The piles of plaster, plumbing and broken appliances top 6 feet in some places, filling the gutters and spilling onto the sidewalks.

Despite the heat _ it’s already in the high 80s _ the piles are moist from the still-waterlogged material ripped from flooded homes. Something in each of them attracts hordes of flies that buzz up at every disturbance.

Eight months after Hurricane Katrina pounded New Orleans, this is the first sign of an attempt to revive the “Gert Town” neighborhood, a poor, mostly black part of the city.

Quintocha Johnson, 30, looks at the debris along her block of Broadway Street with a combination of hope and despair.

The houses now being worked could bring back longed-for neighbors, but she worries about her two young sons getting hurt playing around the debris, which attracts flies, rats and snakes.

“You have to stay on that porch and watch them,” Johnson said, pointing at Mandingo Reed, 1, and James Moffett, 3. “If you don’t stay on that porch, no telling what might happen. The other day, I was sitting on the porch and I saw three nutria rats up on the poles there.”
breitbart.com

A Florida judge told a Palestinian computer engineer yesterday that he must spend another 18 months in prison before being deported, in a case that had been seen as a key test for sweeping anti-terror legislation brought in after September 11.

Sami al-Arian, a former professor at the University of South Florida, has been jailed since February 2003, meaning he has 18 months to serve in the four year and nine month term he received yesterday. In sentencing, Judge James Moody called him an “active leader” in Islamic Jihad.

The verdict was a result of a plea bargain. Arian was acquitted by a jury along with three others in December last year on several more serious terrorist charges, including conspiracy to murder.
In the past, Arian, a Kuwaiti-born Palestinian who has lived in the US for nearly 30 years, has said he was singled out for prosecution because of his support for Palestinian rights. He denies advocating violence. His family said that the professor agreed last month to plead guilty to lesser charges of providing support to the Islamic Jihad in order to get out of prison.

Arian became the target of an FBI investigation as one of the founders of a campus thinktank and a charity formed in the 1980s to support a Palestinian state. Although the defence contends that Arian’s involvement was restricted to charitable activities, the judge said yesterday: “Your only connection to widows and orphans was that you create them.”

The proceedings in Tampa bring to a close one of the most high-profile terror cases brought in the wake of September 11. In 2003, his prosecution was hailed by the then attorney general, John Ashcroft, as a prime example of the importance of sweeping powers of surveillance and intrusion enshrined in the patriot act.
guardian.co.uk

With June 6, 2006, rapidly approaching, authorities in Colorado and elsewhere are carefully watching to see if that date – 6/6/06 – spurs demonstrations or violent activity.

They are aware that 666 signifies the Mark of the Beast or the Antichrist to some organizations and believe June 6 is a date that could trigger problems.

“It’s been a conscious question among some of our folks, so they’ve been on the lookout for something,” said Lance Clem, spokesman for the Colorado Department of Public Safety. “But they haven’t seen anything.”

Even so, some local police are being vigilant.

“The bottom line is that our intelligence unit is familiar with 666 and its significance, but we don’t have any information about anything taking place in Colorado Springs,” said Lt. Rafael Cintron of the Colorado Springs Police Department. “However, we are certainly keeping our feelers out to see if anything is happening.”
denverpost.com

Gee, doesn’t the Beast have ‘feelers’??

The dollar has tumbled to one-year lows against the euro and the lowest level since the 1970s against the Canadian dollar as the markets bet on an end to monetary tightening by the US Federal Reserve.

Greenback liquidation comes amid growing concerns that global central banks and Middle East oil funds are quietly paring back their holdings of US bonds.

The dollar dropped to $1.2680 against the euro and the yen gained sharply to 112.40, though it recovered some ground in New York on strong manufacturing data.

Gold leapt to a 25-year high of $660.95 an ounce on fears the dollar decline could spiral out of control, disrupting the global financial system.

Fed chief Ben Bernanke set off the slide last week by talking of a possible “pause” in interest rate rises, citing worries about the risks of a “pronounced housing slowdown”.

The comments followed Fed minutes revealing that some governors feared “the dangers of tightening too much”. Rates have risen 15 times to 4.75 pc since June 2004.

The dollar slide and the Fed’s apparent willingness to wink at higher inflation has roiled the bond markets, where yields on 10-year Treasuries have spiked to 5.13pc, the highest in four years.

David Bloom, a currency expert at HSBC, said the dollar was vulnerable to a steep sell-off as investors began to refocus on America’s yawning current account deficit, now 7pc of GDP. The currency has been boosted for more than a year by rising US interest rates, but the yield advantage could soon slip away as Europe, Japan, and China play catch-up.

“Beware regime change. When it turns, it will be totally poisonous for the dollar because the US will have to start paying investors for the risk of financing their massive deficits,” he said.
telegraph.co.uk

At the huge, inspiring antiwar march in New York yesterday, I noticed many placards with the massage, “Out of Iraq, Into Darfur.” They were held by members of a group called “Volunteer for Change,” described as “a project of Working Assets.” I wasn’t sure what to make of the slogan. Was it somehow satirical, playing on “Out of the frying pan, into the fire” and warning about a future Somalia-like intervention in Africa? Or was this really a call to take U.S. troops out of Iraq and deploy them instead in “humanitarian” “peacekeeping” in western Sudan?

