An American soldier opened fire on civilians in southern Afghanistan shortly before dawn on Sunday, killing at least 16 people according to an Associated Press photographer who counted the bodies.

At least five people were wounded as well in the attack on two villages near the US base in Kandahar.

President Hamid Karzai, the Afghan leader with whom relations have already been chilling amidst statements Afghanistan would back Pakistan over the United States, called the shootings “an assassination” and demanded an explanation.

According to the AP, the unidentified soldier fired indiscriminately, killing women and children.

There has been a widening rift between US servicemen and Afghans following the burning of Korans, the Muslim holy book, several weeks ago. The burnings resulted in violence and protests, including attacks that killed six Americans.

Lt. Gen. Adrian Bradshaw, the deputy commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, apologized for the shooting.

“I wish to convey my profound regrets and dismay at the actions apparently taken by one coalition member in Kandahar province,” Bradshaw said in a statement. “One of our soldiers is reported to have killed and injured a number of civilians in villages adjacent to his base. I cannot explain the motivation behind such callous acts.”

NATO spokesman Justin Brockhoff told the AP that the alleged shooter was captured and is being detained at a NATO base.

The attack took place in two village, Balandi and Alkozai, about 500 yards away from the US base.

In one of the most brutal details to emerge so far, 12 of those killed were from Balandi, including all 11 members of a farmer named Samad Khan’s family, the AP reported.

This morning, Afghans are calling for justice and retribution against the man who allegedly burst into their homes and committed a truly heinous acts of war crime.

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — AccuWeather.com — Historical snow and cold in Rome have not only tried the patience of its residents but have also taken a toll on one of its architectural wonders, the Colosseum.

The Colosseum had to shut its doors to tourists after bits of the massive structure crumbled and fell, CNN said on Wednesday.

This was but one instance of adverse weather impact in Italy, which has suffered bitter cold and extreme snowfalls.

The loosening of plaster masonry and stone was attributed to ice forming on the walls, according to government spokesman Cristiano Brughitta. In other words, it was a result of what is known as the “freeze-thaw cycle”.

Brughitta called the cold wave exceptional. “Maybe every 30 years it gets this cold, but it’s very rare.”

Most nights this month have been subfreezing in the city, weather data accessed by AccuWeather.com show. Moreover, there have been two outbursts of snow that have left an accumulation of wet snow on parts of the Colosseum.

The wet snow was subject to melting by day, then the water would find its way into the cracks or gaps in the structure. Nightly cold was then able to freeze some of this water, causing expansion, weakening and crumbling of some of the material.

Normal low temperatures in Rome during midwinter are no lower than about 40 degrees. However, the average temperature for the first 15 days of February was more than 10 degrees below normal.

There is a financial fallout from the closure, as the Colosseum normally draws about 7,000 visitors a day, each visitor paying the equivalent of about $15, CNN said.

Elsewhere, the historic wall town of Urbino has been reeling under the collapsing weight of deep snow. Partial roof collapses hit convents of San Francesco and San Bernardino, according to CNN. A roof caving was also reported from a nearby church.

Urbino is located in the Marche region of eastern Italy. Here, persistent cold and damp winds off the Adriatic Sea dumped literally feet of snow along eastern slopes of the Apennine Mountains during February’s major snowstorms, AccuWeather.com meteorologists believe.

Written by Jim Andrews, Senior Meteorologist for AccuWeather.com

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Like those lush green pastures with roaming cows and floating pink water lilies in rural Cambodia, where children still lose limbs every year by taking just one wrong step, this little country’s road to justice has been marred by big mine bombs.

Those judicial bombs have exploded almost annually since the inception in 2003 of a United Nations-backed Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal mandated to hold accountable the architects of one of the deadliest political and military regimes of the 20th century.

Accused Khmer Rouge Head of State Khieu Samphan at ECCC Nov 21

But unlike the victims of unexploded ordnance left behind by 20 years of war either by American, Vietnamese or Khmer Rouge forces and lurking between tall rice paddy and zigzagging crocodiles, the victims of these blasts are still nursing old wounds.

In Cambodia, anyone roughly older than 43 years old, making them 7 at the time of the “liberation” of Phnom Penh in April 1975 by young, stoic guerrillas dressed in all black who called themselves the “Red Khmers,” remembers the military dictatorship.

If they weren’t part of the at least 2 million people who died of torture, executions or starvation while laboring in the countryside as part of the government’s “year zero” agrarian policy, they know someone who did. And though many would rather forget, others want justice.

But adding insult to injury for the regime’s survivors—and a vigilante international community—is the controversy that has incessantly plagued the tribunal, known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), almost since day one.

Accused Khmer Rouge Deputy Prime Minister Ieng Sary at ECCC Nov 21

In October, crisis at the court reached a boiling point. It began October 9, when one of two investigating judges hearing the court’s hallmark Case 002, meant to try the four last living senior leaders of the regime for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, resigned, citing government interference.

And with that, like dominoes, the bombs just kept on dropping.

On October 24, lawyers for “Brother Number Two” Nuon Chea, the most high profile Khmer Rouge leader still living today, sued Prime Minister Hun Sen for criminal interference into the trial. That same day, two international judges in another chamber of the tribunal uncovered what could amount to judicial misconduct in the office of the two investigating judges, putting in doubt much of the work of the tribunal.

The revelations were so big, observers feared the court was on its last legs. But the biggest bombshell of all dropped November 17, when court judges ruled to free the regime’s former Social Action Minister Ieng Thirith after medical experts determined her dementia would render her unfit to stand trial in the tribunal’s hallmark Case 002, which began Nov 21. Judges have since ruled in favor of an appeal of her release, and ordered her to stay at the court’s detention facility of a hospital for six more months while she takes a drug that could improve her cognition to testify.

And in the later part of December, the judge meant to act as Blunk’s replacement has been made to assume a symbolic role as he waits to be formally appointed by a court body that denies receiving a letter from the UN ordering the appointment, further stoking allegations of stalling, dysfunction and animosity in the court.

Court losing “final shreds of credibility”

International defense lawyer for Khieu Samphan, Jaques Verges, at ECCC Nov 21

A highly unpopular judge for his—along with his Cambodian counterpart You Bunleng’s—premature dismissal of two government-opposed cases, 003 and 004, German Co-Investigating Judge Siegfried Blunk made headlines when he cited government interference for his resignation.

Despite the court being mandated to try those “most responsible” for crimes during the 1975 to 1979 regime, Blunk and Bunleng in August said they had doubt the defendants in the two cases, five Khmer Rouge leaders allegedly responsible for large-scale purges and executions, met that criterion.

In Case 003, very few crime scenes went investigated and suspects questioned. In April, investigation into the case was closed, with fear that Case 004, which had slightly more investigation, is headed for the same fate.

Following the shelving of both cases, international pressure began to mount for their reopening or the judges’ resignation.

International Co-Prosecutor Andrew Cayley at ECCC Nov 21

Just a week before Blunk resigned, Human Rights Watch issued a scathing admonition of the judges, calling for their removal and arguing they “egregiously violated their legal and judicial duties” by turning a blind eye to the cases. The organization warned the UN to open an inquiry into the matter before the court’s “final shreds of credibility” were lost.

But the cases fell out of favor with the government long ago. Prime Minister Hun Sen, himself a Khmer Rouge soldier who defected to the Vietnamese in 1977 and whose fight for Phnom Penh against Lon Nol forces in April 1975 with the guerrilla group earned him a glass eye for the one he lost in the battle, has publically stated that the current Case 002 will be the last to be heard.

In October 2010, he told then-UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that the two additional cases—Case 001 wrapped up last year with the 35-year sentencing of “Duch,” warden of the regime’s most notorious torture prison S-21—would not be “allowed.”

Blunk cited in the letter comments by three government officials against the court’s investigating the two cases, including Information Minister Khieu Kanharith, who said in May that “if they [judges] want to go into Case 003 and 004, they should just pack their bags and leave.”

Days before the start of cases 003 and 004 in September 2009, Hun Sen, widely regarded as a deft politician who’s immensely consolidated his power since 1979, gave a speech warning of civil war if the court “prosecuted without thinking of peace and national reconciliation,” according to The Cambodia Daily newspaper.

But some say the Prime Minister’s vehement opposition to the cases results more from his desire to let sleeping dogs lie—especially since several former Khmer Rouge soldiers now hold high-ranking positions within the government.

“[The fear of] cases 003 and 004 causing instability and risks to national security is probably real, but completely blown out of proportion,” said Clair Duffy, who monitors the tribunal for the Open Society Justice Initiative. “With the historic distrust between the government and the UN, the thing we hear more is that the cases might uncover more evidence against other individuals.”

Gallery at ECCC Nov 21

“At a certain level, we also hear the government is worried more about Cambodian society wanting more people to be prosecuted.”

Blunk’s resignation has also added fuel to repeated attempts by lawyers of the four originally accused in Case 002—Nuon Chea, 85, right hand man to deceased Khmer Rouge mastermind Pol Pol; Khmer Rouge Head of State Khieu Samphan, 80; Social Action Minister Ieng Thirith, 79; and Deputy Prime Minister Ieng Sary, 86—to draw attention to their claims of political interference in the court for years.

On October 24, Nuon Chea lawyers Andy Ianuzzi and Michiel Pestman sued Prime Minister Hun Sen and 10 other government and ruling party officials for meddling in the court, although their suit has since been dropped.

They weren’t the only ones that welcomed Blunk’s resignation.

Former Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues under the Bill Clinton administration and co-editor of ECCC watchdog The Cambodia Tribunal Monitor David Scheffer wrote in a statement that the resignation “demonstrates that the ECCC has the capacity to self-correct when confronted with unique challenges.”

Still, even though many were happy to see him go, Blunk’s admission has overwhelmingly left the international community fearful that the reputation of the court is beyond repair.

“The UN must change course”

Almost immediately following Blunk’s resignation, anger quickly turned toward the court’s big brother, the UN.

