BB FANS

Antarctic base staff evacuated after Christmas brawl



Two men, one with a suspected broken jaw, have been airlifted from the Antarctic's most remote research facility after an incident described as a "drunken Christmas punch-up".

The brawl happened at the US-operated Amundsen-Scott South Pole station, located at the heart of the frozen continent. The station, where staff carry out a range of scientific investigations from astrophysics to seismology, is currently being rebuilt in a £76m project.

After reports of the fight reached staff at McMurdo station, the headquarters of the US Antarctic Programme, which is located on Ross Island, a US Air Force Hercules was sent to pick up the injured man and the other worker.

They were flown back to McMurdo, but it was decided the man's injuries were too serious to be treated in Antarctica and he was taken on to Christchurch, New Zealand, accompanied by a nurse and a paramedic.

Many of the McMurdo staff had been expecting a day off for Christmas but support workers returned to work to deal with the rare emergency medical evacuation.

A spokeswoman at Christchurch Hospital said a man was admitted on Christmas Day and discharged the following day.

"There was an altercation between two people -- there's no indication of the cause or of the background between the two folks," said Peter West, spokesman for the National Science Foundation which manages the US Antarctic programme.

The injured man is an employee of Raytheon Polar Services, one of America's largest defence contractors. A company spokeswoman, Val Carroll, said an investigation into the incident would be held. She said it was company policy not to release names of the two men.

The other man involved in the incident has flown back to the United States.

Polar medivac flights are rare occurrences, one of the most dramatic being a midwinter flight in 1999 for a woman doctor who developed breast cancer and needed urgent treatment.

It is currently summer in Antarctica, with light snow falling and daytime temperatures hovering around freezing, making it relatively easy to fly back and forth to New Zealand.
guardian

Healed by the Amazon angels

Flying medics risk treacherous landing conditions to reach sick people in some of the most remote parts of the world's largest rainforest

A deafening roar fills the sky over this tiny village and a fierce gust of wind lashes across the landscape. Half a dozen local children gaze on from the undergrowth, transfixed, as a Black Hawk helicopter descends towards them and a dozen figures in military fatigues leap out and speed away. For this isolated Amazon settlement it can only mean one thing: Brazil's national airmail service has arrived.

The airmail service, or Correio Aereo Nacional, does not deliver postcards or Christmas gifts. It is a group of air force medics who risk life and limb to bring healthcare to the remotest corners of the world's largest rainforest.

Created in 1941, CAN's first pilots were known as the "flag bearers of the skies". Their mission was to help to integrate remote Amazon outposts with the rest of the country, building runways in the jungle and transporting residents of isolated riverside communities to the city. Until the early 1990s, when budget cuts forced the airmail service into extinction, dozens of its planes flew above the Amazon.

Then in 2004, during the first term of the leftwing president Luiz Inacio da Silva the service was resuscitated as a means of bringing medical care to areas so isolated that without aircraft they could only be reached by boat or weeks trekking through the jungle. The flying doctors became known as the Angels of the Amazon.

Caramambatai, an indigenous settlement home to around 190 members of the Ingariko tribe and the scene of the latest airmail mission, is about as remote as they come.

Hidden away on Brazil's tri-border with Venezuela and Guyana, the area is said to have been the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel The Lost World.

The book charts the adventures of an eccentric British scientist called Professor Challenger who claims to have found dinosaurs living on a mysterious Amazonian plateau. The plateau in question was Mount Roraima, a colossal tabletop mountain that surges through the thick layers of mist hanging over Caramambatai.

Life as an airmail medic in Brazil's lost world is not for the light-hearted. Using 10-seater Cessna Caravans, Black Hawk helicopters and a Canadian Buffalo cargo plane built in 1968, CAN doctors and nurses from the air force hospital in Manaus are shuttled between terrifyingly short runways - often mud strips first carved into the dense jungle by illegal gold miners.

