Afghans Rape Children On Canadian Military Base

Such atrocities are ‘normal’ on planet earth: Pakistani women buried alive for choosing husbands
Human beings do net respect themselves, they do not respect others and they do not respect their planet.
This is the perfect recipe for the ultimate disaster.
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Dec 14, 2008 04:30 AM
Source: The Star

Chaplain says senior officer aware of rape by Afghans

Soldier recalls cries from boy brought onto Canadian base

The boy was no more than 12. He wore a wig, lipstick and perfume and was dressed in a flowing robe when an Afghan interpreter escorted him to the entrance of the Canadian base in remote Afghanistan.

It was June 2006 and it was one of Tyrel Braaten’s first days at Forward Operating Base Wilson, about 30 kilometres outside Kandahar.

Braaten watched as the local interpreter, who worked for the Canadians, ushered the boy through the security checkpoint and led him inside a nearby building.

The bombardier was bewildered. He asked another interpreter standing next to him who the boy was. The interpreter shrugged that the boy was one of “the bitches.”

“I said, `What do you mean?’ and he made the motion with his hips, like you know,” said Braaten, 24. “I remember saying, `Are we on Mars? Does this s— go on all the time?'”

The native of Saskatchewan is the latest soldier to come forward alleging in detail how young Afghan boys during his tour in Afghanistan in 2006 were regularly sodomized by Afghan interpreters and soldiers working alongside Canadian soldiers.

For the past four months, the Canadian Forces’ National Investigation Service, an arm’s-length military investigatory body with the power to lay criminal charges, has been probing claims that Canadian commanding officers ignored the complaints of lower-ranking soldiers about the alleged rapes.

Some soldiers have told military chaplains and medical personnel that they were instructed to disregard the sodomy because of a “cultural difference” between Canada and Afghanistan.

In a new development, Maj. Kevin Klein, a high-ranking chaplain, told the Star that a senior officer confided to him in 2007 that his soldiers were struggling to cope with the rapes. Klein has told his story to NIS investigators.

Read moreAfghans Rape Children On Canadian Military Base

LA Hospital CEO Pleads Guilty to Health Care Fraud

LA hospital CEO pleads guilty to billing government for unnecessary care given to the homeless

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A former hospital executive admitted Friday he paid a man to recruit homeless people for unnecessary medical treatment in a scheme to bilk government health programs out of millions of dollars.

Dr. Rudra Sabaratnam, who ran City of Angels Medical Center, faces up to 10 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to paying a recruiter nearly $500,000 to find Skid Row homeless people with Medi-Cal or Medicare cards and transport them to the hospital.

In his plea agreement, which remains under seal, Sabaratnam also agreed to pay more than $4.1 million in restitution to Medicare and Medi-Cal.

Read moreLA Hospital CEO Pleads Guilty to Health Care Fraud

Halliburton accused of supplying rotten food to U.S. forces

Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton. KBR is not paying taxes in the US (Top Iraq contractor skirts US taxes offshore).

Related articles and videos:
US Troops in Iraq talk about Halliburton & KBR
Whistleblower says Pentagon putting KBR over soldiers
Army Overseer Tells of Ouster Over KBR Stir
BBC uncovers lost Iraq billions
Exposing Pentagon and CIA Corruption
KBR Named In Report On Soldier Illnesses
If you do your research on KBR and Halliburton you will find a lot more evidence.

My conclusion is that the government and the corporations are considering US soldiers as cannon fodder.
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U.S military contractor KBR, a former subisidary of Halliburton, is facing a number of lawsuits over its activities in Iraq, and elsewhere.

KBR is the largest contractor for the United States Army and a top-ten contractor for the U.S. Department of Defense.

In one class-action suit Joshua Eller, a civilian who worked for the U.S. Air Force in 2006 at the Balad air force base northeast of Baghdad, alleges KBR ‘knowingly and intentionally supplied to U.S. forces and other individuals food that was expired, spoiled, rotten, or that may have been contaminated with shrapnel, or other materials’.

KBR ‘supplied water which was contaminated, untreated, and unsafe’, Eller charged, detailing a number of examples.

He said Halliburton and KBR ‘shipped ice served to U.S. forces in trucks that had been used to carry human remains and that still had traces of body fluids and putrefied remains.’

The lawsuit says the ‘defendants burned medical waste that contained human body parts on the open air burn pit. Wild dogs in the area raided the burn pit and carried off human remains. The wild dogs could be seen roaming the base with body parts in their mouths.’

