fufor's unregelmässige news

Satellite Photos Detect Activity At North Korea Missile Bases
by Staff Writers
Tokyo (AFP) Jul 12, 2006
North Korea could be preparing for new launches of mid-range missiles following last week's tests, with activity detected at its bases, a report said Tuesday citing Japanese government sources.

US and Japanese satellite photos show that mid-range Rodong missiles had been set up on launch pads at a base in southeastern North Korea, but were later removed, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported.

Fuel tanks could be seen near the launch pads, the report said.

The report said the satellite photos were taken after last week's tests of seven missiles, but did not give a specific date.

"We think North Korea can launch missiles whenever it wishes," the top-selling daily quoted a government source as saying.

Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso on Sunday suggested Tokyo would have the right to launch a pre-emptive strike to protect its citizens from a missile launch by Pyongyang.

He said there were "visible signs" of activity at a North Korean missile base from which North Korea launched a Rodong missile last week.

Japan submitted a draft binding resolution in the United Nations Security Council that would impose sanctions on North Korea over the missile tests.

But on Monday, the Security Council put off a vote on the resolution to allow more time for Chinese diplomatic efforts to defuse the crisis.Source: Agence France-Presse
http://tinyurl.com/gm667

The Bush Pilot
By: John Amato
Monday, July 10th, 2006 at 5:09 AM - PDT
A German TV station produced this.



see video (german): http://tinyurl.com/lol2l

2 Israeli Soldiers Captured By Hezbollah
POSTED: 1:03 pm EDT July 12, 2006

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Hezbollah militants crossed into Israel on Wednesday and captured two Israeli soldiers. Israel responded in southern Lebanon with warplanes, tanks and gunboats, and said seven of its soldiers had been killed in the violence.
An Israeli mobile artillery piece fires towards southern Lebanon near the Israeli army post of Zaura Wednesday July 12, 2006. The Israeli Defense Ministry confirmed the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Lebanese guerrillas on Wednesday, and said it held the Lebanese government 'directly responsible' for their fate and safe return. 'The Lebanese government is responsible for the fate of the Israeli soldiers, and must take immediate action to locate them without harming them and return them to Israel,' the ministry said in a statement.


(AP Photo/Avihu Shapira)

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called the soldiers' capture "an act of war," and his Cabinet prepared to approve more military action in Lebanon _ a second front in the fight against Islamic militants by Israel, which already is waging an operation to free a captured soldier in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli army said three soldiers were killed in the initial raid, and four others were killed when their tank went over a land mine in southern Lebanon.

Olmert said he held the Lebanese government responsible for the two soldiers' safety, vowing that the Israeli response "will be restrained, but very, very, very painful."

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said he will not release the captives except as part of a prisoner swap. He said the two soldiers were "in a safe and very far place."

"No military operation will return them," he told a news conference in Beirut. "The prisoners will not be returned except through one way: indirect negotiations and a trade."

Israeli jets struck deep into southern Lebanon, blasting bridges and Hezbollah positions and killing two civilians, the Lebanese officials said.

The Israeli military planned to call up thousands of reservists, and residents of Israeli towns on the border with Lebanon were ordered to seek cover in underground bomb shelters.

The Israeli stock market plunged on word that two more soldiers were captured and that Israel was getting entangled in a second front against Lebanese guerrillas. The exchange's TA-25 blue chip index sank as much as 4.9 percent in exceptionally heavy trading. It rose slightly in afternoon trading to close down 4.2 percent.

The United States, U.N., European Union, France and Germany expressed deep concern about the fighting. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for the immediate release of kidnapped Israeli soldiers and condemned Israel's retaliation in southern Lebanon.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the Hezbollah action went against the interest of the Lebanese people, and that Syria has a "special responsibility" to resolve the crisis.

"All sides must act with restraint to resolve this incident peacefully and to protect innocent life and civilian infrastructure," she said ahead of meetings in Paris.

Separately, Israel escalated its Gaza assault, dropping a quarter-ton bomb on a home before dawn to try to kill top Hamas fugitives. Palestinian hospital officials said the blast killed nine members of a family _ seven children and two parents.

