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Thứ Tư, 23 tháng 9, 2009
France passes tough anti-piracy measure
PARIS, France (CNN) -- French lawmakers passed a tough new measure to crack down on illegal downloading.
An MP3 music file gets downloaded through a peer-to-peer website.
The legislation would impose fines of up to 300,000 euros -- the equivalent of about $440,000 -- as well as possible prison terms for the illegal download of films or music.
The National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, passed the bill on Tuesday 258-131, a day after the Senate approved it.
The first e-mails to those who infringe the new law should go out starting in January 2010, according to the Minister of Culture.
The bill replaces a tougher version of the legislation that was rejected as being unconstitutional.
Internet piracy has become a global concern, with some musicians, authors, filmmakers and others who create content complaining that illegal downloading is essentially stealing their work.
A British government minister laid out the problem in a recent speech.
The digital age has made it easier to create content, but it's also made it easier to copy it -- and some people who do that do so without paying a royalty to authors or musicians, said David Lammy, Britain's minister for higher education and intellectual property in the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills.
"The harsh reality is that not everyone recognizes that they have a moral and legal obligation to return some of the money they generate to those who created the work," he said in a recent speech.
Some have advocated strict government controls, backed up by sanctions, to limit online piracy, he said, while others have suggested different approaches.
PARIS, France (CNN) -- French lawmakers passed a tough new measure to crack down on illegal downloading.
An MP3 music file gets downloaded through a peer-to-peer website.
The legislation would impose fines of up to 300,000 euros -- the equivalent of about $440,000 -- as well as possible prison terms for the illegal download of films or music.
The National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, passed the bill on Tuesday 258-131, a day after the Senate approved it.
The first e-mails to those who infringe the new law should go out starting in January 2010, according to the Minister of Culture.
The bill replaces a tougher version of the legislation that was rejected as being unconstitutional.
Internet piracy has become a global concern, with some musicians, authors, filmmakers and others who create content complaining that illegal downloading is essentially stealing their work.
A British government minister laid out the problem in a recent speech.
The digital age has made it easier to create content, but it's also made it easier to copy it -- and some people who do that do so without paying a royalty to authors or musicians, said David Lammy, Britain's minister for higher education and intellectual property in the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills.
"The harsh reality is that not everyone recognizes that they have a moral and legal obligation to return some of the money they generate to those who created the work," he said in a recent speech.
Some have advocated strict government controls, backed up by sanctions, to limit online piracy, he said, while others have suggested different approaches.
Simple Facebook question raises problems around the world
(CNN) -- "Where do you live?"
Facebook highlights territorial disputes, such as one between Israel and Syria over Golan Heights.
Seems like a simple question, doesn't it?
But the answer is not clear-cut for everyone. Take people who live in Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir, which is wedged between India, Pakistan and China. India and Pakistan have gone to war repeatedly over the disputed territory.
Technically, it's "Indian-administered."
But on Facebook, it's simply in India.
Shujaat Bukhari, a journalist in Srinagar, was slightly uncomfortable about the classification.
"As far as the traditions of the people are concerned, the political issues, it might not match with the people's mindset," he said, even while conceding it could be seen as accurate.
"It is administratively part of India, so as far as that is concerned, it is correct," he said. "But it doesn't gel with the mood of the people."
The Indian government is very sensitive about how international media organizations characterize Kashmir, he said by phone from Srinagar.
"If the Economist (magazine) publishes a map which is related to India or Kashmir, if that map is not acceptable to the Indian government, they put a stamp when (the magazine) reaches India saying these maps should not be treated as as authentic," he said.
Srinagar is just one of many examples of the diplomatic minefields social-networking sites can stray into when seeking basic information about their users.
Facebook recently changed its listing for the Golan Heights -- which Israel captured from Syria in 1967 -- so users there could choose to say whether they live in Israel or Syria.
It was responding to pressure from a pro-Israel group called HonestReporting -- and from Facebook users who set up a group on the site itself called "Facebook, Golan Residents Live in Israel, not Syria."
"It is not for Facebook to decide the national origin of Golan residents," the group says on its page.
Facebook may have pleased pro-Israel users there by giving them the choice to say where they live, but not all Syrians were happy about the change.
"I think Facebook sort of shot itself in the foot to make it optional for the Golan to say this is part of Israel," said Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian scholar based in the United States.
"This is against international law," he said.
And the Golan is only the tip of the iceberg.
Jerusalem, which remains hotly disputed between Israel and the Palestinians, is simply in Israel as far as Facebook is concerned.
Tibet's capital Lhasa is in China on Facebook, although many Tibetans and their supporters reject China's rule of Tibet. The "Free Tibet" group on Facebook has nearly 188,000 members.
Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia briefly went to war last summer over the breakaway Georgian territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but the Abkhaz capital Sukhumi is listed as being in Georgia on Facebook. Two pro-independence Abkhaz Facebook groups have about 1,200 members between them.
The social-networking site "deals with the listings for disputed territories on a case-by-case basis," Facebook representative Debbie Frost told CNN by e-mail.
She said the site -- which recently announced it has 300 million users -- consults the International Organization for Standardization, the United Nations and other global organizations.
"We also may consider other factors when trying to determine if dual listings would make sense for a given city or region. For example, Srinagar -- the example you gave -- is in the Indian-administered region, and has been since 1947," she said.
"We will continue to look at the listings we provide and may offer more dual listings in (the) future. We will also listen to requests from our users and in the cases of disputed territories we may try to come up with options that enable them to choose one of two countries," she added.
Bukhari, the journalist in disputed Srinagar, suggests that Facebook "should have a separate section for disputed areas."
That's a solution that Yahoo appears to have embraced -- up to a point.
It offers "disputed territory" as an option for users creating a new account, but won't actually register a new account if users choose that option.
It does allow users to say they are from Taiwan -- which China considers a renegade province and is not represented at the United Nations -- and the "Occupied Palestinian Territories." But it does not appear to allow users to create an account if they choose "Occupied Palestinian Territories."
It does not offer Tibet, Kashmir or Abkhazia.
Google, for its part, offers Taiwan and "Palestinian Territories," as well as Western Sahara, a breakaway region of Morocco that is not recognized internationally.
It does not offer Tibet, Kashmir or Abkhazia.
Neither Yahoo nor Google responded to repeated CNN requests for comment.
But if Facebook's experience with the Golan Heights is any indication, they may all be getting comments from users soon enough.
(CNN) -- "Where do you live?"
Facebook highlights territorial disputes, such as one between Israel and Syria over Golan Heights.
Seems like a simple question, doesn't it?
But the answer is not clear-cut for everyone. Take people who live in Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir, which is wedged between India, Pakistan and China. India and Pakistan have gone to war repeatedly over the disputed territory.
Technically, it's "Indian-administered."
But on Facebook, it's simply in India.
Shujaat Bukhari, a journalist in Srinagar, was slightly uncomfortable about the classification.
"As far as the traditions of the people are concerned, the political issues, it might not match with the people's mindset," he said, even while conceding it could be seen as accurate.
"It is administratively part of India, so as far as that is concerned, it is correct," he said. "But it doesn't gel with the mood of the people."
The Indian government is very sensitive about how international media organizations characterize Kashmir, he said by phone from Srinagar.
"If the Economist (magazine) publishes a map which is related to India or Kashmir, if that map is not acceptable to the Indian government, they put a stamp when (the magazine) reaches India saying these maps should not be treated as as authentic," he said.
Srinagar is just one of many examples of the diplomatic minefields social-networking sites can stray into when seeking basic information about their users.
Facebook recently changed its listing for the Golan Heights -- which Israel captured from Syria in 1967 -- so users there could choose to say whether they live in Israel or Syria.
It was responding to pressure from a pro-Israel group called HonestReporting -- and from Facebook users who set up a group on the site itself called "Facebook, Golan Residents Live in Israel, not Syria."
"It is not for Facebook to decide the national origin of Golan residents," the group says on its page.
Facebook may have pleased pro-Israel users there by giving them the choice to say where they live, but not all Syrians were happy about the change.
"I think Facebook sort of shot itself in the foot to make it optional for the Golan to say this is part of Israel," said Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian scholar based in the United States.
"This is against international law," he said.
And the Golan is only the tip of the iceberg.
Jerusalem, which remains hotly disputed between Israel and the Palestinians, is simply in Israel as far as Facebook is concerned.
Tibet's capital Lhasa is in China on Facebook, although many Tibetans and their supporters reject China's rule of Tibet. The "Free Tibet" group on Facebook has nearly 188,000 members.
Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia briefly went to war last summer over the breakaway Georgian territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but the Abkhaz capital Sukhumi is listed as being in Georgia on Facebook. Two pro-independence Abkhaz Facebook groups have about 1,200 members between them.
The social-networking site "deals with the listings for disputed territories on a case-by-case basis," Facebook representative Debbie Frost told CNN by e-mail.
She said the site -- which recently announced it has 300 million users -- consults the International Organization for Standardization, the United Nations and other global organizations.
"We also may consider other factors when trying to determine if dual listings would make sense for a given city or region. For example, Srinagar -- the example you gave -- is in the Indian-administered region, and has been since 1947," she said.
"We will continue to look at the listings we provide and may offer more dual listings in (the) future. We will also listen to requests from our users and in the cases of disputed territories we may try to come up with options that enable them to choose one of two countries," she added.
Bukhari, the journalist in disputed Srinagar, suggests that Facebook "should have a separate section for disputed areas."
That's a solution that Yahoo appears to have embraced -- up to a point.
It offers "disputed territory" as an option for users creating a new account, but won't actually register a new account if users choose that option.
It does allow users to say they are from Taiwan -- which China considers a renegade province and is not represented at the United Nations -- and the "Occupied Palestinian Territories." But it does not appear to allow users to create an account if they choose "Occupied Palestinian Territories."
It does not offer Tibet, Kashmir or Abkhazia.
Google, for its part, offers Taiwan and "Palestinian Territories," as well as Western Sahara, a breakaway region of Morocco that is not recognized internationally.
It does not offer Tibet, Kashmir or Abkhazia.
Neither Yahoo nor Google responded to repeated CNN requests for comment.
But if Facebook's experience with the Golan Heights is any indication, they may all be getting comments from users soon enough.
How Xbox Can Help Fight Heart Disease
By Tara Kelly / London Wednesday, Sep. 23, 2009
Heartworks, the first fully functioning virtual heart to help train cardiologists and doctors
Countless medical studies have concluded that playing too many video games can be harmful to one's health. Now, however, it turns out that one of the more popular video-game consoles on the market, the Xbox 360, could be used to save lives.
A computer scientist at the University of Warwick in England has devised a way to use an Xbox 360 to detect heart defects and help prevent heart attacks. The new tool has the potential to revolutionize the medical industry because it is both faster and cheaper than the computer systems that are currently used by scientists to perform complex heart research. (See pictures of video-game consoles.)
The system, detailed in a study in the August edition of the Journal of Computational Biology and Chemistry, is based on a video-game demo created by Simon Scarle two years ago when he was a software engineer at Microsoft's Rare studio, the division of the U.S.-based company that designs games for the Xbox 360. Scarle modified a chip in the console so that instead of producing graphics for the game, it now delivers data tracking how electrical signals in the heart move around damaged cardiac cells. This creates a model of the heart that allows doctors to identify heart defects or conditions such as arrhythmia, a disturbance in the normal rhythm of the heart that causes it to pump less effectively. (See the top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2008.)
"This is a clever use of a processing chip ... to speed up calculations of heart rhythm. What used to take hours can be calculated in seconds, without having to employ an extremely expensive, high-performance computer," Denis Noble, director of Computational Physiology at Oxford University, tells TIME.
To create a heart model now, researchers must use supercomputers or a network of PCs to crunch millions of mathematical equations relating to the proteins, cells and tissues of the heart, a time-consuming and costly process. Scarle's Xbox system can deliver the same results at a rate five times faster and 10 times more cheap, according to the study. (See pictures from an X-ray studio.)
"These game consoles aren't just glorified toys. [They] are pieces of very powerful computing hardware," Scarle says. "I can see this ... being most useful for students and early-career scientists to just quickly and cheaply grab that extra bit of computing power they otherwise wouldn't be able to get."
Scarle attributes his breakthrough creation to his unusual background of working as a software engineer in the gaming industry and performing electrocardio-dynamics research at the University of Sheffield in England. The idea for the heart-modeling tool came from a "little shooter game" he developed at Microsoft in which a player trys to gun down enemies in an arena meant to resemble a heart. (See pictures of the heart.)
"I did a game-ified version of my old cardiac code. I could actually present some 'proper' science [based on] the cool things us game developers do," Scarle says.
The Xbox 360 isn't the only video-game console that is being used for scientific research. At the University of Massachusetts campus in Dartmouth, scientists are using Sony PlayStations to simulate black-hole collisions to try to solve the mystery of what happens when a supermassive black hole swallows a star. (Read "Microsoft: Out of the X Box.")
So perhaps parents shouldn't be too worried if their children are spending an inordinate amount of time playing video games. Who knows, today's Grand Theft Auto or Halo addict may end up discovering a new moon around Saturn or finding a cure for cancer.
By Tara Kelly / London Wednesday, Sep. 23, 2009
Heartworks, the first fully functioning virtual heart to help train cardiologists and doctors
Countless medical studies have concluded that playing too many video games can be harmful to one's health. Now, however, it turns out that one of the more popular video-game consoles on the market, the Xbox 360, could be used to save lives.
A computer scientist at the University of Warwick in England has devised a way to use an Xbox 360 to detect heart defects and help prevent heart attacks. The new tool has the potential to revolutionize the medical industry because it is both faster and cheaper than the computer systems that are currently used by scientists to perform complex heart research. (See pictures of video-game consoles.)
The system, detailed in a study in the August edition of the Journal of Computational Biology and Chemistry, is based on a video-game demo created by Simon Scarle two years ago when he was a software engineer at Microsoft's Rare studio, the division of the U.S.-based company that designs games for the Xbox 360. Scarle modified a chip in the console so that instead of producing graphics for the game, it now delivers data tracking how electrical signals in the heart move around damaged cardiac cells. This creates a model of the heart that allows doctors to identify heart defects or conditions such as arrhythmia, a disturbance in the normal rhythm of the heart that causes it to pump less effectively. (See the top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2008.)
"This is a clever use of a processing chip ... to speed up calculations of heart rhythm. What used to take hours can be calculated in seconds, without having to employ an extremely expensive, high-performance computer," Denis Noble, director of Computational Physiology at Oxford University, tells TIME.
To create a heart model now, researchers must use supercomputers or a network of PCs to crunch millions of mathematical equations relating to the proteins, cells and tissues of the heart, a time-consuming and costly process. Scarle's Xbox system can deliver the same results at a rate five times faster and 10 times more cheap, according to the study. (See pictures from an X-ray studio.)
"These game consoles aren't just glorified toys. [They] are pieces of very powerful computing hardware," Scarle says. "I can see this ... being most useful for students and early-career scientists to just quickly and cheaply grab that extra bit of computing power they otherwise wouldn't be able to get."
Scarle attributes his breakthrough creation to his unusual background of working as a software engineer in the gaming industry and performing electrocardio-dynamics research at the University of Sheffield in England. The idea for the heart-modeling tool came from a "little shooter game" he developed at Microsoft in which a player trys to gun down enemies in an arena meant to resemble a heart. (See pictures of the heart.)
"I did a game-ified version of my old cardiac code. I could actually present some 'proper' science [based on] the cool things us game developers do," Scarle says.
The Xbox 360 isn't the only video-game console that is being used for scientific research. At the University of Massachusetts campus in Dartmouth, scientists are using Sony PlayStations to simulate black-hole collisions to try to solve the mystery of what happens when a supermassive black hole swallows a star. (Read "Microsoft: Out of the X Box.")
So perhaps parents shouldn't be too worried if their children are spending an inordinate amount of time playing video games. Who knows, today's Grand Theft Auto or Halo addict may end up discovering a new moon around Saturn or finding a cure for cancer.
Scientists say movie androids not as far-fetched as they seem
(CNN) -- Why leave home when you can send out a sexy, stylish robot version of yourself to do anything you tell it?
In "Surrogates," lifelike robots take the place of humans in day-to-day life.
That's the world of "Surrogates," a film starring Bruce Willis that opens Friday.
Willis plays an FBI agent who investigates the first murder to occur in years in a world where no one worries about crime or pain, because their robots self-heal with a quick reboot.
Far-fetched science fiction? Sure.
But scientists and the movie's makers say the technology might not be as far away as most people think.
Armies use remote-controlled robots to attack enemies and destroy land mines. Emerging technology for the disabled allows users to operate robotic limbs and control computer cursors without touching a keyboard.
And emerging "telepresence" technology is letting people see, hear and, increasingly, walk, talk and gesture using human-sized robots a world away.
"There are a lot of real-world components to this," said robotics expert and author Daniel H. Wilson, whose books like "Where's My Jet Pack?" and "How to Survive a Robot Uprising" explore the intersections between science fiction and real science.