Read moreHalliburton accused of supplying rotten food to U.S. forces

Former Nasdaq Chairman Madoff Confessed $50 Billion Fraud Before FBI Arrest

Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) — Bernard Madoff confessed to employees this week that his investment advisory business was “a giant Ponzi scheme” that cost clients $50 billion before two FBI agents showed up yesterday morning at his Manhattan apartment.

“We’re here to find out if there’s an innocent explanation,” Agent Theodore Cacioppi told Madoff (The FBI ‘should’ be there to find out the truth, not an ‘innocent explanation’.), who founded Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC and was once chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market.

“There is no innocent explanation,” Madoff, 70, told the agents, saying he traded and lost money for institutional clients. He said he “paid investors with money that wasn’t there” and expected to go to jail. With that, agents arrested Madoff, according to an FBI complaint.

Read moreFormer Nasdaq Chairman Madoff Confessed $50 Billion Fraud Before FBI Arrest

Panel blames White House, not soldiers, for abuse

The physical and mental abuse of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was the direct result of Bush administration detention policies and should not be dismissed as the work of bad guards or interrogators, according to a bipartisan Senate report released Thursday.

The Senate Armed Services Committee report concludes that harsh interrogation techniques used by the CIA and the U.S. military were directly adapted from the training techniques used to prepare special forces personnel to resist interrogation by enemies that torture and abuse prisoners. The techniques included forced nudity, painful stress positions, sleep deprivation, and until 2003, waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning.

The report is the result of a nearly two-year investigation that directly links President Bush’s policies after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, legal memos on torture, and interrogation rule changes with the abuse photographed at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq four years ago. Much of the report remains classified. Unclassified portions of the report were released by the committee Thursday.

Read morePanel blames White House, not soldiers, for abuse

Change you can believe in – from a city long steeped in corruption

Barack Obama won a convincing victory in the US presidential election as the man who could deliver “change you can believe in”.

The President-elect emerged, however, from a city where political corruption has been rife since before the time of the gangster Al Capone. As Robert Grant, the FBI agent who arrested Mr Blagojevich, said yesterday: “If [Illinois] is not the most corrupt state in the United States, it is certainly one hell of a competitor.”

Mr Blagojevich is the fifth Illinois governor to be indicted for white-collar crime since 1960. Three of his predecessors were convicted.

What makes the prosecution of Mr Blagojevich potentially nettlesome to Mr Obama is the President-elect’s lengthy relationship with the Syrian-born fixer Tony Rezko. During the election campaign, the US press largely turned a blind eye to Mr Obama’s ties to Rezko, who was convicted in June of running a scheme where companies seeking state business had to pay kickbacks to him or Illinois politicians. The “pay-to-play” schemes form the basis of some of the allegations against Mr Blagojevich.

Mr Obama has admitted that Rezko was a friend – but was also one of his earliest campaign contributors when he began his political career in state politics in the mid-1990s.

An associate of Rezko told The Times that Mr Obama telephoned Rezko frequently during this period to discuss state politics. Mr Obama had already graduated to national politics, by winning a US Senate seat, when he enlisted Rezko’s help in buying his current house in 2005 at a $300,000 (£200,000) discount.

Read moreChange you can believe in – from a city long steeped in corruption

RBS secretly charged 80% interest on loan

ROYAL Bank of Scotland has secretly changed customers’ accounts into personal loans with up to 80% interest, generating debts of as much as £100,000, an investigation has revealed.

The bank, which was effectively nationalised 10 days ago, has admitted that its debt collection branch drew up new loan agreements and accounts for customers without their consent. MPs this weekend questioned whether the scheme was legal.

Duncan and Debbie Birch from Torrington, Devon, say their £24,100 overdraft ballooned into a debt of £100,000 when new loan accounts were created without their permission.

Documents show that at one point the couple were being charged an interest rate of 80%, although the bank claims this was rectified. Yet the couple say it has now obtained a legal charge of £70,000 on their home.

Another customer, Paul Walton, 41, from Rotherham, South Yorkshire, found loan documents drawn up in his name for new accounts. “They were fabricated and there was interest accumulating in the accounts,” he said.

The bank claims the new loan accounts were created “purely” for administration and that it was never intended that the debts should be collected.

They were unable to explain exactly what the purpose of the “administrative accounts” was, why they had created them and how many customers were affected.

John Healey, a former Treasury minister and Walton’s MP, said the situation was “deeply disturbing“.

“The system does not appear tight enough to prevent [these accounts] becoming the basis of real debt demands and court action,” he said.

