News in Brief: 26 February 2009

A brief list of news clippings for the day:
Trapped Between the Wall and the Green Line. “They started smashing down doors at 2am last Wednesday before moving through homes and destroying property,” says the mayor of Jayyus, Muhammed Taher Shamasni. Jayyus, an agricultural community of 3,500 inhabitants, located in the Qalqiliya district of the northern [...]

Afghanistan on life support

First published at Rabble.ca
Afghanistan appears stuck in a decades old calamity of continuous war, and now Canada and its NATO allies are in the thick of it. Since the initial ouster of the Taliban from the seat of power, things appear only to be getting worse and no clear route to success illuminates the future.
This [...]

Harsher Regulations on Asbestos Use Needed for Healthy Environment

The following is a guest post by Allen Dutton, Veteran Liaison for the Mesothelioma Cancer Center:
Highly regarded for its heat and fire resistance qualities, asbestos was reportedly used in over 300 products for the United States military from the 1930’s until the 1970’s. Asbestos-containing products advertantly lead to hundreds of thousands of military veterans later [...]

NATO and Iran; Israel fights a covert war

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has again stressed the importance of regional coordination in order to help with their efforts in Afghanistan. Pakistan is mainly focused on, though India, the Central Asian countries, and Russia are included in this. De Hoop Scheffer has also said that Iran could be included in a broader regional [...]

News in Brief: 19 February 2009

A brief list of news clippings for the day:
Food Crisis Under the Spotlight. Worldwide demand for food is expected to grow steadily over the next 40 years, but 25 percent of the world’s food production may be lost to ‘environmental breakdowns’ by 2050 unless urgent action is taken. (IPS)
Balochis intensify rebellion in Iran. The [...]

Child Labour in Afghanistan: 37,000 in Kabul Alone

This report by Al Jazeera briefly reviews a rise in child labour in Afghanistan, many scavenging in garbage dumps or on the streets of the capital.

News in Brief: 18 February 2009

A brief list of news clippings for the day:
Burning Questions. Recently, climatologist David Battisti and Rosamond Naylor, director of Stanford University’s Program on Food Security and the Environment, published a study in Science magazine on the effect of extreme heat on crops. They concluded, based on recent climate models and a study of past extreme [...]

Fatal Incoherence in Afghanistan

First published at Rabble.ca:
In December, the UN Security Council concluded that “almost 40 per cent of Afghanistan is either permanently or temporarily inaccessible to governmental and non-governmental aid.”
The Security Council has also reported that there were 6,792 security incidents in November 2008 versus 508 for the same month in 2003.
These and other grim facts [...]

News in Brief: 17 February 2009

A brief list of news clippings for the day:
US and Japan build a new Silk Road. By helping establish a new Eurasian transport corridor, Japan can honor commitments to its ally Washington in the “war on terror”, and revive its long-lost Central Asian initiative. This re-energized role in the region – namely, sending troops to [...]

News in Brief: 16 February 2009

A brief list of news clippings for the day:
Exploring American Military Base Alternatives in Central Asia; Is Uzbekistan an Option? Speculating over the future of the US air base in Kyrgyzstan is a popular pastime in Central Asian capitals these days. The general consensus is that Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev is taking a gamble, playing [...]