This morning I’ve done some Google searching and found the answer. It is, unfortunately, the latter. Since at least last year Working Assets has been urging people to petition President Bush to support “urgent international action” through the UN to “protect innocent civilians” in Darfur. Plainly the organization finds no contradiction between opposing imperialist military deployment in Iraq and supporting it in Sudan. Nor, perhaps, do many of those marching in Washington D.C. today to demand such U.S. intervention.
counterpunch.org

BAIDOA, Somalia, May 1 (Reuters) – Somali leaders expressed concern but could not confirm growing reports that Washington is financing a group of powerful Mogadishu warlords who have styled themselves as an anti-terrorism coalition.

The warlords have been involved in several bouts of fighting with militia linked to Islamic leaders. About 100 people have been killed in the violence, the worst in Mogadishu in years.

The perception of U.S. involvement has given rise to new fears that Mogadishu’s militia battles are shifting from the commercial to the ideological, and creating a new arena for Islamic militants to fight what they call Washington’s war on Islam.

The United States has been rumoured to have paid the coalition in exchange for help tracking down al Qaeda militants who move freely amid the anarchy in Somalia.

“We have no official communication but these rumours are everywhere,” Prime Minister Mohamed Ali Gedi told reporters on Monday when asked about reports of U.S. cash arriving in Mogadishu.

The United States has never directly confirmed or denied suggestions it backed warlords in the Horn of Africa country of about 10 million, which has been mired in anarchy since its last national president was ousted in 1991.

“We do not expect the American government to just pump dollars to Somali people to create problems. They are our friends and we expect friendship from them,” Speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan added.
alertnet.org

Apparently like most Americans, some Somalis have a hard time wrapping their heads around just what the American government is capable of.

The world is failing children despite global commitments to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by 2015, Unicef said today.
The average number of underweight children has fallen by only 5% in the last 15 years, and one in four children in developing countries is underweight, according to a new Unicef report.

In some countries, including Iraq, Yemen and parts of Africa, the number is actually increasing due to conflict, food shortages and the prevalence of HIV/Aids, the study by the UN’s children’s rights group found.
guardian.co.uk

…The men attending the mawlid — a celebration of the birth and life of Muhammad — sat on colorful rugs, rocking gently back and forth, while the women, on the upper floor watching via a large projection screen, passed around boxes of tissues and wiped tears from their eyes.

The centuries-old mawlid, a mainstay of the more spiritual and often mystic Sufi Islam, was until recently viewed as heretical and banned by Saudi Arabia’s official religious establishment, the ultraconservative Wahhabis. But a new atmosphere of increased religious tolerance has spurred a resurgence of Sufism and brought the once-underground Sufis and their rituals out in the open.

Analysts and some Sufis partly credit reaction to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States for the atmosphere that has made the changes possible. When it was discovered that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, the kingdom’s strict Wahhabi doctrine — which had banned all other sects and schools of thought — came under intense scrutiny from inside and outside the country. The newfound tolerance Sufis have come to enjoy is perhaps one of the most concrete outcomes of that shift.

“This is one of the blessings of September 11. It put the brakes on the [Wahhabi] practice of takfir , excommunicating everyone who didn’t exactly follow their creed,” said Sayed Habib Adnan, a 33-year-old Sufi teacher. The government “realized that maybe enforcing one religious belief over all others was not such a good idea.”
washingtonpost.com

A report based on data collected from Palestinian humanitarian centers and press agencies revealed that Israeli soldiers shot and killed 36 Palestinians, including three children, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during the month of April; at least 300 residents were arrested in several areas in the West Bank.

Al Jeel Center for Journalism reported that most of the residents killed were either wanteds who were assassinated or were civilians killed during assassination attacks and shelling.

Ten of those killed were from the West Bank, while 26 residents were killed in the Gaza Strip during air strikes and shelling especially in the northern areas.

The month of April has been the bloodiest month since Israeli carried its unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, in august 2005.

In April the , Israeli soldiers arrested 320 Palestinian residents; most of the arrestees are members of resistance factions; the arrests were mainly carried out during invasions of the cities of Hebron and Nablus. Women and children were also among the arrested.
imemc.org

JERUSALEM (AP) – Israeli leader Ehud Olmert plans to meet moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas after visiting Washington, an Israeli official said Tuesday – a nod to Abbas’ position that contacts need not be cut off because of the Hamas takeover of the Palestinian government.

The official said no date has been set for the summit, the first since Hamas won parliamentary elections in January. Israel insists it won’t talk to the militants sworn to its destruction, and it was not clear if using Abbas to bypass Hamas could lead to a resumption of Mideast peace talks.

The Israeli official spoke on condition of anonymity because firm plans have not been made. Israel has said it would not regard the Palestinian Authority as a two-headed entity, negotiating peace with Abbas while fighting Hamas. But Olmert never ruled out talks with Abbas, who unlike Hamas is eager to negotiate with Israel about creating a Palestinian state.
guardian.co.uk