December 7, 2008
Georgia Warren and Jon Ungoed-Thomas

Source: The Sunday Times

Robbers in drag steal €80 million from Paris diamond store in biggest French heist

At first sight, the man and three women who entered the Harry Winston store in Paris resembled the sophisticated international clientele who frequent this most exclusive of jewellers. But staff soon realised something was amiss – the women were really men in wigs and dresses and all four were holding guns.

They herded the 15 or so staff and customers into a corner – hitting some over the head – then loaded necklaces, brooches, watches and other valuables into their bags and made off with a haul valued at €85 million (£74 million). The biggest robbery in French history, and the second-biggest jewellery theft in Europe, took only 13 minutes.

French police, who arrived 15 minutes later, said that Harry Winston, the self-proclaimed king of diamonds and supplier to monarchs, aristocrats and film stars, had fallen victim to a highly professional and well informed gang.

The boutique, on the Avenue Montaigne in central Paris, was closed yesterday and three of the five window displays were empty. Members of France’s elite detective squad searched the premises for clues. They studied security camera footage and the alarm mechanism, which is linked to a centre in Switzerland. Witnesses told police that the robbers had spoken only French. Others said that they also spoke a second language but all agreed on the speed, efficiency and brutality of the criminals, who injured some of the staff, though they did not fire a shot.

Read moreRobbers in drag steal €80 million from Paris diamond store in biggest French heist

Blackwater security guards to be charged over mass shooting in Iraq

Five security guards will be charged over the deaths of 17 Iraqis who were shot during an anti-American rally in Baghdad last year.

Blackwater security guards: Five security guards will be charged over the deaths of 17 Iraqis who were shot during an anti-American rally in Baghdad last year.
Blackwater gurads were hired to protect American diplomats Photo: AP

The employees of Blackwater Worldwide, who were hired by the US State Department to protect American diplomats, opened fire on a crowd who had gathered at an interstate in the Iraqi capital on September 16 2007.

Six guards have been under investigation since the attacks after witnesses claimed the shooting was unprovoked.

Blackwater continues to deny the allegations claiming its guards were ambushed by insurgents while responding to a car bombing.

Young children were among the victims and the shooting strained relations between the U.S. and Iraq.

Following the deaths, Blackwater became the subject insurgent propaganda videos in Iraq.

Read moreBlackwater security guards to be charged over mass shooting in Iraq

Police officers investigated after assault of Mark Aspinall caught on CCTV

Watch it.
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Three police officers are being investigated after a soldier claimed he was repeatedly beaten while being pinned to the ground.

CCTV footage shows Lance Corporal Mark Aspinall, who was praised for his bravery against the Taleban in Afghanistan earlier this year, being held down by two officers while a third appears to hit him on the back.

Mr Aspinall, 24, was later found guilty of of assaulting the police offices but the convictions have been quashed on appeal after a judge watched a video of the incident.

The nine-minute video, obtained by the Sunday Mirror, shows a drunken Mr Aspinall gesticulating at three police officers in Wigan, Lancashire, in July.

It is claimed that he was mistakenly identified by the officers who had been called to deal with a man causing a nuisance to paramedics in the centre of the town.

Mr Aspinall is then seen tripping as he attempts to run away from the police and then is then held down by three officers in fluorescent yellow jackets.

An officer, identified in court as PC Peter Lightfoot, appears to twice push Mr Aspinall’s head on the ground in the middle of the road.

Two colleagues – PC Richard Kelsall and another named only as Sergeant Russell – pin down his legs.

When Mr Aspinall bites one of the officers legs, PC Lightfoot appears to scrape his face on the road. He then hits Mr Aspinall eight times on the back before he is put in the back of a police van.

Read morePolice officers investigated after assault of Mark Aspinall caught on CCTV

CIA lied about shoot-down of missionary plane, report says

An investigation by the agency’s inspector general finds that officials covered up details of the 2001 incident over Peru that killed two Americans and wounded three other people.

Reporting from Washington — An internal investigation by the CIA found that agency officials engaged in a cover-up to hide agency negligence in the downing of a private airplane over Peru in 2001 as part of a mistaken attack on an aircraft suspected of carrying illegal narcotics.

Excerpts of an internal CIA report released Thursday accuse agency officials of lying to members of Congress and withholding crucial information from criminal investigators and senior Bush administration officials.The disclosure could lead to the reopening of a probe into whether agency officials committed crimes in the attack on the aircraft, which was transporting American missionaries, and then covering it up.

