Here is the Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 edition of what’s making news and interesting reads from around the world. Also please note that off to the left there are two widgets with updates on news from Asia and the world in a separate page: Around Asia & Around the World New Feeds.
Obama Administration Halts Release of Yemeni Detainees at Guantánamo
The Obama administration said Tuesday that it is suspending the repatriation of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay to Yemen, where a deteriorating security situation driven by a branch of al-Qaeda has stoked fears that detainees could join up with the radical Islamist group. The decision affects at least 30 Yemenis who had been cleared for release by a Justice Department-led inter-agency review. These individual now face many more months in detention. More from the Los Angeles Times.
DEA: “Unholy Alliance” between the FARC and Al-Qaeda
Jay Bergman, DEA director for the Andean region of South America, has said in an interview with Reuters that the FARC and other Colombian guerrillas have entered into “an unholy alliance” with Islamic extremists including Al Qaeda who are helping the Colombian rebels smuggle cocaine via Venezuela through Africa on its way to European consumers.
Interdiction efforts have made it more difficult to send cocaine straight from Colombia and other Andean producer nations to the United States and Europe.
So criminal organizations including the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, are going through Africa to access the European market. And they are doing it with the help of al Qaeda and other groups branded terrorists by Washington, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
“In the mid to late 1990s when the Europeans became better at maritime interdiction, off the coasts of Portugal and Spain for example, traffickers started moving their routes southward. So the next progression was to Western Africa,” said Jay Bergman, DEA director for the Andean region of South America.
Three West African men accused of ties to al Qaeda were extradited to New York in December on drug trafficking and terrorism charges.
It was the first time U.S. authorities established a link suggesting al Qaeda is funding itself in part by providing security for drug smugglers in West Africa.“As suggested by the recent arrest of three alleged al Qaeda operatives, the expansion of cocaine trafficking through West Africa has provided the venue for an unholy alliance between South American narco-terrorists and Islamic extremists,” Bergman said in an interview over the weekend.
To reach the U.S. market, Colombian smugglers are meanwhile being driven to use disposable, fiberglass submarines. The homemade craft are constructed in the mangroves of Colombia’s Pacific coast, used to carry drugs to Mexico for transshipment to the United States, then sunk.All big Colombian trafficking groups, including the 45-year-old FARC, are using Africa to reach European cocaine consumers while Mexican cartels import chemicals used to make methamphetamine via the same route, Bergman said.
“For trafficking organizations to survive, they first and foremost have to be flexible and make adjustments quickly to law enforcement efforts,” he added.
“West Africa is that current alternative.”
When sea interdictions stepped up, traffickers started using planes to get cocaine to Africa. Most flights appear to take off from Venezuela, which shares a border with Colombia.
“All of the aircraft seizures that have been made in West Africa, and we’ve made about a half a dozen of them, had departed from Venezuela. If you look at the range and refueling requirements, that’s the place you have to fly from,” he said.
“Geography is the key reason why Venezuela has become a springboard location,” Bergman added.
€30 Billion Green Energy Project in Europe
Nine countries in northern Europe are hoping to boost renewable energies by creating a new grid to balance out weather-related fluctuations. More from Der Spiegel.
China Tightens Its Rare Earth Mineral Trade
China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has announced that it will create a reserve for rare earth metals next year. The announcement of the intention of its department of raw materials director, Chen Yanhai, only wriggled its way out of an obscure conference by reports in the People’s Daily. This comes on the back of a report released in August by the ministry called the ‘Rare Earths Industry Development Plan 2009-2015′, which called for greater controls over their sale and development.
Rare Earth Minerals (REM) are a class of 30 minerals, 17 of which are considered critical in the development of low-carbon technology from wind-turbines to hybrid car batteries and much else in between and so any debate that followed MIIT’s published plan might be expected to be animated. The story in the Asia Sentinel.
Latest Suicide Bombing Attack in Pakistan Kills Three
Three security officials were killed and eleven other injured as the suicide attackers tried to hit an army barrack in Tarar Khel in Rawlakot area of Azad Kashmir. The story from The Nation.
TIAA-CREF Divests from Sudanese Investments
TIAA-CREF (Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association – College Retirement Equities Fund), one of the largest money managers in the United States, has divested itself of its equity stakes in four East Asian energy firms – PetroChina, CNPC Hong Kong, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and Sinopec – over their business ties to the Sudan. The firm, however, decided to maintain its stake in PETRONAS citing progress in on-going talks with the firm over their ties to the Sudan. The TIAA-CREF press release courtesy of All Africa.