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US-Israel ties bad for peace: Soros aljazeera

Brothers Hanged for Killing Kin in Land Feud news.aol.com

Turkish Christians in new torture fear following murders
20/04/2007

Christians in Turkey have today expressed fear that growing nationalism and intolerance could lead to more violence against them.

The recent murder of three Christians in the eastern Turkey town of Malatya has highlighted Turkey's uneasy relationship with its minorities.

Police detained five more suspects yesterday in the attack at a Christian publishing house that distributes bibles.

Some reportedly said they carried out the killings to protect Islam.

The three victims - a German man and two Turks who converted to Christianity - were found a day earlier with their hands and legs tied and their throats slit.

Their faces were bruised, and the ropes had cut into their wrists.

Today, the Hurriyet newspaper reported that at least one victim was stabbed many times.

"There were so many stab wounds that we couldn't count them," Hurriyet quoted Dr Murat Ugras as saying.

"It was clearly torture."

Christian leaders said they worried that nationalists were stoking hostilities against non-Turks and non-Muslims by exploiting growing uncertainty over Turkey's place in the world. breakingnews

Gest: Liza's still a legend
20/04/2007
Music producer David Gest still considers his ex Liza Minnelli "a legend" and "wishes her well", despite a bitter divorce battle.

The couple's divorce is set to be finalised this week - nearly four years after the couple split following 16 months of marriage.

After they split, Gest accused Minnelli of leaving him needing hospital treatment after beating him in "vicious rages" and sued her for $10m (€7.34m).

The lawsuit was dismissed and Gest came to an agreement with Minnelli regarding their divorce in January.

Gest has now moved on and is dating English actress Malandra Burrows, but insists he has no hard feelings against Minnelli.

"We don't speak," he said. "The chapter is closed for both of us.

"I wish her well and tell people they should see her live in concert. Liza is a great performer - she has been singing the same songs for more than 35 years. She's a true legend." breakingnews

Parents cancel interviews, but network defends decision

Ewen MacAskill in Blacksburg - Friday April 20, 2007




Police, students and victims' relatives turned against the US network NBC yesterday for broadcasting the chilling rant of the Virginia Tech killer, as it became clear he had gone to great lengths to amplify his notoriety with a package of video clips, photographs and invective.

Parents of some of those shot dead by Cho Seung-hui expressed horror at the video footage of the killer and cancelled planned interviews with the network, while the head of Virginia state police, Steve Flaherty, opened a press conference on campus with a rebuke to NBC. "We're rather disappointed in the editorial decision to broadcast these disturbing images," he said. "I'm sorry that you were all exposed to these images."

Col Flaherty said the video had not told the police anything they did not know.

Steve Capus, the NBC president, who shared some material with other broadcasters, defended the broadcast: "This is, I think, as close as we will ever come to being inside of the mind of a killer, and I thought that it needed to be released.

"Pretty much every single news organisation all around the world has made the same decision, that it was appropriate to release this information."

But the decision quickly alienated parents of victims. Meredith Viera, co-host of NBC's Today programme, said: "We had planned to speak to some family members of victims this morning, but they cancelled their appearances because they were very upset with NBC for airing the images." In the face of the criticism, NBC decided yesterday to restrict the number of times the material was shown.

Many students watched on screens around the campus, but expressed revulsion. Others had mixed feelings. Kevin Tosh was in the dormitory where the first shooting took place, and said that, while the images may have been too harsh for those directly involved, they helped in one way: "It puts a face to him, and the mindset he was in. We can't believe how angry and out of his mind he was."

Last night, with a backlash developing, Fox News said it would stop running the images, and other networks said they would severely limit their use. "It has value as breaking news," said an ABC News spokesman, Jeffrey Schneider, "but then becomes practically pornographic, as it is just repeated ad nauseam."

Cho, 23, killed two students in the first shooting, and 30 students and staff two hours later. He stopped in between to post to NBC in New York a package containing video footage, digital photos, and a long statement. NBC received the package on Wednesday and passed it to the police. Asked if the police had asked NBC not to show it, Mr Flaherty said bluntly: "It was NBC's decision to put it out."

