20 arrested in Uganda following World Cup suicide attacks

POLICE have arrested a second batch of suspects in connection to last Sunday's terrorist attacks in Kampala which killed 76.

The two explosions are thought to have been carried out by suicide bombers.

Six others had already been arrested.

Al-Shabaab, the Islamist insurgents who fight to overthrow the UN-backed government in Somalia, have claimed responsibility for the attacks.

The police said the suspects came from Uganda, Somalia and Ethiopia.

The arrests come as Ugana is preparing to host the 15 African Union summit meeting this month; more than 50 African heads of state are expected to attend.

Uganda has 3,500 soldiers in Somalia's capital Mogadishu defending the government under the auspices of the African Union.

Russia's heat wave leads to record number of drunks drowning in lakes

Thousands of people have drowned in Russia as it goes through a record-breaking summer.

Sweltering heat has seen people take to lakes and rivers to cool off. However many have done so under the influence of alcohol.

Russia's emergency ministry said 400 people have drowned since the beginning of July and 1,244 drowned in June.

Another problem is a lack of lifeguards and safety equipment.

In a shocking case two teachers were charged with negligence this week after six children and an instructor drowned during a summer camp trip to a beach on the Sea of Azov in southern Russia.

They were swept away by strong currents after the teachers allowed them to swim without safety equipment. Investigators said one of the teachers was drunk.

The summer is the hottest in living memory. Temperatures in Moscow reached 33 degrees Celcius on Friday, breaking a 1938 record.

Last week the temperature in Saint Petersburg reached 38 degrees Celcius. The heat wave is forecast to continue till July 22.

An emergency drought situation has been declared in 19 of Russia's 83 regions with crops dying in an estimated 9.6 million hectares of fields.

Canada spy chief accuses China of buying politicians

Canada’s spy chief has caused controversy and embarrassment for his country’s Prime Minister by claiming Canadian politicians are under the influence of foreign powers.
Richard Fadden has been director of CSIS - Canada's MI6 - for little more than a year. He made the allegations on an interview for The National news channel which was the broadcast across the country.
The remarks came a day before Chinese Premier Hu Jintao landed in Ottawa on a state visit.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper criticised Fadden for talking too openly about matters considered to be top secret. The comments also met a storm of protest from several politicians.
Proving that China still sees its citizens as pawns, Chinese students on scholarships to Canada were bused in to line the streets. Wearing red shirts and waving their national flag, their presence was an attempt to crowd out the protestors who also took to the streets, campaigning against China’s human rights violations.

North Korea threatens all-out war...again. This time are they for real?

Tensions couldn't be more strained on the divided Korean peninsula. North Korea has become increasingly belicose to its southern adversary and its allies.

The communist state has threatened to unleash its military muscle if the UN releases documents confirming that the South Korean vessel Cheonan was sunk by a North Korean torpedo.

However this is hardly the first time the North has threatened war.

It threaten to "reduce the South to ashes" in 2008 following the South Korean Defence Minister's claim that his country could destroy the North's nuclear sites with a pre-emptive strike.

Then came a new UN resolution in May 2009 which allowed North Korean vessels to be stopped and searched. The North wasted little time in stating how intent it was in using military action should such an event occur.

And yet in August 2009 the Indian Navy detained a North Korean ship off the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. There was no military response by North Korea.

It is same tactic of brinkmanship the country has employed time and time again. It threatens to unleash carnage and destruction on its southern neighbour, South Korea and its allies condemn the threats, then both sides back down.

And yet this time there is a hint that North Korea has a stronger resolve to go to war than before. Never before have they delivered such a threat in a speech to the UN.

Maybe the internal power struggles that are taking place as an ailing Kim Jong-Il tries to groom his younger son for power have made the military more determined to follow through on their military threat.

However North Korea knows that if it follows through on its threat of all-out war, it ultimately has everything to lose. And it will.

Taxpayers' money is funding "both sides" of Afghan war

A sinister twist was added to NATO's military operation in Afghanistan when it was revealed that private security companies were being investigated for colluding with the Taliban.

Two of the biggest security firms operating in Afghanistan have been accused of paying the Taliban to attack NATO conveys, therefore increasing demand for the demand for their services.

After a pair of bloody confrontations with Afghan civilians, Watan Risk Management and Compass Security were banned from escorting NATO convoys between Kabul and Kandahar.

The ban was put in place on 14 May but at 10.30am on the same day a NATO convoy was attacked. After two weeks more than 1,000 lorries sat stalled on the highway, forcing the Afghan government to allow the two companies to resume their activities.

Many security companies have ties relatives of President Karzai and other senior Afghan officials. Roshid Popal, president of Watan Risk Management, is a cousin of Mr Karzai and the companies largest shareholder is believed by Western officials to be Mr Karzai's brother Qayum.

Officials in charge of the investigation suspect that some security companies are bribing the Taliban with American taxpayers' money.

The suspicions raise complex questions about the conduct of operations, since the convoys, and the supplies they deliver, are the lifeblood of the war effort.

"We're funding both sides of the war," a NATO official in Kabul said. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was incomplete, said he believed millions of dollars were making its way to the Taliban.

