For the second time in three months, Venezuela has been implicated in foreign terrorism. The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control named two well-connected Venezuelans as facilitators of Hezbollah Wednesday. Ghazi Nasr al Din and Fawzi Kan’an, along with two Caracas travel agencies, were put on the list this past week, their assets frozen and businesses prohibited. It follows confirmations last March of Venezuelan state support for Marxist terror in Colombia from a captured FARC computer verified as authentic by Interpol in May. Treasury made no bones about Venezuela’s involvement in Hezbollah: “It is extremely troubling to see the Government of Venezuela employing and providing safe harbor to (Hezbollah) facilitators and fundraisers,” OFAC stated.
So what’s emerging is a picture of Venezuelan terror sponsorship on multiple fronts, along the lines of Iran. http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?secid=1501&status=article&id=298857188881027&secure=1&show=1&rss=1

The murderous violence being driven by President Robert Mugabe’s militias reached new levels today with the killing and mutilation of four young men, the largest number of fatalities in a single incident in the last 10 weeks of Zimbabwe’s election campaign. Three of the men were Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) youth activists, defending the home of a local official from attack by Zanu (PF) youths in the sprawling dormitory township of Chitungwiza about 30 km south of Harare. The third was a passerby, abducted because he did not know the Zanu (PF) youths’ secret slogans and salutes used to identify supporters. All of the victims had their skulls smashed, said relatives who had seen the corpses in separate mortuaries. Some had their lips and genitals cut off.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article4174192.ece - Und die Linke wie in alten DDR Zeiten: Kein Land hat je uneingeschränkte Meinungs-, Versammlungs- und Reisefreiheit …

Scientists claim they have cured advanced skin cancer for the first time using the patient’s own cells cloned outside the body. The 52-year-old man involved was free of melanoma two years after treatment. US researchers, reports the New England Journal of Medicine, took cancer-fighting immune cells, made five billion copies, then put them all back. Scientists in the UK warned that further trials would need to be done to prove how well the treatment worked.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7460743.stm

Malaria kills nearly three million people worldwide every year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. Millions of bed nets have been handed out, and villages across the continent have been doused with insecticide. But those measures haven’t put a significant dent in malaria cases. After a string of failed initiatives, the United Nations recently announced a campaign to provide bed nets to anyone who needs them by 2010. Some scientists think creating mutant mosquitoes resistant to the disease might work better. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has found the work so promising it has invested nearly $38 million into genetic strategies to stop mosquitoes from transmitting diseases like malaria and dengue fever. “This is one of those high-tech, high risk innovations that would fundamentally change the struggle between humans and mosquitoes,” said Dr. Regina Rabinovich, director of infectious diseases development at the Gates Foundation.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gaZmTjeqLig8cTjHcGDfbHr9dqDQD91D6FFG0

Die deutschen Energieversorger können einer Studie zufolge bis 2012 durch den Emissionshandel mit Zusatzeinnahmen von rund 35 Milliarden Euro rechnen. Zu diesem Ergebnis kommt eine Modellrechnung des Freiburger Öko-Instituts, die die Umweltschutzorganisation WWF vorstellte. Grund dafür sei, dass die gegenwärtigen Vorschriften es den Konzernen ermöglichten, die Kosten für den Emissionshandel voll auf die Strompreise umzulegen - obwohl sie 90 Prozent der Luftverschmutzungsrechte gratis erhielten. Am meisten kassiert de Grandpré zufolge der Eon-Konzern: Dieser werde in den kommenden Jahren voraussichtlich elf Milliarden einnehmen. Bei RWE seien es neun, bei Vattenfall noch rund 6,6 Milliarden Euro. EnBW und Evonik könnten mit Zusatzeinnahmen von sechs beziehungsweise 2,3 Milliarden rechnen. http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jED0c2aO2DQOqnRzCbQM2ZpshhuA

CALL FOR PAPERS: HOW TO MAKE ENERGY POVERTY HISTORY?

This announcement solicits papers for a special issue of Energy & Environment on energy poverty.

Ensuring secure and affordable supplies of energy is one of the biggest challenges the international community faces in the 21st century. Long-term availability of affordable energy worldwide is paramount to economic growth, poverty reduction and political stability.

Lack of energy is directly correlated with deprivation and poverty, including restriction of social mobility, low education levels and conflict. Access to affordable energy is a precondition for alleviating poverty and economic development. A quarter of the global population lack any access to electricity while almost half of the world’s people have to rely on traditional biomass, agricultural residues and dung, for cooking and heating.

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Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, is to place nuclear power at the heart of a new energy plan this week as his country faces soaring fuel costs. Italy, the only G8 country with no nuclear power stations, decommissioned its four plants after a public referendum in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster. Yet with fuel prices at record highs, Italy is spending twice as much as France on generating electricity each year, and has had to shut several power stations to save money. It is also the world’s biggest importer of electricity, buying 10 per cent of its power from nuclear plants in neighbouring countries. The grim reality of paying the highest electricity bills in Europe has changed the public’s attitudes towards nuclear power. The latest poll shows a 60 per cent support among Italians – a dramatic change from the 70 per cent opposition recorded in 1991. “Our …

The European Union is to boost its ties with Israel, despite objections from the Palestinian Authority and other Arab governments over continued illegal settlement building in the West Bank and Jerusalem. “Today we mark a new phase in the relations between Israel and the EU,” said Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni speaking to reporters alongside Dimitrij Rupel, his Slovenian counterpart, whose country currently holds the six-month rotating EU presidency. Mr Rupel said the EU and Israel were “elevating our relations to a new level of more intense, more fruitful, more influential cooperation,” according to AFP. EU foreign ministers made the decision at their annual bilateral meeting with the Jewish state, the EU-Israel Association Council, which took place on Monday (16 June) in Luxembourg. As a result, Israel has won three key advances: increased diplomatic co-operation with the 27-state bloc, participation in European agencies and the establishment of a working group …