Los Angeles authorities have agreed to pay late rap star Notorious BIG’s family $1.1m (£632,000) for errors made during his wrongful death trial.
Lawyers have said that an appeal to overturn a judge’s order to pay compensation was now unlikely.

LA police were found to have withheld relevant documents during a civil case last year and a mistrial was declared.

The investigation into the rap star’s shooting in 1997 has been reopened with a new team of detectives.

Notorious BIG – whose real name was Christopher Wallace – was killed on a street in March 1997, after seven shots were fired into his vehicle. The shooting took place after the Soul Train Awards.

Notorious BIG’s family say they will go ahead with a retrial of their wrongful death case, alleging a police officer was involved in the shooting.
bbc.co.uk

Started as the super-secret “Project Y” in 1943, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has long been the keystone institution of the American nuclear-weapons producing complex. It was the birthplace of Fat Man and Little Boy, the two nuclear bombs the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Last year, the University of California, which has managed the lab for the Department of Energy since its inception, decided to put Los Alamos on the auction block. In December 2005, construction giant Bechtel won a $553 million yearly management contract to run the sprawling complex, which employs more than 13,000 people and has an estimated $2.2 billion annual budget.

“Privatization” has been in the news ever since George W. Bush became president. His administration has radically reduced the size of government, turning over to private companies critical governmental functions involving prisons, schools, water, welfare, Medicare, and utilities as well as war-fighting, and is always pushing for more of the same. Outside of Washington, the pitfalls of privatization are on permanent display in Iraq, where companies like Halliburton have reaped billions in contracts. Performing jobs once carried out by members of the military — from base building and mail delivery to food service — they have bilked the government while undermining the safety of American forces by providing substandard services and products. Halliburton has been joined by a cottage industry of military-support companies responsible for everything from transportation to interrogation. On the war front, private companies are ubiquitous, increasingly indispensable, and largely unregulated — a lethal combination.

Now, the long arm of privatization is reaching deep into an almost unimaginable place at the heart of the national security apparatus — the laboratory where scientists learned to harness the power of the atom more than 60 years ago and created weapons of apocalyptic proportions.
counterpunch.org

The rate of violent deaths in war-ravaged northern Uganda is three times higher than in Iraq and the 20-year insurgency has cost $1.7bn (£980m), according to a report by 50 international and local agencies released today.

The violent death rate for northern Uganda is 146 deaths a week or 0.17 violent deaths per 10,000 people per day. This is three times higher than in Iraq, where the incidence of violent death was 0.052 per 10,000 people per day, says the report.

“The Ugandan government, the rebel army and the international community must fully acknowledge the true scale and horror of the situation in northern Uganda,” said Kathy Relleen, a policy adviser to Oxfam, one of the organisations behind the report.

The report, by the Civil Society Organisations for Peace in Northern Uganda, puts the cost of the war in northern Uganda at $1.7bn over the past two decades. It says this is equivalent to the United States’ total aid to Uganda between 1994 and 2002. “Twenty years of brutal violence is a scar on the world’s conscience. The government of Uganda must act resolutely and without delay, both to guarantee the effective protection of civilians and to work with all sides to secure a just and lasting peace,” said Ms Relleen.
independent.co.uk

NEW DELHI — India has devised a new 14-point policy to combat Maoist rebels.

More than 10 Indian provinces are affected by Maoist violence which has killed thousands of people in the last 10 years.

The Hindu newspaper said Tuesday the new policy focuses on the states adopting a collective approach and pursuing a coordinated response to counter the Naxalite (Maoist rebel) problem, and emphasizes that there will be no peace dialogue between affected states and the Naxal groups unless the rebels agree to give up violence and arms.

An important component of the new policy, which was tabled in the parliament early this month, is asking political parties to strengthen their base in Naxal-affected areas so that the youth could be weaned away from the path of Naxal ideology.
wpherald.com

“In fact, much of the animosity and violence we now see is the legacy of Saddam Hussein,” Bush said. “He is a tyrant who exacerbated sectarian divisions to keep himself in power.”
mercurynews.com

NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- The U.S. may be open to backing Israel’s Kadima party in plans to draw the country’s borders without Palestinian input, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as saying on its Web site Thursday.

The BBC said Rice made the statements in speaking to reporters traveling with her to Berlin for talks about Iran’s nuclear development program.

The BBC added that Rice said a negotiated deal with the Palestinians was preferable, but seemed unlikely after the militant group Hamas won Palestinian elections.

Rice “pointedly did not rule out supporting Kadima’s plan for withdrawing from parts of the occupied West Bank by 2010 but consolidating other Jewish settlements there,” the BBC said. “I would not on the face of it say … that we do not think there is any value in what the Israelis are talking about,” she said, according to the Web site.

