DUBLIN, Ireland ─ A new word is being used these days by Met Eireann, the Irish Meteorological Service: The forecasters have taken to warning the population that “temperatures will be much colder in snowfields.” Snowfields? What’s going on? This is Ireland, not Iceland or Greenland. The fact is the Irish countryside, normally wet and green in winter because of the flow of temperate ocean air from the Atlantic, has been pretty much one big snowfield since the end of November. The Irish are not accustomed to snow, never mind snowfields, nor temperatures so low that lakes and reservoirs have frozen. But Ireland is currently experiencing a “perfect storm”: a complex and slow-moving low-pressure system across Europe that, aside from a break in mid-December, has been drawing Arctic air directly down across the country.
The novelty of skidding and sliding over compacted snow on hilly, twisting by-roads has forced other unfamiliar words into the Irish national lexicon, such as “snow socks,” “snow chains” and "winter tires.” Few people in Ireland had heard of snow socks before this month. “They were new to us — until this year,” said Stuart Burke of Micksgarage.ie in Dublin, which has begun marketing the super-strong textile covers that are slipped over wheels to provide grip. “Now everybody’s panicking and we’ve sold thousands of snow socks in the last month and we are out of stock at present.” It is the same with all-weather, or winter, tires, which suppliers like Pirelli never saw the need to stock for Irish distribution. The family-owned firm Auto Fast Fit in Letterkenny, County Donegal, imported several hundred winter tires this year after a “mad rush” last January, during the first snowy Irish winter in the mountainous county for 18 years.
“The gamble paid off,” said Auto Fast Fit Director Stephen Harris. “We anticipated the demand and ordered the largest stock levels in the U.K. and Ireland in August. Wholesalers thought we were mad but after last year’s winter I knew that people would want to be better prepared. However I completely underestimated the level of demand. Within 36 hours of the first snow, we sold out.” Forty-year-old Harris, who said his mother has not seen a winter like this year’s since she was 15, thinks that Ireland is undergoing a revolution in thinking about winter driving. Hardly anyone bothered changing tires for winter before now because snow was a rare event, but lately there has been a growing awareness of the need to remain mobile, especially to keep businesses going and schools open, when the roads are as slippery as skating rinks.
(I am no exception: living in a steep cul de sac high in the hills above Dublin I had to leave my Toyota Avalon in the village of Stepaside one-and-a-half miles below for several days in the worst of the snow in early December. Having managed to acquire winter tires, I no longer look with such dread at approaching snow clouds.) Snow chains have been in demand too, but using them is technically illegal in Ireland as snow cover tends to be irregular and chains tear up bare road surfaces.
This December is likely to be the coldest on record in the Emerald Isle, according to Met Eireann forecaster Gerald Fleming. Castlederg, County Tyrone, experienced the coldest-ever December temperature of 0 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 18 Centigrade) early Monday. The Arctic conditions have shaken up preconceptions about weather trends in the islands of the European continent. Ten years ago David Viner, senior research scientist at the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, predicted that with warmer winters, “children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”
He was not alone. A couple of years ago an Irish publisher expressed some enthusiasm for a book on the “Big Snow” of 1947 in Ireland, on the grounds that it would interest a generation that had grown up on the island without experiencing a real snow event. Fortunately nothing came of the idea. Perhaps in another half century, however, there will be an occasion to write a book of the “Big Snow” of 2010.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — If Dante had ever been to Juarez he would have placed it squarely in the seventh circle of hell, the one housing "violence" and "ringed by a river of boiling blood."
The city, which lies on the Rio Grande just across from El Paso, Texas, is the murder capital of the world, claiming more than 5,500 killings since January 2008. It is responsible for one-fifth of the more than 25,000 drug-related murders that have occurred in Mexico since 2006 when President Felipe Calderon officially declared war on the country’s heavily armed drug cartels.
That national war reached another dramatic turning point last month when the front-running candidate for governor in a drug-torn Mexican border state was assassinated by gunmen believed to have been sent by a drug cartel. Nowhere is the violence more horrific than in Juarez, where 13 teenagers were murdered at a party and 17 recovering drug addicts killed at a rehab center.
But amid all the media spotlight on this butchery, the facts of who exactly is fighting, who is dying and why remain misty and confusing to many observers.
In this special report, “The Seven Circles of Juarez: The murder capital of the world and those who dwell in its unique hell,” GlobalPost features a series of videos and dispatches that explore the concentric rings of greed, lust, avarice and complicity that have made the town its own, living inferno. We also look at the human stories of the paramedics, priests and social workers trying to pull the city up from the fiery depths.
Here's a quick primer on the conflict. We hope it provides a way to navigate down into the reality and the complexity of life in Juarez.

Is Ciudad Juarez really the most murderous city in the world?
Most sources, including the FBI and various non-governmental organizations, find that it is. In 2009, Juarez had 191 homicides for every 100,000 inhabitants, according to Mexico’s Citizen Council for Public Security. In second place was San Pedro Sula, Honduras, with 119 killings. New Orleans, America’s most murderous city, had a rate of 69 killings, putting it in eighth place. The United States as a whole has an annual murder of about 5 per 100,000. Of course, many homicides both in Juarez and around the world are never reported.
Watch a video about the Herculean task of Juarez's paramedics:


Who is fighting in Juarez?
According to both Mexican and U.S. agents, the conflict exploded in January 2008 when the Sinaloa Cartel, led by Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman went to war with its old partners in the Juarez Cartel, led by Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, for control of the city. To fight this war, the Juarez mob recruited a street and prison gang called the Barrio Azteca while the Sinaloa Cartel recruited a rival gang called the Artist Assassins, or Double A’s. The alignment of these thousands of street gang members backed by the money and armed with weapons smuggled from the United States, has led to a major proliferation of the violence.

More from "7 circles of Juarez," a GlobalPost series about the hell of Ciudad Juarez: Turning youth into hit men Video: who's to blame? Timeline: the meltdown of Juarez

What are the cartels fighting over?
The main bounty of Juarez is its position for smuggling narcotics into the United States. Located in the center of the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, Juarez has long been a strategic treasure for moving cocaine, heroin, marijuana and crystal methamphetamine toward American users. The gangsters who control this “plaza” can not only move their own drugs but tax other smugglers 20 percent to move their goods through the corridor. Furthermore, the Juarez plaza includes both the international bridges in the city itself and the ports and open desert that stretch out into the Juarez Valley. In total, it is worth billions of dollars.

Do many drugs stay in Mexico?
With narcotics long passing through the city and many migrants returning from the United States with addiction problems, Juarez has developed a major local drug market particularly in cocaine and heroin. The city now has thousands of tienditas, or “little shops” for drugs. Each of these small businesses purportedly collects thousands of dollars daily in sales. The fighting over these street corners has exasperated the war for the smuggling corridor. Many of those killed have been local dealers, who allegedly did not pay a certain cartel their “tax” to sell drugs.
Who is kidnapping/extorting?
Juarez has been plagued by hundreds of kidnappings for ransom as well as groups demanding protection money from businesses since the conflict broke out in 2008. People who don’t pay are often brutally murdered and many businesses have been burned down. This extortion is the No. 1 concern for the business community. However, it is unclear who exactly is behind it. The cartels themselves could be involved but some agents argue the drug bosses would not be messing with shakedowns worth as little as $200 per month. Gang members or killers with tenuous links to the mobs could also be making extra cash. In 2008, the city government fired 600 corrupt police officers. Some allege they are the main culprits of the extortion rackets. Others say that opportunistic criminals with no connection at all to the cartels have just taken advantage of the violent chaos to make quick cash.