In a recent op-ed to The International Herald Tribune, Duffy’s boss, James Goldston, berated the UN for continuously bending to the will of the Cambodian government.

“…business as usual has led to this impasse. At virtually every step along the path since the Khmer Rouge left Phnom Penh in 1979, the UN…[has] disappointed public expectations,” he wrote.

In 2008, the court’s then-Cambodian-staff director Sean Visoth went on “sick leave” after mounting criticism of his instituting a kickback system that netted tens of thousands of dollars each month.

“…the UN resisted a full-blown inquiry and then accepted the appointment of a watchdog who…has done little to stem corruption,” Goldston wrote of the scandal.

“In recent months, when Judge Blunk and his Cambodian counterpart seemed determined to shut down an investigation [into case 003] without carrying out any field investigation, interviewing the prime suspects, or allowing victims any say, UN officials again refused to act, claiming, wrongly, that ‘judicial independence’ precluded them from addressing any judicial misconduct short of an express bribe,” he wrote.

And now Blunk’s revelation about government interference in the cases.

“Going forward, bland declarations of support for the process will not cut it. The UN must change course.”

Seemingly in response, the UN dispatched Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs Patricia O’Brien to Phnom Penh to do damage control.

Meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Sok An on October 22, O’Brien told the government to “refrain” from statements opposing the cases and from interfering “in any way whatsoever” in the court.

While applauding O’Brien’s timely trip to Phnom Penh as a “good start,” Duffy said it wasn’t enough.

“We’ve been saying since June there needs to be a full inquiry into the Office of the Co-Investigating Judges.”

The latest controversy comes at an inopportune time for the tribunal. On November 28 the most-anticipated case of the tribunal, Case 002, entered its evidence-hearing stage.

But many worry that this time, even if justice is not obstructed by interference, it just won’t move fast enough.

“What would the court do if they died tomorrow?”

As comatose Vann Nath’s lungs filled with water and family members pleaded for donations to pay his medical bills on August 31 after the S-21 survivor and artist suffered a heart attack, a very different story was playing out at the genocide tribunal.

That day, Nuon Chea complained to the court that a medical expert who found him to be in good health to stand trial despite chronic health ailments was mistaken. He would then excuse himself 90 minutes through the hearing to a holding cell—complete with a TV, a fan, a living area, three meals a day, and medical care paid for by the government.

Five days later, 66-year-old Vann Nath died.

But 85-year-old Nuon Chea lived. And he was not alone.

Joining him in the ECCC detention center were the three other aging defendants in the court’s Case 002.

Both Ieng Thirith and Nuon Chea contested their fitness to stand trial, their lawyers arguing they were too sick. If the Donepezil, the drug Ieng Thirith will be administered while in the court’s custody to alleviate mild Alzheimer’s-related symptoms, doesn’t improve her condition in six months, she will likely be released. With her notoriety, though, rumors swirl that she may not live long outside the court.

And with increasing health worries that come with their old age, many in Cambodia are questioning whether the accused will actually be sentenced before they die.

“What would the court do if they died tomorrow?” Ang Moeun rhetorically asked a reporter from the Tribunal Monitor outside the health hearings in August. “And how could the court persecute the dead? Could the dead answer questions?”

Out of more than 14,000 men, women and children tortured at Phnom Penh’s S-21 before execution, Vann Nath was one of seven prisoners that walked out on both feet—Duch kept him alive to paint portraits of Pol Pot, who died in 1998.

Testifying at Duch’s trial, Vann Nath wept as he remembered being shackled at the feet, hunger forcing him to eat insects that fell from the ceiling.

“Even had they given me the flesh of a human being, I would have eaten it,” he told the court.

But the horrors of Khmer Rouge atrocities aren’t felt only by Cambodians.

At the time 27, Kerry Hamill was on top of the world when he left the coast of New Zealand to sail the waters of Southeast Asia with his best friend and a charter passenger in the summer of 1978. On August 13, he would encounter paradise lost.

After being blown off course into Cambodian waters, Hamill and crew would be fired on by Khmer Rouge soldiers while their yacht, the Foxy Lady, took shelter behind an island off the south coast of Cambodia. The shots would kill Canadian Stuart Glass, who would be buried at sea.

Shackled and blindfolded, Hamill and Englishman John Dewhirst would be taken to S-21, where they would be interrogated, tortured with a variety of techniques including electric shock, and made to sign confessions admitting they were part of the CIA, which they were not.

Two months after his capture, Hamill would be executed. Following news of Kerry’s death, his brother John Hamill would throw himself off a cliff.

To this day, no one knows exactly how Kerry died. There are whispers he was burned alive.

More than 30 years later, in April, Blunk and Bunleng told Rob Hamill that he didn’t qualify to receive reparations as a civil party in Case 003 because he was not a “direct victim” of the crimes of the accused, said Hamill’s lawyer, Lyma Nguyen.

“There was no doubt, from the very beginning—from when the investigative phase in Case 003 was announced to have been concluded to when Rob Hamill received his appalling rejection letter—that political interference was at play,” Nguyen said.

But despite a bombshell October 24 decision by two international judges in another chamber of the court calling into doubt Blunk and Bunleng’s judicial integrity after uncovering widespread procedural violations in their handling of Hamill’s civil party claim, they couldn’t overturn the rejection because of a vote split 3-2 along national and international lines.

After reading the decision, which alluded to violations of victims’ rights and slammed the judges’ handling of the investigations and civil party appeals in Case 003, Nguyen called for a criminal investigation.

“Given the looming specter of injustice, the only remaining hope is that, with the arrival of the new international [Co-Investigating Judge], both [Co-Investigating Judges] will take a different approach,” she said in a statement, “by reconsidering the previous rejections of the Civil Party applicants as well as the premature closing of the investigations in Case 003.”

That’s the best-case scenario.

“The worst case scenario is that the court is going to acutely whitewash allegations of Khmer Rouge atrocities,” Duffy said.

Speaking December 6 to The Cambodia Daily, Duffy seemed demoralized that almost three months since his resignation and repeated calls for an investigation into his office, the UN has continued to watch idly as the court unravels.

“This all comes back to a very troubling issue,” she said about the feeling of discord within the office of the Co-Investigating Judges in light of apparent stall tactics by a court body affiliated with Bunleng to appoint Blunk’s replacement, Laurent Kasper-Ansermet, to take up his role. “…[T]he UN has forged ahead without addressing these issues of political interference in the work of that office by the government head-on, and we’re already seeing a huge contention between the two judges before his arrival has even been officially announced.”

“I came here to see his face”

Brother Number Two Nuon Chea at ECCC Nov 21

Whatever the court’s controversies, most Cambodians have little opinion about the convoluted litigation occurring in the court.

Even if the defendants serve three years—less than the four years thousands of people spent crammed in S-21 before being hung from gallows or having their skulls smashed with the back of an ax—many will be satisfied.

“No matter what sentence term the court decides, for example, three-year imprisonment…or whatever, it will bring somewhat closure to the victims died, as long as they are finally sentenced,” said Ang, the man who asked if the court could try the dead.

But as the days have turned into months, and months years, changing seasons leave many to hope that the Khmer Rouge architects who have escaped death decades longer than their millions of victims won’t thwart justice so easy.

Speaking outside the health hearings in early September, 73-year-old Chea Poahuoy trembled as she spoke to a reporter from The Tribunal Monitor of taking the law into her own hands.

“I came here to see his face,” she said, referring to Nuon Chea. “If I were permitted, I would slaughter him with a stick just as he did to millions of people executed at his hands.”

With anger like that, the UN must be praying there are no more hidden bombs on the road to justice in this traumatized little pocket of Southeast Asia.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il has died at age 69.

The mysterious, often erratic leader of the north, which has maintained a perpetual state of still war with the south, was believed to be in ill health for a number of years, though accurate reports are all but impossible to obtain in the closed state. He was believed to also have suffered a stroke in 2008. He was also believed to suffer from heart disease and diabetes.

Kim Jong Il took power after his father, Kim Il Sung, died in 1994. The third generation of rulers, Kim Jong Un, will likely take power in the wake of his father’s death.

South Korea’s military went on alert as soon as the news broke, as tensions have been high between the countries for years.

On Sunday, Iranian news network Fars News Agency announced that an Iranian electronic warfare unit had downed and captured a American RQ-170 Sentinel, an unmanned aerial drone manufactured by American defense and aeronautics company Lockheed Martin.

According to a statement from the Iranian government, the drone was in violation of Iran airspace and was brought down after the Iranian unit hijacked the controls from the American. This was later changed to the Iranian’s having shot the drone down.

The U.S Military confirmed that the remains of a RQ-170 were captured by the Iranian army, though they claimed it was flying a mission over western Afghanistan when they lost contact due to a mechanical error.

On Wednesday, an Iranian TV station aired of what appears to be the RQ-170 in perfect condition being examined by Iranian military officials. The Central Intelligence Agency has neither confirmed nor denied the authenticity of the plane that was broadcast.

The RQ-170 is used as a stealth Unmanned Ariel Vehicle (U.A.V.) and has been assumed to be an information gathering device by many aviation experts. Though very little has been released to the public about the design and specific dimensions of the drone, it is guessed to be much larger than many of the other information gathering drones used by the Air Force and C.I.A. in operations in the Middle East. It was first noticed by the public when a low resolution photo was snapped of it at Kandahar International Airport in Afghanistan, gaining the nickname “The Beast of Kandahar” for its large size.

The Iranian government claims that the drone’s presence in their airspace confirms America’s hostile intentions due to recent conflicts over Iran’s nuclear development program. The official stance of the American military meanwhile says that the plane malfunctioned while flying a mission in Afghanistan and was not intended to cross the border.

Iran’s semiofficial Mehr News agency reported on Thursday night that Russian and Chinese officials have asked for permission to inspect the captured drone.

The biggest funder of the fight against three major diseases has run out of money, slowing the advance in research and aid to poor patients.  An official with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria announced the news on Thursday, saying that they are unable to give new grants until 2014 due to global economic trouble, according to CBS News.

