Signalfire

In a press conference on Monday, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange says that there is evidence of war crimes to be found in the controversial Afghan War Diary recently leaked by the site. The Diary is composed of thousands of pages detailing the United States’ military activities in Afghanistan.

The leaked documents have sparked outrage from officials in the U.S., U.K., and Pakistan; it is unclear yet whether the outrage is legitimate or merely a desire to repress information that could be harmful to those parties. The U.S. has said that the documents are a threat to national security. “It has the potential to be a threat to combatants that are fighting in the area, it has the potential to destabilize the trilateral relationships between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the U.S. And it has the potential to place the intelligence community at some level of risk if their sources are being compromised publicly,” said former intelligence analyst Bob Ayers.

Wikileaks has stated that they have a system in place to catch any information that could be harmful to those whom the leaks are about, and that the Afghanistan documents were 7 months old and not current enough to affect soldiers’ safety. Ayers counters: “The fact it is seven months old is immaterial. It is irrelevant. They are not going to change their patrolling patterns in seven months, they are still going to patrol the same way. So now what you have done is you have informed the enemy of information that can assist them in planning how to attack NATO forces in Afghanistan when they are on patrol.”

Hundreds of residents of one of the poorest municipalities in Los Angeles County shouted in protest last night as tensions rose over a report that the city’s manager earns an annual salary of almost $800,000.

An overflow crowd packed a City Council meeting in Bell, a mostly Hispanic city of 38,000 about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles, to call for the resignation of Mayor Oscar Hernandez and other city officials. Residents left standing outside the chamber banged on the doors and shouted “fuera,” or “get out” in Spanish.

It was the first council meeting since the Los Angeles Times reported July 15 that Chief Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo earns $787,637 — with annual 12 percent raises — and that Bell pays its police chief $457,000, more than Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck makes in a city of 3.8 million people. Bell council members earn almost $100,000 for part-time work.

City Attorney Edward Lee said the council members couldn’t discuss salaries in public without advance notice. The council then adjourned for a private session. About an hour later, the council members returned, and Hernandez read a statement saying the city would prepare a report on the salaries and seek public comment at the next council meeting, scheduled for Aug. 16.

Residents shouted in protest. Lee said he would have the room cleared if people continued to speak out of line. Police Chief Randy Adams said the fire department wanted to end the meeting because the crowd outside was blocking the door.

Easing Tensions

Then, in what appeared to be an effort to ease tensions, Hernandez announced that the meeting to discuss salaries would be held instead on July 26.

After the meeting, Bell resident Ali Saleh read a statement from a newly formed group called the Bell Association to Stop the Abuse. He called for an independent audit of city salaries and contracts.

On July 1 Bell took control of many of the city functions of neighboring Maywood, a city whose council members voted to contract out almost all services. Saleh also asked that Bell stop that process until the city’s salary investigations were resolved.

Bell has sold two general obligation bond issues totaling $50 million in the past six years, according to prospectuses for the bonds and information in the city’s annual financial statement for 2009. In that time, its debt has risen to $1,972 per capita in 2009 from $599 in 2004, according to its annual financial statement.

Inquiry Under Way

The city’s personal income was $24,800 per capita in 2008, according to its financial statement. That compares with an average of $32,819 nationwide, according to 2010 figures from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Bell’s general fund revenue declined 4.6 percent to $14.1 million for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2009, according to the city’s financial statement. The city’s expenses rose 2.3 percent to $15.9 million in same period.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office has begun an inquiry into Bell council member pay, according to Dave Demerjian, head of the office’s Public Integrity Division. He said Bell council members were receiving $8,083 a month, mostly by serving on city-related commissions.

“We’re reviewing the council member salaries to see if they conform to state law,” Demerjian said in a telephone interview.

California law limits the salaries of council members to several hundred dollars a month, depending on the size of the city, according to Hector De La Torre, a state assemblyman from nearby South Gate, who sponsored legislation in 2005 that limits how much council members can get paid from other city-related assignments to $150 a month.

‘Obscene Pay’

De La Torre said that after his bill was passed, Bell’s City Council voted to operate under its own charter, rather than adhere to state laws on how cities should be run.

“It seems obscene to me,” De La Torre said in a telephone interview. “People making $30,000 a year are paying taxes so that their council members can make $80,000.”

Adams, Bell’s police chief, said in an interview after the council meeting that he had retired as chief of police in the much larger city of Glendale, California, when Bell officials approached him.

“I told them they would have to pay me what I was making in retirement and the $165,000 I would make as chief of police,” Adams said.

Adams said he had been brought in to end corruption in Bell’s police department.

“Some of the former members of this force are in the federal penitentiary,” he said.

‘Streets Are Cleaner’

Hernandez, the mayor, defended the salaries in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.

“Our streets are cleaner, we have lovely parks, better lighting throughout the area, our community is better,” Hernandez said, according to the newspaper. “These things just don’t happen, they happen because he had a vision and made it happen.”

Carmen Avalos, the city clerk in South Gate, said she attended the Bell council meeting to help educate people about the political process.

“This is what we are trying to avoid,” she said in an interview at the meeting. “The lack of fiduciary responsibility, the lack of transparency.”

KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan soldier opened fire on U.S. civilian trainers at an army base in northern Afghanistan, killing two Americans before being shot dead, the Defense Ministry said Wednesday.

It was the second fatal shooting of NATO soldiers by a member of the Afghan security force this month.

An argument started during a weapons-training exercise and the Afghan soldier turned his gun on the Americans on Tuesday, the ministry said in a statement. Another Afghan soldier was killed in the resulting crossfire, and the shooter was later gunned down.

NATO previously said two Americans and two Afghan soldiers were killed by gunfire at a firing range outside Mazar-e-Sharif, but it did not provide details on how the incident occurred.

The shooter was a “group leader” — an Afghan soldier selected to train other soldiers on the base, Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said. U.S. Brig. Gen. Gary Patton, deputy commander of the training mission, said the shooter was a sergeant.

NATO suspended training throughout the country after the shooting but resumed full operations Wednesday, Patton said.

Intentional shootings by Afghans against coalition partners have occurred previously. Earlier this month, an Afghan soldier killed three British service members with gunfire and a rocket-propelled grenade in the dead of night.

The soldier fled after that attack, leaving his motive unclear. But the Taliban claimed he was a militant sympathizer taken in by insurgents after the assault.

With the help of the Taliban, a man claiming to be the fugitive Afghan soldier has conducted telephone interviews with several Western news organizations. He told The Associated Press that he turned on coalition soldiers because they killed “innocent people” and used search dogs too close to Afghan women, an indignity.

A NATO official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the incident publicly, said at least some of the information provided by the man was inconsistent with what is known about the attack.

In November, an Afghan policeman killed five British soldiers at a checkpoint in Helmand. The gunman escaped.

The attacks come as the international coalition ramps up training of Afghan soldiers and police so they can take responsibility for securing the nation. U.S. civilian contractors — many of them retired police or soldiers — often work on Afghan army bases as trainers.

The allies set an interim goal of expanding the Afghan army from 85,000 in 2009 to 134,000 troops by October 2011. The speed with which Afghan security forces are growing has raised concerns about infiltration by the Taliban and the professionalism of the forces.

AMAGA, Colombia – More than 70 Colombian miners were trapped and feared dead Thursday in a coal mine explosion that could become one of the Andean country’s worst mining accidents.

At least 16 bodies were pulled from the wreckage after the midnight gas explosion at the San Fernando mine in northwestern Antioquia province. The death toll was expected to rise.

The blast occurred far from the major mining operations run by companies such as Drummond and Glencore near the Caribbean coast of the world’s No. 5 coal exporter.

Relatives sobbed and hugged each other and anxiously pressed rescue workers for news as hearses ferried bodies from the wreckage of the mine blast.

“This is a huge tragedy. Initially we have reports of 72 people trapped and now we have 16 bodies recovered,” President Alvaro Uribe said.

Luz Amanda Pulido, a national disaster official, told local radio there was little chance any miners would be pulled out alive.

A new accumulation of gas temporarily halted attempts to reach miners trapped 6,500 feet below the surface, rescue workers on the ground said.

Colombia has enjoyed a boom in energy and mining investment under Uribe, who sent troops out to drive back left rebels who once controlled large parts of the country and targeted oil pipelines as part of Latin America’s oldest insurgency.

