Zimbabwe early this year unveiled a proposed law that would give it authority to monitor phones and mail–both conventional and Internet–to protect national security and fight crime. The bill, which seeks to provide for lawful interception, passed through Senate without amendments and now awaits President Robert Mugabe’s assent.

Once signed, certain communications will be intercepted or monitored in the course of their transmission through telecommunications or postal service. The Bill sailed through the Senate last week (June 2007) after having been passed by the House of Assembly early this week. It also proposes for the establishment of an interception communications center. Earlier, Zimbabwe’s military has said the country’s mobile phone operators are threatening national security by using independent connections to the outside world.

The military feels, mobile phone firms should route international calls through the state-owned fixed-line operator TelOne, and not use their own gateways, in order to make it easier to monitor international traffic.

Critics say the bill is motivated by Mugabe’s desire to punish and keep closer tabs on the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, amid rising unrest in the economically strapped southern African nation. Rights groups say the “Interception of Communication Bill” is part of a crackdown that has included tough policing and political intimidation to stifle criticism of an economic crisis many blame on President Robert Mugabe’s policies.

In June 2004, Mugabe asked ISPs to monitor all email traffic passing through their systems for “anti-national activities”. ISPs protest that this is an impossible task.

Called the Nepal Defence Army, the group is headed by a former policeman who says he joined the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist as a schoolboy but has now begun waging war on his former comrades. The ex-cop, who today calls himself ‘Parivartan’ (change), claims his band has nearly 1,200 trained soldiers who possess arms and have the expertise to manufacture explosives.

Earlier this year, the Nepal Defence Army made its debut with a couple of blasts, including at the well-guarded office of the Maoists in Kathmandu. Leader ‘Parivartan’ in a recent interview said that Nepal Defence Army has been founded to fight for Hinduism. He added that “Hindus worldwide support us, including the families of top Maoist leaders. Our soldiers are being trained across the border in India and we get the ingredients for manufacturing explosives from India”. Parivartan ended with a dire warning. “We have trained five suicide bombers who can go anywhere, including Singh Durbar (the seat of administration)”.

The CPN-Maoist first fired its salvo of ‘People’s War’ on February 12, 1996 seeking to destroy constitutional monarchy and aiming to establish a Maoist people’s democracy. Maoist guerrillas followed the strategy of ‘people’s war’ in which they attempt to take gradual control of the countryside to encircle the cities, only fighting with government forces on their own terms when they can significantly outnumber their enemy.

In 2001, the Nepalese Army began a military campaign against the Maoists, especially in the western areas of the country, although there have been intermittent ceasefires. More than 12,700 people were killed; over 4,000 by Maoists and 8,200 by the government, and an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 people were internally displaced as a result of the conflict. About 600 child soldiers had died during the Maoist insurgency. There are four categories of people killed in the process: Maoist guerrillas, police, alleged informers of police, and innocent civilians. Maoist insurgency has left a lot of families still searching for their loved ones. The new revolutionary leader said his group had no links with King Gyanendra nor the group wants to be a mainstream political party. There sole aim is to form a Hindu state.

The group feels that though, during their 10-year war, the Maoists destroyed and desecrated temples and attacked priests, it will never destroy any church or mosque.

Cameroon’s coastal waters are renowned for being well-stocked with fish but according to authorities, the country’s fish resources are heavily exploited by foreign countries.

According to the ministry, the satellite equipment will help improve the management of fishing resources, as the equipment will improve the control of fishing activities which contribute more than 2 % of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. Commercial fishing generates about 240,000 jobs in the country. The Republic of Cameroon is a unitary republic of central and western Africa. It borders Nigeria to the west; Chad to the northeast; the Central African Republic to the east; and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo to the south.

Cameroon’s coastline lies on the Bight of Bonny, part of the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean. The country is called “Africa in miniature” for its geological and cultural diversity. Cameroon produces around 170,000 tons of fish annually while consuming about 200,000 tons during the same period, resulting into an annual shortfall of about 30,000 tons. Cameroon’s natural resources are better suited to agriculture and forestry than to industry. An estimated 70% of the population farms, and agriculture comprised an estimated 45.2% of GDP in 2006.

Livestock are raised throughout the country. Fishing employs some 5,000 people and provides 20,000 tons of seafood each year.