The attack killed Veronica Bowers and her infant daughter and injured three others, including Bowers’ husband and young son. It was carried out by a Peruvian warplane working with CIA surveillance craft.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, described the revelations as “a dark stain” on the CIA and called for information to be shared with the Justice Department to determine whether reopening the investigation is warranted.

“To say these deaths did not have to happen is more than an understatement,” said Hoekstra, who added that the agency’s inspector general had uncovered “continuous efforts to cover the matter up and potentially block criminal investigation.”

Read moreCIA lied about shoot-down of missionary plane, report says

Pirates Demand $25 Million Ransom for Hijacked Tanker


An undated handout photo, provided to the media on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008, shows the Sirius Star Saudi oil supertanker. Source: U.S. Navy via Bloomberg News

Nov. 20 (Bloomberg) — Somali pirates are demanding $25 million in ransom to release an oil-laden Saudi supertanker seized off the East African coast, and called on the ship’s owners to pay up “soon.”

“What we want for this ship is only $25 million because we always charge according to the quality of the ship and the value of the product,” a man who identified himself as Abdi Salan, a member of the hijacking gang, said in a telephone interview from Harardhare. The town is in Somalia’s semi-autonomous northern Puntland region close to where the ship is anchored. He didn’t give a deadline or say what would happen if the money isn’t paid.

The Sirius Star, which belongs to Saudi Arabia’s state-owned shipping line, Vela International Marine Ltd, and its crew of 25 were seized about 420 nautical miles (833 kilometers) off Somalia on Nov. 15. It is carrying more than 2 million barrels of crude valued at about $110 million. Very Large Crude Carriers cost about $148 million new.

Read morePirates Demand $25 Million Ransom for Hijacked Tanker

Cheney and Gonzales indicted for organized crime

A grand jury in South Texas indicted U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and former attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Tuesday for “organized criminal activity” related to alleged abuse of inmates in private prisons. The indictment has not been seen by a judge, who could dismiss it.


US Vice President Dick Cheney (L) and former US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (R). According to November 18, 2008 media reports, US Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have been indicted by a South Texas grand jury on charges relating to alleged abuse of prisoners in Willacy County’s federal detention centers. Picture: AFP

The grand jury in Willacy County, in the Rio Grande Valley near the U.S.-Mexico border, said Cheney is “profiteering from depriving human beings of their liberty,” according to a copy of the indictment obtained by Reuters.

The indictment cites a “money trail” of Cheney’s ownership in prison-related enterprises including the Vanguard Group, which owns an interest in private prisons in south Texas.

Former attorney general Gonzales used his position to “stop the investigations as to the wrong doings” into assaults in county prisons, the indictment said.

Cheney’s office declined comment. “We have not received any indictments. I can’t comment on something we have not received,” said Cheney’s spokeswoman Megan Mitchell.

The indictment, overseen by county District Attorney Juan Guerra, cites the case of Gregorio De La Rosa, who died on April 26, 2001, inside a private prison in Willacy County.

The grand jury wrote it made its decision “with great sadness,” but said they had no other choice but to indict Cheney and Gonzales “because we love our country.”

Texas is the home state of U.S. President George W. Bush.

Read moreCheney and Gonzales indicted for organized crime

Identities sold online for £80

Complete identities are being sold online for just £80, internet experts have discovered.


The stolen personal data include credit card details, plus the cardholder’s name, address, passport and driving licence numbers.

Once stolen, the average identity yields online fraudsters around £15,000, researchers found.

Individual pieces of stolen data are available for as little as £5.

A study for Get Safe Online Week found one in five people use the same password for all their internet logins, leaving them wide open to hacking.

Half those surveyed did not update their anti-virus software often enough.

And nearly a quarter did not have any protection against spyware.

Read moreIdentities sold online for £80

Game beware: it’s the return of the poacher

As times get harder in Britain’s cities, armed gangs are heading for the countryside – and stealing deer, salmon and rabbits to feed a burgeoning black market in food. Andy McSmith reports


Masked poachers caught in the act, hunting rabbits on private land

Once, the poacher was a man with big pockets in his raincoat sneaking on to an aristocrat’s land to steal game for his family pot. Now he is likely to be part of a gang from town, in it for hard cash, rampaging through the countryside with guns, crossbows or snares.

Police in rural areas across Britain are reporting a dramatic increase in poaching, as the rise in food prices and the reality of recession increases the temptation to deal in stolen venison, salmon, or rarer meat and fish.