MINING AN ELECTION ISSUE

Uribe steps down in August and his former defense minister, Juan Manuel Santos, is favored to succeed him in a run-off vote on Sunday. The country’s commodities boom is an election issue with candidates debating how to handle an influx of mining and oil dollars.

The disaster could also highlight mining safety regulations in a country where the industry ranges from large deposits operated by multinationals to hundreds of small, makeshift pits that produce coal for local markets.

Just as news of the explosion was breaking, workers at Glencore’s La Jagua’s coal mine in Cesar province went on strike over conditions after failing to reach an agreement with the company, a union said.

No details were immediately available on the owners of the San Fernando mine or its production.

Five miners died in the same mine during a flood two years ago, local media reported. Last year, a methane gas explosion in another Antioquia province coal mine killed eight workers and in 2007, 31 miners were killed in an explosion Norte de Santander in one of the country’s worst mining disasters.

The Chinese Communist party called on employers to raise salaries and improve training for workers today, as Toyota became the latest foreign firm to be hit by a wave of high-profile strikes.

The People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the ruling party, warned that the country’s manufacturing model faced a turning point as demographic and social changes slowed the influx of low-cost labour from the countryside.

Coming a day after the premier, Wen Jiabao, made similar comments, the editorial suggests the authorities may be encouraging businesses to restructure the economy by putting less emphasis on cheap exports and more on higher-value goods and domestic consumption.

For most of the past 30 years, China’s economic growth has been fuelled by low-cost migrant labour. This has helped raise national competitiveness, attract foreign investors and keep consumer prices lower across the world. But members of a new generation of migrants are less willing to endure hardship and many have successfully gone on strike to demand better conditions.

Without mentioning strikes, the People’s Daily said China should adjust to a tighter labour market by improving skills, creating more service-sector jobs and giving workers more cash to spend. This echoed a speech a day earlier by Wen, who said a new generation of migrant workers should be given improved conditions .

“Your work is glorious and should be respected by society at large. Migrant workers should be cared for, protected and respected,” he told workers at the construction site for the No 6 subway in the capital. “The government and the public should be treating young migrant workers like their own children.”

According to labour activists, there have been numerous strikes in recent years, though few get reported in the media. Chang Kai, professor of labour relations and law at Renmin University, said the number had increased by 30% per year.

Their impact has grown as the “one-child” family planning policy starts to thin the bulge in the working-age population. This demographic change in the balance of labour supply and demand has added to improved worker organisation and greater activism at high-profile foreign firms.

Japanese firms have disproportionately been the focus of the reported strikes. The Toyoda Gosei car parts plant, in Tianjin, was shut down by a strike this week until the management promised to negotiate higher wages.

Three Honda plants in Guangdong have been affected, along with a Hyundai factory in Beijing and a Taiwanese rubber products manufacturer in Shanghai. According to Xinhua news agency, the fast food franchise KFC has conceded to a union demand for minimum monthly pay of 900 yuan (£90), up by 200 yuan.

In most cases, however, workers have organised outside the unions, which are seen as close to management and the party. This has sparked commentaries in local media urging unions to mediate more effectively between workers and employers.

Having seen how the Solidarity movement in Poland helped to overthrow a communist government that stopped representing its interests, China’s leaders do not want to alienate the labour force. So far, there is no sign of any mass, nationwide protests. This week’s statements of support for workers’ rights suggest the politburo wants to keep on the right side of the activists.

LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Police are gearing up to prevent violence in Los Angeles after Thursday night’s Game 7 of the NBA finals between the Lakers and Boston Celtics.

But at least one store owner near LA’s Staples Center says he’ll close before the game ends — just in case.

Hundreds of police officers will be deployed around the downtown arena to prevent a repeat of rioting that occurred in 2000 after the Lakers won their first championship in a dozen years, or the disturbance that erupted last year.

Fan Victor Lopez says he helped overturn a police car in 2000, but now he’s a 27-year-old father. He says these days he doesn’t want to risk jail time.

City officials are warning fans to stay away from the downtown area unless they have tickets to the game.

The Penan tribe of Borneo are facing a fight for survival. Logging, dam construction and deforestation is threatening the forest on which they depend.

Although only around 300 of the tribe of hunter-gatherers remain nomadic, even those who have settled remain dependent on the forest. Since the 1970s, the Malaysian government has been exploiting the forest of the Sarawak region, logging being a particularly devastating example.

The tribe have been trying to prevent logging on their territory since the mid to late 80s. They’ve been blockading roads to stop loggers from entering their land, with some success, but many communities have seen their forests devastated – forests they rely on for food, medicine and the materials they use to build their homes.

The first community I visited lived in an area where they had managed to keep the loggers out, though officially a company had rights to their land. I had to travel there via the logging roads and was shocked to see truck after truck carrying the timber out. I left the road, transferred to a small boat and took it up river, pushing it over the rapids until, eventually, I arrived at the settlement. It was beautiful there.

The Penan were very welcoming. They were gentle and softly spoken, and cooked me meals of wild boar that they had hunted. There was a lot of food – they pointed out an abundance of fresh boar tracks. Wild boar is what the Penan most like to eat, as well as deer and fresh fish from the river. They catch smaller animals with blow pipes: long carved-out pieces of wood through which they blow poison darts.

Another community I met had made their home at the bottom of a valley where there was old forest. While I was there, we heard bulldozers at the top of the ridge on one side of the valley. A logging company was trying to come over into their territory. The tribe told me they had gone up to the ridge to ask the loggers not to come over but were told to stop harassing the workers. The loggers said that the government had given them permission to be there and the indigenous people would be killed if they didn’t stop protesting.

People would ask for my help in every community that I visited. The tribe are very aware of the odds stacked against them – big powerful companies like Samling, who harvest the timber, and Shin Yang, who harvest palm oil, are on their land with the backing of the Sarawak government. It has also been reported that some of members of the state government are involved with the logging and palm oil companies.

In many of these cases there’s a failure among those in power to appreciate the Penan’s way of life as valid. Most of the indigenous people of Sarawak are ‘shifting cultivators’ tribal, government, who practise agriculture. This is at odds with the Penan’s nomadic hunter-gathering tradition.

I went on to visit a community whose land had been heavily logged. The contrast between them and the Penan I had been with previously was shocking. People here had very little to eat. They told me they went for months without finding a single wild boar and were a little thin. But they were determined to cling to their way of life, despite the odds. The fight for survival has come upon the Penan quickly – 15 years ago life had been relatively straightforward for them.

Some of the tribe have moved into towns, but they’re in a minority. The Penan prefer to hang on to the small patches of forest that remain. They can eke out a living in cleared areas where oil palms are yet to be planted. When companies leave these areas the forest begins to regenerate slightly, although it never totally recovers. When the palm oil companies return to plant their crops the land becomes useless to the Penan. Driving through areas of Sarawak, you can see the rows of neat little trees, stretching over miles of indigenous land.

Sadly, some of the Penan end up working for the companies who moved them off their tribal land. They have no choice: they can no longer find food in the forest so have to earn money to buy it, although the companies do not pay them well.

As well as deforestation, the Penan’s land is threatened by plans to build a series of hydroelectric dams in Sarawak. The first dam is already under construction, and the communities who live on that land have been ordered to leave. But the state of Sarawak already has the capacity to produce more electricity than it needs. The surplus electricity will be sold and exported to other parts of Malaysia.

I went to several of the communities who were being told to make way for these dams. They were worried about what to do and didn’t want to move. They would be given only a small area of land, per family, to farm in government resettlement areas. They would have to grow food in these plots, which is a far cry lifestyle they are used to. They should have the right to choose if they want to grow crops or be hunters, or a mixture of the two, which is what many of them now do.

In many other countries indigenous land rights are at least recognised on paper, but the Malaysian and Sarawak governments do not recognise the Penan’s rights. But the Penan are not giving up. They government are out of step. I think if there is enough international pressure on the Malaysian government, hopefully the Penan can see their rights recognised and their land protected.

A new study shows that deforestation in the Amazon helps spread disease by creating an optimal environment for malaria-carrying mosquitoes. The study, published in the online issue of the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, found that clearing forests in the Brazilian Amazon raised incidences of malaria by almost 50 percent.

“It appears that deforestation is one of the initial ecological factors that can trigger a malaria epidemic,” says Sarah Olson, the lead author of the new report and a postdoctoral fellow at the Nelson Institute, Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Researchers combined information on malaria occurrences in 54 Brazilian health districts with satellite imagery of Amazon deforestation.

