New Hampshire Health News Digest

1981 attack on Pope planned by KGB: Report : : Agence France-Presse New documents found in the files of the former East German intelligence services confirm the 1981 assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II was ordered by the Soviet KGB and assigned to Bulgarian agents, an Italian daily said on Wednesday. The Corriere della Sera said that the documents found by the German government indicated that the KGB ordered Bulgarian colleagues to carry out the killing, leaving the East German service known as the Stasi to coordinate the operation and cover up the traces afterwards. Bulgaria then handed the execution of the plot to Turkish extremists, including Mehmet Ali Agca, who pulled the trigger."

New York City: U.S. May Bring Troops Home if Violence Low : WASHINGTON -- U.S. forces in Iraq could begin coming home in significant numbers if insurgent violence is low through the general elections scheduled for the end of the year, a top general said Wednesday. A larger and more capable insurgency, setbacks in the efforts to develop Iraq security forces, or missed deadlines by the transitional government could delay any significant drawdown, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Lance Smith. Smith, the deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, which has military authority over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, commented in an interview with reporters at the Pentagon. '(If) the elections go O.K., violence stays down, then we ought to be able to make some recommendations ... for us to be able to bring our forces home,' Smith said. Smith is the latest senior general to express conditional optimism about improvements in Iraq since the Jan. 30 elections. Previously, officials ...

Gang will target Minuteman vigil on Mexico border - The Washington Times: Nation/Politics - March 28, 2005 : "Gang will target Minuteman vigil on Mexico border NACO, Ariz. -- Members of a violent Central America-based gang have been sent to Arizona to target Minuteman Project volunteers, who will begin a monthlong border vigil this weekend to find and report foreigner sneaking into the United States, project officials say. James Gilchrist, a Vietnam veteran who helped organize the vigil to protest the federal government's failure to control illegal immigration, said he has been told that California and Texas leaders of Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, have issued orders to teach 'a lesson' to the Minuteman volunteers. "We're not worried because half of our recruits are retired trained combat soldiers," Mr. Gilchrist said. "And those guys are just a bunch of punks." More than 1,000 volunteers are expected to take part in the Minuteman...

Iraqi forces seize 131 suspects in raid. Iraqi soldiers, backed by US helicopters, are reported to have seized 131 suspects in a dawn raid on insurgents planning attacks on the holy city of Kerbala. [...] Officials say say those arrested included foreigners using fake Iraqi identification papers. Three tonnes of TNT explosive, hundreds of rocket-propelled grenade launchers and at least three prepared car bombs were also found. Kerbala, an important Shi'ite Muslim holy city, has been targeted by militants several times in the past. Next week the city will draw hundreds of thousands of pilgrims for Arbain, a major mourning ceremony. Earlier this week Iraqi police commandos said they killed 85 militants in a raid on a suspected insurgent training camp near Baghdad, hailing it as a breakthrough against the insurgency. The Iraqi's are becoming a potent force fighting terrorists in their country. Far from being the "freedom fighters" the leftists gus...

My Way News : "Many Germans Want Berlin Wall Back, Study Finds BERLIN (Reuters) - Nearly a quarter of western Germans and 12 percent of easterners want the Berlin Wall back -- more than 15 years after the fall of the barrier that split Germany during the Cold War, according to a new survey. The results of the poll, published Saturday, reflected die-hard animosities over high reunification costs lowering western standards of living and economic turmoil in the east. The survey of 2,000 Germans by Berlin's Free University and pollsters Forsa found 24 percent of those living in western Germany want the Wall back -- double the eastern level. In Berlin itself, 11 percent of westerners and 8 percent of easterners said 'yes' when asked: 'Would it be better if the Wall between East and West were still standing?.' The Berlin Wall was breached on Nov. 9, 1989, paving the way for the unification of Communist East Germany with the West on Oct. 3, 1990. But bi...

Iraq's insurgents ‘seek exit strategy' Many of Iraq’s predominantly Sunni Arab insurgents would lay down their arms and join the political process in exchange for guarantees of their safety and that of their co-religionists, according to a prominent Sunni politician. Sharif Ali Bin al-Hussein, who heads Iraq’s main monarchist movement and is in contact with guerrilla leaders, said many insurgents including former officials of the ruling Ba’ath party, army officers, and Islamists have been searching for a way to end their campaign against US troops and Iraqi government forces since the January 30 election. “Firstly, they want to ensure their own security,” says Sharif Ali, who last week hosted a pan-Sunni conference attended by tribal sheikhs and other local leaders speaking on behalf of the insurgents. Insurgent leaders fear coming out into the open to talk for fear of being targeted by US military or Iraqi security forces’ raids, he said. [...] ...

