Congo pastor loses 9 out of 10 children in war

MWESO, Congo – First, the rebels killed four of Joseph Munyaneza's children in 1997. The family fled to another village.

The following year, that village came under siege. Another four children died of gunshot wounds. Then the baby, from malnutrition.

Today, Munyaneza, a 52-year-old Protestant pastor, tenderly cares for his 17-year-old daughter, who is in hospital after being kidnapped by rebels a month ago. When the rebels tired of raping her skinny body, they forced a stick up her vagina until it protruded through her side.

"She is the only child left out of 10 I had with my first wife," Munyaneza says, holding the moaning teenager's hand and clucking sounds of comfort as one would to calm a baby.

In the east of this vast country of nearly 63 million people, ongoing rebel attacks and poor health care have produced a generation of mourning mothers and fathers, many of whom have lost more children than they are raising.

More than half a million children die each year in Congo, one out of every five before they reach the age of 5, according to the U.N. Children's Fund. Of those who survive, 40 percent are stunted, according to the World Health Organization. There is only one doctor and five nurses or midwives for every 10,000 people in the country.

And that's before factoring in deaths from war fueled by massive mineral resources that have brought misery instead of development. UNICEF estimates that children account for half of the more than 4 million deaths blamed on conflicts in east Congo that have raged for more than a decade.

Millions of people have been forced from their homes in recent years by fighting between the government and rebel groups, including those from Uganda and Rwanda. The United Nations in April counted nearly 2 million displaced people. In areas where fighting continues, roughly 10 percent of the population is dying each year, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development.

"It's the extent of the violence here that hits me most," says Joelle Depeyrot, a mental health officer on secondment from MSF-USA to Mweso Hospital, where Munyaneza told his story. "Every single patient we see is directly or indirectly a victim."

Many of her adult patients have lost children as well as lived through trauma. Depeyrot says it's easier to treat those who have surviving children.

"Someone once told me that children are the 'wealth' of the family," she says. "Those who are left without children are very alone and isolated ... They often report feeling useless and end up 'waiting for death,' as they often say."

Nyirahabimana Nyirashirambere, a 45-year-old who lives at the refugee camp at Kashuga, has had 11 pregnancies. Five children survive.

Nyiragasigwa Busabimana, 43, gave birth to eight children. Five are living.

Mukeshimana Nyirarukundo, 25, has had six children and one stillbirth. Three children are left.

"We have many pregnancies, but children? The mortality rate is exceptionally high," says Esperance Habjumimana, a maternity nurse at a clinic run by Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, at Kashuga. Among her patients was a pregnant woman who has had 12 children, of whom only three are living.

In Mweso Hospital, flower beds gay with exotic red and yellow blooms belie the horror stories from parents nursing wounded and malnourished children, worrying how to keep them alive. People walk for hours to reach the hospital, which MSF kept open even when shells pounded overheaded during a 2008 rebellion.

Gabaye Msebimana, 6, survived a four-hour operation to remove four bullets in her hip and thigh.

She's lucky. Her 5-year-old brother was killed. Soldiers who mistook the family for rebels also wounded her grandmother and her mother as they tried to flee last month.

In the pediatric ward, two children lie in beds facing each other. Three-year-old Yamuremiye Bahati weighs just 6 kilograms (13 pounds), a little skeleton covered with papery flesh. Wivine Bakarani, 9, is so bloated that her eyes are just slits in a rotund face. Both children suffer severe malnutrition, Wivine's a case of kwashiorkor or lack of protein.

It's a cruel state to be in amid lush, mountaintop vegetation with a bounty of vegetables and fruit — trees dripping with mangoes, bananas, plantains, avocado pears and coconuts, fields filled with yams, sweet potatoes, beans, tomatoes and corn.

But there's no land here for the children's mothers, who live in the refugee camp a few kilometers away at Kashuga, a village of 4,000 people overwhelmed by 15,000 displaced by fighting. The refugees' huts stand apart from the square mud homes or wood cabins of residents. Children as young as three know how to build them, with the heavy work done by teenage siblings who have known nothing but war all their lives.