My trip to North Korea

With relations between North and South Korea at an all time low following the torpedoing of a South Korean warship by a North Korean submarine, my visit to the world’s most reclusive state in 2008 seems all the more distant.
Back then cooperation between the two countries, which are technically still at war, was at an unprecedentedly high level. 2007 saw President Roo Moo-Hyun being greeted by the Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il himself in Pyongyang, the two men walking alongside each other down a red carpet, smiling.
Moo-Hyun’s predecessor Kim Dae-Jung’s Sunshine Policy had sought a more peaceful relationship with North Korea by providing aid to the impoverished country.
In return the North eventually allowed South Korean companies to ply the cheap labour north of the DMZ.
“Special economic zones” were set up and for the first time in history South Koreans were allowed to visit the North, albeit only to a couple of destinations and with soldiers watching their every move.
But then it all changed. Lee Myoung Bak was elected as President in December 2007, finally winning power for his conservative Grand National Party after its shock defeat to Roh Moo Hyeon’s left-wing Millenium Democractic Party in 2002.
The new government took a tougher stance on its communist neighbour, criticising former president Kim Dae-Jung’s (1997-2002) Sunshine Policy for merely appeasing and propping up the repressive North Korean state and jeopardising relations with its key ally the US.
Ironically the South’s decision to challenge the North more directly came at a sensitive moment. The US was trying desperately to secure a deal whereby North Korea would decommission its nuclear weapons and facilities in exchange for aid.
Despite the symbolic destruction of a cooling tower the six-party talks collapsed without any real progress being made. North Korea remains a nuclear threat following its first successful testing of a nuclear device in 2006.
Relations nosedived when the South Korean defence minister said in a meeting to discuss military strategy that his country could launch a pre-emptive strike on North Korea’s nuclear sites.
This prompted the North to retort in its usual hyperbolic character when it threatened to “reduce the South to ashes”.
The sinking of the Cheonan has severed the few diplomatic channels that the South had carefully built up over the years with the North.
Yet despite this flagrant act of aggression the peninsula is not likely to go to war. Incidents like this have been a hallmark its divided history over the past sixty years.
For instance North Korea once sent in a team of assassins in an attempt to kill the South Korean president, but the attempt failed.
At the end of 2007 it was clear the North Korean regime was willing to tolerate an element of capitalism within its borders. The special economic zones along the Chinese and South Korean borders were evidence of that.
But now the regime has shown its willingness to crack down on the black markets that have popped up throughout the country. At the end of 2009 the government revalued its currency, wiping out people’s savings.
Insiders warn that without the black markets thousands of people will starve, unable to afford food.
The Dear Leader’s pride is evidently trumps his desperate need for money. Before relations soured in 2008 North Korea had opened up two areas to South Korean tourists to visit on short trips.
In April 2008, I went on one of those trips.
I was one of six non-Koreans on the trip. We boarded a bus from Seoul in the early hours of a Saturday morning and began the disconcertingly short journey to the DMZ, or de-militarised zone, the biggest misnomer in the world.
Leaving the glitzy, vibrant metropolis of Seoul and its surroundings and in less than two hours having my mobile phone confiscated and dropped in a polythene bag was the closest I will ever come to being in a time machine.
After being surrendered to the hospitality of the North Korean army our convoy of no less than six buses continued into the world’s largest open prison.
There was no other traffic on the roads, save a Volkswagen camper van lookalike complete with four roof-mounted speakers to blare out the daily propaganda.
The town we passed through was crumbling. Where there was still paint it was flaking off. Few of the buildings looked like they had been built since the 60s
This town, Kaesong, was for show. It was the best North Korea had to offer, and the poverty was rife. The people who were allowed on the streets rode identical bicycles and bland clothing. Occasionally you spotted children too curious to stay hidden. They were dressed in rags.
What made it all the more sinister and surreal was the presence of the army. A fifth of the population is in military service, and in Kaesong there was a soldier standing on every corner, standing as tall as their malnourished frames would allow and completely still.
They made it like some bizarre toy town or model village. I pondered the possibility that the windows were in fact TV screens and were on some elaborate and theme park ride.
Nowhere else had I felt my presence so heavy. We had put an entire country on hold. As we left the town and drove up into the mountains, soldiers dotted the landscape. They stood in front of remote hamlets, making sure no one dared creep outside as we passed.
We were allowed out only in a couple of secluded and heavily guarded areas. The first was up in the mountains by a scenic waterfall. The second was in Kaesong where the walls were just high enough to stop us seeing the local people on the other side. I stood on a stone to peek over, but was soon encouraged to get down by a guard.
My proudest moment helped make our bus the last to leave the compound where we had had lunch. As we were late we drove straight past the gigantic bronze statue of Kim Il Sung which sits atop a hill allowing him an unrivalled view of the town. The other bus passengers had to get out and bow before the Great Leader.
By the end of the day I was back in the South Korean capital, Seoul. It was hard to absorb what I had seen that day. It was even harder to believe that just one hour away lay a world so completely cut off from our own.
Were it not the most secretive, reclusive and repressive state on earth, I might have described it as a refreshing respite from our increasingly globalised world. But instead the only positive thing I have to say is that I enjoyed the fresh air. The lives of those who breathe it every day is too ghastly to bear.

Israeli commandos storm aid ship with paintball guns

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/10199480.stm

Extreme paintball! Seriously, paintball guns? The Israelis are going soft!