“The deforested landscape, with more open spaces and partially sunlit pools of water, appears to provide ideal habitat for this mosquito,” Olson says of Anopheles darlingi, the primary carrier of malaria in the Amazon. In deforested areas Anopheles darlingi displaces other less-malaria prone mosquitoes that favor forest landscapes.

“A 4 percent change in forest cover was associated with a 48 percent increase in malaria incidence in these 54 health districts,” explains Olson. “The health data used in the study is of the highest quality and spatial resolution. Unlike previous studies, our data allowed us to zoom in on areas where people are being exposed to malaria and to exclude areas where they are not being exposed.”

The study adjusted for human population, access to healthcare, and additional factors, yet still found malaria outbreaks closely aligned with deforestation.

BERKELEY — UC Berkeley police and administrators bungled their response to a November protest that ended in dozens of arrests and police beatings, an investigative panel has concluded.

In a 128-page report released publicly today, the university’s Police Review Board criticized leaders at UC Berkeley — birthplace of the Free Speech Movement — for being unprepared for civil disobedience. The lack of preparation gave the impression administrators did not care about students’ concerns on Nov. 20, which “fanned flames of anger” among protesters, the panel wrote.

The board also found that budget cuts had thinned the UC Police Department to the point where officers had little leadership as they first responded to the students’ daylong occupation of Wheeler Hall early that morning. The first officer to respond made the “unwise” decision to threaten to use pepper spray on the protesters, the panel said.

About 40 people had taken over the classroom building to protest tuition increases and budget cuts, while scores more gathered outside Wheeler. At least three people were arrested at the scene, and others were later charged with trespassing.

Officers clad in riot gear, called in hours later from Oakland and other agencies, marched into the fray after a limited briefing and little discussion about alternative approaches, the board concluded. The strategy inflamed tensions in the crowd outside Wheeler Hall, panelists said, leading to violent confrontations.

Only five UC officers were on duty the morning of the protest, the report noted, despite the department’s advance knowledge that an “escalation” was scheduled for that day. And the department had made no arrangements to bring in off-duty officers if needed, panelists discovered.

The board was led by UC Berkeley law professor Wayne Brazil, a former federal judge, and also included other professors, students, employees and Ronald Nelson, the city of Berkeley’s former police chief.

The report is “sobering,” Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and Associate Vice Chancellor Ron Coley said in a written statement. “There is no cause for anyone to find reasons for pride or pleasure in this document’s contents and conclusion.”

Administrators noted, however, that the report did not assign blame to students, employees, professors and others who participated in the Nov. 20 protest. Birgeneau and Coley urged those participants to reflect on their own actions as well.

In a separate statement, UC police Chief Mitch Celaya took responsibility for his department’s mistakes during the protest, but defended his officers’ integrity.

“The fact that we, at times, fall short is most accurately ascribed to human error, not evil intent,” he wrote.

Several UC Berkeley leaders, including Birgeneau and Celaya, are scheduled to speak to reporters this afternoon.

KOLKATA: At least eight Maoists, including three women, were killed in an encounter when security force personnel raided a forest hideout in the Salboni block of West Bengal’s Paschim Medinipur district early on Wednesday.

Director-General of Police Bhupinder Singh said here that though only eight bodies were recovered, “we have unconfirmed reports of another four Maoists killed.”

It is suspected that the rebels carried away four bodies while fleeing, he added.

Superintendent of Police Manoj Kumar Verma claimed that it was one of the most successful operations in the region since the crackdown on the Maoists began a year ago.

There was no casualty among the security forces.

The security personnel arrested an injured Maoist and recovered a huge cache of firearms, explosives, landmines and Maoist literature.

According to Mr. Singh, both the State police force and commandos of the Central Reserve Police Force’s Combat Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA) surrounded a Maoist camp in the Ranja forest following a tip-off. “The rebels opened fire on the forces and the latter retaliated. A gun battle ensued and continued for almost six hours following which the remaining Maoists fled the spot,” he said.

The police are yet to establish the identity of the arrested Maoist.

Police sources said that five of the eight Maoists killed were been identified as Arjun (a close associate of rebel leaders Bikash and Tara), Sagen, Mala, Radha and Lakshmi (who is suspected to have played a major role during the massacre of 24 Eastern Frontier Rifles jawans at Silda on February 15).

Intelligence inputs

The sources said that based on intelligence inputs received from the Jharkhand police, it was suspected that top Maoist leader Akash was also killed during the encounter.

An AK-47 rifle, an SLR rifle, more than 150 rounds of ammunition and four pistols, besides 100 detonators, 30 gelatine sticks, explosives, wires and batteries were recovered.

Mr. Verma said the AK-47 rifle and the SLR rifle were among the several sophisticated weapons looted from the EFR’s armoury at Silda on February 15.

According to police sources, the security forces raided the area three days ago also but the Maoists escaped.

NEW DELHI: The government may have decided not to draft it for the anti-naxal offensive, but the Indian Army has started preparing for the possibility of being called upon to tackle what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh calls India’s gravest internal security threat.

Army Headquarters has drawn up a plan to keep about 50,000 soldiers – approximately 5 divisions – in readiness to help the civilian authorities deal with the growing Naxal threat. A training programme, especially designed to meet the challenge that the Left wing extremists pose, has been drawn up, with the Lucknow-based Central Command being given the task of readying the soldiers for what could potentially be the single-biggest internal mobilisation outside the insurgency-ravaged J&K and the northeast.

The rigorous training schedule aims to re-orient troops, conditioned to fight hostile nations as well as insurgents of J&K and northeast, for a battle which is to be fought in the heartland and against an enemy adept at blending into the population.

The Army believes that its approach will be radically different from the way paralimitary troops engaged in the anti-Naxal fight have been taken through the paces. Army officials say that paramilitary forces are engaged in random jungle bashing which is fraught with the risk of collateral damages. As against this, they plan, if and when called in, to create a security grid which would isolate the civilian population from the insurgents.

The anti-Naxal training module focuses on acquiring intimate knowledge of the topography and the tactics used by Maoists. All this would require the sodiers to unlearn many of the lessons imparted to them for conventional warfare, and use tactics different from those in vogue in J&K and northeast.

The Army, which has already identified four senior officers for appointment as security advisors to the worst Naxal-affected states, plans to keep the specially-trained divisions in “ready-to-deploy” condition.

For that, it is pulling out troop components from artillery,armoured and other arms to put them through the new training module. Besides, the infantry units returning from counter-insurgency deployments in Kashmir and northeast will be put through the new training schedule once they have had enough rest and recuperation, sources said.

As a prelude to the eventual deployment, the Army has already stepped up its intelligence gathering capabilities in the Naxal belt. It traditionally never had any intelligence networks in the tribal areas of central India. To fill the gap, Central Command soldiers who understand tribal languages, have been deploying for intelligence gathering and analysis.

Authoritative sources said the four brigadiers, with extensive experience in counter-insurgency operations in northeast and Kashmir, have been identified for deputation to the Union home ministry. These officers will be appointed as security advisors to the unified commands, comprising paramilitary and state polices, that are being set up in Orissa, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh.

These officers would be based in New Delhi as the defence ministry is reluctant at present to post them in the states, given the confusion over chain of command and other concerns, sources said.

LIMA — Thousands of Peruvian workers blocked a key highway, risking clashes with police at a US-owned smelter at the center of a bitter year-long environmental dispute.

Defying a massive police operation to prevent the blockade, workers from the facility in the central town of La Oroya placed boulders and tree trunks across sections of Highway 20, a main east-to-west artery in the Andean nation.

A similar blockade at the complex — which refines lead, zinc, gold and copper — boiled over into ugly clashes with riot police last September that left one officer dead.

“The town is totally paralyzed, 3,500 workers are taking part in the action with the support of the entire population of La Oroya,” union leader Roberto Guzman told AFP by telephone.

The Peruvian government deployed 2,000 police officers and 500 troops to stand guard over the highway.

The protest marked the start of an indefinite strike to compel the government to push back a July 15 deadline imposed on the US firm Doe Run to comply with new environmental regulations.

President Alan Garcia issued an ultimatum to the company, ordering it to resume operations by July 24 or face being shut down for good.

