Sudan Becomes US Ally in 'War on Terror'

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Sudan's Islamist regime, once shunned by Washington for providing a haven for Osama bin Laden as well as for human rights abuses during decades of civil war, has become an ally in the Bush administration's "war on terror". Only months after the US accused Khartoum of carrying out genocide in Darfur, Sudan has become a crucial intelligence asset to the CIA... News of General Gosh's visit to Washington caused consternation in human rights circles. The general is among 51 Sudanese officials implicated in human rights abuses by the international criminal court. "I quite understand that the war on terrorism means dealing with bad actors, but to fly in one of Sudan's chief committers of what Washington has formally described as genocide is deeply disturbing," said an independent Sudan analyst, Eric Reeves. He noted there had been signs of a slight thaw towards Khartoum for some time - despite the state department's official stance. More.

The Disengaged: Gaza And The Fragmentation Of Palestinian Nationhood

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"It is incumbent upon us to ask ourselves what possible benefits Israel derives for itself by continuing to squeeze the Gaza Strip even after its 'Disengagement Plan.' What does it gain by promoting policies that would make the establishment of a viable Palestinian state impossible?.."

The possible planet imagined last year near the brown dwarf 2M1207A has been confirmed to be orbiting the brown dwarf. It´s mass is about five times that of Jupiter´s and it´s distance from the brown dwarf is 55 times that of Earth´s distance from our sun. This is the first confirmed image of a planet outside our own solar system. More.

Poll: Palestinians view Abu Mazen’s performance as weak

The parable of Putin's visit

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It would be almost superfluous to mention that these words "were received with astonishment and disappointment in Jerusalem" (in the Prime Minister's Office they were even "stunned"). Not that that's surprising, or unusual. Is there any development that is not received in Jerusalem "with astonishment," usually mixed with "disappointment"? Quickly, our friend "fear" joins in: "Fear was expressed in Jerusalem" that the anti-aircraft missiles that Russia will be supplying to Syria will be transferred to terror organizations in the Gaza Strip, and that these organizations will endanger civil aviation. And at the end of the march of "fear," "disappointment" and "astonishment," her majesty, "our main concern," kicked in: "The missiles will slip from the Syrians into the hands of Hezbollah, and then they will infiltrate into Gaza and will be turned into shoulder missiles and will greatly restrict the flights of the Israel Air Force in the skies of the Gaza Strip," in the words of a senior military source.

Is truth a casualty of election?

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Blair is a politician who has a great capacity for self-persuasion before he sets out to convince others. And if it becomes politically necessary he is probably quite capable of convincing himself of the continued existence of the tooth fairy and the Marie Celeste, having just run the possibilities past the Joint Intelligence Committee to ensure they cannot rule out either possibility.

Human Rights Watch says that what happened to the Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib was only the tip of an iceberg.

History lost in dust of war-torn Iraq

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Professional smugglers connected to the international antiquities mafia managed to break some of the sealed doors of the Baghdad Museum storage rooms. They looted priceless artefacts such as the museum's entire collection of cylindrical seals and large numbers of Assyrian ivory carvings. More than 15,000 objects were taken. Many were smuggled out of Iraq and offered for sale. To date, 3,000 have been recovered in Baghdad, some returned by ordinary citizens, others by the police. In addition, more than 1,600 objects have been seized in neighbouring countries, some 300 in Italy and more than 600 in the United States... The picture there is appalling. More than 150 Sumerian cities dating back to the fourth millennium BC - such as Umma, Umm al-Akkareb, Larsa and Tello - lie destroyed, turned into crater-filled landscapes of shredded pottery and broken bricks. If properly excavated, these cities - covering an estimated 20 sq km - could help us learn about the development of the human race. But the looters have destroyed the monuments of their own ancestors, erasing their own history in a tireless search for a cylinder seal, a sculpture or a cuneiform tablet that they can sell to a dealer for a few dollars. It is tough, poorly paid work carried out by jobless Iraqis with no way of earning a better income.

Sometimes you can go too far when portraying yourself humble and modest, like the new pope Benedict IX has done:

``As the trend in the ballots slowly made me realize that - in a manner of speaking the guillotine would fall on me - I started to feel quite dizzy,'' a smiling Benedict said, clearly joking. ``I thought that I had done my life's work and could now hope to live out my days in peace. I told the Lord with deep conviction, 'Don't do this to me.''' He recalled saying to God in his prayers: ``You have younger, better, more enthusiastic and energetic candidates.'' ``Evidently, this time He didn't listen to me,'' Benedict said.

Holier than thou
In the age of fame and media scrutiny the new Pope must be without sin

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It's an article of faith in the media that John Paul II died as the most famous pope there had ever been. But a fresher cause for reflection is that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, at the moment of appointment, was already more recognisable than any previous new pontiff. Usually, the new man is largely unknown to both the media and the crowd in St Peter's Square, but on this occasion background television packages on the German were ready to roll as soon as his name was announced and the face on the balcony was already familiar to international TV audiences... The German cleric's elevation has been generally interpreted as the triumph of conservative over liberal forces within the college of cardinals. But an alternative view is that the princes of the church were playing Pope Idol. Dizzied by the celebrity achieved by John Paul II, they voted for the most famous among their number: a man who, because the last pope was the first to die and be mourned in a time of live 24-hour news, had, quite improbably for a backstage Vatican theologian, become a television face.

