AFP – Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak has ordered the army to seal off the West Bank for 48 hours until midnight on Saturday, an army spokesman said. The action was taken “for security reasons” including a risk of attacks, the spokesman said Friday. The area was sealed off at midnight on Thursday. Israeli police have also said they would bar Muslim men under the age of 50 from prayers on Friday at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound, one of Islam’s holiest sites, fearing unrest. Read article
BBC – Turkey has withdrawn its ambassador to Sweden after the parliament voted narrowly to describe as genocide the killing of Armenians in World War I. The Turkish government condemned the resolution, saying it was “based upon major errors and without foundation”. The Swedish government opposed the opposition resolution but it passed by one vote after some MPs voted against party lines. It comes days after a US congressional panel passed a similar resolution. Read article
Guardian – A senior UN official has called for Burma’s military rulers to be investigated over allegations of crimes against humanity and war crimes perpetrated against Burmese civilians, in a move that will sharply increase pressure on the isolated regime ahead of controversial national elections due later this year. In a draft report to the UN Human Rights Council [pdf] in Geneva, Tomás Ojea Quintana, special rapporteur on human rights in Burma, described “a pattern of gross and systematic violation of human rights” which he said has been in place for many years and still continued. Read article
Times Online – If you lived on a street where a neighbour frequently and flagrantly broke the law, you would want something done about it, especially if that neighbour took part of your garden, replaced the fence with a 30ft wall, cut down your trees and redirected your water supply. Suppose the authorities to whom you complained merely denounced the illegalities and took no action? You might think that this situation is inconceivable. But that is precisely what has been happening to the Palestinians for the best part of 60 years. Read article
Reuters – Vice President Joe Biden publicly scolded Israel on Wednesday over a Jewish settlement plan, saying it was undermining peace efforts after Palestinians agreed to U.S.-mediated talks. “It is incumbent on both parties to build an atmosphere of support for negotiations and not to complicate them,” Biden said in a media statement alongside Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah. “Yesterday the decision by the Israeli government to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem undermines that very trust, the trust that we need right now in order to begin … profitable negotiations,” Biden said. Read article
BBC – Up to half the food aid in Somalia is diverted to corrupt contractors, local UN workers and Islamist militants, a leaked UN report says. The report, by the UN monitoring group in Somalia, is particularly critical of the UN’s own World Food Programme and recommends an independent inquiry. It says WFP contracts are awarded to a few powerful individuals who operate cartels that sell the food illegally. The report has not been made public yet, but its contents have been leaked. Read article
BBC – The governor of Nigeria’s Plateau state has accused military commanders of ignoring warnings of an attack on Sunday near the city of Jos. Hundreds died during attacks on three villages in the area between the mainly Christian south and Muslim north. The massacre is seen as revenge for a previous bout of killings in January. Read article
Guardian – An Observer investigation reveals how rich countries faced by a global food shortage now farm an area double the size of the UK to guarantee supplies for their citizens. We turned off the main road to Awassa, talked our way past security guards and drove a mile across empty land before we found what will soon be Ethiopia’s largest greenhouse. Nestling below an escarpment of the Rift Valley, the development is far from finished, but the plastic and steel structure already stretches over 20 hectares – the size of 20 football pitches. Read article
CBS News – Doctors and parents in the Iraqi city of Fallujah are blaming a sharp increase in the number of birth defects on the highly sophisticated weapons U.S. troops have used in the city during the war. The BBC reported Thursday the staggering statistic from doctors in the city that the number of heart defects found in newborn babies is 13 times the number of similar birth defects in Europe. U.S. troops carried out a major offensive in the city in 2004. Military spokesman Michael Kilpatrick told the news organization it takes public health concerns “very seriously.” Read article
BBC – Hundreds of people, including many women and children, were killed in ethnic violence near the city of Jos in Nigeria at the weekend, officials say. They said villages had been attacked by men with machetes who came from nearby hills. Troops have now been deployed in the area and dozens of arrests are said to have been made. Acting President Goodluck Jonathan has ordered security forces to prevent more weapons being brought into the area. Read article
BBC – At least 100 people have been reported killed in suspected religious clashes near the central Nigerian city of Jos. Witnesses said several villages just outside of the city were attacked simultaneously overnight. Acting President Goodluck Jonathan has put security forces in central Nigeria on full alert. Read Article
Bloomberg – Missile attacks by U.S. drone aircraft in northwest Pakistan since 2004 have killed as many as 1,216 people, one third of them civilians, according to a report by a Washington-based think tank. The unmanned aircraft based in neighboring Afghanistan have carried out 114 raids in the past six years, killing up to 849 militants, the report by the New American Foundation said. Since Jan. 1, drones have attacked Taliban based in the South Asian country’s tribal areas 18 times, it said. The minimum number of people who likely died in the total attacks is 834, of whom 549 were thought to have been militants. The data was collated from media reports. Read article
