Somalia’s Islamic leaders begin talks with UN-backed government
Thursday 8 June 2006 14:05.
June 8, 2006 (MOGADISHU, Somalia) — Islamic leaders who seized Somalia’s capital after weeks of bloody fighting were beginning talks Thursday with the U.N.-backed government that has so far failed to assert any real control over the nation.
The Islamic militia captured Mogadishu and surrounding areas after defeating a U.S.-backed alliance of warlords, tightening its grip on Somalia. The weak interim government, wracked by infighting, hasn’t even been able to enter the capital because of the violence, instead operating 250 kilometers away, in Baidoa.
Two ministers from the interim government were meeting with "top leaders of the Islamic Courts Union on Thursday," government spokesman Abdirahman Nur Mohamed Dinari said.
The growing power of the Islamic militia - which has alleged links to al-Qaida - has raised fears that Somalia, which has been in chaos for more than a decade, could fall under the sway of Osama bin Laden’s group. U.S. officials have confirmed cooperating with the secular warlords in an attempt to root out terrorists.
http://www.sudantribune.com/article.php3?id_article=16089
'Spider's web' of rendition and secret prisons revealed in report
By John Lichfield in Paris
Published: 08 June 2006
A European investigation has accused Britain and 13 other countries of colluding with the United States in a "global spider's web" of secret CIA prisons and illegal abduction of terrorist suspects.
Although the Council of Europe report yesterday offered no conclusive proof, it said that circumstantial evidence - including official logs of more than 1,000 CIA flights - suggested that secret American detention centres had existed in Poland and Romania. Other countries, including Britain, had colluded with the US in the abduction or "rendition" of terror suspects on their soil and the illegal transfer of prisoners across frontiers.
Dick Marty, a Swiss senator and leading member of the council, said: "It is now clear - although we are still far from having established the whole truth - that authorities in several European countries actively participated with the CIA in these unlawful activities."
"Even if proof, in the classical meaning of the term, is not as yet available, a number of coherent and converging elements indicate such secret detention centres did indeed exist in Europe."
Senator Marty said his conclusions were based on flight logs provided by the European Union's air traffic agency, Eurocontrol, statements from people who claimed to have been abducted by the US, and inquiries in several countries.
His report listed 14 European countries - Britain, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Bosnia, Macedonia, Turkey, Spain, Cyprus, Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Romania and Poland - as having colluded in the "unlawful inter-state transfers" of up to 50 terrorist suspects since the attacks on the US in September 2001. Similar transfers are also believed to have occurred earlier.
The frequent use of two airports - Timisoara in Romania, and Szymany in Poland - suggested internment camps existed near by, he said. The Council of Europe, a separate body from the EU, is the guardian of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Allegations that CIA agents flew prisoners through European airports to secret detention centres in eastern Europe and elsewhere were first reported by The Washington Post last November. It is alleged the system was used to avoid the normal legal procedures in the US, or home countries, and to expose the suspects to extreme interrogation techniques or even torture.
Human rights groups have claimed Poland and Romania housed "secret prisons" - allegations denied by both countries. Warsaw and Bucharest disputed the renewed claims in the report yesterday.
The Polish Prime Minister, Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, said: "These accusations are slanderous... Not based on any facts." Norica Nicolai, the deputy head of Romania's Defence Committee, said: "If someone uses words like 'I believe that,' that person has the obligation to prove his statements..."
Tony Blair, suggested at Prime Minister's Questions that Britain had come out of the report relatively unscathed. He said: "The Council of Europe report has absolutely nothing new in it." Mr Blair had said previously that Britain accepted two US "rendition" requests in 1998 and refused two others. In his statement yesterday, he did not address the report's renewed allegations that Britain had also been a transfer and stop-over point.
The report followed, as an example, one aircraft with the registration number, N313P. The plane arrived in Timisoara from Kabul on 25 January 2004, after picking up Khaled El-Masri, a German who said he had been abducted by foreign intelligence agents in Skopje, Macedonia. Mr Marty said the plane stayed in Timisoara for 72 minutes before leaving for Majorca.