“But we can’t support it because we don’t know. We haven’t had a chance to talk to them about what they have in mind,” she said.

The BBC quoted Rice as saying the Hamas-dominated Palestinian government “does not accept the concept of a negotiated solution” with Israel, having won seats in the Parliament based on a platform of resistance to Israel and opposing negotiated settlements.
nasdaq.com

Hamas threatens war over Israel’s separation plan
ISRAEL’S new government-in-waiting last night came under immediate attack from Hamas.
Hours after the Islamist group was itself confirmed as the new Palestinian government, a spokesman said that the Israeli electorate’s choice of Ehud Olmert as the new Prime Minister could escalate the conflict.

The hardline Hamas government is due to be sworn in within 48 hours after the Palestinian parliament yesterday voted 71-36 to approve Ismail Haniya’s 25-member Cabinet and Islamist programme.

Sami Abu Zohri, a Hamas spokesman, said: “The initial results show that the Israelis voted for Olmert’s plan, which is a declaration of war on the Palestinians and the liquidation of Palestinian rights. The occupation is pushing the area towards greater escalation.”

Who’s threatening who?

Taliban rebels launched a large-scale attack on a coalition military base Wednesday in southern Afghanistan, killing an American and a Canadian soldier but losing 32 of their own in a fierce American-led retaliation.

The fighting was the deadliest in months and reflected a growing intensity of militant attacks after the Taliban warned of a renewed offensive this year, more than four years after the hard-line militia was ousted by U.S.-led airstrikes. More than 3,000 British troops are readying to take control of the volatile area.

“Over the last five or six weeks there have been various proven attacks mainly at night by the Taliban on that base, but I think it is fair to say this is the largest we have seen thus far,” British spokesman Col. Chris Vernon told reporters in Kandahar.
abcnews.go.com

26 killed in clashes near Afghan border
PESHAWAR, Pakistan: Gunmen loyal to rival pro-Taleban clerics fought street battles in Pakistan’s tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, leaving at least 26 people dead, officials said yesterday.

The clashes erupted late on Monday after supporters of a Pakistani preacher tried to knock down a house which belonged to an Afghan Islamic leader’s faction, a tribal areas spokesman said.

The fighting with automatic weapons near the remote town of Bara in Khyber district follows about a year of tensions during which the two mullahs have used illegal private FM radio stations to criticise each other.

Spokesman Shah Zaman said five of Pakistani cleric Mufti Munir Shakir’s men were shot dead late on Monday when they attempted to demolish the Afghan clan’s house. In retaliation, Shakir’s men attacked tribesmen of Afghan rival Pir Saifur Rehman at around 2:00 am (2100 GMT) yesterday, killing 18 of them, Zaman said.

Another two of Shakir’s men injured in the shooting later died, a local administration official said on condition of anonymity.

The situation was tense in the area and the local administration was trying to end fighting through a jirga, or tribal assembly, Zaman said.

29 March 2006 – Expressing serious concern that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is unable to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran, the United Nations Security Council today called upon that country to re-establish full and sustained suspension of all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development, in a manner that is verified by the Agency.

“The Security Council expresses the conviction that such suspension and full and verified Iranian compliance would contribute to a diplomatic, negotiated solution that guarantees Iran’s nuclear programme is for exclusively peaceful purposes,” the Council said through a statement read out by its March President César Mayoral of Argentina.
un.org

Iran rejects call to halt enrichment
Iran refused Thursday to comply with a UN Security Council demand to freeze uranium enrichment, defying a call by major world powers to curb its nuclear program or face isolation. Iran struck the defiant stance as foreign ministers of the Security Council’s permanent members plus Germany met in Berlin to chart their next moves in the standoff.

The meeting came a day after the Security Council adopted a statement calling for an enrichment freeze and a report from the IAEA on Iranian compliance in 30 days.

But Iran swiftly hit back. “Iran’s decision on enrichment, particularly research and development is irreversible,” Iranian ambassador to the IAEA Aliasghar Soltanieh in Vienna said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, speaking at the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament, slammed the UN declaration as an “angry precedent” and a “bad move.”

He said the International Atomic Energy Agency should be left to handle the case and described the council request for an IAEA report as “nothing short of injustice, double standards and power politics.”

But he added that “we are willing to continue with negotiations [with the IAEA] and also continue with our sincere and constructive cooperation with the agency,” Mottaki said.

World powers discuss next steps in Iran crisis
BERLIN (Reuters) – Six world powers were gathering in Berlin on Thursday to discuss the next steps in dealing with Iran’s nuclear programme, with Russia and China looking for assurances that there are no plans to use force against Tehran.