Checkpoint for ever?

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This is happening to me more and more these days as my daily travels bring some of the concrete (literal as well as figurative) changes on the ground become clear to the eye. Traveling in the north West Bank on the road between Jericho and Tiberias one is struck with the changes happening near the former green line. The structures being built are looking more and more like a border. The problem is that the location of this new 'border' is a few kilometers inside the Palestinian area. There was a check point at the former green line and now the checkpoint has been moved inside the West Bank in parallel to the newly built structure. I have yet to hear any serious complaint about the placement of this new location deep into Palestinian lands. I am not sure whether the reason is simply lack of knowing or the fact that the Palestinian leaderships' agenda is so crowded with critical issues that some of these issues seem to fall between the cracks.

By stealing a few square kilometer there and another here and eventually - as Israel´s current plan goes - 8% of the West Bank, displacing at least 50 000 Palestinians and leaving 150 000 marooned in occupied East Jerusalem, Israel gets little in the way of plunder and much in the way of hate and future bloodshed. So little shouldn´t be the cause of so much current and future suffering.

Corpses keep coming from Iraq's river of death

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The shocking images come from Iraq's new killing fields - the small town of Madain, just 32km from Baghdad. In other times the massacre might have prompted calls for international intervention. But there are already 150,000 US and British troops in Iraq and this was done under their noses... Madain has had no police force since a mob of criminals and insurgents burned down the police station last year. The police fled. Sunni guerillas quickly took over, running the town as their own criminal fiefdom and randomly killing Shia residents, whom they considered infidels and US sympathisers. Then they launched an all-out attempt to purge the town of its Shia.

Survey of 244 glaciers in the Antarctic Peninsula during the last 50 or so years(on average the data starts from 1953), shows 87% of them in retreat. The biggest losses have come during the last 5 years. The glaciers are retreating on average 50 meters a year. Global warming - the average temperature on the area has risen by 2 degrees Celsius during the last half century - seems to be the main culprit, but shifting ocean currents maybe also a factor. Nature. BBC.

Pope Benedict XVI’s political resume: theocracy and social reaction

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The selection of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as the new pope is a clear sign that the Vatican will seek to use its influence to promote the most reactionary political forces within the ruling elites of countries around the world, particularly in Europe. Ratzinger’s long record as enforcer of Church doctrine and chief adviser to Pope John Paul II strongly indicates that as Pope Benedict XVI, he will aggressively intervene into political affairs, using issues such as abortion and homosexuality to foster the development of a social base for right-wing parties and policies. The new pope has close ties to ultra-conservative factions within the Catholic Church, such as Opus Dei, which are openly hostile to the core democratic principle of the separation of church and state, and seek to elevate the Church over civil authority. Such theocratic tendencies are increasingly being embraced by parties on the right as part of their ideological arsenal for attacking all of the social and democratic gains achieved in the course of the twentieth century.

Christian Europe RIP
The new Pope will hasten the decline of the old continent's formative faith

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Atheists should welcome the election of Pope Benedict XVI. For this aged, scholarly, conservative, uncharismatic Bavarian theologian will surely hasten precisely the de-Christianisation of Europe that he aims to reverse. At the end of his papacy, Europe may again be as un-Christian as it was when St Benedict, one of the patron saints of Europe, founded his pioneering monastic order, the Benedictines, 15 centuries ago. Christian Europe: from Benedict to Benedict. RIP.

From “grand inquisitor” to pope: Benedict XVI to head crusade vs. secularism, democracy

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With the selection of Josef Ratzinger as the new pope, the Roman Catholic hierarchy has placed at its head a hard-line enforcer of Church dogma, and one of the Vatican’s fiercest opponents of not only Marxism, but liberalism, secularism, science and virtually all things modern.

I think that Benedict XVI is really a compromise candidate; his election made possible to postpone - maybe for a few years - the necessary, but extremely hard job of tackling the problems that the Catholic Church is facing and choosing the way it will take in the future. The cardinals chose status quo for this time; next time the situation will be even more critical.

One wouldn´t be totally surprised if there would be a some kind of split in the Catholic Church in the coming decades. After all, they were a quite common feature in the Church during large part of it´s history. We could end seeing competing conservative and liberal cardinals electing competing popes. Not likely, but the world has seen been bigger surprises in the past few decades.

It has been claimed that one of the mistakes of the Catholic Church in the late Middle Age and during Renaissance was to elect lawyers instead of theologians as popes. They knew and protected the office and powers of the popes against Church Councils and laymen, but spiritual matters tended to get too little of their attention. It maybe that the election of learned theologians as popes instead of more feet-in-the-ground men will be seen as a mistake in the future. Benedict XVI may know everything about Catholic doctrine and be an efficient leader of the Vatican burocracy, but the way he faces the more down-to-earth matters will decide the success of his reign, and if he wants to be remembered as a succesful pope, he may have to be less than totally succesful protector of orthodoxy, and make compromises. After all, today´s popes can´t force people to be members of the Catholic Church - the luxury that most of their predecessors had - they have to make people want to be members of the Catholic Church.

