Oregon farmer eaten by his pigs

US & Canada

Pigs are omnivorous

Authorities are investigating how a farmer in the US state of Oregon was devoured by his pigs.

Terry Vance Garner, 70, went to feed his animals last Wednesday on his farm by the coast, but never returned.
His dentures and pieces of his body were found by a family member in the pig enclosure, but the rest of his remains had been consumed.
The Coos County district attorney's office said that one of the animals had previously been aggressive with Garner.
But investigators have not ruled out the possibility that the farmer could have suffered a medical emergency, such as a heart attack.
The animals are estimated by the authorities to weigh 700lb (320kg).

Tanzania's invisible web revolution

Africa

By Joe Boyle BBC News, Dar es Salaam

East African governments are in the grip of internet fever. They have built thousands of miles of fibre-optic cable and intend to connect even the most remote villages to super-fast broadband. So is the web really transforming their lives?

Ninety minutes drive north of Tanzania's main city, Dar es Salaam, on rough roads through shanty towns and dusty villages, is the town of Bagamoyo.
It is a bustling chaotic place packed with low-rise shops and houses, most with corrugated metal roofs.

“Start Quote

Our curriculum is focused on the use of basic computer applications... the students don't really know about the new infrastructure”

Rehema Nzige ICT teacher

Continue reading the main story

The town has an arts institute, attracts a trickle of tourists, and there are internet cafes on most streets. It is an ideal place to assess the early signs for the government's ambition to bring super-fast broadband to the masses.

Tanzanian borrowed $170m (£105m) from the Chinese government and raised a further $80m to build a vast fibre-optic cable network, stretching 7,500km (4,600 miles) in a ring around the country.
It hopes to transform Tanzania into a tech powerhouse to rival its neighbour Kenya, which built a smaller network more quickly and is already regarded as the regional hub for technology.
But there are already worrying signs for the government. The people of Bagamoyo are concerned that the government is doing too little to promote its vision.
Rehema Nzige, who teaches Information and Communications Technology (ICT) at Bagamoyo's Institute of Arts and Culture, says she has heard little about the new broadband network.
"Our curriculum is focused on the use of basic computer applications, like Microsoft Office," she says.
"The students don't really know about the new infrastructure. I can't say we're really encouraging them to experiment with apps or programming because we don't know much about it either.

"Maybe they'll change the curriculum but that could take a long time."
The lack of engagement is partly because the internet is intangible, and the work to build the new infrastructure has largely involved burying cables in remote areas away from the cities.
It is a quiet, invisible revolution, but its effects are definitely beginning to be felt in Bagamoyo, where trade in cheap Chinese smart phones is booming, and internet cafes are starting to struggle.
"People used to come to check their mail, Facebook and the like," says Mahbub Nurdin Faqi, who runs the Sunrise web cafe.
"But now everything is on the phones. People only really come to our cafe to print out an attachment or to send a document."
Many of these developments were happening anyway, and it is likely that mobile phone companies would have built their own infrastructure to cater for their growing market.
It may be too early to expect the government's plans to have really taken hold.
The first undersea cable arrived only in 2009, so it is an impressive feat of engineering - carried out by Chinese firm Huawei - to have laid so much cable.
Villages and phone apps

“Start Quote

Farmers are using the internet to plan better for what weather is coming”

Makame Mbarawa Science minister

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But the government insists that positive effects are already being felt, and that rural communities are benefiting.

