A brief world news roundup for 22 April 2008.

United States & the Americas

• Press TV – In an ABC television interview on Sunday, Senator McCain blamed Russia for the ongoing standoff with Iran, arguing that the Kremlin obstructs US attempts to pressure the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program.
• INN – Thieves stole two Torah schools valued at more than $100,000 from a Kenosha, Wisconsin synagogue, shortly before the beginning of the Passover holiday.
• McClatchy – A Georgia company that manufactures munitions for the government and law enforcement agencies has been indicted on charges that it defrauded the government by relabeling and selling defective diversionary grenades to the FBI.
• Maclean’s – Prime Minister Stephen Harper arrived in New Orleans on Monday for the North American leaders’ summit.
• Canada.com – A chair in Global Islam has been set up at McMaster University, thanks to a $1-million gift from one of the rulers of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Dr. Sultan Bin Mohammed Al-Qasimi of Sharjah.
• CBS – The world’s longest-ruling political party lost its six-decade grip on power as a former Roman Catholic bishop won the presidency, but the Colorado Party’s legacy of patronage and corruption remain etched deeply into Paraguayan society.
• MSNBC – The victory of the “bishop of the poor” in Paraguay’s presidential election expands a wave of leftist leadership across Latin America and further isolates the few remaining conservative governments.
• Javno – A former member of Colombia’s Congress says she was offered illegal favors by the government to support an amendment that allowed President Alvaro Uribe to stand for re-election in 2006, a charge Uribe denied. The attorney general on Monday opened an inquiry into Yidis Medina’s accusation that the administration promised, but did not deliver, political favors in exchange for supporting the change in law.
• SouthCom – A group of U.S. airmen and soldiers gained insight into the Honduran Military Training Academy, the educational institution that prepares candidates for service in the Honduran army April 16 in Tegucigalpa.
• NPR – The city of Juarez, across the border from Texas, is the newest epicenter of drug violence in Mexico. The Mexican government has sent in 2,500 army troops and federal police to root out corrupt local police. Many in Juarez are cheering for the soldiers.
• CFR – South America has enjoyed robust economic growth in recent years, in part driven by rising global prices for commodities such as oil. Yet energy shortfalls loom on the horizon, both in electricity generation and oil and gas production.
• Weekly Standard – Mennonites and Mammonites… in Paraguay.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• Kommersant – Kommersant has learned that, during a session of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum in Tehran on April 28, Russia will present a draft charter for that organization, which it has long dreamed of turning into a “gas OPEC.” Moscow’s formulation of the tasks and goals of the GECF is softer than Iran’s proposal, which was similar to the charter of OPEC.
• RIA Novosti – The UN Security Council will address a Georgian request to hold an emergency session on the situation in the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict zone, the Council chairman said on Monday.
• Press TV – Moscow has objected Georgia’s drone flights over Abkhazia as Tbilisi summoned Russia’s ambassador to protest the downing of its plane.
• Military.com – A Russian fighter jet has shot down an unmanned Georgian spy plane as it flew over the breakaway region of Abkhazia, Georgia’s air force commander said Monday.
• Kavkaz Center – The Mujahideen units assigned to the Western Front (under command of Amir Tarkhan Gaziyev) entered Bamut, Yandi-Kotar, Ashkhoi-Kotar, Gekhi-Chu, Shalazhi, and a number of other villages.   At least 23 Kadyrov’s murtadin were eliminated, 15 were arrested during the operation.
• ISN – Commentary by Simon Saradzhyan in Moscow for ISN Security Watch (21/04/08). Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov appears to be closer than ever to his goal of winning full control, if not absolute power, over this North Caucasian republic.
• Jerusalem Post – Azerbaijan halted a Russian shipment of equipment intended for Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant, demanding more information for fear of violating United Nations sanctions, officials said Monday. The Russian state-run company Atomstroiexport said one or two trucks carrying the equipment were stopped two weeks ago at the town of Astara, on the Azerbaijani-Iranian border.
• Global Voices – Uzbekistan, Ukraine: Tashkent Blacksmith and His Children.

