Six In The Morning

How profile of bin Laden courier led CIA to its target

Mysterious Kuwaiti matched many criteria for al-Qaida leader’s contact with outside world

By Michael Isikoff

National investigative correspondent

The courier who led the CIA to Osama bin Laden’s doorstep was identified through years of painstaking detective work that included developing a composite “profile” of what an ideal courier for the al-Qaida leader would look like.

“It was like doing the profile of a serial killer,” said one U.S. official, who provided new details to NBC News about how the agency was able to track down the courier and, ultimately, bin Laden himself. The official, who spoke on the

condition of anonymity, was one of the three U.S. officials to describe the intelligence community’s search for the courier.

Syrian forces arrest ‘scores’ in Damascus suburb

Soldiers reportedly broke into homes in Saqba, where thousands had demonstrated against Assad regime last Friday

Reuters guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 May 2011 07.52 BST

Hundreds of Syrian soldiers in combat gear have broken into houses and made arrests in the Damascus suburb of Saqba, the scene of a mass demonstration against the president last week.

Thousands had joined a demonstration in Saqba last Friday, demanding the removal of President Bashar al-Assad.

“The soldiers did not say who they were. People think they are from Maher’s Fourth division,” a female resident, who did not want to be identified, told Reuters, referring to the president’s brother, Maher al-Assad.

Hamas and Fatah sign historic deal backing new Palestinian unity

Rival factions reach agreement in Cairo to end four-year rift

By Catrina Stewart in Jerusalem Thursday, 5 May 2011

Warring Palestinian factions have reconciled in a long-awaited pact that their leaders hope will draw a line under four years of bitter division that followed a short but bloody civil war.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who heads Fatah, and Khaled Meshaal, the Damascus-based leader of Hamas, the Islamist group in charge of Gaza, joined yesterday in Cairo to ratify the unity deal, seen by most Palestinians as a crucial step towards achieving a lasting peace agreement with Israel. But the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, immediately denounced the pact during a visit to London as a “tremendous blow for peace and a great victory for terrorism.”

Fukushima workers enter nuclear reactor building

Workers at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant have entered one of its reactor buildings for the first time since it was hit by a powerful earthquake on 11 March, officials say.

The BBC 5 May 2011

They are installing ventilation systems in the No 1 reactor to filter out radioactive material from the air.

The quake disabled reactor cooling systems, causing fuel rods to overheat.

Radiation levels inside reactor buildings must be lowered before new cooling systems can be installed.

The No 1 reactor was one of four damaged by explosions in the days immediately after the earthquake and tsunami. Water is being pumped in to cool the reactors.

New systems

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said that 12 engineers would work inside the reactor building in shifts of 10 minutes.

In rural Cambodia, water pumps help farmers help themselves

Paula Shirk, founder of Brooklyn Bridge to Cambodia, tells of a grass-roots approach to helping poor farmers irrigate their fields.

By Rachel Signer, Dowser.org  

Lack of access to water is a crucial roadblock in the path from poverty to wealth for many rural societies. Without irrigation techniques, farmers must rely on rainfall that may only come a few times a year.

Brooklyn Bridge to Cambodia (bb2c) works in a poor rural region in Cambodia, where farmers rely on rain or the arduous and inefficient process of hauling buckets of water in order to produce crops. Bb2c is selling pumps made by Kickstart that gather water 21 feet down. But furthermore, bb2c is motivated by a grassroots approach to poverty-alleviation that strives to put the tools for development into the hands of the people who will use them to benefit themselves.

Sanctioned Zim reporters ‘incite hate’, says EU



May 05 2011 06:56  

EU Ambassador Aldo Dell’Ariccia said the journalists’ work could be seen as an “incitement to hatred”.

The journalists who fiercely support President Robert Mugabe are among about 200 individuals linked to Mugabe’s party who face banking and travel bans from the EU, the US and Britain. The sanctions were imposed to protest years of rights violations in the Southern African nation.

Mugabe called for elections this year to end a shaky coalition with the former opposition. Independent media groups say there has since been a surge in inflammatory reporting in pro-Mugabe media outlets, which has in turn fuelled political violence.