Anushka Asthana & Sam Rogers | Seattle, WA | July 5

The Observer - Campaigner persuades Washington to alter laws that forced travellers to lie on entry forms

A law that has in effect banned people with HIV from visiting America for two decades is to be overturned after a Briton with the virus accused the US of hypocrisy and discrimination during a major health conference.

Paul Thorn should have spoken at the Pacific health summit in Seattle last month, but was refused entry to the country after admitting his HIV status on his visa-waiver application.

CHINA - Torrential rain battering southern China has forced more than 150,000 people from their homes, toppled hundreds of houses and punched a dangerous hole in the spillway of a dam, Xinhua news agency reported.

INDIA - Indian paramilitary rescue teams rushed on Saturday to an island in one of Asia's largest rivers, where nearly 100,000 people took refuge after heavy monsoon rains flooded their homes, said a local administrator. Nearly 300,000 people in remote northeastern Assam state have seen their homes flooded in three days of nonstop monsoon rain, said state Revenue Minister Bhumidhar Barman.

BANGLADESH - Torrential rains triggered landslides and flash floods killing six people and stranding half a million in their homes in Bangladesh, officials said on Saturday. The landslides occurred near Habiganj district town, some 200 km (125 miles) northeast of the capital Dhaka Saturday, burying all six members of a family. Officials said the situation had worsened at three other nearby districts, with some 500,000 people stranded at their homes as the rivers Surma and Khusiara, flowing into Bangladesh from northeastern India, burst their banks following incessant rains over the last four days.

The refugees from the SWAT valley may also be in dire trouble.

Peter Baker | Moscow | July 3

NYT - The Russian government has agreed to let American troops and weapons bound for Afghanistan fly over Russian territory, officials on both sides said Friday. The arrangement will provide an important new corridor for the United States military as it escalates efforts to win the eight-year war.

BBC - A senior Obama administration official has told the BBC that Russia has agreed to let US troops bound for the war in Afghanistan fly through its airspace. The deal, which opens up an important new corridor for the US military, is to be officially announced when President Barack Obama visits Moscow next week. Speaking separately, a Kremlin official confirmed a deal was on the table but suggested it referred to weapons only. The reported agreement marks a major development in US-Russian relations.

Philip Rucker & Eli Saslow | July 3

WaPo - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) announced this afternoon she will resign from office on July 26 and return to private life, a stunning decision by last year's Republican vice presidential candidate to leave office before the end of her first term.

"We know we can effect positive change outside government at this moment in time on another scale and actually make a difference for our priorities," Palin said in a news conference alongside a lake in her hometown of Wasilla, Alaska.

Using a basketball analogy, Palin said, "I know when it's time to pass the ball for victory."

Palin, 45, is a major star in the GOP and is seen as a leading candidate for the party's presidential nomination in 2012.

July 3

BBC - At least 10 militants have died after missiles were fired by a suspected US drone aircraft at a Taliban target in Pakistan, intelligence officials say. Unnamed officials said it was an attack on a militant training facility in the South Waziristan area. It took place in an area on the Afghan border controlled by Pakistan's top Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.

Cancun | July 3

BBC - The UN's top health official has opened a forum in Mexico on combating swine flu by saying that the spread of the virus worldwide is now unstoppable. World Health Organization head Margaret Chan added that the holding of the meeting in Cancun showed confidence in Mexico, which has been hard hit. The WHO says most H1N1 cases are mild, with many people recovering unaided. As the summit opened, the UK alone was projecting more than 100,000 new cases of H1N1 a day by the end of the summer, and informed the ECDC that the country has changed its response strategy, acknowledging that containment of the virus is no longer possible.

The disease, which the WHO declared a full-fledged pandemic on Jun. 11, is now spreading fast in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, fuelled by the southern hemisphere winter.