"Communication is everywhere in Tanzania," says Science Minister Makame Mbarawa.
"All mobile phones around here have the internet.
"Villagers are using the internet and their phones to find out the price of things at the market before they even set out.
"Farmers are using the internet to plan better for what weather is coming."
Phone apps have been developed to help farmers, but it is hard to judge how successful they will be.
Mr Mbarawa raises an important point about the internet in Tanzania: It is almost exclusively mobile; fixed lines connected to homes hardly exist.
So while mobile phone companies have been happy to link up to the new fibre-optic cable to boost their data coverage, they tap into only a fraction of the cable's potential.
What the government really wants is to connect all schools, colleges and universities, and create scientific research centres and modern public libraries.
It wants hospitals and health centres linked up, and wants to bring cheap, quick internet connections to everyone in Tanzania.
To do this will take time. The cable-building project is still not finished.
The first two phases are complete, connecting the biggest cities and most of the regions.
The next two phases, building data centres and linking up remote villages, are in progress. Some 2,500km more cable still needs to be laid.
'Web poster-boy' If the government wants to remain true to its word, it will have to continue to invest heavily.
A tall order for a country that still ranks among the world's poorest.
It has set up a $30m fund to ensure hard-to-reach communities do not miss out, and mobile phone companies have to give up a small percentage of their profit as part of the deal to get access to the cable.
But so far the real revolution is largely limited to the cities. Dar es Salaam residents certainly talk in glowing terms of the improvements in web access since 2009.
"I used to be pretty happy three or four years ago when I got 2MB on my laptop, and I had to wait for a night for a single American TV show to download," says Aashiq Shariff, the CEO of Raha, an internet service provider.

 

Mahbub Nurdin Faqi (L) says these are tricky times for web cafe owners

"Now my laptop has a 60MB connection, so I can download an entire series in five minutes. And I love it."
Mr Shariff is a poster-boy for the new dynamic Tanzania. Barely into his thirties, he sports tattoos and wears ripped jeans to the office.
Raha is fashioning itself very much in the mould of a Silicon Valley start-up.
The government will be hoping there are plenty more where Raha came from.
Especially if it is to fulfil its other key ambition, to make Tanzania an international player in providing internet services.
Science Minister Mr Mbarawa paints a relentlessly positive picture. He says there are 18 companies already signed up to use Tanzania's cable, 12 of which come from neighbouring countries including Rwanda and Uganda.
He says this type of commercial deal will raise enough cash to repay the Chinese and connect all Tanzanians, regardless of their means.
But Mr Mbarawa will need to shout louder because the internet is invisible and cannot achieve anything without the engagement of the people.

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Four Days in Guantanamo

AL Jazeera English Witness

Video footage reveals a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between captor and captive at Guantanamo Bay prison. Witness Last Modified: 30 Sep 2012 08:23