News about Attrition at StrategyPage.com's How to Make War. : "March 2, 2005: Since Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party were removed from power in 2003, there have been about 1,300 deaths among the coalition forces, and between 20-25,000 for Iraqis. The Iraqi deaths include about 5,000 killed during the 2003 invasion. Of the remainder, about half are Sunni Arabs (most of them Iraqi, plus a few Shia Arabs) killed while fighting coalition forces as terrorists. Another five thousand or so are Iraqis killed by the terrorists, and the remainder are Iraqi civilians caught in the cross fire. The deaths among Iraqis is actually lower than when Saddam was in power. During his three decades of rule, Saddam killed half a million Kurds, and several hundred thousand Shia Arabs (and several thousand Sunni Arabs and Christian Arabs). During the 1990s, Saddam used access to food and medical care as a way to keep the Shia Arabs under control, but this process caused twenty thousand or mor...

News about Infantry at StrategyPage.com's How to Make War. But month by month, more Iraqis were identified as effective officers and NCOs. Unfortunately, the few thousand men who filled the bill were spread thinly across a force of some 150,000 police and troops. What this meant, in early 2004, was that where was no Iraqi units that could be used for offensive operations. Meanwhile some foreign police advisors, and American division commanders, took matters into their own hands and collected small numbers of eager and capable Iraqis, and gave them commando or SWAT training. The main need here was for some combat capable Iraqis who could work with American troops in raids and, in particular, operations inside mosques. This worked, and soon the Iraqi Special Operations Force was established. The first battalion, the 36th Special Operations Commando battalion attracted applicants from all over Iraq. Some had served in Saddam’s commando units, but wanted nothing to do with joining the...

military news about Iraq IRAQ: Al Qaeda Losses Up, American Losses Down March 24, 2005: More Iraqis are losing their fear of terrorists, and it's hurting the anti-government forces. In the last three days, tips from Iraqis have led Iraqi police and troops to several terrorist hideouts. This has resulted in some spectacular gun battles, and the deaths of over 130 terrorists (and about a dozen police and soldiers.) The Iraqis have been using their growing force of SWAT teams to carry out the raids, with American forces providing backup and air cover. One raid, north of Baghdad, left 85 terrorists dead, and revealed a suicide car bomb workshop, as well as documents and weapons. The dead terrorists included men from many foreign countries (Persian Gulf states, Algeria, Morocco, Afghanistan, and the Philippines.) The government was quick to let the local media film the crime scenes and interview people. The police and army commandos have become national heroes, with their fame increa...

New US “Intel Snipers” Fielded in Iraq, IDF Undercover Unit in Gaza The newly-employed American and Israeli counter-terror tactics have some fundamentally common features, as DEBKAfile’s military experts point out. In Iraq, the US army has deployed for the first time a 42nd Infantry Division unit known as “Intel Snipers”, i.e. sniper-trained soldiers of the division’s 173rd Long Range Surveillance Detachment. They are armed with newly-issued M-14 rifles which have never been surpassed as a marksman’s weapon. Some 1,000 km to the west, Israel has belatedly deployed for full-scale operations behind enemy lines in the Gaza Strip the same kind of elite unit, the IDF’s Shimshon Battalion 92, reinforced by scores of intelligence snipers trained to target small terrorist units. Capt. Michael Manning, commander of the US unit, describes the M-14 as a tremendous force multiplier. It is an integral part of the unit’s equipment for LRS-Long Range Surveillance and targeting. In I...

The New York Times > Science > Tissue Find Offers New Look Into Dinosaurs' Lives : "A 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex recently discovered in Montana, scientists reported today, has apparently yielded the improbable: soft tissues, including blood vessels and possibly cells, that 'retain some of their original flexibility, elasticity and resilience.' In a paper being published on Friday in the journal Science, the discovery team said that the remarkable preservation of the tissue might open up 'avenues for studying dinosaur physiology and perhaps some aspects of their biochemistry.' 'Tissue preservation to this extent has not been noted before in dinosaurs,' the team leader, Dr. Mary H. Schweitzer of North Carolina State University, said in a teleconference on Tuesday. The scientists said that an examination with a scanning electron microscope showed the dinosaur blood vessels to be 'virtually indistinguishable' from those...

The New York Times > Washington > Report Calls For Punishing Peacekeepers in Sex Abuse : "A report on sexual abuse by peacekeepers recommended Thursday that offending soldiers and their commanders be punished by their home countries, that payments made to them be recovered and put into a fund for victims and that the United Nations make compliance with these measures a condition for taking part in its missions." Yeah, this is the group that sits in judgement of the U.S., from its lofty vantage of moral superiority. I hate the UN!

