had been leading a crowd that was throwing stones and other objects at the riot police. Three police officers were injured in the disturbance, he said.

On Monday, the nation’s High Court ordered the police to allow lawyers access to Mr. Tsvangirai, Reuters reported. Before then, lawyers were not allowed to talk to any of the jailed protesters, said Beatrice Mtetwa, an attorney for some of the activists, and Alec Muchadehama, a lawyer for Mr. Tsvangirai.

Mr. Muchadehama said that the police allowed a second lawyer to see Mr. Tsvangirai at a distance, and that the activist leader seemed to have suffered a deep head wound.

Mr. Madhuku surrendered peacefully to the police on Sunday afternoon, the official of his organization said. “We have not been able to talk to him,” the official said, “but we can only speculate that his injuries happened in his cell, because he didn’t have much resistance to his arrest.”

The violence drew a sharp response from a spokesman at the State Department, who said the United States was shocked by the reports of injuries to protesters.

“This is unfortunately, again, just another example of the increasingly harsh treatment that those wishing to express opposition political views face under President Mugabe,” said a department spokesman, Tom Casey.

Pace Won’t Apologize for Gay Remark, Aides Say

Source: New York Times.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: March 13, 2007
Filed at 1:51 p.m. ET.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon's top general expressed regret Tuesday that he called homosexuality immoral, a remark that drew a harsh condemnation from members of Congress and gay advocacy groups.

In a newspaper interview Monday, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had likened homosexual acts to adultery and said the military should not condone it by allowing gays to serve openly in the armed forces.

In a statement Tuesday, he said he should have focused more in the interview on the Defense Department policy about gays -- and ''less on my personal moral views.''

He did not offer an apology, something that had been demanded by gay rights groups.

''General Pace's comments are outrageous, insensitive and disrespectful to the 65,000 lesbian and gay troops now serving in our armed forces,'' the advocacy group Servicemembers Legal Defense Network said in a statement on its Web site.

The group, which has represented some of the thousands dismissed from the military for their sexual orientation, demanded an apology.

Pace's senior staff members said earlier that the general was expressing his personal opinion and did not intend to apologize. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak on the record.

Rep. Martin Meehan, who has introduced legislation to repeal the current policy, criticized Pace's comments.

''General Pace's statements aren't in line with either the majority of the public or the military,'' said the Massachusetts Democrat. ''He needs to recognize that support for overturning (the policy) is strong and growing'' and that the military is ''turning away good troops to enforce a costly policy of discrimination.''

In an interview Monday with the Chicago Tribune, Pace was asked about the ''don't ask, don't tell'' policy that allows gays and lesbians to serve if they keep their sexual orientation private and don't engage in homosexual acts.

Pace said he supports the policy, which became law in 1994 and prohibits commanders from asking about a person's sexual orientation.

''I believe that homosexual acts between individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts,'' Pace said in the audio recording of the interview posted on the Tribune's Web site. ''I do not believe that the armed forces of the United States are well served by a saying through our policies that it's OK to be immoral in any way.''

Pace, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., and a 1967 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, said he based his views on his upbringing.

''As an individual, I would not want (acceptance of gay behavior) to be our policy, just like I would not want it to be our policy that if we were to find out that so-and-so was sleeping with somebody else's wife, that we would just look the other way, which we do not. We prosecute that kind of immoral behavior,'' he said, according to the audio and a transcript released by his staff.

The newspaper said Pace did not address concerns raised by a 2005 government audit that showed some 10,000 troops, including more than 50 specialists in Arabic, have been discharged because of the policy.

Louis Vizcaino, spokesman for the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign, said Pace's comments were ''insulting and offensive to the men and women ... who are serving in the military honorably.''

''Right now there are men and women that are in the battle lines, that are in the trenches, they're serving their country,'' Vizcaino said. ''Their sexual orientation has nothing to do with their capability to serve in the U.S. military.''

''Don't ask, don't tell'' was passed by Congress in 1993 after a firestorm of debate in which advocates argued that allowing homosexuals to serve openly would hurt troop morale and recruitment and undermine the cohesion of combat units.