The Fund gathered an independent panel last March to discuss the financial situation of the organizations biggest donors, and the panel suggested that they create tougher financial safeguards.  The Fund has been the target of allegations of money mismanagement and alleged fraud.  Since the allegations, they have found $20 million in mismanagement, alleged fraud and misspending.

Because of these allegations, Germany, the European Commission and Denmark have withheld hundreds of millions of Euros from the Fund until a n internal investigation of money management occurs.  Germany has since given back the funding.

Since its 2002 creation, the Geneva based company has distributed about $15 billion to programs to coordinate world efforts against disease and to hasten emergency funds from wealthy nations to the poorer, more affected nations.

“We’re not cutting back — we’re not expanding,” the fund’s board chairman, Simon Bland, told The Associated Press from Accra, Ghana, according to CBS.

Just this year, the Fund spent $2.8 billion, including money to pay for treatment for almost half of the developing world’s AIDS patients.

The Fund can afford to keep existing AIDS programs going, but will not be able to expand or add new patients, CBS reports.  It will repurpose funds that had previously been allotted to countries such as China, Brazil, Mexico and Russia.

“It is deeply worrisome that inadvertently the millions of people fighting with deadly diseases are in danger of paying the price for the global financial crisis,” the fund’s executive director, Dr. Michel Kazatchkine, said in a statement according to  CBS.

Libya’s transitional government claims that deposed dictator Moammar Khadafy has been killed in the attack and fall of Sirte, his hometown.

Interim Libyan Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril told reporters in Tripoli that Khadafy was killed in the attack and fall of Sirte, his hometown.

An unnamed US official also confirmed Khadafy’s death to the Associated Press.

Other reports indicate that Khadafy’s son, Mutassim, and Gadhafi’s chief of intelligence, Abdullah al-Senussi, also have been killed.

Sen. John McCain, (R-Ariz.) called the news “an end to the first phase of the Libyan revolution.”

The U.S. and Europe “must now deepen our support of the Libyan people,” said McCain, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, in a statement.

Khadafy ruled the country for 42 years before a popular uprising gave way to a bloody NATO-backed civil war. Khadafy’s regime fell two months ago, and Sirte had been his last stronghold until now.

The image below, from a cell phone camera, allegedly shows Khadafy’s body. (WARNING, GRAPHIC)

(AFP PHOTO/PHILIPPE DESMAZES)

The government warned that the killing of an American-born terror leader in Yemen has raised the risk of anti-American violence around the globe.

The State Department said Saturday that the death of Anwar al-Awlaki could motivate terrorists or terror groups to retaliate against American interests or individual U.S. citizens.

The State warning says that al-Awlaki and other members of the group called Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula have called for attacks and vengeance for the cleric’s death.

Al-Awlaki was killed in an attack early Friday.

A similar alarm was raised after Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan.

Leila Lopes from Angola was crowned Miss Universe on Monday night, marking Angola’s first winner.  The contestant cinched the crown when she answered an interview question about what physical trait she would change if she could by replying that she is satisfied with her inner beauty.

“Thank God I’m very satisfied with the way God created me, and I wouldn’t change a thing,” Miss Angola answered, according to the Washington Post. “I consider myself a woman endowed with inner beauty. I have acquired many wonderful principles from my family, and I intend to follow these for the rest of my life.”

Lopes also overcame Miss Brazil, a feat considering the pageant was held in Sao Paulo, Brazil.  The Angola woman became a crowd favorite by speaking Portuguese, Brazil’s language, as Angola is a former Portuguese colony.

As Miss Angola, Lopes said she “worked with various social causes,” the Washington Post reports.

“I work with poor kids, I work in the fight against HIV. I work to protect the elderly, and I have to do everything that my country needs.” she said. “I think now as Miss Universe I will be able to do much more.”

This win marks the first time an African woman has won the Miss Universe pageant since Miss Botswana’s win in 1999.

According to the BlogPost, Lopes’ win is expected to draw attention to the problems in Angola.  The country was in a 27-year civil war until 2002 according to the CIA World Fact Book, and as of 2009, 38 percent of the country’s population lived in poverty.

The day after Lopes won the pageant, 17 Angolan citizens were sentenced to three months in prison for participating in a pro-democracy rally, according to Reuters.

Miss Universe’s first runner-up was Olesia Stefanko of Ukraine and the second runner-up Priscila Machado of Brazil.

The crew that helped put an end to counterfeit Viagra pills from China is now on board with Apple, helping to stop the rampant underground market overseas, according to CNN.

CNN’s report was based off of a memo that Wikileaks exposed last Wednesday and promoted via Twitter.

According to the memo, counterfeit Apple problems are a problem in Asia due to a lack of security.

“As amazing as it seems, computer maker Apple Inc. had no global security team – including inside China – until March 2008, when they hired away the team from Pfizer that formed and led a multi-year crackdown on counterfeit Viagra production in Asia,” the report said.

The memo was written by the U.S. embassy in Beijing and distributed through the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network to officials in the Departments of State, Justice, Commerce and Homeland Security, the FBI, the Patent Office, the FTC, the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Library of Congress and the White House, according to CNN Money.

Read the full text of the memo here.

DUBLIN — Scroll back to 2004.

Little Ireland was in its pomp. Delirious on the heady fumes of an emerging property boom, the focus was squarely on party politics and our portly economy. The Fianna Fáil star was its brightest, wowing the world with flash statistics about growth and unemployment. The frenzy to clamber aboard the gravy train was so great that our political servants didn’t even notice that the Irish presidency was up for grabs.

But don’t they know it now?

Yes, now that the money has dried up and Dáil Éireann has become the political equivalent of an Irish famine workhouse, the stately grounds of Áras an Uachtaráin are starting to looking a whole lot more appealing. Hard luck on the Áras though. It did well enough under Mary McAleese — a barrister and professor from Belfast who had a long-standing interest in the presidency and a respectable moral agenda for the duration of its term.

McAleese has done a lot to help engineer peace in Northern Ireland and her role in Queen Elizabeth II’s recent historic visit will be considered one of the finest achievements in the story Irish political and diplomatic affairs. She’s a tough act to follow when you look at it like that and the changing list of likely candidates is far from inspiring. It’s a drab arrangement of spent political journeymen and the battle for nomination has been, at times, so desperate and controversial that the seat of the presidency has already been cheapened by it.

Fine Gael’s Gay Mitchell, a man with all personality and charm of wet cardboard, decided to grace Irish public life again after skipping off to Europe in 2004 to do what? We’re not really sure. Right now it looks to be a two-horse race between Mitchell and Labour’s wispy-haired poet, Michael D. Higgins. It’s not the most exciting shortlist.

The nation seems to be in a state of utter deflation after a ruthless character assassination that saw popular senator David Norris shunted away from the ballot paper. Norris, a human rights veteran, was a sure bet for the Áras and his probable election wouldn’t have hurt our reputation for being a socially progressive country any more than Mary Robinson’s election did back in1990. Alas for Norris, it would appear that to be a gay politician in Ireland is to be a de facto pedophile. Never mind his sparkling record in the senate, his enthusiasm and conviction for a system that many have lost faith in, and his honest criticisms of the neutered function of the Seanad (senate).

No. This man is gay. We must dig deeper. There is surely some speck of dirt, some error in judgement, that we can sink his ship with.

Gay Mitchell described abortion as a ‘holocaust’ and bemoaned the reality of Irish women “sneaking off” to have abortions in the UK. He wrote a letter of clemency for convicted murderer and anti-abortionist Rev. Paul Hill, who is on death row in the US. But David Norris’ plea for leniency for a former partner who’d had consensual sex with a Palestinian minor (statutory rape) was a most grievous offense and for many of his antagonists, this 14-year-old piece of paper was all the proof they needed that he was some kind of sexual predator. It’s a bit of a flimsy argument in a country that, over the years, has become a veritable petri dish for colonies of shady politicians and robed pedophiles.

The wheels came off Norris’ campaign and he was forced to step down eventually. Since then, the election race has descended into anarchy and farce. Instead of looking for people who have the credentials to do the job, various ‘personalities’ have been put forward. Fianna Fáil, pushing hard to restore its blackened reputation after 15 years of economic misconduct, saw in the avuncular broadcaster Gay Byrne—now 77—a handy route back onto the political ladder. Byrne was almost physically inserted into Phoenix Park by politicians and media alike before he eventually took himself out of the equation.

The celebrity vacuum was quickly filled by recently retired sports commentator and former schoolteacher Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh who, at the time of writing this, was still mulling it over. Michael Sheen—yes, that’s President Bartlett from The West Wing—recently said “thanks but no”. So who’s next? Daniel Day-Lewis? Pierce Brosnan? Is it too soon to ask Saoirse Ronan? Brenda Gleeson gave a speech of presidential quality at College Green some months back. Maybe he should do it? While we’re at it, why don’t we just rename it Celebrity President 2011 and let people vote by phone or text via a 1550 number?

To be President of Ireland is to be the face of the country. The most obvious mission for the next President must be to repair the damage done to our reputation by years of fiscal stupidity, but the scramble for Áras an Uachtaráin is beginning to have a negative effect.

Seven years ago, this public office was overlooked—even belittled—by the country’s salivating politicos and McAleese walked through to her second term uncontested.

But desperate times call for desperate measures and things sure are desperate now. With any luck, the mostly inoffensive Michael D. will take it and the Irish public can just cast this embarrassing circus out of the national psyche and move on.

Five are dead and 75 injured after three stage tents collapsed at the Pukkelpop music festival in Belgium on Thursday.

A strong storm hit the festival prompting organizers to cancel the duration out of respect to the victims.  Extra busses and trains are available to evacuate the 40,000 remaining attendees.

The storm hit around 6:30 p.m. in Kiewit, Belgium. The Chateau Tent, Boiler Room and Wablieft Tent were knocked down, along with trees and flying debris.