Cho sent the package from a post office near the campus minutes before he went to Norris Hall for the second shootings. The post worker who served Cho could not recall much about him, but did remember the address was muddled and correcting part of it. NBC said another post worker brought the package to NBC's attention on noticing the Blacksburg return address and a name similar to words reportedly scrawled in red ink on Cho's arm after the bloodbath, "Ismail Ax".

Cho filmed himself: the footage shows him reaching out to switch the camera on and off. Police are checking whether he may have hired a hotel room to film some sequences. Karan Grewal, one of his roommates, said the background in one looked like their flat. He was surprised at the different personality the normally silent and reclusive Cho presented: "It was a totally different person. He was staring straight at the camera, and he never stared into our eyes or even looked at us."

The police had trouble confirming the identities of all of the victims, and finally released a full list yesterday. The university said murdered students would receive posthumous degrees. Classes resume on Monday. Although a university official warned against "the seductive desire to blame", police and university staff faced renewed questioning as to how someone who had spent time in a mental hospital had been allowed back on campus and to buy guns. The owner of one shop where Cho bought a gun said yesterday he had received hate mail and threats to his life.

How NBC got the tape

'At first I wondered if it was real'

Even before it was opened, the oversized letter from Cho Seung-hui to NBC News attracted attention. The postal worker who brought it to NBC's Manhattan headquarters on Wednesday pointed out the return address of Blacksburg, Virginia.

Inside was what NBC anchor Brian Williams described as a multimedia manifesto, with video, pictures and writing from the murderer of 32 people just before he went on his killing spree at Virginia Tech. Cho mailed it at 9.01am on Monday, between murders.

The package was incorrectly addressed, delaying its arrival. NBC security opened the envelope. They handled it with gloved hands, and made copies of what they found. At noon, Steve Capus, president of NBC News, was told what had been delivered. "At first I wondered if it was real, but when you look at it and see all the pictures you realise that it is," he said.

The package contained a DVD, 23 pages of profane messages and 29 pictures of the killer. Eleven showed him aiming a gun at the camera. One showed 30 hollow-point bullets, with the message: "All the **** you gave me right back at you with hollow points." The FBI got the originals from NBC, which was asked not to say anything publicly until investigators had examined the evidence.

The first public word was not released until a news conference in Blacksburg at about 4.30pm.
David Bauder

Testimony of a killer

The killer's confession comprised an 1,800-word harangue, 43 photos and 28 video clips. Only parts have been publicly released. In his statement, he said:

You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today. But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off. I didn't have to do this. I could have left. I could have fled. But now I will no longer run. It's not for me. It's for my children, for my brothers and sisters ... I did it for them...

You just loved to crucify me. You loved inducing cancer in my head, terror in my heart and ripping my soul all this time ... You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience. You thought it was one pathetic boy's life you were extinguishing. Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenceless people.

Do you know what it feels to be spit on your face and to have trash shoved down your throat? Do you know what it feels like to dig your own grave? Do you know what it feels like to have throat slashed from ear to ear? Do you know what it feels like to be torched alive? Do you know what it feels like to be humiliated and be impaled upon on a cross? And left to bleed to death for your amusement? You have never felt a single ounce of pain your whole life. Did you want to inject as much misery in our lives as you can just because you can? You had everything you wanted. Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats. Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust fund wasn't enough. Your vodka and cognac weren't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough. Those weren't enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything ...

When the time came, I did it. I had to ...

This is it. This is where it all ends. End of the road. What a life it was. Some life.
guardian

Multimedia package provides global platform to a troubled mind


Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington - Friday April 20, 2007
The Guardian

When the first photographs surfaced of Cho Seung-hui pointing his two Glock handguns directly at the camera, the NBC anchor was at a loss for words. It was, he said, "what can only be described as a multimedia manifesto".

But the package, which contained 28 video clips, 43 digital photographs, and a 23-page written statement of incoherent rage, demonstrated how multimedia could take expressions of a troubled mind to a worldwide audience.

