Today's Top Islamic News (DAILY)

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US citizen charged with abusing 18 Haitian boys
Mon, 01 Feb 2010 07:53:19 GMT

Douglas Perlitz, 39, is charged with the sexual abuse of 18 Haitian boys.

Additional charges have been leveled against an American national once indicted for abusing Haitian boys he was supposed to be helping.

Douglas Perlitz, 39, founded and operated a home and school for needy children in Haiti, known as Project Pierre Toussaint.

But he was arrested in his home in Colorado in September 2009 after a federal grand jury indicted him on 10 counts related to the abuse of nine boys over a period of 10 years.

Prosecutors on Thursday pushed an additional nine counts against Perlitz, bringing the number of his abuse victims to a total of 18.

The American national, who lived in Haiti for years, is accused of enticing the boys into sexual acts with promises of food and shelter, and with gifts, such as cell phones and cash.

According to the new indictment in Federal District Court in Connecticut, Perlitz offered money to one of the boys and assured him that he would not be expelled from school even if he failed his classes.

He allegedly gave another boy and his family money and other benefits, and in another case, offered a television, shoes, clothes and meals to another boy, demanding sexual acts and silence in return.

Those who refused to cooperate with Perlitz were denied benefits, the indictment added.

Douglas Perlitz, scheduled to appear in federal court in New Haven on Tuesday, would face a maximum of 30 years in prison and fine of $2.5 million if convicted.

A group of five men and five women, all US citizens, are being held in the Haitian capital over suspicions of child trafficking.

They were booked on Friday night as they were moving 33 children, earthquake survivors aged from 2 months to 12 years old, without proper documents.

MRS/JG

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BBC
'Bin Laden' blames US for global warming

Osama Bin Laden, file pic
The al-Qaeda leader issues sporadic tape messages

A new message said to be from al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden has blamed global warming on the US and other big industrial nations.

The audio tape, broadcast on al-Jazeera TV, urges a boycott of the US dollar "to free humankind from slavery".

It comes days after another tape said to be from Bin Laden was released, praising the attempted bombing of a US airliner on 25 December.

The authenticity of neither tape has been verified.

But IntelCenter, a US group that monitors Islamist activity, has said the voice on the earlier tape appeared to be that of Bin Laden.

"All industrial nations, mainly the big ones, are responsible for the crisis of global warming," the latest tape says.

"This is a message to the whole world about those who are causing climate change, whether deliberately or not, and what we should do about that."

Bush the son, and the [US] Congress before him, rejected this [Kyoto Protocol] agreement only to satisfy the big companies
'Bin Laden' audio tape

Is Bin Laden dead or alive?
Timeline: Search for Bin Laden

The tape criticises the administration of former US President George W Bush for not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol on combating climate change.

"Bush the son, and the [US] Congress before him, rejected this agreement only to satisfy the big companies."

The tape also urges a boycott of the US dollar. "I know that there would be huge repercussions for that, but this would be the only way to free humankind from slavery... to America and its companies."

Responding to the earlier audio tape, also broadcast on al-Jazeera, US President Barack Obama said it indicated how weakened Osama Bin Laden had become.

"Bin Laden sending out a tape trying to take credit for a Nigerian student who engaged in a failed bombing attempt is an indication of how weakened he is, because this is not something necessarily directed by him," he said.

A Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, is charged with attempting to blow up a transatlantic US airliner over Detroit on 25 December.

The Yemen-based regional wing of al-Qaeda has said it was behind the attempted attack.

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Dubai police hint Mossad may be behind assassination
Sun, 31 Jan 2010 18:06:24 GMT

Head of Dubai's law enforcement refuses to rule out that the Israeli intelligence apparatus, Mossad, may have been behind the recent assassination of a senior Hamas commander.

"It could be Mossad," police chief Dhahi Khalfan was quoted as saying by AFP about the targeted killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the co-founder of the Palestinian resistance movement's armed wing, Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, in a Dubai hotel on January 20.
"Personally, I don't exclude any possibility. I don't exclude any party that has an interest in the assassination," he said.