Washington Post glorifies US military “ruthlessness” in Iraq

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A disturbing article by Washington Post journalist Steve Fainaru, published on April 13, serves to both justify and promote a colonial and homicidal mentality among American troops fighting in Iraq... The latest article is an indication that the Washington Post considers the collective punishment meted out against the people of Fallujah to be the model for counter-insurgency operations in cities and towns across Iraq. To do so, it needs men like Ruiz, who have been so brutalised by the desperate conditions of life in the US and their experiences in the American military that they approach killing another human being without feeling the slightest moral or political qualms.

The last pope from Europe

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So, the papacy has left Italy, probably forever. The election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI looks very much like the continuation of John Paul II's papacy by other means. It is not Italian, and not in the least bit liberal... But perhaps the lesson of the new pope's election is that if the church has to choose between its authoritarian character and compromise with the rich and secular parts of the world, it will move over further to the places which are neither. It seems impossible that the next pope will be European.

First part of the Axum obelisk arrives back to Ethiopia from Italy.

The battle for the `fingernails'

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While all the attention is focused on the highly publicized evacuation of the settlers from Gush Katif, the real battle for Israel's borders is taking place in the West Bank. It could be years before the eastern border with the Palestinians is finally settled, but meanwhile, the bulldozers and builders are at work - as has been the custom of Israeli greed for the last 38 years of occupation - in an attempt to "create facts on the ground" against all logic and against the long-term interests of the State of Israel... The "fingernails" plan is meant to delay as much as possible any future discussion of the settlements in the Ariel bloc. All the harassment of the Palestinians in this interim period, harming their source of livelihood, their lands, homes and freedom of movement, will only sow more hatred. Ultimately, no separation fence route will be able to defend Israel from that hatred.

The Case Against Alan Dershowitz: The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel vs. Alan Dershowitz

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Alan Dershowitz is a well-known lawyer and professor at Harvard Law School, a prolific author, and makes regular appearances in the media. When it comes to Israel, he is particularly outspoken and taken quite seriously within certain segments of the North American mainstream. Whether he deserves to be taken seriously is another issue altogether...

Genetic testing reveals awkward truth about Xinjiang’s famous mummies

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After years of controversy and political intrigue, archaeologists using genetic testing have proven that Caucasians roamed China’s Tarim Basin 1,000 years before East Asian people arrived... The research, which the Chinese government has appeared to have delayed making public out of concerns of fueling Uighur Muslim separatism in its western-most Xinjiang region, is based on a cache of ancient dried-out corpses that have been found around the Tarim Basin in recent decades.

Israel, on Its Own, Is Shaping the Borders of the West Bank

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In the meantime, Mr. Sharon and Washington continue negotiating what a freeze means, with Israel being pushed to define where existing construction stops within large settlement areas like Maale Adumim, which was established in 1975. Israeli officials say Washington will allow construction within existing built-up areas but not outside them. Even that position, which American officials will not publicly confirm, seem to violate Israel's promises under the road map to freeze settlement growth after March 2001, including natural growth. That is why Mr. Bush was so upset, and publicly so, about the announcement that Israel was planning 3,500 new units in a 4.6-square-mile area known as E1, adjacent to Maale Adumim, enough to house 14,000 new settlers. The mayor of Maale Adumim, Benny Kashriel, says the community of 32,000, with its flowerbeds and shopping mall, is widely accepted as part of Israel and will stay that way, so that new construction is necessary to survive. "We're building in Maale Adumim territory," he said. "We're not expanding at all." Large municipal boundaries around smaller communities are a standard Israeli device, critics say, to make it seem that new settlement construction is merely "thickening" existing settlements. The official municipal boundaries of Maale Adumim are huge, larger than Tel Aviv's, and stretch nearly to Jericho. The settlement is built up on only about 15 percent of its official area.

Conservative German cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has become pope Benedict XVI. So, tradition and continuity prevailed. Ratzinger is a divisive figure, but then he is an old man, 78 years old, and his papacy will not likely last more than few years - and who knows, he may, now as he has been elected, see it wise to take a small turn towards the centre - and the cardinals can then heal any wounds caused by his reign - if needed - by electing a more liberal successor.

Bush’s meeting with Sharon confirms US support for West Bank land grab

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Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s April 11 visit with President George Bush provided yet another demonstration of US support for the continuing expansion of Zionist settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and for Israel’s ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people.

Gaza: the Line of Memory and Despair

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It hurts living in Gaza. It always has. Even those in the equally distraught West Bank pitied us Gazans. For one, the Strip was labeled, "the world's largest open-air prison", and my old neighborhood was for a long while known as the "starvation camp". We earned this title after the first Gulf War when Israel staged a 56-day curfew in most of the Gaza Strip and we ran out of food some days after its wake. If it wasn't for some wild grasses and bushes that had grown sparsely around the camp, God only knows what would've happened.

