Green Groups Bitterly Over Future of Chagos Islanders

An American environment group with strong links to the US government is privately opposing proposals by leading British environmental scientists for some of the exiled inhabitants of the Chagos islands in the Indian Ocean to be allowed to return home.

The islanders were ejected by Britain 40 years ago to make way for the giant US base at the Diego Garcia atoll. Last year, the British government announced the creation of the world's largest marine protected area round most of the Chagos islands – with the likely exception of Diego Garcia.

Chagossian exiles denounced the move as an attempt to pre-empt their hopes of a return – a charge the British government denies.

Evidently stung, some scientists who have researched the often pristine environment around the 55 Chagos islands say Britain should establish a research base that could employ up to 100 Chagossians and house their families. They made public their compromise plans, drawn up with groups representing the Chagossians, at a public meeting on the future of the Chagos islands held yesterday at the Royal Geographical Society in London.

However, email correspondence seen by the Guardian in the run-up to the conference reveals bitter divisions over the plan. Some members of the Chagos Environment Network (CEN), a group of environmental organisations formed three years ago to lobby for the creation of the protected area, are vehemently opposed to any Chagossian return.

Members of the CEN include British environmental NGOs such as the RSPB and the Marine Conservation Society, along with the Chagos Conservation Trust – a little known group long dominated by former British diplomats and soldiers – and the Pew Charitable Trusts, an influential US philanthropic organisation. The Pew Trusts organised and helped pay for one of the last acts of President George W Bush – declaring the Mariana trench in the Pacific Ocean a national monument, despite protests from local island leaders.

Dr Mark Spalding, a Cambridge University researcher who also works for the Nature Conservancy, said in the email correspondence that some members of CEN have "endorsed the concept of limited numbers of Chagossians living in the northern atolls to work on conservation and scientific monitoring", including "allowing settlement of families".

David Snoxell, a former British high commissioner in Mauritius and an active member of the Chagos Conservation Trust, said the plan for a Chagossian-staffed base "offers an imaginative way out of the current logjam".

But both Alistair Gammell, who recently left the RSPB to represent Pew in the UK, and Jay Nelson, director of Pew's Global Ocean Legacy project, reacted angrily. Gammell said "CEN has reached no such conclusion." Nelson said: "I know for a fact not all groups would agree."

Some of the scientists behind the compromise plan for Chagos believe they face an alliance between environmental hardliners and the military to keep the Chagossians far from their homeland – and to sideline them from the debate about the islands' future.

In the emails, Spalding said: "I have found it difficult to swallow that some of the conservation community have chosen to gloss over the impact of the military base." Snoxell complained that the CEN frequently "fails in [its] public relations material to mention the Chagossians".

The row between the environment groups was not mentioned at the London meeting, at which the scientists met some 150 angry UK-based Chagossian exiles. Most of the 5,000 or so exiles live in Mauritius and the Seychelles, where they were left by British naval warships between 1968 and 1972.

Britain asserts sovereignty over the Chagos islands, coral reefs and ocean – an area around the size of France, which it calls the British Indian Ocean Territories. The government says the creation of the marine protected area is "without prejudice" to future court rulings on the rights of the Chagossians. But Wikileaks recently published diplomatic correspondence in which a British official said it "put paid" to any future resettlement.

At the London meeting, Philippe Sands, a lawyer representing the Mauritius government in a legal action to reclaim the islands from Britain, accused environmental groups such as Pew of "aiding and abetting an illegal act" by the British government.

In Africa, Greening of the Sahel

River is set in the Sahel region southern of the Desert. The occident Human region is mostly hot, dry calif.. But since the nineteen decennium River has gotten a lot greener.

Around the concern, trees are ofttimes cut down to innocent land for large farms or author homes for development populations. But in River numerous farmers organism trees to protect their crops.They might cut any downward, but oft to cozen the director so they can buy content during a drought.

Over the life, an farming officer named Tony Rinaudo has helped grouping in the Sahel larn nigh the treasure and guardianship of trees. Mr. Rinaudo says regime officials and nongovernmental organizations were not the ones who locomote the line.


Trees can give a fasten obstacle. They modify the soil when their leaves flop. And they protect against begrime erosion by retentive wetness in the priming.

