One million people affected by Pakistan floods, UN says

BBC News, 31 July 2010 Last updated at 11:34 GMT

At least one million people in north-west Pakistan have been affected by the country's worst monsoon floods in living memory, the UN says.

With roads cut off, the only way
to reach many stranded areas is by air

Rescuers are struggling to reach inundated areas where transport and communication have been cut off.

Peshawar, the area's largest city with a 3m-strong population, is now cut off.

A regional minister said 800 people have been killed - a number that may rise as large areas remain inaccessible and more rain is forecast.

The latest death-toll was given by Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister for the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, who had earlier described the floods as the province's worst ever.

Manuel Bessler, the head of the UN's Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Assistance (UNOCHA) in Pakistan, told the BBC he could not say with certainty the full scale of the emergency, as he was having trouble reaching his own offices in some of the worst-affected areas.

"We're only going to know the extent of the damage when the waters recede and we can gain access to the worst-hit areas," he said.

"In the mean-time, the priorities in the north-west are to help coordinate efforts to provide shelter, health care, drinking water and ready-to-eat food rations, as it is very difficult to cook food in these conditions."

"The other main worry is that the main swollen rivers running south will carry the floods to provinces like Sindh where heavy rain is forecast in the coming three to four days."

'Worst floods ever'

The government has declared a state of emergency as Pakistan's meteorological department said 312mm (12in) of rain had fallen over the last 36 hours in the north-west - the largest amount for decades.

The districts of Swat and Shangla, as well as parts of Afghanistan - where at least 60 have died - are also inaccessible.

In Pictures: Pakistan floods

Large numbers of people have been left homeless and helpless after several rivers burst their banks, washing away villages, roads and bridges. Some 45 bridges have been washed away in the Swat Valley alone.

The BBC's Lyse Doucet, who is travelling through some of the worst-hit areas, says at least half a million people remain marooned on islands of high ground while others have taken refuge in mosques and schools.

TV footage taken from helicopters flying over the affected areas showed people clinging to roof-tops of buildings as raging torrents swept through the streets.

Military and rescue workers have been using helicopters to deliver essential supplies to areas that have had transport and communication links cut off.

Some 17 helicopters were in action to airlift people out of the worst affected areas on Friday and more are being deployed over the weekend, although the scale of the disaster means resources are strained. The army says all available troops have been deployed for relief work.

The BBC's Aleem Maqbool says whole villages have been washed away

Swathes of farmland have been inundated, and some power supplies have been cut after people were electrocuted by the water-borne current.

Although there was some respite from heavy rainfall in recent hours, more is forecast across much of Pakistan later this weekend.

People living in low-lying flood-prone areas have been advised to move to higher ground.

Many of those hit hardest by the flooding are the rural poor who live in flood-prone areas because they cannot afford safer land.

Pakistan has not made a formal request for international aid, but it is understood that it has appealed to donors to help it respond to this disaster.

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Arabs back direct peace talks when Abbas sees fit

Reuters, By Yasmine Saleh, CAIRO | Thu Jul 29, 2010 12:59pm EDT

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (L) speaks with Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani (C) and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa at the opening session of the foreign ministers meeting at Arab League headquarters in Cairo July 29, 2010. (Credit: Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh)

(Reuters) - The Arab League said on Thursday it would back face-to-face peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel when the Palestinians believe the time is right.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, facing U.S. pressure to agree to such talks, has said he first wants progress in U.S.-mediated, indirect negotiations that began two months ago with the Arab League's blessing.

Abbas briefed the Arab League's peace process committee in Cairo on Thursday about the indirect talks, which will end in September according to a timeframe set by the League.

U.S. President Barack Obama said earlier this month he hopes direct talks will begin by September. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he is ready for such talks immediately, putting the spotlight on Abbas.

Knocking the ball back into the U.S. court, senior Palestinian officials said their decision would depend on the U.S. response to Palestinian concerns, to be laid out in a letter the Arab League had decided to send to Obama.

"There is a green light from the Arabs to go to direct negotiations if we receive terms of reference (for the negotiations) in line with the letter," Nabil Abu Rdainah, a senior Abbas aide, told Reuters.

Abbas, his credibility damaged by the failure of past negotiations, is keeping Israel at arm's length until it makes clear the size and shape of the Palestinian state that Netanyahu is prepared to consider.

He also wants Israeli agreement in principle to the idea of a third party, NATO for example, guarding the frontiers of the state the Palestinians aim to establish alongside Israel on land it occupied since a 1967 Middle East war.

Abbas, 75, doubts Netanyahu is willing to make peace on terms the Palestinians can accept.

Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, speaking to journalists after the process committee meeting, said the Arab League would agree to direct talks when Abbas believed conditions were right.

Responding to the Arab League statement, Netanyahu's office said in a statement he was "ready to begin direct and honest talks with the Palestinian Authority already in the coming days."

"The prime minister added that in direct negotiations it is possible to reach a peace agreement soon," it added.

U.S. efforts are complicated further by the scheduled end of a 10-month, partial Israeli freeze on Jewish settlement building in the West Bank -- part of the territories where the Palestinians aim to found their state.