Organised and sometimes armed gangs of poachers are accused of behaving dangerously, intimidating residents, causing damage to crops or to gates and fences. Squads have also been out in the countryside “lamping”, poachers using lights to transfix animals.

Read moreGame beware: it’s the return of the poacher

Poverty, Pension Fears Drive Japan’s Elderly Citizens to Crime


Elderly customers shop in a grocery store in Tokyo, Aug. 12, 2005. Photographer: Haruyoshi Yamaguchi/Bloomberg News

Nov. 14 (Bloomberg) — More senior citizens are picking pockets and shoplifting in Japan to cope with cuts in government welfare spending and rising health-care costs in a fast-ageing society.

Criminal offences by people 65 or older doubled to 48,605 in the five years to 2008, the most since police began compiling national statistics in 1978, a Ministry of Justice report said.

Theft is the most common crime of senior citizens, many of whom face declining health, low incomes and a sense of isolation, the report said. Elderly crime may increase in parallel with poverty rates as Japan enters another recession and the budget deficit makes it harder for the government to provide a safety net for people on the fringes of society.

“The elderly are turning to shoplifting as an increasing number of them lack assets and children to depend on,” Masahiro Yamada, a sociology professor at Chuo University in Tokyo and an author of books on income disparity in Japan, said in an interview yesterday. “We won’t see the decline of elderly crimes as long as the income gap continues to rise.”

Read morePoverty, Pension Fears Drive Japan’s Elderly Citizens to Crime

Tyson Foods Injects Chickens with Antibiotics Before They Hatch to Claim “Raised without Antibiotics”

(NaturalNews) Tyson Foods, the world’s largest meat processor and the second largest chicken producer in the United States, has admitted that it injects its chickens with antibiotics before they hatch, but labels them as raised without antibiotics anyway. In response, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) told Tyson to stop using the antibiotic-free label. The company has sued over its right to keep using it.

The controversy over Tyson’s antibiotic-free label began in summer 2007, when the company began a massive advertising campaign to tout its chicken as “raised without antibiotics.” Already, Tyson has spent tens of millions of dollars this year to date in continuing this campaign.

Poultry farmers regularly treat chickens and other birds with antibiotics to prevent the development of intestinal infections that might reduce the weight (and profitability) of the birds. Yet scientists have become increasingly concerned that the routine use of antibiotics in animal agriculture may accelerate the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that could lead to a pandemic or other health crisis.

After Tyson began labeling its chicken antibiotic-free, the USDA warned the company that such labels were not truthful, because Tyson regularly treats its birds’ feed with bacteria-killing ionophores. Tyson argued that ionophores are antimicrobials rather than antibiotics, but the USDA reiterated its policy that “ionophores are antibiotics.”

Read moreTyson Foods Injects Chickens with Antibiotics Before They Hatch to Claim “Raised without Antibiotics”

Colombia killings cast doubt on war against insurgents


President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, center, accompanied by Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, left, and Chief Army Commander Freddy Padilla, in Bogota on Wednesday. (Miguel Angel Solano/Reuters)

SOACHA, Colombia: Julian Oviedo, a 19-year-old construction worker in this gritty patchwork of slums, told his mother on March 2 that he was going to talk to a man about a job offer. A day later, Oviedo was shot and killed by army troops about 560 kilometers to the north. He was classified as a subversive and registered as a combat kill.

Colombia’s government, the Bush administration’s top ally in Latin America, has been buffeted by the disappearance of Oviedo and dozens of other young, impoverished men and women whose cases have come to light. Some were vagrants, some were street vendors or manual laborers. But their fates were often the same: They were catalogued as insurgents or criminal gang members and killed by the armed forces.

Prosecutors and human rights researchers are investigating hundreds of such deaths and disappearances, contending that the Colombian security forces are murdering civilians and making it look as if they were killed in combat, often by planting weapons on or near their bodies or dressing the corpses in guerrilla fatigues.

With soldiers under intense pressure in recent years to register combat kills to earn promotions and benefits like time off and extra pay, reports of civilian killings are climbing, prosecutors and researchers said, pointing to a grisly facet of this country’s long internal war against leftist insurgencies.

Read moreColombia killings cast doubt on war against insurgents

India terrorised by holy war

A holy war in India has left tens of thousands of Christians crammed into relief camps, too scared to return home following weeks of clashes with Hindu mobs in which at least 35 people have died.