How many of the killings are related to the cartel war?
It is impossible to say how many of the murders are really related to the broader fight for control of the drug trade. The vast majority of the homicides are never solved and even when there are arrests — including some hired cartel hitmen accused of hundreds of killings — the only evidence is a confession obtained under torture. Drug cartel operatives also murder many victims for personal beefs, including fights over lovers or questions of disrespect. And with such widespread impunity, it is easy for those with grudges in Juarez to think they can get away with murder. However, the vast majority of killings do have all the signs of gangland hits, including use of automatic rifles and ambushes involving several vehicles.

Why have the police and army been incapable of stopping the violence?
The Mexican government has pushed a force of up to 10,000 into the city including soldiers, federal police and agents, state police and a beefed-up local police force. However, the troop surges have only been able to establish temporary lulls in the violence. Analysts point to several reasons for their failure. First, the soldiers and federal paramilitary police often lack the investigative skills to go after criminals, who are often able to evade capture by hiding in local neighborhoods where they are provided cover and support. Second, the economic recession and continuation of drug dollars lead to a never-ending army of hitmen replacing those killed. Thirdly, the rot of corruption continues to spread through police officers, even as others are fired.

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — Extreme weather is a part of everyday life in Vietnam.
The Mekong Delta floods each year and small children travel to school by boat. Typhoons and tropical storms blow across the South China Sea to the central coast, often on course from the Philippines. Rains flood the cities and thousands of motorbike exhaust pipes choke on the murky water.
But the floods that hit the north-central coast of Vietnam this past October were outside the normal pattern. What initially looked like an unremarkable depression on satellite maps wound up dropping 80 percent of Ha Tinh province's average annual rainfall in just 10 days. Close to 200 people died in these and later floods. More than 250,000 houses were submerged.
Major floods are usually prefaced by a storm. These weren’t. Few had the opportunity to move their belongings to higher ground. Many were trapped on rooftops without food or water for days. Reports by aid groups detailed stories of costly hospital equipment ruined and pregnant women giving birth in attics.
And this likely won’t be a one-off event. According to experts, unpredictable weather patterns seem to be on the rise in Vietnam. The country will need to adapt, they say, or face increased losses of agriculture, infrastructure and overall GDP.
“If you look at last year and this year what we saw were a succession of medium-scale storm events that affected the country and they also came towards the latter part of the year, which is unusual,” said Ian Wilderspin, a senior technical adviser of disaster risk management at the U.N. Development Program.
“This is now the new norm and the sort of thing we can expect to see recurring. [We have to] gear up for the unpredictability of these events. ... Better preparedness and timely and effective early warnings are needed," he said. October's floods weren't the first time weather had taken a sporadic turn in Vietnam.
Typhoon Ketsana hit Vietnam in September 2009, killing more than 100 people and doing more damage than any other recent storm. North Vietnam's worst drought in a century began around this time last year. The Red River, which runs through Hanoi, reached its lowest level in at least 101 years, when records were first taken. Empty hydro dams meant blackouts persisted throughout a very hot summer.
Vietnam has been named among the 12 countries most at risk for climate change by the World Bank, and many experts say climate change is to blame for the growing number of severe, erratic weather occurrences there. “Natural disasters and other extreme climate events will become more complicated,” said Hoang Minh Hien, an expert in atmospheric physics and satellite meteorology. He added that he expects storms to increase in severity and number, as well as become more unpredictable, as a result of climate change.
Sea level rise is usually touted as Vietnam’s main concern; a one-meter rise would submerge 40 percent of the country and render millions homeless. Much of the country’s key rice-growing areas — Vietnam is the world’s second largest rice exporter, after Thailand — would flood, and people would be pushed into the cities, putting tremendous strain on already limited resources.
Storms and floods cost more than lives, says Miguel Coulier, who works in disaster risk management at the U.N. Development Program. “It’s been said it’s [storms and flooding costs] 1 percent of GDP a year. ... We have to wait until the end of this year to calculate it,” Coulier said.
Many in the international community believe Vietnam has responded quickly to threats, some would argue the nation leads the region in some areas of response. A response program implemented in 2008 lays out the responsibilities of each government department and requests all cities and provinces to begin devising climate-change action plans. Tangential but important issues, such as health and food security or the well-being of possibly more-affected groups, such as women and children, have also been addressed.
Vietnam has been “fast in picking up the issue,” said Coulier, but “knowledge of it is limited" among the rural population. "People ... are very aware of how disasters have changed in severity. They don’t know what is happening or talk in climate change language. … but they know things are happening,” he said.
Nguyen Thanh Hoa, a resident of Quang Tri province, one of the five provinces most affected by October’s floods, said that floods and storms have worsened in recent years. He blames deforestation and overflowing dams. “The levels of flooding and storms have increased rapidly in recent years. We can’t predict it,” he said.
In October, he said the floods caught nearly everyone offguard. They came overnight, he said, so most people weren't able to evacuate. “Transportation and evacuation during the heavy floods was especially dangerous as the waters rose at night,” he said.

NAIROBI, Kenya — Among the thick forests clinging to the sides of the steep volcanoes that straddle the borders between the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda live some of the world’s only wild mountain gorillas. The gorillas are a critically endangered species surrounded by some of the earth’s most populated and dangerous countries. Yet a recently completed census shows that their numbers have risen by more than 25 percent. Researchers carried out a census of the great apes across three adjoining national parks earlier this year. Their findings, published in December, reveal that the number of gorillas has increased to 480, up from 380 when the last count was done seven years ago.
Conservationists welcomed the dramatic increase.
“The mountain gorilla population has made an absolutely remarkable recovery,” said Allard Blom, director of the Congo Basin region at the World Wildlife Fund, one of the organizations that helped fund the research.
Despite the increase there are only 786 mountain gorillas in the world. An additional 302 gorillas are known to live in Uganda’s Bwindi National Park, according to a 2006 census there, and there are four orphaned apes living in a Congolese sanctuary. “We cannot let down our guard on the conservation of these incredible animals,” said Eugene Rutagarama, director of the International Gorilla Conservation Program. “While mountain gorillas are physically strong, they are also incredibly vulnerable.”
Mountain gorillas were only discovered in 1902 but hunting, poaching and destruction of their habitat by humans meant that in the same century they were discovered they faced possible extinction. By the 1980s there were only 250 mountain gorillas left. Numbers have gradually increased but mountain gorillas remain a critically endangered species. These days, the area where most of the gorillas live, known as the Virunga Massif, has become crowded with tourists. Both Rwanda and Uganda, which have been at peace for many years already, welcome tens of thousands of gorilla-seeking tourists every year. The visitors often spend hundreds of dollars for a few minutes of face time with the creatures in their natural habitat.
Across the border in the Democratic Republic of Congo, it is a different picture. Peace still eludes the east of this vast country and the continuous fighting has forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. The United Nations estimates there are perhaps 1.5 million displaced people in the provinces of North and South Kivu alone.
Many settle in rough camps in eastern Congo, close to the main city of Goma and also near the 3,000-square mile Virunga National Park, a World Heritage Site, where they go to hunt animals for meat and to cut down trees to make charcoal for sale — destroying the gorilla's habitat.
The forest is also home to a collection of armed rebel groups and militias who control the illegal charcoal trade — worth an estimated $30 million a year — and who clear precious forest for timber, farms and grazing land.
The battle for resources and survival in Congo often claims gorilla victims but in 2007 the world was horrified when 10 gorillas living in the forests of Virunga National Park were shot and killed, execution-style. The dead included six from a single family group. A photograph of a large male silverback, carried Christ-like on a litter shouldered by local villagers, was seen around the world.
Authorities arrested a former chief park warden, who was involved in the illegal charcoal trade, for the killings. New park management strengthened protection of the animals and paramilitary units were created to close down the charcoal barons — all good news for the gorillas.
Augustin Basabose, International Gorilla Conservation Program’s coordinator of species, said the population growth recorded since the previous census in 2003 was thanks to “the relentless collaborative efforts” of conservation groups and national park authorities in the three countries.
Six teams of 12 researchers spent two months crossing 620 miles of forested mountains and misty volcanoes in the Virunga Massif to carry out the census. In March and April they visited Virunga National Park in Congo, Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda and Mgahinga Gorilla National Park in Uganda to observe the primates and collect and analyze stool samples in order to determine the health of the population.
The full findings of the census are to be published next year. But these initial results were a welcome piece of good news for conservationists and the long struggle to protect the gorilla.