"We have given a platform for individuals to express themselves and mentally ill individuals are quite capable of making use of the media to express their feelings in a dramatic way," said Dewey Cornell, a clinical psychologist and director of the Virginia Youth Violence Project.

"In prior times we talked about a raving lunatic or someone who might be out on the streets screaming. But that might be as far as they could go in communicating their madness. Now unfortunately, it is possible for someone to take their madness on a world stage," Mr Cornell said.

In the past six years, recorded statements intended for wide audiences have emerged as an important tool for Islamist extremists - from suicide bombers in the Palestinian territories to al-Qaida operatives and Sunni insurgents in Iraq.

But those videos are propaganda for organisations with a political purpose. Cho acted alone.

After a lifetime of silence, which provoked despair in his family and alarm from his fellow students, the videos were a desperate attempt to be heard.

"It's almost as if he is making a play of his internal world. He is presenting this information to construct himself. He is desperately seeking some sort of connection," said Suzanne Goodney-Lea, who teaches a course on violence at Washington's Gallaudet University.

With the release of the material, Cho at last became part of a community, albeit one linked by horrific violence and mental illness. Today marks eight years since two teenagers in trenchcoats, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, killed 13 of their fellow students at Columbine high school in Colorado. Cho paid homage to that event in the package he sent to NBC, referring to "martyrs like Eric and Dylan".

The influence of Columbine on Cho and other campus killers is undeniable. Marisa Randazzo, a psychologist who took part in a study of school shootings by the secret service in 2002, said Columbine had become a symbol for young people who were bullied or abused, as well as for disturbed individuals. "The intensity and frequency of the attacks have increased since the events at Columbine," she told US News and World Report.

Cho is not the first campus killer to pay homage to Columbine, or to find refuge in modern tools of communication. Last September, student Kimveer Gill shot dead one woman and injured 19 others at Dawson College in Montreal. It was later discovered that Gill had posted his intention to die in a hail of gunfire on a website. He also loved violent video games, in particular Super Columbine Massacre.

The anger and isolation in Gill's postings were similar to Cho's. "Work sucks ... school sucks ... life sucks ... what else can I say?" the Toronto Star quoted him as writing. Gill also posted photos of himself holding knives and guns, and like Cho he wrote his own epitaph: "Lived fast died young. Left a mangled corpse."

The concern yesterday was that Cho's video testament should not become an inspiration to other troubled young people. "There are going to be side effects. This becomes stimulating for the next severely disturbed and deranged individual who identifies with him," Mr Cornell said.

"Hopefully his statements are so irrational that fewer people will find reason to identify with him." guardian

Iraq fourth in death penalty league, Amnesty says


Ian Black, Middle East editor- Friday April 20, 2007

Iraq is condemned by Amnesty International today for becoming the world's fourth highest user of the death penalty, with a rapid acceleration in executions since 2004, when the US handed control to the newly elected government.

It says 270 death sentences have been handed down and more than 100 carried out, including that of Saddam Hussein, his half-brother Barzan, and the former vice-president, Taha Yassin Ramadan.

Against a background of escalating violence, at least 65 people were executed in 2006 - including two women - putting the country behind only China, Iran and Pakistan. In many cases death sentences were handed down after proceedings which failed to meet international standards, the human rights organisation says. "This represents a profoundly retrograde step, and one that should not be overlooked simply because far larger numbers of lives have been lost due to ongoing violence. The death penalty is a cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment and the ultimate violation to the right to life; furthermore, it is not an effective deterrent against violence and crime, as the continuing crisis in Iraq underlines," Amnesty says. guardian

Moscow foreign students told to stay in as racist attacks rise over Hitler's birthday


· Medical academy sees risk from ultra-nationalists
· Five arrested over two fatal race stabbings

Luke Harding in Moscow - Friday April 20, 2007

Russia's most prestigious medical institute has told its foreign students to stay indoors for three days because of fears they may be attacked by skinheads celebrating Adolf Hitler's birthday.