The few women at the camp who put money together to rent a small field say they stopped going two weeks after soldiers sent to protect them instead attacked, raped and robbed them.

"They must go home," an elderly man whispers fiercely in the village. "We helped them at first but they drain our resources. There's nothing left to give."

"I want to go home, but there's fighting, it's not safe," Wivine's mother, Migisha Tuyambaze, counters at the hospital. "At home, I have a field, I can grow what I need to keep my children healthy."

She is breastfeeding a feisty 1-year-old, Diem Bertin, who tried smiling and making faces at his sister, then pouted when she would not play. Wivine lay down, holding her stomach, then threw up on the floor and got out of bed to allow a flow of diarrhea to escape into a plastic basin.

Wivine has been sick for months, Tuyambaze says. It's her second time being treated for malnutrition. Three months ago, she was on a high-nutrition diet provided at an MSF outpatient clinic. She returned home well, only to get sick again.

Once they leave the hospital, Wivine will be fed the same protein-less diet of yam porridge and leaves. Tuyambaze worries how long her son can stay well, especially since she herself is not eating well so the milk does not always flow.

Like many women in eastern Congo, she has more dead than live children. Two died soon after their birth and two of malnutrition, all before they were five years old. Her husband deserted her after the last death, accusing her of not being a good mother.

She is just 25.

Pastor Munyaneza now gets by renting a patch of land to grow vegetables for meals and making palm oil for sale. He says his first wife died of dehydration and diarrhea while they were fleeing fighting in 1994. He remarried and now has 12 children with his second wife.

He calls himself a master of the "blinde" — the igloo-shaped refugee hut of stick supports covered with banana leaves that he has built many times in eight places he has fled to, trying to keep ahead of the conflicts that rage in eastern Congo.

Asked how he copes, Munyaneza gives a sad smile and a surprising response: "I'm lucky," he says, giving his daughter's hand a squeeze. "We've been on the run for more than 10 years but we manage. We survive."

Ahmadinejad's speech marred by shouts from crowd

KHORRAMSHAHR, Iran – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech in a southern port town has been marred by shouts from disenchanted Iranians demanding jobs.

Ahmadinejad on Monday addressed hundreds gathered in Khorramshahr — about 625 miles (1,000 kilometers) southwest of Tehran — when scores from the crowd interrupted his speech with shouts: "We are unemployed!"

The rare protest is unusual in Iran, where Ahmadinejad's public events are carefully controlled. But public discontent has been rising over Iran's deteriorating economy.

Iran is wrestling with 25 percent unemployment and rising inflation. It also faces possible new U.N. sanctions over its controversial nuclear program that the West fears is geared toward making atomic weapons. Tehran denies the charge.

British Airways cabin crew begin 5-day strike

LONDON – The union representing British Airways cabin crew has begun a five-day strike but the airline says it will still be able to carry 70 percent of passengers who have booked flights.

Monday's strike follows the failure of weekend talks between the Unite union and the airline. A key issue is the union's demand that the airline restore employee travel benefits which the airline suspended following an earlier strike.

The union's joint leader, Tony Woodley, says BA already has secured its aim of cutting 1,700 jobs. Woodley said the dispute has turned personal because he believes the airline dislikes the cabin crew union.

British Airways says it has accepted an invitation for more negotiations, and says it believes the union will also accept.

Germany's Birth Rate at Record Low, Says Fertility Study

Germany is shrinking - fast. New figures released on May 17 show the birth rate in Europe's biggest economy has plummeted to a historic low, dropping to a level not seen since 1946. As demographers warn of the consequences of not making enough babies to replace and support an aging population, the latest figures have triggered a bout of national soul-searching and cast a harsh light on Chancellor Angela Merkel's family policies.

