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TRANSATLANTIC TIMES: World News Report
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Washington, DC, USA
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A. Leaked U.S. archive fuels doubts on Afghan war
B. Pyongyang Talks War, US Holds Drills Off Korea
C. Lindsay Lohan could be out of jail today
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D. Giant star burning itself out
Leaked U.S. archive fuels doubts on Afghan war
The Obama administration scrambled on Monday to manage the explosive leak of secret military records which paint a grim picture of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan and raise new doubts about key ally Pakistan.
The unprecedented release of some 91,000 classified military documents was likely to fuel mounting uncertainty in the U.S. Congress about the unpopular war as President Barack Obama sends 30,000 more soldiers into the faltering drive to break the Taliban insurgency.
The documents detail allegations that U.S. forces sought to cover up civilian deaths in the conflict as well as U.S. concern that Pakistan secretly aided the Taliban even as it took billions of dollars in U.S. aid.
The White House condemned the leak, saying it could threaten national security and endanger American lives, while the Pentagon called the release a "criminal act" and said it was reviewing the documents to determine the potential damage to both U.S. and coalition troops.
The leaked documents, a collection of field intelligence and threat reports from before Obama ordered the troop surge in December, graphically illustrate the Pentagon's own bleak assessment of the war amid deteriorating security and a strengthening Taliban.
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowing website behind the release, told a London news conference on Monday his group had held back 15,000 of the documents as it decides whether their publication had security implications.
The archive leak came as the Taliban said they were holding captive one of two U.S. servicemen who strayed into insurgent territory, and that the other had been killed. The reported capture could further erode domestic U.S. support for the war ahead of pivotal congressional elections in November.
FOCUS ON PAKISTAN
Pakistan, which came in for particular scrutiny in the archive, said leaking unprocessed reports from the battlefield was irresponsible, while a spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the documents underscored longstanding concern about both Pakistan's involvement in the country and the civilian death toll.
The documents suggest that representatives from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) met directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organise militant networks fighting U.S. soldiers.
Senator Jeff Sessions, a conservative Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said suggestions that even rogue elements of the ISI were seeking to confound the U.S. war effort were troubling.
"That would be very disturbing if they were participating in strategies to fight U.S. soldiers. It would be unacceptable," Sessions told reporters.
Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit dismissed the reports as "far-fetched and skewed."
"If anything these betray the lack of understanding of the complexities involved," Basit said. "Pakistan's constructive and positive role in Afghanistan cannot be blighted by such self-serving and baseless reports."
Colonel Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, on Monday declined to discuss the relationship with Pakistan or any of the specific documents, saying that despite their release on the Internet the reports remain classified.
Along with doubts about Pakistan, the documents also said that the coalition troops have killed hundreds of Afghan civilians in unreported incidents, and that they often sought to cover up the mistakes which have shaken confidence in the war effort among many Afghans.
At least 45 civilians, many of them women and children, were killed in a rocket attack by the NATO-led foreign force last week during fighting with Taliban insurgents in the southern province of Helmand, an Afghan government spokesman said.
"Over the years, we have raised the issue of civilian casualties and how harmful civilian casualties or collateral damage could be to achieving our joint objective of defeating terrorism in Afghanistan," spokesman Waheed Omer said.
He said there have been reductions in civilian deaths over the past year and a half and that there was a common understanding about the negative impact such incidents have caused and the role of the ISI in supporting the militants.
U.S. national security adviser Jim Jones said the leak would not affect "our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan."
Violence in Afghanistan is at its highest since the war began as thousands of extra U.S. troops crank up a campaign to oust insurgents from their traditional heartland in the south.
"WAR DIARY"
The United States has repeatedly urged Pakistan to hunt down militant groups, including some believed to have been nurtured by the ISI as strategic assets in Afghanistan and against arch-rival India. Islamabad says it is doing all it can to fight the militancy, adding that it was a victim of terrorism itself.
Under the heading "Afghan War Diary," the 91,000 documents collected from across the U.S. military in Afghanistan cover the war from 2004 to 2010, WikiLeaks said in a summary.
The documents were provided first to The New York Times, Britain's The Guardian newspaper and German weekly Der Spiegel.
Last month was the deadliest for foreign troops since 2001, with more than 100 killed, and civilian deaths have also risen as ordinary Afghans are increasingly caught in the cross-fire.
Pyongyang Talks War, US Holds Drills Off Korea
N. Korea Vows "Powerful Nuclear Deterrence" In Response to US and S. Korea Anti-Submarine Maneuvers
U.S. and South Korean warships and helicopters practiced anti-submarine maneuvers off the Korean peninsula Monday, readying defenses against the kind of weapon that allegedly sank a South Korean navy vessel earlier this year.
The destruction of the Cheonan in March, which has been blamed on North Korean torpedo, killed 46 sailors in the worst military disaster for the South since the 1950-53 Korean War.
The four-day "Invincible Spirit" exercises involving 20 ships, 200 aircraft and about 8,000 U.S. and South Korean sailors are being held in response to the sinking, bringing threats of retaliation from North Korea, which denies responsibility for the attack.
North Korea Threatens "Sacred War"
The anti-submarine phase of the training — which also involves anti-ship and anti-aircraft operations — is particularly important because an international investigation found that the 1,200-ton corvette Cheonan was sunk by a torpedo launched from a North Korean submarine that somehow penetrated South Korea's defenses.