Filmmakers: Patricio Henriquez and Luc Côté Four Days in Guantanamo is a documentary based on security camera footage from the Guantanamo Bay prison. This encounter between a team of Canadian intelligence agents and Omar Khadr, a Canadian-born child detainee in Guantanamo, has never been seen before on a global television network. Based on seven hours of video footage declassified by the Canadian courts, this documentary delves into the unfolding high-stakes game of cat and mouse between captor and captive over a four-day period. Maintaining the surveillance camera style, this film analyses the political, legal and scientific aspects of a forced dialogue. It is a shocking insight into psychological interrogation techniques and speaks to the fate of the facility Barack Obama, the US president, promised to close down but which, four years later, remains open. An excerpt of the film is available to watch here. About the film: This intense documentary is based on seven hours of CCTV material from the interrogation of Canadian-born Omar Khadr, the youngest detainee at Guantanamo Bay. In February, 2003 Canadian security agents interrogated the teenager. This interrogation and the reports of his being tortured prior to arriving at the facility raised the level of scrutiny regarding the treatment of prisoners at this detention camp. In July 2008, the video of the interrogation was ordered to be made available in a Canadian supreme court ruling that stated in part: "Interrogation of a youth, to elicit statements about the most serious criminal charges while detained in these conditions and without access to counsel, and while knowing that the fruits of the interrogations would be shared with the US prosecutors, offends the most basic Canadian standards about the treatment of detained youth suspects." This 15-year-old boy was taken into custody by the US authorities following a firefight in Afghanistan in September 2002. The battle between US special forces and fighters reportedly associated with al-Qaeda left Khadr severely wounded. In a sworn affidavit during his court case, Khadr testified that he was tortured after being taken into custody. A month later, Khadr was delivered to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Not long after he arrived, Canadian security agents spent four days interrogating him. Guantanamo remembered: A personal perspective "Whatever I’ve seen or done in these years the one thing I’ve not been able to recover is the one thing I’ve been fighting to get back: normality. There’s no such thing anymore," says former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg Their primary line of questioning centred on his father's reported relationship with Osama bin Laden and any knowledge that the younger Khadr might have regarding Bin Laden's whereabouts. In this film and over the course of Khadr's interrogation, you see a clear shift in the relationship between the Canadian security service agents and the teenager. You see his transformation from an elated youth relieved to see fellow Canadians arrive and express an interest in him and his welfare, to a distraught young man, bitter and angry at his treatment and his abrupt realisation that these men are not there to take him home. This documentary brings together an array of people connected with this case and examines, in-depth, through this interrogation, one of the most controversial detention facilities in the world. We hear from his legal team, the reporter who fought to have the video of this interrogation released, as well a US intelligence officer familiar with US interrogation practices at Guantanamo and Omar Khadr's detention in particular. In 2010, after lengthy negotiation, the US and Khadr's legal team agreed to a plea deal. Khadr pleaded guilty to committing murder in violation of the laws of war and US authorities agreed to his serving just one more year in Guantanamo and avoiding a 40-year prison sentence. However, the Canadian government has denied that Khadr would be repatriated according to the terms of the agreement. Director's statement By filmmakers Patricio Henriquez and Luc Côté In July 2008, like millions of Canadians, we watched 10 minutes of video footage of the interrogation of Omar Khadr. This material that Omar’s Canadian lawyers had just released stunned us. We were shaken by the moment in which Omar realises that the Canadian intelligence agents who showed up at his cell in Guantanamo had not come to help and protect him as a Canadian citizen but rather to make clumsy attempts to cajole, manipulate and threaten him into making incriminating statements. We felt compelled to use this footage as the basis for a short film. Our mission would be to craft a documentary in which interviews would provide the context to help us understand what the recording of the interrogation was trying to tell us. Since there was intense public interest in Omar’s story, we would have to act quickly to put this work on line. Perhaps inevitably, the short film we set out to make quickly developed into something far longer and more complex.    