Negative Blogs

Militants set off a car bomb and used rocket-propelled grenades to storm the entrance of an airbase outside Jalalabad, near the Pakistani border Wednesday.

The Taliban say six suicide bombers killed dozens of Afghan and foreign forces in the brazen daylight attack. But NATO spokesman Brigadier General Josef Blotz refutes that claim.

“In this incident several insurgents were killed and I can tell you that the security perimeter was not breached and the insurgents were being stopped by Afghan and ISAF forces very effectively,” Blotz said.

The attack appeared planned and coordinated, much like a Taliban assault last May on the Bagram air base, NATO’s biggest in Afghanistan.

June has been the bloodiest month of the near nine-year-old war for foreign troops, with over 100 killed. The rising toll comes amid a troop surge for an operation that seeks to take on the Taliban in their heartland.

On Tuesday in Washington, U.S. General David Petraeus warned there are still difficult days ahead.

“My sense is that the tough fighting will continue, ” he said. “Indeed, it may get more intense in the next few months. As we take away the enemy’s safe havens and reduce the enemy’s freedom of action, the Insurgents will fight back.”

Petraeus has been nominated to head the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan after his predecessor, General Stanley McChrystal, resigned. McChrystal and his aides had made disparaging remarks about Obama administration officials in a magazine interview.

At Tuesday’s Senate confirmation hearing, Petraeus said he believes the Afghan government and its international allies can still succeed in the fight against the Taliban.

But many observers say any progress will be slow. Jeremy Binnie, a terrorism and insurgency expert at IHS Jane’s defense group, says instead of making sustainable gains and winning over the public, coalition troops have been preoccupied with chasing insurgents.

“What we’re typically seeing that the coalition and Afghan allies are capable of securing sort of district centers, the center of these towns, and displacing the Taliban out of them,” he says. “But the insurgents merely move a few miles down the road and they sort of set up a new safe haven and then they do their absolute utmost to undermine any perception of security.”

Rampant corruption in the Afghan government is also raising doubts about the overall war strategy that is now aimed at winning the support of civilians and potential militant defectors.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder arrived in Kabul Wednesday to discuss the country’s anti-corruption efforts. He also will discuss ways to improve Afghanistan’s judicial system in his meetings with Afghan and U.S. officials.

By VOA News

Smoke rises outside an airfield used by Afghan and international forces in Jalalabad, east of Kabul, Afghanistan, 30 Jun 2010

Rescuers search for survivors after torrential rains cause hill to collapse on homes in south-western China.

Hope of finding survivors was diminishing today as rescuers used heavy machinery including bulldozers to search for at least 107 people trapped under a cin south-west China.

Villagers huddled in tents set up at the site as rescuers searched for survivors.

But there appeared to be little hope, with no word by midday today, said Tian Maosheng, an official from Guizhou Communist party propaganda department, who is helping with the rescue.

“The number 107 remains unchanged, and there is still no sign of life here,” he said.

Homes were buried when the landslide struck the village of Dazhai in Guizhou province yesterday afternoon after days of torrential rains. An official interviewed by state broadcaster CCTV said nearly half a hill had collapsed.

Makeshift tents were set up as first aid stations and soldiers waded through water and mud as they evacuated more than 360 residents.

Light rain this morning hindered rescue efforts, threatening to wash more mud down the slopes, but began to subside later in the day.

Large areas of southern China have been hit by flooding in the last two weeks, with at least 377 people killed and another 142 missing – not including those from Monday’s landslide. More than 3 million people have fled their homes over the past two weeks, according to the ministry of civil affairs.

On Sunday floodwaters began receding in the south and workers finished repairing a dike breach that forced the evacuation of 100,000 people.

By Guardian

Soldiers evacuate residents from the site of a landslide in Dazhai Village, Guanling county in south-west China. Photograph: Chinafotopress/Getty Images.

Police maintained tight security around the summit site, but largely did not intervene as marchers destroyed property. Several protesters were being treated for injuries by fellow demonstrators.

Canadian Police used tear gas to disperse protesters during a massive and violent anti-G20 protest march that saw at least two police vehicles set ablaze, and store and bank windows damaged.

Demonstrators broke the windows of several business establishments, including a Scotia bank, CIBC and a Starbucks.

Protesters also threw bricks at a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) van, breaking its windows.

Toronto Transit Corporation (TTC) streetcars were abandoned on Queen Street.

Two were spray painted with anti-summit graffiti and anarchy symbols.

Police with shields and clubs pushed back a small group of protesters who tried to head toward the security fence around the site of the G-20 summit.

Some demonstrators hurled bottles at police.

About an hour later the group, dressed all in black, smashed the windows of a bank, a coffee shop and some stores.

Police maintained tight security around the summit site, but largely did not intervene as marchers destroyed property.