“We can’t be placed with our backs to the wall by a company that hasn’t followed through with the investments it agreed to make… it’s blackmail to try to get more time from the government and parliament,” Garcia told a press conference as he accused the firm of backing the protests.

“We’ve been lenient, but there’s a limit to that. We can’t make any more exceptions.”

If Doe Run isn’t up and running by the stated date, Garcia warned “it will be closed down as promised.”

Energy Minister Pedro Sanchez said a plan was underway to relocate Doe Run workers to other mining jobs across Peru if the smelter is shuttered.

Privatized and sold to Doe Run in 1997, the mine is notorious for making La Oroya the most polluted town in Peru. Sulfur dioxide from its smelters have prompted serious health concerns for the local populace of some 60,000.

It was hoped Doe Run would be able to convert it into a clean-running facility, but the company has failed to meet several deadlines to do so as has run into financial trouble.

Doe Run is accused of resorting to “blackmail” by inciting its workers to side with the company’s demand for a deadline extension.

The firm owes more than 200 million dollars in debts and back taxes and is asking for a 20-year repayment moratorium, which the government says is unacceptable.

Doe Run, an affiliate of the US group Renco, is one of the world’s leading lead producers and is based in the central US state of Missouri.

Gunmen used a heavy truck to block a highway in the Western state of Michoacan and opened fire on a federal police convoy.

“The information we have is that there are 10 dead and several wounded,” Michoacan state Public Security Minister Minerva Bautista told a local radio station.

The federal government confirmed the police deaths and said an unknown number of the assailants were killed.

Michoacan, the home state of President Felipe Calderon, has emerged as a key battleground as the cult-like La Familia cartel fights other gangs and security forces for control of the mountainous state.

At least 23,000 people, mainly traffickers and police, have been killed in drug violence in Mexico since Calderon launched his army-led and U.S.-backed crackdown on traffickers after taking office in December 2006.

Separately, in the Pacific state of Sinaloa, 28 prisoners were killed and three prison guards were injured in a gun battle between rival gangs inside a jail, the daily Universal reported.

Sinaloa is the home turf of Mexico’s most wanted drug lord, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman.

The majority of the prisoners killed were in jail for murder or drug trafficking, Josefina Garcia the head of state police told a radio station.

“A group of prisoners broke through a series of doors using a sledgehammer to destroy the locks and video cameras,” Garcia said.

Police spokesman Martin Gastelum told Reuters the prisoners died from gunshot wounds in the worst riot the jail has seen.

The escalating violence in Mexico frightens away tourists and worries the United States, which is giving millions of dollars in anti-drug aid, equipment and training to the Mexican army and police.

Some investors have frozen funding for factories in cities on the U.S. border, especially in Ciudad Juarez, the most deadly place in the drug war and just across from El Paso, Texas.

Last Friday was the most violent day yet of Calderon’s presidency with 70 drug-related killings, including the murders of 19 addicts at a rehabilitation clinic in the northern city of Chihuahua, local media reported.

A riot at Calipatria State Prison Saturday afternoon leaves 35 inmates injured.

Mostly, it was bumps and bruises … but two were taken to pioneer memorial hospital with more serious injuries.

Lt. Shawn Mclinn with Calipatria Sate Prison described the riot as “everything, fighting, stabbing, kicking … that’s fighting.”

He said “the two inmates had injures consistent with stab wounds, possibly even sliced.”

It took two warning shots from corrections officers to break up the fight.

While the investigation moves forward, the prison is under a modified program.

Mclinn says inmates “shower and outside of that they stay in their cell.”

The program applies to all African American inmates … That’s 60 percent of the prison population. It does not include inmates of any other race.

Lt. Mclinn says its because everyone involved in the riot was African American. He added “we have to take into consideration all general population inmates could be involved.”

Prison officials are looking into whether the uprising was gang related, but have not determined this conclusion so far.

That same day, a horrifying discovery came to light. An inmates body was found.

Samuel Johnson’s was found in the same area the riot occured. Johnson was serving a 37 year sentence for second degree murder.

Prison officials believe he died of natural causes, but aren’t ruling anything out, including the riot.

Johnson’s autopsy is expected to be later this week.

A dozen out-of-control prisoners left a Nova Scotia jail with smashed windows, broken sprinklers and damaged recreation equipment.

Two sections of the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility remained locked down Wednesday, after a stabbing and riot at the jail the night before.

Corrections officials said an inmate was stabbed at about 9 p.m. Tuesday, prompting guards to lock down the entire jail. But some prisoners in another area refused to leave a day room and return to their cells.

Guards donned riot gear when 17 inmates — some wearing masks — started breaking sprinklers, windows and equipment, and covered security cameras.

Police were called in to provide backup but stayed outside the jail. Officers left before midnight without arresting anyone.

“Staff were able to get that under control by midnight,” said Sherri Aikenhead, spokeswoman for the Department of Justice.

David Horner, head of corrections for the department, said the inmate who was stabbed was released from hospital within hours.

Aikenhead said no correctional workers were hurt.

She said there were no fires, unlike a riot in April 2009 when 59 inmates caused extensive damage to the jail.

“We are relieved about that,” she said.

Cleanup and repairs were underway at the jail on Wednesday, as corrections staff looked for the makeshift knife that was used in the stabbing.

Opened in 2001, the jail is designed to hold 225 male and 48 female inmates in single cells. However, prisoners are often placed two to a cell because of overcrowding.

OSH, Kyrgyzstan — Some 100,000 minority Uzbeks fleeing a purge by mobs of Kyrgyz massed at the border Monday, an Uzbek leader said, as the deadliest ethnic violence to hit this Central Asian nation in decades left a major city smoldering.

With fires raging in the southern city of Osh for a fourth day Monday, the official death toll of 124 killed and nearly 1,500 injured from the clashes that began Thursday appeared way too low.

An Uzbek community leader claimed at least 200 Uzbeks alone had already been buried, and the International Committee of the Red Cross said its delegates saw about 100 bodies being buried in just one cemetery.

The United States, Russia and the United Nations worked on humanitarian aid airlifts while neighboring Uzbekistan hastily set up refugee camps to handle the flood of hungry, frightened refugees. Most were women, children and the elderly, many of whom Uzbekistan said had gunshot wounds.

Jallahitdin Jalilatdinov, who heads the Uzbek National Center, told The Associated Press on Monday that at least 100,000 Uzbeks had fled to the border and were awaiting entry into Uzbekistan, while another 80,000 had already crossed.

An Associated Press reporter saw hundreds of Uzbek refugees stuck in no-man’s-land between the two nations at a border crossing near Jalal-Abad, while an AP photographer saw hundreds of refugees in a camp on the Uzbek side.

Kyrgyzstan’s interim government, which took over after former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was ousted by a mass revolt in April, has been unable to stop the violence and accused Bakiyev’s family of instigating it to stop a June 27 vote. Uzbeks have backed the interim government, while many Kyrgyz in the south have supported the toppled president.

The government said Monday it had arrested a well-known politician suspected of stoking the violence, but gave no further details.

Interim President Roza Otunbayeva’s government had hoped to hold a referendum to approve a new constitution on June 27, but the likelihood of that vote taking place now looks slim.

From his self-imposed exile in Belarus, Bakiyev on Sunday denied any role in the violence.

New fires raged Monday across Osh — the country’s second-largest city — which is only 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the border with Uzbekistan. Food and water were scarce as armed looters smashed stores, stealing everything from televisions to food. Cars stolen from ethnic Uzbeks raced around the city, most crowded with young Kyrgyz wielding sharpened sticks, axes and metal rods.

In the mainly Uzbek district of Aravanskoe, an area formerly brimming with shops and restaurants, entire streets were burned to the ground. In one still-smoldering building, an AP photographer saw the charred bodies of three people burned to death.

No police or troops were seen on the streets of the city of 250,000.

Hundreds of residents in Osh abandoned their homes to brave the central square Monday, where they were awaiting evacuation to the airport.

Osh police chief Kursan Asanov told the AP that 950 foreigners — mostly Russians, Pakistanis, Indians and Africans — have been sent out of the city since disturbances began. Trucks and buses had been arriving every few hours to brave the dangerous route to the Osh airport so people could fly to Bishkek, the capital.

“The entire city is in the state of panic — you see for yourselves — because all people have children,” said Osh resident Galina Nikolayevna.

“We are also evacuating our residents, both of Uzbek and Kyrgyz ethnicity,” Asanov said.