As is often the case in documentaries, the story evolved. Through contacts, we were able to obtain an additional seven hours of interrogation video, which the public had never seen. Some of the sound had been erased by the Canadian Security Intelligence Agency (CSIS), yet enough remained for us to realise that we had something special and rarely seen - the confrontation between an interrogator and a prisoner. Indeed this is the only footage available that shows - partially - what takes place inside Guantanamo, the prison where, in the words of Dick Cheney, the former US vice president, the "cream of international terrorists" are supposedly locked up. Reviews of Four Days in Guantanamo: "Painfully stark yet utterly magnetic ... the Montreal-based filmmakers Luc Côté and Patricio Henriquez have assembled an even-tempered glimpse behind a very dark curtain." New York Times "A waking nightmare of passive-aggressive coercion and psychological abuse. Essential viewing." Time Out, New York "A gut-wrenching film." The Guardian "If this documentary doesn't fill you with sorrow, fury and revulsion, then democracy, human rights and justice are hallow words and we belong in the same moral dead zone as fanatics who oppress and destroy in the name of faith." Toronto Star If you assume that documentaries reflect reality, you would also agree that reality includes segments that sit within the shadows of the invisible. Once in a while some of those segments leave their confinement to fall directly under the public spotlight. Making it public, as a documentary was, for us, a compelling though somewhat bizarre privilege. We had a history, as filmmakers, of obtaining public funding and the support of broadcasters in Canada for the ideas we pitched. Yet Omar’s story was turned down almost everywhere. Disappointed but not defeated, we approached Canal D, a French-language private Canadian broadcaster. The channel gave us a small licence. It was not enough to cover production costs, but we invested our time and some of our own money. There was urgency about this story, which drove us forward with strong beliefs and commitment. We started filming interviews in June 2009. As filmmakers we wanted to encourage a deeper dialogue over current Canadian security policy. Since the US launched its global 'war on terror' following 9/11, there has been a corresponding shift in Canadian military and security policy. Omar’s video and other recently released documents mean that the Canadian government can no longer claim to be unstained by torture. In fact, Canada has sent several teams of interrogators to Guantanamo. Before the Canadian interrogators visited Omar, Ottawa knew that he had been tortured. The military lawyer defending Omar established that in 2002, before his transfer to Guantanamo, Omar was detained at Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Base. His chief interrogator there was Joshua Claus. Three years later, following a court martial, Claus pleaded guilty to torturing to death a young Afghani taxi driver named Dilawar. An investigative report by the New York Times blew open the Dilawar story. It became the basis for the film Taxi to the Dark Side, winner of the 2008 Oscar for Best Documentary. Knowing all that, the Canadian government continued to claim that the American authorities treated Omar humanely and that he had committed a very serious crime. International conventions that protect the rights of children in wartime, and in particular the rights of child soldiers, should have applied to Omar. But Ottawa was able to sidestep those laws. Released in the autumn of 2010, You Don’t Like the Truth was almost universally acclaimed. It was invited to more than 60 festivals around the world, from Amsterdam to São Paulo, from Seoul to Paris, from Buenos Aires to New York. But the Canadian government never changed its position towards Omar Khadr. In October 2010, Omar pleaded guilty to all the charges pressed by the US. It was clearly a plea bargain that allowed the young Canadian to serve eight years in jail, rather than 40. He became the first person ever convicted as a war criminal for acts committed as a juvenile. The US government agreed that Omar Khadr could be transferred to a Canadian jail after serving the first year of his sentence. When that year was up, in October 2011, Canada announced that it would take an additional 18 months to process the paperwork to repatriate Omar. So he remains jailed in Guantanamo Bay, abandoned by his own government.