“We have an enormous amount of resources at our hands,” Constable Wendy Drummond who characterised the police response as “measured” said.

The dynamic in the crowd changed around 3 pm as police donned gas masks.

Some parts of the riot line are as many as three officers deep as the crowd chanted: “Let us through!” Several protesters were being treated for injuries by fellow demonstrators amid reports that paramedics faced delays in getting to the area.

By Thehindu

A police car burns after activists and protesters set it on fire along the streets of downtown Toronto during the G20 Summit. Photo:AP

A senior Taliban commander disguised as a woman was killed by Afghan and international forces today after he opened fire with a pistol and tried to throw a grenade south of the capital c.

Nato reported a US serviceman also died in a roadside bomb attack in southern Afghanistan, and a small explosion detonated in an area that houses foreign embassies and government offices in the capital, but caused no casualties.

The serviceman’s death brought to 85 the number of international forces killed so far in June - already the deadliest month of the nearly nine-year-old war. The figure includes at least 51 Americans.

Intelligence sources tracked the senior Taliban commander, Ghulam Sakhi, to a compound last night in Puli Alam district in Logar province, south of the capital, Nato said. Afghan forces used a loudspeaker to call for women and children to leave the building.

“As they were exiting, Sakhi came out with the group disguised in women’s attire and pulled out a pistol and a grenade and shot at the security force,” according to statement released by the coalition.

“When Afghan and coalition forces shot him, he dropped the grenade and it detonated, wounding a woman and two children.”

Nato said Sakhi, who is known by several aliases, was involved in roadside bombings and ambushes throughout the province, and he kidnapped and killed an Afghan government intelligence chief there.

Abdul Ghafar Sayedzada, head of the criminal investigation unit of the Kabul police, said the explosion in the capital was caused by a small bomb placed on the engine of a government vehicle.

The driver of the car, used by the Afghan National Army, was arrested. The front of the vehicle was damaged, but no one was wounded, he said.

The new violence came the day after four US troops were reported killed and the bodies of 11 Afghan men, some beheaded, were found in rising violence across the country.

By Irishtimes

An Afghan policeman passes by the twisted remains of a US army truck destroyed by a roadside bomb planted by suspected Taliban militants outside the military base of Gorgan. Photograph: Denis Sinyakov/Reuters

More dirty signs of massive oil spill wash ashore; latest cap setback has residents skeptical.

More dirty evidence of the massive oil spill washed ashore along the Gulf Coast for residents who don’t need any more reminders of their frustration over failed efforts to stop the crude gushing from a blown-out undersea well.

In Florida , officials on Thursday closed a quarter-mile stretch of Pensacola Beach not far from the Alabama line when thick pools of oil washed up, the first time a beach in the state has been shut because of the spill. A large patch of oil oozed into Mississippi Sound, the fertile waters between the barrier islands and mainland of a state that has mostly been spared.

The news came as a cap collecting oil from the well was back in place after a deep-sea robot bumped it and engineers concerned about escaping gas removed it for about 10 hours Wednesday.

Even before that latest setback, the government’s worst-case estimates suggested the cap and other equipment were capturing less than half of the oil leaking from the seafloor. And in recent days, the “spillcam” video continued to show gas and oil billowing from the well.

BP’s pronouncements that it would soon be able to collect more spewing oil have “absolutely no credibility,” Jefferson Parish Councilman John Young said. The latest problem shows “they really are not up to the task and we have more bad news than we have good news.”

BP officials said they sympathized and planned to do more.

“For BP, our intent is to restore the Gulf the way it was before it happened,” BP PLC managing director Bob Dudley, who has taken over the company’s spill operations, said in Washington.

BP shares fell sharply in London on Friday following the company’s announcement that the cost of responding to the Gulf of Mexico oil leak has risen to $2.35 billion. The share price dipped as low as 296.6 pence ($4.42) during morning trading, an 8.9 percent drop and the lowest for BP since August 1996. By 2 p.m. in London, shares had bounced back to 310 pence, still below half of the 655 pence price on April 20, the day of the oil rig explosion that led to the oil spill.

By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN

Over the past two months, 47 dolphins have beached themselves on Gulf shores.

The decision by thousands of workers to flee their buildings when a 5.0 magnitude earthquake struck Quebec on Wednesday put them in more danger than if they had found a safe place inside, according to a disaster expert.

The tremor hit at 1:41 p.m. ET south of Echo Lake, Que., 60 kilometres north of Ottawa near the Ontario border and was felt across southern and eastern Ontario and western Quebec, as well as in some U.S. states.

The quake caused the acting mayor of Gracefield, Que., a small town about 50 kilometres from the quake’s epicentre, to ask for emergency assistance after a number of buildings were damaged.

In Ottawa and Gatineau, the quake sent thousands of workers streaming out of office towers and onto the streets, where they awaited word as to whether it was safe to return.