Mukaddas Jamolova, a 54-year old housewife from Kara-Su, near Osh, said she saw looters burn down many Uzbek homes. She said her house was not burned down but the family can’t flee to Uzbekistan as they fear armed attackers.

“We can’t go anywhere, we have a curfew, nobody’s letting us out,” Jamolova told The Associated Press on the phone.

In another city beset by violence, Jalal-Abad, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) from Osh, armed Kyrgyz amassed at the central square to hunt down an Uzbek community leader who they blame for starting the trouble.

As the clashes continued, desperately needed aid began trickling into the south. Several planes arrived at Osh airport with tons of medical supplies from the World Health Organization. Trucks carried the supplies into the city, protected by a tank and an armored personnel carrier.

The U.S. had a shipment of tens, cots and medical supplies ready to fly to Osh from its Manas air base in Bishkek, the U.S. Embassy said.

The U.S. and Russia both have military bases in northern Kyrgyzstan, away from the rioting. Russia sent in an extra battalion to protect its air base. The U.S. Manas air base is a crucial supply hub for the coalition fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Uzbeks make up 15 percent of Kyrgyzstan’s 5 million people, but in the south their numbers rival ethnic Kyrgyz. The fertile Ferghana Valley where Osh and Jalal-Abad are located once belonged to a single feudal lord, but it was split by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin among Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, rekindling old rivalries.

In 1990, hundreds were killed in a land dispute between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in Osh, and only quick deployment of Soviet troops quelled the fighting. Russia has refused a request by the interim government to send troops into Kyrgyzstan, so the government began a partial mobilization of military reservists over the weekend.

“No one is rushing to help us, so we need to establish order ourselves,” said Talaaibek Adibayev, a 39-year-old army veteran who showed up at Bishkek’s military conscription office.

There is a temporary reprieve for Manipur after being held hostage by Naga groups demanding their rights to the hills for more than two months.

Just hours after the Home Secretary made it clear that the Centre would send in forces to deal with the blockade, Naga leaders and activists met with the Prime Minister. This was followed by a formal announcement that they would consider suspending the agitation, but the leaders made it clear that their demands were unchanged.

There has been an acute shortage of essential goods due to the blockage. The state has slipped into a virtual emergency with the largest group of private hospitals planning to shut down due to unavailability of fuel, oxygen and medicines.

“You can beat me with 10 lathis (sticks) or I can give you 10,000 rupees but please don’t involve me in fake cases,” begged Pahallu Musahar to the police as he burst into tears.

The police from one of the stations in Uttar Pradesh had come to Pahallu’s house to enquire about his absconding brother Umesh. Umesh was allegedly involved in criminal activities, but unable to find him, the police decided to target his family for information. They were unrelenting in their brutality.

The police ignored Pahallu’s pleas that the family had lost touch with Umesh. Instead, Pahallu was beaten, tortured and then thrown into prison for a month and seven days. He now faces charges in two fake cases – one for possessing drugs and another for making cartridges for guns.

During the last decade when India’s status as an emerging power and a vibrant democracy have been heralded around the world, the poor in India have experienced a much greater degree of police violence and a serious erosion of their civil and political rights.

For the poor in India, Pahallu’s story is all too commonplace – the midnight knock, the brutality at the police station, the long, Kafkaesque slog in a court of law or increasingly now, simply a gun-shot. Pahallu could have ended up in an “encounter” with the police, a sinister euphemism in India for extra-judicial killings.

Since the year 2000, across India, from Kashmir in the north to Tamil Nadu in the south there has been a 41.66% rise in the number of custodial killings according to statistics released by the Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) in New Delhi.

“It is the aam aadmi (common man) who are (sic) the majority victims of torture and other inhuman and degrading treatment. However, the UPA government has failed to address the issue of torture and other human rights violations,” said Suhas Chakma, Director, ACHR.

The statistics on poverty in India vary, but the figure hovers anywhere between 26% – 42% of a population of 1.1bn. For a majority of these people Indian democracy offers no freedom and the Indian constitution offers no equality. Already experiencing the structural violence of caste prejudice, poverty, illiteracy and malnutrition, the police compound their misery by offering little or no access to justice.

The spread of the Naxal insurgency through district after district in rural India is a testimony to the failure of state institutions and the police in particular.

A report submitted by an Expert Group to the Planning Commission of India, titled ‘Development Challenges in Extremist Affected Areas’ discusses how current police practices have made the Naxal movement attractive for people in rural areas. “The movement does provide protection to the weak against the powerful” something the police have failed hopelessly to do. The report adds that the weaker sections of society, “have no faith that justice will be done to them against the powerful.”

Yet there is a deafening silence from the middle class about such police brutality against the poor. “There is so much crime that the middle class conscience also approves of such “encounters”. What do you do?” asks Sudha Ramalingam, National Vice-President of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL).

In militarised states like Kashmir and Manipur the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) has given the military sweeping powers to kill people with complete impunity. But even in states like Tamil Nadu which have a relatively better law and order situation, police behaviour has become more and more brazen. Henry Tiphagne, Executive Director of NGO People’s Watch, in an affidavit filed before the Madras High Court, says, “Most of those killed in “encounters” are persons with a history of criminal involvement who were not convicted. Police thus act as vigilantes, bypassing the criminal justice system and Courts of law, to exact their brand of justice.”

“I thought the police would kill me in an encounter,” Pahallu Musahar later told the People’s Vigilance Committee on Human Rights (PVCHR). He and his family live like pariahs in their community today because people look at them suspiciously, but just being alive has been a fate more fortunate than that of many others.

Egyptian internet activist Khaled Said, post-beating

Egyptian internet activist Khaled Said, post-beating

CAIRO – Egyptian opposition groups clashed with security forces Sunday after rights groups accused undercover officers of beating to death an activist who had attempted to expose police corruption.

Police have denied any role in the death of Khaled Mohammed Said, 28, who the Interior Ministry said Saturday died from an overdose of drugs he swallowed before police approached him.

Some 200 protestors chanting anti-government slogans, were quickly surrounded in Lazougli Square near the Interior Ministry in downtown Cairo, a Reuters witness said.

“Khaled was murdered and Adly is responsible,” protestors chanted, calling for Egyptian Interior Minister Habib el-Adly to be held accountable for Said’s death.

The violence began when demonstrators tried to break through a police cordon. A security official said 32 protestors were detained.

“We are here protesting the loss of the martyr of the emergency law,” said Ahmad Raghab, head of the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre, referring to an Egyptian law that allows indefinite detention and curbs anti-government political activity.

“We demand that those responsible for his death are tried.”

Egypt last month extended until 2011 an emergency law that gives police wide-ranging powers including indefinite detentions without charge and limiting the freedom of public assembly to no more than five people.

The measure has been extended regularly since it was passed in 1981, but authorities say they have now limited its scope to terrorism and drug cases. Activists and analysts say the law is used to crush dissent.

According to activists and human rights groups, Said was killed in the port city of Alexandria on June 6 after he posted an internet video which Said’s family said showed police officers sharing the profits of a drug deal.

The El-Nadeem Centre, a rights group following the case, said undercover policemen confronted Said in an internet cafe, dragged him onto the street and beat him to death. Social networking sites posted images of his beaten face and body.

Egypt’s attorney general has ordered an autopsy and referred the investigation into Said’s death to Alexandria’s appeals court. Rights group Amnesty International has called for an independent investigation into Said’s death.

DURBAN, South Africa — Armed riot police charged into hundreds of security stewards at a World Cup stadium, using tear gas and firing rubber bullets to break up a protest over low wages hours after Sunday’s match between Germany and Australia.

Police appeared to set off two percussive grenades, causing loud bangs, to drive the workers out of a parking lot under the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban after Germany’s 4-0 win in Group D.

Associated Press reporters saw about 30 riot police charge into the crowd to drive it out of the stadium. While calm quickly returned to the stadium, some of the security stewards, wearing orange and green jackets, continued milling around outside.

An AP photographer said police fired tear gas at protesters outside the stadium. A nearby street was littered with trash where the protesters were forced away. Concrete blocks had been pushed into a street.

About 100 police later surrounded a group of about 300 protesters on a street near the stadium and separated the men from the women. The protesters later left peacefully after discussions with police.