“I have seen many tropical storms,” Festival Organizer Chokri Mahassine said according to AP reporters, “but this was unprecedented.” Meteorologists did not detect a storm of that intensity.

Pukkelpop is Belgium’s largest alternative music festival, hosting over 220 acts on eight stages.  This stage collapse is the latest in a string of collapses at music festivals throughout the summer.  The most recent occurred just last week when a stage collapsed at the Indiana State Fair.

The recent tragedies led to many in the industry to ask for a crack down in regulations.

A Sony distribution warehouse in North London was destroyed by a fire as a result of the third night of riots in Great Britain.

The fire will impede the deliveries of CDs and DVDs throughout the United Kingdom, since it was the only place storing Sony products in the country, a Sony representative told Rolling Stone.

The warehouse was also home to the all of PIAS UK’s products, which is the main distribution company for over 150 labels in the area, meaning independent label will take a big hit.  Labels such as Beggars Group, Sub Pop, Rough Trade, Domino and 4AD lost all inventory.

A helicopter transporting 30 American servicemen, including Navy Seals, was shot down by insurgents over Afghanistan on Saturday, marking the single deadliest day for American forces in the war in Afghanistan.

American and Afghan officials confirmed that 30 Americans and 8 Afghans were killed in the attack, according to the New York Times.

The 22 Navy Seals on board were part of Seal Team 6, the unit that killed Osama Bin Laden.

The Taliban took responsibility for the attack on those that killed their leader. However, it is reported that none of the Seals killed in the attack were involved in Bin Laden’s death.

The Chinook Helicopter was on a night-raid mission and was most likely struck by a rocket-propelled grenade, the New York Times reports. The attack occurred around 1 a.m. on Saturday after an attack on a Taliban compound lasting about two hours, Gen. Abdul Qayum Baqizoy, police chief of Wardak, said to the Times.

“All of those killed in this operation were true heroes who had already given so much in the defense of freedom. Their sacrifice will not be forgotten,” said Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of the international military mission in Afghanistan.

President Obama expressed his concern and offered condolences to the families of those killed.

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — AccuWeather.com — Nuclear facilities have become a target of Mother Nature this year, from the tsunami in Japan to recent flooding in Nebraska and the wildfire threatening Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Now jellyfish have prompted the shut-down of two reactors at a nuclear power plant in Scotland. Higher-than-average temperatures in the North Sea may be a factor.

The BBC reported that masses of jellyfish were obstructing the cooling water filters of EDF Energy’s Torness nuclear power plant Tuesday. The sea water is needed to ensure safe operations, and the filters act to prevent sea life and seaweed from entering the cooling system.

Efforts to clear the filters have been under way, but the reactors may not be back online until next week. EDF has reported no danger to the public or impact on the environment.

Jellyfish have been a problem for nuclear power plants in Japan in recent years as well, according to the BBC.

By Heather Buchman, Meteorologist for AccuWeather.com

The Hague-based International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and his son and intelligence chief.

The court charges the men committed crimes during the popular rebellion that has been going on in Libya for months. The charges indicate that Gadhafi arranged for the killing, maiming and jailing of civilians during the first two weeks of the uprising and then tried to cover it all up.

The Associated Press reports that the warrants could be further international attempts to wrench Gadhafi from power and get him to leave the country.

DUBLIN — It was a little dicey, let’s be honest. In terms of his reputation for sincerity and passion, President Obama’s pinched stopover in Ireland ran a serious risk of dipping into the murky realms of tokenism. It was such a short trip, particularly compared to Queen Elizabeth’s comprehensive four-day sojourn last week, that people here might well have been justified in thinking it was no more than a means of killing time while Air Force One refuelled. Iceland’s volcanic hoopla, by now becoming an annual affair, didn’t help. The threat of ash grounding flights for long spells, as it is did last year, forced them to move on to the UK a little sooner than planned and cut short an already brief jaunt on Irish soil.

My personal concerns that Obama’s visit was merely an inconvenient part of a larger European check-list were not dispelled by his first televised words at a press conference in Farmleigh House after a 30-minute meeting with Taoiseach Enda Kenny.

Barack—or Barry as we now affectionately call him—has somewhat spoiled us in the past with sweeping elegant orations, and so maybe this raised expectation was agitating my Irish inferiority complex, because it was a little difficult to interpret his uncertain, even vague words as anything other than indifference and perhaps boredom with the struggles of a nation as small as ours. Analysts watching the press conference thought he seemed jet-lagged and rambling. Obama and Kenny spoke imprecisely about the established necessity to shore up the country’s finances and rebuild the economy. The question of ECB interest rates, and being at the mercy of European bigwigs was not explicitly addressed.

On a cluttered list of presidential priorities that includes issues like the ailing American economy, an upcoming election campaign, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, global warming, and other slightly more important matters, Ireland must have seemed like a fairly minor player. A young child, tugging almost unnoticeably at the coat-tails of this suited and charming man.

As he left Farmleigh, Kenny hastily thrust a hurley into his arms—the ash-carved stick used by players of the uniquely Irish sport of Hurling. The hashed gesture was recovered by a quick photo opportunity of him swinging the hurley with the words, “If Congress don’t behave…”

Ice broken, he carried on.

On the cards was a visit to Moneygall in County Offaly, the birthplace of Obama’s 150-year-old Irish connection, Falmouth Kearney. With a population of less than 300, it could have been an embarrassing affair for us. This was arguably a chance to show off what we are good at it and lift that stereotype of pokey Irish villages surrounded by green fields and a few sheep. Yet there we were, watching him sup the black stuff in Ollie Hayes’s pub. In fairness to him, he knocked back half a pint of it and remarked that it tasted a lot better in Ireland than the US. With Michelle and their newly discovered distant cousin Henry Healy, they spent a whopping 45 minutes greeting the 5,000-strong mob that had turned out in Moneygall to meet him. The coterie of black-clothed men with earpieces looked stressed and frazzled by the proximity of the grasping crowd and the Obamas’ enthusiasm to shake, hug, and talk, but the socialising went down without a hitch.

George Dubya he ain’t.

Obama is liked in Ireland not because of any Irish connection, but because of his ostensibly more ethical agenda. Where Clinton, Palin, and McCain all spoke out about Iran and who they would invade next—as if war was some kind of presidential rite of passage—Obama eased away from the neo-colonial foreign policy that has tarnished America’s mandate around the world. He spoke of forging peace through negotiation, not through sheer military might, an idea that resounds brightly through the Irish psyche. His principles have made him far more palatable to Ireland than his predecessor, and all this made the histrionics of the hovering clench-jawed security guards seem amusing. This is Moneygall lads. Take it easy.

After pressing the flesh in Offaly, they were flown back to Dublin where 60,000 people had gathered for a rally in College Green, just outside the front gates of Trinity College. The waiting crowds were treated to readings and performances by some our best exports—among them Daniel Day-Lewis and Brendan Gleeson. An emotional Gleeson, in particular, gave a speech so rousing and inspirational that he was close to usurping Obama. He warmed the crowd up nicely and stirred the hunger for the strong words of leadership. Kenny, himself surprisingly demonstrative, introduced Obama eventually.

Up to the podium he stepped and embarked on a 25-minute speech that surged through the 60,000 onlookers. It was a clarion-call that seemed to lift the whole country out of the doldrums of this crippling recession—and with a bit of added stand-up, it safely winched his brief visit out of the jaws of saccharine obligation.

“Hello Ireland. My name is Barack Obama, of the Moneygall Obamas. And I’ve come home to find the apostrophe that we lost somewhere along the way.”

In a humorous nudge back to the Correspondents’ Dinner back in April, and the stubborn but laughable conspiracy theories about his nationality, he thanked the genealogists who first traced his heritage back to Ireland saying, “It turns out people take a lot of interest in you when you’re running for President. They look into your past, they check out your place of birth. Things like that. Now, I do wish someone had provided this evidence earlier because it would’ve come in handy back when I was first running in my home town of Chicago… Not many people knew me, they couldn’t even pronounce my name. I told them it was a Gaelic name. They didn’t believe me… I bet those (St. Patrick’s Day parade) organisers are watching TV today and feeling kind of bad.”

With the audience now limbered up with humour and ready to cheer, he reminded listeners of Ireland and America’s shared struggle for freedom from oppression, of the political and philosophical friendship between abolitionist Frederick Douglass and Daniel O’Connell, and the influential role each nation has played in the other’s evolution.

In what might well have been a stab to win over some of the 40 million Irish Americans, he invoked the inspiring popularity of the Kennedy dynasty to great effect and emphasised the unique part the Irish diaspora had played in moulding the US.

“Never has a nation so small inspired so much in another. Irish signatures are on our founding documents. Irish blood was spilled on our battlefields. Irish sweat built our great cities. So you can say there’s always been a little bit of green behind the red, white, and blue.”

Analysts have expressed doubt that the visit, though a resounding success here, will do all that much to boost his numbers at home.

The unspoken bind was of the status of the undocumented Irish in America. It’s still a thorny issue. With immigrants dying at the Mexican border it’s becoming increasingly difficult for American politicians to advocate for the Irish diaspora. Even though the case for the undocumented Irish is somewhat more complex, treating one ethnic group more favourably than others is sure to undermine his election campaign and hurt his reputation as a champion for minority groups.

A roaring success in Ireland then, but only time will tell what it buys him in 2012.

James Foley recounted his time as a prisoner of war under Libyan Leader Moammar Khadafy’s regime, and revealed a secret that he and his three colleagues had to keep throughout their 44 days of imprisonment.

Foley, a correspondent for the Boston-based GlobalPost, revealed that he and the three others kept their knowledge of an unarmed South African photographer’s murder a secret from their captors because they felt the knowledge put their own lives at risk.

The Libyan government declared the photographer, Anton Hammerl, missing.

“There was this deep, dark secret that Anton was dead,’’ said Foley, 37, of Rochester, N.H. “We decided we couldn’t talk about it because it would be dangerous if they knew what we knew,’’ he said to the Boston Globe.