During a recent visit to Xitei, a Yanomami Indian community in Roraima state, the Caravan plane in which the Guardian was traveling with the airmail team spun off the narrow, waterlogged airstrip and into the undergrowth.

When the doctors emerged from the plane they found the burnt out carcass of a helicopter that had smashed into a nearby river and exploded a few years earlier. The helicopter's charred remains - and presumably its occupants - had long since been engulfed by the surrounding forest.

But for Flying Officer Karine Tiemy, a 27-year-old dermatologist from Sao Paulo who took part in a recent six-day CAN mission during which nearly 700 patients were treated, the risks are worth taking.

Officer Tiemy says her most challenging mission to date involved being flown into a jungle clearing onboard the Black Hawk to rescue a gold-miner who accidentally shot himself in the leg while setting a hunting trap.

"One more day and he probably would have died," says Tiemy, an angelic-looking Phil Collins fan, recalling how she used 10 liters of fluid to clean the gaping wound. After four days in the forest it had become infested with larvae, she says.

"The smell was terrible. We had to open the helicopter's doors to get rid of it."

Fidel Anderson Ingariko, 31, a Caramambatai resident who was recently bitten by a poisonous Surucucu snake and airlifted to hospital as he slipped into a coma, is another who owes his life to the Angels of the Amazon.

"I was real bad," says Anderson, a Guyana-born Brazilian who speaks English with a strong Caribbean accent. "If the doctor's hadn't got me I probably would have died like the others."

The humanitarian value of such work is impossible to deny. But airmail missions are not just about airlifts and portable ultra-sound machines. The Brazilian military also uses the trips to gather intelligence on the remote areas around Brazil's border with Colombia, Venezuela and Guyana and to crack down on illegal gold mining and cocaine trafficking.

"We can't leave empty spaces," says Colonel Jose Hugo Volkmer, a 50-year-old fighter pilot from the south of Brazil who worked as a UN military observer in Sarajevo during the 1990s and is now responsible for CAN missions in the western Amazon.

"Empty spaces get occupied. If we don't occupy them, then our neighbour will."

Colonel Volkmer says one major concern is the reported presence of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) in Venezuelan territory.

He claims the Joint Inter-Agency Task Force South, a US backed anti-drug trafficking agency, has recently detected Farc members operating there, not far from the border with Brazil.

"This makes us open our eyes to this area ... We need to be there to know that these runways are being used to bring healthcare not as a logistic point to transport drugs."

After recent intelligence suggested that Ingrid Betancourt was being held captive in the Brazilian Amazon, Colonel Volkmer says he personally flew over the area, triggering a Special Forces raid on a Farc camp in which fifteen arrests were made. The hostage was not found.

"We have to be permanently present and flying in this region is our way of doing this."

Colonel Volkmer laughed off the dangers involved in landing on miniscule, mud-clogged airstrips deep in the jungle. It was the perfect way to train young air force pilots, he said.

"The moment we stop taking risks is ... when it is time to get into the coffin and wave a little goodbye to everybody," he says at an improvised clinic in the Manalai indigenous village, to which Indians from Venezuela and Guyana also flock in search of medical treatment. Minutes later Winifred Thomas, a 48-year-old indigenous woman from a remote settlement in Guyana, limps into the field hospital.

"I couldn't get any help there so I came here," said Thomas, who recently underwent a hip-replacement operation in the Brazilian city of Boa Vista and had trekked several days through the jungle to find the CAN medics.

Thomas had only one complaint - that the airmail doctors couldn't give her a lift home in their Black Hawk.