Netanyahu, who leads a cabinet including pro-settler parties, has voiced reluctance to extend the moratorium.

Avigdor Lieberman, his foreign minister, said on Wednesday there was "no place for any moratorium after 25 September."

(Additional reporting by Dina Zayed in Cairo; Mohammed Assadi and Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem; Writing by Tom Perry; editing by David Stamp))

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John Podesta writes probing foreword for new book on UFOs

Los Angeles Times, July 28, 2010

Photo: Space aliens and cows make peace on South Park.
Credit: South Park screenshot.

He’s not saying he was abducted by a UFO and probed or anything, but former President Clinton’s chief of staff John Podesta is lending his name to a new book on UFOs.

Podesta has written the foreword for “UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record” by investigative journalist Leslie Kean, which will be released Aug. 10.

This isn’t that shocking, as Podesta has been on the record before as an advocate for the Pentagon to release classified government papers on UFO investigations.

"It is time for the government to declassify records that are more than 25 years old and to provide scientists with data that will assist in determining the real nature of this phenomenon," he said back in 2002.

Now, eight years later, Podesta is still -- as he puts it -- "curious."

“As someone interested in the questions of UFOs, I think I have always understood the difference between fact and fiction. I guess you could call me a curious skeptic,” he's reported to write.

UFO enthusiasts say the inclusion of Podesta gives the book weight.

“Its credibility begins on the first page with John Podesta and continues with case studies of extraordinary quality to the very end,” writes John L. Petersen, the founder and president of the Arlington Institute (a think tank for futurists).

We prefer UFO tales like the first episode of "South Park." in which Eric Cartman, a skeptic of alien beings, finds out for himself that he’s been wrong on the topic.

Sadly, this book seems to be the antithesis of that masterpiece. But then again, Podesta probably wouldn’t have lent his name to that production.

-- Jimmy Orr

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UN declares access to clean water a human right

Yahoo News, 28 July 2010

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) – The UN General Assembly on Wednesday recognized access to clean water and sanitation as a human right.

Egyptian girls fill water containers from a cistern delivering drinking water at al-Rahawe village, some 40 kilometres northeast Cairo, in May 2010. The UN General Assembly on Wednesday recognized access to clean water and sanitation as a human right. (AFP/File/Khaled Desouki)

After more than 15 years of debate on the issue, 122 countries voted in favor of a compromise Bolivian resolution enshrining the right, while 41 abstained.

The text "declares the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of the right to life."

The resolution laments the fact that 884 million people lack access to safe drinking water and that more 2.6 billion do not have access to basic sanitation.

It notes that roughly two million people die every year from diseases caused by unsafe water and sanitation, most of them small children.

And it points to the pledge made by world leaders in 2000 as part of the poverty-reduction Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to reduce by half, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access tosafe drinking water and sanitation.

The resolution urges states and international organizations to provide financial and technological assistance to help developing countries "scale up efforts to provide safe, clean, accessible and affordable water and sanitation for all."

Teams at eight stations on the river were working to collect the barrels

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Greenpeace activists close down BP stations in London

BBC News, 27 July 2010 Last updated at 07:41 GMT

BP petrol stations in central London have been shut down by environmental activists.

Greenpeace said it wanted the
company to adopt greener policies

Campaign group Greenpeace claimed it had shut off the fuel supplies to all stations in the area. The oil company said about 20 had been closed.

BP said activists stopped the flow of fuel by flipping safety switches on forecourts, then removing them to prevent the petrol stations reopening.

Greenpeace said it wanted the company to adopt greener energy policies.

A BP spokesman said the petrol stations would be reopened as soon as it was safe to do so.

He described the stunt as "an irresponsible and childish act which is interfering with safety systems".

Logo changed

Greenpeace said the protest was being held to urge Bob Dudley, who will take over from outgoing BP chief executive Tony Hayward from October, to move away from "his predecessor's obsession with high-risk, environmentally-reckless sources of oil".

At one station in Camden, north London, Greenpeace climbers replaced BP's logo with a new version showing the green "sunflower" disappearing into a sea of oil.

At others, protesters put up signs saying: "Closed. Moving beyond petroleum." Greenpeace said the safety switches will be returned.

The organisation's executive director John Sauven said: "The moment has come for BP to move beyond oil.

"We've shut down all of BP's stations in London to give the new boss a chance to come up with a better plan.

"They're desperate for us to believe they're going 'beyond petroleum'.

"Well now's the time to prove it."

Robert Dudley, will replace Tony Hayward as BP's chief executive officer, effective October 1

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INSIDE WASHINGTON: Oil panel's web of interests

Obama: We should know who is funding corporate political ads

USATODAY, AP, Jul 26, 2010

President Obama called on the Senate today to pass a new law restricting corporate political contributions, saying it would "prevent special interests from gaining even more clout in Washington."

President Obama today in the White House
Rose Garden / (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

"The DISCLOSE Act would simply require corporate political advertisers to reveal who's funding their activities," Obama said during remarks in the White House Rose Garden.