But Prof. Paul Kovacs of the University of Western Ontario said the city workers did the wrong thing.

“Parts of the outside of the building are the most likely to fall and hit you,” said Kovacs, the executive director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction.

“If you move inside of a building or outside of a building during an earthquake that is one of the most dangerous things to do,” Kovacs said.

Images from the past year of Haiti and Chile, where buildings collapsed after more powerful quakes struck, might have led many people to flee. But Kovacs said while people should leave a building if they feel it is poorly constructed or unsafe, most of Ottawa’s buildings are designed to handle quakes.

Janet Drysdale, a seismologist with the Geological Survey of Canada, said if people do leave a building, they should also move a safe distance away, which many people did not do on Wednesday in Ottawa’s downtown core.

Both Kovacs and Drysdale said the safe thing to do in a secure building is get under a secure desk, cover your head to protect it and wait for the quake to end.

Schools in Ottawa’s two biggest school boards and all but one federal building in the National Capital Region were open Thursday morning after passing inspections in the aftermath of Wednesday’s earthquake.

Structural engineers inspected 19 schools with the Ottawa Carleton District School Board, and similar checks were also made at the Ottawa Catholic School Board.

All schools were deemed safe.

Public Works has reopened every federal building in the National Capital Region except for Place du Portage’s Phase 3 building, which is still undergoing structural inspections.

But Thursday is Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day, a provincial holiday in Quebec, so few employees are expected to need to go into the building.

The impact of the quake was felt more north of Ottawa, particularly in Gracefield. Seven buildings — including the town’s 98-year-old church — were damaged, town officials said.

“Right now we have the church that has been affected very badly,” said the acting mayor of Gracefield, Claude Blais, adding that the church was a popular tourist attraction in the town.

A section of Highway 307 near Bowman, Que., north of Ottawa, collapsed into a river as a result of the quake, shutting down that route.

In Montreal, some people felt the rumble — but some didn’t even realize the city had been hit by an earthquake. The tremors, which lasted about 30 seconds, rattled buildings in Toronto and Ottawa, as well as government offices across the Ottawa River in Gatineau, Que.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the two largest quakes in western Quebec occurred in 1935 at magnitude 6.1 and in 1732 at magnitude 6.2. The latter caused significant damage in Montreal.

The agency said earthquakes cause significant damage in the region about once a decade. Smaller earthquakes are felt three or four times a year.

BY CBCNews

A cleanup crew surveys the damage to a church in Gracefield, Que., after the earthquake Wednesday. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press).

International talks to try and stop the hunting of whales have collapsed amid accusations whaling nations like Japan, Iceland and Norway are unwilling to stop the slaughter.

The International Whaling Commission has been negotiating for three years to try and find a new agreement that will limit the number of whales killed every year.

But after two days of closed meetings in Morrocco, it appears the 88 countries involved in the talks have failed to find a common position.

Commercial whaling has been illegal for almost 25 years but there are a number of loopholes such as whaling for ’scientific research’ that allow whaling to continue. About 1,500 animals are killed each year by Japan, Norway and Iceland.

Anti-whaling nations, including the UK, wanted to bring in a quota so that the number of animals killed is limited.

But it was impossible for the IWC to agree a quota that the whaling nations can live with. At the heart of the disagreement is whether to allow any whaling in the Southern Ocean, which is a hunting ground for Japan but is supposed to a be a whale sanctuary.

Anthony Liverpool, acting chairman of the IWC, said the “fundamental positions remained very much apart.”

Monica Medina, US chief delegate, said the American objective remained to “save whales now”.
“After nearly three years of discussions, it appears our discussions are at an impasse,” she said.
Dr Susan Lieberman, director of international policy for the Pew Environment Group, blamed the whaling nations.

“We are deeply disappointed that the governments present here, after more than three years of intense work, could not reach a solution that will benefit whale conservation. In particular, the lack of sufficient flexibility shown by Japan to phase out its whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary prevented a decision from being adopted. Unregulated whaling outside of IWC control, by Japan, Norway, and Iceland, will now be able to continue.”

Some environmentalists have accused Japan of vote-buying, using development aid money and personal favours to swing small, poorer nations to its side in the whaling debate.

But Yasue Funayama, the Japanese whaling commissioner, said her country had offered major concessions to reach a compromise and blamed anti-whaling countries that refused to accept the killing of a single animal.

“We must rise above politics and engage in a broader perspective,” she said.

The whaling commission was created after World War II to conserve and manage whale stocks. A moratorium on commercial whaling was introduced in 1986.

It is thought the moratorium will remain in place but the collapse of the talks means that ships could continue to hunt by using the existing ‘loopholes’.

However there could be other means to stop whaling as Australia has threatened to take Japan to the International Court of Justice to stop the animals being killed in the Southern Ocean.