"I want to go back in the helicopter," she grins. "It's only fifteen minutes to my home. On foot it'll take me two weeks."

guardian

News in brief



Rescue for man found trapped in septic tank

A 77-year-old man from Iowa spent part of Christmas Eve stuck upside down in the opening of his septic tank, with his head inside and his feet kicking in the air above. Robert Schoff reached into the tank on Monday in an effort to find a clog, but he lost his balance and got wedged into the opening. "It wasn't good, I'll tell you what," Schoff said on Tuesday. "It was the worst Christmas Eve I've ever had." Schoff screamed for help, but it was an hour before his wife, Toni, walked by a window and saw his feet in the air. He was rescued when she called emergency services.
Associated Press in Iowa

Three million Soviet soldiers listed as missing

More than 3 million Soviet soldiers who fought in the second world war are still listed as missing in action, a senior general said yesterday. General Vladimir Isakov, a deputy defence minister, made the statement while attending the burial of the remains of 121 Red Army soldiers who died in the battle of Moscow in 1941. An estimated 27 million Soviets died during the conflict, known to most Russians as the Great Patriotic War, and much of the western part of the country was ravaged during four years of epic battles. Many historians believe the actual Soviet losses were significantly higher.
Associated Press in Moscow

Castro is getting steadily stronger, says brother

Fidel Castro remains on the mend, gaining weight, exercising twice a day and continuing to help make the Cuban government's top decisions, according to his brother Raul Castro. The island's acting president gave the first clues about his brother's health in weeks, saying on Monday that he has a "healthier mentality, full use of his mental faculties with some small physical limitations". At 76, Raul is five years younger than his brother, who has not been seen in public since announcing he had undergone emergency intestinal surgery and was stepping down in July 2006.
Associated Press in Havana
guardian

Austrian company offers to remove UK's 'disruptive' migrants in adapted aircraft

A company specialising in removing failed asylum-seekers is to approach the Government with plans to use specially adapted aircraft to deport hundreds of "disruptive" refugees.

Asylum Airways, run by an Austrian aviation consultant with ties to British security firms, will operate aircraft for European countries which do not wish to use established airlines for the forced removal of asylum-seekers.

The planes will have specially designed seats so that the "passengers" can be strapped down and restrained by guards. A deal could save the Government millions of pounds compared with the piecemeal contracts it has negotiated with dozens of airlines as well as reduce the number of aborted deportations.

Hundreds of asylum-seeker removals have had to be aborted in the past two years because of what the Home Office describes as "disruptive behaviour".

And in the past few months airlines have been criticised for carrying failed asylum-seekers, many of whom allege they have been physically and racially abused by private security guards paid to escort them.

Earlier this year XL airlines announced that it would no longer work with the Home Office in removing failed asylum-seekers. But British Airways and others argue that they have a legal duty to take asylum-seekers on their aircraft.

Heinz Berger, who has set up the Asylum Airlines company and has worked with British companies providing security at British airports, says that he is still involved with the "bureaucracy" of the scheme but has identified Britain as a key market for his service.

Mr Berger said that Britain was on a list of countries with whom he was seeking to do business. He said there was "ongoing interest all over Europe" for an airline that will organise flights around Europe, picking up failed asylum-seekers from various countries and then flying them back to their home nations around Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

A special feature will be bespoke aircraft with padded rooms and restraining equipment.

Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act show that the removal of hundreds of asylum-seekers each year has to be cancelled because of "disruptive behaviour". But this can include medical problems as well as complaints from passengers.

A spokeswoman for the Home Office said that while the Government was "open to new ideas" she said the present arrangements were working "pretty well".
independent

Cypriot euro entry brings divided economies closer reuters

Convicted aid workers to return Sun

Couple 'admit' Xmas eve killings Sun

Kenya on the brink as more than 100 killed in poll riots

Disputed election result sparks worst violence in 25 years

Kenya's reputation as one of Africa's most stable democracies was shattered yesterday as the fallout from Sunday's highly controversial presidential elections led to nationwide rioting and the deaths of more than 100 people.

Police and protesters fought running battles in a number of Nairobi's slums as supporters of opposition leader Raila Odinga burned down homes and looted shops owned by supporters of the victorious incumbent Mwai Kibaki.

