CBC: July 19, 2010: Thousands of Afghan soldiers and police are patrolling Kabul, trying to secure the capital for a major international conference set for Tuesday.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are among the officials and diplomats from 60 countries who will attend the one-day meeting where Afghan authorities will try to showcase the progress their country is making in its painful journey to self-security.
Securing the capital won't be easy. A suicide bombing in Kabul on Sunday killed three people and a Taliban bomb-making expert was captured in the capital on Friday.
At a peace conference in May, militants attacked security forces and managed to land a rocket about 100 metres from the meeting site.
Many Afghans are skeptical that Tuesday's conference will change the daily reality of suicide bombings and war. Many foreign countries - Canada included - have been critical of the corruption and incompetence that plagues Afghanistan's corridors of power.
But the UN's top diplomat in Afghanistan, Staffan de Mistura, said the West is ready to hand over power to Afghans.
"They are more prepared than before," he said. "Don't forget. Afghanistan is made of very proud people who feel extremely strongly about managing their own future."
Insurgency mounts counteroffensive
The conference attendees hope to see enough progress in how Afghanistan is securing the insurgency to allow them to continue with their plans to withdraw foreign forces.
But the conference comes at a time when the Taliban insurgency is growing increasingly brazen.
The Taliban are mounting a counteroffensive aimed at the Afghan government and a coalition of international troops. NATO and Afghan forces have been aggressively moving into areas controlled by the Taliban.
Last month, 103 foreign soldiers - including four Canadians - were killed in Afghanistan, making it the deadliest month for international forces since they were first deployed in the country nine years ago.
Another 56 NATO soldiers have died so far this month - including an American killed Monday by a bomb blast in southern Afghanistan.
CBC NEWS:July 19, 2010 : For the first time in more than a century, a country other than the United States consumed more energy than any other nation, as China grabbed the top spot last year.
Citing data from the International Energy Agency, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday that China was the world's most voracious consumer of energy in 2009.
China consumed 2,252 million tonnes of "oil equivalent" last year, topping the U.S. tally of 2,170 tonnes by roughly four per cent.
Oil equivalent is the term the IEA uses to bring all forms of energy into a comparable form, including crude oil, nuclear, coal, natural gas, hydroelectricity, wind and solar power.
China was forecast to overtake the U.S. at some point over the next decade. But the global recession appears to have sped up the process as its economy continued to expand at a double-digit pace while the U.S. economy declined and oil consumption flatlined.
Only 10 years ago, China's energy consumption was half that of the United States.
"The fact that China overtook the U.S. as the world's largest energy consumer symbolizes the start of a new age in the history of energy," IEA chief economist Fatih Birol was quoted as saying.
China had already passed the United States as the world's largest polluter several years ago.
With a population of a little over 300 million, the United States still uses much more energy, per capita, than China does.
In terms of the use of crude oil specifically, the IEA says the United States remains well out in the lead, consuming some 19 million barrels per day. But China's economy relies on coal for much of its electricity generation, and its crude consumption is also climbing from its current level of just over nine million barrels per day.
China's electricity demand is forecast to increase by 1,000 gigawatts over the next 15 years - equivalent to the U.S.'s total electricity output at the moment.
India train crash death toll hits 61
Rescue workers and onlookers gather near the wreckage of train carriages at Sainthia, India, on Monday. (Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters)
Last Updated: Monday, July 19, 2010 | 12:58 PM ET : The Associated Press: A speeding express train plowed into a stationary passenger train in eastern India on Monday, killing 61 people in a crash so powerful it sent the roof of one car flying onto an overpass.
Officials said they could not rule out sabotage.
Residents crawled over the twisted wreckage trying desperately to free survivors before rescue workers arrived with heavy equipment to cut through the metal.
Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee, who rushed to the site, raised the possibility the crash could have been another case of sabotage, two months after Maoist rebels were blamed for a derailment that killed 145 people.
"We have some doubts in our mind" about whether it was an accident, she said.
The crash happened about 2 a.m. local time when the Uttarbanga Express slammed into the Vananchal Express as it left the platform at Sainthia station, about 200 kilometres north of Calcutta.
The accident destroyed two passenger cars and a luggage car, turning them into a tangle of twisted metal. The passenger cars were reserved for those on the cheapest tickets and such carriages are usually packed to capacity.
The force of the crash was so intense the roof of one car flew into the air and landed on an overpass above the tracks. Local residents climbing through the debris searching for survivors were later joined by rescue workers using heavy equipment to cut through the metal.
"I was sleeping when I felt a huge jolt and heard a loud noise and then the train stopped," passenger Lakshman Bhaumik told local television. Bhaumik survived with minor injuries.
Rescuers recovered 61 bodies from the crash site and 125 other people were injured, said Surajit Kar Purkayastha, a top police official. The two drivers of the Uttarbanga Express were among the dead, Banerjee said.
Local residents help survivors
Rescue teams arrived about three hours after the accident, local residents said. Before that, locals scrambled to help survivors out of the trains and pull out bodies.
Indian soldiers and rescue workers gather near the wreckage of train carriages at the site of an accident at Sainthia on Monday. (Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters)
"For many hours it was just the local residents helping and it was very difficult to help without any equipment," the unidentified man told NDTV television channel.
Police official Humayun Kabir told NDTV, however, rescue workers reached the site within an hour of the crash.
Bhupinder Singh, the top police official in West Bengal, said the death toll could rise. He said it was too early to know how many people remained inside the coaches.
India's federal Home Ministry rushed several hundred members of the National Disaster Relief Force to the accident site to assist with search-and-rescue operations, a government statement said.
The disaster was the second major train crash in the state of West Bengal in the past two months. On May 28, a passenger train derailed and was hit by an oncoming cargo train in a crash that killed 145 people. Authorities blamed sabotage by Maoist rebels for that crash.
Accidents are common on India's sprawling rail network, one of the world's largest, with most blamed on poor maintenance.
Obama urges action on unemployment
U.S. President Barack Obama addresses Republican lawmakers, calling on them to support a bill that will extend emergency unemployment benefits to millions of Americans. CBC
Barack Obama urges Republican lawmakers to support a bill to extend emergency benefits to millions of unemployed Americans.
CBC NEWS: July 19,2010: Barack Obama urged Republican lawmakers to support a bill that would extend emergency benefits to millions of unemployed Americans on Monday. In a press conference at the White House Rose Garden he blasted Republican critics for their "lack of faith in the American people."
"These are honest, decent, hard-working folks who have fallen on hard times through no fault of their own," Obama said. "The same people who didn't have any problems spending money on tax breaks for the richest Americans are saying we shouldn't offer benefits to middle-class Americans."
Unemployment in the United States is at 9.5 per cent, and benefits for millions of Americans have dried up in recent months. The issue of temporarily extending emergency unemployment benefits has come up three times in recent weeks, but Republican senators have blocked it each time.
Obama has described the bill as crucial to rebuilding the economy, but Republican critics say they won't support it unless it is paid for through the budget and not through deficit spending.
"It's time to stop holding workers laid off in this recession hostage to Washington politics," Obama urged.
The unemployment benefits bill is scheduled for another vote tomorrow in the Senate.
Karlheinz Schreiber faces extradition to Germany, but not until he testifies in a federal inquiry.
Ottawa International Poets and Writers for human Rights (OIPWHR)