<sub>* The United States, with nearly 34,000 confirmed cases, remains the most affected country, followed by Mexico at about 9,000 and Canada with about 8,000 cases.
* 337 people have died from swine flu, which has also sickened 80000 others in 121 countries
* 1970's lab accident may have caused pandemic
* Obama to launch "national influenza campaign"
* WHO update 56 1/7</sub>

Bill Sizemore | Alexandria, VA | July 2

The Virginia-Pilot - A just-amended lawsuit alleges six additional instances of unprovoked attacks on Iraqi civilians by Blackwater contractors.

Three people, including a 9-year-old boy, are said to have died.

Also added to the suit is a racketeering count accusing Blackwater founder Erik Prince of running an ongoing criminal enterprise involved in, among other things, kidnapping and child prostitution.

Yangon | July 3

AFP - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon prepared Thursday for a risky visit to Myanmar amid warnings that his trip will be a "huge failure" if he fails to secure the release of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Ban is set to arrive in the military-ruled nation on Friday for a two-day visit that the UN says will focus on pressing the junta to free all political prisoners -- including the opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate who is currently on trial. He is due to meet junta leader Senior General Than Shwe and members of opposition parties including Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), but

George Jahn | July 3

AP - The 35-nation board of the International Atomic Energy Agency chose a veteran Japanese diplomat as the agency's next head on Thursday, in a tight vote reflecting stubborn North-South divisions of the U.N. nuclear monitoring organization.
Yukiya Amano collected 23 votes, compared to 11 for Abdul Samad Minty of South Africa, with one abstention, barely giving him the two-thirds majority needed for victory.
Even that tight margin came only after hard-fought preliminary sessions. A March vote between the two men — Amano, backed by the U.S. and like-minded countries, Minty supported by the developing world — was inconclusive, showing the divide separating the two camps.

July 2

BBC - Saudi Arabia has signed a deal with a major European defence contractor to build a hi-tech security system including a fence around the whole of its 9,000 kilometre border. The country has been wanting to build a strong border security system for some time.

Its two main concerns are its neighbours Iraq and Yemen, and the instability and lawlessness of these two countries have raised fears in Saudi Arabia that their problems will overflow the border. Specifically, the Saudis are worried about weapons and drug smuggling. The cost of the contract has not been officially disclosed, but a French magazine said it is worth about $3 billion.

July 2

scoop.co.nz - Two tribal communities in eastern Chad have agreed to end a long-running feud and live peacefully together under an initiative co-sponsored by the United Nations peacekeeping mission to the country.

MINURCAT, the UN mission to Chad and the neighbouring Central African Republic (CAR), and local authorities in the town of Adre brought together members of the ethnic Zaghawa and Massalit communities yesterday to formalize the end to their feud.

Helmand Valley | July 2

AFP - US Marines have launched a massive offensive into the Taliban heartlands of southern Afghanistan as President Barack Obama's new war plan swings into action.
_{A US Marine from 5th Battalion 10th Marines patrols with a member of an Afghan border guard unit in the desert of the lower Helmand River valley. Picture: Reuters}

Operation Khanjar (Strike of the Sword), involving nearly 4,000 US forces as well as 650 Afghan police and soldiers, the Marine Expeditionary Brigade said, announcing Thursday's pre-dawn launch of the drive in southern Helmand province. Deploying about 50 aircraft, the air and land assault would push troops into insurgent strongholds in what officers on the ground said was the biggest offensive airlift by the Marines since Vietnam.

“What makes Operation Khanjar different from those that have occurred before is the massive size of the force introduced, the speed at which it will insert,” Brigadier General Larry Nicholson said in a Marine statement.

NYT - “The enemy has chosen to withdraw rather than engage for the most part,” said Lt. Abe Sipe, a spokesman for the unit, according to The Associated Press. “We had a couple of heat casualties, but not deemed serious in nature at this time.”

<sub>* Pakistani troops move to block Taliban fleeing US Operation
* 2 UK soldiers killed in IED explosion
* US opens 'major Afghan offensive'
* 'US Soldier Seized' Amid Major Offensive
* US Marines storm south in major Afghan offensive</sub>

Sue Lannin | July 2

abc.net.au - A leaked report from the World Trade Organisation (WTO) says that nations are throwing up trade barriers in response to the global recession.{snip} WTO director-general Pascal Lamy says the global economy is fragile and that wealthy nations will see exports drop by 14 per cent this year, and that is not going to help the world recover from the worst downturn since the Great Depression.