"Clearly, there are not fully functional humanoid robots ... but there are a lot of components to telepresence that already exist."
"Surrogates" director Jonathan Mostow, whose film credits include 2003's "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines," said he was drawn to the concept of surrogate robots as an extension of current technology. And, he said, as he met with scientists, he became convinced that something approaching the concept could one day be a reality.
"To me, it's not even a question of the technology. Technology always catches up," he said. "The question is, is some universal human urge being met by this invention? It seems to me we have a fundamental human desire to be lazy, to sort of not have to do things in person and to do it remotely.
"That began with the telegraph and the telephone and has morphed into the Internet."
The first steps down the road are being taken at Anybots, a Mountain View, California, company founded in 2001 by Trevor Blackwell.
The company offers, for about $30,000, a 5-foot-tall, 35-pound robot that allows the user to remotely travel, see, hear and talk. It hopes to release its latest version of the robot at a more affordable price.
The robot's vaguely humanoid curves, roughly adult height and ability to move around using technology similar to that of the Segway are important steps up from current teleconferencing technology, Blackwell said.
Anybots in the development phase are being designed to run, jump and climb stairs, and they come equipped with fully articulated hands designed to perform increasingly human-like tasks.
Blackwell said he's not sure the technology will ever advance to the level imagined in "Surrogates" -- but that may have as much to do with desire as ability.
"I don't know if we'll ever get quite to that level, of being that realistic," he said. "Most of the time, you're not trying to fool people; you're just trying to make something human enough so people can relate to it."
Wilson, who said he appreciates "Surrogates" because it avoids sci-fi's traditional "man vs. machine" dynamic, also imagines social reasons for not pursuing such technology.
"Would humans stand in line at the grocery store behind a robot? Would I let my children play outside if I knew there were robots outside walking dogs?" he said.
It's more realistic, Wilson said, that a humanoid robot could be created to remotely perform tasks that would be too dangerous for the machine's operator to do. although NASA employs robots in space, the highly technical work often required for space walks still requires a human touch -- at least for now.
Plus, he said, making robots that look and act like us would help them function better, he said.
"Another major reason to create humanoid robots is, they can use all of our tools," Wilson said. "Human beings have taken large chunks of the planet and completely transformed the environment to support our embodiment. Doorways are a certain width all over the world because human beings are about the same size. All our tools are similar because we've all got hands and thumbs."
For Mostow, the movie also reflects technological advances that, for better or worse, exist as the world of online networking continues to grow.
"You can do your shopping. You can get your news. You can let everyone know what you're up to," he said. "For those who telecommute, you don't even have to put your clothes on to go to work.
"This idea basically just takes that to its logical conclusion."
(CNN) -- Why leave home when you can send out a sexy, stylish robot version of yourself to do anything you tell it?
In "Surrogates," lifelike robots take the place of humans in day-to-day life.
That's the world of "Surrogates," a film starring Bruce Willis that opens Friday.
Willis plays an FBI agent who investigates the first murder to occur in years in a world where no one worries about crime or pain, because their robots self-heal with a quick reboot.
Far-fetched science fiction? Sure.
But scientists and the movie's makers say the technology might not be as far away as most people think.
Armies use remote-controlled robots to attack enemies and destroy land mines. Emerging technology for the disabled allows users to operate robotic limbs and control computer cursors without touching a keyboard.
And emerging "telepresence" technology is letting people see, hear and, increasingly, walk, talk and gesture using human-sized robots a world away.
"There are a lot of real-world components to this," said robotics expert and author Daniel H. Wilson, whose books like "Where's My Jet Pack?" and "How to Survive a Robot Uprising" explore the intersections between science fiction and real science.
"Clearly, there are not fully functional humanoid robots ... but there are a lot of components to telepresence that already exist."
"Surrogates" director Jonathan Mostow, whose film credits include 2003's "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines," said he was drawn to the concept of surrogate robots as an extension of current technology. And, he said, as he met with scientists, he became convinced that something approaching the concept could one day be a reality.
"To me, it's not even a question of the technology. Technology always catches up," he said. "The question is, is some universal human urge being met by this invention? It seems to me we have a fundamental human desire to be lazy, to sort of not have to do things in person and to do it remotely.
"That began with the telegraph and the telephone and has morphed into the Internet."
The first steps down the road are being taken at Anybots, a Mountain View, California, company founded in 2001 by Trevor Blackwell.
The company offers, for about $30,000, a 5-foot-tall, 35-pound robot that allows the user to remotely travel, see, hear and talk. It hopes to release its latest version of the robot at a more affordable price.
The robot's vaguely humanoid curves, roughly adult height and ability to move around using technology similar to that of the Segway are important steps up from current teleconferencing technology, Blackwell said.
Anybots in the development phase are being designed to run, jump and climb stairs, and they come equipped with fully articulated hands designed to perform increasingly human-like tasks.
Blackwell said he's not sure the technology will ever advance to the level imagined in "Surrogates" -- but that may have as much to do with desire as ability.
"I don't know if we'll ever get quite to that level, of being that realistic," he said. "Most of the time, you're not trying to fool people; you're just trying to make something human enough so people can relate to it."
Wilson, who said he appreciates "Surrogates" because it avoids sci-fi's traditional "man vs. machine" dynamic, also imagines social reasons for not pursuing such technology.
"Would humans stand in line at the grocery store behind a robot? Would I let my children play outside if I knew there were robots outside walking dogs?" he said.
It's more realistic, Wilson said, that a humanoid robot could be created to remotely perform tasks that would be too dangerous for the machine's operator to do. although NASA employs robots in space, the highly technical work often required for space walks still requires a human touch -- at least for now.
Plus, he said, making robots that look and act like us would help them function better, he said.
"Another major reason to create humanoid robots is, they can use all of our tools," Wilson said. "Human beings have taken large chunks of the planet and completely transformed the environment to support our embodiment. Doorways are a certain width all over the world because human beings are about the same size. All our tools are similar because we've all got hands and thumbs."
For Mostow, the movie also reflects technological advances that, for better or worse, exist as the world of online networking continues to grow.
"You can do your shopping. You can get your news. You can let everyone know what you're up to," he said. "For those who telecommute, you don't even have to put your clothes on to go to work.
"This idea basically just takes that to its logical conclusion."
Thứ Ba, 22 tháng 9, 2009
Desperation stalks Zimbabwe's white farmers
HARARE, Zimbabwe (CNN) -- A desperate Zimbabwean farmer fighting to hold onto his land -- a year after the country's political rivals pledged to govern jointly -- fears he will eventually lose to politics and violence.
Ben Freeth's farm was gutted by fire, as was his father-in-law's.
The power-sharing agreement included an undertaking by both parties to ensure property rights are upheld but farm attacks and invasions continue unabated in Zimbabwe.
Charles Lock is one of an estimated 400 farmers who have remained in the country despite President Robert Mugabe's policy of redistributing white-owned farms to landless blacks.
"Why do they want to remove me when I've complied with everything they want? What more do they want other than for me to pack my bags and leave and if that's the case, then admit that that is the policy. Pass a law: no whites are allowed to farm. Then it makes it clear," Lock said.
Since 2000, Mugabe's controversial land reform program has driven more than 4,000 commercial farmers off their land, destroying Zimbabwe's once prosperous agricultural sector.
"When the land reform program began, we decided we were not going to have a confrontational attitude; that we would actually go along with this program because it was the only way that this whole thing would be sorted out. So I voluntarily gave away my own farm and moved onto my father-in-law's farm," Lock said.
That was in 2002. A year later the government came knocking on his door again, he said, demanding more land.
Lock told CNN he eventually gave up 70 percent of his father-in-law's farm, which he then owned. Now an army general is demanding Lock's remaining 30 percent.
When Zimbabwe's new unity government was formed -- with Mugabe's ZANU-PF and Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change -- in February this year, the general allegedly posted soldiers on Lock's farm. The farmer said he stopped farming and trade at gun point.
When CNN visited Lock's farm this month, workers were standing idle. Maize and tobacco, which Lock said is worth more than U.S. $1 million, lay in storage.
"They've switched off our irrigation system, taken out keys and stop our trucks if we want to deliver maize," he told CNN.
So Lock had to sneak into his own property like a thief by cutting open the gate leading to his store room. He took a few valuables from his workshop suspecting that his whole place will soon be looted.
With the formation of a unity government farmers were hoping for some protection but Lock said: "Nothing is happening here. There is no land audit happening, no one comes out here to check, to see. We are just left vulnerable."
On another farm, Ben Freeth's fight for his land has just escalated to another level.
Freeth has been repeatedly beaten, arrested and harassed. Now his farmhouse and that of his father-in-law have been gutted by a mysterious fire. See the destruction the fire caused
Freeth could not say for sure that this is arson but told CNN that the group of ZANU-PF youths who have occupied his farm have repeatedly threatened to burn his house.
"One time they came round with burning sacks at night and they started making a huge noise and ringing a great big bell and shouting and screaming. They were going underneath the thatch saying we are going to burn your house down if you don't get out," he said.
Freeth and his father-in-law Mike Campbell are among a group of Zimbabwean farmers who won the right to remain on their land at a southern African tribunal.
But Mugabe has declared the ruling null and void and pulled out of the tribunal. Farmers cannot contest land issues in Zimbabwe and approaching international courts has thus far not worked either.
When CNN interviewed Mugabe's minister of state, Didymas Mutasa, about the disregard for human and property rights on the farms, he blamed the farmers for the violence, saying landless blacks are getting frustrated with their refusal to relinquish their land.
"Human rights are beginning to be seen now because they benefit the whites, and when they were affecting blacks badly as they did the likes of us, it didn't matter and nobody raised anything about those human rights.
"And sometimes we say, good heavens, if that is the kind of human rights you are talking about, you better keep them away from us; we don't want to see them," he told CNN.
But it is black farm workers who are caught in the cross fire. They continue to bear the brunt of the land reform program by repeatedly being beaten and intimidated. Some have even been killed.
Tractor driver William Kale said it is farm laborers working for white farmers who are targeted.
"They actually say you the workers, you are ones that are supporting the white farmer. That is why he is carrying on farming and we refuse to go because we have nowhere to go," Kale told CNN.
Many farmers and farm workers we spoke to say they are in a worse position now under the unity government than they were before.
Lock said: "When ZANU-PF was in power, you had hawks and doves in government and the doves were approachable and often helped us. But now that these positions are being shared with Mr. Tsvangirai's MDC, Mr. Mugabe has only appointed hawks to his cabinet who insist on continuing the land reform program. And when it comes to the MDC, the land issue seems to be a hot potato they do not want to touch. I have asked Mr. Tsvangirai to intervene but nothing is happening."
Prime Minister Tsvangirai refuted that. "That is not true," he said. "We initiated to find out who is being affected, the few remaining white farmers. Let's be frank here, we are talking of farmers as being white, but to me any destruction of farm production affects the whole viability of agriculture. There should be no disruption of any farm activity."
To those under siege these words are little comfort as they continue to fight a battle they are unlikely to win.
HARARE, Zimbabwe (CNN) -- A desperate Zimbabwean farmer fighting to hold onto his land -- a year after the country's political rivals pledged to govern jointly -- fears he will eventually lose to politics and violence.
Ben Freeth's farm was gutted by fire, as was his father-in-law's.
The power-sharing agreement included an undertaking by both parties to ensure property rights are upheld but farm attacks and invasions continue unabated in Zimbabwe.
Charles Lock is one of an estimated 400 farmers who have remained in the country despite President Robert Mugabe's policy of redistributing white-owned farms to landless blacks.
"Why do they want to remove me when I've complied with everything they want? What more do they want other than for me to pack my bags and leave and if that's the case, then admit that that is the policy. Pass a law: no whites are allowed to farm. Then it makes it clear," Lock said.
Since 2000, Mugabe's controversial land reform program has driven more than 4,000 commercial farmers off their land, destroying Zimbabwe's once prosperous agricultural sector.
"When the land reform program began, we decided we were not going to have a confrontational attitude; that we would actually go along with this program because it was the only way that this whole thing would be sorted out. So I voluntarily gave away my own farm and moved onto my father-in-law's farm," Lock said.
That was in 2002. A year later the government came knocking on his door again, he said, demanding more land.
Lock told CNN he eventually gave up 70 percent of his father-in-law's farm, which he then owned. Now an army general is demanding Lock's remaining 30 percent.
When Zimbabwe's new unity government was formed -- with Mugabe's ZANU-PF and Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change -- in February this year, the general allegedly posted soldiers on Lock's farm. The farmer said he stopped farming and trade at gun point.
When CNN visited Lock's farm this month, workers were standing idle. Maize and tobacco, which Lock said is worth more than U.S. $1 million, lay in storage.
"They've switched off our irrigation system, taken out keys and stop our trucks if we want to deliver maize," he told CNN.
So Lock had to sneak into his own property like a thief by cutting open the gate leading to his store room. He took a few valuables from his workshop suspecting that his whole place will soon be looted.
With the formation of a unity government farmers were hoping for some protection but Lock said: "Nothing is happening here. There is no land audit happening, no one comes out here to check, to see. We are just left vulnerable."
On another farm, Ben Freeth's fight for his land has just escalated to another level.
Freeth has been repeatedly beaten, arrested and harassed. Now his farmhouse and that of his father-in-law have been gutted by a mysterious fire. See the destruction the fire caused
Freeth could not say for sure that this is arson but told CNN that the group of ZANU-PF youths who have occupied his farm have repeatedly threatened to burn his house.
"One time they came round with burning sacks at night and they started making a huge noise and ringing a great big bell and shouting and screaming. They were going underneath the thatch saying we are going to burn your house down if you don't get out," he said.
Freeth and his father-in-law Mike Campbell are among a group of Zimbabwean farmers who won the right to remain on their land at a southern African tribunal.
But Mugabe has declared the ruling null and void and pulled out of the tribunal. Farmers cannot contest land issues in Zimbabwe and approaching international courts has thus far not worked either.
When CNN interviewed Mugabe's minister of state, Didymas Mutasa, about the disregard for human and property rights on the farms, he blamed the farmers for the violence, saying landless blacks are getting frustrated with their refusal to relinquish their land.
"Human rights are beginning to be seen now because they benefit the whites, and when they were affecting blacks badly as they did the likes of us, it didn't matter and nobody raised anything about those human rights.
"And sometimes we say, good heavens, if that is the kind of human rights you are talking about, you better keep them away from us; we don't want to see them," he told CNN.
But it is black farm workers who are caught in the cross fire. They continue to bear the brunt of the land reform program by repeatedly being beaten and intimidated. Some have even been killed.
Tractor driver William Kale said it is farm laborers working for white farmers who are targeted.
"They actually say you the workers, you are ones that are supporting the white farmer. That is why he is carrying on farming and we refuse to go because we have nowhere to go," Kale told CNN.
Many farmers and farm workers we spoke to say they are in a worse position now under the unity government than they were before.
Lock said: "When ZANU-PF was in power, you had hawks and doves in government and the doves were approachable and often helped us. But now that these positions are being shared with Mr. Tsvangirai's MDC, Mr. Mugabe has only appointed hawks to his cabinet who insist on continuing the land reform program. And when it comes to the MDC, the land issue seems to be a hot potato they do not want to touch. I have asked Mr. Tsvangirai to intervene but nothing is happening."
Prime Minister Tsvangirai refuted that. "That is not true," he said. "We initiated to find out who is being affected, the few remaining white farmers. Let's be frank here, we are talking of farmers as being white, but to me any destruction of farm production affects the whole viability of agriculture. There should be no disruption of any farm activity."
To those under siege these words are little comfort as they continue to fight a battle they are unlikely to win.
D.C. train crash probe prompts nationwide rail alert
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Federal safety investigators said Tuesday they fear flaws found in Washington's Metro subway system after a deadly crash this summer may endanger other transit systems, and they sent out an urgent recommendation asking that other rail operators check for similar problems.
Investigators are shown at the crash scene in Washington. Nine people were killed in the June 22 wreck.
In letters to federal regulators, the National Transportation Safety Board said "all rail transit operators and railroads should be informed" about system flaws that could cause a track circuit to fail to detect a train.
It was not clear how many rail systems have similar train detection systems. Neither the NTSB nor the Federal Transit Administration had a list of systems that use the "audio frequency track circuits" that are the focus of the probe.
But an FTA spokesman said that because it doesn't know how many operators use the systems, "we are sending today's urgent recommendation to all rail transit operators, and will identify the pertinent operators through a later survey."
Meanwhile, the Federal Railway Administration, which regulates Amtrak and more than a dozen commuter rail systems, said it also will follow the NTSB guidance but believes the number of impacted systems will be "limited."
Nine people were killed and 52 taken to hospitals June 22 when a southbound Metrorail train struck the rear end of stopped train just north of the Fort Totten station. Investigators say an automatic train protection system did not detect the stopped train, so the moving train did not receive a command to slow or stop.
The NTSB said it is continuing its investigation into the precise causes of the crash, but it said the investigation has raised concerns that the track circuit is susceptible to errant signals.