On Wednesday, the U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a “presidential statement” calling on Iran to freeze its uranium enrichment programme, which can produce fuel for atom bombs. It also requests a report in 30 days from the U.N. nuclear watchdog in Vienna on Iran’s cooperation with the agency’s demands.

The Council statement was the product of weeks of negotiations among the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council — Britain, France, China, Russia and the United States. The final text was softened to remove language Moscow and Beijing feared could lead to punitive measures.

…See, it is very likely that you already know that Sept. 11 will go down in the conspiracy history books as a far more sinister affair than, say, the murky swirl of the Kennedy assassination. You probably already know that much of what exactly happened on Sept. 11 remains deeply unsettling and largely unsolved — or to put another way, if you don’t know all of this and if you fully and blithely accept the official Sept. 11 story, well, you haven’t been paying close enough attention.

But on this, the third anniversary of the launch of Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq by way of whoring the tragedy of Sept. 11 for his cronies’ appalling gain, what you might not know, what gets so easily forgotten in the mists of time and via the endless repetition of the orthodox Sept. 11 tale, is the sheer volume, the staggering array of unanswered questions about just about every single aspect of Sept. 11 — the planes, the WTC towers, the Pentagon, the fires, the passengers and the cell phone calls and the firefighters and, well, just about everything. It is, when you look closely, all merely a matter of how far down the rabbit hole you are willing to go.

Verily, Jacobson, in his New York mag piece, encounters crackpots and fringe nutballs and those who think Sept. 11 was connected to aliens and electromagnetic fields and the Illuminati. It can, unfortunately, get a little crazy. But there is also a very smart, grounded, intelligent and surprisingly large faction — which includes eyewitnesses, Sept. 11 widows, former generals, pilots, professors, engineers, WTC maintenance workers and many, many more — who point to a rather shocking pile of evidence that says there is simply no way 19 fanatics with box cutters sent by some bearded lunatic in a cave could have pulled off the most perfectly orchestrated air attack of the century. Not without serious help, anyway.
sfgate.com

NY Mag article: The Ground Zero Grassy Knoll

Moussaoui Had No 9/11 Role, Terrorists Said
ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 28 — Zacarias Moussaoui’s lawyers used the accounts of known terrorists today to try to deflate their client’s boastful claim that he had a major role in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and portray him instead as an ineffective, almost comic bungler.

Nearing the end of their attempt to persuade a federal jury to spare his life, Mr. Moussaoui’s team tried to show that he was a fringe player, in part because more serious, effective terrorists thought him erratic, undisciplined and perhaps a bit unhinged.

“He had dreams about flying a plane into the White House,” a South Asian terrorist known as Hambali told United States interrogators after his capture in August 2003. But his dreams were never going to become reality because Mr. Moussaoui was known to be “not right in the head and having a bad character,” Hambali said.

My name is Elena. I run this website and I don’t have anything to sell. What I do have is my motorbike and the absolute freedom to ride it wherever curiosity and the speed demon take me.

I have ridden all my life and over the years I have owned several different motorbikes. I ended my search for a perfect bike with a big kawasaki ninja, that boasts a mature 147 horse power, some serious bark, is fast as a bullet and comfortable for a long trips. here is more about my motorcycle I travel a lot and one of my favorite destinations leads North from Kiev, towards so called Chernobyl “dead zone”, which is 130kms from my home. Why my favorite? Because one can take long rides there on empty roads. The people there all left and nature is blooming. There are beautiful woods and lakes. In places where roads have not been travelled by trucks or army vehicles, they are in the same condition they were 20 years ago – except for an occasional blade of grass or some tree that discovered a crack to spring through. Time does not ruin roads, so they may stay this way until they can be opened to normal traffic again…….. a few centuries from now.
chernobyl-land-of-the-woods

shocking and haunting.

We need to know the truth about the Chernobyl fallout
Supporters of the nuclear industry will be apoplectic about the report on the Chernobyl legacy by John Vidal (UN accused of ignoring 500,000 deaths, March 25). And even those of us who believe the effects of the nuclear disaster to be widespread, serious and long term, will be disappointed to read of what must surely be a gross over-estimate of the real casualty figures.

It is notoriously difficult to gather real statistics – there has been little serious research, and many of those involved have an axe to grind.

The charity I represent has been working in Belarus for 11 years, delivering humanitarian aid, training orphanage staff and foster families, and bringing children to the UK for recuperative holidays.

Regular visitors to Belarus cannot fail to be aware of the many health problems which, even today, seem to be more acute in the contaminated parts of the country. Twenty years on, young parents are giving birth to babies with disabilities or genetic disorders, or who develop serious diseases in their early months. But as far as we know, no research is being conducted into these issues.