The death squad included "seven or more people holding passports from different European countries," the police chief said. "We are currently in contact with these European countries to verify the authenticity of the passports."

According to the Times of London, the hitmen had subjected Mabhouh to an injection which induced a heart attack, photographed the documents in his briefcase and left a "do not disturb" sign on the door of the hotel room where the crime was committed.

Hamas has accused Israel of carrying out the hit. In a statement, the movement said, "we hold Israel responsible for the assassination of our brother and leader."

Izzat al-Rishq, a member of the Hamas political bureau told Press TV that the victim "spent a long time in Israeli jails and when he was released from prison, they monitored him as he continued to play his important role in continuing to implement resistance activities in Palestinian refugee camps and as a result he was targeted."

HN/HGH/MD

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Alarm at Mumbai's teen suicide trend

By Zubair Ahmed
BBC News, Mumbai

Sharadashram Vidyamandir school
Sharadashram Vidyamandir school has been rocked by Shushant Patil's death

A writer once said that more than one soul dies in a suicide.

It seems so in Neha Sawant's home. The atmosphere in the tiny flat in Mumbai has been lifeless since the 11-year-old was found hanging from her apartment window.

It has been weeks but her parents are still in deep shock. They look dazed and sleep-deprived.

Neha's distraught grandmother said in a broken voice: "Our brains are not working. We still cannot believe it."

Neha, at 11, must be one of the youngest in Mumbai to commit suicide. Figures suggest that more and more teenagers in India's financial hub are killing themselves.

Dizzying

Inexplicably, teen suicides have become an almost daily occurrence in Maharashtra - one of India's most developed states - and its capital Mumbai (Bombay).


Rhea Timbekar
Something has gone amiss in [children's] lives quite early and suicides are a manifestation of that
Rhea Timbekar

The toll of teen suicides from the beginning of the year until 26 January 2010 stood at 32, which is more than one a day.

While there are no comparative figures for the same period in 2009, there is a consensus among the concerned authorities in Mumbai that teen suicides are spiralling out of control.

There is also a general agreement between psychologists and teachers that the main reason for the high number of teen deaths is increasing pressure on children to perform well in exams.

The scale of this largely preventable problem is dizzying - both in India and particularly in the state of in Maharashtra.

More than 100,000 people commit suicide in India every year and three people a day take their own lives in Mumbai.

Suicide is one of the top three causes of death among those aged between 15 and 35 years and has a devastating psychological, social and financial impact on families and friends.

'Needless toll'

World Health Organisation Assistant Director-General Catherine Le Gals-Camus points out more people die from suicide around the world than from all homicides and wars combined.

"There is an urgent need for co-ordinated and intensified global action to prevent this needless toll. For every suicide death there are scores of family and friends whose lives are devastated emotionally, socially and economically," she says.


Mangala Kulkarni
The children don't realise they have more avenues than academic successes
School principal Mangala Kulkarni

In Mumbai the authorities are so alarmed by the scale of the problem that they have began a campaign, Life is Beautiful, which aims to help students cope with academic pressure.

Psychologists visit government schools in Mumbai once a week to train teachers dealing with students' problems.

Sharadashram Vidyamandir school boasts illustrious alumni such as cricketers Sachin Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli. It has been holding parent-teacher assemblies where parents can receive tips on tackling the pressures children face.

And yet such sessions could not prevent 12-year-old Shushant Patil's death. He was found hanging in the school toilet on 5 January.

Mangala Kulkarni is the principal of the girls' section of the school. She says that ultimately families need to be more proactive when it comes to stopping students from feeling stressed.

"The children don't realise they have more avenues than academic successes. They need to be made to realise this by their families from childhood," she said.

Blockbuster

A helpline in Mumbai, called Aasra, has been operating for several years to tackle the problem.

