Todays' news!Haiti quake......

Haiti quake relief effort under way

The United Nations and international humanitarian agencies are preparing to begin aid efforts in Haiti, after an earthquake in which many people are feared to have been killed. Thousands of people living in and around Port au-Prince, the Haitian capital, are thought to have been trapped in the rubble of buildings that collapsed during the earthquake on Tuesday evening. Elisabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman for the UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said that search and rescue teams were "working against the clock" to save lives. About 37 search and rescue teams from a global network have been mobilised by the UN. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said on Wednesday that its relief plans are based on a "maximum of three million people". Jean-Luc Martinage, a Federation spokesman, said that "a massive international aid operation was needed" in the wake of the quake, which was centred about 15km inland, west of the capital. Aid agencies said that access to trapped people has restricted by debris, while electricity, water and phone services were down. 'City in darkness' Rene Preval, Haiti's president, told the Miami Herald on Wednesday that the scene in his country was "unimaginable" and that he believed that thousands of people had died. "Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed ... There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them." A Food for the Poor charity employee said that there were likely to be many casualties given the destruction he had witnessed in the capital. "The whole city is in darkness, you have thousands of people sitting in the streets, with nowhere to go," Rachmani Domersant, the charity's operations manager, said. "I've seen seven to eight buildings, from office buildings to hotels and shopping stores, collapsed ... I think hundreds of casualties would be a serious understatement." Karel Zelenka, a Catholic Relief Services representative in Port-au-Prince, told colleagues in the US that "there must be thousands of people dead", according to a spokeswoman for the aid group. 'Buildings crumbling' Sebastian Walker, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, said that efforts to get aid to those affected by the quake have been complicated by the scale of destruction. "We are about 300km from the epicentre of the earthquake, and we know that the UN agencies and the humanitarian groups here are trying to get together some kind of strategy to get aid over to Haiti. "We know that there are trucks loaded with supplies ready to go but the difficulty is that no-one really knows how to get that aid to the people [effectively]." The head of UN peacekeeping operations said later on Wednesday that Port-au-Prince airport was "operational". However, Haiti's authorities have not yet authorised aeorplanes to land at the airport. Hospitals, schools and hotels collapsed in the capital, raising fears that the injured would have nowhere to go to get treatment. "We have reports of some of the most important hospitals in Port-au-Prince have been severely impacted by the earthquake," Paul Conneally, the Head of Media at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told Al Jazeera. The presidential palace in the capital was among the buildings badly damaged in the earthquake. Raymond Joseph, Haiti's ambassador to the United States, on Wednesday called for international help in the rescue and relief effort. "The palace and quite a few government buildings have collapsed ... We were able to always to get though to the First Lady ... she said please ask the US, ask the world to send a hospital ship. It is a must for us now because some of the hospitals have been affected ... In the meantime I am asking for international solidarity with Haiti." UN staff 'missing' Alain Joyandet, the French secretary of state for co-operation, told the AFP news agency that up to 200 people were missing after the Hotel Montana was levelled. "We know there were 300 people inside the hotel when it collapsed, only around 100 have got out, which greatly concerns us," he said. Television footage showed long cracks in many of the buildings that were still standing. The United Nations headquarters in the capital was also reported to be severely damaged and many of its staff were missing. "The United Nations can confirm that the Headquarters of the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti [Mintusah] in Port-au-Prince has sustained serious damage along with other UN installations," Alain le Roy, the under-secretary-general for peacekeeping operations, said in a statement issued in New York. "For the moment, a large number of personnel remain unaccounted for." The magnitude 7.0 quake's epicentre was about eight to 10km deep, a relatively shallow depth which was likely to have magnified the destruction, according to seismologists. The quake, which was followed by at least 27 aftershocks up to 5.9 in magnitude, prompted a tsunami alert for parts of the Caribbean that was later cancelled. Thoughts and prayers Barack Obama, the US president, said his thoughts and prayers were with the people of Haiti and that he has directed his administration to provide a swift, coordinated aid effort to the country. He said that the first US search and rescue teams would arrive in Haiti on Wednesday morning local time to help deal with the "cruel and incomprehensible" tragedy. Hillary Clinton, Obama's secretary of state, said the US would provide civilian and military disaster relief assistance. Tuesday's quake was felt as far away as southeastern Cuba, about 257km from the epicentre, prompting Cuban authorities to evacuate coastal residents because of the initial tsunami threat. Soldiers at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in eastern Cuba also felt the quake but there was no damage to the base or the prison where the US holds about 200 foreign detainees. Chief Petty Officer Bill Mesta, a sailor at the base, said troops had begun checking stockpiles of blankets, tents and other relief supplies in anticipation