Indiadaily.com - The Middle East is closer to Shiite Sunni all out civil war : "Indication are there that Shiite majority is Iraq and Sunnis in Iraq, Syria, Jordan and other countries are on the verge of an all out civil war. On one side Iran is influencing the Shiite population. But on the other side predominantly Sunni Arabs are ready to wage the overt and covert war against Iraq. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said on 20th march that Iraq was temporarily recalling its ambassador to Jordan for 'consultations.' The decision comes two days after Shiite protesters, demanding an apology for alleged Jordanian involvement in a suicide bombing in the city of Al Hillah, raised the Iraqi flag over the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad. More interestingly, Kuwait predominantly Sunni came out a few days back with strong words against a secret pact with Israel. The Sunnis all over the Middle East are irritated with Shiite dominance in Iraq. Saddam after all fought the lo...

Indiadaily.com - Converging U.S. Navy aircraft carrier groups in Middle East send strong message to Iran and Syria : "The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt is on the move in Atlantic Ocean and is possibly headed towards the Mediterranean Sea. The convergence of three carrier groups in the corridor of the Middle East will send very strong message to the Syrians and Iranians. There are indications that soon US is moving two more aircraft carrier battle groups to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf. This will spell a formidable strike force for Iran and Syria who are in defiance on issues of Lebanon and Nuclear weapons development."

A Daily Briefing on Iran from regimechangeiniran.blogspot.com: Guardian article: Iranians celebrate ancient holiday hated by Mullah hardliners. : 'This is a way for people to use their national traditions to show their opposition to the regime,' said a man called Reza, before hurrying away, saying that the security forces were lurking nearby. Stretching back 2,500 years, the significance of Chahar Shanbeh Souri for Iranians is comparable to Christmas in the west. But its pre-Islamic roots have rendered it an object of hostility to the country's hardline clerical establishment. After the 1979 revolution, the authorities tried to ban the celebration, deeming it an affront to Islamic mores. But with many Iranians chafing against the regime's austere brand of Shia Islam, the festival has increasingly been used to express displeasure with the government. In previous years, pro-regime vigilantes have been deployed to break up such gatherings by force. This time, ...

The Seattle Times: Nation & World: 7 al-Zarqawi insurgents found slain in retaliation for killing BAGHDAD, Iraq — When more than 80 bodies were found last week at four different places in Iraq, a fifth gruesome discovery attracted little notice. In the violent city of Ramadi, a center of Sunni insurgent activity 60 miles west of Baghdad, the bodies of seven men were found lined up in an unfinished house on the western outskirts of town, according to eyewitnesses. Unlike the corpses elsewhere, which were mostly Iraqi police and soldiers, the bodies in Ramadi apparently were foreigners, fighters working for Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has claimed responsibility for suicide bombings, kidnappings and assassinations. [...] "My cousins are the ones who killed them," said Jabbar Khalaf Marawi, 42, a former army officer and Communist Party member in Ramadi. Marawi said the slayings were carried out by members of his Dulaimi clan in retaliation for ...

Mark Steyn on John Bolton and the U.N. You're with a bunch of foreigners and you want them to like you and it's easy to get carried away. That's what was so stunning about Bolton. In a roomful of Euro-grandees, he was perfectly relaxed, a genial fellow with a rather Mitteleuropean moustache, but he thwacked every ball they served back down their gullets with amazing precision. He was the absolute antithesis of Schmoozer Bill and Pandering Eason: he seemed to relish their hostility. At one event, a startled British cabinet minister said to me afterwards, 'He doesn't mean all that, does he?' But he does. And that's why the Bolton flap is very revealing about conventional wisdom on transnationalism. Diplomats are supposed to be 'diplomatic'. Why is that? Well, as the late Canadian prime minister Lester B. Pearson used to say, diplomacy is the art of letting the other fellow have your way. In other words, you were polite, discreet, circumspect,...

:: moroccoTimes.com : "A female professor has broken with Islamic tradition by leading the Friday prayer service in a New York chapel, where men and women sat together, sparking outrage among religious scholars in the Middle East who affirmed that what she did was against Islamic Shari'a (law). The event, heavily protected by police forces, was held at the Synod House, a small chapel next to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan's Upper West Side in New York, after several locations had refused to host the service. The Muslim Women's Freedom Tour, a US grass-roots organisation, and the Web site MuslimWakeUp.com sponsored the service, said to Reuters. According to Islamic traditions, Muslim women sit separately from men in worship services and, in some places, enter mosques through a back or side door. Orthodox Jews also segregate men from women during religious services. Roman Catholics do not allow women to hold important leadership roles. Amin...

News about Military Blunders at StrategyPage.com's How to Make War. February 15, 2005: U.S. Department of Defense research has uncovered some interesting aspects of military operations conducted during the last few years. The most useful finding was that it was the skill and training of American troops that accounted for most of their success. Adding more technology did not increase the success of U.S. troops as much as expected, because most of the existing success was due to high skill levels and, all-too-often, low skill levels among the opposition. This was the case in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in counter-terrorism efforts around the world. The media has not picked up on this, because your average journalist does not realize how important high skill levels are in military success. Like most people, journalists assume that better technology plays a larger role than it actually does. Moreover, the manufacturers of that technology, and their political allies, have a vested int...