Foley encouraged the international community to pressure the Libyan government to reveal the facts about Hammerl’s shooting in a n interview with the Boston Globe.

“I want to get out the fact he was killed . . . and the Libyan government kept it a secret from the world and kept putting out misinformation,’’ Foley said. “I believe it is a war crime when an unarmed journalist is killed, and it’s not reported and covered up.’’

Foley; Hammer;; Clare Morgana Gillis, a free lance journalist who has reported for news outlets including the Globe; and Spanish Photographer Manuel Varela, also known as Manu Brabo, were on their way to the front lines with a small group of rebels in Libya to report on the rebels’ efforts on April 5.

Their vehicle stopped on the road outside the eastern port city of Brega when the journalists left the vehicle to interview a different group of rebels who informed them Khadafy’s forces were near by, according to Foley.

The rebels went ahead while the journalists waited in the desert brush. Two heavily-armed vehicles carrying Libyan soldiers quickly approached the unarmed journalists, firing machine guns,

“I quickly realized this isn’t crossfire — this is them firing directly at us,’’ said Foley, I heard Anton shouting, ‘Help, help.’ I shouted, ‘Anton are you OK?’ He responded, ‘No.’ Another barrage of bullets, I said ‘Anton,’ and he didn’t respond after that.”

Foley jumped up and yelled,” sahafi,” which means journalist in Arabic. This stopped the shooting, but then the soldiers struck him in the head with an AK-47 and punched him, Gillis and Brabo.

The soldiers took the journalists to a house in Brega, but left Hammerl, who appeared dead according to Foley, behind.

Libyan soldiers interrogated Foley over the following six weeks and repeatedly brought him to court and charged him with entering the country without a visa and reporting without permission.

Foley reported that he was treated fairly well, although he saw physical evidence that other prisoners were beaten, whipped or shocked.

He was permitted to call his mother the day before Easter after he begged his captors.

“All you want to do is tell your Mom you’re OK. . . . She might think I’m dead’’ he said.

On April 29, Foley’s colleagues were taken away, but he was left behind without explanation. After a worrisome eight days, Foley was blindfolded, placed in the back of a van and driven to a luxury villa where Gillis and Brabo had been transported. He was also met by another captured journalist, Nigel Chandler, a British freelancer.

In the last days of his captivity at the villa, Foley ate three-course meals, slept in his own room and watched cable television, which informed him that Khadafy’s son, Saadi, believed Western journalists should be well treated.

Hungarian officials checked on the journalists on May 9th and told them many people were working for their freedom.

They were finally released on May 18 when Brabo was handed over to Spanish authorities and Foley, Gillis and Chandler were driven to the Tunisian border. A hostage team of American and British soldiers, media and Foley’s brother met them there.

Foley is currently taking a short break from world conflict reporting, according to the Boston Globe, because he feels he owes it to his family to stay home for a while

CORK, Ireland — It was a surreal week in many respects. When Queen Elizabeth’s BAE 146 Whisperjet touched down in the Casement Aerodrome in Baldonnel, the nation seemed to take in one long, measured breath. For four days thereafter, the weight of history made everything else shrink into insignificance. We scarcely blinked at the thought of Obama’s forthcoming stopover. We forgot about debt, jobs, policies. The IMF told us we were on track and making progress, and we even landed a few blows in the ongoing corporate tax spat with Sarkozy. But much of this fell to the wayside while we sat glued to our televisions and watched a small 85-year-old woman and her 90-year-old husband disembark, smile, greet. She made headlines — made history — with her emerald green attire and that familiar, delicate wave.

Geographically, Ireland is as close as forty miles to the UK, but for all that has happened between the two over the centuries, she might as well have been taking her first steps on the moon. Time has moved on. There are now a great deal more Irish people whose experience of the countries’ troubled relationship is confined primarily to history books, a few Hollywood movies, and half-hour montages from RTÉ’s popular historical series Reeling in the Years.

The days and weeks leading up to her visit raised few heads, bar the usual grumbles from republicans. Or at least, I personally wasn’t paying too much attention. However, the sight of her plane descending from grey skies stirred up the significance of the occasion. The first monarch to visit the Republic of Ireland. The first to even touch Irish soil in a century. I wondered what it must have be like for her as she came down those steps. It must have been strange to have access (and be welcome) to so many parts of the world, and yet to be unspokenly denied by her nearest nation and the echo of war.

And maybe stranger still for the door to finally open in her 85th year.

Although Ireland and the UK now enjoy a harmonious relationship and lucrative trade deals, no corners were cut when it came to security. The week preceding her arrival was a string of nervy reports of viable devices and coded IRA threats. The euro equivalent of $42 million was spent on ensuring her safety and stamping out possible attacks from dissident republican groups. There were violent protests from a handful of dissenters on Dorset Street, just a few hundred metres from O’Connell Street and Parnell Square, but police in riot gear held them off comfortably. Controversially, Sinn Féin declined to participate in the visit that was described by party leader Gerry Adams as “premature”. He and others opted instead to “celebrate republicanism” by releasing 1,000 black balloons to coincide with the Queen’s excursion to the Garden of Remembrance. Inside, however, she laid a wreath at the sculpture of the Children of Lir and bowed her head noticeably, paying her respects to the soldiers who had fought British crown forces for the sake of Irish independence. It was a poignant acknowledgment of Ireland’s sovereignty and bestowed respect upon those who had died fighting for it. In light of this, republican demonstrations seemed weak and fussy, even self-defeating.

She followed an exhaustive, if sterile, tour of Ireland’s historical sites, planting trees, visiting Áras an Uachtaráin, The Book of Kells, the Guinness Storehouse, Government Buildings, Croke Park, and Islandbridge (a memorial garden dedicated to the 50,000 Irish soldiers who fought and died for Britain in World War I.)

A state dinner was held in Dublin castle where, to her credit, she met and greeted 160 guests—a feat at any age, let alone at 85. There had been plenty speculation about her scheduled speech. The matter of whether there would be an apology made many headlines in the UK and around the world, but despite reports to the contrary, the Irish people neither expected nor demanded an apology. This visit was never intended to act as some sort of confessional for years of colonial fallout.

Britain’s is a constitutional monarchy and it has not operated in a political capacity in decades. She is the head of state, an ambassador, and not a general or a strategist. It was never the Queen’s responsibility to apologise for The Troubles. The mood of the event was one of reconciliation as a means of moving on from the past, and her words were fashioned around this more optimistic notion.

In an unexpected gesture, she opened with Irish.

“A Uachtaráin agus a chairde”.

President, friends.

Those cúpla focail, perfectly enunciated, will most likely live longer in people’s memories than anything else the Queen said or did. She spoke of the anguish the conflict had wrought and accepted that mistakes had been made by all throughout the two nations’ tetchy story.

“To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past, I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathies. With the benefit of historical hindsight, we can all see things which we would have done differently or not at all.”

She honoured President Mary McAleese, who had originally invited the Queen as early as 1998, shortly after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, and her meditative words garnered a five-minute standing ovation from a room full of diplomats, politicians, and poets.

From Dublin, she moved south, passing through Kildare and Tipperary before arriving in Cork where the sun made a rare appearance. In contrast to Dublin, where security efforts had resulted in large exclusion zones and mostly empty streets, the Queen was met by a crowd of 30,000 in the rebel city and here she embarked on an impromptu meet-and-greet with the some of the people who had lined Grand Parade to see her. With the help of blue skies, the occasion turned into something of a festival experience, and the crowds were treated to live music performances and food fairs throughout the city’s temporarily pedestrianised streets.

Her short two-hour stop in Cork saw her visit the famed English Market, a beautifully restored 18th-century indoor food emporium, where local traders described her as gracious and warm. She was given a less traditional insight into modern Irish culture when she was brought to the Tyndall Institute, UCC’s state-of-the-art research facility. She was given a brief overview of the work being done at Tyndall before meeting Hassan and Hussein Benhaffaf—conjoined twins who were born in Cork and separated successfully by surgeons at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.

Ireland has hosted Clinton, Bush, and today Obama, but this was a state visit like no other. To say it was packed with symbolism is now a redundant statement. The phrase was beaten into the realms of cliché by media mallets over the last few of days. But it was symbolic. As her plane lifted off from the blacktop at Cork airport, we reflected on the week that had passed and there was a sense of relief and accomplishment. I think, more than anything, we surprised ourselves. Where previous generations might have spurned her, might have wished for more sinister outcomes, we surprised ourselves with an unexpected anxiety for her safety and an eagerness for her presence. For a long time, every official interaction between Ireland and the UK seemed only to highlight our differences and fuel the resentment, but May 17th marked a turning point where the sole wish was to cast off history’s deadwood and to reconstruct using the things that we have in common.

“These ties of family, friendship, and affection are our most precious resource. They are a reminder that we have much to do together to build a future for our grandchildren. The kind of future our grandparents could only dream of.”

(Blast staff photo/Laura Krantz)

Strauss-Kahn’s situation has raised questions in France about the pertinence of public figures’ personal choices, and while the country relishes its historical disconnect between public and private life, many young French voters say this episode has changed their thoughts about the private lives of public figures.

“In general I vote for the political ideas of the man, not for his private life,” said Gaëlle Simonin, 23, a student in Rennes.

“[But] there are things that you can’t ignore.”

Most young voters said they were shocked by last Monday’s news, but not necessarily surprised.

“I never imagined that we could see DSK in handcuffs,” said Fatoumata Trahoré, 26, a student in Paris.

“But on another side, it is known that women are one of his weaknesses. He admitted it on newspaper,” she said.

Strauss-Kahn has a long history as a womanizer and is most recently known to have had an affair with a staff member in 2008.

Trahoré said she considered Strauss-Kahn the best candidate in the 2012 elections because of his social and economic experience.

Now she’s changed her mind.

“It’s sure that I’m going to vote for another candidate.”

So does a politician’s personal life matter when voting?

“Until now I didn’t think so. But today I suppose it’s vital. It’s important to know the personality of the person who is going to make decisions about our state,” Trahoré said.