Decoded at last: the 'classical holy grail' that may rewrite the history of the world

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Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed... The papyrus fragments were discovered in historic dumps outside the Graeco-Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus ("city of the sharp-nosed fish") in central Egypt at the end of the 19th century. Running to 400,000 fragments, stored in 800 boxes at Oxford's Sackler Library, it is the biggest hoard of classical manuscripts in the world. The previously unknown texts, read for the first time last week, include parts of a long-lost tragedy - the Epigonoi ("Progeny") by the 5th-century BC Greek playwright Sophocles; part of a lost novel by the 2nd-century Greek writer Lucian; unknown material by Euripides; mythological poetry by the 1st-century BC Greek poet Parthenios; work by the 7th-century BC poet Hesiod; and an epic poem by Archilochos, a 7th-century successor of Homer, describing events leading up to the Trojan War. Additional material from Hesiod, Euripides and Sophocles almost certainly await discovery.

Exaggeration? Almost certainly. Wild optimism? Undoubtedly. But hopefully there´s some truth in this.

Bush silent as top terrorist seeks US asylum

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“If you harbor terrorists, you are a terrorist,” were the words used by President George W. Bush in justifying the invasion of Afghanistan three-and-a-half years ago and launching the campaign of worldwide militarism known as the global war on terror. But the Bush administration is itself harboring a notorious terrorist, wanted for the mid-flight bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner as well as other deadly attacks on civilian targets and attempted assassinations. The terrorist in question is Luis Posada Carriles, a CIA-trained Cuban exile who slipped quietly across the US-Mexican border last month and is now formally applying for political asylum in the United States.

Audio slideshow: Liberation of Belsen

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Horrific scenes greeted British troops as they entered Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on 15 April 1945. They were accompanied by the BBC's Richard Dimbleby who recorded his first impressions for radio.

Israel clears officer of killing journalist who had white flag

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The British government formally protested to Israel after the army officer who opened fire when the film-maker James Miller was shot dead in Gaza two years ago was acquitted of disciplinary charges. The decision by the head of Israel's Southern Command to clear the officer overturned a recommendation by the military advocate general that he should be severely disciplined. Mr Miller was killed in Rafah in 2003 while walking back to his lodgings displaying a white flag and clearly identifying himself to troops as a journalist. The officer acquitted yesterday has admitted opening fire and a 79-page report by Brigadier-General Avihai Mandelblit, the advocate general, held that the first lieutenant in the Bedouin Desert Reconnaissance Battalion had fired in clear breach of army rules of engagement.

The settlement tic

And they are still frantically building blocs of houses, blocs of housing projects, blocs of settlements and "thousands of housing units" beyond the pre-Six-Day War border: not out of urban needs, not out of demographic urgencies, not for the sake of quality of life, not out of any rational economic and urban planning - but building for the sake of building, as a barrier and barricade against the very possibility of having to evacuate the territory on which the buildings will stand... At some stage this blind Zionist inertia that knows no bounds (in every sense of the word - limits, borders, restraint) and measures everything in terms of quantities and area will have to stop and focus on the quality and the flavor of our lives as Israelis. And then it will become clear that size does not always make the difference; we have already learned that when there is no peace and no security, even the most massive housing projects and houses can produce fear and misery. And as Sharon fights like a lion for more territory, and more time, and another ridge, and another "settlement bloc" with X "thousands of housing units" - he is liable to discover, too late as usual, that this war too is anachronistic and a waste of time, like most of his wars.

US and UK blamed for oil scandal

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The US and Britain are partly to blame for the scandal enveloping the UN oil-for-food programme, Secretary General Kofi Annan has said. Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein made billions of dollars smuggling oil in defiance of sanctions policed by the US and Britain, the UN chief said... US Senate investigators have alleged that the Iraqi regime received some $4bn (£2.13bn) in illegal payments from oil companies involved in the programme. The BBC's Michael Voss in New York says this figure is dwarfed by the $14bn (£7.5bn) that allegedly came from "sanctions-busting" - illegally selling oil to neighbouring states such as Jordan and Turkey. "The bulk of the money that Saddam [Hussein] made came out of smuggling outside the oil-for-food programme, and it was on the American and British watch," Mr Annan said. "Possibly they were the ones who knew exactly what was going on, and that the countries themselves decided to close their eyes to smuggling to Turkey and Jordan because they were allies."

UN condemns Israeli settlements

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The UN has condemned Israeli settlement building in Palestinian territories and called for the policy to be reversed. The resolution at the annual Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva was passed easily with only the United States and Australia voting against. Two other resolutions were also passed, calling for Israel to withdraw from the Golan and condemning its use of force.

Votes went 39-2, with 12 countries abstaining. The usual suspects supported and other usual cowards were too terrified to stand against the might of Israel.

I don´t think it to be improbable that the actions of the Israeli army during the last days, like today´s, are an attempt to provoke violence from the Palestinian side, which would then give Israel an excuse - according to it and it´s vassals - to claim that the Palestinians are breaking the ceasefire, and that so Israel can break off the negotiations and hurry on with the landgrabs.