In its letter to regulators, the NTSB said it discovered one circumstance in which an unintended signal path could be created, resulting in a track relay remaining energized even though a stopped train was occupying the circuit.
"After only three months, this complex investigation is far from complete, so we are not ready to determine the probable cause of the [Metro] accident," NTSB Chairwoman Deborah A.P. Hersman said. "However, our findings so far indicate a pressing need to issue these recommendations to immediately address safety glitches we have found that could lead to another tragic accident."
The NTSB sent letters to Metro, the Federal Transit Administration, the Federal Railroad Administration and Alstom Signaling Inc., which acquired General Railway Signal, the manufacturer of some of the equipment.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Federal safety investigators said Tuesday they fear flaws found in Washington's Metro subway system after a deadly crash this summer may endanger other transit systems, and they sent out an urgent recommendation asking that other rail operators check for similar problems.
Investigators are shown at the crash scene in Washington. Nine people were killed in the June 22 wreck.
In letters to federal regulators, the National Transportation Safety Board said "all rail transit operators and railroads should be informed" about system flaws that could cause a track circuit to fail to detect a train.
It was not clear how many rail systems have similar train detection systems. Neither the NTSB nor the Federal Transit Administration had a list of systems that use the "audio frequency track circuits" that are the focus of the probe.
But an FTA spokesman said that because it doesn't know how many operators use the systems, "we are sending today's urgent recommendation to all rail transit operators, and will identify the pertinent operators through a later survey."
Meanwhile, the Federal Railway Administration, which regulates Amtrak and more than a dozen commuter rail systems, said it also will follow the NTSB guidance but believes the number of impacted systems will be "limited."
Nine people were killed and 52 taken to hospitals June 22 when a southbound Metrorail train struck the rear end of stopped train just north of the Fort Totten station. Investigators say an automatic train protection system did not detect the stopped train, so the moving train did not receive a command to slow or stop.
The NTSB said it is continuing its investigation into the precise causes of the crash, but it said the investigation has raised concerns that the track circuit is susceptible to errant signals.
In its letter to regulators, the NTSB said it discovered one circumstance in which an unintended signal path could be created, resulting in a track relay remaining energized even though a stopped train was occupying the circuit.
"After only three months, this complex investigation is far from complete, so we are not ready to determine the probable cause of the [Metro] accident," NTSB Chairwoman Deborah A.P. Hersman said. "However, our findings so far indicate a pressing need to issue these recommendations to immediately address safety glitches we have found that could lead to another tragic accident."
The NTSB sent letters to Metro, the Federal Transit Administration, the Federal Railroad Administration and Alstom Signaling Inc., which acquired General Railway Signal, the manufacturer of some of the equipment.
Chinese president pledges steps to combat climate change
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- Chinese President Hu Jintao told a U.N. summit on climate change Tuesday that China will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase reliance on clean energy sources in coming years.
Chinese President Hu Jintao addresses a summit on global climate change on Tuesday at the United Nations.
In what was called the first speech on climate change by a Chinese leader at the United Nations, Hu outlined some specific steps but provided no firm target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.
As one of the world's two largest greenhouse gas emitters, China is a major player in international negotiations on a new global climate change treaty.
Hu reiterated past calls by China for industrialized powers such as the United States, the other largest emitter, to contribute more to a solution because they pollute more in developing their economies. Watch Greenpeace react to Hu's speech »
In his speech, Hu said China will "endeavor" to cut emissions of carbon dioxide -- the most prevalent of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change -- by "a notable margin" in coming years.
He also said China will "vigorously develop renewable energy and nuclear energy" with the goal of increasing the share of nonfossil fuels in total energy consumption to 15 percent by 2020.
In his most specific proposal, Hu said China will increase forest cover by 40 million hectares by 2020 as a way to offset greenhouse gas emissions by industrial polluters, cars, airplanes and other sources. The increase, equal to more than 150,000 square miles, or an area almost as big as California, would be based on China's forest cover in 2005, according to Hu.
Forests serve as carbon "sinks" by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it.
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- Chinese President Hu Jintao told a U.N. summit on climate change Tuesday that China will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase reliance on clean energy sources in coming years.
Chinese President Hu Jintao addresses a summit on global climate change on Tuesday at the United Nations.
In what was called the first speech on climate change by a Chinese leader at the United Nations, Hu outlined some specific steps but provided no firm target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.
As one of the world's two largest greenhouse gas emitters, China is a major player in international negotiations on a new global climate change treaty.
Hu reiterated past calls by China for industrialized powers such as the United States, the other largest emitter, to contribute more to a solution because they pollute more in developing their economies. Watch Greenpeace react to Hu's speech »
In his speech, Hu said China will "endeavor" to cut emissions of carbon dioxide -- the most prevalent of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change -- by "a notable margin" in coming years.
He also said China will "vigorously develop renewable energy and nuclear energy" with the goal of increasing the share of nonfossil fuels in total energy consumption to 15 percent by 2020.
In his most specific proposal, Hu said China will increase forest cover by 40 million hectares by 2020 as a way to offset greenhouse gas emissions by industrial polluters, cars, airplanes and other sources. The increase, equal to more than 150,000 square miles, or an area almost as big as California, would be based on China's forest cover in 2005, according to Hu.
Forests serve as carbon "sinks" by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it.
Fertility clinic to couple: You got the wrong embryos
(CNN) -- On a cold morning in February, 10 days after undergoing in vitro fertilization, Carolyn Savage lay in bed at her Ohio home waiting for the results of her pregnancy test.
Sean and Carolyn Savage with daughter Mary Kate (now 18 months) and sons Ryan, left, and Andrew.
Time was moving slowly. It was getting late and the call from the fertility clinic should have come by lunchtime.
"We were waiting and waiting and the call seemed like it would never come," Savage said.
Finally, around 4 p.m., Carolyn's husband, Sean, got the call at work.
"The doctor told me in one sentence, 'Carolyn is pregnant, but we transferred the wrong embryos,'" he said. "I didn't even know that could physically happen. It was a total shock, totally beyond the realm of possibility."
In a tragic mix-up, the Savages say the fertility clinic where Carolyn underwent in vitro fertilization implanted another couple's embryos into Carolyn's uterus.
In essence, she had become an unwitting surrogate for another family.
After receiving the news, Sean hung up the phone and drove straight home to tell his wife in person.
"He walked in and was as white as a sheet," Carolyn said. "He told me, and I think he repeated himself two or three times, and I kept saying 'You're joking.' I kept yelling at him stop it but there was nothing on his face indicating a joke." Watch more on the Savages and their reaction to their situation »
Incredulity turned to shock, and when that shock melted, so did the couple's hope for having another child of their own. At the time, Carolyn was 39 and her chances of having a child naturally after this one were waning.
"That was the beginning of a very treacherous and emotional journey for us," said Sean.
"I don't think I've ever cried so much in my life," said Carolyn. "It was such a nightmare and, in a way, I felt violated."
That nightmare was the tipping point on a pregnancy path marred by failed attempts and painful miscarriages.
Only the birth of the Savages' first child was easy. Their second child, born almost three years later in 1997, was 10 weeks premature after Carolyn developed life-threatening complications.
"That was a scary time for us," said Carolyn. Yet after she recovered, the Savages consulted with a doctor and remained intent on pursuing future pregnancies.
It would prove exceedingly difficult. Carolyn and Sean tried on and off for 10 years to have another child before turning to IVF. Eventually, Carolyn became pregnant with the couple's third child, resulting in another difficult pregnancy and premature birth. Their daughter is now a healthy 18-month-old.
With five embryos left over from IVF -- and despite the risks to Carolyn's health -- the Savages, guided by their religious beliefs, refused to let the unused embryos at the clinic languish.
February 6 was when they thought they had three of their own embryos implanted by the fertility clinic.
Cases like these, while tragic, are exceedingly rare, said Dr. David Adamson, a reproductive endocrinologist and past president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
"There are well in excess of 100,000 embryo transfers every year in this country," said Adamson. "The fact that this happens once in several hundred thousand embryo transfers means the vast majority of the time, systems do protect from this taking place."
Groups like the ASRM have a series of strong protocol recommendations for in vitro procedures, such as accurately labeling embryos with the patient's name and Social Security number, and color-coding samples uniquely to avoid confusion. These identification procedures are not legally mandated, but mistakes can occur if they are not followed, said Adamson. After learning about the mistake, the Savages made two decisions right away: They would not abort the baby, and when he was born, they would relinquish the baby to his DNA parents.
"They didn't choose this path either," Carolyn Savage said of the DNA parents, who declined to speak with media. "We knew if our embryo had been thawed and negligently put into another woman, we would expect that the child would be returned to us."
The Savages are not releasing the name of the clinic where they underwent the IVF procedure, but provided CNN with proof of their reproductive predicament, including results of amniocentesis, a genetic test, indicating the baby Carolyn is carrying is not theirs.
They have met with the baby's DNA parents, and according to Carolyn the DNA-related mother of the child has come along for one doctor's appointment.
"We knew based on legal precedent that custody would be lost, and we agree with that precedent," said Carolyn, alluding to a similar case of errant IVF in 1999 in New York in which custody was awarded to the genetic parents.
The Savages are grimly aware that they will have to do the same thing soon. Carolyn is now 35 weeks pregnant and expecting to deliver within the next couple of weeks. It is a countdown fraught with mixed emotions.
Health Library
MayoClinic.com: Infertility
"As the process has gone along, it has been exceptionally difficult imagining this playing out," Sean Savage said.
"There are so many ways to walk into that delivery room," Carolyn. "We're trying to mentally frame it instead of a loss -- it is a loss, I don't want to say that it isn't -- but we're trying to look at it as a gift we're giving someone else."
The Savages say the five embryos they originally had cryogenically preserved at the clinic in Ohio are still unused and have been moved to another clinic in Atlanta, Georgia. They say doctors have advised against any more pregnancies for Carolyn, so they are working out terms with a gestational carrier, or surrogate, to carry some of those embryos for them.
Still, even if a surrogate can eventually help them expand their family, the Savages say that the memory of the child they gave up will always linger.
"I know that tug will be there every day wondering if the baby's happy, healthy and OK," said Carolyn.
"We want him to know that it wasn't that we didn't want him, but too many people wanted him," said Sean. "We gave him up because it was the right thing to do."
(CNN) -- On a cold morning in February, 10 days after undergoing in vitro fertilization, Carolyn Savage lay in bed at her Ohio home waiting for the results of her pregnancy test.
Sean and Carolyn Savage with daughter Mary Kate (now 18 months) and sons Ryan, left, and Andrew.
Time was moving slowly. It was getting late and the call from the fertility clinic should have come by lunchtime.
"We were waiting and waiting and the call seemed like it would never come," Savage said.
Finally, around 4 p.m., Carolyn's husband, Sean, got the call at work.
"The doctor told me in one sentence, 'Carolyn is pregnant, but we transferred the wrong embryos,'" he said. "I didn't even know that could physically happen. It was a total shock, totally beyond the realm of possibility."
In a tragic mix-up, the Savages say the fertility clinic where Carolyn underwent in vitro fertilization implanted another couple's embryos into Carolyn's uterus.
In essence, she had become an unwitting surrogate for another family.
After receiving the news, Sean hung up the phone and drove straight home to tell his wife in person.
"He walked in and was as white as a sheet," Carolyn said. "He told me, and I think he repeated himself two or three times, and I kept saying 'You're joking.' I kept yelling at him stop it but there was nothing on his face indicating a joke." Watch more on the Savages and their reaction to their situation »
Incredulity turned to shock, and when that shock melted, so did the couple's hope for having another child of their own. At the time, Carolyn was 39 and her chances of having a child naturally after this one were waning.
"That was the beginning of a very treacherous and emotional journey for us," said Sean.
"I don't think I've ever cried so much in my life," said Carolyn. "It was such a nightmare and, in a way, I felt violated."
That nightmare was the tipping point on a pregnancy path marred by failed attempts and painful miscarriages.
Only the birth of the Savages' first child was easy. Their second child, born almost three years later in 1997, was 10 weeks premature after Carolyn developed life-threatening complications.
"That was a scary time for us," said Carolyn. Yet after she recovered, the Savages consulted with a doctor and remained intent on pursuing future pregnancies.
It would prove exceedingly difficult. Carolyn and Sean tried on and off for 10 years to have another child before turning to IVF. Eventually, Carolyn became pregnant with the couple's third child, resulting in another difficult pregnancy and premature birth. Their daughter is now a healthy 18-month-old.
With five embryos left over from IVF -- and despite the risks to Carolyn's health -- the Savages, guided by their religious beliefs, refused to let the unused embryos at the clinic languish.
February 6 was when they thought they had three of their own embryos implanted by the fertility clinic.
Cases like these, while tragic, are exceedingly rare, said Dr. David Adamson, a reproductive endocrinologist and past president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
"There are well in excess of 100,000 embryo transfers every year in this country," said Adamson. "The fact that this happens once in several hundred thousand embryo transfers means the vast majority of the time, systems do protect from this taking place."
Groups like the ASRM have a series of strong protocol recommendations for in vitro procedures, such as accurately labeling embryos with the patient's name and Social Security number, and color-coding samples uniquely to avoid confusion. These identification procedures are not legally mandated, but mistakes can occur if they are not followed, said Adamson. After learning about the mistake, the Savages made two decisions right away: They would not abort the baby, and when he was born, they would relinquish the baby to his DNA parents.
"They didn't choose this path either," Carolyn Savage said of the DNA parents, who declined to speak with media. "We knew if our embryo had been thawed and negligently put into another woman, we would expect that the child would be returned to us."
The Savages are not releasing the name of the clinic where they underwent the IVF procedure, but provided CNN with proof of their reproductive predicament, including results of amniocentesis, a genetic test, indicating the baby Carolyn is carrying is not theirs.
They have met with the baby's DNA parents, and according to Carolyn the DNA-related mother of the child has come along for one doctor's appointment.
"We knew based on legal precedent that custody would be lost, and we agree with that precedent," said Carolyn, alluding to a similar case of errant IVF in 1999 in New York in which custody was awarded to the genetic parents.
The Savages are grimly aware that they will have to do the same thing soon. Carolyn is now 35 weeks pregnant and expecting to deliver within the next couple of weeks. It is a countdown fraught with mixed emotions.
Health Library
MayoClinic.com: Infertility
"As the process has gone along, it has been exceptionally difficult imagining this playing out," Sean Savage said.
"There are so many ways to walk into that delivery room," Carolyn. "We're trying to mentally frame it instead of a loss -- it is a loss, I don't want to say that it isn't -- but we're trying to look at it as a gift we're giving someone else."
The Savages say the five embryos they originally had cryogenically preserved at the clinic in Ohio are still unused and have been moved to another clinic in Atlanta, Georgia. They say doctors have advised against any more pregnancies for Carolyn, so they are working out terms with a gestational carrier, or surrogate, to carry some of those embryos for them.
Still, even if a surrogate can eventually help them expand their family, the Savages say that the memory of the child they gave up will always linger.
"I know that tug will be there every day wondering if the baby's happy, healthy and OK," said Carolyn.
"We want him to know that it wasn't that we didn't want him, but too many people wanted him," said Sean. "We gave him up because it was the right thing to do."
Thứ Hai, 21 tháng 9, 2009
Latin American drug cartels find home in West Africa
(CNN) -- Colombian and Mexican drug cartels have jumped the Atlantic Ocean and expanded into West Africa, working closely with local criminal gangs to carve out a staging area for an assault on the lucrative European market.
Authorities destroy cannabis found in Ivory Coast. West Africa is appealing to drug traffickers from Latin America.
The situation has gotten so out of hand that tiny Guinea-Bissau, the fifth-poorest nation in the world, is being called Africa's first narco-state. Others talk about how Africa's Gold Coast has become the Coke Coast. In all, officials say, at least nine top-tier Latin American drug cartels have established bases in 11 West African nations.
"The same organizations that we investigate in Central and South America that are involved in drug activity toward the United States are engaged in this trafficking in Western Africa," said Russell Benson, the Drug Enforcement Agency regional director for Europe and Africa. "There's not one country that hasn't been touched to some extent."
The calculus is simple: bigger profits in Europe than in the United States, less law enforcement in West Africa than in Europe.
The driving force is the booming European market for cocaine.
"The exponential rise in the number of consumers has made Europe the fastest-growing and most-profitable market in the world," said Bruce Bagley, dean of the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Miami.
While the European market has been expanding, use in the United States has declined from its peak in the 1980s, the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime said in its 2009 annual report, issued in July.
"Cocaine use prevalence in the USA is 50 percent lower than it was two decades ago, while Spain, Italy, Portugal, France and the United Kingdom have all seen cocaine use double or triple in recent years," the U.N. report said.
About 1,000 tons of pure cocaine are produced each year, nearly 60 percent of which evades law enforcement interception and makes it to market, the report said. That's a wholesale global market of about $70 billion.
Criminals traffic about 250 tons to Europe each year, though not all of it makes it there, the U.N. said. The European market totals about $11 billion. About 27 percent of the cocaine that entered Europe in 2006 came from Africa, the United Nations said.