Vincent Delagarde, of La Roë, France, also said the news shocked him.

“I was considering voting for DSK, because I think he has a great international experience, and you can’t be a French president without [that],” said the 27-year-old technical engineer who said he does not belong to a political party.

Delagarde said the personal lives and habits of politicians shouldn’t be important when choosing a candidate.

“I don’t know why people are so upset when they see a picture of a politician in a luxury car. You can’t judge someone on how he looks or what car he drives. The only thing that matters to me is what they do and how they do it,” he said.

Delagarde said he’d have to know whether Strauss-Kahn is guilty before he decided whether to vote for him.

“How could you vote for someone who’s a rapist?” he said.

Other young voters said they were not shocked at all.

Morgane Mercier, 24, a student in Rennes, said she believes Strauss-Kahn was set up.

CORK, Ireland — There have been tentative suggestions in Ireland recently that relations with the UK are at an all-time high. Despite the efforts of dissident groups, the people of Northern Ireland have worn a remarkably durable united front in their vocal support for peace. But sometimes it’s tricky to walk away from the past—even when you’re 3,000 miles away from it.

Boston College is on the ropes this week after the US attorney general (at the behest of the P.S.N.I Serious Crime Branch) issued a subpoena for confidential archived interviews with former IRA and loyalist members. The interviews had been conducted 10 years ago as part of an oral history project on the conflict in Northern Ireland.

The interviews contain more than 50 personal accounts from individuals who had been involved on both sides of The Troubles. The project was directed by author and former Irish Times and Sunday Tribune journalist, Ed Moloney. Mr. Moloney has since published a book (and subsequent film documentary) entitled Voices from the Grave which is based on interviews with ex-IRA member Brendan ‘The Dark’ Hughes who died in 2008, and former UVF prisoner and politician David Ervine, who died in 2007.

Former IRA member Anthony McIntyre interviewed Hughes and other IRA dissidents, including Dolours Price, who was convicted and imprisoned for her role in the bombing of The Old Bailey criminal court in London in 1973. Meanwhile, loyalist Wilson McArthur interviewed the unionist participants.

In particular, the PSNI are interested in alleged comments made my Hughes and Price in the interviews which suggest that prominent Irish politician and Sinn Féin party leader Gerry Adams oversaw an IRA unit that was responsible for kidnappings and disappearances in the 1970s, most notably that of Jean McConville. Hughes and Price were both close allies of Adams until an ideological falling-out some years ago. The allegations could have enormous implications for Belfast-born Adams who recently resigned his seat in Westminster in order to run for election in the Dáil in the Republic’s recent general election. Although Mr. Adams has continually denied being a member of the IRA, his involvement in the organisation has long been presupposed by the media and general public.

There are other implications however. The revelations thought to be contained in the interviews were disclosed on the condition that the material would not be released in the lifetime of the participants. Indeed, in a promotional clip of Ed Moloney’s Voices From the Grave documentary, you can hear this pledge of secrecy in a conversation between McIntyre and Hughes:

“Do you have a problem with committing all this to secret tapes to be used only after you have died?”

“I don’t have a problem with that. If I did have a problem with that I wouldn’t be sitting here talking into the microphone. And I think a lot of the stuff I’m saying here, I’m saying it in trust, because I have a trust in you. And I have never, ever, ever, admitted to being a member of the IRA. Never. I’ve just done it here.”

There are clear questions as to how this subpoena might threaten the safety of all those who contributed to the oral history project. While Hughes and others have since passed away, there are many still who are alive and whose wellbeing might now be at risk.

In addition to this problem, the case could potentially undermine the entire academic field of oral history. Speaking to The New York Times, Mary Marshall Clark, director of Columbia University’s Oral History Research Office, described the situation as “our worst-case scenario.”

Blast spoke with Dr. Rob Perks, the director of Oral Histories at the British Library about the case and the stance it holds on this turn of events.

“The British Library will, wherever possible, seek not to disclose restricted confidential oral history interviews,” he said. The comment demonstrates the reluctance of those involved in oral history undertakings to betray the privacy the field needs to function, but his words came with a caveat.

“Such obligations of confidentiality may be overridden by certain legal requirements. Disclosure of confidential material to meet a legal requirement may be mandatory, and beyond the Library’s reasonable control.”

Should the subpoena be successful, project director Ed Moloney has not ruled out the radical move of destroying the tapes as a protective measure, although he stressed that it would be an option of last resort.

In a stray from previous policy, US immigration officials announced that Haitians who found refuge in the United States after the earthquake last year will be allowed to stay in the US legally for a fixed amount of time.

Those who fled after the disaster can apply for temporary protected status from the US government, which will allow them to live and work legally until January 22, 2013.

Previously, the US government only allowed Haitians who were in the United States before the earthquake to apply for temporary protected status. The new policy also grants them an 18-month extension, as the previous grant had been set to expire in July.

An estimated 10,000 fled to the US after Haiti was destroyed and were granted visitor visas, however many found themselves homeless or living in motels or family members’ homes, according to the Boston Globe.

“Providing a temporary refuge for Haitian nationals who are currently in the United States and whose personal safety would be endangered by returning to Haiti is part of this administration’s continuing efforts to support Haiti’s recovery,” Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said in a statement.

Haitian immigrants and advocates were overjoyed with the shift in policy.

“We are all ecstatic,” said Marjean A. Perhot, director of refugee and immigration services of Catholic Charities Archdiocese of Boston. “I ran down the hall I was so excited. We are so thrilled, so thankful. Today has made the lives of thousands of Haitians hundreds of times better.”

People must apply for temporary protected status, and if granted, they must pay fees in order to live and work in the United States.

The Homeland Security secretary grants this special status to people who have suffered a natural disaster or war in their home country until the US decides it is safe for them to return.

The State Department put American embassies around the world on alert as it issued a travel warning about the possibility of anti-American outbursts in the wake of al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden’s death at the hands of American special forces in Pakistan.

The worldwide travel alert was posted early Monday morning, shortly after President Barack Obama confirmed bin Laden’s death in a live speech at the White House.

The alert warns of “enhanced potential for anti-American violence given recent counterterrorism activity in Pakistan.”

“Given the uncertainty and volatility of the current situation, U.S. citizens in areas where recent events could cause anti-American violence are strongly urged to limit their travel outside of their homes and hotels and avoid mass gatherings and demonstrations.”

CORK, Ireland — For more than a decade, a shady troika of bankers, developers and government ministers stood watching the simmering cauldron of the Irish economy, and stirred it very deliberately. So, when Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in 2008, it shuddered across the Atlantic and knocked the rickety legs from under our economy, proving the saying that when America sneezes, Ireland catches a cold. Maybe it’s a little dramatic to say this, but watching the news reports of the country’s downfall over the last three years has been a bit like watching the collapse of the World Trade Center in slow-mo. You’re stunned, you know it’s bad, you know it’s going to happen. You watch the whole thing crash and there’s nothing you can do about it: Unemployment. Downgraded credit ratings. Nationalizations. Guarantees. Loans from the European Central Bank. Scramble budgets. And then, after all that, the International Monetary Fund steps in with $120 billion to bail us out. Bang. Rock bottom—we hope.

Ireland's standardized unemployment rate by percentage. (Source: Eurostat, via European Central Bank Statistical Data Warehouse)

The nation seems to be holding its breath today while a stress test of the banking system is undertaken. The way it’s being covered in the media makes it seem like the sort of thing that could yet transform every depositor into Jane and Michael Banks demanding their tuppence. The whole thing has been such an exhausting marathon of twists, turns and revelations that many of the nasty by-products of financial ruin have gone under the radar.

With so much talk of the numbers, cuts and taxes, you start to forget what it means in human terms. You forget that a slashed health budget means fewer beds or fewer nurses. You forget that unemployment means emigration. After three years of a bruising recession, you’re so frazzled by the terminology and the growing number of zeros that we owe to Germany that you simply don’t have the wherewithal to remember why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Given that this is the nation’s third time sending large swarms of Irish people packing, you could say we’re getting used to it now. Granted, it’s not as acute now as it was during the Great Famine of 1845, which resulted in 2.1 million people leaving the country by 1855, according to the Irish Times. But the statistics now are about to equal the bleak era of the 1980s, a decade that saw an 18 percent unemployment rate by 1989 and the exodus of 500,000 people, according to the Irish Times. In 2010, 65,000 people left the country, compared to 70,600 in 1989. And now, with Eurostat data reporting unemployment at 15 percent, the Economic Social Research Institute predicts a net outflow of 50,000 more people over the next year. Year-for-year across the decades, that figure puts us just about on-course to repeat our statistical feats.

We’re getting used to it now, reverting to the “Paddy Irish” type, I suppose. “Poor but happy,” some people like to say, as if economic success were a suit that never really fit and we are now returning to the familiar rags of our national upbringing. But I’m not buying it. I untangle the mess of earphone and Webcam wires, and yawn off the tiredness of the idle day. What am I doing again? Why am I doing it?

Ah, yes. With the help of three albums’ worth of Iron and Wine, I’m whiling away the five-hour time difference between Ireland and D.C. My best friend is interning there. She commutes, I type. Maybe we both hum along to “Southern Anthem” and whittle the clock down. A narrow window of opportunity in the 3,000-mile distance is about to make itself available; that rare time when she is not working and I am not sleeping or vice versa. This is the stuff that gets lost. I’m not so desperate that this recession is making me lonely. But with most of my friends more likely to be making a living in Uganda than Ireland, I have to admit that it’s getting a little barren and boring for me here. I feel like I’m the only one left. I don’t laugh anymore when I see the “Will the last graduate left in Ireland please turn off the light” Facebook page pop up on my news feed. I admit, I’m not the most gregarious of individuals and this probably hasn’t helped my case. In Ireland, shyness and sobriety do not a social network make.

Nevertheless, I feel slightly robbed. We were the first generation of Irish people who grew up with the warm and unwavering promise that we would never have to leave. And so we grew up, unprepared, only to get smacked mid-degree with a hefty layer cake of governmental corruption, incompetence and economic failure.