Middle East

• AFPS – Coalition forces battling al-Qaida terrorists and Iranian-trained “special group” criminals killed 23 terrorists and detained 42 others during multiple engagements and missions across Iraq.
• MNF Iraq – “The insurgents, by and large, have been marginalized in western Anbar,” Marine Corps Col. Pat Malay, commander of Regimental Combat Team 5, told Pentagon reporters.
• MNF Iraq – The Iraqi Army discovered a large weapons and munitions cache in a house located in the Al Hyyaniyah area of Basra April 19. Soldiers from the 1st Iraqi Army discovered the cache during the search phase of Operation Charge of the Knights. The cache consisted of a large number of weaponry with Iranian markings.
• UK MoD – Iraqi Security Forces personnel, supported by UK troops, have been continuing their efforts to target rogue militias in Basra City, uncovering a large quantity of weapons and explosives in the process.
• Dawn – A missile struck the central Baghdad headquarters of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council on Monday, said an official for the party, which is the main rival of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr for control of Shi’ite areas.
• Reuters – The Iraqi government will not allow Shi’ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to wage an “open war” in Iraq and will move to curb his militia, Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said on Monday.
• CSM – The summit of Arab neighbors Tuesday is the third attempt to gain more support for Iraq’s reconstruction from Sunni states.
• AFP – Three months after US forces dropped tonnes of bombs on Arab Jubur and put Al-Qaeda to flight, farmers are everywhere out in their fields tending their tomatoes.
• AFP – A female suicide bomber blew herself up near the office of a group fighting Al-Qaeda in the Iraqi city of Baquba on Monday, killing three of its members, police and a doctor said.
• Asharq Al Awsat – Iraq’s Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani said Monday that oil contracts between the autonomous Northern Iraqi Kurds and foreign companies remain invalid, despite recent amicable talks between the two sides over the country’s long-delayed federal oil law. The Kurds have signed around 25 production-sharing contracts with several small and mid-sized oil companies, but Al-Shahristani said they do not meet the conditions of the draft 2007 law.
• Anthony Cordesman – The Shi’ite Gamble: Rolling the Dice for Iraq’s Future.
• Khaleej Times – A Palestinian militant from the Islamist Hamas movement was killed in an exchange of fire with Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip early on Monday, an emergency services official said.
• NY Sun – Hamas’s latest strategy seems to have been lifted from Mel Brooks’s Sheriff Bart, who threatened to shoot himself in the head if the townspeople tried to kill him. That ploy could work just as well in Gaza as it did in “Blazing Saddles.” The territory’s ruling faction, while keeping up its rocket attacks on the town of Sderot and other southern Israeli civilian centers, is shifting the bulk of its firepower to border crossings and other entry points for goods on which Gazans depend.
• Ya Libnan – For years, Hizbollah has been trading Lebanese-produced heroin and cocaine for Israeli military secrets.
• Al Arabiya – The United Arab Emirates promised to set “a good example” for the Middle East on developing civilian nuclear energy as it signed a cooperation agreement on Monday with the United States.
• SANA – Hundreds of Syrian citizens organized a sit-in outside the International Red Cross Bureau in Damascus marking the Syrian Captive Day, expressing their support to captives in Israel’s prisons and their condemnation of its policies and refusal to abide by the international legitimacy resolutions and continued occupation of the Syrian Golan and the rest of the occupied Arab lands.
• Intellibriefs – Yemen is struggling to balance competing forces as it seeks to quell southern protests, a revived political opposition and rekindled northern rebellion, writes Dominic Moran for ISN Security Watch.

Iran

• Payvand – The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Deputy Head for Safeguards Agreement Olli Heinonen and Iranian nuclear negotiators started negotiations in Tehran Monday afternoon.
• Press TV – A senior Iranian MP says the US has to accept the reality concerning Iran’s achievements in developing an indigenous nuclear capability.
• NCRI – Mohammad-Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, known as Ahmadinejad’s mentor, in a speech let out his fear of new generation’s hatred of the regime, the state-run media reported on Saturday.
• TIME – From President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s office and the sitting rooms of high-ranking mullahs to university campuses and the Farsi-language blogosphere, Iranians are following the American presidential race more avidly than ever before.
• Uskowi on Iran – The influential publisher and editor of Keyhan Hossein Shariatmadari in an editorial on Monday warned Iranian officials against falling into the trap set for them by the US and Israelis to commit themselves to negotiations over “alleged studies.” The term is used by IAEA in reference to research allegedly undertaken in Iran to build nuclear weapons.http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/04/video-russian-m.html