Sunday Mirror – Children in Afghanistan are more likely to die before the age of five than children anywhere else in the world, according to Save the Children. At the current appalling rate, one child dies every two minutes in the violence-wracked nation. The study shows that last year was also the deadliest for Afghan children since the fall of the Taliban. More than 1,050 were killed in suicide attacks, air strikes, explosions and crossfire, according to latest figures. Read article
Reuters – The Obama administration on Friday sought to limit fallout from a resolution branding the World War One-era massacre of Armenians by Turkish forces as “genocide,” and vowed to stop it from going further in Congress. Turkey was infuriated and recalled its ambassador after a House of Representatives committee on Thursday approved the nonbinding measure condemning killings that took place nearly 100 years ago, in the last days of the Ottoman Empire. Read article
The Independent – Gordon Brown today expressed his sorrow for the loss of life in the conflict in Iraq while insisting it had been the “right decision” to overthrow Saddam Hussein. In his long-awaited appearance before the Chilcot Inquiry, the Prime Minister said the Iraqi dictator had to be confronted as a “serial violator” of international law. Read article
Reuters – The Pentagon should consider blocking a potential $1 billion contract with the company formerly known as Blackwater to train Afghan police because of questions about its conduct in Afghanistan, a top U.S. senator said. In letters to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Attorney General Eric Holder, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin said there was evidence of misconduct in a previous subcontract awarded to a Blackwater affiliate to conduct weapons training for the Afghan National Army. Read article
Reuters – A U.S. congressional panel voted on Thursday to label as “genocide” the World War One-era massacre of Armenians by Turkish forces, prompting Turkey to recall its ambassador from Washington. The House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee voted 23-22 to approve the non-binding resolution, which calls on President Barack Obama to ensure U.S. policy formally refers to the killings as genocide. Read article
BBC – The UN has begun talks with Democratic Republic of Congo on withdrawing its peacekeeping mission – the biggest UN operation in the world. UN peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said his officials would take a month to assess how the pullout of 20,500 personnel could be carried out. Read article
New York Times – An official at the United States Embassy in Iraq has told federal prosecutors that he believes that State Department officials sought to block any serious investigation of the 2007 shooting episode in which Blackwater Worldwide security guards were accused of murdering 17 Iraqi civilians, according to court testimony made public on Tuesday. Read article
Times Online – Scores of Palestinian homes in one of Jerusalem’s most volatile neighbourhoods will need to be demolished to make way for a parks project under plans unveiled yesterday by the city’s Israeli mayor. More than 88 homes in the Arab-dominated Silwan valley area of the city are scheduled to be removed to make way for a tourist centre. The plan has been criticised by Palestinians and the United Nations. Read article
Associated Press – President Barack Obama is in a bind as a House committee prepares to vote on a resolution that would recognize the World War I-era killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide. While a White House candidate, then-Sen. Obama said he believed the killings were genocide. A congressional resolution to that effect could alienate Turkey, a NATO ally and traditional friend of the United States that is crucial to America’s foreign policy goals. Read article
Times Online – Iran’s religious leadership is orchestrating a campaign of killings and arrests in Kurd provinces as it seeks to prevent pro-democracy protests from spreading to the country’s ethnic minorities, an Iranian Kurd leader has said. In an interview with The Times, Abdullah Mohtadi, secretary general of the Komala Party, said Tehran had ordered a security crackdown that had brought renewed oppression to Kurd areas in the wake of protests against last year’s contested presidential election. Read article
Times Online – A night-time raid in eastern Afghanistan in which eight schoolboys from one family were killed was carried out on the basis of faulty intelligence and should never have been authorised, a Times investigation has found. Ten children and teenagers died when troops stormed a remote mountain compound near the border with Pakistan in December. Read article
Washington Post -A lingering technical question about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks still haunts some, and it has political implications: How did 200,000 tons of steel disintegrate and drop in 11 seconds? A thousand architects and engineers want to know, and are calling on Congress to order a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7 at the World Trade Center. Read article
ABC – A remote-controlled bomb has killed at least seven civilians and wounded 14 in front of a government building in southern Afghanistan. The blast occurred in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, Afghanistan’s most violent province. NATO-led troops are in the 10th day of an operation to flush the Taliban out of nearby Marjah district, where the militants had set up their last big stronghold in Helmand. Read article