July 2

BBC - A court in the Indian capital, Delhi, has ruled that homosexual intercourse between consenting adults is not a criminal act.

The ruling overturns a 148-year-old colonial law which describes a same-sex relationship as an "unnatural offence".

Homosexual acts were punishable by a 10-year prison sentence.

Many people in India regard same-sex relationships as illegitimate. Rights groups have long argued that the law contravened human rights.

The court said that a statute in Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which defines homosexual acts as "carnal intercourse against the order of nature" and made them illegal, was an "antithesis of the right to equality".

Washington | July 1

AP - The Justice Department is again delaying the release of an internal CIA report on the agency's secret detention and interrogation program during the Bush administration.

The report had been expected to be made public two weeks ago but was held back over debates about how much of it should be censored. The government published a version of the report in 2008, but its contents were almost entirely blacked out.

Michael Day | Milan | July 2

The Independent -

A self-portrait by the Renaissance genius Michelangelo has been discovered in his final painting, the Crucifixion of Saint Peter in the Vatican's Pauline Chapel, it emerged last night.

Maurizio De Luca, the Vatican's head of paintings restoration, said the finding, possibly the only clear Michelangelo self-portrait in existence, was "extraordinary and moving", and was given extra poignancy by appearing in the artist's last painted work.

The figure identified as the artist is one of three horsemen in the picture. Michelangelo is depicted wearing a blue turban of lapis lazuli blue. (click pic to enlarge)

Jerusalem | July 2

Reuters - * Amnesty also accuses Hamas of war crimes
* Report says Israel put Palestinian children in harm's way
* No evidence found that Hamas used human shields

Amnesty International said on Thursday Israel inflicted "wanton destruction" in the Gaza Strip in attacks that often targeted Palestinian civilians during an offensive in December and January in the Hamas-run enclave.

The London-based rights group, in a 117-page report on the 22 days of fighting, also criticised the Islamist movement Hamas for rocket attacks on Israel, which it called "war crimes".

Among other conclusions, Amnesty said it found no evidence to support Israeli claims that Gaza guerrillas deliberately used civilians as "human shields", but it did, however, cite evidence that Israeli troops put children and other civilians in harm's way by forcing them to remain in homes taken over by soldiers.

Robert Marquand | Paris | July 1

CSM - On Monday, the French legislature passed a radical new law making it illegal to be part of a "gang" – if it's one that has been or may be violent.

The move is part of a recent law-and-order initiative by President Nicolas Sarkozy that the French palace is tying to new forms of youth crime at a time of economic crisis. Earlier this month, France banned the wearing of masks during public protests.

The new antigang law says that anyone identified with a group, formal or informal, known by police to have committed criminal acts, or is intending to, may be subject to a three-year sentence or a 45,000 euro (US$63,000) fine.

Christian Estrosi, of Mr. Sarkozy's ruling center-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party, spearheaded the new antigang law that passed late Monday night.

Daniel Nasaw | Washington | July 1

The Guardian - A US army panel has recommended an Arabic linguist and Iraq veteran be discharged from the military for declaring on television that he is gay.

The army accused Lieutenant Dan Choi, 28, of violating the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that bars homosexuals from serving openly in the military. Choi, a graduate of the elite West Point military academy, served a tour in Iraq as an infantry officer, translator and Arabic language instructor. He announced in March on a popular liberal television chat show that he is gay, setting up a confrontation.

The panel today recommended that the US army withdraw Choi's federal recognition as an officer, a move that would end his military career, said Lieutenant Colonel Paul Fanning, a spokesman for the New York army national guard, Choi's command.

"It is firing based on identity, purely discriminatory based on my identity," Choi said. "If I had said 'no, I'm sorry, I'm actually straight but those statements were a lie and I'm sorry,' then I had a good chance of being retained."