Last month, the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, opened a formal probe into Google’s policies regarding the ranking of competitors’ websites in its search results, including links to paid advertising, and whether it restricts advertisers from working with Google competitors. This followed the filing of formal complaints in February by British price-comparison site Foundem and the French legal search tool ejustice.fr regarding the ranking system.  Ciao, a search service owned by Microsoft, lodged the advertising concerns.
Google denies the accusations, but said it has been and will continue being responsive to commission questions. “There’s always going to be room for improvement, and so we’ll be working with the commission to address any concerns,” said Al Verney, Google’s Brussels spokesman.
At the same time, Verney rejected the specific allegations in the case:  “Since we started Google we have worked hard to do the right thing by our users and our industry. Google has never taken action to intentionally hurt competing services. We do not impose any exclusivity obligations on advertisers.”
Friday the commission expanded the probe to include similar complaints by two German companies that had originally filed with the German government. EU member states are not allowed to pursue anti-trust investigations in an area that’s already being investigated at the European level, so the transfer of portions of the complaints to Brussels’ dossier, explained competition commission spokesman Jonathan Todd, “was a natural consequence of that.” Some analysts in the high-tech world suspect the commission has just been waiting for a way to go after Google, having pursued virtually every other American high-tech company. Microsoft has been there. Intel too. Penalties cost both companies billions of pretty pennies, not to mention the cost of their legal defense.  Apple wriggled out of penalties by changing its policies on iPhone applications and repairs when threatened with EU antitrust action.
EU law prohibits a company from abusing a dominant position and Google now holds between 80 percent and 90 percent of the European search-engine market share, much more in some countries. Should it have been expecting the probe? Greg Sterling said he was. It’s “an opportunity to put the fear of God into Google,” said Sterling, a market analyst and contributing editor to SearchEngineLand.com, which tracks all the major players in the industry. The complaints gave the commission a much-desired platform, Sterling believes, “to put Google on notice … that it’s going to take every chance it can to rein in Google’s power because it doesn’t like the position Google has attained.”
But there are others who believe there is a more insidious plot behind the commission’s move.  The fact that Microsoft-owned Ciao is part of the suit spurs their suspicion.
“I think it’s backed by Microsoft,” said Clint Boulton bluntly, a writer for eWeek and GoogleWatch.org, a blog devoted to — and usually supportive of — all things Google.  Boulton said Microsoft “learned its lessons well” from years of being prosecuted — he purposely uses “persecuted” — by the EU. The software giant knows this case could “possibly put a hurt on Google,” its main competitor, Boulton said.
Complaining to the commission was a “genius” move by Foundem and ejustice.fr, Boulton said.  “You’ve got Microsoft whispering in your ear — it gets these companies thrust into the limelight,” he said.  “So it’s a win-win for them because they’re not the ones taking Google to court; all they have to do is show up and testify.  It’s better to lobby that a governing body do this than to go and do it on your own.”
But Shivaun Raff laughed a bit wearily when asked if Foundem is a front for a Microsoft campaign against Google. She and her husband, Adam, who cofounded the site, have been presented with the theory dozens of times.       
“It’s irritating, because it’s so untrue,” she said.
Foundem’s connection with Microsoft, Raff said, begins and ends with their shared membership in the trade group Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace (ICOMP), an organization that takes positions against Google.  The Raffs say it was news to them when Ciao and ejustice.fr were named as a co-complainants in February, because all three companies took their matters to the commission independently.
 Shivaun says the perceptions are “also a bit flattering,” because it shows that no one believes a “tiny company can so effectively take on the world’s most powerful brand.”
Foundem became one of ICOMP’S more than 40 members in 2009, while its complaints against Google date back to 2006.  That’s when the Raffs say they found that Google had entirely blocked their price-comparison and shopping site from showing up in Google search results.
They said ICOMP has nothing to do with Foundem's complaints. An attorney for the initative did once add some legalese to a document the Raffs — neither of whom are lawyers — had drafted, Adam Raff said, but that’s the sum total of the organization’s involvement in their case.
Microsoft has address the accusations too, pinning them squarely on Google. “Google is telling reporters that antitrust concerns about search are not real because some of the complaints come from one of its last remaining search competitors,” wrote Dave Heiner, vice president and deputy general counsel, in February.  “It’s worth asking whether Google’s response really addresses the concerns that have been raised. Complaints in competition law cases usually come from competitors.”
Shivaun Raff said Foundem's best defense is the facts and letting them speak for themselves takes a lot less staff than if they tried to hide information. The Raffs’ blog searchneutrality.org offers a detailed chronology into Foundem’s dispute with Google. Google has explained in public statements that sites such as Foundem, which duplicate the majority of their content from other sites, are given lower positions in its ranking system than those with original material. But after years of back and forth, Google finally in 2009 had the block against Foundem removed by manually manipulating an algorithm, a process called “whitelisting.”   Despite a February statement by Google attorney Julia Holtz that, “We don’t whitelist or blacklist anyone,” the Raffs provide emails from “adwords-support@google.com” with the subject line “[#196919718] Update on Whitelisting”.
So once the Raffs resolved their issues with Google, why didn’t they just get back to running their business? “We had to do something to preserve our future,” Adam Raff explained.  With Google’s search engine dwarfing all competition, a company simply has to be listed there, as high as possible.  It is not acceptable, the Raffs believe, that Google favors its own results in what is advertised as an objective “universal search."
It’s Google’s search, however; why  shouldn’t it be allowed to rank its own products higher than others?  Adam Raff said fine, as long as users are informed. One remedy he said they have suggested in the legal process would be for Google to provide an option on its search results that says “show me the results UNpenalized.” It will be months, perhaps years, before the commission announces the results of its investigation into Google's behavior. In the meantime, from across the ocean, Greg Sterling cast more doubt on the prospect that Microsoft really could be behind the smaller two complainants, and even questions why it’s thrown Ciao in the ring. “Microsoft might welcome some punishment for Google, some censure or some slap on the wrist,” Sterlin said, “but I don’t think they would necessarily welcome a principle of disclosure that would equally apply to them.”