"Nobody's saying you can't run the ads," Obama said, occasionally slapping the presidential lectern for emphasis. "Just make sure that people know who in fact is behind financing these ads."

Obama did not mention -- and did not take questions about -- the release of some 92,000 classified documents related to the Afghanistan war.

Obama's critics accused him of promoting a Democratic-friendly political bill at a time of 9.5 percent unemployment, not to mention the release of new Afghanistan documents.

"The mere suggestion that a bill designed to save politicians' jobs should take precedent over helping millions of Americans find work is an embarrassing indictment of Democrats' priorities, said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

McConnell also said the proposal "seeks seeks to protect unpopular Democrat politicians by silencing their critics and exempting their campaign supporters from an all out attack on the First Amendment."

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce called the DISCLOSE Act a violation of its free speech rights.

"With millions of Americans out of work, you would think the Senate would focus its efforts on creating American jobs rather than spending time on a bill designed to protect their own," said chamber president and CEO Thomas J. Donohue.

In his Rose Garden remarks, Obama said voters who want the government to do more about jobs and other issues will not be heard unless changes are made.

"Millions of Americans are struggling to get by and their voices shouldn't be drowned out by millions of dollars in secret special interest advertising," Obama said.

(Posted by David Jackson)

Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor
and outspoken consumer rights advocate (Reuters)

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Khmer Rouge prison chief given 30 years in prison

RNW, Published on 26 July 2010 - 6:07am

A former Khmer Rouge prison chief was handed a 30-year prison sentence Monday by a UN-backed war crimes court for his role in atrocities committed under the regime in the late 1970s.

Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, is the first Khmer Rouge cadre to face justice in an international court over the deaths of up to two million people at the hands of the communist regime.

He was sentenced to 35 years but the court reduced the term after ruling that he had been detained illegally for years before the UN-backed tribunal was established.

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Researchers discover water on the moon is widespread, similar to Earth's

Physorg.com, July 21, 2010

The Moon. Image: NASA (Enlarge)

Researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, are once again turning what scientists thought they knew about the moon on its head.

Last fall, researchers, including Larry Taylor, a distinguished professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, discovered "lunar dew" on the moon's surface -- absorbed "water" in the uppermost layers of lunar soil. This discovery of water debunked beliefs held since the return of the first Apollo rocks that the moon was bone-dry.

Now, scientists, including Taylor and Yang Liu, research assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, have discovered that water on the moon is more widespread -- on the outside and inside of the moon -- with some similarities to water in volcanic systems on Earth.

Their research will be featured in the article, "Lunar Apatite with Terrestrial Volatile Abundances" in the July 22 edition of the scientific journal, Nature.

Unlike lunar dew which is believed to come from an outside source such as solar wind which brings hydrogen into contact with the Moon's oxygen, the water discovered by Taylor and Liu is internal, arising from an entirely different origin. How it got there is not yet known. The water may have been added by impacting comets, which contain ice, during or after the formation of the moon and Earth.

The existence of volcanoes on the moon more than 4 billion years ago gave the researchers a clue that water might exist inside the body, since the dynamics of volcanoes on Earth are mostly driven by water. Therefore, the scientists made their novel discovery by examining a lunar basalt brought back from the 1971 Apollo 14 mission. Using secondary ion mass spectrometry at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., scientists determined volatile elements in a calcium phosphate mineral are very similar in the same mineral found on Earth.

The scientists said this provides "robust evidence for the presence of water in the interior of the moon from where some lunar rocks were derived. This demonstrates a closer chemical and geologic relationship between the Earth and moon than previously known. We must now re-evaluate the volatile inventories of the moon, relative to the Earth."

This is a photomicrograph of a thin section of lunar sample 14053. Credit: Larry Taylor/University of Tennessee (Enlarge)

The finding of volatiles on the moon has deep implications for how it, and the Earth, formed. It is generally believed that the moon was created when the early Earth was hit by a Mars-sized proto-planet called Theia, melting and vaporizing itself and a large chunk of the Earth. The cloud of particles created by the impact later congealed to form the moon, which supposedly was devoid of highly volatile elements such as hydrogen and chlorine. However, the researchers' discovery of these volatiles challenges this theory.

"If water in the Moon was residue water kept during the giant impact, it is surprising that water survived the impact at all because less volatile elements, such as sodium and potassium, are strongly depleted. The details of the impact theory need to be re-examined," Liu said.

The discovery of abundant and ubiquitous water on the moon could mean a human settlement on the moon is not so far-fetched. Currently, the endeavour would be very expensive. For example, it costs $25,000 to take one pint of water to the moon.

However, if scientists devise processes to easily recover this water from the lunar rocks for drinking water and fuel, a human settlement is not out of reach.

"Now we have ready sources of water that can be consumed by plants and humans but also electrolyzed into liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to develop rocket fuel," Taylor said. "Until the recent discovery of water in and on the moon, it was going to be a very energy-intensive endeavor to separate these elements from the lunar rocks and soil."

Provided by University of Tennessee at Knoxville

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