Huge profits make Europe particularly attractive. Two pounds of uncut cocaine can sell for $22,000 in the United States but for $45,000 in Europe, analyst Ashley-Louise Bybee wrote in a policy journal this year. The Justice Department said the price in Europe can be three times more than in the United States.
"It's a significant market for them to exploit," Benson said.
A strong euro and weaker dollar also make Europe attractive to traffickers because of favorable exchange rates. There's also the fact that the European Union recently issued a 500 euro note, currently equivalent to about $700. The largest U.S. denomination in circulation is the $100 bill. Traffickers prefer the large euro notes because they are easier to carry in large quantities.
For example, Benson said that $1 million in $100 bills weighs 22 pounds, while $1 million in 500 euro notes weighs 3.5 pounds.
"It's a huge difference," he said.
Though Europe is highly attractive to traffickers, it can have tight, Western-style security. So the Colombian and Mexican cartels have discovered that it's much easier to smuggle large loads into West Africa and then break that up into smaller shipments to the continent -- mostly Spain, the United Kingdom and France.
West Africa is a smuggler's dream, suffering from a combination of factors that make the area particularly vulnerable. It is among the poorest and least stable regions in the world. Governments are weak and ineffective and, as a top DEA chief testified to the U.S. Senate this summer, officials are often corrupt.
Law enforcement also is largely riddled with corruption. Criminal gangs are rampant. Foot soldiers can be recruited from a large pool of poor and desperate youth.
"It's a point of least resistance," Benson said.
West Africa refers to Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo.
"This area of the world is ripe," Bagley said. "There has been very little attention paid to it. The United States is loath to give aid to these countries because they are corrupt."
U.S. authorities find themselves at a great disadvantage fighting cartels that have much more money and guns. The DEA has four offices -- in Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa -- to cover a continent that spans 11.7 million square miles and has nearly 1 billion people.
"It's a big place," Benson acknowledges, noting that there are 54 countries on the continent.
Local police also are vastly outgunned. Guinea-Bissau offers an alarming example.
"The Judicial Police ... have 60 agents, one vehicle and often no fuel," analyst Bybee wrote in a journal called New Voices in Public Policy, published by the George Mason University School of Public Policy. "As a result, when culprits are apprehended, they are driven in a taxi to the police station. They just recently received six sets of handcuffs from the U.K., which were badly needed. In the military, one rusty ship patrols the 350-kilometer (217-mile) coastline and 88 islands."
Even when criminals are caught, Bybee said, "the near absence of a judicial system allows traffickers to operate unimpeded." For example, she said, "because the police are so impotent, the culprits are often held for just a few hours before senior military personnel suddenly attain extraordinary judicial powers to demand their release."
The few officials who stand up to the traffickers receive death threats or are killed.
West Africa also is particularly attractive to traffickers because it is near "the soft underbelly of Europe," said retired four-star Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who was drug policy director for President Clinton.
Geography plays another role because West Africa is fairly close to the three South American nations that produce nearly all of the world's cocaine -- Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. Many of the shipments depart from Venezuela, which shares a 1,273-mile (2,050-kilometer) porous border with Colombia and is even closer to Africa.
"They go right dead-ass across the shortest route," McCaffrey said.
Most of the cocaine shipments cross the Atlantic in large "mother ships" and then are off-loaded to small vessels near the coastline, the United Nations said. Small planes modified for overseas flight that can carry a 1-ton cargo also have been used. Most of those come from Venezuela, the United Nations reported.
A report issued in July by the Government Accountability Office said traffickers use go-fast boats, fishing vessels and commercial shipping containers as the primary means of smuggling cocaine out of Venezuela. McCaffrey also noted the use of go-fast boats and special planes.
DEA Assistant Administrator Thomas Harrigan testified before the Senate in June that authorities in Sierra Leone seized a cocaine shipment last year from a twin-engine aircraft marked with a Red Cross insignia. The flight originated in Venezuela, he said.
The GAO report noted that "U.S. government officials have observed an increase in suspicious air traffic originating in Venezuela." In 2004, the report said, authorities tracked 109 suspect flights out of Venezuela. In 2007, officials tracked 178 suspicious flights.
Then there's the crime connection in West Africa.
"Colombian and Venezuelan traffickers are entrenched in West Africa and have cultivated long-standing relationships with African criminal networks to facilitate their activities in the region," Harrigan told a Senate subcommittee on African affairs.
"These organizations don't operate in a vacuum," Benson said. "They have to align themselves with West African criminal groups."
The cartels also have aligned themselves with terrorists, Harrigan said.
"The threat of narco-terrorism in Africa is a real concern, including the presence of international terrorist organizations operating or based in Africa, such as the regional threat presented by al Qaeda in the Lands of Maghreb," he said, referring to al Qaeda activists in North Africa. "In addition, DEA investigations have identified elements of Colombia's Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia [FARC] as being involved in cocaine trafficking in West Africa."
Benson said the groups operating in Africa are "primarily narcotics organizations" but acknowledged that the Marxist FARC guerrillas in Colombia are a force to be dealt with. The rebels have waged war on the Colombian government for more than 40 years.
"The profit potential is such that the FARC is one of the largest cocaine-trafficking operations globally and is also a terrorist organization," he said.
Bagley and McCaffrey see less evidence of terrorist connections with the traffickers in Africa, both using nearly identical language.
"I'd be really skeptical of those kinds of assertions," McCaffrey said.
"I'm quite skeptical about linkages between cartels and terrorists," Bagley said. "The criminal groups seek profits. They're not interested in taking over governments."
Still, Bagley said, traffickers and terrorists may use some of the same criminal networks.
Analysts note that the surge of cartel activity in West Africa is a fairly recent development. The U.N. report said it started around 2005. Bybee places it around 2006.
McCaffrey, who was in the Clinton White House in the 1990s, said he saw the problem coming a long time ago.
"I've been warning people in Europe and Latin America starting 10 years ago where this issue was going to move," he said. "The Europeans absolutely blew me off."
The U.N. report offers some hope, saying that cocaine seizures in Europe peaked in 2006 and topped out in West Africa in 2007. Overall seizures have declined since 2006, the report said.
"This trend appears to be continuing in 2009 and includes declines in the number and volume of seizures made in the region and in the number of air couriers coming from the region in Europe," the report concluded.
For example, authorities seized 11 large shipments in Africa in 2007, four in 2008 and none so far this year.
The report does not specify whether there are fewer shipments or smarter criminals avoiding detection.
But if there is a decline, the DEA's Benson said he has not seen it.
"In the last three or four years, it's increased quite dramatically," he said. "The Colombian organizations have been active there longer than that. In the last two years, we've also seen Mexican involvement in the area as well."
(CNN) -- Colombian and Mexican drug cartels have jumped the Atlantic Ocean and expanded into West Africa, working closely with local criminal gangs to carve out a staging area for an assault on the lucrative European market.
Authorities destroy cannabis found in Ivory Coast. West Africa is appealing to drug traffickers from Latin America.
The situation has gotten so out of hand that tiny Guinea-Bissau, the fifth-poorest nation in the world, is being called Africa's first narco-state. Others talk about how Africa's Gold Coast has become the Coke Coast. In all, officials say, at least nine top-tier Latin American drug cartels have established bases in 11 West African nations.
"The same organizations that we investigate in Central and South America that are involved in drug activity toward the United States are engaged in this trafficking in Western Africa," said Russell Benson, the Drug Enforcement Agency regional director for Europe and Africa. "There's not one country that hasn't been touched to some extent."
The calculus is simple: bigger profits in Europe than in the United States, less law enforcement in West Africa than in Europe.
The driving force is the booming European market for cocaine.
"The exponential rise in the number of consumers has made Europe the fastest-growing and most-profitable market in the world," said Bruce Bagley, dean of the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Miami.
While the European market has been expanding, use in the United States has declined from its peak in the 1980s, the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime said in its 2009 annual report, issued in July.
"Cocaine use prevalence in the USA is 50 percent lower than it was two decades ago, while Spain, Italy, Portugal, France and the United Kingdom have all seen cocaine use double or triple in recent years," the U.N. report said.
About 1,000 tons of pure cocaine are produced each year, nearly 60 percent of which evades law enforcement interception and makes it to market, the report said. That's a wholesale global market of about $70 billion.
Criminals traffic about 250 tons to Europe each year, though not all of it makes it there, the U.N. said. The European market totals about $11 billion. About 27 percent of the cocaine that entered Europe in 2006 came from Africa, the United Nations said.
Huge profits make Europe particularly attractive. Two pounds of uncut cocaine can sell for $22,000 in the United States but for $45,000 in Europe, analyst Ashley-Louise Bybee wrote in a policy journal this year. The Justice Department said the price in Europe can be three times more than in the United States.
"It's a significant market for them to exploit," Benson said.
A strong euro and weaker dollar also make Europe attractive to traffickers because of favorable exchange rates. There's also the fact that the European Union recently issued a 500 euro note, currently equivalent to about $700. The largest U.S. denomination in circulation is the $100 bill. Traffickers prefer the large euro notes because they are easier to carry in large quantities.
For example, Benson said that $1 million in $100 bills weighs 22 pounds, while $1 million in 500 euro notes weighs 3.5 pounds.
"It's a huge difference," he said.
Though Europe is highly attractive to traffickers, it can have tight, Western-style security. So the Colombian and Mexican cartels have discovered that it's much easier to smuggle large loads into West Africa and then break that up into smaller shipments to the continent -- mostly Spain, the United Kingdom and France.
West Africa is a smuggler's dream, suffering from a combination of factors that make the area particularly vulnerable. It is among the poorest and least stable regions in the world. Governments are weak and ineffective and, as a top DEA chief testified to the U.S. Senate this summer, officials are often corrupt.
Law enforcement also is largely riddled with corruption. Criminal gangs are rampant. Foot soldiers can be recruited from a large pool of poor and desperate youth.
"It's a point of least resistance," Benson said.
West Africa refers to Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo.
"This area of the world is ripe," Bagley said. "There has been very little attention paid to it. The United States is loath to give aid to these countries because they are corrupt."
U.S. authorities find themselves at a great disadvantage fighting cartels that have much more money and guns. The DEA has four offices -- in Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa -- to cover a continent that spans 11.7 million square miles and has nearly 1 billion people.
"It's a big place," Benson acknowledges, noting that there are 54 countries on the continent.
Local police also are vastly outgunned. Guinea-Bissau offers an alarming example.
"The Judicial Police ... have 60 agents, one vehicle and often no fuel," analyst Bybee wrote in a journal called New Voices in Public Policy, published by the George Mason University School of Public Policy. "As a result, when culprits are apprehended, they are driven in a taxi to the police station. They just recently received six sets of handcuffs from the U.K., which were badly needed. In the military, one rusty ship patrols the 350-kilometer (217-mile) coastline and 88 islands."
Even when criminals are caught, Bybee said, "the near absence of a judicial system allows traffickers to operate unimpeded." For example, she said, "because the police are so impotent, the culprits are often held for just a few hours before senior military personnel suddenly attain extraordinary judicial powers to demand their release."
The few officials who stand up to the traffickers receive death threats or are killed.
West Africa also is particularly attractive to traffickers because it is near "the soft underbelly of Europe," said retired four-star Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who was drug policy director for President Clinton.
Geography plays another role because West Africa is fairly close to the three South American nations that produce nearly all of the world's cocaine -- Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. Many of the shipments depart from Venezuela, which shares a 1,273-mile (2,050-kilometer) porous border with Colombia and is even closer to Africa.
"They go right dead-ass across the shortest route," McCaffrey said.
Most of the cocaine shipments cross the Atlantic in large "mother ships" and then are off-loaded to small vessels near the coastline, the United Nations said. Small planes modified for overseas flight that can carry a 1-ton cargo also have been used. Most of those come from Venezuela, the United Nations reported.
A report issued in July by the Government Accountability Office said traffickers use go-fast boats, fishing vessels and commercial shipping containers as the primary means of smuggling cocaine out of Venezuela. McCaffrey also noted the use of go-fast boats and special planes.
DEA Assistant Administrator Thomas Harrigan testified before the Senate in June that authorities in Sierra Leone seized a cocaine shipment last year from a twin-engine aircraft marked with a Red Cross insignia. The flight originated in Venezuela, he said.
The GAO report noted that "U.S. government officials have observed an increase in suspicious air traffic originating in Venezuela." In 2004, the report said, authorities tracked 109 suspect flights out of Venezuela. In 2007, officials tracked 178 suspicious flights.
Then there's the crime connection in West Africa.
"Colombian and Venezuelan traffickers are entrenched in West Africa and have cultivated long-standing relationships with African criminal networks to facilitate their activities in the region," Harrigan told a Senate subcommittee on African affairs.
"These organizations don't operate in a vacuum," Benson said. "They have to align themselves with West African criminal groups."
The cartels also have aligned themselves with terrorists, Harrigan said.
"The threat of narco-terrorism in Africa is a real concern, including the presence of international terrorist organizations operating or based in Africa, such as the regional threat presented by al Qaeda in the Lands of Maghreb," he said, referring to al Qaeda activists in North Africa. "In addition, DEA investigations have identified elements of Colombia's Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia [FARC] as being involved in cocaine trafficking in West Africa."
Benson said the groups operating in Africa are "primarily narcotics organizations" but acknowledged that the Marxist FARC guerrillas in Colombia are a force to be dealt with. The rebels have waged war on the Colombian government for more than 40 years.
"The profit potential is such that the FARC is one of the largest cocaine-trafficking operations globally and is also a terrorist organization," he said.
Bagley and McCaffrey see less evidence of terrorist connections with the traffickers in Africa, both using nearly identical language.
"I'd be really skeptical of those kinds of assertions," McCaffrey said.
"I'm quite skeptical about linkages between cartels and terrorists," Bagley said. "The criminal groups seek profits. They're not interested in taking over governments."
Still, Bagley said, traffickers and terrorists may use some of the same criminal networks.
Analysts note that the surge of cartel activity in West Africa is a fairly recent development. The U.N. report said it started around 2005. Bybee places it around 2006.
McCaffrey, who was in the Clinton White House in the 1990s, said he saw the problem coming a long time ago.
"I've been warning people in Europe and Latin America starting 10 years ago where this issue was going to move," he said. "The Europeans absolutely blew me off."
The U.N. report offers some hope, saying that cocaine seizures in Europe peaked in 2006 and topped out in West Africa in 2007. Overall seizures have declined since 2006, the report said.
"This trend appears to be continuing in 2009 and includes declines in the number and volume of seizures made in the region and in the number of air couriers coming from the region in Europe," the report concluded.
For example, authorities seized 11 large shipments in Africa in 2007, four in 2008 and none so far this year.
The report does not specify whether there are fewer shipments or smarter criminals avoiding detection.
But if there is a decline, the DEA's Benson said he has not seen it.
"In the last three or four years, it's increased quite dramatically," he said. "The Colombian organizations have been active there longer than that. In the last two years, we've also seen Mexican involvement in the area as well."
Firm offers to settle toxic waste case in Ivory Coast
LONDON, England (CNN) -- A giant oil-trading company is offering to pay thousands of Africans a settlement after a contractor illegally dumped toxic waste in West Africa three years ago.
Parents say their child's body is covered in lesions as a result of toxic waste dumped in Ivory Coast in 2006.
The United Nations says the 2006 dumping in Ivory Coast killed 15 people and sickened about 100,000 others.
Trafigura is offering $1,536 (or 950 British pounds) per person to settle a lawsuit stemming from the dumping of 500 tons of toxic waste off Ivory Coast, or Cote d'Ivoire, a company spokeswoman said Monday.
The law firm representing the claimants has said in the past it represents up to 30,000 people, making the settlement potentially worth about $46 million.
A judge still must approve the deal before it becomes final. The Trafigura spokeswoman, Alex Nelless of the public relations firm Bell Pottinger, said she did not know if a court date had been set.
The Dutch-based company does not admit liability in the settlement and aggressively fought the suit.
It threatened to sue media outlets, including the BBC, for its reporting of the case.
Don't Miss
Firm weighs settlement in toxic waste case
The British law firm representing the victims Monday refused to comment on any aspect of the case or to confirm the existence of a settlement.
Nisha Patel, a spokeswoman for Leigh Day and Co. in London, said she did not know when the firm would be able to comment.
Trafigura also sued Leigh Day for libel, a suit that Trafigura said had been "resolved."
Last week, the United Nations said that Trafigura caused death and injury when the cargo ship Probo Koala dumped 500 tons of toxic waste belonging to the company at sites around Abidjan, Ivory Coast's largest city.
"According to official estimates, 15 people died, 69 people were hospitalized and over 100,000 others, complaining of nausea and vomiting after inhaling fumes, sought medical treatment after the incident," said the report released Wednesday by Okechukwu Ibeanu, an unpaid investigator for the Geneva, Switzerland-based U.N. Human Rights Council.
The areas where the toxic waste was dumped still have not been decontaminated and continue to threaten residents' health, Ibeanu said last month. Many people, he said, report headaches, skin lesions, digestive difficulties and nose, throat and lung problems, according to a U.N. statement.