For a Pax Europeana
Can we fold the remains of the Ottoman empire into a new European empire?

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We talk a lot these days about a Pax Americana, as a successor to the Pax Romana. The United States played a vital role in bringing peace to the Balkans in the 1990s, and could help keep the peace there now by supporting Nato enlargement. But a Pax Americana is not on offer in Europe's backyard. This one is up to us. Isn't the prospect of a Pax Europeana, embracing the whole continent, worth the undoubted risk?

There´s one simple problem:The EU is uncapable of acting when needed and even when facing the resistance from the puniest of foes, it retreates. There can be no continental peace nor empire when the will to protect even the most selfish interests of EU - not to speak of any high ideals - is lacking. In the Mediterranean, an area that should be the EU`s backyard, where it should be calling the shots, it´s standing in the aisles and watches as the US monster rages and creates problem for the EU, as many individual EU members court the monster´s favours.

EU needs leadership that has more aggressiveness, stubborness, arrogance and far more spine and will to do what is necessary for the benefit of the EU.

Who will serve the servants of God?

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Will the Curia vote as a block or might this be a conclave where the Germans flex their muscles? Or will it simply follow the old Roman adage of a fat Pope following a skinny one? One thing is certain: there is no clear front-runner in this papal election.

One thing against an Italian pope is the fact that John Paul II pretty much finished the transformation of the office of bishop of Rome to an universal leader of the Catholics. One can say that being a bishop of Rome is a continually decreasing part of the job. And selecting an Italian now would be seen too much a conservative choice, a step back if not turning the back of the Church toward the world. And certainly we must remember that the reason Italians are so overpresented when it comes to popes is that since the 11th century the pope has been selected by those cardinals that can get to Rome to attend the conclave, who of course, for transportation reasons alone, were mostly Italians, and when an Italian was elected, he tended to make mostly other Italians cardinals. Nowadays the situation is different.

The exception to the rule of Italians are the times when the papacy was under control of powerful non-Italian states; from the 6th to the early 8th century the East Roman empire put men from the Greek speaking world to the papal throne and then the German Holy Roman Emperor Henry III(1017-1056, r. 1039-56) put a succession of Germans to the papal throne in the 1040s and 1050s -as he practically saved it from the Roman aristocracy - that had made the office of pope practically their heirloom - and started the development of increasing papal and Church power, which soon pitted his son Henry IV(1050-1106, r. 1056-1105) against the pope Gregory VII(c.1020/25-1085, r. 1072-85). And of course the were the French popes of the Avignon papacy(1305-1378).

So, I would be surprised if the next pope would be Italian.

Titan probe's pebble 'bash-down'

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An ice pebble was almost certainly the first thing the Huygens probe struck as it landed on Titan... "We probably pushed the pebble to one side and then ploughed into the stuff underneath which we are pretty convinced is a 'sand' made of ice," the principal investigator on the Huygens surface science package explained.

The National Party - officially it´s successor the New National Party, but it´s the same in every meaningful way - that created the apartheid system in South Africa after the Second World War, is set to disband after getting less than 2% of votes in the last parlamentary elections.

Israeli human rights groups condemn Sharon government’s Gaza policies

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The report also critically examined Israel’s claim that its status as an occupying power in Gaza will end with the pending withdrawal of settlers and military installations within the territory. B’tselem and HaMoked pointed to a number of legal experts’ opinions, as well as precedents in international law, which made clear that Israel will remain an occupying power after the completion of the “unilateral disengagement” plan in Gaza, and will still have all the humanitarian and legal obligations that accompany this status.

The Orange Revolution

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Last autumn, Ukraine imprinted itself on the political consciousness of the world for the first time in its history. In what was christened the "orange revolution," vast crowds wearing orange scarves gathered in subzero temperatures in Kyiv's Independence Square to demand a fair election for president. They won. Under its new president, Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine can move toward what he and his allies hope will be a working democracy and market economy under the rule of law, and toward membership in the European Union.

Outraged Palestinians demand end to evictions

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Palestinians are urging the international community to stop the evictions of 58 people from their farms in Al-Khader in the occupied West Bank. Palestinian officials regard the demolition of their homes - which could begin as early as next week if court action fails - as further evidence that settlement-related activity is continuing unabated in the West Bank while the Israeli government prepares to withdraw 8,000 settlers from Gaza... The Israeli military has issued final demolition orders on three outbuildings and seven homes belonging to an extended Palestinian family which for more than 200 years has owned and farmed the adjacent vineyards and orchards in the Um Rukba South neighbourhood of this town west of Bethlehem.

Gaza violence jeopardises truce

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Israeli soldiers have shot dead three Palestinian teenagers on the edge of a refugee camp in southern Gaza. Witnesses say they were killed trying to retrieve a football in a no-go area near the Egypt border; the Israeli army says it is investigating the report. It is the most serious such incident since Israeli and Palestinian leaders declared a ceasefire in February.

What would these soldiers think if in future their own children would be killed for playing football? You have to be quite a monster to shoot children to death, even if they go to get their football from "a forbidden area".