News about Armor at StrategyPage.com's How to Make War. ARMORED WARFARE: Streetfighters Wish List March 17, 2005: American tank crews have now had two years of using their M-1 tanks in urban areas. While the M-1 has done quite well, the tankers have developed a wish list of upgrades they would like to see. First priority goes to protection. While the M-1 has generally been invulnerable to RPG rockets, there are three parts of the M-1 that were vulnerable. First, there is the rear of the tank, where the gas-turbine engine spews out hot exhaust. Put an RPG round in there and you can shut down the engine. Tank crews have noted the success of the slat armor used by the Stryker. Some of this would work to protect the rear of the M-1. The other vulnerability is the running gear (the wheels and tracks. These items were never meant to be resistant to RPGs, but a lucky shot here can slow down or stop an M-1. The solution here would be side skirts covered with reactive armor (that explode...

This Was Not Looting - How did Saddam's best weapons plants get plundered? By Christopher Hitchens My first question is this: How can it be that, on every page of every other edition for months now, the New York Times has been stating categorically that Iraq harbored no weapons of mass destruction? And there can hardly be a comedy-club third-rater or MoveOn.org activist in the entire country who hasn’t stated with sarcastic certainty that the whole WMD fuss was a way of lying the American people into war. So now what? Maybe we should have taken Saddam’s propaganda seriously, when his newspaper proudly described Iraq’s physicists as “our nuclear mujahideen.” My second question is: What’s all this about “looting”? The word is used throughout the long report, but here’s what it’s used to describe. “In four weeks from mid-April to mid-May of 2003 ... teams with flatbed trucks and other heavy equipment moved systematically from site to site. ... ‘The first wave came for t...

Yahoo! News - Pakistan lost Bin Laden trail last year: Musharraf : ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Pakistani forces hunting Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) lost track of the Al-Qaeda leader after coming close to discovering his whereabouts several months ago, President Pervez Musharraf said in an interview. Musharraf told the BBC late Monday that intelligence agencies had indications eight to 10 months ago about the whereabouts of Bin Laden but then the trail went cold. 'There have been occasions where, through interrogation of those who have been captured, the Al-Qaeda members who were apprehended there, and through technical means, there was a time when the dragnet has closed,' Musharraf said. 'We thought we knew roughly the area where he possibly could be. That was, I think ... not very long (ago), maybe eight to 10 months back,' said Musharraf, who is a close ally in the US-led war against terrorism." [...] In May and July 2004 Pakistan also rounded up...

Anti-Syrian protesters carry Lebanese flags during a rally in Beirut March 14, 2005. Hundreds of thousands of people rallied in central Beirut on Monday in the largest anti-Syrian protest in Lebanon since the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri exactly a month ago. REUTERS/Sharif Karim

Yahoo! News - Hundreds of Thousands in Lebanon Protest Syria BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of people rallied in central Beirut on Monday in the largest anti-Syrian protest in Lebanon since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri exactly a month ago. Flag-waving crowds from across Lebanon gathered in Martyrs' Square in central Beirut, just meters away from Hariri's grave, to demand an international inquiry into his killing, the sacking of Syrian-backed security chiefs and a total Syrian pullout. Unlike previous anti-Syrian opposition protests since a bomb blast killed Hariri on Feb. 14, many Sunni Muslims joined Druze and Christians in taking to the streets. Hariri was a Sunni. The opposition rally came a day after huge crowds turned out in the south for a anti-U.S. demonstration organized by Lebanon's Shi'ite Muslim Hizbollah group, an ally of Syria. Organizers of the Beirut protest say it will draw hundreds of thousands to ...

Ion Engine Under Consideration for Jupiter Mission Passes Test : "Unlike the short, high-thrust burns of most chemical rocket engines that use solid or liquid fuels, the ion engine emits only a faint blue glow of electrically charged atoms of xenon - the same gas found in photo flash tubes and in many lighthouse bulbs. The thrust from the engine is as gentle as the force exerted by a sheet of paper held in the palm of your hand. Over the long haul though, the engine can deliver 20 times as much thrust per kilogram of fuel than traditional rockets. Key to the ion technology is its high exhaust velocity. The ion engine can run on a few hundred grams of propellant per day, making it lightweight. Less weight means less cost to launch, yet an ion-propelled spacecraft can go much faster and farther than any other spacecraft. 'This test, in combination with the recent test of the High Power Electric Propulsion ion engine at NASA's Glenn Research Center, is another examp...

