Pakistan’s top military officials are worried about militant collaborators in their ranks



By Karin Brulliard, Saturday, May 28,

 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Embarrassed by the Osama bin Laden raid and by a series of insurgent attacks on high-security sites, top Pakistani military officials are increasingly concerned that their ranks are penetrated by Islamists who are aiding militants in a campaign against the state.

Those worries have grown especially acute since the killing of bin Laden less than a mile from a prestigious military academy. This week’s naval base infiltration by heavily armed insurgents in Karachi – an attack widely believed to have required inside help – has only deepened fears, military officials said.

Mladic health questions halt court hearing

Officials say interrogation will continue on Friday, despite former Bosnian Serb general’s poor physical condition.

Last Modified: 27 May 2011

 Former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic, captured in Serbia, has appeared in a Belgrade court, but his hearing was halted for doctors to assess his health, according to local media reports.

Mladic appeared frail and haggard during his court appearance on Thursday evening, and Serbian television station B92 reported that Milan Dilparic, the judge, had suspended the interrogation due to Mladic’s poor physical and mental health.

Mladic, who is accused of multiple war crimes charges, faces extradition to The Hague where he would be tried by a tribunal prosecuting cases relating to conflicts during the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia.

The 69-year-old, who commanded Bosnian Serb forces during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, is alleged to have orchestrated the killing of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995, as well as the four-year siege of Sarajevo.

India courts Africa, long wooed by China

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh takes a six-day trip to the continent, in an effort to boost business ties and drum up support for New Delhi in its bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.

By Mark Magnier, Los Angeles  Times

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh arrives Thursday in Tanzania on the last stop of a six-day Africa trip designed to underscore his nation’s growing stature on the global stage, lobby for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council and signal to China that the South Asian giant is also a player on the resource-rich continent.

China has long targeted Africa under its “Going Out” strategy launched in 1998, and India, as part of a bid to make up for lost time, this week participated in the India-Africa Forum Summit, its second in three years. New Delhi said it would extend a $5-billion line of credit, fund 22,000 scholarships, set up a “virtual university” and support infrastructure and training programs on the continent.

Researchers see a pattern in rise of deadly tornadoes



By Brian Vastag and Ed O’Keefe, Tuesday, May 24

The extraordinary Joplin twister – the single deadliest tornado since officials began keeping records in 1950 – was a rare destructive phenomenon known as a “multi-vortex,” hiding two or more cyclones within the wider wind funnel.

Sunday’s storm smashed the southwest Missouri city’s hospital, left nothing but splintered trees where neighborhoods once stood, and killed at least 116, with the death toll expected to rise. The storm injured another 500 and and damaged or destroyed at least 2,000 buildings.

Justice Department, SEC investigations often rely on companies’ internal probes



By David S. Hilzenrath, Monday, May 23

As the U.S. government steps up investigations of companies suspected of paying bribes overseas, law enforcement officials are leaving much of the detective work to the very corporations under suspicion.

The probes are so costly and wide-ranging that the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission often let the companies investigate themselves and then share the results.

The strategy is especially common in cases of foreign corruption but also extends to domestic investigations involving issues as varied as health-care fraud and shady accounting.

US ‘would repeat Bin Laden raid

President Obama has indicated he would order a similar operation to that which killed Osama Bin Laden if another militant leader was found in Pakistan.



He said the US was mindful of Pakistani sovereignty but said the US could not allow “active plans to come to fruition without us taking some action”.

The killing of Bin Laden by US forces in a Pakistani garrison town on 2 May strained ties between the two allies.

President Barack Obama was speaking to the BBC ahead of a European visit.

Asked what he would do if one of al-Qaeda’s top leaders, or the Taliban leader Mullah Omar, was tracked down to a location in Pakistan or another sovereign territory, he said the US would take unilateral action if required.

FOREIGN INTRIGUE

The defense ministry said that the number of sorties flown by the ASDF “to intercept foreign aircraft flying near Japanese airspace” surged by 29 percent in 2010.

Ten Japanese tourists were injured when their sightseeing bus hit a wall in Seoul.

After the Japanese Embassy in France lodged a complaint with a local TV station for airing a program that mocked the March 11 disaster, the network responded by saying that its show “criticizes anything and is not a news program.”

The University of Arkansas-Fort Smith has set up a scholarship fund for “two Japanese students who want to study abroad but face financial difficulties because of the [March 11] disaster.”

Three North Koreans who had been granted asylum at a Japanese consulate in northeastern China were given permission by Beijing to leave for Japan.

Two mountain climbers died in an avalanche on Mt. Shirouma in Nagano Prefecture, but nine others escaped with their lives.

During a visit to Tokyo, the Dalai Lama warned that a “cultural genocide is taking place” inside Tibet.

A meeting of environment ministers from Japan, China and South Korea was held in Busan to discuss bird flu, yellow sandstorms and the need “to promote information-sharing” during extreme natural disasters.

Talk about dumb luck: it is now believed that the hydrogen explosion at the no. 4 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on March 15 might have helped prevent a meltdown “by causing a flow of water into the pool the rods are stored in.”

The Japan Business Federation announced that 80 percent of its members plan to enact some type of energy-saving program to meet government power-consumption reduction targets by this summer.

The government has also pitched in by extending its “Cool Biz” promotion for office workers to wear casual clothes by two months.

Al-Qaida eyed oil tankers as bombing targets

Bin Laden documents show the idea had reached group’s upper echelons

By EILEEN SULLIVAN, MATT APUZZO

  Osama bin Laden’s personal files revealed a brazen idea to hijack oil tankers and blow them up at sea last summer, creating explosions he hoped would rattle the world’s economy and send oil prices skyrocketing, the U.S. said Friday.

The newly disclosed plot showed that while bin Laden was always scheming for the next big strike that would kill thousands of Americans, he also believed a relatively simpler attack on the oil industry could create a worldwide panic that would hurt Westerners every time they gassed up their cars.

Israeli PM Netanyahu rejects Obama ‘1967 borders’ view



Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected comments from US President Obama that a future Palestinian state must be based on the 1967 borders.

The BBC  20 May 2011

In a major speech to the state department, Mr Obama said “mutually agreed swaps” would help create “a viable Palestine, and a secure Israel”.

But Mr Netanyahu said those borders, which existed before the 1967 Middle East war, were “indefensible”.

Mr Netanyahu is preparing to meet Mr Obama for talks at the White House.

An estimated 300,000 Israelis live in settlements built in the West Bank, which lies outside those borders.

The settlements are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

U.S. Was Warned on Vents Before Failure at Japan’s Plant



By MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: May 18, 2011

WASHINGTON – Five years before the crucial emergency vents at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant were disabled by an accident they were supposed to help handle, engineers at a reactor in Minnesota warned American regulators about that very problem.Anthony Sarrack, one of the two engineers, notified staff members at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the design of venting systems was seriously flawed at his reactor and others in the United States similar to the ones in Japan. He later left the industry in frustration because managers and regulators did not agree.