# The Sandbox and Areas Reports Thread January 2013



## The Bread Guy (30 Dec 2012)

*The Sandbox and Areas Reports Thread January 2013 *               

*News only - commentary elsewhere, please.
Thanks for helping this "news only" thread system work!*


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## GAP (1 Jan 2013)

*Articles found Jan 1, 2013*



Doubts linger as Afghan security forces expand control
Article Link
By Daniel Proussalidis	,Parliamentary Bureau Monday, December 31, 2012 

OTTAWA - Afghan military and police forces will soon begin the next stage in their takeover of NATO responsibilities to stare down Islamist forces still waging a campaign of violence.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced that his country's forces will expand patrols and efforts to establish law and order from covering 75% of Afghanistan's population now, to 87% over the next year.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen welcomed the news.

"This is a significant step towards our shared goal of seeing Afghans fully in charge of their own security by the end of 2014," Rasmussen said in a statement on Monday. "The Afghan army and police are steadily growing in capacity and confidence."

Canadians have already helped NATO forces train more than 343,000 Afghan police and military members.

Afghan forces are set to surpass 350,000 personnel by February.

More than 900 Canadian Forces personnel are in the Afghan capital, Kabul, and the city of Mazar-e Sharif offering basic military training and literacy courses.

They're also helping with flight instruction for Afghanistan's fledgling air force.
More on link

Pregnant woman and Canadian husband missing in Afghanistan
Article Link
By Sheena Goodyear ,QMI Agency  Monday, December 31, 2012

A U.S. couple has made a public appeal for the safety of their sick, pregnant daughter and her Canadian husband who went missing in Afghanistan almost three months ago and are feared kidnapped.

In a video posted to YouTube this month, James Coleman and his wife Lynn of Pennsylvania said their daughter, Caitlan, is seven months pregnant and suffers from a liver ailment.

"She urgently needs medical attention," James said in the video.

Caitlan and her Canadian husband Josh went missing in Afghanistan while travelling in the region. It's not known where in Canada Josh is from or what his last name is.

"As parents and soon-to-be grandparents, we appeal to whomever is caring for her to show compassion and allow Caitie, Josh and our unborn grandbaby to come home," James said. "We will do everything we can to get them back."
More on link

Afghan policewoman kills U.S. adviser in police chief’s compound
Article Link
Mirwais Harooni and Hamid Shalizi, Reuters: Monday, December 24, 2012 

KABUL - An Afghan woman wearing a police uniform shot dead on Monday a civilian contractor working for Western forces in the police chief’s compound in Kabul, NATO said.

The incident is likely to raise troubling questions about the direction of an unpopular war.

It appeared to be the first time that a woman member of Afghanistan’s security forces carried out such an attack.

There were conflicting reports about the victim.

A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said a U.S. police adviser was killed by an Afghan policewoman. Then ISAF said in a statement only that it was a “contracted civilian employee” who was killed.

Mohammad Zahir, head of the police criminal investigation department, described the incident as an “insider attack” in which Afghan forces turn their weapons on Western troops they are supposed to be working with. He initially said the victim was a U.S. soldier.
More on link


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## GAP (1 Jan 2013)

Myths about iodine in salt lead to health crisis in Pakistan
Monday December 31, 2012 
Article Link

LAHORE, PAKISTAN—At a bustling general store in Lahore, a major metropolitan centre of culture and learning, people ask a lot of questions about one seemingly innocuous product — table salt.

If it contains iodine, about 40 per cent of his customers spurn it, according to proprietor Muhammad Waqas Vicky. They won’t allow their families to consume what they call “mixed salt,” believing it causes infertility.

“The majority among them are businessmen and religious people,” Vicky said from behind the counter.

Pakistanis of all classes have been hearing about the alleged dangers of iodized salt for nearly two decades. But insufficient iodine in the diet can cause spontaneous abortion, stillbirth, goitre, learning disabilities, birth defects and other developmental problems.

Anti-polio campaigns here have been the target of deadly attacks that stemmed from similar myths, but officials blame the iodine-related infertility rumours, at least in part, for a massive health crisis. Nearly half of Pakistan’s population of 200 million suffers from some form of iodine deficiency disorder, according to last year’s National Nutrition Survey, which was carried out by academics, UNICEF and Pakistan’s Health Ministry.