By Louise Gray

Dead minke whales aboard the flensing deck of the Nisshin Maru research factory ship of the whaling fleet of Japan Photo: ALAMY

A congressional investigation says tens of millions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer funds are indirectly being paid to Afghan warlords, public officials and even the Taliban to ensure safe passage of U.S. supply convoys in Afghanistan.

A lengthy report released late Monday says eight Afghan-based private contractors working with the Defense Department through a $2.1 billion transportation contract are paying several thousand dollars per truck for guards.

The contract covers at least 70 percent of all goods and services used by U.S. forces. 

Congressional investigators say trucking contractors raised the issue with military officials, but their concerns were never properly addressed. 

The report was completed by the House of Representative’s national security subcommittee, which will hold hearings on the report Tuesday.

The U.S. military says it has begun investigating reports of corruption in Afghanistan, and has created a task force to determine the impact of its contracting processes on corruption.

By VOA News

A U.S. armored personal carrier vehicle escorts a convoy of trucks carrying U.S. equipments in Kabul, Afghanistan (File)

Iraqi officials say a bomb attack in the northern part of the country has killed eight people, including six police officers.

The attack came less than 24 hours after twin car bombs killed at least 26 people in the capital, Baghdad.

The latest bombings happened late Sundayin the town of Shirqat.  Reports indicate two bombs were involved and that the second went off as people gathered to inspect the site of the first.

There are conflicting reports as to whether the second bombing was a suicide attack or a roadside bomb.

Iraq has been hit by a wave of violence since the nation’s parliamentary elections in March failed to yield a clear winner.

Some officials fear insurgents may be taking advantage of the country’s political deadlock to try to derail recent security gains. 

The Baghdad bombs exploded within minutes of each other Sunday near the headquarters of the Trade Bank of Iraq.

Police officers and civilians were among the dead. More than 53 people were wounded.

Baghdad’s security chief (General Qassam Mohammed Atta) indicated the bank was the apparent target of the explosions

The bank was established in 2003 after the U.S.-led invasion, and is the conduit for much of the Iraqi government’s efforts to help finance reconstruction and international trade.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing, but an al-Qaida front group (the Islamic State of Iraq) has said it carried out last week’s suicide attack on Iraq’s Central Bank that killed 18 people in Baghdad.

By VOA News

A woman cries out during the funeral for a relative killed in an attack on Iraq's central Bank as the body is taken for burial, 14 Jun 2010.

Both the insurgent group Al Shabab and the US-backed Somali government rely on children to fill their ranks, human rights officials say.

The United States this week joined other members of the United Nations Security Council in condemning the growing use of children in conflict – as soldiers, bomb makers, cooks, and sex slaves – by rebel groups and governments alike.

Yet even as the US singles out Somalia as one of the world’s worst child-soldier offenders, mounting evidence suggests the US-backed Somali government is using child soldiers in its fight with the Islamist-militant Al Shabab group.

And that in turn has some experts concluding that the US assistance is paying the pittance salaries of Somali child soldiers.

At Tuesday’s Security Council debate on children and armed conflict, US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice said the US is “particularly concerned about the situation in Somalia,” where she said all parties to the conflict have “placed several thousand children in the line of fire.”

The US, she said, calls on the parties to the conflict to cease child recruitment and to release those children already in the fight.

But both the US-backed Somali transitional federal government and the rebels the government is battling rely on children to fill out their soldier ranks, say UN and non-governmental human rights officials. The government has a force that is up to one-quarter children, experts estimate, while children may make up as much as three-quarters of Al-Shabab’s fighters.

The Somali government, which barely hangs on in the capital of Mogadishu and has lost much of the country’s central and southern regions to the rebels, acknowledges using children in its war and has not made removing them from the fight a top priority, the New York Times said in a report from Mogadishu Monday.

Tuesday’s Security Council debate came a month after the UN special representative for children and armed conflict for the first time issued a list of the “most persistent violators” of the international convention against the use of children in conflict. That list includes the Somali transitional government, pro-government and insurgent groups in Sudan, rebel groups in Colombia and the Philippines, both the government and rebel groups in Burma, and the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) with roots in Uganda.

In her comments, Ambassador Rice singled out cases of child soldiers in addition to Somalia – including the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But she said the US especially “abhors” the LRA’s practice of “forced recruitment through abduction.”

The UN’s annual report does note some examples of progress. Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN special representative for children and armed conflict, said Burundi was delisted as a convention violator. Also last year, rebel groups in the Philippines, Nepal, and Sudan signed agreements to end their recruitment of child soldiers.

By Howard LaFranchiBy

Al Shabab fighters conduct a military exercise in northern Mogadishu, Somalia, on Jan. 1. The UN Security Council this week condemned Somalia and others for their use of child soldiers.