In western Kenya, where Odinga's support is greatest, 40 people were reported to have been killed, many of them by police, and a day-time curfew was enforced.


The government enforced a nationwide media blackout and civil society groups said there was "an undeclared state of emergency" in the country. British citizens were advised by the Foreign Office to stay indoors.

Tens of thousands of security officers were deployed in the main towns to try to quell the increasing fury at an election result about which Britain, the US, Canada as well as the EU observer mission have expressed concern. Several members of the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK), who awarded Kibaki victory, also appeared to have second thoughts yesterday.

But Kibaki, 76, who had trailed in all the pre-election opinion polls as well as the media counts from Thursday's ballot, yesterday remained defiant, vowing to quickly end what is the worst violence in Kenya in 25 years. "My government will ... deal decisively with those who breach the peace by intensifying security across the country," he said.

Internal security minister John Muchuki, one of Kibaki's oldest allies, has banned live television and radio broadcasts, drawing strong condemnation from media groups.

Odinga, 62, who spent eight years in jail as a political prisoner, said he refused to be intimidated, despite the persistent rumours that he and other top members of the opposition would soon be arrested. After police blocked a planned alternative swearing-in yesterday for "the people's president" - using water cannon and teargas to barricade protesters in the capital's slums - Odinga called for peaceful mass action, culminating in a 1 million-person rally in Nairobi on Thursday.

After declaring himself "the elected president of the Republic of Kenya", he told a press conference that the previous 48 hours had been some of the darkest in the country's history. "Kenyans are in a state of mourning. They have seen their nascent democracy shackled, strangled and finally killed," he said.

Western diplomats, concerned at the rapid downturn in one of the few politically stable and democratic countries in the region, were yesterday desperately trying to get hold of Kibaki, who was hastily inaugurated after being given 4.6 million votes to Odinga's 4.4 million on Sunday. But they had little success, with the president and his cabal of Kikuyu advisers dismissing allegations that large-scale rigging occurred during vote-tallying.

While the election day went smoothly, many of the results announced by the ECK, which included several members recently appointed by Kibaki, did not agree with those released at the counting centres in the 210 constituencies.

Despite loud protests by the opposition leaders during the announcement of the final results - leading to the storming of the election headquarters by the elite GSU police unit and the ejection of observers and media - commission officials ruled that Odinga would have to seek redress via the courts.

EU monitors expressed doubts about the tallying process, noting suspiciously high turnout figures in Kibaki strongholds; they are expected to announce today that the poll was not free and fair. Britain, which is Kenya's largest bilateral donor, has voiced similar concerns. After initially congratulating Kibaki on his victory, the US State Department said yesterday that there were some "real problems" about "irregularities in the vote count".

The Kenya Domestic Observation Forum, which deployed 17,000 observers around the country, also qualified their report. "Tallying of votes ... undermined the integrity of the election and therefore it was not legitimate," it said.

Four members of the electoral commission appeared to be reconsidering their decision, saying in a statement that "some of the information received from some of our returning officers now casts doubt on the veracity of the figures".

Jack Tumwa, one of the commissioners, said: "We are going to recommend to our colleagues at the ECK that a proper judicial process be started."

Kibaki's PNU party, which was trounced by the opposition Orange Democratic Movement in the parallel parliamentary election, has rejected the claims of vote- rigging, instead accusing Odinga of trying to manipulate the results. In Central Province yesterday, where Kibaki achieved 97% of the vote, helping him win the overall count despite losing in six out of eight provinces, residents piled into local bars to celebrate.

Across the rest of the country there was anger and fear. The chaos has caused shortages of fuel, water and food, particularly in the slums, where people's movements have been restricted and shops remain closed. Tourism, Kenya's biggest foreign exchange earner, is expected to be severely hit at the height of peak season. The Foreign Office yesterday warned against all but essential travel to several towns in western Kenya and parts of Nairobi and Mombasa.

guardian

50 villagers burnt to death in church

Up to 50 villagers sheltering in a church were burnt to death today as violence escalated in the wake of Kenya's election.