Trafigura rejects the U.N. findings and said the investigator ignored repeated offers to see the results of the company's own studies. It said 20 experts it had hired did not find a link between "exposure to the chemicals released from the slops [toxic waste] and deaths, miscarriages, stillbirths, birth defects, loss of visual acuity or other serious and chronic injuries."
It admits that a contractor dumped the toxic waste but denies responsibility.
"It remains Trafigura's position that it did not foresee, and could not have foreseen, the reprehensible acts of Compagnie Tommy in dumping the slops in and around Abidjan in August and September 2006, and that Compagnie Tommy acted entirely independently of, and without any authority from, Trafigura," the company said in a statement Saturday.
"Nevertheless, Trafigura regrets that this incident occurred and is pleased that the matter has now been resolved," it said.
Trafigura said the statement was being issued jointly with Leigh Day and that a court had ordered the law firm to publish the statement on its Web site.
CNN could not find the statement on Leigh Day's site, and the firm's spokeswoman declined to say if it was there.
"While we certainly do not accept legal liability, Trafigura regrets the Probo Koala incident and in particular the distress that it caused the local population," company director Eric de Turckheim said in a statement.
Trafigura says on its Web site that it has "access to approximately $17 billion in credit facilities and investments ... around the world of more than $1 billion."
LONDON, England (CNN) -- A giant oil-trading company is offering to pay thousands of Africans a settlement after a contractor illegally dumped toxic waste in West Africa three years ago.
Parents say their child's body is covered in lesions as a result of toxic waste dumped in Ivory Coast in 2006.
The United Nations says the 2006 dumping in Ivory Coast killed 15 people and sickened about 100,000 others.
Trafigura is offering $1,536 (or 950 British pounds) per person to settle a lawsuit stemming from the dumping of 500 tons of toxic waste off Ivory Coast, or Cote d'Ivoire, a company spokeswoman said Monday.
The law firm representing the claimants has said in the past it represents up to 30,000 people, making the settlement potentially worth about $46 million.
A judge still must approve the deal before it becomes final. The Trafigura spokeswoman, Alex Nelless of the public relations firm Bell Pottinger, said she did not know if a court date had been set.
The Dutch-based company does not admit liability in the settlement and aggressively fought the suit.
It threatened to sue media outlets, including the BBC, for its reporting of the case.
Don't Miss
Firm weighs settlement in toxic waste case
The British law firm representing the victims Monday refused to comment on any aspect of the case or to confirm the existence of a settlement.
Nisha Patel, a spokeswoman for Leigh Day and Co. in London, said she did not know when the firm would be able to comment.
Trafigura also sued Leigh Day for libel, a suit that Trafigura said had been "resolved."
Last week, the United Nations said that Trafigura caused death and injury when the cargo ship Probo Koala dumped 500 tons of toxic waste belonging to the company at sites around Abidjan, Ivory Coast's largest city.
"According to official estimates, 15 people died, 69 people were hospitalized and over 100,000 others, complaining of nausea and vomiting after inhaling fumes, sought medical treatment after the incident," said the report released Wednesday by Okechukwu Ibeanu, an unpaid investigator for the Geneva, Switzerland-based U.N. Human Rights Council.
The areas where the toxic waste was dumped still have not been decontaminated and continue to threaten residents' health, Ibeanu said last month. Many people, he said, report headaches, skin lesions, digestive difficulties and nose, throat and lung problems, according to a U.N. statement.
Trafigura rejects the U.N. findings and said the investigator ignored repeated offers to see the results of the company's own studies. It said 20 experts it had hired did not find a link between "exposure to the chemicals released from the slops [toxic waste] and deaths, miscarriages, stillbirths, birth defects, loss of visual acuity or other serious and chronic injuries."
It admits that a contractor dumped the toxic waste but denies responsibility.
"It remains Trafigura's position that it did not foresee, and could not have foreseen, the reprehensible acts of Compagnie Tommy in dumping the slops in and around Abidjan in August and September 2006, and that Compagnie Tommy acted entirely independently of, and without any authority from, Trafigura," the company said in a statement Saturday.
"Nevertheless, Trafigura regrets that this incident occurred and is pleased that the matter has now been resolved," it said.
Trafigura said the statement was being issued jointly with Leigh Day and that a court had ordered the law firm to publish the statement on its Web site.
CNN could not find the statement on Leigh Day's site, and the firm's spokeswoman declined to say if it was there.
"While we certainly do not accept legal liability, Trafigura regrets the Probo Koala incident and in particular the distress that it caused the local population," company director Eric de Turckheim said in a statement.
Trafigura says on its Web site that it has "access to approximately $17 billion in credit facilities and investments ... around the world of more than $1 billion."
Report: Alzheimer's cases to nearly double every 20 years
(CNN) -- The number of people with dementia globally is estimated to nearly double every 20 years, according to a report released Monday for World Alzheimer's Day.
It's common for people with Alzheimer's or other types of dementia to wander from their homes.
Much of the growth will be fueled by longer life spans and population growth, especially in developing nations.
"Over the next 20 years, the numbers of people with dementia are anticipated to increase by 40 percent in Europe, 63 percent in North America, 77 percent in the southern Latin America ... and 89 percent in the developed Asia Pacific countries," the report said.
"In comparison, the percentage increase is expected to be 117 percent in East Asia, 107 percent in South Asia, 134-146 percent in the rest of Latin America, and 125 percent in North Africa and the Middle East."
By 2010, an estimated 35.6 million people around the world will be living with dementia. The number is expected to hit 65.7 million in 2030 and 115.4 million in 2050.
One in seven Americans age 71 and older, or about 3.4 million, have dementia, according to the National Institutes of Health. In this age group, 2.4 million people have Alzheimer's disease, NIH research has shown. Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Some of the causes of the disease are believed to be genetic, while others are thought to be preventable.
Studies have shown that physical exercise, the kind that keeps the heart healthy, also keeps the brain healthy, according to the National Institutes of Health's Cognitive and Emotional Health Project.
Mental stimulation can help too.
"Our brains can be made stronger through exercise," Andrew Carle, assistant professor in the department of health administration and policy at George Mason University, told CNN late last year. "In the same way physical exercise can delay many of the effects of aging on the body, there's some evidence cognitive exercise can at least delay the onset of Alzheimer's."
A combination of antioxidants, supplements and curry may also help.
Vitamins A, C, and E are antioxidants, which prevent cell damage and are believed to slow down diseases of aging, said Edythe London, a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Vital Signs
Each month CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta brings viewers health stories from around the world.
See more from the show »
"There are studies that suggest antioxidants might prevent dementia," she said.
Fish oil and phosphatidylserine supplements may also help. Aging brains show signs of inflammation, and fish oil has anti-inflammatory properties, said Gary Small, director of the UCLA Center on Aging.
Phosphatidylserine is a lipid found naturally in the body and is a major component of cell membranes. Small said he's not 100 percent convinced these supplements will help stave off dementia, but they're worth a try.
There's also curry. Small said that as he gets older, he might try eating more foods with curry in them.
"Some studies in Singapore show that those who ate curry once a week had better memory scores," he said.
(CNN) -- The number of people with dementia globally is estimated to nearly double every 20 years, according to a report released Monday for World Alzheimer's Day.
It's common for people with Alzheimer's or other types of dementia to wander from their homes.
Much of the growth will be fueled by longer life spans and population growth, especially in developing nations.
"Over the next 20 years, the numbers of people with dementia are anticipated to increase by 40 percent in Europe, 63 percent in North America, 77 percent in the southern Latin America ... and 89 percent in the developed Asia Pacific countries," the report said.
"In comparison, the percentage increase is expected to be 117 percent in East Asia, 107 percent in South Asia, 134-146 percent in the rest of Latin America, and 125 percent in North Africa and the Middle East."
By 2010, an estimated 35.6 million people around the world will be living with dementia. The number is expected to hit 65.7 million in 2030 and 115.4 million in 2050.
One in seven Americans age 71 and older, or about 3.4 million, have dementia, according to the National Institutes of Health. In this age group, 2.4 million people have Alzheimer's disease, NIH research has shown. Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Some of the causes of the disease are believed to be genetic, while others are thought to be preventable.
Studies have shown that physical exercise, the kind that keeps the heart healthy, also keeps the brain healthy, according to the National Institutes of Health's Cognitive and Emotional Health Project.
Mental stimulation can help too.
"Our brains can be made stronger through exercise," Andrew Carle, assistant professor in the department of health administration and policy at George Mason University, told CNN late last year. "In the same way physical exercise can delay many of the effects of aging on the body, there's some evidence cognitive exercise can at least delay the onset of Alzheimer's."
A combination of antioxidants, supplements and curry may also help.
Vitamins A, C, and E are antioxidants, which prevent cell damage and are believed to slow down diseases of aging, said Edythe London, a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Vital Signs
Each month CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta brings viewers health stories from around the world.
See more from the show »
"There are studies that suggest antioxidants might prevent dementia," she said.
Fish oil and phosphatidylserine supplements may also help. Aging brains show signs of inflammation, and fish oil has anti-inflammatory properties, said Gary Small, director of the UCLA Center on Aging.
Phosphatidylserine is a lipid found naturally in the body and is a major component of cell membranes. Small said he's not 100 percent convinced these supplements will help stave off dementia, but they're worth a try.
There's also curry. Small said that as he gets older, he might try eating more foods with curry in them.
"Some studies in Singapore show that those who ate curry once a week had better memory scores," he said.
Cold? Flu? H1N1? How can you tell the difference?
(CNN) -- When Tyra Smith's boyfriend, Chris Lewis, first suggested they be guinea pigs in a H1N1 vaccination study in August, she wasn't so crazy about the idea. But then she warmed to it: While she doesn't like needles, she thought she'd help out because she knew H1N1 was a serious virus.
To cut your risk of catching a bug, doctors say wash your hands and avoid touching your mouth, nose and eyes.
"I heard people might die from it," Smith said. "So I think it's a good idea to help people, by being involved."
Lewis and Smith, both from Baltimore, Maryland, were among the first Americans to receive H1N1 flu shots. As part of a trial of 2,400 people, they gave blood samples and kept diaries of their symptoms, all in an effort to get an H1N1 vaccine ready for the fall. Now that the results from this and other trials are in, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that the FDA has approved applications from four manufacturers to make H1N1 flu vaccine, which should be ready for high-risk patients by October 15. She said there will be enough vaccine available for everyone eventually.
And that's just in time. With fall in the air and old man winter right around the corner, seasonal flu and the common cold are sure to follow -- and H1N1 is here; in its most recent H1N1 update, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 21 states are reporting widespread flu activity.
This cold and flu season could star a cornucopia of viruses. Doctors say they worry the two flu strains (H1N1 and seasonal) could combine, further complicating the situation. Mix in colds, which are prevalent this time of year, and the immune system of Americans could be dealt a one-two punch.
So, how can someone tell if those sniffles they're having is something to be concerned about?
'Health Minute'
Watch for "Health Minute" on HLN.10 a.m. -6 p.m. ET weekdays
see full schedule »
Infectious disease experts say people need to be aware of the symptoms. Dr. Shmuel Shoham, an infectious-disease specialist at Washington Hospital Center, says the common cold, seasonal flu and H1N1 are all respiratory illnesses, but they're caused by different viruses.
Symptoms of the cold are more common, and can make the patient miserable for three to five days. A patient usually has a stuffy nose, congestion, some body aches and a growing cough.
According to the CDC seasonal flu and H1N1 symptoms consist of fever, more painful body aches, dry cough, diarrhea and severe fatigue. It's hard, without testing, to tell apart the seasonal strain of flu from the H1N1 variety. Watch more on cold, flu and H1N1 symptoms »
"People need to take notice when they begin to feel bad. If they start to have respiratory problems, or are dehydrated because of a bug, they should go to the doctor. It could be H1N1 or seasonal influenza," says Shoham. "Some people with influenza can get very sick and could end up in the hospital if it's not taken care of."
People at greatest risk for catching H1N1 include young people ages 6 months to 25 years, pregnant women, and people with chronic health conditions like asthma, diabetes or heart and lung disease. The CDC recommends that these groups -- as well as health care workers -- get vaccinated first.
The seasonal influenza vaccination is especially important for people at high risk of serious flu complications, according to the CDC, including children ages 6 months to 18 years, people with immune system problems, women who plan on being pregnant during the flu season, those 50 years and older and health care workers.
But if someone doesn't fall into these categories, it doesn't mean he or she should skip vaccinations altogether. Experts say everyone should get both flu shots. "It's the best way to protect yourself," Shoham says.
Health Library
MayoClinic.com: Common cold
MayoClinic.com: Influenza (flu)
Other than flu shots, are there other ways to stay healthy and avoid all of these bugs? Doctors say wash your hands and keep your fingers away from your mouth, nose and eyes. If you sneeze, sneeze into your elbow so as not to transfer your germs to your hands -- and everything else around you.
As for the myth about avoiding cold drafts -- forget it. "It doesn't seem to play out that sleeping with the window open, going out with your hair wet in the cold affects your immune system," Shoham says.
Also, keep your immune system healthy. That translates to eating well, getting enough sleep and staying active.
If you become ill and experience severe symptoms, see your doctor. Your physician may recommend antiviral drugs that can treat the flu. Antiviral drugs are prescription medicines (pills, liquid or an inhaled powder) that fight the flu by keeping the virus from reproducing in your body.
Above all, stay away from others. If you have the flu, the CDC recommends you stay home for at least 24 hours after your fever is gone. It's the best way to keep others from getting infected.
(CNN) -- When Tyra Smith's boyfriend, Chris Lewis, first suggested they be guinea pigs in a H1N1 vaccination study in August, she wasn't so crazy about the idea. But then she warmed to it: While she doesn't like needles, she thought she'd help out because she knew H1N1 was a serious virus.
To cut your risk of catching a bug, doctors say wash your hands and avoid touching your mouth, nose and eyes.
"I heard people might die from it," Smith said. "So I think it's a good idea to help people, by being involved."
Lewis and Smith, both from Baltimore, Maryland, were among the first Americans to receive H1N1 flu shots. As part of a trial of 2,400 people, they gave blood samples and kept diaries of their symptoms, all in an effort to get an H1N1 vaccine ready for the fall. Now that the results from this and other trials are in, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that the FDA has approved applications from four manufacturers to make H1N1 flu vaccine, which should be ready for high-risk patients by October 15. She said there will be enough vaccine available for everyone eventually.
And that's just in time. With fall in the air and old man winter right around the corner, seasonal flu and the common cold are sure to follow -- and H1N1 is here; in its most recent H1N1 update, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 21 states are reporting widespread flu activity.
This cold and flu season could star a cornucopia of viruses. Doctors say they worry the two flu strains (H1N1 and seasonal) could combine, further complicating the situation. Mix in colds, which are prevalent this time of year, and the immune system of Americans could be dealt a one-two punch.
So, how can someone tell if those sniffles they're having is something to be concerned about?
'Health Minute'
Watch for "Health Minute" on HLN.10 a.m. -6 p.m. ET weekdays
see full schedule »
Infectious disease experts say people need to be aware of the symptoms. Dr. Shmuel Shoham, an infectious-disease specialist at Washington Hospital Center, says the common cold, seasonal flu and H1N1 are all respiratory illnesses, but they're caused by different viruses.
Symptoms of the cold are more common, and can make the patient miserable for three to five days. A patient usually has a stuffy nose, congestion, some body aches and a growing cough.
According to the CDC seasonal flu and H1N1 symptoms consist of fever, more painful body aches, dry cough, diarrhea and severe fatigue. It's hard, without testing, to tell apart the seasonal strain of flu from the H1N1 variety. Watch more on cold, flu and H1N1 symptoms »
"People need to take notice when they begin to feel bad. If they start to have respiratory problems, or are dehydrated because of a bug, they should go to the doctor. It could be H1N1 or seasonal influenza," says Shoham. "Some people with influenza can get very sick and could end up in the hospital if it's not taken care of."
People at greatest risk for catching H1N1 include young people ages 6 months to 25 years, pregnant women, and people with chronic health conditions like asthma, diabetes or heart and lung disease. The CDC recommends that these groups -- as well as health care workers -- get vaccinated first.
The seasonal influenza vaccination is especially important for people at high risk of serious flu complications, according to the CDC, including children ages 6 months to 18 years, people with immune system problems, women who plan on being pregnant during the flu season, those 50 years and older and health care workers.
But if someone doesn't fall into these categories, it doesn't mean he or she should skip vaccinations altogether. Experts say everyone should get both flu shots. "It's the best way to protect yourself," Shoham says.
Health Library
MayoClinic.com: Common cold
MayoClinic.com: Influenza (flu)
Other than flu shots, are there other ways to stay healthy and avoid all of these bugs? Doctors say wash your hands and keep your fingers away from your mouth, nose and eyes. If you sneeze, sneeze into your elbow so as not to transfer your germs to your hands -- and everything else around you.
As for the myth about avoiding cold drafts -- forget it. "It doesn't seem to play out that sleeping with the window open, going out with your hair wet in the cold affects your immune system," Shoham says.