More than 40,000 Christians have had to flee their homes in Kandhamal district, one of India’s poorest, in the eastern state of Orissa. Their homes have been systematically attacked, looted and burned down by Hindu mobs since the end of August as the local police have looked on helplessly.

“Villagers have threatened to kill me because I am a Christian. They have said I will be welcome back only if I change my religion and become a Hindu,” said Jibit Kumar Digal, 30, who has spent over a month in a relief camp at Baliguda, 200 south west of the provincial capital Bhubaneswar.

Aligned to the radical Hindu Opposition Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), the marauding mobs supported by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad or World Hindu Council, are alleged to have killed Christians by burnign them alive, gang-raped a nun and destroyed over 140 churches and orphanages across Kandhamal.

Read moreIndia terrorised by holy war

Zeitgeist: Addendum

Related: Zeitgeist, The Movie, Final Edition


Added: Oct 3, 2008

Source: Google Video

Brazilian Government Largest Illegal Logger in the Amazon

BRASILIA, Brazil, September 30, 2008 (ENS) – A Brazilian government agency that provides land to settlers is the largest illegal logger in the Amazon rainforest and could face criminal prosecution, Environment Minister Carlos Minc said Monday. Minc blamed Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform, or Incra, for occupying the top six places on a new government list of the 100 largest illegal loggers.

Today, he backed off a little, giving another government agency 20 days to analyze information presented by Incra contesting the legality of the deforestation.

Illegally cut logs await transport from a clearing in the Brazilian rainforest. (Photo by Andy Revkin)

“As some questions had been raised about what is legitimate, Ibama will go to evaluate point the point,” Minc said, handing responsibility for the inquiry to the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, or Ibama.

Minc clarified that Incra is the formal owner of the six parcels of land at issue, which in fact were deforested by the settlers. But legally, he said, the problem falls again on Incra because the Institute cannot pass ownership of land to the agriculturists until it has been settled for 10 years.

“They are small deforestations, of 20 or 30 hectares, per person. On the other hand, a small one deforests little but thousands deforest a great deal,” said Minc. “Therefore, we have that to improve, and as well we have to improve the incidents of deforestation on conservation units and on aboriginal lands.”

In total, 223,000 hectares of the rainforest were logged on those six properties

The Amazon rainforest is being chopped down more than three times as fast as last year, Brazilian officials said Monday, after three years of declines in the deforestation rate.

Read moreBrazilian Government Largest Illegal Logger in the Amazon

India: where Christians are a target for the religious murder mobs


Namrata, a young Christian villager who was injured in an attack by a Hindu mob

The mob appeared an hour after sunset, armed with axes, clubs and paraffin. The carnage that followed would have been much worse if the Christians of Gadragaon, a remote village in northeast India, had not been warned by text message: “The Hindus are coming to kill you.”

The alert gave most enough time to flee to the jungle, where 114 of them would hide for a week, drinking rainwater and foraging for food.

But the warning did not come early enough for those unable to run. “They doused him with petrol and taunted him; we could hear him screaming,” said Ravindra Nath Prahan, 45, of his paralysed brother, Rasananda, 35, who was burnt alive by Hindu fanatics. “I could have tried to save him. But we had to save ourselves.”

Read moreIndia: where Christians are a target for the religious murder mobs

Home Office: Recession will bring big rise in crime and race hatred

Ministers are bracing themselves for a rise in violent crime and burglaries and a shift to far-right extremism as the effects of the economic downturn take their toll, a leaked Home Office report to the Prime Minister says.

In a series of warnings, the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, says that Britain also faces a “significant increase” in alcohol and tobacco smuggling, hostility towards migrants and even a potential rise in the number of people joining terrorist groups.

Read moreHome Office: Recession will bring big rise in crime and race hatred

Pakistani women buried alive for choosing husbands

A Pakistani politician has defended a decision to bury five women alive because they wanted to choose their own husbands.

Israr Ullah Zehri, who represents Baluchistan province, told a stunned parliament that northwestern tribesman had done nothing wrong in first shooting the women and then dumping them in a ditch.

“These are centuries-old traditions, and I will continue to defend them,” he said.

“Only those who indulge in immoral acts should be afraid.”

The women, three of whom were teenagers and whose “crime” was that they wished to choose who to marry, were still breathing as mud and stones were shovelled over their bodies, according to Human Rights Watch.

The three girls, thought to be aged between 16 and 18, were kidnapped by a group of men from their Umrani tribe and murdered in Baba Kot, a remote village in Jafferabad district.

Read morePakistani women buried alive for choosing husbands