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Malls in Jakarta are decked to the halls this holiday season.
The massive rotunda at one central shopping mall boasts a giant snow globe containing the North Pole. Another has taken an Indonesian twist on Christmas by dressing jolly white-bearded Santas in stripes and conical hats and placing them in rice fields. Yet another Jakarta mall recently captured an award from the Indonesian Museum of Records for building Asia’s largest Lego Santa.
Almost all of the city’s commercial malls, of which there are many, have piped in Christmas music. In the evenings, they have choirs that sing about the birth of Jesus
But the spirit of Christmas appears confined to Jakarta’s commercial spaces, a reality made all the more stark after hundreds of fanatical Muslims forced a group of Christians from the seven homes where they were worshipping last Sunday.
The mob were mostly supporters of a small group of extremists called the Islamic Defenders Front, which has gained notoriety for its thug-like tactics that include raids on bars and threats to celebrities they accuse of debasing Islam.
(Read Vigilante jihad: Inside Indonesia's Islamic Defender's Front.)
They said the Christians — members of the Batak Christian Protestant Church — were illegally worshipping in their homes, since a 2006 government regulation on houses of worship requires religious groups to get the support of local residents before they can establish a place of prayer.
Rights groups said the decree makes it nearly impossible for Christians to set up churches in neighborhoods where they are the minority — which is often the case in Indonesia, where about 90 percent of the population is Muslim.
The December 12th incident is the latest in a rash of recent confrontations between Muslims and Protestants living in areas surrounding Jakarta, and rights groups say it is a sign of growing intolerance in a country U.S. President Barack Obama just hailed for its religious pluralism during his recent visit here.
In September, a series of clashes between the Front and the Batak Church in Bekasi, an industrial suburb of Jakarta, turned violent when one church leader was stabbed and several members were beaten.

Groups that support religious pluralism said the government has not done enough to crack down on extremists who threaten Indonesia’s tradition of religious tolerance and they’ve called on President Susilo Bambang Yudoyono to uphold the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom.

“What the government should do is enforce the law,” said Andreas Harsono, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, based in Jakarta. “What it should not do is create this kind of decree that discriminates against minorities.”

The government said the house of worship regulation applies to all religions and is necessary to prevent conflict in society. Officials say Sunday’s clash was based on a “technical matter” involving building permits rather than sectarian conflict.
“In Indonesia all people are free to practice their religion in the privacy of their homes, as it is protected by the constitution,” said Kusuma Habir, director of public diplomacy at the Foreign Affairs Ministry and a frequent spokesperson on Indonesia’s democratic transition, which began more than a decade ago. “But there are problems when it involves the establishment of a place of worship as this involves building permits, land ownership and the maintenance of order among members of the community.”
The Batak Christians say they are forced to use their homes to worship since the government has consistently denied their requests to build a church.
Since Yudhoyono won Indonesia’s first direct elections in 2004, more than 400 churches have faced violent threats from mobs demanding that they close down, according to the Indonesian Communion of Churches. Some churches have been destroyed or burned. But few cases have gone to court and the government has rejected appeals from religious rights activists to change the 2006 decree.
Indonesia is a secular state that recognizes a citizen’s right to worship one of six state-sanctioned religions, including Christianity. The right is enshrined in the Constitution and is part of the state philosophy known as Pancasila, but Bonar Tigor Naipospos, head of the Setara Institute for religious pluralism, said Indonesia has a difficult time separating religion from politics.
“If these radical groups are trying to replace Pancasila with Sharia law they are in violation of the constitution,” he said.
Nasaruddin Umar, the head of Islamic community guidance at the Religious Affairs Ministry, denies that that the government has not properly addressed recent clashes. He said every group has the right to demonstrate in a democracy, explaining that the respect for free speech is a positive sign in a country that only emerged from Suharto’s iron-fisted leadership 12 years ago.
Some officials blame recent violence on a lack of police presence. Others point out that police did arrest several suspects after the stabbing in Bekasi in September, including the head of the local arm of the Islamic Defender’s Front. He is now in prison awaiting trial.
The Front accuses Christian groups of proselytizing and trying to convert Muslims to Christianity. They say they are only trying to protect their religion by protesting aggressive congregations, such as the Batak Christians.
Indonesian society is generally considered to be tolerant and moderate — though an influx of migrants into conservative Muslim neighborhoods outside Jakarta has driven an uptick in intolerant behavior in the past four years. In some cases, Muslim residents in mixed religious communities have complained that congregations disturb the neighborhood with their prayers and singing.
The weeks leading up to Christmas have been fraught with religious tension since 2000, when a series of church bombings took place in Jakarta. In early December, police uncovered several homemade bombs near a church in Central Java, prompting the government to put security forces on high alert for terrorist activity.
The malls are another story. Harsono said commercial Christianity is acceptable in Indonesia because it makes money. And, so far, the plight of the Batak appears not to have dampened the Christmas shopping spirit.

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HAVANA, Cuba — It might take years for Raul Castro's economic reforms to significantly alter Cuba's state-dominated retail and commercial landscape. But at least one set of small-time entrepreneurs has surfaced on Havana's streets in recent weeks, freshly licensed to sell their wares as openly as if they were in Cairo or Kabul: DVD pirates. A month after the communist government began issuing new legal permits for 178 forms of self-employment, vendors hawking bootlegged movies and music have begun setting up outside markets, at bus stops and even along sidewalks around the city. No longer forced to sell their goods in secret, they now carry laminated ID cards recognizing them as authorized, tax-paying professionals.
“I'm making money for my family, and I'm making money for the state,” said Lupe Gonzalez, who now runs four separate licensed businesses from her front patio in Havana's Vedado neighborhood, conveniently located opposite one of the city's biggest fruit-and-vegetable markets.