The IM Sechenov Medical Academy in Moscow yesterday advised its 2,000 non-Russian students to remain in their dormitories until tomorrow.

The institute's deputy dean said the extraordinary measures were necessary because of the risk of attack by ultra-nationalist thugs, who are traditionally more active around Hitler's birthday - which falls on April 20.


"We believe that the best form of medicine is prevention," Sergei Baronov, deputy dean in the faculty of foreign students, told the Guardian. "I don't think the problem in Russia is worse than anywhere else. But there are a small group of people who are bent on provocation."

Foreign students are also being taught self-defence and lectures have been cancelled as security has increased. Officially the shutdown is described as a fire drill.

"I was shocked when I first heard it," Vijay Ganason, 23, a medical student from Malaysia, said. "Basically we are staying in. If you want you can go out. But it's at your own risk. We've filled our drawers with dried food."

Other students, however, said they welcomed the move.

"We are finally getting a rest and some sleep," said Vishnu Ravee, 21, also from Malaysia. "We've been revising very hard and have exams in a few weeks."

Next door the smell of Indian cooking came from the communal kitchen; in an adjacent room another medical student slept on a sofa.

The students come from 82 countries - including Britain but mostly from Malaysia and India - and they live in a renovated 19th century block not far from campus.

In recent years there has been a steep rise in the number of racist and xenophobic attacks across Russia. The victims are often migrant workers from former Soviet Union countries.

Yesterday police said they had detained five suspects in connection with the latest race stabbings in Moscow, one of which was recorded on a video camera.

Khairullo Sadykov, 26, a street cleaner from Tajikistan, was stabbed 35 times on Monday evening outside an apartment building near a metro station in eastern Moscow, a prosecutor, Sergei Vasilovsky, said. He died at the scene.

According to Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, two teenagers, thought to be skinheads wearing "high, laced-up army style boots", were captured on video allegedly carrying out the murder. They were later arrested, the paper said.

In another attack an Armenian businessman, Karen Abramyan, 46, was brutally stabbed 20 times also on Monday evening, in south-west Moscow. He died of his injuries in hospital. Three young men were arrested.

"After he was taken to hospital the victim said he was attacked because of his ethnicity, saying the young men were shouting racial epithets," a police source told Interfax news agency.

Last year 53 people were killed and 460 injured in racially motivated attacks, according to the human rights centre Sova. Activists say that the authorities are in denial about the problem and regularly classify race attacks as the lesser crime of hooliganism. Courts also impose lenient sentences, they say.

"It is nice that the university is taking care of us, but on the other hand it's absurd that our freedom is being limited because of some militant groups," said Liah Ganeline, a second-year medical student from Israel. "In a normal democratic country the authorities don't obey the interests of these groups, but on the contrary, law enforcement forces protect people from them."

She said that students were aware of the real reason for the lockdown - which has happened over the past two or three years - and that someone had scrawled the word "skinheads" over the announcement of the measure posted in a dormitory.

Founded in 1758, Moscow's medical academy is famous in Russia for its talented students and rigorous teaching. The institute has 8,000 students studying medicine, dentistry and pharmacology.

Backstory

Russia has been gripped in recent years by a series of brutal racist attacks on foreigners, with at least 53 people murdered last year alone. The victims are typically migrant workers in low-paid jobs from the former Soviet Union. But there are also regular attacks on students and on Jews. The violence appears to spike around Hitler's birthday, on April 20, when foreign embassies receive anonymous emails demanding that all "non Russians" leave or face death. The attacks occur in all of Russia's big cities where immigration and nationalism are on the rise. The situation is especially bad in St Petersburg and in Voronesh, a city south of Moscow with a large student population. Critics say the Kremlin is too lenient towards far-right groups.


guardian

Report: Former Russian president Yeltsin dies
23/04/2007 - 14:41:31

Russian news agencies have cited the Kremlin as saying that former President Boris Yeltsin has died. breakingnews

Officials Backing Down From Plan for Wall in Iraq nytimes

Jordan accused of censorship after security agents seize al-Jazeera tape


· Confiscated interview was critical of US and Saudis
· TV channel protests at gag on media freedom

Ian Black, Middle East editor


Jordan's pro-western government is embroiled in an embarrassing row with al-Jazeera television after Amman confiscated the videotape of an interview in which the former crown prince attacked the United States and Saudi Arabia for pursuing "destructive" Middle East policies.