that they will be asked to help in the relief effort. The last major earthquake that hit Haiti - a magnitude 6.7 quake – struck in 1984. Already the poorest nation in the Americas, Haiti has been hit by a series of disasters recently and was battered by hurricanes in 2008. Michael Zamba of the Pan American Development Foundation said that the disaster would be a "tremendous setback" for Haiti. "A year ago Haiti was hit by four back-to-back tropical storms and hurricanes. That wiped about 20 per cent off the Gross Domestic Product," he told Al Jazeera from Washington DC. "It has not yet recovered from that last series of natural disasters and this only compounds the situation. "Haiti is a food insecure nation, it is a nation that needs a lot of food assistance, this is only going to push it back further." Google 'may quit China' Google has said it may shut down its China operations in protest against government censorship of its search results. The announcement by the internet search giant, which represents a major shift in policy, follows a recent hacking incident that appeared to target the accounts of activists using its electronic mail system, Gmail. Google has previously said it would obey Chinese internet laws requiring politically and socially sensitive issues to be blocked from search results, but now says that policy will be dropped. In a statement on Tuesday Google officials said they planned to talk to the Chinese government about finding a way it can still provide unfiltered search results in the country, failing which it will leave China four years after opening an office there. "The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences," David Drummond, Google's top lawyer, wrote in a blog posting on Tuesday. Thomas Crampton, an expert on digital media with Ogilvy public relations based in Hong Kong, said one had to wonder if Google's threats to leave China would have any sway over Chinese policy. "It's impossible to imagine China backing down in any way," he told Al Jazeera. "From the point of view of the Chinese government, there are much more important things than even a high-profile company such as Google." Crampton noted that Chinese officials had nevertheless urged internet portals in the country to play down the news of Google's potential departure. 'Bold step' Google's announcement has though been welcomed by free-speech and human rights groups who hope that the move will spur other companies to take a similar stand. "Google has taken a bold and difficult step for internet freedom in support of fundamental human rights," Leslie Harris, the president of the Centre for Democracy & Technology, a civil-liberties group in Washington, told the Associated Press. "No company should be forced to operate under government threat to its core values or to the rights and safety of its users." Danny O'Brien, the international outreach co-ordinator at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an internet-rights group in San Francisco, told the Associated Press that it was "an incredibly significant move". "This changes the game because the question won't be 'How can we work in China?' but 'How can we create services that Chinese people can use, from outside of China?'" Google's changed stance on China was triggered by a sophisticated computer attack recently orchestrated from within the country, targeting the company and at least 20 others from the internet, financial services, technology, media and chemical industries. 'Don't be evil' Google's previous pledge to obey Chinese censorship laws had outraged free-speech advocates and even some shareholders, who argued Google's co-operation with China violated the company's "don't be evil" motto. The California-based company discussed the attacks with the US state department prior to its announcement. Google said its Chinese operations accounted for an "immaterial" amount of its roughly $22bn in annual revenue, but some analysts say leaving the country could crimp its growth. The internet audience in China has soared from 10 million to nearly 340 million in the past decade and analysts have forecast Google's China revenue will total about $600 million this year. Phishing As part of its investigation into the cyber attack, the company said it stumbled onto another more successful scam, in which dozens of activists in the US, Europe and China fighting the Chinese government's policies fell prey to ruses commonly known as "phishing" or malware. Matt Furman, a Google spokesman, declined to say whether the company suspected the involvement of the Chinese government in the attacks. "Phishing" involves malicious emails urging the recipients to open an attachment or visit a link that they're duped into believing comes from a friend or legitimate company. Clicking on such a link installs malware, or malicious software, on to computers, which can be used as a surveillance tool to steal passwords and unlock email accounts. Source: Al Jazeera Yemen al-Qaeda link to Guantanamo Bay prison The failed Detroit airliner bomb attack on Christmas Day awakened the world to the threat from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a group that until then was hardly a household name. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was formed in January 2009 Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a young Nigerian who allegedly came within an ace of killing almost 300 passengers and crew with a bomb hidden in his underwear, said he had been trained and sent by its leaders. US President Barack Obama's embarrassment and anger at the potentially catastrophic failure of intelligence which allowed Mr Abdulmutallab to board the plane has been compounded by the revelation that two of AQAP's founders, Said al-Shihri and Mohammed al-Awfi, were both former Guantanamo detainees. Several AQAP foot soldiers are also former Guantanamo prisoners. This only confirms the fears of critics vehemently opposed to Mr Obama's promise to close the prison camp by the end of this month. 