Shoppers outside a Havana market browse pirated American movies

On one table, she laid out cheap trinkets, household cleaning supplies and various decorative knickknacks, while on another stand, she displayed a colorful array of women's shoes, careful to keep each business separate, as the law requires. A few feet away, another relative offered eyeglass repair services.
Most prominent of all, though, was the big rack of bootlegged CDs and DVDs, priced at the equivalent of $1 to $2, with everything from Shakira and Michael Jackson to Dora the Explorer and the Incredible Hulk.
Gonzalez said she paid 1,100 pesos (about $50) a month in taxes, license fees and social security contributions. Did she think that was fair?
“Don't ask,” she said. At least she didn't have to worry about copyright laws. The Castro government isn’t likely to crack down any time soon, given that the Cuban state is arguably the country's biggest pirate of all, filling the island's airwaves and cinemas with unlicensed American movies and television shows.
Street-level vendors and government television programmers generally copy their material from the same sources: illegal hookups to U.S. satellite providers like Direct TV, or discs brought in from Miami or elsewhere. In the Cuban government’s view, that's only fair, since U.S. trade sanctions prevent the country from acquiring such materials legally. And individual sellers struggling to make ends meet aren’t especially sympathetic to arguments about the intellectual property rights of foreign media conglomerates.
“There's nothing in the constitution against this,” said Hansal Vargas, who had just lined up his offerings along the sidewalk outside the Vedado market. Each of his DVDs came loaded with five or six American movies, organized according to themes like romance, action and baseball. Pornography and any political materials are taboo, but otherwise, it was a wide-open marketplace. “I used to have to hide these,” explained Vargas, who pays the government about $2.50 a month for his license and profits roughly $1 on every DVD sold, after production costs. “Now I can do this openly, with more freedom. It’s great.”
With Cuba in the process of shedding 500,000 state workers, the government is looking to move employees off the public payrolls and capture new revenue from the island’s large informal sector. By licensing these off-the-books occupations — like selling DVDs and CDs — the government can attempt to bring some degree of regulation, even if it could care less about copyright protections.
What is less visible at this stage of the reform process are private establishments that resemble small businesses elsewhere in the world. There’s little advertising or signage, and the city remains full of empty storefronts and other under-utilized state-owned property that could be more productive in private hands. Further liberalization measures are likely forthcoming in 2011, when Cuba’s Communist Party will hold its first congress in 14 years. Government officials say they’ve issued more than 46,000 new self-employment licenses, with another 20,000 in the pipeline. The average processing time for the permits is a mere five days — a light-speed pace by the standards of Cuban bureaucracy. In recent weeks, Cuba’s state-run newspapers and television programs have devoted extensive coverage to the permitting process and the new tax structures. Still, it’s not clear how Cuba can possibly generate enough jobs to absorb the 500,000 workers — one-tenth of the country’s labor force — who are due to be laid off by April. And deeper cuts are soon to follow. In formal meetings held at Cuban workplaces to discuss the economic changes in preparation for the congress, employees have consistently asked for further liberalization measures, while government officials take great pains to insist the country isn’t embracing capitalism, but “perfecting” socialism. Ordinary Cubans on the streets say they’re looking for more variety and better services — and the newly licensed entrepreneurs are delivering. “I’d like to see them legalize more things,” said Humberto Davila, having just purchased a CD of salsa music for 30 Cuban pesos ($1.25). “This country needs to change a lot.”

A man looks at logo of Slovak edition of euro

LONDON, United Kingdom — This is the story of the euro and the economic crisis overwhelming the periphery of the eurozone — the main subject of a European Union summit meeting today and tomorrow. Before you click away to a story with more sex appeal, answer two questions:
How many people were killed in the wars that convulsed Europe between 1914 and 1945?
Between 1871 and 1945 France and Germany went to war three times, how many times have they gone to war since? You are thinking about the answer to the first, but know the answer to the second: None. Zero. Zip. The story of the euro and its current crisis begins with that fact. The idea of what is today the European Union can be traced to those 70 years of war and uneasy peace between Germany and France. Out of the rubble of that era two visionary politicians, Frenchman Jean Monnet and German Konrad Adenauer — in 1950, just five years after Germany's occupation of France was ended — established the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) to make it easier for France to import German steel and coal. The ECSC was a success and by the end of the 1950s the Common Market was created. Decade by decade, treaty by treaty, Europe's political leadership continued their countries' drive toward economic integration. By 1985, the Schengen agreement eliminated many border controls, allowing the free movement of goods around the EU. Europe's collective economies grew. The logic of economic integration led inevitably to the creation of a single currency. The Maastricht Treaty, signed in 1992, set the EU on the path toward the euro, launched in 1999 and used today by 16 of the EU's 27 members. The logic for having a single currency may have been impeccable, but implementing it meant putting the idea through that most illogical of processes — politics. Politics is about appealing to emotion and the call of national identity is about as emotional as it gets.
In order to avoid running into the raw emotion connected to the EU's economic integration, much of the process was delegated to the European Commission, the EU's administrative arm in Brussels. Staffed by technocrats who speak and write a language unknown to ordinary folk, the process by which the euro was created was opaque and to some minds not entirely democratic.
For some nations, such as Britain, giving up the national currency was an identity crisis too far. Led by the right wing of the Conservative Party, opposition to joining the euro is visceral and deep seated in the U.K., and no British prime minister, Conservative or Labour, has even attempted to argue for membership in the single currency. France and Germany were willing to cede their national currencies, but not their authority. Politicians like to control tax rates. They like to set budgets. So these functions were reserved for each government's politicians to oversee. For its first decade the euro worked well. It quickly established itself as a reserve currency. It was instrumental in helping the entire European Union grow economically. Today the EU accounts for between 27 percent and 28 percent of world GDP — a larger share than either the U.S. or China. But now there is a crisis. The onset of the global economic downturn caught over-leveraged economies in Europe with their pants down, especially those that, like America's economy, were heavily dependent on a never-ending property boom to maintain prosperity: Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain. Riots erupted again in Greece on Wednesday, thousands of young Irish people are re-enacting the great emigration of earlier generations, and Moody's investment service warned it is reviewing Spain's economy with an eye to downgrading its bond rating. Current economic conditions have exposed the crack in the EU's foundation. A single currency always implied greater political union and that has never happened. There is no federal European government, and so there is no way for the EU to set a central tax policy or budget. Each nation inside the euro is sovereign with its own political dynamics. It is an irony that a politically created project has no overall political framework. Now the smaller nations on Europe's periphery are in deep trouble, and they are having to raise money to pay off debts. The summit today and Friday is supposed to come up with a coordinated solution, but that won't be easy.
Germany carries a bigger stick when it comes to solving this crisis, not just because its economy is booming, but for historic reasons, according to Ian Stannard, currency analyst for BNP Paribas bank.
"The strength of the euro is inherited from the deutschmark," Stannard said. "The Bundesbank gave credibility to the European Central Bank."
One solution suggested for helping raise money to bail out the weaker economies is for the central bank to sell Europe-wide bonds. But the sale of euro-bonds is a no-no for the German government. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble told German television earlier this week, “As long as we don’t have a common budgetary policy — and that was a decision made when setting up the euro — then we need to have different interest rates” payable on government bonds, Schaeuble said. “Because that’s the only way to bring member states round to sound policy. That can’t be abandoned.”
In other words, Ireland, Portugal and Greece can raise money by selling their own bonds, and if the interest they have to pay on them is murderous, tough. Germany's economic strength and probity is not going to underwrite Europe-wide bond issues.
This doesn't mean Europe's leaders won't come up with some way of addressing the crisis, if not solving it, said Stannard. "The EU has always been managed by a series of deals being brokered."
The solution being discussed at this week's summit involves rewriting a clause of the recently ratified Lisbon Treaty: “The member states whose currency is the euro may establish a stability mechanism to safeguard the stability of the euro area as a whole. The granting of financial assistance under the mechanism will be made subject to strict conditionality.” That is pure European technocrat language. I think what it means is that bailouts will be decided on a case-by-case basis. Whether that keeps the bond markets at bay is open to question.
Over in Britain, there is a self-satisfied sense of "I told you so." Yesterday at Prime Minister's Question Time, David Cameron was asked by Mark Reckless, a member of his own Conservative Party, "The BBC reports that the German Finance Minister wants to set an interest rate to punish Ireland. Will the prime minister confirm that this country wants to help Ireland?" The prime minister replied: "My right honorable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be setting out the details of the loan on Second Reading of the Bill today, but I think that it is worth standing back and asking ourselves, 'Why is it that we are able to make a loan to Ireland? Why is it that people are asking us to do that?' It is because Britain’s economy is out of the danger zone and recovering." The reason for that, he implied was because Britain was in charge of its own economic policy. Despite the more alarmist analyses that have been published, Stannard does not think the euro is in danger of collapsing. "The euro is going to continue. The political will is very strong to keep it going," he said. "There are still countries queuing up to join the euro." And if you wonder why the political will is still there to maintain the single currency now is the time to answer the questions at the top. No one knows precisely but a good estimate is that about 70 million people died in World Wars I and II. No one has died in a European war since the euro went into circulation.

