Headlines:
• Inside America's secret 'bomb library' housing 100,000 IEDs from Afghanistan and Iraq
• Angolan Authorities Destroying Mosques
• CIA Station Chief Exposed in Pakistan
• Anti-Veil Drive Sows Tension In Xinjiang
Details:
Inside America's secret 'bomb library' housing 100,000 IEDs from Afghanistan and Iraq
It's a nondescript warehouse on the outskirts of Washington D.C., but hidden inside are the remains of 100,000 explosives specifically designed to harm U.S. troops. America's secret 'bomb library' holds many of the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) which have killed hundreds of military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. They've been collected to help identify individual bomb makers and to develop high-tech responses. The secret FBI facility stores in cardboard boxes the ball bearings, shrapnel, wires, circuit boards, melted cell phones and cordless base stations which were turned into deadly weapons .In Afghanistan, IEDs have killed 954 U.S. troops over the past twelve years of war. In Iraq, 2,207 Americans were killed by roadside bombs. Tens of thousands were wounded. According to ABC News' special report, each IED collected is prioritized by specialized military units in Afghanistan and formerly in Iraq. A code red item must be examined, photographed and checked for fingerprints or DNA within five days. Amber cases have to be processed in 30 days and green packages are considered low-priority. Each IED has its own computer case file, which states the location and date it was detonated or located and if there were any casualties. The IED packages are piled into 3,500 stacked into five-foot-tall white boxes in the FBI warehouse. About 800 IEDs are delivered each month from Afghanistan and about 20 other countries. [Source: Daily Mail]
Angolan Authorities Destroying Mosques
Muslim leaders in Angola say the government has shut down or destroyed dozens of mosques over the past few months, with little or no explanation. An Angolan newspaper quotes David Alberto Já, president of the Islamic Community of Angola, as saying a total of 60 mosques have been shut down, mostly outside the capital, Luanda. In an interview Tuesday with VOA, the community group's vice president, David Fungula, described the closures as "religious persecution," and said he will not stop praying even if all the mosques in Angola are closed. The spokesman of Angola's national police, Aristophanes dos Santos, recently said he is unaware of any government order to shut down and destroy mosques, and denied the state was persecuting Muslims. However, VOA recently obtained a government document telling officials to demolish the "Zango 1" Mosque in Viana Luanda province, east of the capital. The order said the mosque must be torn down because it was built without authorization. VOA has also seen a video showing the total destruction of a mosque in the town of Saurimo. Only a small percentage of Angola's 18 million people are Muslim. Most Angolans are Christians or follow indigenous religions. [Source: Voice of America]
CIA Station Chief Exposed in Pakistan
The political party of the former cricket star Imran Khan on Wednesday identified a man it described as the C.I.A.'s top spy in Pakistan, in an escalation of Mr. Khan's campaign to end American drone strikes in the country. In a letter to the Pakistani police, Mr. Khan's Information Secretary, Shireen Mazari, accused the C.I.A. director, John O. Brennan, along with a man identified as the agency's Islamabad station chief, of "committing murder and waging war against Pakistan." In Washington, a C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment on the case. Ms. Mazari demanded that the authorities prevent the station chief, whose identity has not yet been confirmed, from leaving the country so that he could face prosecution in a Pakistani court. In her letter on Wednesday, Ms. Mazari claimed that the station chief did not enjoy diplomatic immunity, and suggested that if interrogated by the police he might divulge the names of the pilots who fly the drones. Since the escalation of the C.I.A.'s drone war in Pakistan in 2008, the Islamabad station has grown to become one of the spy agency's largest outposts in the world. The agency's expansion in Pakistan has been an irritant to America's relations with Pakistan. The influence of the C.I.A.'s Islamabad station chief has sometimes eclipsed even that of the American ambassador in Pakistan. A previous station chief clashed repeatedly in 2011 with Cameron Munter, the ambassador at the time, over the intensity of the drone campaign. The Obama administration ended up siding with the C.I.A., and Mr. Munter's tenure was cut short. [Source: New York Times]
Anti-Veil Drive Sows Tension in Xinjiang
A Chinese government worker in the ancient Silk Road oasis of Kashgar beckons two women to her street side stand and logs their details under the gaze of a surveillance camera. Their offence: wearing veils. The "Project Beauty" campaign aims to discourage women from covering their faces -- a religious practice for Muslim Uighurs, the largest ethnic group in China's Xinjiang region -- in an attempt to improve security. But critics warn the effort could sow resentment and backfire instead. "We need to hold onto our traditions and they should understand that," said a 25-year-old woman who has been registered twice. Offenders were made to watch a film about the joys of exposing their faces, she added, speaking behind a white crocheted covering. "The movie doesn't change a lot of people's minds," she said, like others declining to be named. Xinjiang, a vast area bordering Pakistan and Central Asia in China's far west, beyond the furthest reaches of the Great Wall, has followed Islam for centuries. It came under Chinese control most recently during the Qing dynasty in the late 1800s. Kashgar residents say veil restrictions sparked at least one deadly conflict this year near the city, where 90 per cent of the area's 3.3 million residents are Uighur. "For the Chinese government the causal process is: the Islamic extremists ask for independence, ask for separatism, then that's why they set very strict limits on Uighurs' religious activities," said Shan Wei, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore. Policies to stop them covering their faces, and to a lesser extent their hair, are not publicised. City authorities declined to comment and Xinjiang officials could not be reached. But "Project Beauty" stands could be seen around the city, and a tailor said campaign staff had instructed him not to make the full-length robes often worn with face coverings. Other residents said that to enter government offices, banks or courts, women had to remove their veils and men shave their beards. [Source: Dawn News]
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