According to a preliminary analysis by the Federal Statistics Office, 651,000 children were born in Germany in 2009 - 30,000 fewer than in 2008, a dip of 3.6%. In 1990, German mothers were having on average 1.5 children each; today that average is down to 1.38 children per mother. With a shortfall of 190,000 between the number of people who died and the number of children who were born, Germany's birth rate is well below the level required to keep the population stable. (See why the recession is causing women to have fewer kids.)

"The German birth rate has remained remarkably flat over the past few years while it has increased in other low-fertility countries, like Italy and the Czech Republic," Joshua Goldstein, executive director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, tells TIME. "Women are continuing to postpone motherhood to an older age and this process of postponement is temporarily lowering the birth rate." According to Goldstein's research, Germany has the longest history of low fertility in Europe.

To explain Germany's low reproduction rate, Steffen KrÖhnert, a social scientist at the Berlin Institute for Population Development, points to a number of factors. Many German women decide not to have children because of poor state-run child-care facilities. Most schools in Germany finish earlier than in other parts of Europe - some as early as 1 p.m. - leaving parents struggling to find and afford sufficient day care. And often women who take up part-time jobs to try to juggle work and family life end up paying a high financial price. "Many German women have to stop work and end their careers if they want to have kids," says KrÖhnert. It doesn't help that German mothers are still often branded RabenmÜtter - "raven mothers" - a pejorative label that accuses them of being bad mothers if they decide to put their children in nurseries and continue working.

As Germany feels the demographic crunch, the country's plummeting birth rate has become a contentious political issue. Over the past few years, Chancellor Merkel has introduced a number of family-boosting incentives, including a new parental allowance for couples that pays a parent who chooses to stay home 67% of his or her income for the first year after their child is born (with a cap of $2,300 per month). The measure is aimed at encouraging fathers to take a more active role in raising their children and, in that respect, it appears to have paid off. One-in-five fathers now stays home to look after the kids. (Read how Germany is trying to save the euro all by itself.)

Merkel's new center-right government has also pledged to expand the number of nursery school places, setting itself the ambitious goal of providing 1-in-three 3 under age 3 with state-funded child care by 2013. But it remains to be seen whether that new initiative will motivate Germans to make more babies. "There are many reasons why couples don't have children," said Family Minister Kristina SchrÖder in a statement. "The economic crisis and job fears play a role. We have to help people combine work and family, especially in these difficult economic times."

And that help has to come soon: the predictions of Germany's demographic future make for uncomfortable reading. The Federal Statistics Office says Germany's population of 82 million could drop by up to 17 million over the next 50 years. Demographers fear a shrinking workforce will stymie growth and struggle to foot the bill for a rapidly aging population. "Germany's working-age population is likely to decrease 30% over the next few decades," says KrÖhnert of the Berlin Institute for Population Development. "Rural areas will see a massive population decline and some villages will simply disappear - Germany will become a weak economic power in the future."

KrÖhnert says that while society has become more modern and more women are choosing both career and kids, German politicians have reacted too slowly to the country's falling birth rate. With the recent multibillion dollar bailout for Greece and the euro-zone rescue package straining Germany's already stretched public finances, Merkel is coming under increasing pressure from within her own conservative party to make cuts. The powerful governor of the state of Hesse, Roland Koch, recently suggested the government could save on education and child care, although Merkel quickly distanced herself from his remarks, insisting that those areas would be spared the axe. But the Chancellor was elected last September on her promise to reduce taxes, a pledge she has been forced to put on ice for the next few years. As Germany battles to bring its spiraling budget deficit under control, it may have trouble convincing its citizens to add to the family for the good of the country.

Yemeni cleric calls for killing US civilians

CAIRO – A U.S.-born cleric who has encouraged Muslims to kill American soldiers called for the killing of U.S. civilians in his first video released by a Yemeni offshoot of al-Qaida, providing the most overt link yet between the radical preacher and the terror group.

