16 Worid
WWW.PGCITIZEN.CA | WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 9, 2013
Deluge, freezing temperatures make camp ‘worse than... Syria’
 The Associated Press
   ZAATARI, Jordan — A winter storm is magnifying the misery for tens of thousands of Syrians fleeing the country’s civil war, turning a refugee camp into a muddy swamp where howling winds tore down tents and exposed the displaced residents to freezing temperatures.
   Some frustrated refugees at a camp in Zaa-tari, where about 50,000 are sheltered, attacked aid workers with sticks and stones after the tents collapsed in 60 kph winds, said Ghazi Sarhan, spokesman for the Jordanian charity that helps run the camp. Police said seven Jordanian workers were injured.
   After three days of rain, muddy water engulfed tents housing refugees including pregnant women and infants. Those who didn’t move out used buckets to bail out the water; others built walls of mud to try to stay dry.
   Conditions in the Zaatari camp were “worse than living in Syria,” said Fadi Suleiman, a 30-year-old refugee.
   Most of Zaatari’s residents are children under age 18 and women. They are some of the more than 280,000 Syrians who fled to Jordan since the uprising against President Bashar Assad broke out in March 2011. As the fighting has increased in recent weeks, the number of displaced has risen.
   About a half-million Syrians have fled to neighbouring countries including Turkey and Lebanon to escape the civil war that has killed an estimated 60,000 people in nearly two years of fighting. Wet and wintry weather across the Middle East has made
 Syrian refugee children stand near their tent, surrounded by water and mud, at Zaatari Syrian refugee camp, near the Syrian border in Mafraq, Jordan on Tuesday.
 conditions miserable for refugees in those countries as well - even flooding two camps in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley after a river overflowed its banks.
   Several large pools of standing water - including one nearly the size of a football field and about four inches deep - have spread in the Zaatari camp. Children clad only in plastic sandals waded in despite the frigid water. An old woman wore plastic bags on
 her feet as she walked to pick up some food.
   “Zaatari is sinking,” said a refugee who gave his name as Abu Bilal from the southern Syrian town of Dara’a, across the border. The 2l-year-old father of two toddlers said his tent has been flooded for days, and when he appealed for help, he was turned away by both the U.N. refugee agency and the Jordan Hashemite Charity Organization, which administer the camp.
 Manning
 sentence
 lessened
 The Associated Press
  FORT MEADE, Md. — A military judge on Tuesday reduced the potential sentence for an Army private accused of sending reams of classified documents to the WikiLeaks website.
  Col. Denise Lind made the ruling during a pretrial hearing at Fort Meade for Pfc. Bradley Manning.
  Lind found that Manning suffered illegal pretrial punishment during nine months in a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va. She awarded a total of 112 days off any prison sentence Manning gets if he is convicted.
  Manning was confined to a windowless cell 23 hours a day, sometimes with no clothing. Brig officials say it was to keep him from hurting himself or others.
  The judge said that Manning’s confinement was “more rigorous than necessary.” She added that the conditions “became excessive in relation to legitimate government interests.”
  Manning faces 22 charges, including aiding the enemy, which carries a maximum of life behind bars. His trial begins March 6.
  The 25-year-old intelligence analyst sought to have the charges against him thrown out, arguing that the military held him in unduly punishing pretrial conditions after his 2010 arrest.
  Jailers at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va., have testified they considered Manning a suicide risk and that they were only trying to keep him from hurting himself and others by keeping him in a windowless, six-by-eight-foot cell for all but one hour a day.
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Colorado shooter left explosive surprise
The Associated Press
  CENTENNIAL, Colo. — An elaborate booby trap system found in the apartment of the suspected gunman in last year’s Colorado theatre shooting included improvised napalm and thermite, which burns so hot that water can’t put out the blaze, an FBI bomb technician testified Tuesday, and police said loud music playing on a timer-equipped portable stereo was used to lure people to the door.
  Prosecutors are trying to show that the shooting that killed 12 and wounded at least 58 was a premeditated act and that James
Holmes should stand trial for one of the country’s worst mass shootings. Defence attorneys have said Holmes is mentally ill.
  Bearded and disheveled, Holmes appeared blank as audio from the first emergency call from the movie theatre was played. The call lasted 27 seconds, and police say at least 30 shots could be heard.
  Bomb technician Garrett Gumbinner said three different ignition systems were later found in Holmes’ apartment. A thermos full of glycerin leaned over a skillet full of another chemical. Flames and sparks are created when they mix,
and a trip wire linked the thermos to the door.
  Holmes is charged with more than 160 counts, including murder and attempted murder. Authorities said the victims who died were shot from one to nine times.
  Dozens of survivors and family members of the dead have packed the courtroom as details of the attack, until then kept quiet by a judge’s order, emerge.
  Later in the day, Det. Craig Appel testified that James Holmes had paper bags over his hands to preserve gunshot residue. Holmes played with the bags as if they were puppets. Appel said Holmes
also played with a cup on the table and tried to jam a staple into an electrical outlet.
  Defence attorney Daniel King asked whether Holmes had been tested for drugs or other substances. Appel said there was no indication that he was under the influence of anything.
  Appel acknowledged that Holmes’ pupils’ were dilated, something that had also been noted by the officer who arrested him.
  On Monday, police officers struggled to hold back tears during their testimony, describing how they found a six-year-old
girl without a pulse, tried to keep a wounded man from jumping out of a moving police car to go back for his young daughter and screaming at a gunshot victim not to die.
  Holmes watched intently as one detective showed surveillance video of him calmly entering the theatre lobby, holding the door open for a couple behind him, and printing out tickets to the midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises. Authorities did not show video of the attack but said Holmes, wearing body armour, tossed two gas canisters into the packed theatre and opened fire.
APPHOIO