The Army soldiers captured a rebel bunker line during the fight in a swathe of landlocked eastern jungle called Thoppigala, where Tiger fighters are still entrenched after the fall of their eastern stronghold. Around 150 Tiger fighters remained in the Thoppigala area. Sri Lankan Navy on the other hand destroyed five Tiger vessels after being attacked by two dozen rebel boats off Sri Lanka’s far northern tip.

The land battle and clash at sea off Point Pedro in the northern army-held Jaffna peninsula, cut off from the rest of the island by rebel lines, come amid a rash of battles on land and at sea as well as ambushes and air strikes.

Fighting is now focused on the north after the military captured the Tigers’ eastern stronghold earlier this year. Around 4,500 people have been killed since last year alone. There has been a series of land and sea battles in recent months as Sri Lanka’s long-running civil war flared into heavy action again.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), fighting for an independent state in the island’s north and east and widely listed as a banned terrorist group, accused the navy of starting the sea battle. They said just two of their own fighters died in the confrontation. The government is forging ahead with a plan to resettle tens of thousands of internally displaced from dusty camps in the east to areas southeast of Thoppigala, from where the distant sound of artillery and mortar bomb explosions can be heard.

Aid groups and displaced families alike have voiced concern about the safety of those being resettled.

Khushab Reactor is located at Khushab, Punjab, Pakistan. The 50 MWt, heavy water and natural uranium research reactor is a central element of Pakistan's program for production of plutonium and tritium for advanced compact warheads. The Khushab facility, like that at Kahuta, is not subject to IAEA inspections, but the security of the site is professed by the Pakistani government.

The reactor reportedly will be capable of producing enough plutonium for as many as 50 bombs each year. The Washington based ‘Institute for Science and International Security’ recently said, the construction was seen on commercial satellite imagery. The researchers hinted that the activity at Khushab and also at a plutonium separation facility at Chasma should be viewed as a sign of an accelerated nuclear arms race between Pakistan and its nuclear-armed rival, India. Pakistan secretly developed its nuclear weapons over many decades.

It is unknown when Pakistan began its nuclear development projects, but by the 1980s it was suspected of having successfully developed nuclear warheads. However, this was to remain speculative until 1998 when Pakistan conducted its first nuclear tests at the Chagai Hills, a few days after India conducted its own tests. Many organisations have speculated Pakistan's nuclear bomb production capacity to be in between 50-60 per year although the exact number of possible nuclear weapons within Pakistan's arsenal is kept strictly confidential.

Pakistan currently possesses ballistic missiles and fighter planes which can carry conventional weapons and nuclear warheads. The US acknowledged that it had long known about Pakistan's plans to build a large plutonium-production reactor, but it said the White House was working to dissuade Pakistan from using the plant to expand its nuclear arsenal. Construction of the larger reactor at Khushab apparently began sometime in 2000. Satellite photos taken in the spring of 2005 showed the frame of a rectangular building enclosing what appeared to be the round metal shell of a large nuclear reactor.

A year later, in April 2006, the roof of the structure was still incomplete, allowing an unobstructed view of the reactor's features.

Ecuador’s principal foreign-policy objectives have included defense of the national territory from external aggression and internal subversion; support for the objectives of the United Nations and the Organization of American States; and defense of its claim to 200 miles of territorial and fisheries jurisdictions off its coast; and revision of the 1942 Protocol of Peace, Friendship, and Boundaries which ended, at least officially, open warfare between Peru and Ecuador over a territorial dispute.

Ecuador and the Soviet Union established diplomatic relations in 1969, but it was not until 1972, when Ecuador joined OPEC, that the Soviets showed much interest in Ecuador. By the mid-1970s, the Soviet Union maintained an embassy in Quito rivaling in importance that of the United States.

Ecuador’s membership in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in the 1970s and 1980s allowed some Ecuadorian leaders to exercise somewhat greater foreign policy autonomy. Ecuador recently established diplomatic relations with Botswana on the ‘ambassor’ level. Both sides signed a communique noting that the formal relations between the two countries will promote their ‘mutual understanding and strengthen the friendship and cooperation between their people’.

The papers, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, were made public by Judicial Watch, a Washington-based group that investigates government corruption.