The first round of the Indonesia-Filpina temporarily ended with the score already 1-0 for Indonesia.
Since the beginning of the game, good coordination between the Indonesian national players matched by an aggressive game from the Philippines. Both national teams have the same number of golden opportunities.
But, the attacker eccentric Indonesia, Cristian Gonzalez broke the Philippine team of mental combat. In the 31st minute, a header naturalized players from Uruguay was poking the ball rolling into the nets Philippines.
Get the ball from the left wing, Firman Utina breakthrough release in the free position into the penalty box Philippines. Philippines goalkeeper Neil Etheridge, make blunders and collided with two other Filipino players.
Etheridge dropped, while free standing behind Gonzales. His head the ball, and creates goals.
From the glass screen appears, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono who watched the rows of benches VVIP so with joy when a goal is created. SBY shawl unfurled the pride of Indonesia towards the player. Similarly, the First Lady, Ani Yudhoyono, who jumped immediately from her seat and shouted happy

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — The botched terrorist bombing in central Stockholm last weekend is being seized upon by Sweden's extreme right as an example of the dangers that multiculturalism and open immigration can have on the country. The attack, which caused little damage, leaving only the perpetrator dead and two others with minor injuries, is now serving as political fodder for right-wing groups already hostile toward immigration and foreign cultures. The right is pointing to the bomber as a clear example of why Sweden should stop accepting more immigrants and promoting a multicultural society.
The National Democrats, a small, far-right party with a handful of seats on local government councils, have planned a rally on Sunday in Stockholm against multiculturalism and terrorism. The party said it had warned of terrorists coming to Sweden in the past, only to have the warnings fall on deaf ears.
“The bombings in Stockholm were not a coincidence but part of a frightening development that will affect us all,” read a statement posted on the group’s website. “The biggest tragedy with this first terrorist attack in central Stockholm is that it’s an indication of what is about to happen to our once-safe Swedish nation.”
Though terrorist attacks are nothing new to Europe, Sweden has long prided itself on remaining free from such violence while fielding troops abroad and hosting a growing Muslim population at home.
Omar Mustafa, president of the Islamic League in Sweden, said he fears the Saturday evening attack could undo the years of progress made by Muslims living in Sweden.
“We will lose the most after this attack,” he said. “This will not help the level of Islamophobia.”
The far right has seized upon the suicide bomber’s Middle Eastern roots and calls for violent jihad. The man, identified as 28-year-old Iraqi-born Swede Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, directed his ire toward Sweden’s military presence in Afghanistan and Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who drew an image of the prophet Muhammad’s head on a dog’s body in 2007. In an emailed audio messages sent to Sweden’s national news agency and recorded in Arabic, English and Swedish, al-Abdaly also called upon the “hidden mujahedeen in Europe and, especially, in Sweden” to carry out more attacks.
“It’s now the time to strike even if you only have a knife to strike with,” he said, “and I do know that you have more than that.” A larger and more-established political party entered the fray when William Petzall, a parliamentarian for the populist, anti-immigration Sweden Democrats party, wrote on his Twitter account, “I hate to say it but what did we tell you?”
Petzall’s comments were echoed by Alexandra Brunell, secretary to the Sweden Democrats’ party leader Jimmie Akesson, who wrote Saturday night on her Twitter account, “Is it now that we can say we told you so?” She later backtracked, however, apologizing for the remark and its tone.
Speaking with the Swedish daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, Akesson made it clear the Sweden Democrats would take up the issue in parliament. The party has long demanded halting the country’s flow of immigrants. “Now we see an opening to get a debate and start taking this threat seriously,” Akesson told the newspaper.
The Sweden Democrats stunned the political establishment in September when the party garnered enough votes to enter parliament for the first time. Since the election, the group’s popularity has even slightly increased, according to a Dec. 8 opinion poll by the country's main statistics office, Statistics Sweden.
Observers said it is unsurprising that the Sweden Democrats would utilize the bombing for political gains. Given its past objection to the rise of Islam in Sweden, the party can now use the attack as a rallying point for its faithful and as a means to possibly recruit more into the fold.
“It’s a process of scapegoating. You have one person that represents a very radical interpretation of Islam. Then what the Sweden Democrats are trying to do is extrapolate that to all of Islam," said Cristian Norocel, a researcher at Stockholm University and Finland's University of Helsinki. "This plays on their line of reasoning.”
As for whether or not the Swedish electorate will listen to the far right's arguments, Norocel said that remains to be seen. Sweden has a moderate political tradition, and the country's mainstream political parties called for calm following the explosions while Sweden's Muslim associations condemned the bomber's actions and beliefs.
"This moment of pondering can be easily hijacked by Sweden Democrats," Norocel said, adding that the media must also be careful not to overhype the incident with excessive coverage.
Mustafa, of the Islam association, said Sweden needed to promote an open dialogue rather than the recriminations offered by far-right parties in order to prevent future attacks.
“I think Swedes will not fall into this trap,” he said.