USNews.com: Paul Thompson's mind movies (3/21/05) : Paul Thompson has brains. Lots of them. The 33-year-old has degrees in Greek and Latin, mathematics, and neuroscience, and a colleague calls him 'the smartest person I know.' But we're not just talking about smarts. Thompson really does have lots of brains--about 7,000 at last count. To see them, step out of the bright Southern California sunshine and into the dark confines of the Reed neurology building at the University of California-Los Angeles, where Thompson has his office and lab. There, in a room behind a heavy glass panel, is a large, humming black computer, and inside are brain images captured by high-tech medical scanners: young brains, old brains, autistic brains, Alzheimer's brains, schizophrenic brains, drug addicts' brains, and a whole bunch of normal ones. 'My brain is in there somewhere,' Thompson says. Yet individuality is not what Thompson is interested in. He's mapping br...

USNews.com: Fouad Ajami sees a strong stirring and lauds Bush's passionate pursuit of freedom for the crowds in Araby (3/14/05) : "A sudden, powerful stirring By Fouad Ajami In retrospect, it was an appearance by President George W. Bush before the National Endowment for Democracy, in November 2003, that signaled the birth of a new 'diplomacy of freedom' in the Arab world. The American military effort in Iraq was in its early stages then; the euphoria of the military campaign had ended, and a war of attrition had begun. Saddam Hussein was still on the loose, advertisement and there was no trace of those vaunted weapons of mass destruction that had taken us to war. At that uncertain hour, Bush proposed nothing less than a break with the ways of American diplomacy in the region. 'Sixty years of western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe, because in the long run,' he said, 'stability cannot be ...

New York Post Online Edition: postopinion SYRIA'S ROAD TO FREEDOM By AMIR TAHERI March 7, 2005 -- 'LET'S do the Salsa!" is one of the refrains chanted by Lebanese demonstrators who have vowed to occupy the streets of Beirut until Syria ends its occupation of their country. But the Salsa they are referring to is not the Brazilian style of sexy dancing. It refers to the Syria Accountability and Lebanon Sovereignty (Restoration) Act (SALSA) — passed by Congress over a year ago, and seen as a signal that the Bush administration was determined to extend its quest for status quo change in the Middle East beyond Iraq into the Levant. And Lebanon's Cedar Revolution — while far from complete — could, and must, become a prelude to the liberation of Syria from half a century of despotic rule. There is as much pent-up energy for change in Syria as there is in Lebanon. "We, too, want to do the SALSA," says a senior Syrian economist with years of experi...

Aljazeera.Net - Iraqis vent anger over al-Hilla attack : Hundreds of Iraqi Shias have staged protests in Baghdad and Karbala against the alleged involvement of a Jordanian in a devastating bombing in al-Hilla two weeks ago. Crowds gathered outside the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad on Sunday shouting: 'No, no to Jordan, close your embassy, we do not want to see you here.' They urged the government to file charges against the family of Raed al-Banna, who the Iraqi media says carried out a car bombing on 28 February that killed at least 118 people and wounded scores more. They also demanded compensation for victims from Amman, which rejected the accusations against it and insisted it condemned the al-Hilla bombing, the worst single attack in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003. According to media reports, al-Banna's family organised a funeral for him during which he was a hailed as 'a martyr'. 'We condemn the act and we cond...

Italy to stop paying ransoms - Sunday Times - Times Online THE Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has promised President George W Bush that he will not pay more ransoms to free hostages in Iraq. The Italian government has denied newspaper reports that $6m (£3.1m) was paid for the release of Giuliana Sgrena, who worked for the Communist daily Il Manifesto. But senior officials and intelligence sources have confirmed that money did change hands. The affair ended when American soldiers opened fire on the car carrying Sgrena and killed the intelligence officer who had freed her. Last year Italy paid a reported $5m (£2.6m) for the freedom of two aid workers, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta. Hours after Sgrena was seized, Berlusconi announced that “negotiations” had begun. The reports of ransom payments have infuriated American officials, who say they fund violence and encourage more kidnappings. Mel Sembler, the American ambassador in Rome, told Berlusconi last week ...

Italy to stop paying ransoms - Sunday Times - Times Online THE Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has promised President George W Bush that he will not pay more ransoms to free hostages in Iraq. The Italian government has denied newspaper reports that $6m (£3.1m) was paid for the release of Giuliana Sgrena, who worked for the Communist daily Il Manifesto. But senior officials and intelligence sources have confirmed that money did change hands. The affair ended when American soldiers opened fire on the car carrying Sgrena and killed the intelligence officer who had freed her. Last year Italy paid a reported $5m (£2.6m) for the freedom of two aid workers, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta. Hours after Sgrena was seized, Berlusconi announced that “negotiations” had begun. The reports of ransom payments have infuriated American officials, who say they fund violence and encourage more kidnappings. Mel Sembler, the American ambassador in Rome, told Berlusconi last week ...