The director of the helpline, Johnson Thomas, says the problems today's children face are manifold: "They have peer pressure, they have communication problems with their parents, broken relationships, academic pressure and fear of failure," he says.

Aasra class in Mumbai
Classes to help vulnerable teenagers are now being held

The home ministry estimates that for every teen suicide in Mumbai there are 13 failed attempts.

One theory behind the recent rise is the influence of a recently released Bollywood blockbuster, Three Idiots, which has a scene where an engineering student is shown committing suicide after a mediocre exam result.

The film's impact has been debated and scrutinised in prime time television shows, with many directly blaming it for adding to the problem.

But Mumbai clinical psychologist Rhea Timbekar argues that it would be wrong to blame the film, which she says strives to explain that parents should not put too much pressure on their children.

Ms Timbekar says that she recently met a child who had not eaten for four days.

The child's parents said they were upset with him because he only got 89% in exams and stood third in the class, compared to coming first in previous years.

"Such parents need to be counselled", she asserts.

Ms Timbekar said that another explanation for the high teen suicide rate was "copycat suicides" where children read about suicides in newspapers and decide to do the same thing themselves.

'Extreme steps'

Dilip Panicker, an eminent psychologist in Mumbai, says that pressure of exams is alone is too simplistic an explanation.

Pupil at Sharadashram Vidyamandir school
It's hoped that young people will have a brighter future

"At one level school pressures and expectations from parents are a valid reason," he says, "but that's always been there.

"In fact, parents used to beat up their kids in our time. What's changed is that today children are more aware, they have more exposure. They are more independent. So they blame themselves for failures and take extreme steps."

Psychologists also argue that the definition of a teenager needs to be revised in 2010.

"Today's 11-year-olds are the new teens. What we did at the ages of 14 and 15 children can do at 11 today," says Rhea Timbekar.

She demolishes the theory that children are more likely to be spontaneous in committing suicide, as opposed to adults who start with an idea, proceed with a plan and end with action.

"A child doesn't just wake up in the morning and says I will commit suicide today," she argues. "Something has gone amiss in their lives quite early on and suicides are a manifestation of that."

The breakdown of India's traditional family system is also being blamed for the problem. In a city like Mumbai - where it is common for both parents to work - children tend to become reclusive and watch too much television.

Dilip Panicker argues that there is a simple solution.

"If parents love their children unconditionally, with all their successes and failures, the problem would be greatly alleviated."

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February begins with US casualty in Afghanistan
Mon, 01 Feb 2010 08:23:29 GMT

Another American soldier has been killed in a bomb explosion in southern Afghanistan as the first US service member to lose life in February, 2010. -- Today 01-02-2010

NATO confirmed the death in a statement on Monday without giving further details.

The US military death toll in Afghanistan has been on the rise. In January, at least 29 soldiers were killed compared to 14 deaths in the same month last year.

Earlier on Saturday, two American soldiers were shot dead in a gun battle in Wardak province, southwest of the capital city of Kabul.

The US and its allies have planned to send more troops to the war-torn country despite the fact that public support of the eight-year conflict continues to drop.

Many thousands of Afghan civilians have lost their lives in the controversial war.

AGB/TG/DT

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Gunmen kill 13 students at high school party in Mexico
REUTERS, 1 February 2010, 01:24am IST

MEXICO: Suspected drug hitmen burst into a party and killed 13 high school students, on Sunday in Ciudad Juarez, the latest massacre in one of the world's deadliest cities, Mexican media and witnesses said.

Gunmen jumped out of sport utility vehicles and fired at the students, who were celebrating victory in a local American Football championship, in a house in the city across the border from El Paso, Texas, in the early hours of Sunday.

"The men drove up in four SUVs, they were well-armed. They went into the house and shot at everyone, you could hear the gunfire all around," a neighbor at the scene said.

It was not immediately clear why the gunmen attacked the students.

But drug hitmen have attacked parties in the city, searching for rivals, while police have reported that some teenagers have been involved in kidnapping others.