Just when Goldman Sachs had you convinced that Wall Street would be the instrument of global doom, this excellent primer on the future of oil arrives to demonstrate that the specter of diminishing crude reserves could be just as lethal. And not just to the world economy.
The “petroaggressors” of Robert Slater’s new book aren’t the usual Middle Eastern suspects. “Seizing Power” lifts the veil on a major shift in the oil business that brings enormous wealth and power to relatively small dictatorships and represents another tool with which China, for one, has stolen a jump on the United States. Slater, biographer of hedge-fund kingpin George Soros and former General Electric chief executive Jack Welch, lays out the history of the world oil markets from colonial speculation, to dominance by the massive oil conglomerates known as the “Seven Sisters,” through partial or complete nationalization by developing countries, and on to the current nervous state of flux. He does this with a wealth of statistics, and with case studies of big time petroaggressors, like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and the more common corruption of the hoodlums at the helm of Chad, an African nation whose rulers skim off oil money and aid while its people languish in poverty. The rise in oil prices in the middle of the last decade — coming after the Sept. 11 attacks and war in Iraq — gave the likes of Chavez even more of a stick with which to beat the West. “The petroaggressors had always been strident, flexing their muscles inordinately, making threats, or delivering ultimatums to the West,” Slater writes. “However, the new oil wealth pouring into their coffers gave them an even greater capacity to throw their weight around.”
Why? Because Western oil companies know the oil is running out — reserves may be played out within 50 years and certainly within a 100, writes Slater, quoting latest estimates. “‘When there’s a lack of oxygen,’” Slater quotes an oil analyst, “‘we all want the tank.’” So oil companies are forced to enter unstable political environments and to pay ever larger fees for doing so. The risks are enormous (though that hasn’t stopped oil companies making equally enormous profits. Yet.)
A couple of cases in point: Bolivia sent its military to take control of its oil fields in 2006, forcing their international operators to renegotiate deals in the government’s favor. Venezuela gave its national oil company majority control in its oil fields in 2007, securing $31 billion in revenues from projects previously operated by companies including Exxon and Chevron. Russia engineered a 2008 takeover of a BP joint-venture on its territory. The company could do little about it, as 25 percent of its output came from Russia and it needed to keep the pipelines open. “The power shift” — away from Western companies and governments to Russia, Venezuela, Iran and other petroaggressores — “will lead to violence in the short-term,” Slater writes, “as nation fights nation for the last dregs of a fossil fuel that will eventually be used up.” The fight, in effect, has already begun. In countries where Western oil companies decline to take the risk of investing, China steps in to slake its growing thirst for oil. China invests in developing countries’ oil industries, and also offers massive military and economic aid packages to sweeten the deal and give the economy a double boost. That’s why a hotel room in Luanda, the capital of Angola, the biggest supplier of oil to China, these days costs the same as a room overlooking Times Square. At the heart of Slater’s argument is the need for alternative sources of energy. He notes that at the height of gasoline price rises in 2008, Americans reined in their consumption, driving 11 billion fewer miles in March that year than in the same period a year earlier. But he adds that Americans might have kept on motoring had the mortgage crisis not crashed the economy in general. In other words, we may be so addicted to oil, we’d rather send our cash to Caracas than drive a Prius. That flies in the face of the governing idea of oil pricing over the last four decades of the 20th century. The Organization of the Oil Producing Countries (OPEC), the cartel representing the biggest crude pumpers, took the line that prices could be regulated by drilling either more or fewer barrels a day. Saudi Arabia, the most powerful OPEC member, engineered this method so that oil would never rise high enough that Western nations would be impelled to look for alternative energy sources. But just when non-OPEC producers like Russia took center stage, we showed that we didn’t much care about the price. Meanwhile, alternative energies are portrayed either as counterproductive (ethanol inflates food prices), risky (think nuclear, think Three Mile Island), or untested and incapable of meeting demand efficiently (wind and solar power). No doubt many readers will shed few tears for our poor oil companies, as they contend with troublesome pseudo-socialists like Chavez. But Slater hammers home the point that Chavez and his ilk don’t pass on the wealth to their people. And though world-domination by a few Western oil companies may have been inequitable, it was at least orderly. Now, “quite the opposite is true,” he writes. “It is instability that characterizes the new oil order.” Maybe there’s still time to test drive that hybrid.

MINSK, Belarus — Few doubt that Belarus' authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko will storm to victory in presidential elections here on Sunday. Less certain is what will happen the day after.
Observers are in agreement that the former collective farm boss, barring an incredible turn of events, will win a fourth term at the helm of the ex-Soviet eastern European state of 10 million, where he has dominated political life since 1994. For those still not convinced, Lukashenko already gave his guarantee.
“There will definitely be political changes … but no change of power in Belarus,” he told journalists in Moscow last week. Of course, no one expects the elections to be a true reflection of the popular will. The main group carrying out election observation missions in the former Soviet Union, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, has never deemed a Belarus election free and fair.
But the fact that the elections could be manipulated is not to say that Lukashenko would lose should Belarus hold an open ballot. “Batka” or “father,” as many here refer to him, remains popular — especially among villagers and pensioners, who appreciate the extensive social safety net he has created.
The problem is, nobody knows for sure. Public opinion polls are unreliable. Lukashenko’s popularity is said to be slipping — or isn’t. His numbers are above 50 percent – or they aren’t.
“Lukashenko would absolutely win if these elections were free and fair,” said Vitali Silitski, director of the Minsk-based Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies. “But he can’t afford them to be free and fair, because next time he will risk losing them.” “That’s what he’s afraid of,” Silitski added. “He can’t allow free and fair elections as an institution. Because one day he is going to lose.”
But if the election’s outcome is predictable, the campaign so far has not been.
Belarus has witnessed levels of electoral freedom almost unheard of since Lukashenko came to power 16 years ago. Candidates have campaigned openly and actively, drawing large crowds at their rallies. State television for the first time held an election debate — though Lukashenko stayed away. (The other nine candidates, instead of debating one another, used the time to excoriate the president.)
Each candidate has also been allotted free television air time — though the one hour that they received pales in comparison to the wall-to-wall coverage that Lukashenko enjoys on the national networks.
On the evening of election day, when the polls close, opposition forces promise to bring thousands of protesters onto Minsk’s main square, to rally against what they say will be a clearly doctored election. Government officials are speaking ominously of the planned demo as a “provocation.”
But it is unclear what course Lukashenko will take post-election. Some see reason for hope — that the relative thaw of the campaign period points to continued political relaxation. Others believe that the election was just a temporary respite: The crackdown will come the day after, they say.
The result will hinge on two variables: Belarus’s economy and relations with Russia, Belarus’ big brother to the east. The international economic freeze has smacked the country with force, and Belarus has seen its export markets contract considerably. Its foreign currency reserves are dropping to disturbing levels, Western officials say. The tighter economics have given some Western officials hope that they can leverage economic assistance for further reform. The European Union, for example, has promised 3 billion euros (about $4 billion) to the Belarus government if the elections are democratic.
At the same time, relations with Russia, Minsk’s traditional political and economic patron, hit major turbulence over a series of issues. (Among the most prominent was Lukashenko’s refusal to recognize the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Georgia’s breakaway regions.) The Kremlin also began slowly to increase the price Belarus pays for Russian oil and gas.
The falling out became personal, and Lukashenko and Medvedev traded insults in recent months. Russian television also aired a multi-part documentary comparing Lukashenko to a mafia boss.
Now, however, it appears as if the storm has passed. Lukashenko traveled to Moscow last week and reached agreement on a number of key fronts. Moscow promised to remove an export duty on oil shipped to Belarus, thereby saving Minsk an estimated $4 billion. Lukashenko in return promised to speed up his country’s entrance into a single economic zone with Russia and Kazakhstan — a project that the Kremlin has given top priority. The Moscow deal may mean that Lukashenko feels less pressure to open his political system any further. Western officials are not holding out too much hope, but they do see the past months as reason for qualified optimism. “The Belarusians try to do as little as possible, and hope for a positive response,” said one European official speaking on condition of anonymity. “But [the election] could have been different — and it has been different in the past.” “And this could open a way for the future,” he added.

Belarus soldiers leave polling booths before casting their ballots for the presidential elections in early voting in Minsk on Dec. 14, 2010.

