Number of refugees worldwide rises to 11.4 million

LONDON (AP) -- Tents, sacks of food and a replica of a burnt-out village hut appeared in Trafalgar Square on Tuesday as a tourist hotspot became a refugee camp to highlight the plight of millions of people displaced in Darfur and elsewhere.

The display, set up to mark World Refugee Day this week, came as the U.N. refugee agency reported a record 11.4 million people were driven from their home countries last year.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said numbers were rising again after several years of decline in which refugees returned to countries including Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Angola.

"Now, unfortunately, with the multiplication of conflicts and the intensification of conflicts, the number is on the rise again," said Guterres, standing amid white U.N. tents erected in the square as part of the "Experience Darfur" exhibition.

"People being forced to move, unfortunately, will be one of the characteristics of the 21st century," he said.

In its annual report released Tuesday, the UNHCR said 11.4 million people were forced to leave their countries in 2007, compared to 9.9 million in 2006. Another 26 million were displaced within their own countries by conflict or persecution, up from 24.2 million the year before.

Nearly half the world's refugees are from war-torn Afghanistan and Iraq. UNHCR said there are 3.1 million displaced Afghans, most in neighboring Pakistan and Iran, and 2.3 million Iraqi refugees, mostly in Syria and Jordan. Another 2.4 million Iraqis are internally displaced, an increase of 600,000 since the start of 2007.

The number of internally displaced people grew last year in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Yemen, as well as in the Central African Republic and Chad, where thousands of refugees have crossed the border from the Sudanese region of Darfur.

Up to 300,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been displaced since ethnic African tribesmen took up arms against Sudan's Arab-dominated government five years ago. The government is accused of responding by unleashing the tribal militia known as janjaweed, which have committed the worst atrocities against Darfur's local communities.

Around half a million Sudanese have sought refuge abroad, the UN report said, including some 300,000 in Chad, and violence has also spilled across the border from Darfur.

"Darfur is like an earthquake," Guterres said. "It has an epicenter in Darfur itself, but then the waves spread and instability is created also in the countries around, as is the case in Chad and the Central African Republic. And that's why it is so urgent for the international community to be engaged to make sure there is a political solution in Darfur, to bring stability to the whole region."

Organizers of the mock refugee camp said they hoped it would bring the situation in Darfur home to politicians at Parliament, a few hundred yards away, as well as to Londoners and tourists visiting Trafalgar Square.

"The burning house had quite a strong impact. It was quite emotive," said 22-year-old student Charlotte Snowdon, who stopped by the exhibition. "When you see something and can experience it for yourself, it makes you understand it more."

The UNHCR report also said that in Colombia, where the government has fought a decades-long war with left-wing guerrillas, as many as 3 million people have left their homes, while more than 550,000 have become refugees in other countries.

Most refugees end up taking shelter in neighboring countries. UNHCR said the top refugee-hosting countries included Pakistan, Syria, Iran, Germany and Jordan.

The group said 647,000 asylum applications were made around the world in 2007, a 5 percent increase on 2006 and the first rise in four years. The top destinations for asylum seekers were the United States, South Africa, Sweden, France, Britain, Canada and Greece.

It is not just war that drives forced migration. Guterres said bad governance, environmental degradation and rising food prices were generating instability and "new patterns of forced displacement" in many regions.

The report did point to progress in some areas, noting that 2.8 million refugees and displaced people returned home in 2007.

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'My beautiful little angels': Agony of mother of two children 'gassed by estranged husband on Father's Day'

A mother has spoken of her utter devastation after her two "little angels" were killed by her estranged husband.

Brian Philcox, 53, drove Amy, seven and Owen, three, to a remote country lane on Father's Day.

Once there he attached a hosepipe to the exhaust, fed it through the window and left the engine running.

Tragic: Amy, seven, and Owen, three, died together in their father's Land Rover. Below, Brian Philcox, who is believed to have gassed himself and the children

Their bodies were found huddled on the rear seat of the Land Rover parked in the isolated lane in Tal-y-cafn, North Wales.

Yesterday the distraught mother of the children, Evelyn Philcox, 37, spoke of her horrendous loss.

She said: "My family and I are absolutely devastated about the loss of Amy and Owen.

"They were more than everything to us - they were our world and a reason for living.

"Amy was a very artistic child and was labelled by her teachers at Windmill Hill Primary School as exceptional.

"She was a strong-willed little girl and loved to be in the middle of whatever was going on."

She said: "Owen was very loving little boy and very affectionate. He would always play with my hair which he found comforting.

"Owen loved playing with his Thomas the Tank engine and Lazytown toys.

"Every night they would both get into bed with me and we would read books and sing together. The children loved story time in bed with me at night.

"We cannot believe what has happened and how they have so unfairly and tragically been taken away from us.

"They are our beautiful little angels and will be greatly missed and they will always be in our hearts."

Mr Philcox, who was chairman of the Federation of English Karate Organisations (FEKO), and his wife were going through a bitter divorce and he had been due to attend a court hearing this week at which his estranged wife was seeking possession of the family home.

Tributes: A policeman stands guard outside Mr Philcox's home in Runcorn today, where friends and well-wishers had laid flowers and cuddly toys

He had told neighbours he would rather burn the four-bedroom maisonette down than hand it over to his wife.

In the weeks leading up to the Father's Day tragedy he had contacted pressure group Father 4 Justice to tell them of his desperation over the divorce.

On Friday Mr Philcox, who saw his children regularly, picked them up from their mother and was seen playing football with them in a nearby park.

Scene of the tragedy: The country lane in North Wales where he parked his car. Below, forensic officers investigate dense woodland

On Saturday he took them to Llangollen in North Wales where they visited the miniature railway.