This is not a whinge for the country’s 20-somethings. We know it could be a lot worse. We know we could be 30-something, unemployed, with a rake of kids and a sub-prime mortgage. Or worse still, employed and footing the lengthy bill. And we know that emigration in 2011 is not the sobering and unglamorous affair that it was in the ‘80s. It’s not busloads of pasty Irish whelps queuing forlornly for boats to Holyhead, North Wales or flights to Boston’s Logan Airport. We arrive on foreign shores pre-Fitch’d and almost tanned enough to blend in. We’re globalised enough to shut our eyes, ride it out, and label it a bit of “craic.” Still, it goes against the grain to leave your home. My friend summed it up succinctly when she said, “You know, I always knew I would have to travel to pursue my ambitions. But I hate that it wasn’t on my own terms.” And right she is. There is a severe enough distinction between leaving your home and being evicted from it because you can’t pay the rent—and no amount of Abercrombie sweaters or bottles of St. Tropez can stifle that particular sting.

And so, here we are; bleary eyed and more tired for our age than we would truly like to admit. I look at my watch. The narrow window of opportunity opens and through Google Voice I converse with my friend for nearly two hours. We laugh about friends and sex. And then we talk about jobs. How is the internship going? What do things look like at home? Who is where? They’re in Seattle, Vancouver, Sydney, London. Certainly not Ireland. We lament the situation we have been shoehorned into.

The choices for emerging graduates are stark. You can stay and fill out the long application forms for social welfare payments and paper the streets with your resumé in the hope that something sticks. Or you can leave. Because the biggest problem is not the lack of jobs (although it’s hardly a reason to celebrate), it’s the lack of anything. Last September, I moved to Manhattan to do a three-month unpaid internship. It was an incredible experience and I gained so much from it, both professionally and personally. But the sheer insanity of borrowing money to work for nothing epitomises the sort of outlandish rabbit-hole that the Irish people have been pushed into.

And that’s why people are emigrating. Not only is it nigh on impossible to get a salaried job, it’s also impossible to get work experience or internships. Facing a future of meagre state payments and the slow rot of their academic skills, graduates turn instead to visa applications. They uproot their whole lives just to feel what it might be like to have a career. I read New York Times articles about 28-year-old law students who are “stuck” doing yet another internship, and I envy them. There is no such innovation on this side of the pond.

You could’ve knocked out George Foreman with the accumulated volume of newspaper reports and television programmes that have gleefully attacked the government and senior bank officials since this crisis began. I wouldn’t for one moment relent in pointing the finger at those gluttonous fat-cats who landed us in this endless mess, but there is a distinct failure of industry too, particularly in the media.

Let’s not forget that during the property boom, most national newspapers in Ireland fed into the fever pitch with large property supplements. And now that it has gone bust and they are busy playing the blame game, they are happy to ignore the thousands of graduates who come knocking on the door seeking not jobs, just the opportunity to learn and contribute. Here I am, the case in point, more likely to write for a publication located 3,000 miles away than I am to write for one located just three miles away. Ireland’s small publishing industry makes no effort to accommodate the youth that might yet keep it going. There are swathes of state and semi-state bodies that largely seem to snub our language students at a time when their skills might be most advantageous, especially when you consider how much we must parlay with Sarkozy, Merkel, et al. And what about those pharma companies who have had to make staff redundant to reduce their costs? Wouldn’t they benefit from a couple of chemical engineering interns? We score poorly in mathematics compared to our European colleagues. Is there an opportunity there for some unemployed graduates with the requisite qualification? Do we give our artists a strong network? A forum for aspiring writers? No.

And I’m not convinced by the new coalition’s guff about reinventing Ireland and creating opportunities for young people. They, too, are so entranced by the debt clock that the billions of euros that were invested in education are continuing to trickle steadily out of the country. Implementing some sort of short-term stopgap is simply not on the top of anyone’s list. It’s ironic because when national debt is weighing in at the euro equivalent of nearly $140 billion in such a small country, or about $31,000 per citizen, it seems like you might want to hang on to as many people as possible to help shoulder the deficit in the long term. Right?

The US military has launched a missile attack against Libyan air defenses, the Associated Press ahs reported.

The missiles were aimed at coastal military targets and launched by Navy vessels in the Mediterranean, according to reports.

No other details were available.

A “United Nations conflict” has started.

The United Kingdom and France have taken the lead in enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya. British warplanes and French Rafale and Mirage jets have begun flying sorties over Benghazi and other parts of Libya.

A Moammar Gadhafi loyalist fighter jet was seen being shot down in an Associated Press photo dated Saturday, but it was not clear how the jet was shot down or if British or French fighters had attacked it,

French Defense Ministry spokesman Thierry Burkhard did confirm that French forces fired on a Libyan military vehicle Saturday.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in Paris on Saturday for a meeting with European and Arab allies. Twenty-two countries participated in the summit.

Earlier today, government troops attacked Benghazi, the rebel capital, in defiance of Gadhafi’s own proclaimed cease-fire.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said: “The time for action has come, it needs to be urgent,” according to the Associated Press.

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — AccuWeather reports winds at the ill-fated Fukushima nuclear power plant will remain essentially off shore through at least Friday, thereby steering any leaked radioactive matter out to sea and away from populated areas.

Winds at the eastward-facing coastal site will blow from the northwest at 15 to 30 mph through Thursday, local time, then from the west at 10 to 20 mph on Friday.

Unusual cold and snow flurries will linger through Thursday, putting extra hardship on survivors and rescue crews.

West to southwest winds will likely hold sway on Saturday, then southeasterly, or on shore, winds will be possible on Sunday.

Thursday flurries will be followed by a substantial warming trend through Sunday.

Reports say that the Fukushima site has leaked significant radioactive matter into the lower atmosphere with detectable rising in radiation levels southward to greater Tokyo.

Low-level winds are key to tracking any major release of radioactive matter.

By Jim Andrews, Senior Meteorologist for AccuWeather.com

NEW YORK — Four New York Times journalists, including a Pulitzer Prize winner, have been reported missing in Libya, the newspaper said.

Editors said they last heard from their employees on Tuesday.

Executive editor Bill Keller reports on NYTimes.com that Libyan officials told the Times that they are trying to find the journalists.

“We have talked with officials of the Libyan government in Tripoli, and they tell us they are attempting to ascertain the whereabouts of our journalists,” Keller said. “We are grateful to the Libyan government for their assurance that if our journalists were captured they would be released promptly and unharmed.”

Missing are Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter and Beirut bureau chief Anthony Shadid; reporter/videographer Stephen Farrell; and photographers Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario.

“Their families and their colleagues at The Times are anxiously seeking information about their situation, and praying that they are safe,” Keller said.

An employee of Tokyo Electric Power Co. working at the doomed Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant is being treated for exposure to radiation, according to Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency

Bloomberg reported that the worker, who was not named, was hospitalized after his radiation exposure exceeded 100 millisieverts.

No word on any symptoms.

Japan’s top governmental spokesman told the media Sunday (late Saturday in the U.S.) that radiation at a besieged nuclear plant briefly rose above the legal limit and that a “partial meltdown” of one reactor may be underway.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters that the meltdown was likely underway at a second reactor affected by Friday’s 8.9 magnitude earthquake and resulting tsunami.

Three nuclear reactors are now in danger of meltdown, creating a potential ecological disaster of unprecedented proportions. It appears that redundant cooling and power systems have failed, particularly with the influx of water during the tsunami.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., owner of Fukushima Daiichi and Fukushima Daini, the two heavily damaged nuclear power complexes took a desperate measures in one reactor, pouring seawater and boric acid directly into the core, which, even if successful, would render the reactor useless.

Some 200,000 residents near the nuclear complexes are being evacuated beyond a 12.5-mile radius around the plants. Government officials are also distributing iodine pills to civilians, a step that is seen as a sign of increased danger and public health exposure.

The U.S. government and American companies told media outlets they have offered assistance to Japan, but that the country has not requested any help.

The Japanese nuclear safety agency has reported a nuclear emergency at a second reactor in the same complex where an explosion had occurred earlier, the Associated Press is reporting.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said early Sunday, local time, that there was a malfunction in the cooling system at Unit 3 of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. The agency was informed of the situation by Tokyo Electric, the utility which runs the plant.

No additional details were released.

An earlier explosion at another reactor in the same complex destroyed the building housing the reactor and sending radioactive material into the air. Thousands have been evacuated from the area.

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — AccuWeather reports officials have shut down a nuclear power plant in earthquake-ravaged north-central Japan. Winds could help protect nearby residents in the event of a radiation leak.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is currently not leaking radiation, but the threat of a leak has prompted officials to evacuate nearly 3,000 people within the surrounding 2 miles.

The power plant is located in Onahama city, which is about 170 miles northeast of Tokyo.

The fear of a leak stems from the fact that a power outage and failed backup generator are inhibiting the reactor’s cooling system from working properly, according to the Associated Press.

Radiation could leak out if the power outage continues and the reactor core stays hot. A reactor meltdown would be a worst-case scenario.

In the event of a leak Friday night, local time (through this evening EST), winds flowing from the northwest to west may help guide most of the radiation offshore.

Winds will remain offshore Saturday, local time, despite turning more to the southwest.

The danger of a possible leak has also prompted officials to declare a state of emergency at the power plant, the first of its kind in Japan.

By Kristina Pydynowski, Senior Meteorologist for AccuWeather.com

Surgeons at a hospital in southern China said they successfully removed a rusty knife end from the skull of a man who didn’t know it was there for four years, the Associated Press reported.

Yuxi City People’s Hospital in Yunnan Province said Friday that Li Fuyan, 30, was suffering severe headaches, bad breath, and breathing problems, but never knew why. He told doctors he had been stabbed in the lower right jaw by a robber four years ago. Apparently the knife broke off inside his head.