One FBI document referred to a Ryan Air 727 airplane that departed Los Angeles International Airport on September 19 2001, which was said to have carried Saudi nationals out of the US. The plane was chartered either by the Saudi Arabian royal family or Osama bin Laden – according to the document.

The flight made stops in Orlando, Florida; Washington, DC; and Boston, Massachusetts and eventually left its passengers in Paris the following day. In all, the documents detail six flights between September 14 and September 24 that evacuated Saudi nationals and bin Laden family members, Judicial Watch said.

The suspects were seized in the northwestern province of Bursa. More than 60 people were killed in a series of attacks claimed by a cell of al-Qaeda in Istanbul in November 2003 and since then operations against militants have been common. The British Consulate, two synagogues and HSBC bank in Istanbul were targeted.

Tensions are running high in Turkey which holds a parliamentary election next month as separatist Kurdish militants have stepped up attacks in the mainly Kurdish southeast. Authorities also blamed a deadly attack in Ankara last month on Kurdish militants.

On the one hand, dam construction plays a critical role in the government's large-scale infrastructure initiative called the Program to Accelerate Growth (P.A.C.). The P.A.C. is a multi-year public works program designed to advance economic development by promoting incentives for infrastructure expansion, including building large dams in the Amazon.

On the other hand, the president must confront the reality that the mega-projects in the Amazon could cause enormous and irreversible environmental and social impacts, and that they face considerable obstacles under Brazil's demanding environmental laws.

The hot-button issue is the plan to build two large dams at the Santo Antônio and Jirau rapids on the Madeira River in the Amazonian state of Rondônia. The projects would dam the Amazon's principal tributary, causing dramatic changes to the riverine ecology and affecting thousands of families who depend on the river for income, nutrition, and agriculture.

With a combined generating capacity of 6,450megawatts, government energy planners insist the Madeira dams are essential to avoiding blackouts in the next decade. Yet following more than two years of analysis, Brazil's environmental agency, IBAMA, recently issued a finding that it cannot give the go-ahead for the controversial project, citing insufficient information with which to make a decision.

The Brazilian electric sector has launched a torrent of criticism against the environment minister, claiming that IBAMA is holding up Brazil's development. The project's effects on Bolivia could eventually block the project from moving ahead. Brazilian government officials (other than IBAMA) have tried to ignore the fact that for Brazil to build a dam that floods the territory of a neighboring country would require negotiating a complex set of treaties, in the absence of which Brazil would be guilty of violating international law.

In addition to serious questions regarding the project's environmental feasibility, Brazil may have trouble attracting sufficient private investment in the project due to questions about its economic viability. Originally proposed as a source of cheap energy for the national grid, the project's budget continues to grow. The latest estimate by the Brazilian Electrical Agency, Agência Nacional de Energia Elétrica (ANEEL), sets the cost for the Santo Antônio and Jirau dams at $13.2 billion, not including the additional cost—estimated by the government at up to $7.5 billion—of constructing 2,400 kilometers of transmission lines to connect with the central electricity grid.

It also doesn't include the costs of navigation locks, and the costs of building upstream dams to flood a series of rapids, making it possible for barges to travel from the mouth of the Amazon to the upper stretches of the Madeira's tributaries. President Lula faces a major dilemma with these dams plan and so far has responded with frustration and cynicism.

Travel to areas of Sulu, Basilan, Tawi-Tawi and Jolo, where anti-government groups are active, is strongly discouraged due to ongoing military and police operations against the rebels.

The warning was issued by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office said in the travel advisory. Theban was imposed because, terrorist groups continue to plan attacks and have the capacity and the intent to carry out these attacks at any time and anywhere in the Philippines.

It added that attacks could be indiscriminate and against civilian targets in public places including those frequented by foreigners. British travelers were also advised to be aware of the risk of terrorist attacks to road, rail, sea and air transport in the Philippines. Terrorists and criminal elements plan to kidnap foreign tourists from islands and coastal areas in the southern Philippines, it added.

The 57-year-old Italian missionary, Giancarlo Bossi, was seized by armed men on June 10 in Zamboanga, southern Mindanao. His kidnappers are reportedly demanding ransom in exchange for his release. The bomb explosion on a bus at Bansalan, Davao del Sur province in the same region, killed eight people and injured 18 others on 15 June 2007.