Lt. Colonel Leon Engelbrecht, a police spokesman assigned to the World Cup, confirmed that tear gas was used to help end the lengthy protest, but nobody was seriously injured.

A woman was hit by a rubber bullet but not badly hurt, he said.

Engelbrecht said the protest arose from a dispute between stadium workers and the security contractor over pay, and that disgruntled workers tried to stay in the venue after the match.

“It’s a concern that the security company didn’t have this settled before the tournament,” Engelbrecht said. “Dialogue will continue to ensure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again.

“It’s fortunate it was well after the game.”

Rich Mkhondo, head of communications for the local World Cup organizing committee, said the protest did not have any impact on security at the match or any spectators.

“Two hours after the end of the first match at the Durban stadium last night, there was an internal pay dispute between the principal security company employed by the organizing committee and some of the static security stewards employed by the company at the match,” Mkhondo said in a statement e-mailed to the AP. “Police were called on to disperse the protesting stewards.”

Mkhondo said later that World Cup organizers are meeting with stadium stewards and the security contractor, Stallion, to resolve the dispute but that “we don’t get involved on what an employer pays their employees.”

A FIFA spokesman had no immediate comment.

Protesters said they gathered at the venue to complain about their wages, claiming they’d been paid a fraction of what they were promised.

“We left our homes at seven in the morning and now it is nearly 1 o’clock (a.m.),” Vincent Mkize said. Before the tournament, “In the dry run, they didn’t want to tell us how much we would get.”

Another of the stewards, Fanak Falakhebuengu, told the AP he had heard they would be paid 1,500 rand ($195) a day but they were only getting 190 rand ($25).

“They were supposed to give us 1,500, that’s what FIFA told us, and they gave us 190. We are working from 12 o’clock until now,” said another man who asked not to be named. He ran from police before he could give his name.

Many of the protesters were waving small brown envelopes that had held their pay. One handed to a reporter had the figure 190 written on it under “amount payable.”

Others said they had been abandoned at the stadium after the match and would have to walk about four hours to get home. They said no transport was provided for them.

Rising temperatures are adding to the perils of cleanup efforts on the Gulf oil disaster, and workers’ heat-related illnesses are now the primary worry for local doctors and nurses.

“Our big issue with the health is the heat-related stuff,” said Dr. Robert Chugden, director of emergency medicine at West Jefferson Medical Center in Marrero, Louisiana. “Initially we had issues with fumes and dispersants being sprayed, but that seems to have faded away.”

Heat indices in the area ranged from 100 to 115 degrees Fahrenheit on Thursday, according to CNN meteorologist Reynolds Wolf, who said the extreme heat is expected in the Gulf through the weekend.

West Jefferson Medical Center’s first-aid tent for oil leak workers in Grand Isle, Louisiana, has treated 66 workers who had some heat-related problem since it opened May 31; only one other patient has been seen who did not have heat-related symptoms, said Taslin Alfonzo, spokeswoman for the hospital.

Reported heat-related symptoms have included dizziness, headache, nausea, muscle cramping and shortness of breath, Chugden said. The tent, staffed by a nurse and paramedics, offers fluids and a cool place to rest to these patients.

A clinic offering more complete medical services and staffed with physicians is planned on Grand Isle. Currently, patients who have more than mild symptoms must be transferred about 50 miles inland to the main hospital, Chugden said.

“Fortunately they are working in teams, so it’s unlikely anyone is going to suffer from an actual heatstroke — basically they’d become unconscious,” he said.

Heatstroke is generally marked by a body temperature higher than 104 F with mental status ranging from personality changes to coma, according to the Mayo Clinic. Symptoms can include fainting, lack of sweating, rapid and shallow breathing.

Some workers also received oxygen for shortness of breath at the tent, Chugden said. Pre-existing conditions such as asthma make some people more susceptible to these symptoms.

In addition to heat problems, workers have also complained of headaches, sunburn and insect bites, she said. The 67 patients at the tent were released after treatment.

The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals does not keep track of cases of heat exhaustion because it is difficult to separate out as a symptom, said spokeswoman Olivia Watkins.

Occasionally patients do come in complaining of symptoms that may relate to fumes, Chugden said.

Many of the cleanup workers are wearing Tyvek suits, disposable protective coverings that protect them from the chemicals, said Dr. Jimmy Guidry, state health officer for Louisiana. These suits are necessary because oil can cause skin irritations, but can make the workers very warm, he said.

The suits trap heat near the body, don’t allow the air to cool the skin, and probably hinder the evaporation of sweat, Chugden said.

Some patients have speculated that work conditions are a lot hotter around the oil, he said.

Health experts recommend that workers keep themselves hydrated and take in salt, in the form of something like potato chips, Chugden said. They should sit down and unzip their suits during breaks.

“They’re going to have to make sure that their activity is in spurts, short spurts, and drink plenty of fluids, otherwise they’re going to get dehydrated and get in trouble,” Guidry said.

Medical professionals should take into account whether a patient with heat-related symptoms has been taking medicines, such as those for blood pressure, that would throw off salt balance, said Dr. Doug Swift, associate clinical professor in the department of medicine at Tulane University, who is not involved in caring for oil spill workers. Allergies medications may also make a person more susceptible to heat stress, he said.

In Orange Beach, Alabama, workers cleaning up the beach area wear long pants and hard-soled shoes, Joint Information Center spokesman Brian Sibley told CNN.

They work in shifts of 15 to 20 minutes, then get out of the sun and rehydrate, he said.

BP spokesman John Pack said the company has about 20,000 people working on the oil leak cleanup, and is taking precautions against the heat. The company gets both water and vitamin-rich beverages such as Gatorade, and make sure they take regular breaks when they’re working.

“We obviously monitor in advance what the likely temperature is going to be so we can give advance warning of when the heat’s going to be even more of a problem,” he said.

Kumasi, June 9, GNA – Hundreds of people angered by the recent increases in electricity and water tariffs on Wednesday hit the streets of Kumasi to demand a freeze on the new charges.

Organized by the Alliance for Accountable Governance (AFAG), a pressure group, the placard bearing demonstrators marched through some principal streets of the Metropolis and later converged at the Centre for National Culture, where they were addressed by their leaders.

“Ghana is moving backwards,” “Where is the I care for you slogan?,” “Save us from tax epidemic in Ghana,” “We are getting poorer,” “Harsh economic policies will kill us,” “NDC One, NDC Two, the value is the same,” and “Reduce water and electricity tariffs now” read some of the placards.

Henry Asante, Communications Director of the People’s National Convention, Kwabena Bomfeh, National Youth Organiser of the Convention People’s Party, Anthony Karbo, National Youth Organiser of the New Patriotic Party, Appiatu Ankrah, former Member of Parliament of Lower West Akyem, and Ms Frances Essiam were among those who took turns to address the protestors.

Mr Asante urged the government to deliver on his election pledge of making life better for Ghanaians.

The people, he said, were becoming fed up with the bad economic policies of the government which were worsening their economic situation.

“If the Mills Administration really cares about improving the living conditions of the ordinary Ghanaian then we expect it to act firmly to reduce the increases in tariffs”.

Mr Karbo denounced what he called the mismanagement of the economy, adding that the NDC had proved to be incapable of addressing the socio-economic needs of the people.

This, he said, was evidenced from the near collapse of the National Youth Employment Programme and National Health Insurance Scheme, just two years into the Mills Administration.

Ms Essiam said similar demonstrations would be held across the country until government rescinded the decision to increase the tariffs.

AURANGABAD: Agitated over the death of a motorcyclist in a road accident and refusal by policemen to rush the injured pillion rider to a local hospital, a group of residents set ablaze a police jeep at Haspura village in Aurangabad district on Wednesday afternoon.

Police said that one, Rakesh Sharma, with his friend, Rajiv Kumar, was on way to Daudnagar from Goh on his motorcycle. As the duo reached near Koelwa Mor at Haspura, a school bus carrying general passengers and coming from opposite direction, hit the motorcycle killing Rakesh on the spot and causing serious injuries to Rajiv. Agitated over the death of the youth, the locals blocked the road. The police reached the spot and tried to pacify the residents.

The agitated residents asked the policemen to send Rajiv to a local hospital either by the police vehicle or the school bus. When the policemen refused, a heated argument ensued between them.