Various reports have linked manifestations such as lethargy and lower IQ scores to dampened national productivity, which can further harm a fragile country like Pakistan, consistently beset by economic crisis as it is.

How did this happen? Some experts see little mystery in the evolution of what has become one of Pakistan’s more bizarre, longer-running and destructive conspiracy theories.

Seventeen years ago, well-meaning government officials launched a maternal health initiative in the face of rising birth rates. To this day, people remember a slide show on official Pakistan television — at the time the nation’s only channel — that pushed prenatal care and awareness of vital nutrients.

One slide promoted one element in particular — iodine.

The final slide, officials recall, credited the initiative to the government’s department of primary health and family planning.
More on link


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## GAP (2 Jan 2013)

*Articles found Jan 2, 2013*


 Islamic militants massacre five women teachers travelling to primary school in protest at female education in Pakistan
Article Link
    Two health workers also murdered in the ambush on a van taking them home from work today
    It came in same region of Pakistan where Malala Yousufzai, 15, was shot in the head just for going to school
By Martin Robinson, 1 January 2013

Five female teachers in Pakistan have been slaughtered by Islamic militants bent on keeping women and girls away from education.

They were murdered in a New Year's Day ambush on the van carrying them home from their jobs at a community centre and primary school in the north-west of the country.

The teachers and two health workers - one man and one woman - were killed this afternoon in the conservative Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.
More on link


 Al-Qaeda offers $160K bounty for assassination of US Ambassador to Yemen and $23K for killing American soldiers
Article Link
By Daily Mail Reporter and Associated Press, 30 December 2012

Al-Qaeda has placed a $160,000 bounty on the head of the U.S. Ambassador to Yemen and $23,000 for the assassination of any American soldiers in the country. 

An audio produced by the group's media arm, the al-Malahem Foundation, and posted on militant websites Saturday said it offered three kilograms of gold for the killing of Ambassador Gerald M. Feierstein.

The bounties were set to 'inspire and encourage our Muslim nation for jihad,' the statement said.
More on link


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## GAP (3 Jan 2013)

*Articles found Jan 3, 2013*

  B.C. woman, feared dead, is latest Canadian to vanish in Pakistan
Article Link
COLIN FREEZE The Globe and Mail Wednesday, Jan. 02 2013

A Canadian woman is feared murdered abroad, the latest in a series of mysterious disappearances of Canadian citizens in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Rajvinder Kaur Gill, a 41-year-old involved in the jewellery business whose family is from British Columbia, travelled to Lahore in late August and was never heard from again.

Her father recently travelled from Mission, B.C., to Pakistan to press authorities publicly for answers after his efforts to do so from Canada stalled. His appeals for justice in Pakistan’s media and its courts appear to have yielded results.

After a hearing on Wednesday in which a judge ordered police to divulge what they know about the case, Pakistani authorities revealed that they believe Ms. Gill was murdered shortly after she arrived. Police said the killers were two men, one of whom is in custody and talking to detectives, while the other remains at large.

Police say the latter is a German citizen of Pakistani heritage who owed Ms. Gill a sizable debt. They alleged that the men were taking Ms. Gill to a diamond exhibition before she was killed and her body tossed into a canal.
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 Afghan woman killed on conjugal visit to prison
Article Link
An Afghan prisoner murdered his wife during a conjugal visit, allegedly because she had been unfaithful after he was jailed for killing her relatives, police said Wednesday. 

Din Mohammad was sentenced to 20 years in prison two years ago for killing his mother-in-law, and his wife's brother and sister in the northern province of Samangan.

Mohammad's wife, whose name has not been disclosed, visited him in jail in the provincial capital Aybak on Monday and was found dead in a small private room used for inmates to see their wives, police said.

Mohammad confessed to her murder, Samangan police chief Ikram Nikzad told AFP.

"Mohammad was told by his mother that his wife had affairs," he said, citing a police investigation.

"When she came to visit him in jail he strangled her with her veil and killed her. They were meeting in a private prison room," he said.

Mohammad's mother has been detained for questioning, Nikzad added.
More on link


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