Pope John Paul II: a political obituary

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John Paul II was a charismatic figure, who was able to somewhat offset the protracted decline in mass support for the Church and hold the institution together. His departure will intensify the internal and external pressures on this ancient, sclerotic and reactionary institution. The absurd lengths to which the media is going to use John Paul II’s death to promote the Church is itself a contradictory expression of the crisis of that institution, and the bourgeois order which it defends.

Ibrahim al-Jaafari, representing the Shia coalition, has been named the prime minister of Iraq.

Talabani leads renaissance of Iraqi Kurds

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The new President is a burly, mercurial figure who has shown great ability to survive numerous setbacks and defeats in the past. He is expected to live in the mansion in Baghdad formerly occupied by Barzan al-Tikriti, the half-brother of Saddam Hussein who is now in prison. Mr Talabani is believed to have brought 3,000 peshmerga, elite Kurdish soldiers who are now members of the Iraqi army, as his bodyguard in Baghdad. Mr Talabani is likely to play a far more powerful role than his predecessor, Ghazi al-Yawer, who will be one of his deputies. He already has the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, a powerful political and military organization, under his command. Since the Gulf War in 1991 he has ruled half of Kurdistan and in 1993 his forces attacked and captured the oil city of Kirkuk. He rose to influence as a lieutenant of Mullah Mustafa Barzani, the founding father of Kurdish nationalism in Iraq. He joined the Kurdistan Democratic Party at the age of 13, trained as a lawyer and by 1958, when the Iraqi monarchy was overthrown, he was in the inner circle of the party. At the time of the great Kurdish defeat in 1975 - after the Kurds were treacherously abandoned by the US and the Shah of Iran - Mr Talabani broke away to form his own party called the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. For years he competed with Massoud Barzani, the present leader of the KDP, a rivalry which periodically led to heavy fighting and, in the 1990s, to civil war in Kurdistan.

UN review paints gloomy picture of 2004 economy in occupied Palestinian territory

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Throughout 2004, violence continued, particularly in the Gaza Strip, and the lives of thousands of Palestinians and Israelis alike were dramatically affected. In 2004, 118 Israelis and 881 Palestinians were killed including eight Israeli and 160 Palestinian children; a total of 602 Israelis and 4,009 Palestinians were injured. In 2004, 1,443 Palestinian buildings were demolished in the Gaza Strip resulting in the dispossession of 13,510 Palestinians... The humanitarian situation in 2004 remained vulnerable. Around half of the Palestinian population was living below the official poverty line of US $2.10 per day (compared to just 22% in 2000). Furthermore, 16% of Palestinians (approximately 560,000 people) were in deep poverty.6 Unemployment increased as well. Palestinians continued to face problems reaching their places of work, schools and hospitals, and standards of health and education continued to deteriorate. In some parts of the territory, Palestinians' needs for additional humanitarian assistance rose sharply as a consequence.

Report claims evidence of Mugabe rigging

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A Zimbabwean pro-democracy movement Sokwanele, whose name translates as "enough is enough", said official figures showed massive ballot stuffing started half an hour after the polls closed at 7pm when sample counts showed a victory for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. In the most extreme cases, the group claims that Zanu-PF more than doubled its support in some constituencies from 6,000 to 16,000 votes in the hours between the polls closing on March 31 and a result being declared early the next morning. "The fraud is out, and for all to see," the report said. "There can be no denying that Zanu-PF have been caught red-handed." Sokwanele said the fraud was revealed when the turnout figures as of 7.30pm for 72 out of Zimbabwe's 120 constituencies were mistakenly read out on state television and radio by officials from the electoral commission. That meant the group could compare the original turnout figures with the much higher number of votes reported in the later results. Assuming Zanu-PF would not use "ghost voter" ballots to increase the opposition share of the vote, the difference would be the extra votes the party gave to itself. In the Goromonzi constituency in Mashonaland East province, the electoral commission put turnout at 15,661 at 7.30pm but the declared results read out several hours later added up to 26,123 votes: Zanu-PF recorded 16,782 - more than the announced number of voters - the MDC took 8,578 and 763 ballot papers were spoiled. Subtracting the 10,462 excess votes from the declared Zanu-PF total, Sokwanele puts the ruling party behind the MDC on 6320 votes in Goromonzi.

Facelift seals standing of oldest hominid

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The new teeth samples verify that Toumaï had small canines, alongside large molars and premolars that had thick enamel. Such a pattern is similar to that of later members of the human family. The virtual reconstruction, led by Brunet's colleague Christoph Zollikofer at the University of Zürich-Irchel in Switzerland, uses a high-resolution computed tomography, or CT, scan to show what the fossil would look like without its cracks and other distortions. The reconstruction shows that the opening in the base of the skull through which the spinal cord passes, called the foramen magnum, is oriented so that the neck points downwards. But in apes, such as gorillas, the neck point backwards, explains Dan Lieberman, a palaeoanthropologist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of Brunet's team. This means that Toumaï's head balanced on top of its spine, suggesting an upright walking stance. "The evidence certainly suggests that Toumaï was a biped," says Lieberman... [who] ...points out that all of the earliest known bipeds, such as the hominid Australopithecus afarensis, which is about half as old as Toumaï, had large neck muscles. "This work confirms that Toumaï is the earliest and most complete hominid, and suggests that the earliest hominids were bipedal," claims Lieberman. "And that's big news."