"Having eliminated other explanations - including that of a simple logistics flight - the most likely hypothesis of the purpose of this flight was to transport one or several detainees from Kabul to Romania," Mr Marty said.
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article717614.ece
Oil Falls Below $70 After Al-Qaeda Leader Is Killed in Iraq
June 8 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil fell below $70 a barrel in New York for the first time in two weeks after Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, was killed, prompting speculation the attacks that have cut Iraqi oil output will ease.
President George W. Bush called the death of al-Zarqawi a ``major defeat'' for al-Qaeda. Iraq's output fell 115,000 barrels a day to an average 1.94 million barrels a day last month, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News. The nation produced 2.48 million barrels a day in February 2003, before the U.S.-led invasion.
``The death of this man should help end the attacks that have crippled the oil industry,'' said Kyle Cooper, director of research at IAF Advisors in Houston. ``It's too early to say what the effect of his death will be but it is definitely a psychological boost.''
Crude oil for July delivery fell $1.22, or 1.7 percent, to $69.60 a barrel at 10:19 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Futures touched $69.40, the lowest since May 25. Prices are up 32 percent from a year ago. Oil reached $75.35 on April 21 and 24, the highest since New York trading began in 1983.
``Al-Zarqawi has been killed,'' Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said in a televised press conference from Baghdad. ``This is a message to all those who take violence as a path to reconsider and to go back to their senses before it is too late.'' Seven other people were killed in the raid, he said.
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=a5UwLndGqdKU&refer=news_index
Gorbachev invests in anti-Putin paper
Thursday 08 June 2006, 17:45 Makka Time, 14:45 GMT
Mikhail Gorbachev: Novaya Gazeta will stay independent
Mikhail Gorbachev, the former president of the Soviet Union, has bought a stake in a Russian newspaper critical of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.
Gorbachev said he had bought a 49% share of Novaya Gazeta with Alexander Lebedev, a former spy and businessman turned deputy for the pro-Putin United Russia party.
"Together with my comrade Alexander Lebedev we acquired 49% of Novaya Gazeta," Gorbachev told Kommersant daily.
"The question arises: Will the paper preserve its face? Our answer is simple: The editorial has the controlling stake."
Gorbachev, a long-time fan of Novaya Gazeta, bought 10% of the paper while Lebedev bought 39%. Editorial staff will keep the remaining 51% of the paper's shares.
Novaya Gazeta has published scathing reports about the Kremlin's handling of the conflict in Chechnya, the attack on Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former Yukos owner, as well as official corruption.
Gorbachev pledged not to use the newspaper as a political vehicle.
"We need to provide a pluralism of opinions and the reliability of its publications, and it must be reflective of public opinion in Russia," he said.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/AEF2CD49-ED42-44E5-955F-C8B12671F83E.htm
Prozac approved for eight-year-olds
13:32pm 8th June 2006
Despite controversy over giving antidepressants to adolescents, the European Medicines Agency said the benefits outweighed the risks in children with moderate to severe depression who failed to respond to psychological therapy.
Children's welfare groups have criticised the move. A spokesman for the educational trust Family and Youth concern said: "It is disastrous to start children on powerful drugs as early as eight - they will become dependent."
It is one of a class of drugs known as Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs). There has been research suggesting some SSRIs are associated with an increased risk of suicidal behaviour and thoughts.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/healthmain.html?in_article_id=389720&in_page_id=1774
Well, the unthinkable has happened. According to a recent survey by the Student Monitor that has been conducted twice a year for the last 18 years (that makes that 36 times, for us college grads in the house), Apple's ever-popular iPod has somehow managed to surpass beer in popularity on college campuses this year, which is only the second time in history that "beer" has managed to be overtaken by, well, something that's not beer. The last time? Nearly ten years ago in 1997, with "The Internet." God, we're all nerds.