NAIROBI, Kenya — What's the true cost of that mobile phone in your pocket?
That's the big question human rights group Enough Project wants you to ponder this year as it urges holiday consumers to be strategic when buying electronic gifts.
At issue: whether their new high tech items were produced using "conflict minerals."
The mobile phones, laptops, tablets and other electronic gadgets that define our age are all made with tin, tungsten, tantalite and gold. Those increasingly valuable minerals are mined in eastern Congo — where their profits are blamed for fueling the region's ongoing war.
A new survey urges American consumers to press electronic manufacturers to make sure that their products do not contain minerals that cause war, mass rape, murder and exploitation in eastern Congo.
The world's top 21 electronics firms are ranked according to their efforts to make their products "conflict free" in a survey published by the Enough Project, a Washington-based pressure group, on Dec. 13.
HP is the best, according to the rankings. Intel, Motorola and Nokia ranked two, three and four, respectively. Microsoft and Dell round out the top five.
At the bottom of the rankings were camera-maker Canon, electronics companies Panasonic and Sharp, and video game giant Nintendo, all of which are deemed by Enough to have done nothing.
The scores were based on the steps the companies have taken, according to their responses to a Enough's survey and publicly available information, said David Sullivan, research director for the Enough Project.
"As the scores show, we still have a long way to go but we are pleased at the positive momentum from the companies at the top of our list," Sullivan told GlobalPost. "The leaders have set the pace and pushed others to follow."
Sullivan said the industry has formed a working group to coordinate their response to the challenge and added that if the companies work together they wield a great deal of influence.
“Although Congo’s conflict stems from long-standing grievances, the trade in conflict minerals provides the primary fuel for the conflict,” according to the Enough Project report, "Getting to Conflict-Free: Assessing Corporate Action on Conflict Minerals."
As consumers worldwide stock up on Christmas gifts like mobile phones, smartphones, MP3 players, tablet readers, laptops and games consoles, activists are concerned that some of the companies making these products are failing to ensure that their products are free of conflict minerals.
Gold, tantalum, tin and tungsten are essential parts of mobile phones, laptops and other electronic gadgets. Gold is used in wiring, tantalum stores electricity, tin is used to solder circuit boards, tungsten is used to make mobile phones vibrate.
The U.S. Congress took action to improve the situation in July by passing the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The new law, also known as the Dodd-Frank Act, will force American companies using these minerals to prove they have taken responsible steps to ensure they are not using conflict minerals.
All these minerals are found in large quantities in the mines of eastern Congo. The mines are controlled by armed groups that levy illegal taxes and extract vast profits that run into the hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The miners are paid meager wages and work under terrible conditions. The profits from the mining are used to buy the guns and bullets that have kept eastern Congo in a near-constant state of conflict since 1996, according to human rights campaigners.
More than 5 million people have died in eastern Congo during the years of fighting, most of them killed by disease and hunger rather than violence, according to the International Rescue Committee, a New York-based organization. Although a peace deal was signed in 2003, the fighting continues. The demand for minerals and the money they earn no longer simply fuels the conflict, but has also become the cause for it, some activists claim.
Armed groups proliferate with relentless speed as militias emerge to take control of the mines. They frequently use rape as a weapon to terrify and humiliate local populations: tens of thousands of women and girls are raped in eastern Congo every year. When more than 300 people were raped during a three-day attack this summer, the root cause was a battle between rival armed groups over control of a nearby mine, according to the United Nations.
Among those feeding Congo’s instability is the country’s own army, according to a recent report by the U.N. Group of Experts, a panel established to investigate infringements on the arms embargo imposed in the east.
Congolese minerals are smuggled out of Congo through its neighbors — Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda — and on across the Indian Ocean to metal smelting companies in China, India, Malaysia and Thailand where the illicit minerals are mixed with legal ones from around the world.
Enough’s stated aim is to “have companies at the top of the minerals supply chain use their buying power to influence their suppliers, exerting pressure down the supply chain, a model of change that has had success in the apparel, forestry and diamond sectors.” To encourage electronics companies to analyze their own supply chains and stop fueling the fighting in eastern Congo, Enough has produced a league table that names and shames those making the least progress while congratulating those making the most efforts. Some of the companies, such as Intel, Motorola and HP, have visited their suppliers to check the provenance of the tantalum used in their products, according to the Enough Project. HP, Microsoft, Apple, Nokia, Acer and Intel have all investigated their supply chains and indentified the individual smelters where raw minerals are processed. “These companies prove that progress is achievable,” the report states. Enough argues that the progress made shows that supply chains are not so complex as to make it impossible to trace minerals to exact mines in precise locations. The Enough report makes it clear that while some companies are making progress, more must be done if Western consumers want to be sure that the Christmas presents beneath their trees are not contributing directly to the ongoing misery in eastern Congo.

Mining of minerals essential to mobile phones and laptop computers is blamed for fueling continuing violence in eastern Congo. Here a man working in a gold mine is pictured on Feb. 23, 2009 in Chudja, near Bunia, northeastern Congo.

No one was hurt, but a 10-yard (nine-meter) strip of the fibreglass roof was left dangling above the playing field.
The National Football League has been forced to move a game between the Minnesota Vikings and the New York Giants to Detroit on Monday night.
The storm has now moved east, dumping heavy snow on Illinois and Michigan.
Officials are optimistic about the chances of repairing the roof in time for the Vikings' next home game on 20 December.
The Vikings-Giants game had already been postponed for a day and a half because the snowstorm delayed the New York team's flight.
The Metrodome covers an area of 20 acres (eight hectares), with a 10-acre roof made of fibreglass coated in Teflon. The roof is 195 feet (60m) high and is supported by 20 electric fans.

The roof collapse forced the National Football League to reschedule a game for Monday night in Detroit, 700 miles (1120km) away

British, French, German, Austrian and Italian sites were down for about 30 minutes on Sunday during a peak pre-Christmas shopping period.
A group of cyber activists, Anonymous, is hitting firms that withdrew services from whistle-blowing site Wikileaks.
There has been no official comment from Amazon or from Anonymous.
Amazon sites ending .it, .de, .uk, .fr and .at - which are all hosted in Dublin - were unavailable for about half an hour at about 2115 GMT on Sunday, according to a Twitter posting by web monitoring firm Netcraft.
However, all servers are now back up and running after a brief delay, the firm says.
There were no clear indications that Anonymous was responsible for the disruption to Amazon, and the group has not said it carried out an attack.
However, it did plan to mount a distributed denial-of-service (DDos) attack on Amazon several days ago.
Supended accounts On Friday Anonymous publicly abandoned plans to hit Amazon, saying they did not have the "forces".
"We cannot attack Amazon, currently. The previous schedule was to do so, but we don't have enough forces," read one message on Twitter on Friday.
DDoS attacks, which are illegal in the UK, involve overloading a website with high numbers of requests so it stops working.
Several Twitter accounts attributed to Anonymous and its campaign have been suspended over the attacks.
The group's Operation Payback Campaign has also targeted the websites of Paypal, Mastercard and Visa, as well as the Swedish Prosecutor's website after a case was brought there against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
Mr Assange is in British custody awaiting an extradition hearing after being accused of sex crimes in Sweden. He denies the charges.
Wikileaks has angered the US government by publishing large caches of secret documents online, including US diplomatic cables.
The government has written to Wikileaks, saying it believes its actions are illegal, but it has denied putting pressure on firms such as PayPal to withdraw services.
WikiLeaks has refused to link itself with Anonymous, saying "we neither condemn nor applaud these attacks".