The Qatar-based satellite channel protested at an infringement of media freedoms after its Beirut bureau chief, Ghassan Ben Jeddou, filmed an interview with Prince Hassan, uncle of King Abdullah and previous heir to the throne, for the channel's Open Dialogue programme.

Prince Hassan was asked about allegations in a recent article by the New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh, suggesting that the US and Saudi Arabia were bankrolling Sunni Muslim groups - some with links to al-Qaida - to counterbalance the weight of Hizbullah, the Shia political and paramilitary organisation based in Lebanon and backed by Iran and Syria. The prince is said to have commented, characteristically: "If this is true, we have a big problem."

But even this anodyne response was deemed too explosive for an Arab audience. The 60-year-old prince is an engaging and highly articulate intellectual who is active on the international conference circuit, but no longer has any real power.

The tape of the interview was confiscated by security agents on Saturday as the al-Jazeera producer was about to fly out of Amman. The channel quickly went public with the news.

"Everything that was said in the interview had been said before, though maybe never in Arabic," said a well-placed source in the Jordanian capital, admitting that the affair had been badly handled by the security service and that clumsy censorship had created a far bigger story than the original interview would have done.

Al-Jazeera identified a Saudi official mentioned by the New Yorker as Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who is a long-serving former ambassador to Washington, confidant of Vice-President Dick Cheney and the man allegedly behind payments to Sunni groups in Lebanon.

The main concern in Amman was understood to have been about offending Saudi Arabia, which recently hosted a key Arab summit that repackaged the kingdom's 2002 initiative for a comprehensive peace agreement with Israel. King Abdullah has given enthusiastic support to his Saudi namesake. Both monarchs are worried about a widening Sunni-Shia divide and the growth of Iranian influence in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine.

"We cannot afford to have any misinterpretation of Jordan's stand at this delicate stage," said a government spokesman. "Remember, we live in the Middle East where media outlets are sometimes employed to serve political purposes."

This is not the first time al-Jazeera has clashed with Arab governments. Earlier this year, Egyptian authorities arrested a correspondent who was preparing a film about torture. It is not allowed to broadcast from Saudi Arabia at all.

In its 10 years, the channel has challenged the stultifying world of the official and semi-official Arab media, and has thrived on its no-holds-barred coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The censorship row was Amman's second public media spat in only a few days after the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported that the Jordanian king favoured paying compensation to Palestinian refugees rather than ensuring their right of return. Hamas, the ruling Palestinian movement, demanded an explanation. Jordan then denounced the Ha'aretz report as causing "flagrant harm to Jordan and its leadership and jeopardising serious efforts to aid the Palestinian people". guardian

Huge win for Nigeria's Yar'Adua
BBC

Woman dies after camel sits on her


The owner of an exotic animal farm has died after being kicked and then sat on by a 1,800lb camel.

Cathie Ake and the four-year-old camel were being filmed by a local television station last weekend when the camel kicked her and sat on her during a break in filming.

The station was doing a story on Mini-Akers Exotic Animals, the farm in Wewahitchka, Florida Ake owned with her husband.

Ake’s husband, Donnie Ake, said he thought Polo, the camel, was agitated by the mating season.

He said he would find a new home for Polo, which the couple bought three weeks ago.

“My wife did a lot of rescue,” Ake said. “She wouldn’t let an animal suffer.”

Police and paramedics moved the camel and recovered Ake’s body.

“To be honest with you, I don’t think there’s much that she could have done,” said Gulf County Sheriff Dalton Upchurch. breakingnews

Drunken man parks horse in bank foyer to take snooze


An early-morning German bank customer had a shock when he found a horse in line at the automatic teller machine in front of him.