Ciudad Juarez is the bloodiest city in Mexico's drug war as rival cartels fight over markets and control of smuggling routes into the United States.

Violence is escalating even as federal police and soldiers patrol the streets.

Some 2,650 people were killed in drug violence in Ciudad Juarez last year and cartel murders have jumped since the start of 2010.

In some of the worst attacks, gunmen have stormed at least seven drug rehabilitation clinics in the manufacturing city over the past two years targeting rival dealers.

Two strikes in September killed 28 people. Mexico is the key transit route for US-bound cocaine from South America and a top producer of marijuana and heroin.

A military crackdown on rival cartels in Mexico has fueled a surge in drug violence that has killed more than 17,000 people over the past three years.

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Australia most sinful nation in the world: Study
PTI, 29 January 2010, 02:15pm IST

MELBOURNE: Australia is the most sinful nation on the Earth, a study has claimed as the country ranked first overall in seven deadly sins, which include lust, greed and pride.

"The country that gave the world The Body, Sylvania Waters and Les Patterson has been ranked first overall in a study of the seven deadly sins - lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride," according to 'Courier Mail' newspaper that qouted the latest edition of BBC's focus magazine.

Australia took out the dubious honour in the edition of BBC's magazine of science, technology and the future.

While US topped the table for gluttony, South Korea topped the list for lust.

Iceland ranked number one for both pride and sloth and Mexico topped the list for greed, the study revealed.

Australia's biggest weakness was envy and ranked in the top 10 in all categories to give a higher aggregate than the US, Canada, Finland or Britain.

The article, which argues that people are "bad" by nature, has found social data to compare nations under the categories of wrath, sloth, pride, lust, greed, gluttony and envy. The report said the to determine country's wrongdoigns, the researchers studied levels of violent crime by comparing incidents of assault, rape and murder per 1000 people.

For sloth, they looked at the number of days off workers have. For pride the comparison was made on plastic surgery rates per capita, and for lust they looked at the amount people spent on porn.

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After test failure, US warns Iran over defensive missiles
Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:41:56 GMT

A modified "target vehicle" in a missile test over the Marshall Islands in the Pacific
Amid failure of the US long-range ballistic missile test over the Pacific Ocean, the Pentagon warns Iran continue to pursue long-range ballistic missiles.

The Pentagon released a report that described the intermediate and shorter-range missiles of Iran and North Korea as " threats" to US forces, allies and partners.

On Sunday, the US military fired a ballistic missile at a US Army site at the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Island and minutes later launched a ground-based interceptor missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in an attempt to shoot down the ballistic missile.

However, the sea-based X-band radar "did not perform as expected" in the test, the MDA said in a statement.

The US Air Force says both missiles performed well during the launch and the flight phases but the system's sea-based radar fell short of expectations.

Iran has repeatedly announced that its missiles are defensive and aimed at increasing the country's deterrence capability with regard to mounting war threats mainly by the US and Israel over its nuclear program.

The test comes as the US has reportedly begun beefing up its military presence and war paraphernalia thousands of miles away from the American soil near the Iranian coast in addition to imposing new sanctions on the Tehran government.

Unnamed US military officials said that Washington has taken silent steps to increase the capability of land-based Patriot missiles on the territory of some Arab states in the Persian Gulf region.

After a recent wave of developments in the Middle East that strongly imply preparations for a possible new military conflict in the region, Israel has allegedly increased the scope of its undercover operations in the region, particularly against Lebanon, Iran, Syria and the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas.

For years Israeli politicians have masterminded a wave of undercover operations and terror plots in numerous countries, including Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Switzerland, and the US.

In their most recent remarks Israeli officials have threatened Lebanon and Iran with 'inevitable confrontation' and 'heavy measures.'

Much of Israel's espionage operations have lately been focused on the Tehran government, largely because of Iran's uranium enrichment activities, which Tel Aviv has been seeking to portray as a serious threat.