A mob torched the church killing villagers cowering inside, as the death toll from ethnic riots triggered by President Mwai Kibaki's disputed re-election soared to an estimated least 250.

Around 200 members of Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe had taken refuge in the church in fear of their lives.

A reporter and a senior security official said the fire at the Kenya Assemblies of God Pentecostal church had been deliberately started by a gang of youths.

ThisisLondon

Tuesday 1 January 2008 18:50
Foreign and Commonwealth Office (National)

Kenya travel advice update


This advice has been reviewed and reissued with amendments to the Summary and LOCAL TRAVEL section (continuing serious unrest). We now advise against all but essential travel to Kisumu, Kakamega, Kericho, Eldoret and Kisauni district in Mombasa. We also advise against all but essential travel to the city centre, Uhuru Park, Kibera, Mathare and the Eastleigh areas of Nairobi.

GNN.Gov

Carnage in Kenya:

A screaming mob set fire to a Kenyan church and killed up to 50 villagers cowering inside, including women and children, as the death toll from ethnic riots soared towards 300 last night.

Anger triggered by President Mwai Kibaki's disputed reelection at the weekend has seen simmering tribal tensions explode into open warfare.

The church massacre in the west Kenyan town of Eldoret brought back traumatic memories of Rwanda's 1994 genocide, in which tens of thousands were slaughtered in churches burned to the ground.

DailyMail

Khan: My hope for Pakistan
Exclusive by Victoria Ward In Islamabad


Cricket legend Imran Khan insisted last night Benazir Bhutto's assassination could finally bring democracy to Pakistan.

And Mr Khan, leader of the country's marginal Tehreek-e-Insaf party, urged opposition parties to "strike while the iron is hot" and demand hardline President Pervez Musharraf steps down so free and fair elections can be held.

He said: "We need a neutral, caretaker government to see this through quickly.

Memories fade. This is why right now, while the iron is hot, opposition leaders must insist on change.


"The silver lining is Benazir died a martyr for democracy. She has mortally wounded Musharraf, he will not survive this. You can't have democracy with a dictator."

Mr Khan was speaking as newspapers in Pakistan printed a photo of the decapitated head of one Mrs Bhutto's killers in a Government-sponsored colour ad. It is struggling to identify the gunman and bomber after the site in Rawalpindi was hosed down before being examined and took out the ads offering 10million rupees (£80,000) for information.

A second photo shows the gunman in shades and the suicide bomber, moments before he was blown apart by the blast, circled in red.

Officials admitted yesterday it would be "impossible" to hold next week's election because of the violence in the wake of Mrs Bhutto's death.

The election commission said: "Our offices in 10 districts have been burned, the electoral rolls have been burned, the polling schemes, the nomination papers have been burned."

President Musharraf, who has been accused of stalling to avoid a massive sympathy vote for Mrs Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, is expected to announce a new date today.

Former Pakistan cricket captain Mr Khan, placed under house arrest when Musharraf imposed a state of emergency in November, agreed a vote could not take place until an independent inquiry into her killing had been held but slammed Musharraf's claim the Taliban was responsible. He said: "All the fingers are pointing at Musharraf whether directly or indirectly."

Mrs Bhutto planned to give two US lawmakers a 160-page dossier accusing Musharraf's government of "pre-poll rigging" of the election on the day she was killed, an aide claimed yesterday.
Mirror

US envoy in Sudan murdered


An American diplomat died yesterday after being shot in an attack on a US embassy vehicle in Sudan.

The unnamed official and his driver, Abdel Rahman Abbas, 40, who was also killed, both worked for the US Agency for International Development.

Only the day before President Bush cut investment in firms in Sudan after labelling the Darfur conflict genocide.

Mr Bush, who warned extremists may target US interests, accused the government of war crimes against the black population in its Western region.