After initially claiming its leaders had escaped harm, Hamas militants took over the intensive care unit of Gaza City's main hospital, where doctors said seven militants were in critical condition. The gunmen refused to say who was being treated.

The Israeli military said Mohammed Deif, the leader of the Hamas military wing and No. 1 on Israel's wanted list for more than a decade, was among the wounded.

The Shiite Lebanese Hezbollah said it captured the two soldiers to help win the release of prisoners held in Israel. Hamas had made identical demands in seizing Cpl. Gilad Shalit on June 25.

A top Hamas leader said his movement did not coordinate with Hezbollah over the capture of the soldiers but said it was "natural" for the groups to work together against Israel.

"Now Israeli has to decide on its choices," Osama Hamdan, Hamas' spokesman in Lebanon, told The Associated Press. "It is early to talk about details of the exchange, but no doubt the operation carried out by Hezbollah today will strengthen our demands to exchange the captives."

Israel, however, appeared determined to win freedom for its troops with a show of force.

Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz warned the Lebanese government that the Israeli military will target infrastructure and "turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years," if the soldiers were not returned, Israeli TV reported.

Israeli troops crossed into a southwestern sector of Lebanon, across the border from where the soldiers were seized, trying to keep their captors from moving them deeper into Lebanon, Israeli security officials said.

Israeli warplanes and gunboats blasted bridges and Hezbollah positions in south Lebanon, killing two civilians, the Lebanese security officials said.

The Israeli jets made their deepest foray in an afternoon strike on a road in the Zahrani region along the Mediterranean coast _ about halfway between the border and the capital of Beirut. Anti-aircraft guns opened fire on jets flying over the coastal city of Sidon.

The Arab League planned an urgent meeting on the crisis Thursday amid "fears of widening of tension and possible Israeli strike against Syria," which backs Hezbollah, a senior league official in Cairo said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa blamed Israel for the escalating violence in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories and denied his country had a role in either abduction.

"It's up to the resistance _ both the Lebanese and the Palestinian _ to decide what they are doing and why are they fighting," he told reporters in Damascus.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State David Welch, visiting Cairo, said the capture of the two Israeli soldiers was "a very dangerous escalation" that "puts at risk all the effort that's being put forth by many to find a solution to the current situation."

Jubilant residents of south Beirut, a stronghold of Hezbollah, and Palestinians in the Ein el-Hilwa refugee camp fired guns in the air and set off firecrackers in celebration after the capture of the Israeli soldiers was announced.

The top U.N. official in Lebanon, Geir Pedersen, met with Lebanon's prime minister and denounced Hezbollah's incursion across the border into northern Israel, known as the Blue Line.

"Hezbollah's action escalates the already tense situation along the Blue Line and is an act of very dangerous proportions," he said in a statement.

Elsewhere, Israeli troops killed a Hezbollah guerrilla as he tried to infiltrate a military base in northern Israel. The army said Hezbollah also fired rockets toward the Israeli border. There were no reports of injuries.

Hezbollah's military arm said its fighters captured two Israeli soldiers "on the border with occupied Palestine, fulfilling the promise to liberate its prisoners" held by Israel.

Hamas-linked militants have demanded the release of at least some of the estimated 9,000 prisoners held by Israel in exchange for Shalit's freedom. Israel has carried out several prisoner swaps with Hezbollah in the past to free captured Israelis.

Israel occupied a small strip of southern Lebanon for 18 years before withdrawing in 2000 amid public complaints in Israel. Hezbollah fighters have controlled the Lebanese side of the border with Israel since then. Israel and Hezbollah have been clashing for two decades and still fight over a small sliver of border territory _ Chebaa Farms.

Lebanon is under U.N. and U.S. pressure to disarm the Shiite guerrilla group and move its own military into the south, but the government has refused to do so, calling Hezbollah a legitimate resistance group.

Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://tinyurl.com/k7cms

Baghdad Burning

... I'll meet you 'round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend...
Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Atrocities...
It promises to be a long summer. We're almost at the mid-way point, but it feels like the days are just crawling by. It's a combination of the heat, the flies, the hours upon hours of no electricity and the corpses which keep appearing everywhere.