Dressed in a white Yemeni robe, turban and with a traditional jambiyah dagger tucked into his waistband, Anwar Al-Awlaki used the 45-minute video posted Sunday to justify civilian deaths — and encourage them — by accusing the United States of intentionally killing a million Muslim civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

American civilians are to blame, he said, because "the American people, in general, are taking part in this and they elected this administration and they are financing the war."

"Those who might be killed in a plane are merely a drop of water in a sea," he said in the video in response to a question about Muslim groups that disapproved of the airliner plot because it targeted civilians.

Al-Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico and is believed to be hiding in his parents' native Yemen, has used his personal website to encourage Muslims around the world to kill U.S. troops in Iraq.

He has emerged as a prominent al-Qaida recruiter and has been tied by U.S. intelligence to the 9/11 hijackers, the suspects in the November shooting at an Army base in Fort Hood, Texas, and the December attempt to blow up a U.S. jetliner bound for Detroit.

For U.S. officials, al-Awlaki is of particular concern because he is one of the few English-speaking radical clerics able to explain to young Muslims in America and other Western countries the philosophy of violent jihad.

Al-Awlaki's direct role in al-Qaida — if any — remains unclear. The U.S. says he is an active participant in the group, though members of his tribe have denied that.

However, Sunday's video provides the clearest link yet between the cleric and the terror group.

It was produced by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula's media arm, which touted the recording as its first interview with al-Awlaki. It may also indicate al-Qaida is trying to seize upon al-Awlaki's recruiting prowess by featuring him in its videos.

In the months before the Fort Hood shooting, which killed 13 people, al-Awlaki exchanged e-mails with the alleged attacker, U.S. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. Hasan initiated the contacts, drawn by al-Awlaki's Internet sermons, and approached him for religious advice.

Yemen's government says al-Awlaki is also suspected of contacts with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who traveled to Yemen late last year, and U.S. investigators say Abdulmutallab told them he received training and his bomb from Yemen's al-Qaida offshoot.

In Sunday's video, al-Awlaki praised both men and referred to them as his "students."

Speaking of Hasan, the cleric said, "What he did was heroic and great. ... I ask every Muslim serving in the U.S. Army to follow suit."

Because of what U.S. officials view as al-Awlaki's growing role with al-Qaida, the Obama administration placed him on the CIA's list of targets for assassination — despite his American citizenship.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Sunday that the U.S. is "actively trying to find" al-Awlaki.

"The president will continue to take action directly at terrorists like Awlaki and keep our country safe from their murderous thugs," Gibbs said on CBS's "Face the Nation."

Ali Mohammed al-Ansi, Yemen's national security chief and head of the president's office, said in remarks published Sunday in Yemen's ruling-party newspaper that the country's security forces will continue to pursue al-Awlaki until he turns himself in or he is arrested.

Yemen has indicated that if its security forces capture al-Awlaki, it wants to try the cleric on Yemeni soil.

Al-Awlaki was born in 1971 in New Mexico. His father, Nasser al-Awlaki, was in the United States studying agriculture at the time and later returned with his family to Yemen to serve as agriculture minister. The father remains a prominent figure in Yemen, teaching at San'a University in the capital.

The younger al-Awlaki returned to the United States in 1991 to study civil engineering at Colorado State University, then education at San Diego State University, followed by doctoral work at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

He was also a preacher at mosques in California and Virginia before returning to Yemen in 2004.

"We have had more freedom in America than in any Muslim country," he said in Sunday's video. "But when America started to feel the danger of Islam's message, it tightened limits on freedom, and after 9/11 it was impossible to live in America as a Muslim."

Al-Awlaki is believed to be hiding in Yemen's Shabwa province, the rugged region of towering mountains that is home to his large tribe. He said he was moving from place to place under the protection of his tribe.

"As for the Americans, I will never surrender to them," al-Awlaki said. "If the Americans want me, let them come look for me. God is the protector."