John Shalikashvili, the retired Army general who was Joint Chiefs chairman when the policy was adopted, said in January that he has changed his mind on the issue since meeting with gay servicemen.

''These conversations showed me just how much the military has changed, and that gays and lesbians can be accepted by their peers,'' Shalikashvili wrote in a newspaper opinion piece.

Rain Forests, It Seems, Need the Dry Season

Source: New York Times.

By HENRY FOUNTAIN
Published: March 13, 2007.

To the uninitiated, the Amazon rain forests are a vast ocean of trees that are unchanging throughout the year.

Scientists know better. Like trees in more temperate regions, those in the tropics display what is called phenological behavior — budding and other events that recur seasonally.

“We always find there seems to be some sort of seasonality” in the rain forests, said Ranga B. Myneni, a professor in the department of geography and environment at Boston University, that corresponds to the rainy and dry (or rather, not so rainy) seasons.

But the overall impact of this seasonal behavior has been largely unstudied. Now, Dr. Myneni and other researchers have discovered one effect: leaf area in the Amazon changes significantly between wet and dry seasons.

The researchers used data from NASA’s Terra satellite, which can measure reflected sunlight from the ground at various frequencies, to analyze the “greenness” of given areas over time.

They found that compared with the annual average, the Amazon had 25 percent more leaf coverage in the dry season and 25 percent less in the rainy season. The findings are reported in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Myneni said the results were counterintuitive, because rain forest trees have been thought to be limited by available water.

But the study shows that the trees are worse off in the rainy season, when many leaves die but relatively few new ones are produced. In the dry season they thrive; far more new leaves are produced than are shed, allowing the tree to benefit from the season’s increased sunlight. In fact, Dr. Myneni said, it appears that the trees anticipate the dry season, putting out leaves earlier, suggesting that they have evolved to take maximum advantage of the light.

The findings show that water is not the limiting factor. “These plants are kind of clever,” Dr. Myneni said. “They have deep roots and are able to tap water deep in the soil. What’s really limiting them is light.”

The results also may help answer a longstanding question as to how the rainy season starts. More leaves mean more water vapor in the atmosphere through transpiration. So the additional growth during the dry season, Dr. Myneni said, “seems to be a strong driver for triggering the onset of the wet.”

Urban Ants Take the Heat

There may be some remaining pockets of resistance to the idea that the planet is heating up, but no one can deny that cities have been growing warmer. Urban areas can be as much as 20 degrees hotter than nearby rural ones, a result, among other factors, of all that concrete and asphalt pumping out heat as sunlight hits it.

Sweltering temperatures affect humans, of course, but are there other biological consequences of what are known as urban heat islands? A study by Michael J. Angilletta Jr. of Indiana State University and colleagues shows that there is. Urban ants, they report in PLoS Biology, can stand the heat better than those from out of town.

The researchers studied leaf-cutter ants in and around São Paulo, Brazil, where surface temperatures at midday in summer can rise above 110 degrees Fahrenheit. This is hot enough to stop an ant in its tracks, so ants that can better tolerate heat would be better able to reach shelter as temperatures approached the danger point.

To compare the heat-tolerating abilities of urban and rural ants, the researchers exposed both to temperatures near the maximum, about 108 degrees, and measured how long it took before they became immobilized. Ants from within São Paulo lasted 20 percent longer than those from rural areas outside the city.

The researchers say they do not know whether the difference in tolerance has been wired into the ants genetically or whether it is more that all individuals can become acclimatized to environmental conditions.

Either way, they say, their study shows that urban heat can affect species. And since, when it comes to warming, cities are far ahead of the rest of the globe, studies like this can give researchers an idea of the types of changes that may occur with other species as the whole planet heats up.

Arsenic Levels in Rice

Rice may be a great accompaniment to a main dish, but some rice apparently comes with an accompaniment of its own — the toxic element arsenic.