The day before yesterday was catastrophic. The day began with news of the killings in Jihad Quarter. According to people who live there, black-clad militiamen drove in mid-morning and opened fire on people in the streets and even in houses. They began pulling people off the street and checking their ID cards to see if they had Sunni names or Shia names and then the Sunnis were driven away and killed. Some were executed right there in the area. The media is playing it down and claiming 37 dead but the people in the area say the number is nearer 60.

The horrific thing about the killings is that the area had been cut off for nearly two weeks by Ministry of Interior security forces and Americans. Last week, a car bomb was set off in front of a 'Sunni' mosque people in the area visit. The night before the massacre, a car bomb exploded in front of a Shia husseiniya in the same area. The next day was full of screaming and shooting and death for the people in the area. No one is quite sure why the Americans and the Ministry of Interior didn't respond immediately. They just sat by, on the outskirts of the area, and let the massacre happen.

At nearly 2 pm, we received some terrible news. We lost a good friend in the killings. T. was a 26-year-old civil engineer who worked with a group of friends in a consultancy bureau in Jadriya. The last time I saw him was a week ago. He had stopped by the house to tell us his sister was engaged and he'd brought along with him pictures of latest project he was working on- a half-collapsed school building outside of Baghdad.

He usually left the house at 7 am to avoid the morning traffic jams and the heat. Yesterday, he decided to stay at home because he'd promised his mother he would bring Abu Kamal by the house to fix the generator which had suddenly died on them the night before. His parents say that T. was making his way out of the area on foot when the attack occurred and he got two bullets to the head. His brother could only identify him by the blood-stained t-shirt he was wearing.

People are staying in their homes in the area and no one dares enter it so the wakes for the people who were massacred haven't begun yet. I haven't seen his family yet and I'm not sure I have the courage or the energy to give condolences. I feel like I've given the traditional words of condolences a thousand times these last few months, "Baqiya ib hayatkum… Akhir il ahzan…" or "May this be the last of your sorrows." Except they are empty words because even as we say them, we know that in today's Iraq any sorrow- no matter how great- will not be the last.

There was also an attack yesterday on Ghazaliya though we haven't heard what the casualties are. People are saying it's Sadr's militia, the Mahdi army, behind the killings. The news the world hears about Iraq and the situation in the country itself are wholly different. People are being driven out of their homes and areas by force and killed in the streets, and the Americans, Iranians and the Puppets talk of national conferences and progress.

It's like Baghdad is no longer one city, it's a dozen different smaller cities each infected with its own form of violence. It's gotten so that I dread sleeping because the morning always brings so much bad news. The television shows the images and the radio stations broadcast it. The newspapers show images of corpses and angry words jump out at you from their pages, "civil war… death… killing… bombing… rape…"

Rape. The latest of American atrocities. Though it's not really the latest- it's just the one that's being publicized the most. The poor girl Abeer was neither the first to be raped by American troops, nor will she be the last. The only reason this rape was brought to light and publicized is that her whole immediate family were killed along with her. Rape is a taboo subject in Iraq. Families don't report rapes here, they avenge them. We've been hearing whisperings about rapes in American-controlled prisons and during sieges of towns like Haditha and Samarra for the last three years. The naiveté of Americans who can't believe their 'heroes' are committing such atrocities is ridiculous. Who ever heard of an occupying army committing rape??? You raped the country, why not the people?

In the news they're estimating her age to be around 24, but Iraqis from the area say she was only 14. Fourteen. Imagine your 14-year-old sister or your 14-year-old daughter. Imagine her being gang-raped by a group of psychopaths and then the girl was killed and her body burned to cover up the rape. Finally, her parents and her five-year-old sister were also killed. Hail the American heroes... Raise your heads high supporters of the 'liberation' - your troops have made you proud today. I don't believe the troops should be tried in American courts. I believe they should be handed over to the people in the area and only then will justice be properly served. And our ass of a PM, Nouri Al-Maliki, is requesting an 'independent investigation', ensconced safely in his American guarded compound because it wasn't his daughter or sister who was raped, probably tortured and killed. His family is abroad safe from the hands of furious Iraqis and psychotic American troops.