News : "Americans were not trying to kill me, hostage decides By Peter Popham in Rome 12 March 2005 The Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, who was wounded by American fire last Friday soon after being released by kidnappers in Baghdad, has said that she does not think that the Americans were trying to kill her. 'I never said that they wanted to kill me,' she said on a television talk show, 'but the mechanics of what happened were those of an attack.' In an interview with The Independent, her partner, Pier Scolari, said: 'None of us is so stupid as to think the Americans did it on purpose. But the dynamic was that of an ambush and we want a convincing explanation of what happened, because the first American explanation was totally false.' Ms Sgrena, who writes for the daily newspaper Il Manifesto, was freed last Friday after a month in captivity. Two Italian government ministers have said that a ransom was paid to secure her release, although t...

HBS Working Knowledge: The Leadership Workshop: Tips for Mastering E-mail Overload : " by Stever Robbins Being at or near the the top of your organization, everyone wants a piece of you. So they send you e-mail. It makes you feel important. Don't you love it? Really? Then, please take some of mine! Over 100 real e-mails come in each day. At three minutes apiece, it will take five hours just to read and respond. Let's not even think about the messages that take six minutes of work to deal with. Shudder. I'm buried in e-mail and chances are, you're not far behind. For whatever reason, everyone feels compelled to keep you 'in the loop.' Fortunately, being buried alive under electronic missives forced me to develop coping strategies. Let me share some of the nonobvious ones with you. Together, maybe we can start a revolution." [...] Use a subject line to summarize, not describe. Give your reader full context at the start of your message. When yo...

TCS: Tech Central Station - Syria, Leaving with a Bang? Even though it has been widely established that Syria was involved in Hariri's assassination, the naysayers are advancing among others this reasoning: Syria knew for sure the backlash that the murder of Hariri would trigger so, why would they decide to go ahead anyway? The answers are simple. First and foremost, Assad is playing for his own survival. In fact if Assad leaves Lebanon, then his regime's days are numbered. He is a desperate man. And a desperate man can do desperate things. Having killed Hariri directly or indirectly was a very desperate act, but he had nothing to lose. In fact, when Hariri decided to join the opposition and built a real national alliance among Sunnis, Druzes and Christians, Assad knew that the upcoming May elections would be lost by his goons. One of the most understudied aspects of this crisis is the economic factor: Lebanon is Syria's cash cow. According to a World Bank e...

Telegraph | News | Saddam's $2m offer to WMD inspector Saddam Hussein's regime offered a $2 million bribe to the United Nations' chief weapons inspector to doctor his reports on the search for weapons of mass destruction. Rolf Ekeus, the Swede who led the UN's efforts to track down the weapons from 1991 to 1997, said that the offer came from Tariq Aziz, Saddam's foreign minister and deputy. Mr Ekeus told Reuters news agency that he had passed the information to the Volcker Commission. 'I told the Volcker people that Tariq [Aziz] said a couple of million was there if we report right. My answer was, 'That is not the way we do business in Sweden.' ' A clean report from Mr Ekeus's inspectors would have been vital in lifting sanctions against Saddam's regime. But the inspectors never established what had happened to the regime's illicit weapons and never gave Iraq a clean bill of health. The news that Iraq attempted to bribe...

Ethnic Map of Pakistan With the near revolt in Balochistan, thought this map may help sort things out. There are tensions among the different groups, and the CIA supposedly said recently that Pakistan will be a failed state by 2015. Much of the natural resources of the Paks are in Balochistan, and these primitive tribesmen, who love violence much as do the Pashtun people, and who share their love of honor and military feats, are angry that the Pak government gets all the profit from their natural resources. They are now waging low level guerrilla warfare against the central government. This is an area to keep a close eye on.

gulfnews.com: Opinion : "'Kifaya' is the bud of a new movement on Arab streets By Youssef M. Ibrahim, Special to Gulf News The recent protests in Cairo and Beirut have been organised with the chant of a new Arab movement kifaya, Arabic for enough. The word, says the Egyptian democracy advocate and sociologist Dr Saad Al Din Ebrahim, is fast becoming a mantra for millions of Arabs wanting to seize their own destiny. Certainly the slogan has surfaced in banners carried into those street demonstrations, but more important it has now found its way on television shows, read in opinion columns by Arab pundits and certainly advocated by millions of Arabs in the privacy of their homes from Casablanca to Riyadh. Could this one word be a harbinger of a muscular popular Arab revolt such as the movement that guided millions of people in Eastern Europe in shedding their tired old despotic regimes after the fall of the Soviet Union? Scepticism abounds, but so do tell-ta...