Southeast Asia

• ABC – Clashes and airstrikes in the south killed 11 Taliban militants, Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry said Monday.
• UN – Although over 6 million children returned to Afghanistan’s classrooms a month ago at the start of a new school year, United Nations agencies said today that half of the war-torn country’s young people are excluded from receiving an education, the bulk of them girls.
• IRIN – In the bazaars of small towns such as Kohat, Bannu or Tank, ruined buildings stand desolately, resembling a scene of war. Now such scenes are also becoming more commonplace in Peshawar, NWFP’s provincial capital and a city of over two million people: Most of the affected buildings are shops that once sold music CDs, video or DVD films, or housed tailoring businesses. All have been targeted by militants who hold “Western entertainment”, or the stitching of women’s clothes by male tailors, a violation of religious principles.
• Press TV – The Pakistani government releases the head of an outlawed group as part of its peace talks with rebel groups in the Swat Valley. Maulana Sufi Mohammed, chief of a banned movement was released from a hospital in Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier, where he was under medical treatment for months.
• Reuters – Gunmen in a lawless Pakistani region near the Afghan border released two U.N. workers on Monday after security forces attacked the kidnap gang, officials said.
• Daily Times – There is no sign of a let-up in the ongoing flour crisis in NWFP, as the commodity has once again disappeared from shops and markets. The flour that is available at a few shops and stores of the province is being sold at exorbitant prices. While the Punjab government has banned the export of wheat flour to the NWFP, it is still being transported to the province.
• Asia Times – The weekend release of a video of Tariq Azizuddin, Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan, confirming that he has been in the hands of militants linked to al-Qaeda since being captured in February, places Islamabad in an untenable situation. It can either bow to the militants’ extravagant demands for Tariq’s release or reverse its position and go for all-out war against militancy.
• AFP – Sri Lanka’s military said Monday it had smashed at least 10 Tamil Tiger bunker positions in an offensive in the far north of the island that left 28 rebels and five government soldiers dead. The government also carried out fresh air raids Monday, with three rebel speedboats reported destroyed in the coastal Alampil area.
• Colombo Page – Sri Lanka Air Force MI-24 helicopter gun ships in a night time raid on Sunday destroyed an LTTE mortar launching pad and a ‘forward operating position’ east of Adampan in Mannar. The targeted mortar launching pad in the night raid was located 3-4 km north of the Mannar forward defense lines.
• IHT – French aid group Action Against Hunger has pulled out of Sri Lanka due to concerns the government is not seriously investigating the massacre of 17 of its workers nearly two years ago, a spokeswoman said Monday.
• Times of India – The CPN-Maoist, which has already emerged as the single largest party in the historic Nepal polls, has secured 50 per cent of the directly elected seats under the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system. The Maoists won 120 seats of the total 240 seats, which brings them one seat short of majority.
• Taipei Times – A general strike against spiraling food prices paralyzed the eastern Indian city of Kolkata yesterday as thousands of police were deployed across West Bengal state to stop protests turning violent.
• UPI – India said certain foreign-based militant groups are attempting to revive terrorism in Punjab state. “The government is aware of the efforts the certain militant groups based abroad are making to revive extremism in Punjab and the government has taken various measures to contain such attempts,” Jaiswal said in a written statement.
• RSIS – Bangladesh has been facing political turmoil since October 2006 when a caretaker government assumed power followed by a takeover by the military in January 2007. Initially hailed by the Bangladeshi people as a blessing from the corruption and nepotism that had pervaded Bangladeshi politics, increasing human rights abuses by the government coupled with a poor economy, devastating floods and threats from rising Islamist sentiments in the country threaten to fragment the nation. However, the political and security situation in Bangladesh is not as dire as it may appear.