Agitated over the policemen’s attitude, the locals pelted the policemen with stones and later set ablaze the police vehicle. As the news of torching of police vehicle spread in the locality, a host of officials including Daudnagar SDO Kamal Nayan, DSP Mohd Azhar Khan, Haspura BDO Om Prakash Pathak, Haspura police station SHO Ajay Kumar Sinha and Goh police station SHO Ashok Kumar reached the spot with additional reinforcements and pacified the agitated residents. The road blockade that continued for over two hours was later lifted by the residents.

Leaders of the state’s powerful nurses union said Wednesday that their members will respect a judge’s order that bars them from striking at University of California hospitals. At the same time, the union plans to rally Thursday at the hospitals and student health centers, as well as two private facilities in the Los Angeles area.

The nurses plan to strike came months after contract negotiations broke down last year over their demand that hospital officials increase staffing at the five hospitals and four student centers.

“Our No. 1 priority remains correcting the chronic staffing issues at University of California medical centers, which we have been unable to resolve,” said Beth Kean, a negotiator with the California Nurses Assn.

A California judge Tuesday issued a temporary restraining order barring more than 10,000 nurses from striking at the UC hospitals and student health centers. In all about 12,000 nurses in the state had planned to join in the walkout.

San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Peter J. Busch said a strike would be contrary to the public interest and might break the law. The order was requested by the California Public Employment Relations Board, a state regulatory agency.

“We’re glad there’s not going to be a one-day strike,” UC spokesman Steve Montiel said. “We always support the right of people to express themselves.”

Union leaders and university officials are scheduled to return to court June 18 for a hearing on the temporary restraining order.

In preparation for the possible strike, UC officials paid staffing agencies to fly in thousands of backup nurses this week at an estimated cost of $10 million to $15 million, Montiel said.

He said the injunction would allow officials to scale back the effort, although he did not have new cost figures Wednesday for the contingency plan. When nurses threatened to strike at the UC hospitals in 2005, a judge issued a similar order that barred them, and the university health system’s contingency plan cost $7 million to $8 million, Montiel said.

Nurses had planned to strike at the UC hospitals, as well as at Marina del Rey Hospital, Citrus Valley Medical Center and Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Centerin San Pedro, Jacobs said.

The injunction does not bar nurses from striking at the three private hospitals, but union officials said Wednesday that they were in bargaining talks with officials from Marina del Rey Hospital and planned to rally at the other two hospitals Thursday.

LANCASTER, Pa. — With simplicity as their credo, Amish farmers consume so little that some might consider them model environmental citizens.

“We are supposed to be stewards of the land,” said Matthew Stoltzfus, a 34-year-old dairy farmer and father of seven whose family, like many other Amish, shuns cars in favor of horse and buggy and lives without electricity. “It is our Christian duty.”

But farmers like Mr. Stoltzfus are facing growing scrutiny for agricultural practices that the federal government sees as environmentally destructive. Their cows generate heaps of manure that easily washes into streams and flows onward into the Chesapeake Bay.

And the Environmental Protection Agency, charged by President Obama with restoring the bay to health, is determined to crack down. The farmers have a choice: change the way they farm or face stiff penalties.

“There’s much, much work that needs to be done, and I don’t think the full community understands,” said David McGuigan, the E.P.A. official leading an effort by the agency to change farming practices here in Lancaster County.

Runoff from manure and synthetic fertilizers has polluted the Chesapeake Bay for years, reducing oxygen rates, killing fish and creating a dead zone that has persisted since the 1970s despite off-and-on cleanup efforts. But of the dozens of counties that contribute to the deadly runoff of nitrogen and phosphorus, Lancaster ranks at the top. According to E.P.A. data from 2007, the most recent available, the county generates more than 61 million pounds of manure a year. That is 20 million pounds more than the next highest county on the list of bay polluters, and more than six times that of most other counties.

The challenge for the environmental agency is to steer the farmers toward new practices without stirring resentment that might cause a backlash. The so-called plain-sect families — Amish and Old Order Mennonites, descended from persecuted Anabaptists who fled Germany and Switzerland in the 1700s — are notoriously wary of outsiders and of the government in particular.

“They are very resistant to government interference, and they object to government subsidies,” said Donald Kraybill, a professor at Elizabethtown College who studies the Amish. “They feel they should take care of their own.”

But the focus on the plain-sect dairy farmers is unavoidable: they own more than 50 percent of Lancaster County’s 5,000-plus farms.

“It’s been an issue over the last 30 years,” Dr. Kraybill said. “We have too many animals here per square acre — too many cows for too few acres.”

For now, the environmental agency’s strategy is to approach each farmer individually in collaboration with state and local conservation officials and suggest improvements like fences to prevent livestock from drifting toward streams, buffers that reduce runoff and pits to keep manure stored safely.

“These are real people with their own histories and their own needs and their own culture,” said John Hanger, the secretary of environmental protection in Pennsylvania. “It’s about treating people right, and in order to treat people right, you’ve got to be able to start where they are at.”

But if that does not work, the government will have to resort to fines and penalties.

Last September, Mr. McGuigan and his colleagues visited 24 farms in a pocket of Lancaster County known as Watson’s Run to assess their practices. Twenty-three of the farms were plain sect; 17 were found to be managing their manure inadequately. The abundance of manure was also affecting water quality. Six of the 19 wells sampled contained E. coli bacteria, and 16 had nitrate levels exceeding those allowed by the E.P.A.

Persuading plain-sect farmers to install fences and buffers underwritten by federal grants has been challenging because of their tendency to shy from government programs, including subsidies. Members neither pay Social Security nor receive its benefits, for example.

Word of the E.P.A.’s farm visits last September traveled rapidly through Amish country, Mr. Stoltzfus said, even though most plain-sect farmers do not have their own phones.

The farmers whom the agency visited declined to be interviewed. But Mr. Stoltzfus, whose brother-in-law was among them, said that as the news circulated, some farmers decided on their own to make changes in anticipation of intervention by the agency.

“I had never heard of the E.P.A. coming out to do inspections,” he said. “I think these practices are going to be required more.”

With help from the Lancaster County Conservation District, Mr. Stoltzfus applied for a government grant to help finance construction of a heifer barn with a manure pit. He expects the grant to cover about 70 percent of the cost.

But some Amish farmers were angered by the agency’s intrusion and its requirements.

“It’s certainly generated controversy,” said Sam Riehl, a farmer in the area. “We wonder whether we are being told what to do, and whether the E.P.A. will make it so that we can’t even maintain our farms.”

Mr. Riehl said he had vowed never to accept a government grant. He does have a manure management plan and a manure pit, he said, although several of his neighbors do not.

Last year the federal Fish and Wildlife Service awarded $500,000 to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to work with the farmers on switching to barnyard runoff controls, streamside forest buffers, no-till farming and cover crops. The money has been lucrative for local agricultural companies like Red Barn Consulting, which has used some of it to hold milk-and-doughnut sessions in barns for Amish farmers and drop off fliers door to door.

The firm’s owner, Peter Hughes, and his employees instruct the farmers on manure management and do free walkthroughs to offer suggestions. In the last six months, Mr. Hughes said, his plain-sect clientele has soared from several dozen farmers to about 200.

Working with the plain sect presents challenges, Mr. Hughes said. For one thing, the group is deeply averse to salesmanship. Then there is the technological communication problem: most of the farmers share a phone booth along a road with several neighbors.

“I had one client who would call me at 5:15 every morning,” he said. “That was his allotted time to use the phone, and that was the only way for us to talk.”

Most days Mr. Hughes is on the road in his pickup visiting farmers. As he drives, he said, he is often struck by the dichotomy between a would-be pastoral ideal and the environmental reality.

“You see those cows and the fields, and it’s beautiful,” he said. “But then there’s that big pile of manure sitting back there.”

Mr. Stoltzfus hopes he is ahead of the game. By adopting new practices and building the manure pit, he thinks he can both help the environment and steer clear of E.P.A. interference.

At midday, Mr. Stoltzfus was placing a bowl of cut fruit into a propane-powered cooler in his backyard, one of the family’s few concessions to technology. Hand-washed black pants and plain cotton dresses fluttered on a clothesline behind him. He offered a taciturn reflection on how quickly things had changed — his willingness to accept the grant, for example.

“A while back, Old Order Amish would not participate in programs like this,” he said, “but farming is getting expensive.”

And then he ended the conversation.

“Is that all?” he said politely but coolly. “I have work to do.”

It was milking time.