The controversial Dmanisi hominids - that some researchers want to make a new species, Homo georgicus - cared for their old, as a 1,77 million year old fossil skull shows. The reason for keeping alive a toothless over 40-year old member of their community is of course almost impossible to find out.

Saul Bellow, the Canadian born US author and winner of the 1976 Nobel prize of literature, has died at the age of 89.

I have read only six of his novels: The Victim(1947), Seize the Day(1956), Mr. Sammler´s Planet(1970), A Theft(1989), The Bellarosa Connection(1989) and Something to Remember Me By(1991). Quite enjoyable, but his longer works were less easily approachable to me, they were works that didn´t seem to go anywhere, and... well, they stalled, and I haven´t finished any of them that I have started to read. And that´s my shame.

'Extra votes gave Mugabe victory'

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Zimbabwe's main opposition party has alleged that the ruling Zanu-PF party won last week's election through the widespread stuffing of ballot boxes. The Movement for Democratic Change says that in at least 11 areas, the number of votes cast was boosted after the polls closed, handing Zanu-PF victory. The MDC further says that it has been unable to obtain full results from the election commission in several areas.

New information on Sahelanthropus tchadensis.

Pope John Paul II(1920-1978-2005) has died.

Mugabe's party sweeps to victory

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So far the party has taken 62 of 120 contested seats, official results show - enough to guarantee Mr Mugabe's party control of the legislature. The opposition, which has 35 seats so far, said "disgusting, massive fraud" had been committed in Thursday's polls. Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme that he was "over the moon" about his party's victory. All Zanu-PF's hard work had paid off and the result was a vindication of the party's good policies, he said... "These were the most free and fair elections in the world," he said.

So the collapse of Zimbabwe can continue. If there will not be a revolution that would save the country.

Dark Days for Dark Energy?

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Dark energy has become widely accepted as the main ingredient in today's cosmic soup. Arguing that "there is no dark energy," as Kolb says, is as heretical today as was advocating for its existence (in the form of Albert Einstein's cosmological constant) a decade ago. Thus it's no surprise that weblogs and university hallways are buzzing with the news of dark energy's possible demise... To most astronomers, the too-faint supernovae demonstrate that the universe's expansion is accelerating, as if it were stepping on the gas pedal after applying the brakes for billions of years. Kolb and his colleagues don't take issue with that interpretation. But when it comes to what's in the gas tank, they stand apart from the crowd. They attribute the universe's accelerating expansion not to dark energy, but to ripples in the fabric of space and time that dwarf the entire visible universe.

U.S. Soldier Convicted of Killing Iraqi Walks Free

Finding him guilty of manslaughter and then letting him go free. American "justice" at it´s "best".

Certainly this ingenious way of distributing "justice" would solve the US problem of ballooning prison populations, if applied to civilian courts.

Astronomers capture photo of extrasolar planet around a normal, Sun-like star. Earlier both VLT and Hubble imagined a likely planet orbiting a brown dwarf.

Great extinction came in phases

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A joint UK-Chinese team tell Nature magazine the disaster that befell the planet 250 million years ago must have happened in phases. Their conclusion is based on the abundance of "organic fossils" found in rocks at Meishan in southern China. These suggest there were at least two episodes to the mass die-off that saw up to 95% of lifeforms disappear... The new data from China supports this view. It is based on the traces left in rocks by cyanobacteria. These photosynthetic, mostly single-celled organisms existed in vast blooms in the Permian oceans. They are one of the major groups of phytoplankton, which form the basis of the marine food chain. However, the phytoplankton not eaten by higher organisms would have fallen to the seafloor over time to be incorporated into the sedimentary rocks we see today. And chemical components in their cell membranes have left telltale signs of their past existence. Specifically, a lipid molecule, known as 2-methylhopane, has left ring structures in the Meishan rock. "These ring structures are the 'hydrocarbon skeleton' - that is how we would refer to them - and they can be preserved for a very long time," explained Dr Pancost. The research team sees two peaks of abundance in the Chinese rocks which are believed to indicate periods immediately following biotic crises in the oceans - times when the collapse of higher marine lifeforms allowed the cyanobacteria populations to boom. "What we think happened was that the grazing pressure changed," explained Dr Pancost. "A lot of the fauna that went extinct went through larval stages that would have fed on the phytoplankton. "Changes in the faunal assemblages would have changed predation patterns, and this led to the phytoplankton prospering."

Pope's condition worsens

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The Pope's condition worsened this evening as his breathing became more shallow and his kidneys deteriorated, the Vatican said... Despite the serious decline in his health, the 84-year-old pontiff appointed 17 new bishops and archbishops and accept the resignation of six others today. It is unusual for such a large number of appointments and resignations to happen in one day.