It fills me with rage to hear about it and read about it. The pity I once had for foreign troops in Iraq is gone. It's been eradicated by the atrocities in Abu Ghraib, the deaths in Haditha and the latest news of rapes and killings. I look at them in their armored vehicles and to be honest- I can't bring myself to care whether they are 19 or 39. I can't bring myself to care if they make it back home alive. I can't bring myself to care anymore about the wife or parents or children they left behind. I can't bring myself to care because it's difficult to see beyond the horrors. I look at them and wonder just how many innocents they killed and how many more they'll kill before they go home. How many more young Iraqi girls will they rape?

Why don't the Americans just go home? They've done enough damage and we hear talk of how things will fall apart in Iraq if they 'cut and run', but the fact is that they aren't doing anything right now. How much worse can it get? People are being killed in the streets and in their own homes- what's being done about it? Nothing. It's convenient for them- Iraqis can kill each other and they can sit by and watch the bloodshed- unless they want to join in with murder and rape.

Buses, planes and taxis leaving the country for Syria and Jordan are booked solid until the end of the summer. People are picking up and leaving en masse and most of them are planning to remain outside of the country. Life here has become unbearable because it's no longer a 'life' like people live abroad. It's simply a matter of survival, making it from one day to the next in one piece and coping with the loss of loved ones and friends- friends like T.

It's difficult to believe T. is really gone… I was checking my email today and I saw three unopened emails from him in my inbox. For one wild, heart-stopping moment I thought he was alive. T. was alive and it was all some horrific mistake! I let myself ride the wave of giddy disbelief for a few precious seconds before I came crashing down as my eyes caught the date on the emails- he had sent them the night before he was killed. One email was a collection of jokes, the other was an assortment of cat pictures, and the third was a poem in Arabic about Iraq under American occupation. He had highlighted a few lines describing the beauty of Baghdad in spite of the war… And while I always thought Baghdad was one of the more marvelous cities in the world, I'm finding it very difficult this moment to see any beauty in a city stained with the blood of T. and so many other innocents…
http://tinyurl.com/qiqk

Aids HIV Bayer
MSNBC | July 12 2006
This clip from Scarborough Country highlights how Bayer knowingly dumped medicine that was known to be contaminated with AIDS virus on the European market after it killed people in America.



see the video: http://tinyurl.com/kduvr

Pinochet 'sold cocaine to Europe and US'

Jonathan Franklin in Santiago
Tuesday July 11, 2006
The Guardian

Augusto Pinochet's $26m (£14m) fortune was amassed through cocaine sales to Europe and the US, the general's former top aide for intelligence has alleged.

In testimony sent to Chilean Judge Claudio Pavez, Manuel Contreras alleges that Pinochet and his son Marco Antonio organised a massive production and distribution network, selling cocaine to Europe and the US in the mid-1980s.

According to Contreras, once Pinochet's ally and now a bitter enemy, Pinochet ordered the army to build a clandestine cocaine laboratory in Talagante, a rural town 24 miles from Santiago. There he had chemists mix cocaine with other chemicals to produce what Contreras described as a "black cocaine" capable of being smuggled past drug agents in the US and Europe.

Pinochet denied the charges. His son also denied the charges and said he would sue the former head of intelligence whom he called "a liar" and "a monster".

The details of Contreras' testimony were published first in the Chilean newspaper La Nación. The Pinochet fortune, amassed during the dictator's 1973-1990 rule, is now estimated at some $26m and is being investigated in Chile, the US and Europe.

The mastermind behind the cocaine operation, alleges Contreras, was Eugenio Berríos, a renegade chemist who was used repeatedly by Pinochet's secret police force, DINA, to run clandestine laboratory experiments. Earlier testimony and documents show that Berríos and the lab tested anthrax and botulism and were able to produce the deadly gas sarin.