Al-Arabiya TV said the official had been shot in the chest but no group had claimed responsibility.

On Monday, a joint UN-African Union force took charge of peacekeeping in Darfur and will grow to 26,000 soldiers and police.
Mirror

Kenya hate mob kill 50 in church blaze


At least 50 people - half of them children - cowering in a church were savagely burned to death by a mob yesterday in Kenya's bloody election violence.

The victims were among 400 villagers sheltering from marauding machete gangs.

Thugs attacked youths guarding the building and then torched it. Witnesses told of seeing some of the charred corpses - several of them women - scattered among the burned-out ruins.

One said: "We counted 15 to 20 bodies." Church pastor Jackson Nyanga added: "Children died, around 25 in number. And our men who tried to confront the attackers were injured."


The atrocity brings to 270 the death toll in ethnic clashes sparked by Sunday's allegedly rigged presidential election results.

Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe said: "This is the first time any group here has attacked a church. We never expected the savagery to go so far."

The victims of the outrage in Eldoret, western Kenya, were mainly members of the same Kikuyu tribe as re-elected president Mwai Kibaki.

Some 15,000 had hidden in the town's churches and police stations to flee mobs from the Luo ethnic group, who back Kibaki's rival Raila Odinga.

Irish-born priest Fr Paul Brennan said: "There are four to five thousand in the main cathedral and thousands in other churches.

"Houses are being burned. It is too dangerous to go outside and count the dead." One local jour nalist said: "Some youths came to the church They fought with boys who were guarding it, but they were overpowered and the youths set fire to the church."

Around 20 people are though to have suffered life-threatening burns in the attack on the Kenya Assemblies of God Pentecostal church, some 180 miles from capital Nairobi.

Tv footage showed plumes of smoke covering the area and gangs of youths, some wielding bows and arrows, manning crude roadblocks.

Some 7,000 Brits are currently holidaying in the country. Yesterday the Foreign Office repeated advice urging Britons to avoid travelling to Kenya and those already there to remain indoors.

A Foreign Office spokesman added: "If you need to travel you should exercise extreme caution and seek advice locally."

Meanwhile, Gordon Brown called on feuding rivals Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga to strike a deal and stop further bloodshed.

The PM said: "What I want to see is them coming together, I want to see talks and I want to see reconciliation and unity.

"I want to see the possibility explored where they can come together in government. The reason is the violence must come to an end."

Mr Kibaki also urged his opponent to enter talks. But Mr Odinga said the President must first declare the results void and added: "If he announces he wasn't elected, then I will talk to him."

Riots erupted across the country after Mr Kibaki was narrowly declared winner of the contest last Sunday with 4.6 million votes, five per cent ahead of Mr Odinga.

The Kenyan Red Cross says 70,000 have fled their homes to escape the unrest and called it "a national disaster".

Eu observers called the polls flawed and said they had "fallen short of key international and regional standards".

TRIBES AT WAR OVER VOTE

Q What has sparked this terrible violence in Kenya?

A President Mwai Kibaki was re-elected on Sunday in the closest ever poll. But both he and his main opponent claim the voting process was rigged,

Q Who is fighting who and why are they killing one another?

A Kenya is one of Africa's richest and most stable nations but Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe are deadly enemies of opposition leader Odinga's Luo tribe.

Q Can the two warring factions resolve their differences?

A Odinga has called a mass protest rally on Thursday and hopes to be swept into power. Kibaki has called on all political parties to meet to resolve the emergency.

Q What has been the response of America and Britain?

A The US initially congratulated Kibaki, then voiced "concerns about irregularities". Gordon Brown has demanded reconciliation talks between the two sides.
Mirror

Islands make switch to euro


Cyprus and Malta yesterday switched to the euro, joining 13 other nations.

The Turkish lira remains the primary currency in northern Cyprus, which is outside the EU. But new Cyprus euros are inscribed in both Greek and Turkish.
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