Also, keep your immune system healthy. That translates to eating well, getting enough sleep and staying active.
If you become ill and experience severe symptoms, see your doctor. Your physician may recommend antiviral drugs that can treat the flu. Antiviral drugs are prescription medicines (pills, liquid or an inhaled powder) that fight the flu by keeping the virus from reproducing in your body.
Above all, stay away from others. If you have the flu, the CDC recommends you stay home for at least 24 hours after your fever is gone. It's the best way to keep others from getting infected.
At least 8 dead as quake rocks Bhutan
NEW DELHI, India (CNN) -- A strong earthquake rocked Bhutan on Monday, blocking access roads in the mountainous Asian kingdom and killing at least eight people, the country's home minister told CNN.
Rescue teams are en route to the quake-stricken region in eastern Bhutan, but they could be delayed by closed roads. The quake sent boulders down the hillsides, blocking access to some of the remote, hilly regions, said Bhutan's home minister, Minjur Dorji.
The strong quake destroyed many homes and damaged monasteries, homes and dzongs -- Bhutanese forts.
"There's definitely an impact on the infrastructure," Dorji said.
The quake was initially registered at 6.3 in magnitude, but the U.S. Geological Survey -- which measures earthquakes around the world -- later revised the magnitude to 6.1.
Several schoolchildren and monks were treated for injuries sustained in the aftermath, but Dorji said it is unclear how many people were wounded by the quake. Those injured included two monks who had been trapped inside a collapsed monastery in Bhutan's eastern Tashigang district, he said.
The quake also was felt in India's northeastern Assam state, bordering Bhutan. There were no immediate reports of damage there, however.
The quake struck at approximately 2:50 p.m. (4:50 a.m. ET) and its epicenter was 180 kilometers (110 miles) east of Bhutan's capital, Thimphu, and 135 kilometers (85 miles) northwest of Gauhati, in Assam state, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Bhutan -- a small, landlocked country in the Himalaya mountains -- is considered one of the world's most isolated countries because of the government's strict regulation of foreign influences.
NEW DELHI, India (CNN) -- A strong earthquake rocked Bhutan on Monday, blocking access roads in the mountainous Asian kingdom and killing at least eight people, the country's home minister told CNN.
Rescue teams are en route to the quake-stricken region in eastern Bhutan, but they could be delayed by closed roads. The quake sent boulders down the hillsides, blocking access to some of the remote, hilly regions, said Bhutan's home minister, Minjur Dorji.
The strong quake destroyed many homes and damaged monasteries, homes and dzongs -- Bhutanese forts.
"There's definitely an impact on the infrastructure," Dorji said.
The quake was initially registered at 6.3 in magnitude, but the U.S. Geological Survey -- which measures earthquakes around the world -- later revised the magnitude to 6.1.
Several schoolchildren and monks were treated for injuries sustained in the aftermath, but Dorji said it is unclear how many people were wounded by the quake. Those injured included two monks who had been trapped inside a collapsed monastery in Bhutan's eastern Tashigang district, he said.
The quake also was felt in India's northeastern Assam state, bordering Bhutan. There were no immediate reports of damage there, however.
The quake struck at approximately 2:50 p.m. (4:50 a.m. ET) and its epicenter was 180 kilometers (110 miles) east of Bhutan's capital, Thimphu, and 135 kilometers (85 miles) northwest of Gauhati, in Assam state, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Bhutan -- a small, landlocked country in the Himalaya mountains -- is considered one of the world's most isolated countries because of the government's strict regulation of foreign influences.
Renault escape with suspended ban after race-fixing hearing
(CNN) -- Renault's Formula One team was handed a two-year suspended ban by the sport's governing body Monday after a hearing into their part in fixing the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix.
Nelson Piquet Jr. during practice for the Singapore Grand Prix in September last year
The 26-strong World Motor Sport Council of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), met for 90 minutes to discuss allegations by former Renault driver Nelson Piquet Jr. that he was ordered to crash deliberately during last year's race.
As a result, former team boss Flavio Briatore was banned from FIA-sanctioned events for an unlimited period, while ex-engineering director Pat Symonds was excluded from the sport for five years.
Both men quit the team last week after Renault decided against contesting the allegations.
A statement on the FIA Web site said: "The World Motor Sport Council considers Renault F1's breaches relating to the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix to be of unparalleled severity.
"Renault F1's breaches not only compromised the integrity of the sport but also endangered the lives of spectators, officials, other competitors and Nelson Piquet Jr. himself." Watch analyst of the ruling »
Renault, one of the strongest teams in Formula One, could have faced expulsion from the sport, but the council revealed it took into account Renault's willingness to "address the failings within its team and condemn the actions of the individuals involved."
The individuals in question were identified by Renault at the hearing as Briatore and Symonds.
Blog: Renault punishment not enough
Renault said in a statement releaded after the verdict that they full accepted the decision of the council and had not defended the charges.
"We apologize unreservedly to the F1 community in relation to this unacceptable behaviour.
"We sincerely hope that we can soon put this matter behind us and focus constructively on the future. We will issue further information in the next few days."
Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone had previously hinted that the resignations might be enough to avoid the ultimate sanction of expulsion.
"I think we need to show balance," said the 78-year-old
"What they did was very serious. There can be no excuse, but they have acted quickly to get rid of the culprits, and that must be borne in mind."
Renault president Bernard Rey gave evidence at the hearing as well as Piquet Jr.
Two-time world champion Fernando Alonso, who went on to win the Singapore Grand Prix for Renault after the alleged fake crash, also addressed the council.
The saga comes in the wake of last year's "spygate" scandal which saw McLaren fined a record $80 million and a row between leading teams and world governing body FIA (International Automobile Federation) over a budget cap for next season.
The first grand prix held under lights in Singapore last year proved an eventful affair and Alonso won the race -- the first for Renault in two years -- despite starting from 15th on the grid.
Just two laps after Alonso came in early to take on more fuel, Piquet's crash forced the deployment of the safety car and the subsequent pit stop of nearly all other drivers, an action that promoted Alonso to fifth from where he went onto to secure victory.
Piquet attributed the crash to a simple error at the time, but subsequently changed his story after falling out with the French team and being sacked.
(CNN) -- Renault's Formula One team was handed a two-year suspended ban by the sport's governing body Monday after a hearing into their part in fixing the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix.
Nelson Piquet Jr. during practice for the Singapore Grand Prix in September last year
The 26-strong World Motor Sport Council of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), met for 90 minutes to discuss allegations by former Renault driver Nelson Piquet Jr. that he was ordered to crash deliberately during last year's race.
As a result, former team boss Flavio Briatore was banned from FIA-sanctioned events for an unlimited period, while ex-engineering director Pat Symonds was excluded from the sport for five years.
Both men quit the team last week after Renault decided against contesting the allegations.
A statement on the FIA Web site said: "The World Motor Sport Council considers Renault F1's breaches relating to the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix to be of unparalleled severity.
"Renault F1's breaches not only compromised the integrity of the sport but also endangered the lives of spectators, officials, other competitors and Nelson Piquet Jr. himself." Watch analyst of the ruling »
Renault, one of the strongest teams in Formula One, could have faced expulsion from the sport, but the council revealed it took into account Renault's willingness to "address the failings within its team and condemn the actions of the individuals involved."
The individuals in question were identified by Renault at the hearing as Briatore and Symonds.
Blog: Renault punishment not enough
Renault said in a statement releaded after the verdict that they full accepted the decision of the council and had not defended the charges.
"We apologize unreservedly to the F1 community in relation to this unacceptable behaviour.
"We sincerely hope that we can soon put this matter behind us and focus constructively on the future. We will issue further information in the next few days."
Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone had previously hinted that the resignations might be enough to avoid the ultimate sanction of expulsion.
"I think we need to show balance," said the 78-year-old
"What they did was very serious. There can be no excuse, but they have acted quickly to get rid of the culprits, and that must be borne in mind."
Renault president Bernard Rey gave evidence at the hearing as well as Piquet Jr.
Two-time world champion Fernando Alonso, who went on to win the Singapore Grand Prix for Renault after the alleged fake crash, also addressed the council.
The saga comes in the wake of last year's "spygate" scandal which saw McLaren fined a record $80 million and a row between leading teams and world governing body FIA (International Automobile Federation) over a budget cap for next season.
The first grand prix held under lights in Singapore last year proved an eventful affair and Alonso won the race -- the first for Renault in two years -- despite starting from 15th on the grid.
Just two laps after Alonso came in early to take on more fuel, Piquet's crash forced the deployment of the safety car and the subsequent pit stop of nearly all other drivers, an action that promoted Alonso to fifth from where he went onto to secure victory.
Piquet attributed the crash to a simple error at the time, but subsequently changed his story after falling out with the French team and being sacked.
Australian granted right to starve to death dies of infection
(CNN) -- An Australian quadriplegic who won the right to refuse food and water died Monday of an upper respiratory infection, his brother and a right-to-die advocate said.
An Australian high court ruled Christian Rossiter had the right to refuse food and water.
Christian Rossiter had not started his fast but had refused antibiotics and other medical treatment, said Philip Nitschke, director of Exit International, a leading global voluntary euthanasia and end-of-life advocacy group.
"I spoke with him Thursday and he was very ill at time," Nitschke said in a telephone interview from Australia. "He was quite aware of his plight."
Rossiter, 49, won a court case in Australia last month that some described as a major victory for right-to-die proponents. In a rare legal finding, the Supreme Court of Western Australia ruled that Rossiter had the right to refuse food and water. The ruling meant that the nursing facility in which Rossiter had lived since November 2008 could not be held criminally liable for allowing the patient to die, the court said.
"I'm happy that I won my right to die," Rossiter said at the time.
Rossiter's younger brother, Tim, said Monday he is relieved his brother's suffering has ended. "I saw him just previous to his passing away," he said, adding that his brother was grateful that he was able to end his life.
He had been seeking the right to refuse food and water "going back to the middle of last year," Tim Rossiter said.
Christian Rossiter suffered a series of injuries starting in 1988 that left him with limited foot movement and the ability to wriggle only one finger. He was fed through a stomach tube. He relied on staff at the Brightwater Care Group nursing facility in the city of Perth for such routine care as regular turning, cleaning, assistance with bowel movements, physical and occupational therapy and speech pathology.
"He wasn't even able to scratch his nose," the brother said Monday.
Tim Rossiter said he is opposed to legal euthanasia because some people might try to persuade a relative to die in order to reap financial benefits. But he fully supported his brother's decision.
"If I was in my brother's shoes -- and I pray to God I don't end up in his situation -- yes, I would do the same thing," he told CNN.
He said his brother received excellent care -- "second to none" -- at the Brightwater facility. And Tim Rossiter said he bought his brother a top-notch TV and other items to try to make him comfortable.
"There was nothing we could do," he said. "We offered him everything, but we could not give him the thing he wanted most -- his mobility. That was the saddest thing. He was never ever going to be able to take a walk along the beach again."
Rossiter said he has been criticized for supporting his brother.
"People have pointed their finger at me as if I instigated it," he said.
Some family and right-to-life groups opposed Christian Rossiter's request.
"Really, what we should be doing is looking after each other rather than facilitating an escape," John Barich of the Australian Family Association said in a TV interview last month.
Peter O'Meara, president of Western Australia's Right to Life Association, said after the court ruling, "The law which is being applied can be a dangerous precedent."
Nitschke, the right-to-die advocate, said Rossiter was very weak when they talked last week. "It was a difficult phone call," he said. "It did have the feeling of a good-bye phone call."
Nitschke had noted last month that Rossiter's court case was significant because his mind was fully functional.
"This is the first time that it's come up with a person that's rational and lucid," Nitschke said. "This is unusual. It's very rare."
Chief Justice Wayne Martin acknowledged that distinction in his order, saying, "Mr. Rossiter is not a child, nor is he terminally ill, nor dying. He is not in a vegetative state, nor does he lack the capacity to communicate his wishes. There is therefore no question of other persons making decisions on his behalf.
"Rather, this is a case in which a person with full mental capacity and the ability to communicate his wishes has indicated that he wishes to direct those who have assumed responsibility for his care to discontinue the provision of treatment which maintains his existence."
Rossiter had attended the hearing in a wheelchair, breathing through a tracheotomy tube in his throat. He told the judge he wanted to die.
It's a point he often made publicly.
"I can't move," Rossiter said in a televised interview in August. "I can't even wipe the tears from my eyes. And I'd like to die. I'm imprisoned in my own body. I have no fear of death. Just pain."
Rossiter had pointed out in an interview with the PerthNow news outlet that he once led an active life.
"This is living hell," he is quoted as saying. "I used to be a cyclist, I used to be a keen walker. I bushwalked around the world. ... I've rock climbed in Yosemite Valley in California up very steep cliffs. I've got a degree in economics and now I can't even read a newspaper. I can't turn the pages."
Rossiter had no other close family members, his brother said. The funeral is scheduled for Wednesday.
(CNN) -- An Australian quadriplegic who won the right to refuse food and water died Monday of an upper respiratory infection, his brother and a right-to-die advocate said.
An Australian high court ruled Christian Rossiter had the right to refuse food and water.
Christian Rossiter had not started his fast but had refused antibiotics and other medical treatment, said Philip Nitschke, director of Exit International, a leading global voluntary euthanasia and end-of-life advocacy group.
"I spoke with him Thursday and he was very ill at time," Nitschke said in a telephone interview from Australia. "He was quite aware of his plight."
Rossiter, 49, won a court case in Australia last month that some described as a major victory for right-to-die proponents. In a rare legal finding, the Supreme Court of Western Australia ruled that Rossiter had the right to refuse food and water. The ruling meant that the nursing facility in which Rossiter had lived since November 2008 could not be held criminally liable for allowing the patient to die, the court said.
"I'm happy that I won my right to die," Rossiter said at the time.
Rossiter's younger brother, Tim, said Monday he is relieved his brother's suffering has ended. "I saw him just previous to his passing away," he said, adding that his brother was grateful that he was able to end his life.
He had been seeking the right to refuse food and water "going back to the middle of last year," Tim Rossiter said.
Christian Rossiter suffered a series of injuries starting in 1988 that left him with limited foot movement and the ability to wriggle only one finger. He was fed through a stomach tube. He relied on staff at the Brightwater Care Group nursing facility in the city of Perth for such routine care as regular turning, cleaning, assistance with bowel movements, physical and occupational therapy and speech pathology.
"He wasn't even able to scratch his nose," the brother said Monday.
Tim Rossiter said he is opposed to legal euthanasia because some people might try to persuade a relative to die in order to reap financial benefits. But he fully supported his brother's decision.
"If I was in my brother's shoes -- and I pray to God I don't end up in his situation -- yes, I would do the same thing," he told CNN.
He said his brother received excellent care -- "second to none" -- at the Brightwater facility. And Tim Rossiter said he bought his brother a top-notch TV and other items to try to make him comfortable.
"There was nothing we could do," he said. "We offered him everything, but we could not give him the thing he wanted most -- his mobility. That was the saddest thing. He was never ever going to be able to take a walk along the beach again."
Rossiter said he has been criticized for supporting his brother.
"People have pointed their finger at me as if I instigated it," he said.
Some family and right-to-life groups opposed Christian Rossiter's request.
"Really, what we should be doing is looking after each other rather than facilitating an escape," John Barich of the Australian Family Association said in a TV interview last month.
Peter O'Meara, president of Western Australia's Right to Life Association, said after the court ruling, "The law which is being applied can be a dangerous precedent."
Nitschke, the right-to-die advocate, said Rossiter was very weak when they talked last week. "It was a difficult phone call," he said. "It did have the feeling of a good-bye phone call."
Nitschke had noted last month that Rossiter's court case was significant because his mind was fully functional.
"This is the first time that it's come up with a person that's rational and lucid," Nitschke said. "This is unusual. It's very rare."
Chief Justice Wayne Martin acknowledged that distinction in his order, saying, "Mr. Rossiter is not a child, nor is he terminally ill, nor dying. He is not in a vegetative state, nor does he lack the capacity to communicate his wishes. There is therefore no question of other persons making decisions on his behalf.
"Rather, this is a case in which a person with full mental capacity and the ability to communicate his wishes has indicated that he wishes to direct those who have assumed responsibility for his care to discontinue the provision of treatment which maintains his existence."
Rossiter had attended the hearing in a wheelchair, breathing through a tracheotomy tube in his throat. He told the judge he wanted to die.
It's a point he often made publicly.
"I can't move," Rossiter said in a televised interview in August. "I can't even wipe the tears from my eyes. And I'd like to die. I'm imprisoned in my own body. I have no fear of death. Just pain."
Rossiter had pointed out in an interview with the PerthNow news outlet that he once led an active life.
"This is living hell," he is quoted as saying. "I used to be a cyclist, I used to be a keen walker. I bushwalked around the world. ... I've rock climbed in Yosemite Valley in California up very steep cliffs. I've got a degree in economics and now I can't even read a newspaper. I can't turn the pages."
Rossiter had no other close family members, his brother said. The funeral is scheduled for Wednesday.