Jamaica: Gunfire, fire bombs in barricaded slum

KINGSTON, Jamaica – Masked men defending a reputed drug lord sought by the United States torched a police station and traded gunfire with security forces in a patchwork of barricaded slums in Jamaica's capital Sunday.

The government declared a state of emergency as sporadic gunshots rang out in gritty West Kingston, stronghold of Christopher "Dudus" Coke, a Jamaican "don" charged in the U.S. with drug and arms trafficking. His defiant supporters turned his Tivoli Gardens neighborhood and other areas into a virtual fortress with trashed cars and barbed wire.

Four police stations came under heavy fire from gangsters roaming the streets with high-powered guns. In barricaded Hannah Town, close to Tivoli Gardens, black smoke spiraled into the sky from one that was set aflame by molotov cocktails.

Officers fled the burning station in impoverished West Kingston, where a 2001 standoff between gunmen and security forces killed 25 civilians as well as a soldier and a constable.

Authorities said two security officers had been wounded by Sunday night.

Police said the attacks were unprovoked. It called for all "decent and law-abiding citizens" in the troubled areas to immediately evacuate their homes and said security forces would ferry them out safely.

Police Commissioner Owen Ellington said "scores of criminals" from gangs across the Caribbean island had traveled to West Kingston to join the fight. "It is now clear that criminal elements are determined to launch coordinated attacks on the security forces," he said.

In a gritty section of the capital of an island known more for reggae and all-inclusive resorts, the violence erupted after nearly a week of rising tensions over the possible extradition of Coke to the United States.

Prime Minister Bruce Golding had stalled the extradition request for nine months with claims the U.S. indictment relied on illegal wiretap evidence. After Golding reversed himself amid growing public discontent over his opposition, Coke's supporters began barricading streets and preparing for battle.

Before Sunday's shooting started, police urged the neighborhood boss to surrender, calling the heavy barricades encircling his slum stronghold a sign of "cowardice."

The U.S., Canada and Britain issued travel alerts Friday warning of possible violence and unrest in Jamaica. Most islanders have been avoiding downtown Kingston.

The state of public emergency, limited to the parishes of Kingston and St. Andrew, will be in effect for one month unless extended or revoked by lawmakers, the government said.

In a national address Sunday night, Golding said the order gives authorities the power to restrict movement and effectively battle violent criminals. Security forces will also be able to conduct searches and detain people without warrants.

Golding stressed that Kingston "is not being shut down," and schools and businesses outside the battle zone will be open.

Coke is described as one of the world's most dangerous drug lords by the U.S. Justice Department. He has ties to the governing Jamaica Labour Party and holds significant sway over the West Kingston area represented in Parliament by Golding.

Golding's fight against the extradition strained relations with Washington, which questioned Jamaica's reliability as an ally in the fight against drugs. His handling of the matter, particularly his hiring of a U.S. firm to lobby Washington to drop the extradition request, provoked an outcry in Jamaica that threatened his political career.

Coke, who typically avoids the limelight, has remained silent. He faces life in prison if convicted on charges filed against him in New York.

Jamaica's political history is intertwined with the street gangs that the two main parties helped organize — and some say armed — in Kingston's poor neighborhoods in the 1970s and '80s. The gangs controlled the streets and intimidated voters at election time. In recent years political violence has waned, and many of the killings in Kingston now are blamed on the active drug and extortion trade.

Coke was born into Jamaica's gangland. His father was the leader of the notorious Shower Posse gang, a cocaine-trafficking band with agents in Jamaica and the U.S. that began operating in the 1980s and was named for its members' tendency to spray victims with bullets.

The son took over from the father, and expanded the gang into selling marijuana and crack cocaine in the New York area and elsewhere, U.S. authorities allege.

Lawyers for Coke — who in addition to "Dudus" is also known as "Small Man" and "President" — have challenged his extradition in Jamaica's Supreme Court. As a West Kingston community "don," Coke has acted as an ad hoc civic leader and provides protection and jobs.