The percentage of students surveyed who chose the iPod as the number one "in" thing on college campuses jumped 14 percent from last year, topping out at 73 percent this time around with a close second-place tie of "beer" and "FaceBook" (remember what I said about nerds up there?) at 71 percent each.
Though beer might soon regain its No. 1 spot, as it quickly did a decade ago, the iPod's popularity is still "a remarkable sign," Weil said. "For those who believe there's an excessive amount of drinking on campus, now there's something else that's common on campuses."
Most of us couldn't imagine a world in which beer (or in my case, straight shots of 151) and Facebooking that chick you made out with on Friday weren't the most important things in life. Sadly, college kids' priorities seem to be changing, at least for the short term. It's certainly a testament to Apple's increasing prowess over the digital music player market, but how long can they manage to milk it before things fall flatter than that two-day-old Natty Light?
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2006/6/7/4252
Google forging ahead with Wi-Fi effortsBy Elinor Mills, CNET News.com
Published on ZDNet News: June 7, 2006, 4:49 PM PT
Forward in EMAIL Format for PRINT ZDNet Tags: 802.11/Wi-Fi Networking Advertising Search Google Earthlink Inc Microsoft Yahoo! Inc
Google will begin a phased rollout of a free wireless Net access service in its hometown of Mountain View, Calif., this summer and is still hammering out details with San Francisco officials for its citywide Wi-Fi service there.
Testers who volunteer to offer feedback for the Mountain View project will be able to sign up for Wi-Fi starting sometime this summer, and the service will be widely available to the public later this year, Chris Sacca, head of special initiatives at Google, said Wednesday.
"The Mountain View network rollout is on track to be completed by (the end of) June," Sacca said. Google will operate the network itself and has partnered with wireless technology providers, equipment vendors and integration providers to design, build and install the network, he said.
"We are going to be an ISP here in Mountain View," Sacca said, adding that there are no plans at this time to put ads on the service.
Thursday 8 June 2006 14:05.
June 8, 2006 (MOGADISHU, Somalia) — Islamic leaders who seized Somalia’s capital after weeks of bloody fighting were beginning talks Thursday with the U.N.-backed government that has so far failed to assert any real control over the nation.
The Islamic militia captured Mogadishu and surrounding areas after defeating a U.S.-backed alliance of warlords, tightening its grip on Somalia. The weak interim government, wracked by infighting, hasn’t even been able to enter the capital because of the violence, instead operating 250 kilometers away, in Baidoa.
Two ministers from the interim government were meeting with "top leaders of the Islamic Courts Union on Thursday," government spokesman Abdirahman Nur Mohamed Dinari said.
The growing power of the Islamic militia - which has alleged links to al-Qaida - has raised fears that Somalia, which has been in chaos for more than a decade, could fall under the sway of Osama bin Laden’s group. U.S. officials have confirmed cooperating with the secular warlords in an attempt to root out terrorists.
http://www.sudantribune.com/article.php3?id_article=16089
'Spider's web' of rendition and secret prisons revealed in report
By John Lichfield in Paris
Published: 08 June 2006
A European investigation has accused Britain and 13 other countries of colluding with the United States in a "global spider's web" of secret CIA prisons and illegal abduction of terrorist suspects.
Although the Council of Europe report yesterday offered no conclusive proof, it said that circumstantial evidence - including official logs of more than 1,000 CIA flights - suggested that secret American detention centres had existed in Poland and Romania. Other countries, including Britain, had colluded with the US in the abduction or "rendition" of terror suspects on their soil and the illegal transfer of prisoners across frontiers.
Dick Marty, a Swiss senator and leading member of the council, said: "It is now clear - although we are still far from having established the whole truth - that authorities in several European countries actively participated with the CIA in these unlawful activities."
"Even if proof, in the classical meaning of the term, is not as yet available, a number of coherent and converging elements indicate such secret detention centres did indeed exist in Europe."