Bail set for terrorism suspect in Colorado
(CNN) -- A federal magistrate set bail at $50,000 Monday for one of the three men charged with lying to federal agents during a wide-ranging terrorism inquiry, as the men made their first appearances in courtrooms in New York and Colorado.
Najibullah Zazi is accused of making false statements to officials about an alleged bomb plot in the United States.
Mohammed Wali Zazi, 53, whose son is at the center of the terrorism investigation, will be allowed to go home under electronic monitoring and required to remain there except for work, medical care, religious services or court appearances, prosecutors said.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Craig Shaffer in Denver, Colorado, set bail at $50,000, but Zazi is unlikely to be released until later this week.
Prosecutors are asking that his son, 24-year-old Najibullah Zazi, be held until trial. Shaffer set a detention hearing for the younger Zazi for Thursday.
Investigators said Najibullah Zazi has admitted attending courses and receiving instructions on weapons and explosives at an al Qaeda training facility in Pakistan's tribal areas during a 2008 trip and lied to federal agents about explosives-handling instructions they found on his computer.
His attorney, Arthur Folsom, has denied the allegations.
The Zazis and Ahmad Wais Afzali, a 37-year-old Muslim cleric and funeral director from the New York borough of Queens, are the first people charged in connection with what the Justice Department has said was a plot to detonate bombs in the United States.
Earlier Monday, Afzali appeared in a federal court in New York, where a not-guilty plea was entered on his behalf. He smiled as he listened to the magistrate read the charge against him, blowing kisses to his wife during the hearing.
Ron Kuby, Afzali's lawyer, said his client had tried to help federal agents find Najibullah Zazi and called the charge against his client "a bootstrap case" the government brought "to cover up their own failings and the fact that they were the ones who blew this investigation."
He said that Afzali had known the Zazi family since the suspect was a teenager and that they used to attend his Queens mosque.
"When the federal authorities initiated this investigation, they asked him -- they begged him -- to weed out anything he could about Najibullah Zazi," Kuby said.
Afzali was ordered to remain in custody until a bail hearing this week.
All three suspects are originally from Afghanistan. Mohammed Wali Zazi is a naturalized U.S. citizen, and Afzali and Najibullah Zazi are permanent legal residents. If convicted, each faces eight years in prison. Watch why authorities wanted to talk with Zazi »
The plot may have been targeting a major transportation center, such as a large railroad or subway station, sources close to the investigation said last week.
Federal agents have "no specific information regarding the timing, location or target of any planned attack," David Kris, assistant attorney general for national security, said in a written statement.
Court papers describe conversations among the men. At one point, according to the papers, Afzali warned Najibullah Zazi that their phone call was being monitored.
"I was exposed to something yesterday from the authorities," Afzali allegedly told Zazi in a September 11 call. "And they came to ask me about your characters. They asked me about you guys. ... I told them that they are innocent, law-abiding."
Afzali, however, called the questions from police "a good sign."
"The bad sign is for them coming to you guys and picking you up automatically," he said. And he allegedly told the younger Zazi, "Don't get into the Afghanistan garbage, Iraq garbage. ... Listen, our phone call is being monitored."
The federal complaint against Afzali says he falsely asserted that he never told Zazi that agents were monitoring him on the phone, an assertion Kuby slammed.
"Why on Earth is the imam going to lie to the FBI about the contents of a conversation that he knows they're recording?" Kuby asked Monday.
The criminal complaint against Afzali also says he falsely told federal agents that he did not ask Zazi about evidence in his rental car.
The inquiry emerged after a series of raids in Queens on September 14, three days after the intercepted calls. A police stop of Najibullah Zazi during a visit to New York raised investigators' concern that he would discover he was under surveillance, a former counterterrorism official familiar with the investigation said last week.
At the Queens residence where Zazi stayed during his visit, FBI agents seized a black scale containing several AA batteries. Zazi's fingerprints were on both, the criminal complaint against him said.
And agents searched his rental car and laptop computer while he was there, turning up what they said were handwritten notes of his that explained how to make, handle and detonate explosives, according to the complaint.
An FBI expert determined that the handwriting in the photographed document was similar to Najibullah Zazi's, according to the complaint. But during an interview with investigators Wednesday, Zazi denied having the instructions and said that if it was found on his computer, he must have unintentionally downloaded it as part of a religious book. He said he deleted the book within days after he realized that its contents discussed a holy war, investigators said.
According to court records, Mohammed Wali Zazi falsely told investigators that he had not called, nor had he received a call, from anyone in New York asking him about his son's activities. He also said he did not know anyone named Afzali, despite recorded phone calls that showed he did, the FBI stated.
(CNN) -- A federal magistrate set bail at $50,000 Monday for one of the three men charged with lying to federal agents during a wide-ranging terrorism inquiry, as the men made their first appearances in courtrooms in New York and Colorado.
Najibullah Zazi is accused of making false statements to officials about an alleged bomb plot in the United States.
Mohammed Wali Zazi, 53, whose son is at the center of the terrorism investigation, will be allowed to go home under electronic monitoring and required to remain there except for work, medical care, religious services or court appearances, prosecutors said.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Craig Shaffer in Denver, Colorado, set bail at $50,000, but Zazi is unlikely to be released until later this week.
Prosecutors are asking that his son, 24-year-old Najibullah Zazi, be held until trial. Shaffer set a detention hearing for the younger Zazi for Thursday.
Investigators said Najibullah Zazi has admitted attending courses and receiving instructions on weapons and explosives at an al Qaeda training facility in Pakistan's tribal areas during a 2008 trip and lied to federal agents about explosives-handling instructions they found on his computer.
His attorney, Arthur Folsom, has denied the allegations.
The Zazis and Ahmad Wais Afzali, a 37-year-old Muslim cleric and funeral director from the New York borough of Queens, are the first people charged in connection with what the Justice Department has said was a plot to detonate bombs in the United States.
Earlier Monday, Afzali appeared in a federal court in New York, where a not-guilty plea was entered on his behalf. He smiled as he listened to the magistrate read the charge against him, blowing kisses to his wife during the hearing.
Ron Kuby, Afzali's lawyer, said his client had tried to help federal agents find Najibullah Zazi and called the charge against his client "a bootstrap case" the government brought "to cover up their own failings and the fact that they were the ones who blew this investigation."
He said that Afzali had known the Zazi family since the suspect was a teenager and that they used to attend his Queens mosque.
"When the federal authorities initiated this investigation, they asked him -- they begged him -- to weed out anything he could about Najibullah Zazi," Kuby said.
Afzali was ordered to remain in custody until a bail hearing this week.
All three suspects are originally from Afghanistan. Mohammed Wali Zazi is a naturalized U.S. citizen, and Afzali and Najibullah Zazi are permanent legal residents. If convicted, each faces eight years in prison. Watch why authorities wanted to talk with Zazi »
The plot may have been targeting a major transportation center, such as a large railroad or subway station, sources close to the investigation said last week.
Federal agents have "no specific information regarding the timing, location or target of any planned attack," David Kris, assistant attorney general for national security, said in a written statement.
Court papers describe conversations among the men. At one point, according to the papers, Afzali warned Najibullah Zazi that their phone call was being monitored.
"I was exposed to something yesterday from the authorities," Afzali allegedly told Zazi in a September 11 call. "And they came to ask me about your characters. They asked me about you guys. ... I told them that they are innocent, law-abiding."
Afzali, however, called the questions from police "a good sign."
"The bad sign is for them coming to you guys and picking you up automatically," he said. And he allegedly told the younger Zazi, "Don't get into the Afghanistan garbage, Iraq garbage. ... Listen, our phone call is being monitored."
The federal complaint against Afzali says he falsely asserted that he never told Zazi that agents were monitoring him on the phone, an assertion Kuby slammed.
"Why on Earth is the imam going to lie to the FBI about the contents of a conversation that he knows they're recording?" Kuby asked Monday.
The criminal complaint against Afzali also says he falsely told federal agents that he did not ask Zazi about evidence in his rental car.
The inquiry emerged after a series of raids in Queens on September 14, three days after the intercepted calls. A police stop of Najibullah Zazi during a visit to New York raised investigators' concern that he would discover he was under surveillance, a former counterterrorism official familiar with the investigation said last week.
At the Queens residence where Zazi stayed during his visit, FBI agents seized a black scale containing several AA batteries. Zazi's fingerprints were on both, the criminal complaint against him said.
And agents searched his rental car and laptop computer while he was there, turning up what they said were handwritten notes of his that explained how to make, handle and detonate explosives, according to the complaint.
An FBI expert determined that the handwriting in the photographed document was similar to Najibullah Zazi's, according to the complaint. But during an interview with investigators Wednesday, Zazi denied having the instructions and said that if it was found on his computer, he must have unintentionally downloaded it as part of a religious book. He said he deleted the book within days after he realized that its contents discussed a holy war, investigators said.
According to court records, Mohammed Wali Zazi falsely told investigators that he had not called, nor had he received a call, from anyone in New York asking him about his son's activities. He also said he did not know anyone named Afzali, despite recorded phone calls that showed he did, the FBI stated.
Five reported dead in Georgia flooding
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Georgia creeks and rivers, swollen by days of rain, burst their banks Monday, and at least five people were killed in flooding in the state, officials said.
Atlanta firefighter Stephen Webb carries a dog to safety Monday at the Peachtree Park Apartments.
At least four others were thought to be missing, said Wes Tallon, spokesman for fire and emergency management services in Douglas County, west of Atlanta.
"We're in rescue-and-recovery mode," he said. "It has not stopped raining, and another line of thunderstorms is coming."
About 100 miles north of Atlanta, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, one person was swept into rushing water and is presumed drowned, said Jeremy Heidt, a spokesman for the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency in Nashville.
Among those who died in Georgia was a 2-year-old child, swept out of the arms of her father in Carroll County west of Atlanta, emergency management director Tim Padgett told CNN.
In Cobb County in northwest metro Atlanta, standing water kept hundreds of students at Pope High School from leaving, county spokesman Doug Goodwin told CNN. With oversight from the fire department, students were able to evacuate later.
In neighboring Paulding County, an overflowing dam burst onto a highway, said Dema Brummer, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Emergency Management Agency. About 20 homes near the dam were evacuated earlier, county Fire Chief Michael Earwood told CNN. Watch what caused the torrential rain »
The situations came after days of persistent rain soaked a region that until just a few months ago was gripped by drought.
Several storms moving northeast from the Gulf of Mexico brought the downpours, which forecasters expected to continue through Monday night. Rains were expected to taper off by Tuesday morning but scattered showers were expected for the next couple of days.
Just west of Atlanta, some areas have received about 22 inches of rain since last week, CNN meteorologists reported. About 12 of those inches fell in a 12-hour period from Sunday night to Monday morning.
In the town of Trion in northwest Georgia's Chattooga County, 300 people were evacuated from their homes because of concerns that a levee might fail, Brummer said.
Authorities opened a shelter for them in a church, she said.
National Guard units were waiting to see whether they would be needed. There were concerns that they would be called in to assist in Douglas County west of Atlanta, National Guard spokeswoman Lt. Col. Beth Thelen told CNN.
"Conditions are dangerous," she said about the excess water, which has left most of metro Atlanta and the surrounding area subject to flash floods. "We are encouraging people to stay at home and to stay off the roads if they can." Watch flooding one CNN.com staffer recorded »
She said "numerous search-and-rescue efforts" have been carried out in Carroll, Douglas and Paulding counties along the Interstate 20 corridor west of Atlanta. iReport.com: Floodwaters seep into Carroll County home
Two of the Georgia fatalities involved people trying to drive through floodwater. A vehicle with one man inside was swept off a road in Douglas County, and a car carrying a woman was swept off a road in Lawrenceville in Gwinnett County, east of Atlanta, Brummer said.
Seydi Burciaga, 39, was driving to her Lawrenceville home from work when flash flooding trapped her in her vehicle, Gwinnett County police said. Watch home's yard become a lake »
She called 911 and police tried to locate her, but Burciaga could not tell them exactly where she was. Floodwater moved her car about 500 feet after she was swept off the roadway, and her attempts to guide them toward her by mentioning landmarks were unsuccessful, police said.
By the time rescuers found her minivan, she was dead, police said.
In Chattanooga, the presumed drowning victim was forced into a culvert, or underground storm water drain, about 6 p.m. Sunday, Chattanooga Fire Department spokesman Bruce Garner told CNN. Sylvester Kitchens Jr., 46, was with a friend, Albert Miller, when the two decided to swim in a large, flooded ditch, Garner said. He said a Miller family member told him that "basically it was a bet."
Both managed to grab onto a chain link fence while being buffeted by the strong current, Garner said. A neighbor threw a garden hose for them to grab onto, and Kitchens reached for it but was unable to hold on. Miller clung to the fence for about 20 minutes and was eventually rescued by firefighters, Garner said.
Kitchens' body has not been found, said Garner, who added that it "doesn't appear he could've survived."
Northeast of Atlanta, the Chattahoochee River was at 20 feet, up from 2 feet last June. Watch I-75/85 under water »
Along the border between Paulding County and Cobb County, CNN's Reynolds Wolf watched as Sweetwater Creek crept overnight 100 yards across his back yard to within a few feet of his house. Watch Wolf's backyard under water »
Neighbors who slept through the downpour overnight awoke to find their dog had drowned in their basement, Wolf said.
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Georgia creeks and rivers, swollen by days of rain, burst their banks Monday, and at least five people were killed in flooding in the state, officials said.
Atlanta firefighter Stephen Webb carries a dog to safety Monday at the Peachtree Park Apartments.
At least four others were thought to be missing, said Wes Tallon, spokesman for fire and emergency management services in Douglas County, west of Atlanta.
"We're in rescue-and-recovery mode," he said. "It has not stopped raining, and another line of thunderstorms is coming."
About 100 miles north of Atlanta, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, one person was swept into rushing water and is presumed drowned, said Jeremy Heidt, a spokesman for the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency in Nashville.
Among those who died in Georgia was a 2-year-old child, swept out of the arms of her father in Carroll County west of Atlanta, emergency management director Tim Padgett told CNN.
In Cobb County in northwest metro Atlanta, standing water kept hundreds of students at Pope High School from leaving, county spokesman Doug Goodwin told CNN. With oversight from the fire department, students were able to evacuate later.
In neighboring Paulding County, an overflowing dam burst onto a highway, said Dema Brummer, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Emergency Management Agency. About 20 homes near the dam were evacuated earlier, county Fire Chief Michael Earwood told CNN. Watch what caused the torrential rain »
The situations came after days of persistent rain soaked a region that until just a few months ago was gripped by drought.
Several storms moving northeast from the Gulf of Mexico brought the downpours, which forecasters expected to continue through Monday night. Rains were expected to taper off by Tuesday morning but scattered showers were expected for the next couple of days.
Just west of Atlanta, some areas have received about 22 inches of rain since last week, CNN meteorologists reported. About 12 of those inches fell in a 12-hour period from Sunday night to Monday morning.
In the town of Trion in northwest Georgia's Chattooga County, 300 people were evacuated from their homes because of concerns that a levee might fail, Brummer said.
Authorities opened a shelter for them in a church, she said.
National Guard units were waiting to see whether they would be needed. There were concerns that they would be called in to assist in Douglas County west of Atlanta, National Guard spokeswoman Lt. Col. Beth Thelen told CNN.
"Conditions are dangerous," she said about the excess water, which has left most of metro Atlanta and the surrounding area subject to flash floods. "We are encouraging people to stay at home and to stay off the roads if they can." Watch flooding one CNN.com staffer recorded »
She said "numerous search-and-rescue efforts" have been carried out in Carroll, Douglas and Paulding counties along the Interstate 20 corridor west of Atlanta. iReport.com: Floodwaters seep into Carroll County home
Two of the Georgia fatalities involved people trying to drive through floodwater. A vehicle with one man inside was swept off a road in Douglas County, and a car carrying a woman was swept off a road in Lawrenceville in Gwinnett County, east of Atlanta, Brummer said.
Seydi Burciaga, 39, was driving to her Lawrenceville home from work when flash flooding trapped her in her vehicle, Gwinnett County police said. Watch home's yard become a lake »
She called 911 and police tried to locate her, but Burciaga could not tell them exactly where she was. Floodwater moved her car about 500 feet after she was swept off the roadway, and her attempts to guide them toward her by mentioning landmarks were unsuccessful, police said.
By the time rescuers found her minivan, she was dead, police said.
In Chattanooga, the presumed drowning victim was forced into a culvert, or underground storm water drain, about 6 p.m. Sunday, Chattanooga Fire Department spokesman Bruce Garner told CNN. Sylvester Kitchens Jr., 46, was with a friend, Albert Miller, when the two decided to swim in a large, flooded ditch, Garner said. He said a Miller family member told him that "basically it was a bet."
Both managed to grab onto a chain link fence while being buffeted by the strong current, Garner said. A neighbor threw a garden hose for them to grab onto, and Kitchens reached for it but was unable to hold on. Miller clung to the fence for about 20 minutes and was eventually rescued by firefighters, Garner said.