The blade was very rusty and corroded, but doctors very carefully removed it without shattering the blade. The man is expected to fully recover.

CBS News Correspondent Lara Logan in Tahrir Square moments before she was attacked on Feb. 11, 2011. (CBS)

A CBS correspondent was attacked and sexually assaulted on Friday in Tahrir Square in Cairo, after the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the network said in a statement Tuesday.

Lara Logan, 39, was covering the events for “60 Minutes” when about 200 people surrounded Logan and her crew. Logan was separated from her group, surrounded, beaten, and sexually assaulted, CBS said.

According to CBS, a group of women and 20 Egyptian soldiers came to Logan’s rescue. She returned to her hotel and arrived back in the US on Saturday, where she was hospitalized.

CBS said that Logan and her family requested privacy.

Logan is the “60 Minutes” chief foreign affairs correspondent and has worked for the show since 2004.

The Egyptians weren’t the first peoples in the Arab world to rise up against an oppressive government in 2011. Before that Facebook group was made, the people of Tunisia rose up against their (now former) president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, kicked him out, and have had an acting president since mid-December.

Egypt got so much attention because of the sheer scale of the protests, the millions that marched and demanded democracy, and the fact that they are a major receiver of U.S. aid. But now, as Part I of Egypt’s fight for freedom has come to a close, several of its Arab counterparts are learning from it and Tunisia’s example.

Here is a list of the top five countries (in no particular order) in the Middle-East facing a major uprising against oppression and for democracy. And you can bet, a lot of it will be organized on Facebook and Twitter.

1. Tunisia

Just like in Egypt, this fight isn’t over. It all started when Mohammed Bouazizi lit himself on fire, an act of self-immolation that has been emulated in other countries as a symbol of governmental oppression and humiliation. Now, even though Ben Ali has stepped down, Tunisians are protesting against high food prices and high unemployment, and are trying to put together a reliable temporary government until a free and fair election is held later this year for the first time since Ali took office in 1987.

2. Bahrain

Bahrain has an overwhelming Shiite majority that wants more of a say in governmental procedures and a larger share of economic opportunities. They want their king Sheikh Hamid bin Isa al-Khalifa to rewrite the country’s constitution to include those amendments, and an end to the 39-year reign of prime minister Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa (the uncle of the king). Add that to concerns over corruption, torture and the jailing of 500 presumably innocent Shiites last year and Bahraini’s have plenty to protest against. The government has tried to stop protesters by offering each family nearly $2,700 each, but this movement can’t be bought. There have been clashes between protesters and pro-government forces here, too. Forces fired on the funeral procession for a fallen protester in the capital Manama early Feb. 15, and killed at least one person, Al Jazeera reports.

3. Iran

We all remember the green revolution; the 2009 uprising after the results of a disputed election that put President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back in power. But now that fire has been rekindled, thanks largely to Egypt’s success in overthrowing Hosni Mubarak, and Iranians are now back in the streets. Ironically, after Mubarak was overthrown, Ahmadinejad’s government supported the protesters, but are now banning their own people from voicing their opinions in the streets of Tehran. There were many clashes in Tehran on February 14th, as police used tear gas to disperse protesters who were chanting “death to a dictator,” in reference to Ahmadinejad. Iranians aren’t happy at their country’s hypocrisy, and while the people obviously support the Egyptian cause, they can hardly believe their government’s words of encouragement.

4. Algeria

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has been in power since 1999, when he was elected amidst widespread allegations of fraud, as several candidates pulled out just before election day. This one is for democracy, much like Egypt’s, and on Feb. 13 hundreds of Algerian protesters were met by thousands of police who were deployed to stop the protest. The people want a legitimate government and an end to the state of emergency that has plagued the country for almost two decades, which President Bouteflika said he’d lift soon, according to Al Jazeera. Bouteflika also promised Algerians more political freedom, but that hasn’t stopped them from organizing a massive protest set for Feb. 19.

5. Yemen

Monday, Feb. 14 marked the fourth straight day of protests in the country, but the first day of major clashes between the people and the police. During a sit-in at Sanaa University, hundreds of protesters clashed with pro-government forces, where at least 17 were injured and 165 arrested. President Ali Abdullah Saleh said he would not run for re-election in 2013, but that hasn’t been enough to stop Yemenis from airing their grievances in the street. This protest is of special concern to the U.S., as the New York Times reports the movement has spread because of the president’s relationship with the U.S., and possibly his role in covering U.S. involvement in trying to eliminate the Yemeni branch of al-Qaeda.

None of the above uprisings have reached numbers anywhere close to what was happening in Egypt. However many of the country’s populations are smaller and many of the protests are still in their infancies. Amazingly, these aren’t the only Mid-East countries rising up. Here are a list of countries and corresponding dates for their next planned major protests (via twitter user @Blindust): Libya Feb. 17, Morocco Feb. 20, Cameroon Feb. 23, Kuwait March 8.

Along with these, the people of Jordan, Syria and Sudan are standing up to governments they see as illegitimate.

For a near constant stream of updates on the situation in the Mid-East, you can watch Al Jazeera English live on their website by clicking here.

Switzerland has frozen the assets of Hosni Mubarak, who resigned as president of Egypt on Friday after 30 years of rule.

“I can confirm that Switzerland has frozen possible assets of the former Egyptian president with immediate effect,” Swiss spokesman Lars Knuchel told Reuters soon after Mubarak bowed to 18 days of mass protests. “As a result of this measure any assets are frozen for three years.”

It is not known how much money has been frozen.

The Swiss will also target assets possibly belonging to Mubarak’s associates in order to limit the chance of Egyptian state money being stolen on the way out by the outgoing administration.

According to Reuters, Switzerland also froze the assets of former Tunisian dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, who was forced out in a popular revolution last month.

Senator John Kerry, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, today issued a statement following the announcement that President Hosni Mubarak resigned:

“This is an extraordinary moment for Egypt. Courageous and peaceful demands for freedom and opportunity have now won the Egyptian people a chance at a new beginning. Now the hard work intensifies to prepare for free and fair elections that will allow the people to choose a broadly representative and responsive government. Egypt’s army and transitional leaders must heed the call to lift the emergency law and clarify a timetable to establish a proper foundation for credible elections. The United States must help Egyptians turn this democratic moment into a process that builds a government responsive to economic needs as well as demands for freedom. What happens next will have repercussions far beyond Egypt’s borders. We know from recent experience in Gaza that this requires not just elections, but hard work to build a government that is transparent, accountable, and broadly representative.”

Kerry wrote an op-ed in The New York Times on February 1 calling on President Mubarak to step aside as soon as possible.

I’m able to write this today, without the fear of censorship, without the fear of futile efforts and with the confidence that it will be read by at least one pair of eyes that were entitled to the same freedoms.

Today, Hosni Mubarak stepped down as president of Egypt after 30 long years of oppression that encompassed aspects of life that we take for granted everyday.

The Egyptian people have faced spirit-stifling oppression, from political and economic corruption to the simple entitlements, like the right to assemble – which they defied quite extraordinarily in the last 17 days.

Using tools like Facebook, Twitter and blogging, the Egyptian youth initiated a revolution that brought down a regime in just 17 days.  To put it in perspective, it is what the U.S. could not do in Iraq for almost 10 years now.  Egypt’s example of peaceful demands by the people will surely go down in history and change the way in which the calls for change are heard and carried out.

The high-leveled organization and resilience of the protesters throughout Egypt (and those in support around the globe) has showed the world a different face of political reform, lead and fueled by the desire to be free and carried out by simple tools of communication.

Egypt did not only win it’s freedom today; it fought on behalf of you and me for the sanctity of our God-given freedoms.  The iconic picture of a elderly woman kissing a soldier on the cheek so as to welcome his support of the people was immensely moving and demonstrated, in a single frame, the genuine source from which the demands of change were born from.  Only time can tell what will come next for Egypt’s political trajectory and many will wisely hold their breaths in being so optimistic.  Nonetheless, today’s feat is enough to deserve a sigh in relief that, on the path to a more peaceful and just world, Egypt just took a big one for the team.

This is not about Egyptians or about Arabs – this was oppression felt by individuals, just like you, me, that were muffled by oppression for decades.  If you can imagine the pain of a life with limited freedoms, then today, you will have felt the elation of those freedoms redeemed.

After the announcement that Mubarak stepped down from power, tens of thousands of demonstrators in the streets of Egypt chanted, “Egypt is Free!”  Forging the road to a peaceful, just and free society for all, the Egyptian people have allowed hearts around the globe to revisit the deep gratitude of what it means to be free.

Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak has resigned as president after 18 days of protests by the country’s people, and 30 years as the country’s ruler.

The move was a surprise, as many thought Mubarak planned to step down yesterday during his speech. Emergency law however is still in place and will be until the military sees fit to remove it. The Supreme military council, now in control of the country, also asked protesters to return to their homes in an address on Egyptian state television.

Blast reported this morning that Mubarak left Cairo for Sharm-el Sheikh, a resort town a few hundred miles away from the capital.

The news was announced by appointed vice-president Omar Suleiman, in an address this morning: “My fellow citizens. At these hard circumstances our country is experiencing, President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak has decided to waive the office of the President of the Republic, and instructed the Supreme council of the Armed forces to run the affairs of the country. May God guide or steps.”

It is still unclear if elections will take place soon, of if their are plans to institute a civilian-controlled government.

However, today, the mood in the streets of Cairo has changed from anger and agitation, to joy and relief, now that the ruler the people so despised has finally given into their demands.

“Feb 11 is (a) Historic day in Egypt! We will celebrate it forever,” tweeted Egyptian Blogger Mahmoud Salem, 29, a 2004 graduate of Northeastern University, who has been active in the protests since the beginning.

Salem, who was nearly beaten to death in Tahrir Square last week, returned on Friday, victorious.

“People (are) jumping up and down. Everyone hugging. We did it. I wanna cry from happiness,” he tweeted.

Click here for a live stream of the celebration in Egypt from Al Jazeera English.