THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2012
PAGE 3
NEWS OF THE WORLD
Associated Press
NORTH AMERICA
ASSOCIATED PRESS
In this detail of a courtroom sketch, U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, center,
is shown Nov. 5, during a preliminary hearing in a military courtroom at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state.
Trial continues in Robert Bales case
ASSOCIATED PRESS
JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. — Through a video monitor in a military courtroom near Seattle, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales saw young Afghan girls smile beneath bright head coverings before they described the bloodbath he's accused of committing.
He saw boys fidget as they remembered how they hid behind curtains when a gunman killed 16 people in their village and one other.
And he saw dignified, thick-bearded men who spoke of unspeakable carnage — the piled, burned bodies of children and parents alike.
From the other side of that video link, in Afghanistan, another man saw something else — signs that justice will be done.
"I saw the person who killed my brother sitting there, head
down with guilt," Haji Mullah Baraan said Monday in an interview with The Associated Press. "He didn't look up toward the camera."
Baraan was one of many Afghan witnesses who testified in Bales' case by live video link over the weekend.
"We got great hope from this and we are sure that we will get justice," Baraan said.
Prosecuters say Bales, 39, slipped away from his remote base at Camp Belambay to attack two villages early on March 11, killing 16 civilians, including nine children. The slayings drew such angry protests that the U.S. temporarily halted combat operations in Afghanistan, and it was three weeks before American investigators could reach the crime scenes.
Bales faces 16 counts of premeditated murder and six counts of attempted murder.
AFRICA
$2 bil in diamonds stolen in Zimbabwe
ASSOCIATED PRESS
VICTORIA FALLS, Zimbabwe
— At least $2 billion worth of diamonds have been stolen from Zimbabwe's eastern diamond fields and have enriched President Robert Mugabe's ruling circle, international gem dealers and criminals, according to an organization leading the campaign against conflict diamonds.
Zimbabwe's Marange fields have seen "the biggest plunder of diamonds since Cecil Rhodes", the colonial magnate who exploited South Africas Kimberley diamonds a century ago, charged Partnership Africa Canada, a member of the Kimberley Process, the world regulatory body on the diamond trade.
Zimbabwe's eastern Marange field — one of the world's biggest diamond deposits — has been
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mined since 2006 and its vast earnings could have turned around Zimbabwe's economy, battered by years of meltdown and political turmoil, the group said. But funds from the diamond sales have not showed up in the state treasury. Instead, there is evidence that millions have gone to Mugabe's cronies.
The report, released Monday to coincide with the Zimbabwe government's conference on the diamond trade here in Victoria Falls, casts a shadow over the Mugabe regime's effort to win international respectability for its gem trade. Government officials at the conference denied the report's allegations as "totally false."
Mugabe pledged that Zimbabwe will soon have new law to ensure greater transparency and accountability in order to boost the "international reputation of our diamonds,"
In this Nov. 1, 2006 file photo, miners dig for diamonds in Marange, eastern Zimbabwe. At least $2 billion worth of diamonds have been stolen from Zimbabwe's eastern diamond fields and have enriched President Robert Mugabe's ruling circle, international gem dealers and criminals, according to an organization leading the campaign against conflict diamonds.
Opening the conference, Mugabe said his government is committed to observing "international laws on diamond mining, storage and trading."
The report condemns the Mugabe government's control of the Marange diamond fields which have made Zimbabwe a major player in the international diamond trade.
"Marange's potential has been overshadowed by violence, smuggling, corruption and most of all, lost opportunity," the PAC report said.
"The scale of illegality is mindblowing," and has spread to "compromise most of the diamond markets of the world," said the report.
NORTH AMERICA
Implications of marijuana legalization to be studied
ASSOCIATED PRESS
MEXICO CITY — Two U.S. state decisions to legalize marijuana will have important implications for international efforts to quash drug smuggling, four Latin American leaders declared on Monday.
Mexico, Belize, Honduras and Costa Rica called for the Organization of American States to study the impact of the votes in Colorado and Washington and said the United Nations' General
Assembly should hold a special session on the prohibition of drugs by 2015 at the latest.
"It has become necessary to analyze in depth the implications for public policy and health in our nations emerging from the state and local moves to allow the legal production, consumption and distribution of marijuana in some countries of our continent," Mexican President Felipe Calderon said after a meeting with Honduran President Porfirio Lobo, Costa
Rican President Laura Chinchilla and Prime Minister Dean Barrow of Belize.
Marijuana legalization by U.S. state governments is "a paradigm change on the part of those entities in respect to the current international system," Calderon said.
The most influential adviser to Mexico's next president, who takes office Dec. 1, questioned last week how the country will enforce a ban on growing and smuggling a drug now legal under some state laws.
Mexico has seen tens of thousands of people killed over the last six years as part of a militarized government attempt to destroy the country's drug cartels.
President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto has promised to shift the government's focus to preventing violence against ordinary citizens, although he says he intends to keep battling cartels and is opposed to drug legalization. Guatemala's president has advocated the international legalization of drugs.