Kitchens' body has not been found, said Garner, who added that it "doesn't appear he could've survived."
Northeast of Atlanta, the Chattahoochee River was at 20 feet, up from 2 feet last June. Watch I-75/85 under water »
Along the border between Paulding County and Cobb County, CNN's Reynolds Wolf watched as Sweetwater Creek crept overnight 100 yards across his back yard to within a few feet of his house. Watch Wolf's backyard under water »
Neighbors who slept through the downpour overnight awoke to find their dog had drowned in their basement, Wolf said.
Obama prepares for week of foreign policy challenges
(CNN) -- Fights over the economy and health care may be dominating the headlines at home, but President Obama is turning his sights abroad this week.
President Obama will tackle top foreign policy issues, including the global economic crisis, this week.
Starting Tuesday, the president is set to tackle a range of thorny international problems with his counterparts at the United Nations, including nuclear non-proliferation, climate change, the Arab-Israeli conflict and the escalating U.S. war in Afghanistan.
On Thursday, he'll be at a Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he will host a two-day meeting of representatives of the world's largest economies. Issues of financial regulation and executive pay are expected to top the agenda as leaders wrestle with the question of how best to reverse the global economic slide.
The meetings come as Obama retains immense personal popularity overseas but is receiving little backing for controversial decisions such as the deployment of additional military forces to battle al Qaeda and Taliban militants. Watch more on Obama's week ahead »
Several European allies also are worried that Obama may not have the political muscle to carry through with new U.S. pledges of cooperation on global warming and other concerns.
"Our agenda is ambitious," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at the Brookings Institution last week when discussing the highly anticipated U.N. session. It stems from Obama's belief that the United Nations is "a critical, central institution," she said.
The United Nations "does not have to be just a diplomatic talk shop," she said. "At its best, it can be an institution that brings the world's nations together to solve global problems."
The U.N. gathering marks Obama's first presidential appearance before the world body. Among other things, he is scheduled to attend a meeting on climate control Tuesday, address the General Assembly on Wednesday and chair a special session of the U.N. Security Council dealing with nuclear non-proliferation Thursday.
Obama will be the first U.S. president to head a meeting of the council. His high-profile U.N. engagement marks a sharp shift in emphasis from George W. Bush's administration, which generally placed a lower priority on the need to act through international institutions.
"A top priority for this administration is to ... actually listen to what other countries have to say," said Peter Yeo, head of the Better World Campaign, which encourages closer cooperation between the United States and the United Nations.
The Obama administration is "less about threats and more about negotiations and diplomacy," he added.
Middle East peace will top the agenda for much of Tuesday as Obama huddles with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The president is hoping to build on the peace process but has "no grand expectations out of one meeting," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday.
The meetings come as hopes for renewed Israeli-Palestinian talks have dimmed despite the diplomatic efforts of George Mitchell, the U.S. envoy for the Middle East.
The United States and Israel have publicly disagreed on Israeli plans to build more housing on land the Palestinians regard as theirs, and U.S. demands for a complete freeze have been ignored by the Netanyahu government.
Abbas has rejected resuming talks with Israel until the Jewish state halts all settlement building in the occupied West Bank and in predominantly Palestinian East Jerusalem.
Obama will also sit down at the United Nations General Assembly's annual session with Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, Chinese leader Hu Jintao and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
American officials have been trying to gain Chinese and Russian support for potential new sanctions against Iran in response to Tehran's continued nuclear ambitions. U.S. officials denied last week that Obama's decision to scrap a proposed missile defense system based in Eastern Europe was motivated by a desire to curry favor with Moscow.
Russian officials strongly opposed the system, which many analysts believed posed a potential threat to Russia's strategic nuclear deterrent.
Clinton said last week that Iran's failure to prove that its nuclear program will not be used for military purposes remains a source of "deep concern" to the international community.
She promised continuing "costs" for Iran in the form of diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions if Tehran does not allow greater international oversight of the program.
At the same time, Clinton defended the U.S. administration's decision to open the door to talks with the Iranian government, which has been criticized for cracking down on domestic political opponents in the wake of its disputed June presidential election.
"Dialogue alone doesn't guarantee any outcome," she conceded. But she added that Bush's refusal to engage with Tehran didn't yield any progress on the nuclear issue or reduce Iranian support for terrorist groups.
At the same time, she warned, the Obama White House is not seeking greater diplomatic engagement "just for the sake of talking." She stressed that U.S. officials are hoping for "some movement" on Iran's part by the end of the year.
American U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice said Friday that she doesn't expect a direct meeting between Obama and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the United Nations session.
Also high on the agenda is Afghanistan.
Top U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal has warned Obama that more troops are needed within the coming year, or the nearly 8-year-old war "will likely result in failure," according to a copy of a 66-page document obtained by The Washington Post. He has also called for increased emphasis on protecting civilians and training Afghan troops.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai told CNN on Monday that he backs McChrystal's recommendations. European allies, however, have resisted calls for more assistance.
Some critics of increased military operations have also questioned the legitimacy of Karzai's government in the wake of Afghanistan's contested August presidential election.
Results of the recently completed count gave Karzai 54 percent of the vote, but the numbers won't be certified until authorities investigate allegations of irregularities.
Karzai needs to get more than 50 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff in his bid for a second term. His chief rival, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, said he has "no doubt" that Karzai and his supporters worked to rig the vote in the incumbent's favor.
The United States has about 62,000 troops in Afghanistan, with NATO and other allies contributing about 35,000 more. The Pentagon is planning to add 6,000 troops by year's end.
(CNN) -- Fights over the economy and health care may be dominating the headlines at home, but President Obama is turning his sights abroad this week.
President Obama will tackle top foreign policy issues, including the global economic crisis, this week.
Starting Tuesday, the president is set to tackle a range of thorny international problems with his counterparts at the United Nations, including nuclear non-proliferation, climate change, the Arab-Israeli conflict and the escalating U.S. war in Afghanistan.
On Thursday, he'll be at a Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he will host a two-day meeting of representatives of the world's largest economies. Issues of financial regulation and executive pay are expected to top the agenda as leaders wrestle with the question of how best to reverse the global economic slide.
The meetings come as Obama retains immense personal popularity overseas but is receiving little backing for controversial decisions such as the deployment of additional military forces to battle al Qaeda and Taliban militants. Watch more on Obama's week ahead »
Several European allies also are worried that Obama may not have the political muscle to carry through with new U.S. pledges of cooperation on global warming and other concerns.
"Our agenda is ambitious," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at the Brookings Institution last week when discussing the highly anticipated U.N. session. It stems from Obama's belief that the United Nations is "a critical, central institution," she said.
The United Nations "does not have to be just a diplomatic talk shop," she said. "At its best, it can be an institution that brings the world's nations together to solve global problems."
The U.N. gathering marks Obama's first presidential appearance before the world body. Among other things, he is scheduled to attend a meeting on climate control Tuesday, address the General Assembly on Wednesday and chair a special session of the U.N. Security Council dealing with nuclear non-proliferation Thursday.
Obama will be the first U.S. president to head a meeting of the council. His high-profile U.N. engagement marks a sharp shift in emphasis from George W. Bush's administration, which generally placed a lower priority on the need to act through international institutions.
"A top priority for this administration is to ... actually listen to what other countries have to say," said Peter Yeo, head of the Better World Campaign, which encourages closer cooperation between the United States and the United Nations.
The Obama administration is "less about threats and more about negotiations and diplomacy," he added.
Middle East peace will top the agenda for much of Tuesday as Obama huddles with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The president is hoping to build on the peace process but has "no grand expectations out of one meeting," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday.
The meetings come as hopes for renewed Israeli-Palestinian talks have dimmed despite the diplomatic efforts of George Mitchell, the U.S. envoy for the Middle East.
The United States and Israel have publicly disagreed on Israeli plans to build more housing on land the Palestinians regard as theirs, and U.S. demands for a complete freeze have been ignored by the Netanyahu government.
Abbas has rejected resuming talks with Israel until the Jewish state halts all settlement building in the occupied West Bank and in predominantly Palestinian East Jerusalem.
Obama will also sit down at the United Nations General Assembly's annual session with Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, Chinese leader Hu Jintao and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
American officials have been trying to gain Chinese and Russian support for potential new sanctions against Iran in response to Tehran's continued nuclear ambitions. U.S. officials denied last week that Obama's decision to scrap a proposed missile defense system based in Eastern Europe was motivated by a desire to curry favor with Moscow.
Russian officials strongly opposed the system, which many analysts believed posed a potential threat to Russia's strategic nuclear deterrent.
Clinton said last week that Iran's failure to prove that its nuclear program will not be used for military purposes remains a source of "deep concern" to the international community.
She promised continuing "costs" for Iran in the form of diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions if Tehran does not allow greater international oversight of the program.
At the same time, Clinton defended the U.S. administration's decision to open the door to talks with the Iranian government, which has been criticized for cracking down on domestic political opponents in the wake of its disputed June presidential election.
"Dialogue alone doesn't guarantee any outcome," she conceded. But she added that Bush's refusal to engage with Tehran didn't yield any progress on the nuclear issue or reduce Iranian support for terrorist groups.
At the same time, she warned, the Obama White House is not seeking greater diplomatic engagement "just for the sake of talking." She stressed that U.S. officials are hoping for "some movement" on Iran's part by the end of the year.
American U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice said Friday that she doesn't expect a direct meeting between Obama and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the United Nations session.
Also high on the agenda is Afghanistan.
Top U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal has warned Obama that more troops are needed within the coming year, or the nearly 8-year-old war "will likely result in failure," according to a copy of a 66-page document obtained by The Washington Post. He has also called for increased emphasis on protecting civilians and training Afghan troops.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai told CNN on Monday that he backs McChrystal's recommendations. European allies, however, have resisted calls for more assistance.
Some critics of increased military operations have also questioned the legitimacy of Karzai's government in the wake of Afghanistan's contested August presidential election.
Results of the recently completed count gave Karzai 54 percent of the vote, but the numbers won't be certified until authorities investigate allegations of irregularities.
Karzai needs to get more than 50 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff in his bid for a second term. His chief rival, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, said he has "no doubt" that Karzai and his supporters worked to rig the vote in the incumbent's favor.
The United States has about 62,000 troops in Afghanistan, with NATO and other allies contributing about 35,000 more. The Pentagon is planning to add 6,000 troops by year's end.
Pakistan arrests top Taliban commander
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Pakistan has arrested a key militant commander suspected of launching suicide attacks in the country's northwest, Pakistan's army announced Monday.
Abu Faraj was arrested during a military operation in the Swat region, but the army statement did not say when. Abu Faraj is believed to be one of the key commanders for Maulana Fazlullah, the head of the Pakistani Taliban in Swat, who is still at large.
Fazlullah has stated that his goal is to impose a harsh interpretation of Islamic law in northwest Pakistan.
Fazlullah's father-in-law, pro-Taliban leader Sufi Mohammed, helped mediate a peace agreement with the Pakistani government earlier this year.
That deal collapsed, and paved the way for Pakistan's current military operation against Taliban elements in the northwest. Shortly after his father-in-law's peace deal took effect, Fazlullah proclaimed himself the emir of Swat.
Swat is a region in Pakistan's northwest that continues to experience near-daily attacks by Islamic militants on civilians and on security forces conducting the military operation against them.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Pakistan has arrested a key militant commander suspected of launching suicide attacks in the country's northwest, Pakistan's army announced Monday.
Abu Faraj was arrested during a military operation in the Swat region, but the army statement did not say when. Abu Faraj is believed to be one of the key commanders for Maulana Fazlullah, the head of the Pakistani Taliban in Swat, who is still at large.
Fazlullah has stated that his goal is to impose a harsh interpretation of Islamic law in northwest Pakistan.
Fazlullah's father-in-law, pro-Taliban leader Sufi Mohammed, helped mediate a peace agreement with the Pakistani government earlier this year.
That deal collapsed, and paved the way for Pakistan's current military operation against Taliban elements in the northwest. Shortly after his father-in-law's peace deal took effect, Fazlullah proclaimed himself the emir of Swat.
Swat is a region in Pakistan's northwest that continues to experience near-daily attacks by Islamic militants on civilians and on security forces conducting the military operation against them.
Facebook gets caught in Golan Heights dispute
JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Logging onto Facebook as a resident in the Golan Heights, should you enter Syria or Israel as your home country?
Facebook now has 300 million users -- almost as many as the population of the United States.
Decades of war and occupation have not provided an answer to that question -- but the social networking Web site now permits both options, sparking fears about an anti-Facebook cyber-war.
The Golan Heights is Syrian territory that was captured by Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967. Since then it has been internationally classified as Israeli-occupied territory.
Up until recently, Facebook fans in the Golan Heights could only choose Syria as their country of origin or else leave it blank. Pro-Israel Web site honestreporting.com sought to change that, starting a group called "Facebook, Golan residents live in Israel, not Syria."
Alex Margolin says the campaign was never political. "It was never a question of the future of Golan... it's totally possible that at some time in the future the Golan will change hands and go to Syria."
The group welcomed 2,500 members in the first week. Shortly afterwards Facebook policy changed. Do you think Facebook was right to change policy?
"We have enabled users in Golan Heights to choose either Syria or Israel in the listings," a Facebook spokesperson told CNN. "We currently have the same dual-listing options for the West Bank settlement, which is listed in both Palestine and Israel.
Connect the World
Becky Anderson takes viewers across continents, beyond headlines.2000 GMT
see full schedule »
"We deal with the listings for disputed territories on a case-by-case basis, and with Golan Heights we decided a dual listing made sense in this instance."
Eighteen-year old Ofri Bazaz is delighted she can finally change her profile to Israel, squealing with delight as she tries it for the first time. She said: "It's very important on the Internet when somebody comes to my profile on Facebook they will see Israel and not Syria. I'm not Syrian."
But a 20-minute drive away in the Druze town of Majdal Shams, the reaction is very different. Facebook users here consider themselves Syrian and refuse to accept the change, as they fear it undermines their peaceful resistance to the Israeli occupation.
Shopkeeper Sakar abu Sabit said: "Even if it's just on the computer, I want people to always recognize me in the Golan Heights as a Syrian citizen."
Reaction from Syria is likely to be muted according to Syrian scholar, Ammar Abdulhamid. He told CNN that Facebook and other social networking sites have already been banned in Syria. "The Syrian government has really taken a strong stance on Internet activism and social networking sites," he said.
"The real reason is nothing to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict, it's because these sites are very popular with Syrian activists."
But with 300 million users worldwide and an estimated 120 million logging in every single day according to Facebook, there will inevitably be fears about a backlash against the site that now finds itself at the center of a 40-year-old conflict.
JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Logging onto Facebook as a resident in the Golan Heights, should you enter Syria or Israel as your home country?
Facebook now has 300 million users -- almost as many as the population of the United States.
Decades of war and occupation have not provided an answer to that question -- but the social networking Web site now permits both options, sparking fears about an anti-Facebook cyber-war.
The Golan Heights is Syrian territory that was captured by Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967. Since then it has been internationally classified as Israeli-occupied territory.
Up until recently, Facebook fans in the Golan Heights could only choose Syria as their country of origin or else leave it blank. Pro-Israel Web site honestreporting.com sought to change that, starting a group called "Facebook, Golan residents live in Israel, not Syria."
Alex Margolin says the campaign was never political. "It was never a question of the future of Golan... it's totally possible that at some time in the future the Golan will change hands and go to Syria."
The group welcomed 2,500 members in the first week. Shortly afterwards Facebook policy changed. Do you think Facebook was right to change policy?
"We have enabled users in Golan Heights to choose either Syria or Israel in the listings," a Facebook spokesperson told CNN. "We currently have the same dual-listing options for the West Bank settlement, which is listed in both Palestine and Israel.
Connect the World
Becky Anderson takes viewers across continents, beyond headlines.2000 GMT
see full schedule »
"We deal with the listings for disputed territories on a case-by-case basis, and with Golan Heights we decided a dual listing made sense in this instance."
Eighteen-year old Ofri Bazaz is delighted she can finally change her profile to Israel, squealing with delight as she tries it for the first time. She said: "It's very important on the Internet when somebody comes to my profile on Facebook they will see Israel and not Syria. I'm not Syrian."
But a 20-minute drive away in the Druze town of Majdal Shams, the reaction is very different. Facebook users here consider themselves Syrian and refuse to accept the change, as they fear it undermines their peaceful resistance to the Israeli occupation.
Shopkeeper Sakar abu Sabit said: "Even if it's just on the computer, I want people to always recognize me in the Golan Heights as a Syrian citizen."
Reaction from Syria is likely to be muted according to Syrian scholar, Ammar Abdulhamid. He told CNN that Facebook and other social networking sites have already been banned in Syria. "The Syrian government has really taken a strong stance on Internet activism and social networking sites," he said.
"The real reason is nothing to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict, it's because these sites are very popular with Syrian activists."
But with 300 million users worldwide and an estimated 120 million logging in every single day according to Facebook, there will inevitably be fears about a backlash against the site that now finds itself at the center of a 40-year-old conflict.
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