Far East & Pacific

• Reuters – North Korea told the United States in December it has produced a total of around 30 kg of plutonium, about 20 kg less than what the United States estimates, a Japanese newspaper reported on Monday.
• AFP – South Korea’s new President Lee Myung-Bak sought Monday to turn the page in troubled relations with Japan, pledging to cooperate over North Korea and to avoid “knee-jerk” reactions over the past.
• Reuters – An Indonesian court sentenced two top leaders of the regional Jemaah Islamiah (JI) militant group to 15 years each in prison on Monday for harbouring militants and for weapons possession.
• news.com.au – Singapore says a suspected Islamic militant managed to escape from a detention centre two months ago mainly due to an unlocked window in the toilet – and fled without his trousers.
• Pacific Magazine – South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint has blocked the passage of HR 1959 (or the Guam World War II Loyalty Recognition Act) reports the Marianas Variety. The federal government will spend $126 million to compensate Guam residents who suffered during World War II under Japan’s rule if the bill is passed.
• BBC – Australia has increased its share of the seabed by 2.5 million sq km, after the UN agreed an extension. Its continental shelf will be extended by five times the size of France, giving it rights to explore new areas for oil and gas.
• Times Online – It is the world’s most heavily fortified border, a no man’s land that marks the last front of the Cold War. Now though, just south of the demilitarised zone (DMZ), close to Britain’s most desperate Korean War battlefield, stands a new kind of English stronghold: an English-themed tourist town.
• VOA - As in other developing countries from Egypt to Haiti, soaring inflation has recently emerged as a threat to Cambodia’s hard won social stability. While wages have remained low, the prices of rice and other staples have rocketed – pushing millions deeper into poverty.

Europe

• NATO – The NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, visits Skopje, Macedonia today . He will meet with President Branko Crvenkovski, with   Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, with Minister of Foreign Affairs Antonio Milososki and with Minister of Defence Lazar Elenovski.
• BalkanInsight – Serbian parties are deadlocked over when to ratify a key energy deal with Russia.
• Javno – Norway will give Tanzania $100 million over five years to cut deforestation in the east African country and try to reduce carbon emissions blamed for climate change, according to a deal signed on Monday.
• Spiegel – The old man with the face lift is back in power again. But what does Silvio Berlusconi have planned for his third stint as prime minister? One thing is certain: the anti-immigrant Northern League will be keen to wield its newfound power.
• Telegraph – Deutsche Bank has told its executives that they cannot claim brothel visits and adult films in hotels on company expense accounts.
• The Economist – France’s public finances deteriorated last year and President Sarkozy’s commitments on tax and spending suggest that a serious attempt at fiscal consolidation is unlikely before 2009 at the earliest, despite pressure from other member states. Moreover, contentious plans to streamline the civil service to help return the public finances to a more stable footing over the medium term could be derailed by opposition to the government’s wider reform programme.
• Turkish Daily News – Ukraine, NATO, and German foreign policy; Don’t overestimate Berlin’s statements concerning Russian interests in the former USSR.
• FT – If the European Union needed a new warning of Russia’s efforts to strengthen its grip on the continent’s gas supplies, it has come in the shape of President Vladimir Putin’s trip to Libya.

Africa

• CNN – The presence of the Ethiopians has united various Islamic militant groups in Somalia, who are trying to oust the Ethiopian forces and gain control of Mogadishu. One witness told CNN that Ethiopian troops seized a mosque on Sunday in a Mogadishu neighborhood where the worst fighting was taking place. The Ethiopians left the bodies of six elderly men outside the mosque and were separating men and boys from the neighborhoods and arresting them, the witness said.
• IPS – A significant proportion of the world’s 2.2 billion children, many of whom are victims of violence, sexual abuse, labour exploitation and preventable diseases, are from the crisis-plagued African continent.
• The East African - Hamstrung by unpredictable climatic changes that have reduced the water levels in Lake Victoria and the amount of hydroelectricity generated by dams along the River Nile, the Ugandan government is turning to the more predictable nuclear power.
• IRIN – Zimbabwe’s post-election violence is hampering the activities of humanitarian organisations and making the country’s already dire food situation even more precarious. One-third of the population, or about four million people, are receiving food aid.
• This Day – Amidst growing public opinion and apprehension over the state of affairs of the country, especially on the need to sanitise the electoral process and arrest the deepening corruption, the top echelon of the Nigerian Labour Congress and the civil society coalition partners recently adopted a common strategy to deal with the issues.
• CNN – Militants said they blew up two more oil pipelines Monday in southern Nigeria and called for former President Jimmy Carter and actor George Clooney to help mediate an end to the crisis.
• Magharebia – A Nouakchott judge charged four Mauritanians on Sunday with connivance, complicity and criminal negligence in the escape of terror suspect Sidi Ould Sidna from a Nouakchott courthouse, AFP reported. Ould Sidna, 21, is a suspected member of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