MEXICO CITY — Mexican leaders on Wednesday condemned the fatal shooting of a Mexican teenager by the U.S. Border Patrol at the international border in El Paso, as U.S. officials scrambled to investigate the circumstances surrounding the second killing of a Mexican by a U.S. agent in two weeks.

According to preliminary reports from U.S. officials, Border Patrol agents on bicycles were pelted with rocks while trying to apprehend migrants trying to cross illegally from Ciudad Juarez into El Paso near a downtown bridge, an area known for drug and human trafficking, and monitored by video cameras and constant patrols.

U.S. officials said an unidentified Border Patrol agent was defending himself as the officers came under attack. The teenager, Sergio Adrian Hernandez Güereca, 15, was shot in the head Monday, according to Mexican officials. Both governments and the FBI are trying to determine whether Hernandez was standing on U.S. or Mexican soil at the time of the shooting, and whether he was throwing rocks and posed a credible threat to the U.S. agents.

Police in the neighboring state of Chihuahua said the teenager died on the Mexican side of the border. Investigators retrieved a .40-caliber bullet casing.

U.S. officials said the Border Patrol agent has been placed on administrative leave, and a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security issued a statement saying the U.S. government “regrets the loss of life and awaits the results of a complete investigation into this incident.”

Mexican President Felipe Calderón, a close U.S. ally in the drug war raging just south of the border, said Mexico “will use all resources available to protect the rights of Mexican migrants.” In a statement, he said his government “reiterates its rejection to the disproportionate use of force on the part on U.S. authorities on the border with Mexico.”

José Reyes Baeza, the governor of Chihuahua state, said that U.S. agents were too quick to shoot at Mexicans and blamed “the xenophobic and racist conduct” on the passage of a new immigration law in Arizona that allows city and state police to detain people who are in the United States illegally.

José Reyes Ferriz, the mayor Ciudad Juarez, said in a statement that “we cannot tolerate these kind of incidents, where people fight with rocks against firearms, mainly when there are well-trained agents involved in these cases, like Border Patrol agents,” the Associated Press reported. He said the U.S. government must hold the Border Patrol agent accountable if he acted recklessly.

Reyes Ferriz said the Juarez police are reviewing videos taken from the area where the shooting occurred. “Watching those videos, we will be able to establish if Border Patrol agents are the culprit,” he said in a statement.

Tempers are high along the U.S.-Mexico border because of the ongoing violence from the fight against the drug cartels, the Arizona immigration law and an incident two weeks ago in which Anastasio Hernandez, 32, from Mexico, died after a Customs and Border Protection officer shocked him with a stun gun at the San Ysidro border crossing, which separates San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico.

In Ciudad Juarez, a city beset by drug-related violence, the slain teenager’s father told the El Paso Times that his son did not take drugs, was not in a gang and was not trying to cross into the United States. He said his son was just hanging out, as many teenagers do, along the trickle of water that is the Rio Grande and separates the two downtowns.

“He shouldn’t have gotten close to those cowards — what this dog did — shoot into Mexico,” Jesus Hernandez told the El Paso Times.

U.S. Border Patrol agents are routinely pelted with rocks and bottles while chasing and apprehending illegal crossers, and have sometimes been shot at from Mexico. Although most illegal migrants are trying to enter the United States to find work, the borderlands are constantly crisscrossed by drug, human and weapons traffickers, many of them armed.

OIL from the Gulf of Mexico disaster has been found more than 100 miles from the leak, adding to fears of more pollution.

As slicks continued to wash ashore in the US, tests showed that plumes of oil were also lurking deep underwater.

Their presence carries implications for deep-sea life because tiny microbes eat them and consume oxygen, choking off the supply to other organisms.

The impact could cascade up the food chain, cutting off the food supply of larger predators.

The containment cap on the stricken BP wellhead is helping to limit the leak, collecting more than 620,000 gallons of oil.

But it is unclear how much oil is still escaping, and underwater video feeds continued to show a dark geyser.

The amount of oil kept from spilling into the Gulf “has climbed steadily,” Admiral Thad Allen said.

The initial clean-up could take months and the spill’s effects could linger for years. And as the oil patches dance unpredictably from coastline to coastline, residents who depend on tourism and fishing are wondering how to head off the damage or salvage a season that’s nearing its peak.

The random, scattered nature of the oil was evident this week near the Alabama- Florida state line. On the Alabama side, oil-laden seaweed littered beaches for miles, and huge orange globs stained the sands.

But at Perdido Key, on the Florida side, the sand was white and virtually crude-free.

“The daily images of the oil is obviously having an impact,” said Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, the state closest to the leak and the one where the oil is having its most insidious effects on wildlife. “It’s having a heavy, real, very negative impact on our economy.”

Some of the most enduring of those images are of pelicans and other wildlife drenched in oil.

As the sun rose on Barataria Bay, Louisiana, just west of the mouth of the Mississippi River, marsh islands teemed with oily brown pelicans and crude-stained white ibis.

Some struggled to fly, fluttered and fell, while others just sat and tried to clean themselves, squawking and flapping their wings.

Snakes may be declining across the world, according to a global study.

Researchers examined records for 17 snake populations covering eight species over the last few decades, and found most had declined markedly.

For reasons that are not entirely clear, some populations shrank in number abruptly around 1998.

Writing in the journal Biology Letters, the researchers describe the findings as “alarming” but say much more work is needed to understand the causes.

“This is the first time that data has been analysed in this way, and what we’ve shown is that in different parts of the world we seem to have this steep decline in a short period,” said project leader Chris Reading.

“It surprised us when we realised what we were looking at,” he told BBC News.

“And we don’t have a clue what it was about that period of time (around 1998).”

Dr Reading’s team at the UK’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology ran the study with institutions in Australia, France, Italy and Nigeria.

Data deficiencies

The main problem for anyone wanting to conduct a global survey such as this is simply lack of data.

Monitoring snake populations means marking the individuals in some way – typically by snipping a pattern into their scales, or implanting a microchip.

Field seasons can last for many months, and have to be repeated annually.

The researchers believe they amassed most, if not all, long-term datasets for this study – although “long-term” in this context means going back more than one decade, in some cases more than two.

Nevertheless, within this relatively short timeframe, eight of the 17 populations were seen to fall markedly in size – some by more than 90% – with only one showing any sign of a rise.

Species in decline include the asp and the smooth snake from Europe, the Gabon viper and rhinoceros viper of West Africa, and the royal python.

Populations shrank even in protected areas, suggesting that the progressive loss of habitat for wild animals being seen all over the world is not the only cause.

Similar steep declines observed in frogs and newts in an earlier period were eventually found to be caused by the fungal disease chytridiomycosis.

The year when many of the snake declines began – 1998 – raises the question of whether climatic factors might be involved, as very strong El Nino conditions contributed to making it the hottest year recorded in modern times.

Dr Reading’s research group suggests many causes might be involved, and is appealing to other researchers to come forward with any more long-term datasets that might broaden the picture.

“The purpose of this paper was to say ‘this is what we’ve found’, and to say to other herpetologists ‘now go and look at your own data’,” he said.

“But I think that with so many populations in different places showing decline, it’s more than co-incidence.”

A pro-Maoist activist has been arrested for his involvement in the sabotage that derailed a passenger train in West Bengal killing 148 people, police said Thursday.

Samir Mahato, a member of the militant wing of the People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA), was taken into custody from Jhargram in West Midnapore district Monday night, a police official said.

This is the second arrest the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has made following the May 28 derailment of Gyaneshwari Express. The first man to be arrested was Khagen Mahato.

As the Mumbai-bound train ran off the tracks because of Maoist sabotage, a speeding freight train rammed into five derailed coaches. In all, 148 passengers were killed. Scores were injured.

‘Samir Mahato was arrested from his Kushumaghati village and brought to the CIB headquarters here,’ Deputy Inspector General Anuj Sharma told IANS.

Samir Mahato, a close aide of Khagen Mahato, was allegedly engaged by the latter to keep a vigil on the movement of security forces while other members of the militia wing cut away steel clips that keep the rail fixed to the sleeper.

‘We have a lot of evidence about Samir’s involvement,’ Sharma said.

The Jhargram additional chief judicial magistrate sent the suspect to police custody.

The arrest came hours after West Bengal Home Secretary Samar Ghosh said the police would wind up the case and hand over all findings to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which has been engaged by the central government to probe the case.