Somalia's war on journalism

AL Jazeera English

Listening Post

Exploring the media landscape in a country where going to work has become a life-and-death decision for reporters. Listening Post Last Modified: 29 Sep 2012 08:10 inShare1

On Listening Post this week: The deadly attacks on Somali journalists. Plus, to pay or not to pay? The newspapers' fight for survival in a digital world. 2012 has been a big year for Somali media – after years of covering civil war, rising insurgency and a battle for resources, Somali journalists reported on the country’s first election in decades. But there is another reason 2012 has been significant: 13 journalists have been killed in the country this year. A suicide bomb attack in Mogadishu on September 20 killed three reporters. Hours later, unidentified gunmen shot dead veteran journalist Hassan Yusuf Absuge for covering the explosion. Al-Shabaab, the armed group operating in Somalia, has claimed responsibility for a number of the killings this year, but they are by no means the only threat. There are no official regulations on what you can or cannot report but journalists trying to cover stories that criticise Al-Shabab, government, big business or certain clans and their leaders, do so at their peril. In this week’s News Bytes: As Syria’s civil war gets bloodier, journalists and media activists are becoming ever more explicit targets for attack, latest deaths take the tally of professional journalists killed in Syria to 11 while 32 citizen journalists have been killed as well; the decision by the Iranian government to block access to Google’s search and mail services in the country - after widespread protests over the anti-Islam Youtube clip - is being seen as a step towards disconnecting Iran from the world-wide web completely; Vietnam, which has the second largest number of internet dissidents in jail in the world after China, is seeking to push through a new law which would require internet users to register with their real names and would impose further penalties for criticising the regime; Al-Watan, an Egyptian newspaper, is going to head-to-head with French weekly Charlie Hebdo that published cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed earlier this month. Al-Watan responded by publishing 13 cartoons depicting how the West sees the Muslim community in a post-9/11 world. Our feature this week looks at the future of online news. In the early days of the internet websites competed with each other for your attention. Each new visitor to the website was an achievement. But things have changed. The battlefield may be the same but the war is now being faught for your money. And fighting the battle the hardest is the newspaper in the street. For years, print publications watched helplessly as the internet ate into their market. However, over the past two years newspapers have been fighting back. They have barricaded their websites behind paywalls  - if you want to read you have got to pay. In July 2010 the Times of London set up its paywall; now there are numerous newspapers sites charging for access. The Listening Post's Flo Phillips investigates who is winning the online war. Finally, Listening Post has succumbed to the unrelenting viral power of gangnam style. The addictive, be-bopping, hot-stepping South Korean tune by Psy has had nearly 280 million Youtube views and spawned many parodies. Our favourite one has been put together by ‘Barely Political’, a group of online satirists in the US, and it imagines what the gangnam style song would have been like had it been produced across the border – in North Korea. ‘Kim Jong style’ is our video of the week.