Senator Marty said his conclusions were based on flight logs provided by the European Union's air traffic agency, Eurocontrol, statements from people who claimed to have been abducted by the US, and inquiries in several countries.
His report listed 14 European countries - Britain, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Bosnia, Macedonia, Turkey, Spain, Cyprus, Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Romania and Poland - as having colluded in the "unlawful inter-state transfers" of up to 50 terrorist suspects since the attacks on the US in September 2001. Similar transfers are also believed to have occurred earlier.
The frequent use of two airports - Timisoara in Romania, and Szymany in Poland - suggested internment camps existed near by, he said. The Council of Europe, a separate body from the EU, is the guardian of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Allegations that CIA agents flew prisoners through European airports to secret detention centres in eastern Europe and elsewhere were first reported by The Washington Post last November. It is alleged the system was used to avoid the normal legal procedures in the US, or home countries, and to expose the suspects to extreme interrogation techniques or even torture.
Human rights groups have claimed Poland and Romania housed "secret prisons" - allegations denied by both countries. Warsaw and Bucharest disputed the renewed claims in the report yesterday.
The Polish Prime Minister, Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, said: "These accusations are slanderous... Not based on any facts." Norica Nicolai, the deputy head of Romania's Defence Committee, said: "If someone uses words like 'I believe that,' that person has the obligation to prove his statements..."
Tony Blair, suggested at Prime Minister's Questions that Britain had come out of the report relatively unscathed. He said: "The Council of Europe report has absolutely nothing new in it." Mr Blair had said previously that Britain accepted two US "rendition" requests in 1998 and refused two others. In his statement yesterday, he did not address the report's renewed allegations that Britain had also been a transfer and stop-over point.
The report followed, as an example, one aircraft with the registration number, N313P. The plane arrived in Timisoara from Kabul on 25 January 2004, after picking up Khaled El-Masri, a German who said he had been abducted by foreign intelligence agents in Skopje, Macedonia. Mr Marty said the plane stayed in Timisoara for 72 minutes before leaving for Majorca.
"Having eliminated other explanations - including that of a simple logistics flight - the most likely hypothesis of the purpose of this flight was to transport one or several detainees from Kabul to Romania," Mr Marty said.
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article717614.ece
Oil Falls Below $70 After Al-Qaeda Leader Is Killed in Iraq
June 8 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil fell below $70 a barrel in New York for the first time in two weeks after Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, was killed, prompting speculation the attacks that have cut Iraqi oil output will ease.
President George W. Bush called the death of al-Zarqawi a ``major defeat'' for al-Qaeda. Iraq's output fell 115,000 barrels a day to an average 1.94 million barrels a day last month, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News. The nation produced 2.48 million barrels a day in February 2003, before the U.S.-led invasion.
``The death of this man should help end the attacks that have crippled the oil industry,'' said Kyle Cooper, director of research at IAF Advisors in Houston. ``It's too early to say what the effect of his death will be but it is definitely a psychological boost.''
Crude oil for July delivery fell $1.22, or 1.7 percent, to $69.60 a barrel at 10:19 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Futures touched $69.40, the lowest since May 25. Prices are up 32 percent from a year ago. Oil reached $75.35 on April 21 and 24, the highest since New York trading began in 1983.
``Al-Zarqawi has been killed,'' Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said in a televised press conference from Baghdad. ``This is a message to all those who take violence as a path to reconsider and to go back to their senses before it is too late.'' Seven other people were killed in the raid, he said.
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=a5UwLndGqdKU&refer=news_index
Gorbachev invests in anti-Putin paper
Thursday 08 June 2006, 17:45 Makka Time, 14:45 GMT
Mikhail Gorbachev: Novaya Gazeta will stay independent
Mikhail Gorbachev, the former president of the Soviet Union, has bought a stake in a Russian newspaper critical of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.
