Insider notes from United Press International for Dec. 30 ...
Syrian President Bashar Assad has ordered logistical preparations to receive up to a million Arab refugees in the event of the Iraq war spilling over. A ministerial committee has been formed under Prime Minister Muhammad Mustafa Miro to implement the directives. The government also discreetly approached Tawfiq Bin Amara, the U.N. Development Program head in Damascus, to coordinate the preparations. Another U.N. agency, the High Commission for Refugees, received permission to extend its work at the al Hal camp in Hassaka, which has hosted 15,000 Iraqi refugees since the 1991 Gulf War. UNHCR also asked for the foundation of other five camps that can accommodate 200,000 Iraqi refugees. Syria's Red Crescent has also been coordinating its activities with the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Russia's President Vladimir Putin has been quick to jump on U.S. President Bush's war on terrorism bandwagon, cunningly equating his own brutal war in Chechnya with the multinational effort in Afghanistan. The former KGB agent's cynicism has now reached new heights with an offer to Georgia's President Eduard Shevardnadze to extradite two Chechen citizens involved in an assassination attempt on Shevardnadze on Feb. 9, 1998. Vepkhvia Durglishvili and Soso Toria were subsequently arrested in Gudermes, Chechnya, and charged in the terrorist act, in which two security guards and one terrorist were killed. So far, so good -- except that Shevardnadze for one is convinced that all three assassination attempts against him have been orchestrated from Moscow. And in return for extraditing the Chechens, Putin now wants Georgia to hand over three Chechens, arrested on the border in August last year. Two of the three are Georgian citizens, and the Public Prosecutor General's Office decreed they should be tried in Georgia. All three have now asked for political asylum, fearing they would be killed if returned to Russia.
An article of faith in the Middle East about the 9/11 terrorist attacks is that Jews were forewarned and stayed away from lower Manhattan on the fateful morning. In fact, some 200 Jews and 100 Muslims died in the Twin Towers. But the FBI continues to investigate the instant-messaging service Odigo, two of whose employees received warning messages two hours before the first plane hit the World Trade Center. Odigo Chief Executive Officer Micha Macover said, "I have no idea why the message was sent to these two workers, who don't know the sender. It may just have been someone who was joking and turned out they accidentally got it right." Odigo has been cooperating with the FBI, providing the message's IP address, so the FBI could track the ISP and the sender of the message. Odigo has offices in Manhattan and Herzliya, Israel. Feeding the Arab world's conspiracy theorists is the fact that Herzliya is a Tel Aviv suburb where many of the country's high-tech companies are located. It is also home to Unit 8200, Israel's equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency, the eavesdroppers of intelligence.
There are nasty rumors in the aerospace industry that Indian Defense Ministry officials are cooking the books, massively overstating the costs of new Western warplanes in favor of Russian-made MiGs that are falling out of the sky with dismaying regularity. Regardless of the fact that 14 of India's 69 MiG-21MF warplanes, and five of its 170 MiG21-bis/U models, have crashed in the past two years, the Indian Air Force has decided to stick with MiGs through the year 2020. Instead of buying the British Hawk trainer, India plans simply to upgrade the accident-prone MiGs, now dubbed "flying coffins" by the Indian media. The reason is money. The full MiG-21 fleet comprises some 250 aircraft: 55 MiG-21 MF/PFMA; 66 MiG-21FL/U; and 165 MiG-21 bis/U fighter/ground attack models. (India also operates MiG-29/UB, MiG 27, MiG-23 BN/ UM and MiG-23 MF/UM squadrons.) Upgrading them all would cost about $4.5 million per warplane. The figures produced by the Indian Defense Ministry say they cannot afford to buy British Aerospace Hawks, which cost just under $20 million each, despite long negotiations and a draft contract the Brits were convinced was final. British sources say the Indian figures are wildly inflated, not taking account of BAe's offers of big offsets, technology exchanges and co-production deals. The Defense Ministry claims U.S.-made F-16s would cost some $35 million each (way too high, say Lockheed-Martin sources), and that the French Mirage 2000-5 warplanes they already bought are far too costly at $40 million each.
One Saudi citizen in four suffers from diabetes -- the highest incidence in the world. This curious fact emerged from a symposium held as part of a Diabetes Challenges Forum and organized by the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce. The Saudi Ministry of Health is to establish a diabetes council to tackle the problem.