Tel Aviv, which is reported to have an arsenal of 200 nuclear warheads itself, accuses Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons and routinely threatens to reduce the country's enrichment sites to rubble.

This is while Iran, unlike Israel, is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has opened its enrichment facilities to UN inspection.

SF/DT

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'Laws of science do not apply in Aafia Siddiqui case'
Tue, 02 Feb 2010 02:07:40 GMT

Aafia Siddiqui's lawyer says the laws of science do not apply in the case against the Pakistani woman who is charged with attempting to murder US soldiers and FBI agents.

Siddiqui is accused of grabbing a US warrant officer's M-4 rifle in a police station in Ghazni, Afghanistan and firing two shots at FBI agents and military personnel when being interrogated for her alleged possession of documents detailing a 'terrorist' plan.

On Monday, Siddiqui's lawyer Linda Moreno said in the final stages of her trial in the Manhattan Federal Court that the "science" supported her testimony that she didn't touch the weapon or fire it, The Wall Street Journal reported.

"Where are the bullet holes? …Did the Afghanis take the bullet holes? …There is no physical evidence that an M-4 rifle was touched by Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, let alone fired," Moreno said.

She went on to say that Siddiqui appears to have been interrogated in a "sort of a Bermuda Triangle of a room" in which the evidence of the alleged crime had disappeared before reaching the courtroom.

"According to the government, the laws of science don't exist in that small room in Ghazni, Afghanistan. The laws of physics don't apply."

The prosecution says she burst from behind a curtain and attempted the 'murder' and was shot in the abdomen.

Last week, Siddiqui said she was concerned about being transferred to a "secret" prison by the US forces and was trying to slip out of the room when she was shot. "I'm telling you what I know. I walked toward the curtain. I was shot and I was shot again. I fainted," she said.

The prosecutors condemned the defense as 'lies.' "She raised her right hand and she lied to your face. She lied and lied and lied," Prosecutor Christopher LaVigne was quoted by The New York Daily News as saying in the closing arguments of the trial.

"We're here, folks, because the defendant committed attempted murder. She had the motive to do it. She had the know-how to do it," La Vigne was quoted by the Journal as saying, despite the accused's insistence that she did not even know how to use firearms.

The defendant was thrown out of the trial twice after protesting over not being given "a chance to speak," calling the trial a sham and saying her children had been tortured.

Siddiqui vanished in Karachi, Pakistan with her three children on March 30, 2003. The next day it was reported in local newspapers that she had been taken into custody on terrorism charges.

US officials allege that she was seized on July 17, 2008 by Afghan security forces in Ghazni province and claim that documents, including formulas for explosives and chemical weapons, were found in her handbag.

She has been brought to the United States to face charges of attempted murder and assault. Siddiqui faces 20 years in prison on the attempted murder charges and life in prison on the firearms charge.

HN/HGL

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US says will not back off from Taiwan deal
Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:33:28 GMT

US Patriot missiles PAC-3 launchers
US Deputy Undersecretary of the Air Force Bruce Lemkin says Washington will not back off from its deal to sell weapons to Taiwan despite China's threats.

"This is a policy decision based on principle and based on our commitment in the Taiwan Relations Act," Lemkin said on Tuesday.

China suspended military exchanges with the US and threatened to impose sanctions on US arms companies after Washington stated its military cooperation with Taiwan.

The 6.4 billion-dollar arms sale to Taiwan includes Black Hawk helicopters, Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles, mine hunter ships and information technology.

"I think it's unfortunate that China has reacted the way it has," said Lemkin, who made the remark on Tuesday after Beijing once again warned Washington that their relations could suffer and urged US companies to back away from the deal.

"China-US relations, in important international and regional issues, will inevitably be influenced and the responsibility completely lies with the United States," said foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu.

A number of other issues such as US President Barack Obama's plan to meet with the exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, and Google's complaint of China's cyber attacks have strained ties between the two nations.

AGB/TG/DT