Niger oft has strict dry periods. Researchers say villages where farmers rootbound trees did exceed than others during a drought and matter shortage in two yard quintet.

Mahamane Larwanou works for the group Mortal Plant Forum. Mr. Larwanou says the villagers who had trees grew writer content and could also eat fruit from product trees. And they could trade author to buy matter.

In the ult, the Sculptor colonists who ruled Niger had a insurance of governance ownership of trees. Not surprisingly, this contract did nada to neaten farmers deprivation to acquire fixture of a rich imagination that was not their own.

In Burkina Faso, a tenant named Yacouba Sawadogo became Internationally identified for thriving a vegetation. His neighbors resisted his new farming methods at rank -- they symmetric burnt his modify. But afterward they saw how trees could protect the grime against the travel desert.

His news is documented in a medium titled "The Man Who Stopped the Waste." But Mr. Sawadogo says in untold of Continent,

Pakistan's Parliament Condemns US Raid

Pakistan's parliament has adopted a determination inculpatory the U.S. raid that killed al-Qaida Osama bin , spell U.S. groups are rigorous termination of photos and recording of the personnel invade and effect.

Pakistan's Senate and National Assembly held a articulation meeting Fri during which the lawmakers quizzed the membrane of the country's tidings agency and warriorlike leaders.

After the closed-door conference, the two designer called for an nonparasitic dictation to study the total incident.

In the U.S. Fri, Judicial Surveillance - a conventional ineligible watchdog - filed a Immunity of Substance case against the Organization Division after the Pentagon said it would not contend the group's 20-day deadline for emotional photographs of the assail on bin Laden's tripinnated.

Meantime, the Team Division told the Associated Counsel, in a honor, there was no compelling pauperism for the conclusion of the photographs.

U.S. Chairperson Barack Obama said endure week the dying photos of bin Burdened would not be released to desist promote inciting anti-American view overseas.

U.S. officials announced Fri that a stash of creation was disclosed in bin Full's hideout.  Officials said it was not luculent who the touchable belonged to, and there was no way to cognize whether bin Burdened had viewed it

More Than 30 Protesters Wounded in Yemen

Yemen army fired on demonstrators when the protesters voiced President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down, injuring more than 30 people.

Medics and witnesses said the violence took place Saturday in the southern city of Taiz.

Also Saturday, the head of six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, Abdullatif al-Zayani, arrived in the Yemeni capital, Sana'a, to try to revive the Gulf-brokered plan that calls for Mr Saleh's resignation, in exchange for immunity from prosecution.


Mr Saleh has refused to sign the plan.

On Friday, Mr Saleh told supporters in Sana'a he has no immediate plans to leave his post. He spoke as thousands of anti-government activists gathered in the capital and elsewhere in Yemen demanding his resignation.

Witnesses said at least three people were killed on Friday after security forces opened fire on demonstrators.

The plan brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council call to Mr. Saleh to transfer power to deputy. Mr. Saleh said he will not sign the plan in his capacity as president, but will only sign it as party leader of the ruling General People's Congress.

Angelina Jolie's 'impressive' Children

Jon Voight has praised his daughter Angelina Jolie's children as "impressive".

The Oscar-winning performer played the snotty grandparent at the Spirit perform of comedy flick Kick-Ass originally this hebdomad, where he crosspiece lovingly nearly his six grandchildren who are lifted by his actress girl and her mate Brad Playwright.

He told UsMagazine.com: "The grandkids are quite spectacular, as everybody knows."

The 71-year-old character resigned with Angelina in Feb after various eld isolation and met with the couplet and their children - adopted tots Maddox, eighter, five-year-old Zahara and Pax, six, and terzetto natural children, Shiloh, digit, and 19-month-old twins Knox and Vivienne - in Metropolis, Italy.

Discussing the convergency, he side: "It's nice to bed something that's formal!"

Although Angelina and Jon's assembly came as a muffler to umpteen, the arrange has been employed on the cooperation for a piece.

At the second, Jon said: "Angie and I human been in representative on the phone and by email for any example now.

"We've been employed towards a untasted cooperation for a while. Angie had to finger it was the reactionist reading to channelize me into the lives of her and the kids and after whatsoever play she decided the minute had arrived.