Gorbachev said he had bought a 49% share of Novaya Gazeta with Alexander Lebedev, a former spy and businessman turned deputy for the pro-Putin United Russia party.
"Together with my comrade Alexander Lebedev we acquired 49% of Novaya Gazeta," Gorbachev told Kommersant daily.
"The question arises: Will the paper preserve its face? Our answer is simple: The editorial has the controlling stake."
Gorbachev, a long-time fan of Novaya Gazeta, bought 10% of the paper while Lebedev bought 39%. Editorial staff will keep the remaining 51% of the paper's shares.
Novaya Gazeta has published scathing reports about the Kremlin's handling of the conflict in Chechnya, the attack on Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former Yukos owner, as well as official corruption.
Gorbachev pledged not to use the newspaper as a political vehicle.
"We need to provide a pluralism of opinions and the reliability of its publications, and it must be reflective of public opinion in Russia," he said.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/AEF2CD49-ED42-44E5-955F-C8B12671F83E.htm
Prozac approved for eight-year-olds
13:32pm 8th June 2006
Despite controversy over giving antidepressants to adolescents, the European Medicines Agency said the benefits outweighed the risks in children with moderate to severe depression who failed to respond to psychological therapy.
Children's welfare groups have criticised the move. A spokesman for the educational trust Family and Youth concern said: "It is disastrous to start children on powerful drugs as early as eight - they will become dependent."
It is one of a class of drugs known as Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs). There has been research suggesting some SSRIs are associated with an increased risk of suicidal behaviour and thoughts.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/healthmain.html?in_article_id=389720&in_page_id=1774
Well, the unthinkable has happened. According to a recent survey by the Student Monitor that has been conducted twice a year for the last 18 years (that makes that 36 times, for us college grads in the house), Apple's ever-popular iPod has somehow managed to surpass beer in popularity on college campuses this year, which is only the second time in history that "beer" has managed to be overtaken by, well, something that's not beer. The last time? Nearly ten years ago in 1997, with "The Internet." God, we're all nerds.
The percentage of students surveyed who chose the iPod as the number one "in" thing on college campuses jumped 14 percent from last year, topping out at 73 percent this time around with a close second-place tie of "beer" and "FaceBook" (remember what I said about nerds up there?) at 71 percent each.
Though beer might soon regain its No. 1 spot, as it quickly did a decade ago, the iPod's popularity is still "a remarkable sign," Weil said. "For those who believe there's an excessive amount of drinking on campus, now there's something else that's common on campuses."
Most of us couldn't imagine a world in which beer (or in my case, straight shots of 151) and Facebooking that chick you made out with on Friday weren't the most important things in life. Sadly, college kids' priorities seem to be changing, at least for the short term. It's certainly a testament to Apple's increasing prowess over the digital music player market, but how long can they manage to milk it before things fall flatter than that two-day-old Natty Light?
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2006/6/7/4252
Google forging ahead with Wi-Fi effortsBy Elinor Mills, CNET News.com
Published on ZDNet News: June 7, 2006, 4:49 PM PT
Forward in EMAIL Format for PRINT ZDNet Tags: 802.11/Wi-Fi Networking Advertising Search Google Earthlink Inc Microsoft Yahoo! Inc
Google will begin a phased rollout of a free wireless Net access service in its hometown of Mountain View, Calif., this summer and is still hammering out details with San Francisco officials for its citywide Wi-Fi service there.
Testers who volunteer to offer feedback for the Mountain View project will be able to sign up for Wi-Fi starting sometime this summer, and the service will be widely available to the public later this year, Chris Sacca, head of special initiatives at Google, said Wednesday.
"The Mountain View network rollout is on track to be completed by (the end of) June," Sacca said. Google will operate the network itself and has partnered with wireless technology providers, equipment vendors and integration providers to design, build and install the network, he said.
"We are going to be an ISP here in Mountain View," Sacca said, adding that there are no plans at this time to put ads on the service.
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