Report: Congo rebels smuggling out $500 million a year in gold
By Carol J. Williams
M23 rebels in the lawless eastern reaches of the Democratic Republic of Congo have built alliances with local gangs to gain control of lucrative gold mines and smuggle out $500 million a year of the precious metal to finance their brutal attacks, a Washington-based human rights group reported Thursday.
Despite M23 leader Bosco Ntaganda's surrender to war crimes investigators in The Hague this year, his co-commander has succeeded in reviving a brisk trade in "conflict minerals," according to the report by Enough, which bills its mission as ending genocide and crimes against humanity.
De facto M23 commander Sultani Makenga has joined forces with armed groups -- including some rivals -- in Congo's mineral-rich east, from which they smuggle out gold through Uganda and Burundi for sale to jewelers in the United Arab Emirates, Enough reported in "Striking Gold."
Elephants understand pointing, scientists show
Scientists claim elephants inhabit as complex a social system as humans so they can recognise unspoken signals and make them
Elephants understand pointing without being trained to recognise the human gesture, research has shown.
Scientists believe they may even use their trunks to communicate in a similar way to pointing. The ability may have evolved from the complex social system elephants inhabit, which involves recognising unspoken signals.
The findings, published in the journal Current Biology, shed light on the way elephants have been associated with humans for thousands of years.
The creatures seem to possess a natural ability to interact with humans despite not being domesticated in the same way as horses, dogs and camels.
Jobs not ‘benefit tourism’ the reason migrants move around EU, says report
Report dispels notion abusing welfare systems is main motive
Suzanne Lynch
There is no evidence EU citizens who move to another member state are “more intensive users” of social welfare than nationals of that member state, a study commissioned by the European Commission has found.
The report, which will be published in the coming days and has been seen by The Irish Times, is likely to reignite the debate about so-called “benefit tourism” – people moving to another country to receive social benefits rather than to work.
The UK has raised concerns about migrants’ access to benefits, with David Cameronpledging to put the issue at the heart of his planned “renegotiation” of the relationship with the EU.
SYRIA
HRW report accuses Syrian rebels of 'crimes against humanity'
Human Rights Watch has accused groups within the Syrian opposition of committing atrocities against civilians. The allegations come as world leaders seek to arrange peace talks aimed at ending the Syrian civil war.
Syrian opposition fighters launched an offensive against civilians in the coastal province of Latakia in early August, during which some 190 people were killed, according to a report published by the New York-based group Human Rights Watch. The villagers who came under attack were Alawites, the same minority sect to which Syrian President Bashar al-Assad belongs.
The report based its finding on investigations carried out in Latakia in the weeks that followed the assault.
"The findings strongly suggest that the killings, hostage taking, and other abuses rise to the level of war crimes and crimes against humanity," Human Rights Watch (HRW) said.
Scientists find evidence of an apocalypse in another planetary system
October 11, 2013John von Radowitz
London: Evidence of an apocalypse in a planetary system similar to our own has been uncovered by astronomers studying a dying star.
The shredded remains of a watery asteroid suggest that hundreds of millions of years ago the system may have harboured Earth-like habitable planets.
But any intelligent beings living there must have departed - assuming they had mastered space travel - or been extinguished as their sun blew up and then collapsed into a "white dwarf".
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Scientists believe six billion years from now, alien astronomers studying the burned out remains of our Sun may come to the same conclusion.
Overcrowding pushes some of El Salvador's criminals outside prison walls
In 2012, El Salvador's prison system housed three times its proper capacity. Where do excess criminals end up?
El Salvador’s prisons are wretched, overcrowded hellholes, among the worst in Latin America, but for William Romero Cartagena a trip to prison would be a step up in life.
Mr. Romero is among 3,000 or so detainees currently housed in police station holding cells, unable to get remanded to one of the nation’s 19 prisons. The holding cells are even more crowded and ghastly than the prisons.
Romero, 23, was accused a few months ago of extortion. Since then he’s been held in a cell that measures no more than 9 feet by 9 feet. It contains 23 men. It has no toilet. Feces are passed out on a plate for removal.
On a recent day, Romero stood grasping the cell’s bars. Behind him were shirtless men, sitting or squatting. One inmate lay in a homemade hammock fashioned from plastic shopping bags.
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