Guardian Unlimited:

Germany's top security officials said Friday they consider the goals of the U.S.-based Church of Scientology to be in conflict with the principles of the nation's constitution and will seek to ban the group.

The United States has 290 million guns in circulation, which equates to about one per person or 90 per 100 people -- depending on who's crunching your numbers -- and the highest per capita ratio in the world. Either way it's a staggering stat and one that contrasts to those in the other "northern industrial states" like Canada, Sweden and Germany, where there is an average of 30 guns for every 100 people.

Eva Haule of the leftist terrorist group RAF was released on parole on Friday. The court ruled that she no longer presented a threat to society. She has, however, shown no remoarse and has not "shed light on the numerous assassinations carried out by her group, many of which remain unsolved," writes Spiegel International. 

She was convicted of killing two Americans in a 1985 air base bombing. She was in prison since August 1986.

A German lawmaker scheduled to go on trial in June resigned from Parliament on Tuesday and confessed to making false statements in connection with a corruption scandal at automaker Volkswagen AG. (...) [The state court in Braunschweig] said that six prostitutes were being summoned to testify as witnesses. Prosecutors have said the charges of accessory to breach of trust relate to Uhl's alleged participation in events in Barcelona and Seoul in 2001 "during the course of which the services of prostitutes allegedly were called upon."

Mr Jefferson is accused of straightforward corruption to enrich himself and his family. Prosecutors say he accepted nearly $500,000 in bribes in return for helping with business deals in Africa. He is also alleged to have offered a bribe to a top Nigerian politician. He denies the charges, but he was secretly recorded apparently discussing bribes, and the FBI found $90,000 in cash hidden in his freezer in 2005. The case embarrasses the Democrats, who recaptured Congress last year vowing to end the Republican “culture of corruption”.

Dear Dr. Steger:

Senator W. Fulbright's idea was to build up a world of tolerance, mutual understanding - and even better - friendship; instead of animosity. If one lifts these ideas on a bigger scale, how can anyone see a reason in killing another person in an amok run like this. No one who bears Senator Fulbight's ideas and spirit in his own character can see any sense in this tragedy.

Members and Board of the German Fulbright Alumni Association convey their sympathies to the families of Professor Jamie Bishop (Fulbright scholar to Christian-Albrechts University at Kiel, Germany), Professor Liviu Librescu and all those who suffered from the Virginia Tech killings. In such a time of bereavement, it might be comforting to feel that one is not alone and that people all over the world also sympathize with these families.

Our most sincere condolences especially to Stefanie Hofer

On behalf of the board

Uwe Koch
President
Fulbright Alumni e.V.
German Fulbright Association

THE UNITED States and NATO are about to lose the war in Afghanistan to an insurgent, revived Taliban. Deprived of sufficient firepower and soldiers, Allied forces are failing to hunt down and contain the Taliban, especially in the southern part of the country. Moreover, the crucial battle for Pashtun hearts and minds is also about to be lost. Only the rapid provision of security, roads, electricity, and educational and health services can counter the appeal of the renewed and reinvigorated Taliban. Urgently required are more troops for security and more funds for rebuilding essential services.

Narco-trafficking is fueling the Taliban, and fat profits from poppies and opium are partially responsible for the militants' resurgence. Indeed, Afghanistan is supplying about 90 percent of the world's opium and nearly all of the heroin that ends up in Europe. A recent study by the UN Office for Drugs and Crime forecasts a record crop of poppies this year, on top of last year's bumper harvest. To undercut the ability of the Taliban to purchase arms, pay soldiers, and buy the support of villagers, the United States and NATO need to break the back of the drug trade in and out of Afghanistan. However, reliance on eradication -- the current weapon of choice -- is foolish and wasteful. Uprooting crops and spraying have both had limited local effect. What is needed is a radically new, incentive-based method to provide better incomes to farmers from substitute crops.

Governments in Berlin, Paris and Rome, along with NATO leadership are discussing a potentially explosive new idea: the legalization of Afghanistan's opium production. The plan envisages farmers being able to sell their poppies to officially licensed buyers for the same price they currently get from the drug barons. The product could then be sold to the pharmaceutical industry for pain medication and other products.

The new law vaguely bans torture -- but makes the administration the arbiter of what is torture and what isn't. It allows the president to imprison indefinitely anyone he decides falls under a wide-ranging new definition of unlawful combatant. It suspends the Great Writ of habeas corpus for detainees. It allows coerced testimony at trial. It immunizes retroactively interrogators who may have engaged in torture. Here's what Bush had to say at his signing ceremony in the East Room: "The bill I sign today helps secure this country, and it sends a clear message: This nation is patient and decent and fair, and we will never back down from the threats to our freedom." But that may not be the "clear message" the new law sends most people. Here's the clear message the law sends to the world: America makes its own rules.