The biological weapons were slated to be used against Pinochet's personal enemies and in a massive form against enemy troops in the event of an invasion by Argentina. The drug operation, says Contreras, was designed to raise cash for the dictator.

Contreras is serving two jail terms for human rights violations. As former director of DINA, Contreras is accused of running death squad operations that led to the murders of an estimated 3,000 Chileans in the mid-1970s.

The details of the cocaine operation came as part of an investigation into the murder of Colonel Gerardo Huber, a top intelligence operative and close friend of Contreras.

Huber was found murdered in the middle of an investigation that implicated the Chilean army in breaking a UN weapons embargo and sending arms to Croatia in 1991. Huber, who had extensive first hand knowledge of the deals and was expected to testify before Chilean judges, was kidnapped and his body dumped in a remote area.

With mounting evidence that Pinochet personally planned the 1992 execution of Huber, former allies such as Contreras have turned on Pinochet and are now alleging a stunning list of crimes and cover-ups.

The Chilean president, Michelle Bachelet, called on the courts to carry out further investigations.

While the allegations of cocaine sales are new, the alleged use of clandestine arms deals has been under intense investigation for two years in Chile. Investigators in Chile and England continue to look at the role of British Aerospace (now BAE Systems) in a number of payments to Pinochet advisers. Whether those fees were consultant fees or kickbacks is still under investigation.

In addition to the investigation for tax fraud and falsifying documents (passports), Pinochet also faces investigation for his role in "Operación Colombo", an organised massacre of dozens of regime opponents carried out by DINA in 1974 and 1975.
http://tinyurl.com/hef83

Bartending, RFID Style

Evan Schuman - eWEEKTue Jul 11, 6:25 AM ET

On a busy Saturday night, a good bartender makes a lot of money for the bar's owner, but an overly generous bartender—or one fond of pouring free drinks for friends—can cost the owner even more.

A Miami-based 7-year-old beverage-monitoring software company is drinking from the keg of RFID and is selling a tilt switch that attaches to bottles and updates an Internet database every time the bottle is poured. Hilton, Hyatt, Outback Steakhouse, TGI Fridays and others are reportedly testing the system.

It's not merely recording how many times the bottle is poured, but it factors in the tilt of the bottle, the duration of the pour and the bartender's pouring style to calculate how much liquid is leaving the bottle.

"The software converts the tilt into an estimated volume, and the conversion is automatically perfected based on the history of each bottle; hence it becomes more accurate over time and adapts to each bartender's habits. When the bottle is empty, our sensor knows it and the software readjusts the historical pours of each bottle to the known volume of the bottle," said Beverage Metrics CEO David Teller, who said his company has between $5 million and $10 million in annual revenue. "Our system reconciles pours to ring-ups and recipes and automatically decides what is a long pour that should be changed to two pours [and] when to combine short pours in sequence."

Because the server that watches the tilt-tracking RFID system also tracks the POS (point-of-sale) system, it can also know what ingredients bartenders are using to make drinks and whether they are following the authorized recipes in addition to whether they are pouring too much or too little.

Gentag is touting a way to add classic active-tag capabilities—including temperature sensors—to lower-cost passive RFID tags. Click here to read more.

Teller said he expects the sensors to eventually sell for "less than $2 with housing, attachment means, on/off switch, tilt switch, TI micro, five-year battery and RF circuit." Right now, though, the price is closer to $5 plus a subscription fee roughly equivalent to about 1 percent of revenue, Teller said.

Teller argues that his system fits perfectly within the typical restaurant supply chain.

"We are at the cusp of changing the hospitality industry as significantly as POS did, by deploying miniature active RFID tags to every bottle received off the truck. The system reconciles the purchase order to the received goods, and the sensors ping every hour, thereby updating the inventory automatically," he said. "When a bottle arrives at a bar or banquet, the system knows where it is by the receiver location. When a bottle is tilted, the inventory is reduced by that amount and value. When the drink is rung up on the POS, it is reconciled against the pour. If there's no payment registered, the open pour is an alert. When the bottle is empty, it automatically builds the purchase order."