The Global War

• Bloomberg – A Nippon Yusen K.K. crude oil tanker was fired upon by a small boat off the coast of Yemen. There were no injuries. The attack may spur crude oil prices to records.
• Taipei Times – Pakistan’s military said a missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead anywhere in India is ready for wartime use after troops successfully launched it yesterday for the first time during a field exercise.
• Press TV – NATO and coalition forces are “stumbling toward failure” in Afghanistan and no amount of military success against the Taliban will bring an end to the war without a fundamental change in political policy, says Col. Thomas Lynch. In his provocative article in the latest edition of The American Interest, a Washington-based policy journal, Lynch says the US and NATO cannot win in Afghanistan without convincing both Afghans and Pakistanis that economic support and Western military are there to stay.
• Washington Post – American and Chinese officials publicly disputed each other’s conclusions today about what caused a deadly spike in severe reactions to the blood thinning drug heparin. Each side essentially said that the other was to blame.
• BBC – Ethiopia’s government has announced it is breaking off relations with Qatar. Ethiopia is thought to be angry at recent coverage from Al-Jazeera, based in Doha, and financial support given to Eritrea, accused of backing rebels.
• Middle East Institute – Introduction to Islam by M. Cherif Bassiouni.
• Marine Corps Times – Secretary of Defense Robert Gates continued to criticize military leaders for the slow build up of unmanned aerial vehicles patrolling the skies over Iraq and Afghanistan at a speech he made Monday morning to officers at Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.
• TIME – Why the Air Force Bugs Gates.
• Oxford Analytica – On April 4, Navy Commander-in-Chief Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky confirmed that Russia would build 5-6 new aircraft carriers. The move, which Russia’s naval commander-in-chief announced in early April, confirms a doctrinal shift towards developing the navy as a ‘blue water’ power projection force able to deploy forces throughout the world. As such it has significant political, strategic and economic implications.
• US News – Last December, Zawahiri invited supporters of the terrorist group to log on to several password-protected jihadist online forums and send questions to him, and his first set of answers presented another opportunity to analyze his words. But he also unwittingly provided a glimpse into some of the issues that al Qaeda supporters and sympathizers are thinking about these days. Experts at the U.S. Defense Department managed to acquire 1,868 separate questions posed to Zawahiri on two secure jihadist websites.
• Nosint – A Syrian delegation has arrived in Russia to inspect and accept the first batch of Pantsyr-S1 short-range air-defense systems for delivery, according to reports from Reuters in Russia on April 15 and Iranian state media on April 17 (which have not been confirmed by Russian arms-export monopoly Rosoboronexport).
• Mudville Gazette – Dawn Patrol (4/21/2008).

Sights & Sounds

From The Hub; The Number of Japan Sex Slaves during WWII is estimated from 80,000 to 200,000. These women are from Korea, China, Taiwan, Filipino,Dutch, Indonesian, etc. The experience as sex slaves left physical and mental trauma in their lives. The survivals are demanding the Japanese government’s sincere official apology and compensation, and seeking for justice.

From Danger Room; A Russian MiG 29 shot down what Georgians say was an unarmed drone used by the ministry of interior. And guess what? They’ve got video.

Russia Today; Abkhazia awaits UN reaction to Russia’s overtures

Stratfor Daily Podcast: South Africa’s High Court and waterfront unions refuse to allow a Chinese ship to unload its arms cargo for transshipment to Harare and Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe — defying South African President Thabo Mbeki.

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Secretary of Defense Robert Gates speaks at Air University in Maxwell-Gunter AFB, AL

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CBC Dispatches: In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi sweeps back to power with more questionable comments about women. Emma Bonino isn’t surprised, or amused. Kenya and Capoeira. Echoes of lost culture come back to Africa with stories of the slave trade. In Egypt: big plans for a fabled oasis on the Great Sand Sea. In Ghana, goodbye school fees doesn’t mean hello teachers, hello books. And, the battle for the Mayor’s office in London. It’s Red Ken versus the Blonde Bicyclist

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Trans-Pacific Radio: Fukuda talks tough, but his approval ratings keep falling; Korea’s Lee visits Tokyo; tax hike; Americans buy udon because Fukudome is batting .317; more on Steel Partners; a temple is defaced in Nagano after declining to host the Olympic torch; and more.

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