Lee: NKorea must pay for torpedo attack on warship

SEOUL, South Korea – South Korea's president said Monday his nation will no longer tolerate North Korea's "brutality" and said the regime would pay for a surprise torpedo attack that killed 46 South Korean sailors.

President Lee Myung-bak vowed to take Pyongyang to the U.N. Security Council over the March 26 sinking of the warship and said Seoul would cut all trade with the impoverished regime — measures aimed at striking back at the isolated wartime foe diplomatically and financially.

President Barack Obama said Washington fully supports South Korea's bid to take North Korea to the Security Council and would conduct its own review of U.S. policies on North Korea, the White House said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was in Beijing trying to get China's support for a coordinated diplomatic response. China, a veto-wielding permanent seat holder on the Security Council and North Korea's main ally and benefactor, has refrained from criticizing the neighboring nation.

The March sinking of the Cheonan was South Korea's worst military disaster since the 1950-53 Korean War. Fifty-eight sailors were rescued from the choppy Yellow Sea waters near the Koreas' maritime border, but 46 perished.

An international team of investigators concluded last week that a a midget torpedo fired from a North Korean submarine tore the ship in two.

Lee, addressing the nation from the War Memorial, called it a "military provocation" that was part of an "incessant" pattern of attacks by communist North Korea, including the downing of an airliner in 1987 that killed 115 people.

"We have always tolerated North Korea's brutality, time and again. We did so because we have always had a genuine longing for peace on the Korean peninsula," Lee said.

"But now things are different. North Korea will pay a price corresponding to its provocative acts," he said. "I will continue to take stern measures to hold the North accountable."

The truce signed in 1953 prevents South Korea from taking unilateral military action, but Lee said troops were prepared to defend the nation.

Defense Minister Kim Tae-young also announced joint military drills with the U.S., which has 28,500 troops in South Korea. He said Seoul will also resume psychological warfare against the North that had been suspended in 2004 during a period of warming relations.

North Korea has steadfastly denied responsibility for the sinking of the Cheonan. Naval spokesman Col. Pak In Ho warned last week in comments to broadcaster APTN that any move to retaliate or punish Pyongyang would mean war.

As Lee spoke Monday, North Korea's main newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun, called the investigation results an "intolerable, grave provocation" tantamount to a declaration of war.

"The traitor's group will not avoid our merciless punishment," the paper said in commentary carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

On Monday, the North Korean military warned it would shoot at any propaganda loudspeakers installed in the Demilitarized Zone.

"More powerful physical strikes will be taken to eradicate the root of provocation if (South Korea) challenges to our fair response," a commander said, according to KCNA.

North Korea routinely denies involvement in attacks blamed on Pyongyang, including a 1983 bombing in Burma targeting a South Korean presidential delegation and the 1987 downing of the airliner over the Andaman Sea. Burma has since renamed itself Myanmar.

Pyongyang also disputes the western maritime border unilaterally drawn by U.N. forces at the close of the Korean War, and the Koreas have fought three bloody skirmishes there, most recently in November.

Unification Minister Hyun In-taek, laying out economic strikes against the North, said the regime's cargo ships would not be allowed to pass through South Korean waters.

Imports of sand and other goods would be cut off, he said. Seoul has been North Korea's No. 2 trading partner with $1.68 billion in trade in 2009, according to the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency.

However, the biggest source of trade — a joint factory park in the North Korean border town of Kaesong where some 110 South Korean firms employ about 42,000 North Koreans — will stay open for now, he said. Seoul will also continue providing some humanitarian help, Hyun said.

Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said Seoul's countermeasures had the support of 21 nations — including the U.S., Japan, Britain and France. He said Seoul has also been working with China and Russia.

North Korea has been punished with two Security Council resolutions since conducting a nuclear test in 2006. Punitive measures could include more economic sanctions.

"I think these are acceptable countermeasures," businessman Park Joo-shin, 53, said in Seoul. "We can't just sit by and watch them do this."