Police said the horse’s owner, identified only as Wolfgang H, had too much to drink the night before and decided to sleep it off inside the bank’s heated foyer.

The 40-year-old machinist told Bild newspaper he had “a few beers” with a friend in Wiesenburg, south-west of Berlin, and decided to sleep in the bank on his way home.

“It was late, it was already dark and cold,” he was quoted as saying.

Confronted with the lack of a hitching-post, he took the six-year-old horse, named Sammy, in along with him.

When a customer came across the horse and sleeping rider in the bank early yesterday morning, he called police, who woke the owner and sent him on his way.

No charges were filed, but there might be some cleanup needed. Apparently Sammy made his own after-hours deposit on the carpet. breakingnews

More than 350 dead in Somali fighting


Artillery shells and mortars rained down on Mogadishu today after a week of fighting, despite a plea by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for an end to the violence that local groups say has claimed the lives of over 350 people.

Islamic insurgents clashed with Ethiopian and Somali government forces, using mortars and rocket-propelled grenades against tanks and artillery positions in the north of the battle-scarred coastal city.

A suspected suicide car bomb exploded outside an Ethiopian military base 18 miles from the capital, after troops opened fire on a minibus speeding toward the base, local resident Mayow Mohamed said.

Three civilians were injured in the blast, and Ethiopian troops sealed off the area as smoke billowed into the sky, he said.

Another car bomb exploded outside Mogadishu’s Ambassador Hotel, Somali presidential spokesman Hussein Mohamoud Hussein said. Seven people were killed in the blast, said eyewitness Abdu-kadir Mohamud. The hotel is used by government lawmakers.

Sudan Ali Ahmed, who heads Somalia’s Elman Human Rights Organisation, said 29 civilians were killed in today’s fighting and 49 others were wounded. Some 36 insurgents were killed and 44 wounded, he added.

In total 358 people have been killed and 680 wounded in the outbreak of violence, according to a local committee assessing damage from the worst fighting in more than 15 years.

More than 320,000 Somalis have fled the capital since February, the UN says. Over 82,000 people have fled the city since fighting erupted on April 18, said Hussein Farah Siyad, a spokesman with Mogadishu’s dominant clan – the Hawiye.

The latest upsurge came hours after the UN secretary-general called on the warring sides to “immediately cease all hostilities and to facilitate access for the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian assistance,” spokeswoman Michele Montas said in a statement in New York.

“He deplores the reported indiscriminate use of heavy weapons against civilian population centres, which is in disregard of international humanitarian law,” the statement said.

The coastal city of Kismayo, 300 miles south of the capital, has fallen to a Somali clan with alleged ties to the defeated Islamic movement, remnants of which are fighting Ethiopian forces in the capital, said Marehan spokesman Mohamed Ali Hassan.


The city fell last night after a bloody clash between two clans.

The United Nations said the fighting in Mogadishu had sparked the worst humanitarian crisis in the war-ravaged country’s recent history, with many of the city’s residents trapped because roads out of Mogadishu were blocked.

Corpses have been left on the streets for days, witnesses said, as it is too dangerous to try to retrieve them.

The top US diplomat for Africa, Jendayi Frazer, said late Monday the US was also deeply concerned by the fighting in the Somali capital but condemned Eritrea “because they continue to fund, arm, train and advise the insurgents”.

“We’re pushing for the ceasefire…so that they can end this violence,” she told reporters in Washington.

The latest fighting flared after Ethiopian and Somali government troops made a final push to try to wipe out the insurgency, Western diplomatic and Somali government sources said.

The government and its Ethiopian backers were facing international pressure over the mounting death toll and appeared determined to bring order before a planned national reconciliation conference. Clan and warlord militia have also joined the fight against the Ethiopians and government forces.

A bid earlier this month to wipe out the insurgency left more than 1,000 people dead, many of them civilians.

Somalia has not had an effective national government since 1991, when warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on one another, throwing the country into anarchy.

The transitional government was formed in 2004 with UN help, but has struggled to extend its control over the country. breakingnews