NDM Article - Stryker Brigade in Iraq Will Protect Bases With Remote-Controlled Mines The Army Stryker brigade now fighting in Iraq will be first in line to receive a new radio-frequency kit that allows soldiers to detonate mines from several kilometers away. The technology, called “Matrix,” essentially turns old-fashioned mines into standoff munitions. It was developed by the Army’s Picatinny Arsenal, in New Jersey, to meet growing base-security needs in Iraq. “Matrix allows them to cover their flanks and protect their base of operations with fewer soldiers,” said Maj. Joe Hitt, the project lead. Matrix consists of three components: a touch-screen laptop, a radio transmitter and a munitions-control assembly that attaches to a Claymore antipersonnel mine. When detonated, the Claymore spits out steel balls out in a fan-shaped pattern, with a lethal radius of about 50 meters. While Hitt declined to specify the exact range of the radio signal, he noted that, “Matrix allows h...

News about Attrition at StrategyPage.com's How to Make War. : "March 2, 2005: Since Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party were removed from power in 2003, there have been about 1,300 deaths among the coalition forces, and between 20-25,000 for Iraqis. The Iraqi deaths include about 5,000 killed during the 2003 invasion. Of the remainder, about half are Sunni Arabs (most of them Iraqi, plus a few Shia Arabs) killed while fighting coalition forces as terrorists. Another five thousand or so are Iraqis killed by the terrorists, and the remainder are Iraqi civilians caught in the cross fire. The deaths among Iraqis is actually lower than when Saddam was in power. During his three decades of rule, Saddam killed half a million Kurds, and several hundred thousand Shia Arabs (and several thousand Sunni Arabs and Christian Arabs). During the 1990s, Saddam used access to food and medical care as a way to keep the Shia Arabs under control, but this process caused twenty thousand or more ...

Ynetnews - News - Israeli Army frowns on Dungeons and Dragons IDF says players are detached from reality and automatically given a low security clearance By Hanan Greenberg Does the Israel Defense Forces believe incoming recruits and soldiers who play Dungeons and Dragons are unfit for elite units? Ynet has learned that 18-year-olds who tell recruiters they play the popular fantasy game are automatically given low security clearance. “They're detached from reality and suscepitble to influence,” the army says. Fans of the popular roleplaying game had spoken of rumors of this strange policy by the IDF, but now the army has confirmed that it has a negative image of teens who play the game and labels them as problematic in regard to their draft status. So if you like fantasy games, go see the military psychologist. Dungeons and Dragons (also known as D&D) has been a popular roleplaying game for decades and is based on a fantasy world.

Spanish Muslims issue fatwa against Al-Qaeda's Osama Bin Ladin : MADRID (AFX) - Spain's Islamic Commission, which groups the nation's Muslim community, said it was issuing a fatwa against Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, 'We are going to issue a fatwa (religious decree) against Bin Laden this afternoon,' Mansour Escudero, who leads the Federation of Islamic religious entities (Feeri) and co-secretary general of the Spanish governmenmt-created Commission told AFP. The Commission invited Spanish-based imams to condemn terrorism at Friday prayers, when the whole country will be remembering the 191 people who were killed in the train blasts and the 1,900 injured a year ago. The attacks have been blamed on mainly Moroccan Islamic extremists loyal to Bin Laden."

Terror confessions on TV grip Baghdad - World - Times Online On-screen admissions are used in the propaganda war THE grim-faced young man looks shiftily in front of him, glancing from time to time at the lens recording his discomfort. A disembodied voice barks out: “Tell us about the crime you committed.” The man clears his throat and begins to mumble. “We attacked the National Guard with machineguns and killed two of them. Then we beheaded one of them.” He stumbles for a moment, as if forgetting his lines. Then the interrogator prompts him with more details of his story and he continues with the tale of how he joined the insurgency and the attacks he carried out. This is Terror in the Grip of Justice, the latest television hit in entertainment-starved Iraq where it is too dangerous to venture out at night and street life ends at last light. It is also the latest weapon in the Government’s propaganda war against the insurgents, aimed at exposing them as the enemies of ordinary Iraqis a...

Terror confessions on TV grip Baghdad - World - Times Online On-screen admissions are used in the propaganda war THE grim-faced young man looks shiftily in front of him, glancing from time to time at the lens recording his discomfort. A disembodied voice barks out: “Tell us about the crime you committed.” The man clears his throat and begins to mumble. “We attacked the National Guard with machineguns and killed two of them. Then we beheaded one of them.” He stumbles for a moment, as if forgetting his lines. Then the interrogator prompts him with more details of his story and he continues with the tale of how he joined the insurgency and the attacks he carried out. This is Terror in the Grip of Justice, the latest television hit in entertainment-starved Iraq where it is too dangerous to venture out at night and street life ends at last light. It is also the latest weapon in the Government’s propaganda war against the insurgents, aimed at exposing them as the enemies of ordi...