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave, my ass

Robert Tait | Istanbul | July 1

The Guardian -

_{Most of the ancient city of Hasankeyf, in Batman province, will be submerged if South-eastern Anatolia project goes ahead, critics claim. Photograph: Alamy}

Turkey today announced plans to resume a controversial £1bn dam project in the face of environmental protests that it would displace thousands of people, destroy habitats and drown priceless archaeological treasures.

The environment minister, Veysel Eroglu, said work on the Ilisu hydroelectric dam on the Tigris river in south-east Turkey would restart after a six-month funding suspension ends next week.

Steve Connor | July 1

The Independent - Scientists have discovered a remarkable similarity between the genetic faults behind both schizophrenia and manic depression in a breakthrough that is expected to open the way to new treatments for two of the most common mental illnesses, affecting millions of people.

Previously doctors had assumed that the two conditions were quite separate. But new research shows for the first time that both have a common genetic basis that leads people to develop one or other of the two illnesses.

Amy Yee | Dharmasala, India | June 29

NYT - Tibetan monks and nuns spend their lives studying the inner world of the mind rather than the physical world of matter. Yet for one month this spring a group of 91 monastics devoted themselves to the corporeal realm of science.

Instead of delving into Buddhist texts on karma and emptiness, they learned about Galileo’s law of accelerated motion, chromosomes, neurons and the Big Bang, among other far-ranging topics.

Many in the group, whose ages ranged from the 20s to 40s, had never learned science and math. In Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and nunneries, the curriculum has remained unchanged for centuries.

July 1

AFP - Nepal's anti-corruption authority has come up with a novel solution to rampant bribe-taking at the country's only international airport - the pocketless trouser. The authority said it was issuing the new, bribe-proof garment to all airport officials after uncovering widespread corruption at Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International Airport.

"We sent a team to observe the growing complaints about the behaviour of airport authorities and workers towards travellers and we discovered that the reports were true," a spokesman for the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA), Ishwori Prasad Paudyal, said. "So we decided that airport officials should be given trousers with no pockets. We have directed the ministry of civil aviation to implement our order as soon as possible," he said. "We believe this will help curb the irregularities."

Paudyal said CIAA investigators had observed theft as well as bribe-taking by airport officials, who would lose their jobs if the situation did not improve. His comments came a day after Nepal's new Prime Minister Madhav Mumar Nepal expressed fears that corruption was tarnishing the airport's reputation.

Washington | July 1

AFP - A North Korean ship tracked by the US Navy and suspected of transporting weapons or military know-how in violation of UN sanctions has turned around, a Pentagon official said.

The official declined to provide details, including where the Kang Nam 1 ship -- reportedly originally bound for Myanmar -- could now be headed, but news reports out of South Korea suggested the ship may be returning home two weeks after it set sail June 17.

Daniel Howden | July 1

The Independent - The streets are no longer burning, but smouldering corruption at every level of government threatens to rip the country apart. Once the pride of East Africa, it has now been judged a failure of a state, writes Daniel Howden

Symbols rarely come as obvious or appropriate as Nairobi's Integrity Centre. A stone's throw from State House Avenue, the headquarters of Kenya's Anti-Corruption Commission (Kacc) is both a rusting hulk and a public joke. It was built to project the arrival of a brash new world but its metal panels have oxidised and bled, scarring its bronze facade with rivulets like the tracks of filthy brown tears.

In a country so traumatised by the consequences of corruption this ought to be a hive of activity. Instead it is a place which most experts would be happy to see closed. "They should be locked in and paid to stay there," says Mwalimu Mati, an anti-corruption campaigner. "They're not ever going to fight grand corruption. They are managers of scandal and no action is ever taken."

Eighteen months after East Africa's island of stability was brought to the brink of civil war by the fallout from a stolen election, there is a temptation to assume that if the country is not burning, it must be healing. That would be wrong, according to the annual index of failed states, issued yesterday, which put Kenya in the critically failed group, one place below Burma.