When he failed to return from the scheduled contact visit on Saturday evening Mrs Philcox alerted police who launched a hunt for the missing children.

The three bodies were found on Sunday afternoon down an isolated country lane.

Post mortems were carried out and revealed all three had died from carbon monoxide poisoning.

A message left by Mr Philcox - in which he told her he had left her a present - sparked a bomb scare.

A suspect package found at his home proved to be a hoax but Army bomb disposal teams were called in the carry out a controlled explosion on a parcel sent to Mr Philcox's stepson Ryan McAuliffe.

The tragedy happened in the picturesque Conwy Valley

Last night neighbours said the community was still reeling after the loss of the popular young children.

One man said: "I will never forget hearing their mother cry 'My babies, my babies,' after police had broken the news to her that her two lovely young children were dead.

"She was absolutely hysterical and I never want to see anything like it again. It was horrific and the whole community feels for her at this time."

Coroner John Hughes opened and adjourned an inquest in Wrexham into the deaths of the two children and their father.

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Can the Enemy Build a Super-Soldier?

Imagine bad guys able to fight without sleep. Or enemy soldiers with hardware implanted in their brains that makes them better able to target U.S. troops than U.S. troops are able to target them. How about future foes able to outfox GIs thanks to the "pharmaceutical intervention" that has improved their "brain plasticity"? Or American soldiers rendered flat-footed and lethargic because a crafty nemesis has been slipping lead into their food.

Just because the U.S. military now lacks what defense eggheads call a peer competitor — a country capable of beating us in a head-to-head confrontation — that doesn't mean it lacks for imagination in conjuring fearful foes. Sure, it was easier for John F. Kennedy to blow smoke about a non-existent "missile gap" with the Soviet Union, or for Ronald Reagan to convince us of the need for a "Star Wars" missile shield when Moscow was still our superpower rival (it may no longer be, but we're still spending $10 billion annually on missile defenses).

In the inaugural edition of the Pentagon's annual Soviet Military Power booklet, published in 1981, then Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger warned: "There is nothing hypothetical about the Soviet military machine. Its expansion, modernization and contribution to projection of power beyond Soviet boundaries are obvious." (He was referring to Moscow's invasion and occupation of Afghanistan that had occurred two years earlier — and fell apart eight years later with the Russians' humiliating defeat, followed two years after that by the demise of the Soviet Union itself.)

But if the old Soviet soldier was portrayed as 10 feet tall, the Pentagon has a tougher task today, now that the Soviet juggernaut is gone. The new warning: our potential enemies may be only six feet tall today (okay, five-seven), but they could be 10 feet tall tomorrow.

Today's equivalent of Weinberger's Soviet Military Power booklet is titled simply Human Performance, and it was written by the JASONs, a band of top scientists that advises the Defense Department. Completed in March, it has surfaced thanks to Steven Aftergood, who issues a weekly compendium of interesting government documents for the nonprofit Federation of American Scientists. The report warns that potential foes — none is named, although there is a backwards nod to "East German Olympic athletes" — could put better troops on the battlefields of tomorrow through medication, surgery and mind training. While such changes are not imminent, the study says, the science behind them needs to be monitored carefully so the U.S. military can anticipate what it might face in a future war.

Soviet Military Power was illustrated with cartoonish drawings of Moscow's latest and greatest weaponry, but Human Performance, equal parts Dr. Strangelove and Dr. Frankenstein, is crammed with complex equations and charts that make it tougher to dismiss. "Little is known about the present activities of adversaries in using/developing human performance modifiers," the report says. "This possibility now should be considered with some seriousness, because of rapid advances in understanding brain function, in developing therapies for brain and spinal chord damage, and in psycho-pharmacology." (Try to ignore the misspelling of "spinal cord.")

Understanding "brain plasticity" could let adversaries basically rewire their troops' minds, "permanently establishing new neural pathways" that could "increase troop effectiveness or modify troop behavior and/or emotional responses." New "neuropharmaceuticals" (and you thought the Pentagon was interested only in anti-depressants) "may have the additional effect of weakening or overwriting existing memories," the JASONs warn. They could end up being used "in training programs or field operations." ("The market for these drugs in foreign cultures," the report adds darkly, "should also be monitored.)

If drugs aren't ready, implanting devices to send signals directly into enemy soldiers' brains might work. "Although the present technical capabilities are not impressive, one can consider the potential that an adversary might use invasive interfaces in military applications," the report says. "An extreme example would be remote guidance or control of a human being." (The Pentagon is limiting this kind of work to bugs. The neural tweaks detailed in Human Performance would be performed by "an adversary who may not be guided by the same cultural or ethical concerns that govern U.S. military operations," the report says.)

A big battlefield advantage will be gained by the side that wins the race on "the manipulation and understanding of human sleep," the study notes. "Suppose a human could be engineered who slept for the same amount of time as a giraffe (1.9 hours per night). This would lead to an approximately twofold decrease in the casualty rate. An adversary would need an approximately 40% increase in the troop level to compensate for this advantage."

The scientists also warn that U.S. troops could be weakened by taking diet supplementals obtained from local shops in faraway lands (a 2003 report found 90% of special forces troops and 76% of support troops take such nutrients, including energy boosters, vitamins and protein powders). "Such markets could serve as a method of intentionally poisoning U.S. personnel," the report warns, helpfully suggesting the use of lead salts mixed in with nutritional supplements. "Lead poisoning has a slow onset of symptoms that are easily misdiagnosed in the early stages," it adds. "These symptoms include fatigue, irritability, and difficulty in concentration." That sounds familiar. Based on reports from U.S. troops serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, nefarious enemies may already be at work.

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