'Deviant ideology' In total, 120 Saudi detainees have been repatriated from Guantanamo. Mr Obama's dilemma is dramatically illustrated by a BBC investigation into what happened to the 14 detainees of Batch 10, who were flown home to Saudi Arabia just over two years ago. The Saudi government's aim was to put them through its controversial de-radicalisation or Care programme, with a view to rehabilitating its "beneficiaries" in society. Of the 120 Saudi returnees, 111 of them have gone through the Care programme - the other nine returned to the Kingdom before the scheme was set up. The government claims a 90% success rate and says that only 10 of the former Guantanamo detainees absconded, crossing the border into Yemen. But Batch 10 certainly does not fit this picture. When the Saudi 747 jet carrying them landed in Riyadh, its passengers were greeted by the authorities not as heroes but as "victims" who had been brainwashed and misled by a deviant ideology. All went through the Care programme, but five later escaped to Yemen. Increasing threat There two of them, al-Shihri and al-Awfi, helped set up AQAP and then took part in the organisation's launch video. The video was released on 22 January 2009, the day after Mr Obama announced that Guantanamo was to be closed down by 22 January 2010 - a deadline which will not be met. In the video al-Awfi savagely attacked the Saudi rehabilitation programme, perhaps an indication of the increasing threat it poses to al-Qaeda. It is no coincidence that last October an al-Qaeda suicide bomber, with explosives concealed in his rectum, tried to assassinate the eponymous founder of the centre, Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef, the Saudi deputy interior minister. He survived. The bomber did not. The attack was a sign of the technical sophistication of al-Qaeda's Yemeni franchise, mirrored by the explosives hidden in Abdulmutallab's underpants on Christmas Day. Capitulation Mohammed al-Awfi's is an extraordinary story. He went through the rehabilitation programme like the others from Batch 10, but then fled to Yemen where he starred in the al-Qaeda launch video. Astonishingly al-Awfi later re-crossed the border into Saudi Arabia and gave himself up. Peter Taylor pictured in Riyadh, where he met Mohammed al-Awfi I have never understood why he did so. The Saudis told me it was because he had received a phone call from his wife telling him to return to look after her and the children. The explanation caused me to raise a quizzical eyebrow. I was told it is not unknown for the Saudis to use families as bait. Al-Awfi is now living in luxury accommodation in Riyadh's top security prison where he is being drained of every scrap of intelligence. He has all the comforts of home, a well furnished flat and regular visits by a grateful and relieved family. After long negotiations with the Ministry of the Interior, I was finally allowed to meet him for an interview. Surprisingly for a former jihadi who had breathed such fire in the al-Qaeda video, he was gentle and unthreatening, with pristine white robes, and a red and white checked Saudi keffiyeh. His story and the reasons for his change of heart are well rehearsed. Eighteen months earlier the interior ministry had video-taped the return of Batch 10. In it one of the first returnees to be seen boarding the plane is al-Awfi. He is dishevelled and appears to be in pain, the result, he told me, of being tortured by the Americans at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan six years earlier. Al-Awfi claimed his US interrogators had done terrible things to him. He alleges they sat him on a chair, made a hole in the seat, and then "pulled out the testicles from underneath which they then hit with a metal rod". "They'd then tie up your penis and make you drink salty water in order to make you urinate without being able to do so, until they make you scream," he added. Painful memories I spoke to other former detainees who allege they had been subjected to electric shock treatment at Bagram and Kandahar. When I asked al-Awfi why the rehabilitation programme had not worked for him, he said it was because the memories of what he had suffered at the hands of Americans were far more powerful than any corrective inducements he had received in the Care programme. I asked him about his participation in the video. Now securely in Saudi hands and surrounded by Saudi minders, he told me he had been forced into it. "The al-Qaeda leadership there put pressure on me to appear," he said. "I came and found a photocopied paper with a full text of what they wanted me to say. I even disagreed, but they said I had to recite all these things for political reasons." He says the recording took six hours and lasted until 0200 in the morning. I then asked al-Awfi why he had decided to return after making the video. "I saw the truth," he said. "I saw that the path was a deviant path away from the sayings of the Prophet. Thanks to God Almighty's generosity, I realised that and I made a final decision to return to Saudi Arabia." I personally suspect there was much more to it than that though. But al-Awfi is alive, unlike another former detainee from Batch 10, Youssef Al-Shihri, who also joined al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Last October he crossed the border from Yemen into Saudi Arabia disguised in a burqa, with six others from Yemen to carry out a bomb attack. The cell was intercepted by the Saudi security forces. Al-Shihri and another member of the cell were shot dead in the ensuing gun battle. Three loaded explosive belts were found in their car. Bigger threats Two others returnees from Batch 10 - Murtadha Ali Saeed Magram and Turki Meshawi Zayid al-Assiri - are still at large in Yemen and on the Saudi wanted list. And what of Said al-Shihri who was on the same flight as al-Awfi and who later appeared with him in the al-Qaeda video? Al-Shihri now represents the biggest threat of all as he is believed to be second in command - the deputy leader - of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. In the video he declared "our imprisonment has only increased our persistence". What happened in the skies above Detroit on Christmas Day is an indication of that. Source: BBC