In the journal Environmental Science and Technology, P. N. Williams and colleagues at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland report on a study of rice bought at American supermarkets. Comparing products from the nation’s two major growing regions, the researchers found that rice from South-Central states like Arkansas and Louisiana had about 30 micrograms of arsenic per gram, or nearly twice the level found in rice from California.

The most likely reason for the difference, the researchers say, is that rice growers in South-Central states are increasingly using old cotton fields, where years of application of inorganic arsenic as a pesticide has contaminated the soils.

Arsenic is a carcinogen and can cause skin, reproductive, developmental and other disorders. Given that most Americans do not eat large amounts of rice, the arsenic levels in the tested rice may not result in excessive exposure to arsenic.

But the researchers note that some population subgroups — among them Hispanics, Asian-Americans and people who suffer from celiac disease and must avoid wheat products — eat much more rice on average. So for them, the researchers calculate, exposure may exceed the limits established for arsenic intake from water, the main source of the element for most Americans.

Satellite Resuscitation

It’s a sad fact of orbital life, but all satellites eventually die, eventually running out of propellant or other consumables needed to keep them in orbit.

But a satellite experiment launched last week called the Orbital Express has the potential to change that. The experiment, the work of NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, will test the robotic repair and refueling of satellites in orbit.

It consists of two satellites, one carrying extra propellant and batteries and equipped with a small robotic arm. The two spacecraft will practice autonomous rendezvous and docking maneuvers, and the servicing satellite will try to transfer propellant and batteries to the other.

Frostbite Ends Bancroft - Arnesen Trek

Source: New York Times.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: March 12, 2007.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite. The explorers, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, on Saturday called off what was intended to be a 530-mile trek across the Arctic Ocean after Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes, and extreme cold temperatures drained the batteries in some of their electronic equipment.

"Ann said losing toes and going forward at all costs was never part of the journey," said Ann Atwood, who helped organize the expedition.

On Monday, the pair was at Canada's Ward Hunt Island, awaiting a plane to take them to Resolute, Canada, where they were to return to Minneapolis later this week.

Bancroft, 51, became the first woman to cross the North Pole on a 1986 expedition. She and Arnesen, 53, of Oslo, Norway, were the first women to ski across Antarctica in 2001.

But the latest trek got off to a bad start. The day they set off from Ward Hunt Island, a plane landing near the women hit their gear, punching a hole in Bancroft's sled and damaging one of Arnesen's snowshoes.

They repaired the snowshoe with binding from a ski, but Atwood said the patch job created pressure on Arnesen's left foot, which led to blisters that then turned into frostbite.

Then there was the cold -- quite a bit colder, Atwood said, then Bancroft and Arnesen had expected. One night they measured the temperature inside their tent at 58 degrees below zero, and outside temperatures were exceeding 100 below zero at times, Atwood said.

"My first reaction when they called to say there were calling it off was that they just sounded really, really cold," Atwood said.

She said Bancroft and Arnesen were applying hot water bottles to Arnesen's foot every night, but had to wake up periodically because the bottles froze.

The explorers had planned to call in regular updates to school groups by satellite phone, and had planned online posts with photographic evidence of global warming. In contrast to Bancroft's 1986 trek across the Arctic with fellow Minnesota explorer Will Steger, this time she and Arnesen were prepared to don body suits and swim through areas where polar ice has melted.

Atwood said there was some irony that a trip to call attention to global warming was scuttled in part by extreme cold temperatures.

"They were experiencing temperatures that weren't expected with global warming," Atwood said. "But one of the things we see with global warming is unpredictability."

U.N.: World must protect Darfur civilians from war crimes

Source: CNN:

GENEVA, Switzerland (AP) -- U.N. human rights team said Monday that the Sudanese government has orchestrated crimes against humanity in Darfur, and that steps taken by the international community "have proven inadequate and ineffective."

The team, headed by Nobel peace laureate Jody Williams, urged stronger U.N. Security Council intervention, sanctions and criminal prosecution.

"All U.N. Security Council and [African Union] Peace and Security Council resolutions should be fully implemented, including those relating to travel bans and the freezing of funds, assets, and economic resources of those who commit violations," the 35-page report said.