Although the system's readers have a range of about 50 feet, Teller said a bartender can't outsmart the system by pouring a drink beyond the range of the sensor—or simply disabling the sensor—because all of the tags are in periodic content with the server.

"It issues an alert if the tag is removed," he said. "If the sensor doesn't ping, 'Hey, I'm here' after an hour, we start paying attention to that guy."

John Fontanella, an RFID analyst with the Aberdeen Group, dubbed Teller's system "an interesting idea" but wondered whether wireless rings around the bottles would scare off customers and chill some of the bartender-drinker relationship.

"Will it be invisible to customers? Remember those machines that were used to accurately pour a drink every time? They were all over the place, and now I never see one. There is a reason why: It ruins the intimacy created between customer and bartender," Fontanella said. "Good bartenders take care of good customers. It's as simple as that, and that's what brings them back. If the customer is unaware, or if it is in a bar with a great deal of transient traffic, it makes sense."

But Fontanella is even more cynical about whether it will truly minimize theft. "I'm already thinking about how bartenders will beat this," he said. "They will find a way."
http://tinyurl.com/ewp99

Tobacco may kill 1 billion this century

By ANDREW BRIDGES, Associated Press WriterMon Jul 10, 11:49 PM ET

Curbing tobacco use and taking other steps to eliminate some of the most common risk factors for cancer could save millions of lives over the next few decades, health officials said Monday.

Tobacco alone is predicted to kill a billion people this century, 10 times the toll it took in the 20th century, if current trends hold.

"In all of world history, this is the largest train wreck not waiting to happen," said John Seffrin, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society.

Reducing tobacco use would have the single largest effect on global cancer rates, Seffrin and other health officials said Monday in unveiling two reference guides that chart global tobacco use and cancer.

Changing diets to contain fewer saturated fats and more fruits and vegetables, as well as reducing infection by cancer-causing viruses and bacteria, could also cut rates dramatically, they said.

"We know with cancer, if we take action now, we can save 2 million lives a year by 2020 and 6.5 million by 2040," said Dr. Judith Mackay, a World Health Organization senior policy adviser.

Today, tobacco accounts for one in five cancer deaths, or 1.4 million deaths worldwide each year, according to the new Cancer Atlas. When deaths from tobacco-related cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases are included, the yearly death toll rises to nearly 5 million and it's expected to keep going up.

An estimated 1.25 billion men and women currently smoke cigarettes, and more than half of them will die from the habit, according to the newly issued second edition of the Tobacco Atlas.

The two atlases were released Monday at an International Union Against Cancer conference. The two statistics-packed guides are meant as reference guides for doctors, politicians, academics, students and attorneys who work on cancer and tobacco control.

Lung cancer remains the major illness among the 10.9 million new cases of cancer diagnosed each year, according to the Cancer Atlas. And it is not likely to be bumped from its perch: In countries like China, where 300 million men now smoke, lung cancer could eventually kill a million smokers a year, Seffrin said.

The authors and researchers responsible for the atlases fear that a reduction in the global prevalence of smoking would do little to curb what they called the "tobacco epidemic."

"Even if smoking rates decline worldwide, there will be a constant or even slightly increasing number of smokers due to population increases," said Michael Eriksen, director of the Institute of Public Health at Georgia State University.

In 2002, besides the nearly 11 million new cancer cases worldwide, there were nearly 7 million cancer deaths. By 2020, officials anticipate there will be 16 million new cases a year and 10 million deaths. An estimated 70 percent of those deaths will occur in developing countries, according to the Cancer Atlas. The number of new cases is largely the result of the increasing proportion of older people in the world.

The risk of developing cancer is higher in the developed world, according to the Cancer Atlas. In the United States, for instance, the probability someone will develop cancer by age 65 is nearly 18 percent. In Oman, the probability is just shy of 6 percent. Still, cancers in developing countries are more often fatal.

The American Cancer Society published the two atlases with help from the International Union Against Cancer, WHO and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. English, French and Spanish editions are now available; Chinese language versions are due later this year.
http://tinyurl.com/h9eop