World News // Current

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3 days ago

Landslide in northern China kills 23

A state media report says a massive landslide in northern China partially has buried a village and killed at least 23 people, and... more

Future_America
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6 days ago

Jewish Settlers cut olive trees south of Nablus

group of 25 settlers from Yitzhar settlement, south of Nablus, cut down 97 olive trees in the village of Burin this morning. The attack comes on the heels of a similar attack made 5 weeks ago, and a continued campaign of intimidation and harrassment of Burin’s residents from nearby settlements Yitzhar and Bracha.

Approximately 25 settlers began hacking the trees to pieces at 3am this morning. Although cutting manually, the noise awoke a Palestinian resident, whose house is located close to the scene on the Yitzhar ’side’ of Burin. After alerting the village, the Palestinians arrived in the olive grove as it became light to survey the damage, amongst them the owner of the land, Burin farmer Akram Brahim Embran. They counted 97 trees destroyed.

It is not the first time this year that Burin’s olive trees have been caught in the middle of territorial violence, for which Yitzhar settlers are notorious. On 4 October, a neighbouring grove was wiped out when 25 settlers took to the trees with axes in the early hours of the morning, just one day before the village’s olive harvest was due to commence. Previous years have seen fields burnt and crops stolen, in addition to continual settler harrassment and intimidation. The havoc it wreaks on Burin’s economy is obvious, agriculture its main source of income – and identity.

The village of Burin and its surrounding neighbours have been subject to numerous violent attacks from the two illegal settlements of Bracha and Yitzhar that sandwich the local Palestinian villages. Burin village as also lost thousands of dunams of land from annexation by settler construction or proximity, in addition to the repeated attacks on its remaining farmland. In 2006 settlers from the settlement of Bracha fired homemade rockets on the village, burning a house down.

Settlements are illegal under international law and both settlements have numerous outposts that continue to annex further Palestinian land in violation of both Israeli and international law.group of 25 settlers from Yitzhar settlement, south of Nablus, cut down 97 olive trees in the village of Burin this morning. The... more

Ihatethemall
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6 days ago

Hippo brings joy to town

For the second time in less than a week residents of Kasagam in Kisumu woke up to free hippo meat after another rogue animal was... more

stupidy
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7 days ago

Israelis bring green power to West Bank village

,7340,L-3787543,00.html Group of Israeli scientists, activists, put villagers of Susya on electric grid using energy saving... more

CarolynGillis
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7 days ago

Can Baseball bring US and Cuba together?

"Pingpong diplomacy" thawed relations between the United States and China in 1971. Can "baseball diplomacy"... more

Future_America
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7 days ago

Europe: British Home Secretary's Firing of Drug Advisor Continues to Reverberate

Three more members of the British government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) quit Tuesday night after... more

JackHerer
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8 days ago

Idea: Why don't we have a mosh of web services that would allow volunteers to get paid if they need it.

We would all prosper if we had a service that would allow your typical volunteer to get paid per hour if they needed it. Perhaps... more

CarolynGillis
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9 days ago

Blackwater Said To Pursue $1 Million In Iraqi Bribes After Killing 17

Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.

Blackwater approved the cash payments in December 2007, the officials said, as protests over the deadly shootings in Nisour Square stoked long-simmering anger inside Iraq about reckless practices by the security company’s employees. American and Iraqi investigators had already concluded that the shootings were unjustified, top Iraqi officials were calling for Blackwater’s ouster from the country, and company officials feared that Blackwater might be refused an operating license it would need to retain its contracts with the State Department and private clients, worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

Four former executives said in interviews that Gary Jackson, who was then Blackwater’s president, had approved the bribes and that the money was sent from Amman, Jordan, where the company maintains an operations hub, to a top manager in Iraq. The executives, though, said they did not know whether the cash was delivered to Iraqi officials or the identities of the potential recipients.

Blackwater’s strategy of buying off the government officials, which would have been illegal under American law, created a deep rift inside the company, according to the former executives. They said that Cofer Black, who was then the company’s vice chairman and a former top C.I.A. and State Department official, learned of the plan from another Blackwater manager while he was in Baghdad discussing compensation for families of the shooting victims with United States Embassy officials.

Alarmed about the secret payments, Mr. Black cut short his talks and left Iraq. Soon after returning to the United States, he confronted Erik Prince, the company’s chairman and founder, who did not dispute that there was a bribery plan, according to a former Blackwater executive familiar with the meeting. Mr. Black resigned the following year.

Stacy DeLuke, a spokeswoman for the company, now called Xe Services, dismissed the allegations as “baseless” and said the company would not comment about former employees. Mr. Black did not respond to telephone calls and e-mail messages seeking comment.

Reached by phone, Mr. Jackson, who resigned as president early this year, criticized The New York Times and said, “I don’t care what you write.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/world/middleeast/11blackwater.html?_r=1Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to... more