Important steps have been taken by the international community, including the African Union and the United Nations, but "these have been largely resisted and obstructed, and have proven inadequate and ineffective," the report said.

More than 200,000 people have died and more than 2.5 million people have been displaced in four years of fighting in Darfur. The conflict began when members of the region's ethnic African tribes took up arms against what they saw as decades of neglect and discrimination by the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum.

The government is accused of unleashing a pro-government Arab militia that has committed many of the atrocities in the conflict.

The U.N. Human Rights Council commissioned Monday's report in an emergency session last December. Williams filed the report after concluding in a 20-day attempt to enter Sudan in February that the Sudanese government had no intention of cooperating with the United Nations.

Sudan's government "has manifestly failed to protect the population of Darfur from large-scale international crimes, and has itself orchestrated and participated in these crimes," the report said.

Monday's report said rape was widespread across Darfur, but that Sudanese authorities were doing little to prevent it or investigate the crimes.

"Arbitrary arrest and detention in Darfur by government security forces continue," the report said, adding that there had been a wave of arrests of Darfurians in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, in recent months.

There also have been curbs on free speech and "credible information on torture, inhumane and degrading treatment by national Security and Military Intelligence during attacks and in the treatment of detainees," the report said.

Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, last month linked Sudan's government to atrocities in Darfur, naming a junior minister as a war crimes suspect who helped recruit, arm and bankroll the janjaweed.

Ahmed Muhammed Harun, the former junior interior minister responsible for the western region of Darfur, and a janjaweed militia leader, Ali Mohammed Ali Abd-al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, are suspected of a total of 51 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, according to prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo.

Sudan says it already has set up its own war crimes courts, and does not have to turn over suspects named by the ICC.

The report said anti-government rebels also were to blame for human rights abuses, including the rape and torture of civilians. Much of this violence was related to fighting between different rebel groups and an increase in violent banditry in the largely lawless region, it said.

Although the team was unable to enter Sudan, it held numerous consultations with a wide range of aid agencies working in the region and also was briefed by African Union officials in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the report said.

In Chad, the team also spoke to some members of rebel groups, including the Justice and Equality Movement and the secretariat of the National Redemption Front, and to Darfur refugees.

Australian PM to sign security pact in Japan

Source: CNN.

TOKYO, Japan (AP) -- Australian Prime Minister John Howard is expected to sign a security declaration with his Japanese counterpart during a four-day trip to Tokyo that started Sunday, officials said.

He said Friday that the declaration will underline the two countries' increasingly close security relationship.

Those ties vastly improved after Australian troops provided security for a Japanese humanitarian mission, comprising about 600 troops, in the southern Iraqi city of Samawah. The non-combat mission ended in July.

"One of the reasons why it has been possible to move towards this Joint Declaration is the close partnership between Australia and Japan in Iraq," Howard said, according to the transcript of the news conference in Sydney on Friday published on his Web site.

Howard sidestepped a question about whether the declaration would aim to curtail North Korea's nuclear ambitions, saying that issue might be addressed after the agreement is signed.

The declaration could include cooperation on peacekeeping and disaster operations as well as joint exercises within the Australian territory, Japan's business daily Nikkei reported Saturday, without citing where it got the information from.

Officials at the Japanese Foreign Ministry were not available for comment Sunday.

Howard was scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday when they will seal the joint security declaration at a signing ceremony, according to an itinerary provided by the Japanese Foreign Ministry.

Tokyo and Sydney are scheduled to launch negotiations on a free trade agreement on April 23. Japan has been Australia's largest export market for nearly 40 years.

While the two countries enjoy close economic ties, Australia and Japan disagree on whaling.

Asked if he plans to raise the issue with Abe, Howard said, "I will of course in the course of our discussions."

Japan has been pushing for a resumption of commercial whaling while Australia strongly opposes it.

Howard will also meet Foreign Minister Taro Aso on Monday and attend a luncheon hosted by the Japan-Australia Business Conference on Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry said.