In New York, defiant Ahmadinejad says Israel will be "eliminated"

REUTERS

Mon, Sep 24 2012

• Protesting Ahmadinejad
• Ahmadinejad presents tapestry with Iranian map to U.N. chief

By Louis Charbonneau

NEW YORK | Mon Sep 24, 2012 7:54pm EDT

(Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday Israel has no roots in the Middle East and would be "eliminated," ignoring a U.N. warning to avoid incendiary rhetoric ahead of the annual General Assembly session.
Ahmadinejad also said he did not take seriously the threat that Israel could launch a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, denied sending arms to Syria, and alluded to Iran's threats to the life of British author Salman Rushdie.
The United States quickly dismissed the Iranian president's comments as "disgusting, offensive and outrageous."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hinted Israel could strike Iran's nuclear sites and criticized U.S. President Barack Obama's position that sanctions and diplomacy should be given more time to stop Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Iran denies it is seeking nuclear arms and says its atomic work is peaceful and aimed at generating electricity.
"Fundamentally we do not take seriously the threats of the Zionists," Ahmadinejad, in New York for this week's U.N. General Assembly, told reporters. "We have all the defensive means at our disposal and we are ready to defend ourselves."
Ahmadinejad is due to speak at the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met Ahmadinejad on Sunday and warned him of the dangers of incendiary rhetoric in the Middle East.
Ahmadinejad, who has used previous U.N. sessions to question the Holocaust and the U.S. account of the September 11, 2001, attacks, did not heed the warning and instead expanded on his previous rejection of Israel's right to exist. Western envoys typically walk out of Ahmadinejad's U.N. speeches in protest at his remarks.
"Iran has been around for the last seven, 10 thousand years. They (the Israelis) have been occupying those territories for the last 60 to 70 years, with the support and force of the Westerners. They have no roots there in history," he said, referring to the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948.
"We do believe that they have found themselves at a dead end and they are seeking new adventures in order to escape this dead end. Iran will not be damaged with foreign bombs," Ahmadinejad said, speaking through an interpreter at his Manhattan hotel.
"We don't even count them as any part of any equation for Iran. During a historical phase, they (the Israelis) represent minimal disturbances that come into the picture and are then eliminated."
In 2005, Ahmadinejad called Israel a "tumor" and echoed the words of the former Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, by saying that Israel should be wiped off the map.
WHITE HOUSE: COMMENTS DISGUSTING
In Washington, White House spokesman Tommy Vietor reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to Israel's security.
"President Ahmadinejad's comments are characteristically disgusting, offensive and outrageous," he said. "They underscore again why America's commitment to the security of Israel must be unshakeable, and why the world must hold Iran accountable for its utter failure to meet its obligations."
The United States also officially linked Iran's state oil company to the country's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a move that enables Washington to apply new sanctions on foreign banks dealing with the company.
Attending what will likely be his last U.N. General Assembly as he nears the end of his second term next year, Ahmadinejad also spoke at a high-level U.N. session on the rule of law, prompting a walkout by Israel's U.N. Ambassador Ron Prosor.
"Ahmadinejad showed again that he not only threatens the future of the Jewish people, he seeks to erase our past," Prosor said in a statement. "Three thousand years of Jewish history illustrate the clear danger of ignoring fanatics like Iran's president, especially as he inches closer to acquiring nuclear weapons."
Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a brigadier general in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was quoted on Sunday as saying that Iran could launch a pre-emptive strike on Israel if it was sure the Jewish state was preparing to attack it.
Ahmadinejad said the nuclear issue was ultimately between the United States and Iran and must be resolved in talks.
"The nuclear issue is not a problem," he said. "But the approach of the United States on Iran is important. We are ready for dialogue, for a fundamental resolution of the problems, but under conditions that are based on fairness and mutual respect.
"We are not expecting a 33-year-old problem between the United States and Iran to be resolved in a speedy fashion," Ahmadinejad said. "But there is no other way besides dialogue."
Obama will underscore his commitment to preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and address Muslim unrest related to an anti-Islamic video in his speech to the General Assembly on Tuesday, the White House said.
'BULLYING COUNTRIES'
At the meeting on the rule of law, Ahmadinejad said states should not yield to rules imposed "by bullying countries."
Ahmadinejad said on Monday that conditions in Iran, which is under U.N., U.S. and European Union sanctions over its nuclear program, were not as bad as portrayed by some and the country could survive without oil revenues.
Britain, France and Germany called for fresh economic sanctions on Iran in a letter to European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, a top French official told reporters.
"If we want to reach a diplomatic and peaceful solution to Iran's nuclear program, then we must increase the pressure," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said.
Western sanctions on Iran tightened markedly this year with an EU ban on crude oil purchases from Iran and U.S. sanctions targeting banks that deal with Iran's central bank. Those sanctions have not yielded tangible progress toward a diplomatic solution.
There will be high-level side meetings on Iran's nuclear program and the Syrian conflict during the General Assembly but U.N. diplomats do not expect either issue to be resolved soon.
Ahmadinejad's annual visits to New York, a city with a sizable Jewish population, are routinely met with protests against his anti-Israel rhetoric. United Against Nuclear Iran, a U.S. group that opposes Iran acquiring an atomic bomb, protested at the Iranian official's hotel with a banner reading "Out of the Warwick, out of New York, out of the U.N.!"
'WE SEEK PEACE IN SYRIA'
Ahmadinejad rejected charges by the United Nations and Western officials that Iran is sending arms to pro-government forces in Syria fighting rebels trying to topple President Bashar al-Assad. "The so-called news that you alluded to has been denied vehemently, officially," he said to a question.
"We see both sides as equally our brothers," he said. "The intervention and meddling from outside have made conditions that much tougher. We must help to quell the violence and help ... (facilitate) a national dialogue."
Ahmadinejad also was asked about a move by an Iranian religious foundation to increase its reward for the killing of Rushdie in response to a California-made anti-Islam video called "The Innocence of Muslims" that has sparked anti-American protests around the Muslim world.
"Where is he now?" Ahmadinejad asked of Rushdie. "Is he in the United States? If he is, you shouldn't broadcast that for his own safety.
Rushdie, an Indian-born British novelist who has nothing to do with the video, was condemned to death in 1989 by Khomeini, Iran's late leader, because of his novel "The Satanic Verses," saying its depiction of the Prophet Mohammad was blasphemous.
Ahmadinejad appeared to reject Washington's position that while it condemns the video's content, freedom of expression must be upheld. "Freedoms must not interfere with the freedoms of others," Ahmadinejad said. "If someone insults, what would you do? ... Is insulting other people not a form of crime?"
(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick and John Irish; Writing by Michelle Nichols and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Will Dunham and Bill Trott)

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