"I am concerned about every submarine underwater that I don't know about," said Capt. David Lausman, the commanding officer of the USS George Washington, a nuclear-powered supercarrier deployed to the maneuvers from its home port in Japan.
Lausman said the attack — which North Korea denies having ordered — demonstrated the opaque nature of Pyongyang's military, which he said should not be underestimated.
"North Korea's danger lies because they are unpredictable," he said. "The sinking of the Cheonan is a prime example."
North Korea has strongly protested the exercises, saying they are a provocation and threatening retaliation. In flourishes of rhetoric typical of the regime, it vowed to respond with a "sacred war" and a "powerful nuclear deterrence."
U.S. officials say that the maneuvers, held well away from North Korea's border, are not intended to provoke a response, but add that they do want to send North Korea a message that further aggression in the region will not be tolerated and that the alliance between the U.S. and South Korea remains strong.
On Monday, Gen. Han Min-goo, chief of the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff, was to tour the George Washington.
The exercises are the first in a series of U.S.-South Korean maneuvers conducted in the East Sea off Korea and in the Yellow Sea closer to China's shores in international waters.
They are the first to employ the F-22 stealth fighter — which can evade North Korean air defenses — in South Korea.
The North routinely threatens attacks whenever South Korea and the U.S. hold joint military drills, which Pyongyang sees as a rehearsal for an invasion. The U.S. keeps 28,500 troops in South Korea and another 50,000 in Japan, but says it has no intention of invading the North.
Pyongyang's latest rhetoric was seen by most as bluster. South Korea's Defense Ministry said it had not observed any significant moves by the North Korean military since the maneuvers began Sunday.
But the North's latest rhetoric carries extra weight following the sinking of the Cheonan and the heightened tensions that have followed. North Korea says the investigation results were fraudulent and has warned the United States against attempting to punish it.
Cmdr. Ray Hesser, the head of an anti-submarine helicopter squadron on the George Washington, said North Korean submarines are largely restricted to shallow, coastal waters.
"We're not expecting to see them out here," he said. "I would not think they would be willing or wanting to come all the way out here."
He said the attack on the Cheonan probably came when the ship was not prepared and said U.S. ships observe higher readiness.
"It was like sucker punch," he said. "It doesn't say much about how much of a fighter you are."
Still, Capt. Ross Myers, the commander of the George Washington's air wing, said the threats were being taken seriously.
"There is a lot they can do," he said. "They have ships, they have subs, they have airplanes. They are a credible threat."
The maneuvers underscore a diplomatic blitz by the United States aimed at further tightening the screws on North Korea.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced during a visit to Seoul last week that the U.S. would slap new sanctions on the North to stifle its nuclear ambitions and punish it for the Cheonan sinking.
The European Union is also considering new sanctions on North Korea.
The deployment of the supercarrier to the area off Korea was also raising eyebrows in China — which was believed to have been concerned about having the carrier operate too close to its own shores.
Lindsay Lohan could be out of jail today
Lindsay Lohan could be freed today, less than a week after getting a 90-day jail term.
The actress, 24, was expected to serve at least two weeks after being jailed on Tuesday for failing to attend alcohol education lessons.
But a lawyer acting for the Mean Girls star - known as LiLo - said she is trying to bring her release from Lynwood women's prison in California even further forward.
A source said: "Her team is doing everything to get her out of jail this weekend."
LiLo was last night in isolation for screaming at wardens after taunts by inmates over her relationship with female DJ Sam Ronson. She is said to have antagonised prisoners by wailing at night.
Read more: http://www.mirror.co.uk/celebs/news/2010/07/25/lindsay-lohan-could-be-out-of-jail-today-115875-22438152/#ixzz0uinJWQjx
Giant star burning itself out
Astronomers said last week they had figured out just how heavy a star was that they spotted five years ago in a neighboring galaxy.
Their verdict: probably the heaviest ever -- like, 320 times heavier than the sun at one time.
Astrophysicist Paul Crowther said the obese star -- twice as heavy as any previously discovered -- has slimmed down considerably over its lifetime.
In fact, it's burning itself off with such intensity that it shines at nearly 10 million times the luminosity of the sun.
"Unlike humans, these stars are born heavy and lose weight as they age," said Crowther, an astrophysicist at the University of Sheffield in northern England.
Crowther said the giant, named R136a1, was identified at the center of a star cluster in the Tarantula Nebula, a sprawling cloud of gas and dust in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy about 165,000 light-years from the Milky Way.
The star was the most massive of several giants identified by Crowther and his team in an article in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
But size matters
Scores of other stars are larger -- notably the swollen crimson-colored ones known as red giants. But they weigh far less.
Some red giants are so big they fill the orbit of the Earth.
Still, the mass of R136a1 and its ilk means they're tens of times bigger than the sun and they're brighter and hotter, too.
Surface temperatures can surpass 72,000 degrees Fahrenheit, seven times hotter than the sun. They're also several million times brighter, because the greedy giants tear through their energy reserves far faster than their smaller counterparts.
That also means that massive stars live fast and die young, quickly shedding huge amounts of material and burning themselves out in what are thought to be spectacular explosions.
"The biggest live only 3 million years," Crowther said. "In astronomy, that's a very short time."
Short life spans are one of several reasons these obese stars are so hard to find. Another is that they're extremely rare, forming only in the densest star clusters.
Astronomers also have a limited range in which to look for them. In clusters that are too far away, it isn't always possible to tell whether a telescope has picked up on one heavyweight star or two smaller ones in close proximity.
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