Terror confessions on TV grip Baghdad - World - Times Online On-screen admissions are used in the propaganda war THE grim-faced young man looks shiftily in front of him, glancing from time to time at the lens recording his discomfort. A disembodied voice barks out: “Tell us about the crime you committed.” The man clears his throat and begins to mumble. “We attacked the National Guard with machineguns and killed two of them. Then we beheaded one of them.” He stumbles for a moment, as if forgetting his lines. Then the interrogator prompts him with more details of his story and he continues with the tale of how he joined the insurgency and the attacks he carried out. This is Terror in the Grip of Justice, the latest television hit in entertainment-starved Iraq where it is too dangerous to venture out at night and street life ends at last light. It is also the latest weapon in the Government’s propaganda war against the insurgents, aimed at exposing them as the enemies of ordi...

Zacht Ei - About Giuliana Sgrena (found via little green footballs) Zacht Ei translates an article from a Dutch paper about Giuliana Sgrena, by a Dutch reporter who describes Sgrena and her companions as the very epitome of the modern clueless far left, simultaneously naïve and filled with hatred, childish and treacherous. Mr. Harald Doornbos is a veteran war reporter. He is no archetypical hawk nor a staunch supporter of the United States. In fact, he used to be a reporter for the communist newspaper ‘De Waarheid’ (The Truth, or Pravda, if you like) before it went bust. (This doesn’t necessarily mean he was ever a communist, by the way. De Waarheid used to be a huge employer.) However, this doesn’t make him overly sympathetic towards Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian journalist who was held hostage by Iraqi insurgents. Some snippets from this article which was published today in a Dutch Christian broadsheet. ’Be careful not to get kidnapped,’ I told the female...

Israel unveils tank protection system Israel Tuesday revealed a system it says will protect vehicles -- from Humvees to tanks -- against attacks launched from a very close range. The system could help American troops in Iraq if they stay there long enough, indicated the head of the government's Rafael armaments development authority, retired Vice Admiral Yedidia Yaari. Yaari told United Press International militant attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq were the kind of "a reality to which (Israel) had to prepare." The system, called Trophy, detects incoming threats, such as anti-tank rockets, and sprays tungsten balls at them. The tungsten disintegrates a rocket-propelled grenade for example. It thus neutralizes the threat without causing an explosion, Yaari said.

BLACKFIVE: Showdown - The Battle of Fallujah - Part 15 - After Action Report : "Lessons Learned: Infantry Squad Tactics in Military Operations in Urban Terrain During Operation Phantom Fury in Fallujah, Iraq Introduction Historically speaking, military operations in urban terrain (MOUT) have created casualty figures that are extraordinary compared to similar operations conducted in different types of environments. The casualties in MOUT present a significant challenge to small unit leaders. Casualties hit Marine infantry squads and fire teams extremely hard because generally speaking they were already under the table of organization (T/O) standards. Some squads in 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines (3/5) commenced the assault on the Jolan with only six Marines. It is the small unit leaders’ duty to accomplish the mission with the least amount of casualties possible. In order for small unit leaders to complete the above task they need tactics and techniques that will prevent ca...

Yahoo! News - U.S. General: Omar Loses Control of Afghan Insurgency KABUL (Reuters) - Fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar has lost control of the insurgency in Afghanistan and the number of attacks has fallen dramatically, a senior U.S. general said Monday. Taliban spokesmen have said attacks will resume once the harsh Afghan winter is over. But Major General Eric T. Olson told a news conference in Kabul that the Taliban lacked cohesion and were a fading force in the southern and southeast provinces that had been their strongholds. “We believe that this spring there will be a number of factors combined to make this so-called spring offensive much less effective and much lesser scale than we’ve seen in the past in Afghanistan,” said Olson. [...] Many saw the Taliban's inability to mount an effective threat to last October's presidential election as a sign the movement was a spent and demoralized force. Olson said about 30 fighters, des...

Kuwaitis demonstrate for women's suffrage KUWAIT (Reuters) - Around 500 Kuwaiti activists, mostly women, have demonstrated outside parliament to demand female suffrage amidst tensions in the Gulf Arab state over a government drive to grant women political rights. 'Women's rights now,' chanted the crowd, which included women dressed in abayas, or traditional long black cloaks. Some of the demonstrators at Monday's protest wore veils over their faces. 'Our democracy will only be complete with women,' said a placard written in Arabic. 'We are not less, you are not more. We need a balance, open the door,' said one written in English." [...] Some Islamic lawmakers have said they would back women voting but not running. Other Islamists and tribal legislators oppose the bill. "For the past 40 years, Kuwait's society has been used to the idea that elections take place in such a manner (without women)," said parliamentarian K...