Digital reconstruction could resurrect original vision of many ancient artists, craftsmen

The final hours approach for a tough, dynamic communicator

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After one of the most extraordinary careers in the Catholic church's history the Polish Pope, known as "the Great Communicator", is finally running out of road.

His last hours appear to be upon him. The Vatican did not confirm last night that John Paul II had received the last rites but church sources said it was "likely", given the precarious state of his health. A top conservative cardinal in Vienna said the Pope was "approaching the end of his life". A priest in the Vatican said the only hope was a miracle.

Ecuador pressured to save Galapagos wildlife

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Ecuador is facing pressure to act against the fishermen who are threatening the ecosystems of the Galapagos Islands, the archipelago that inspired Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. As revealed by The Independent, the Ecuadorean government is being lobbied by the fishing industry to legalise long-line fishing inside the marine reserve at the Galapagos, despite its potentially catastrophic impact on the rare marine life there. Long-lining in pursuit of tuna and swordfish also indiscriminately kills other marine life such as turtles, seals and penguins in by-catch.

Zimbabwe election fraudulent, says MDC leader

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The Zimbabwean parliament's 120 seats are at stake, and a further 30 are appointed by Mr Mugabe, giving Zanu-PF a head start over the MDC. Voter turnout, estimated from official figures, was around 42%, compared to 48% at the last parliamentary election in 2000. Electoral officials said around 10% of voters had been turned away from polling stations in six of Zimbabwe's 10 provinces, either for lacking proper identity documents or being at the wrong voting centre. An independent poll monitoring group put the number of voters turned away at as high as 25%.

Zimbabwe election 'being rigged'

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Zimbabwe's opposition leader has accused the ruling party of trying to steal Thursday's elections. Morgan Tsvangirai said "disgusting, massive fraud" had been committed and said Zimbabweans should "defend their vote", without elaborating. Average turnout was below 50%, chief elections officer Lovemore Sekeramai said. The Zimbabwe Election Support Network, which has some 6,000 observers in the 8,000 polling stations, says that some 10% of would-be voters were turned away, either because their names were not on the electoral roll, they did not have the right identity papers, or they were in the wrong constituency. One man told the BBC News website that his name had been taken off the register since the last election and yet the name of his aunt was still there, although she had died six years ago. Human rights groups say that hundreds of thousands of "ghost voters" appear on the electoral roll of some 5.8m. They fear these entries could be used to record fraudulent votes.

The famous spiral minaret of Samarra in Iraq has suffered damage in an explosion.

After his health deteriorated last evening and continued to do so during the last night, pope John Paul II is most likely now living his last days, if not his last hours. He is in a stable, but grave condition and seems to have accepted his fate, as he wants to remain in his apartment in Vatican, and not to be transferred in a hospital.

His legacy will be mixed, as he did and achieved good things during his pontificate, but he did also wrong decisions - mainly because of his conservative views - and so caused also bad things to happen.

US intelligence on Iraq chaotic and incompetent, says Bush commission

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A presidential commission investigating the intelligence debacle that preceded the Iraq invasion reported yesterday that the damage done to US credibility would "take years to undo". American intelligence was described by the report as being in chaos, often paralysed by the rivalry of 15 different spy agencies and affected by unchallenged assumptions about Baghdad's supposed weapons of mass destruction.

Hutu rebels apologise for Rwanda genocide

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A Rwandan Hutu rebel group offered an unprecedented apology yesterday for the 1994 genocide, announcing that it would lay down its weapons before peacefully returning home. The Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), the main Hutu rebel group, includes the Interahamwe militia who participated in the mass murder of 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus during 100 days of violence. About 2 million Hutus fled Rwanda in the last days of the genocide, as Tutsi-led forces swept across the country. The presence of the rebel militias prompted Rwanda to invade its huge neighbour in 1996, to drive home the refugees. Large numbers of former Interahamwe, their families and other refugees fled deeper into the rainforest, vowing to keep up a guerrilla war. That led to a second Rwandan invasion in 1998, triggering a wider war which sucked in several neighbouring countries and cost an estimated 3 million lives.

Rather simplified account; Tutsi controlled Ruanda wanted also to get the natural resources of eastern DR of Congo in it´s control. The Hutu rebels became largely an excuse for continued interference in DR of Congo.

Carbon dioxide continues its rise

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The atmospheric concentration of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide has reached a new high, say US researchers. The figures - 378 parts per million (ppm) - were gathered by a Hawaiian lab regarded by experts as one of the most reliable in climate research. The rise in the past year is smaller than it was in the previous two years. But the trend remains upwards, as it has for every year since measurements began on top of the Mauna Loa volcano nearly half a century ago. The research was carried out by the US government's Climate Monitoring Diagnostics Laboratory, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).

US spies 'dead wrong' on Iraq WMD

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US spy agencies were "dead wrong" in "almost all" of their pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capability, a commission appointed by the US president said in a final report today. The damning report described the failures as "major" and also revealed that US intelligence still knew "disturbingly little" about the weapons programmes in other potentially dangerous nations.

And yet the US is starting to feed to the world - and especially it´s own bad excuse of citizenry - same garbage about Iran´s nuclear program.