Police in Texas are looking for a 22-year-old man for questioning in connection with a series of mailbox pipe bombs that have been planted since Friday. The latest bomb was discovered Tuesday in Texas. 

The FBI has issued an all-points bulletin for a man named Luke John Helder. They say he is believed to be in northwestern Texas, driving a Honda Accord automobile with Minnesota license plates. Officials say they want to question Mr. Helder about more than a dozen pipe bombs found since Friday in the states of Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado and now Texas. 

The FBI's bulletin came just hours after the announcement that another pipe bomb had been found in a mailbox in Amarillo, Texas. Officials say the device was similar to those found in other states: a small pipe, roughly 15 centimeters long, attached to a small battery. It was also accompanied by a note. Notes found with the other bombs had complained about government intrusion into people's lives, and warned that more "attention getters" were on the way. 

Since Friday, 18 pipe bombs have been found in rural, roadside mailboxes in five states. Six people were injured in Illinois and Iowa Friday when several of the bombs exploded. 

Hundreds of law enforcement officials have been working to find the person responsible for the mailbox bombs. The series of bombs has also left people throughout the central United States nervous about opening their mailboxes. Letter carriers are nervous, too. Since Monday, the U.S. Postal Service has told people who live in areas where bombs have been found to leave the doors to their mailboxes open, so that carriers could look inside before dropping off the day's mail. 

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies says thousands of people left homeless by recent violence in Palestinian territories are in urgent need of emergency medical care. The organization is appealing for more than $1 million for health care in the Palestinian areas. 

The International Red Cross says the Palestine Red Crescent Society has run out of medicines and medical supplies. It says it can no longer carry out its primary health care and home-based programs for sick and destitute Palestinians. 

Red Cross spokesman Denis McClean says that during the past month, the crisis has left thousands of people homeless. He says they have not been able to get either emergency or regular public health care in hospitals or clinics. 

"Many of these people have been confined to their homes now for several weeks," said Mr. McClean. "It is important that we have sufficient medicines and medical supplies available to bring to them in their homes." 

"Home delivery of care is very important now," he went on, "especially given the fact that people are afraid to move around the streets, particularly after dark. More and more mobile services are being relied on by the general population to get basic outpatient treatment." 

Mr. McClean says the health needs of the internally displaced and homeless people in Gaza and the West Bank are high. In the Jenin refugee camp alone, he says an estimated 2,000 people need emergency medical assistance. 

A spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, Fadela Chaib, says the organization continues to have difficulty getting medical supplies into the Palestine territories, noting that "40 emergency health kits are still stuck in Amman. WHO is just trying to find a way to transport them to the Palestinian occupied territories. But since now, we did not succeed." 

Ms. Chaib says the WHO is in contact with the Israeli Health Ministry to try to resolve the problem. She says Palestinians in need of medical assistance continue to have difficulty reaching doctors and medical facilities. 

A team sent by the U.N. Security Council has ended an eight-nation tour of Africa aimed at bolstering support for an end to fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The team, as one of its proposals, is calling for the creation of a corridor inside Congo in which Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi could deploy troops to protect themselves from attacks by Congo-based insurgents. 

Rwanda, for example, has frequently said it cannot withdraw its troops from Congo while it is still being threatened by Rwandan rebels based there. Most of the rebels fled into Congo after carrying out the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. 

In an interview with VOA, a conflict analyst based in South Africa, Jan van Eck, endorsed the U.N. team's proposal, noting that "what the Security Council has done is to identify the cause, the main cause of the war in the Congo and that's Rwanda's security problem. If Rwanda and all the other belligerents can negotiate an acceptable multinational force patrolling the eastern Congo, the border with Rwanda, that will go a long, long way in addressing the concerns of Rwanda," said Mr. van Eck. 

However, Rwandan President Paul Kagame said Monday that the creation of a security area alone does not fully address Rwandan concerns. He says Congo's president, Joseph Kabila, also has to carry out his pledge to disarm and arrest the Rwandan rebels based in eastern Congo. 

While it acknowledges that many problems remain, the U.N. team is urging Congo's warring parties to continue negotiating until they come up with an agreement to end fighting that has torn apart one of the most mineral rich countries in Africa. 

In a report released Monday, the International Labor Organization warns that one child in eight worldwide works under conditions that can cause physical or mental damage. 

The International Labor Organization believes that "significant progress" has been made in the decade since it launched its campaign against child labor, but it says much more remains to be done. 

The ILO study, called "A Future without Child Labor", says that around the world about 246 million children between the ages of five and 17 are working. And the report says well over half of these, 180 million children, work in hazardous industries, such as mining or construction. 

A spokeswoman for the U.N. agency, Carolyn O'Reilly, says this is very troubling. "We are not saying categorically that there has been a decline in child labor, the indications are that perhaps there has been," she said. "What we do know, what is alarming about these figures is [the] proportion of working children who are engaged in the worst forms of child labor and that's the 180 million figure." 

The ILO says most of the young people in these hazardous jobs are part of the so-called "informal economy. They have no legal protection and are exposed to situations that jeopardize their physical, mental or moral well-being. 

According to the ILO, nearly 8.5 million children are used as slaves, prostitutes or forced into the military as soldiers. 

The report also urges countries to take action to ensure that children go to school rather than to work. ILO chief Juan Somavia points to Brazil as a country that has found a way to encourage parents to send their children to school. The Brazilian government gives subsidies to parents who send their children to school to compensate them for the income the children would have earned by working. 

Mr. Somavia says the wider issue of global unemployment also needs to be addressed to deal effectively with the problem of child labor. "If we don't put back the full employment agenda on the table as part of the whole decent work objectives of the ILO, we're not only going to have problems dealing with child labor, we going to have problems dealing with the stability and the security of our societies," he said. 

The ILO is pressing all United Nations members to ratify its treaty outlawing the worst forms of child labor. So far 115 countries have done so, but child labor still persists in many of these countries. 

As part of Mexican President Vicente Fox's war on criminals, the Mexican Attorney General's office has posted a list of its most-wanted criminals on an Internet site. This is one of several moves being taken by the government to target top crime groups.

 From now on, anyone with a computer and Internet access can join Mexico's fight against crime. The federal attorney general has posted information, including photos where available, of the country's top fugitives. 

Joaquin Guzman

Ismael Garcia

 Another one of Mexico's most-wanted is Osiel Cardenas Guillen, considered to be the head of the drug cartel based in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas.
 
 

Osiel Cardenas Guillen

Francisco Javier Arellano Felix

 Since Vicente Fox assumed the office of the presidency here in Mexico in December of 2000, federal authorities say they have captured more than 10,000 criminals. President Fox has also made moves to streamline the federal investigative agencies and to provide better cooperation with local and state authorities. 

Each spring and summer, millions of Americans visit their national parks from the Everglades in southern Florida to Alaska's Denali Preserve from Sequoia National Park in California to the Cape Cod National Seashore on the Atlantic Coast. The tourism dollars those parks bring in fuel the economy of surrounding communities. But in Moab, Utah - the tourist activities can pose a threat to those lands. 

Hikers on Desert Nature Trail, Arches National Park, Utah (Photo - National Park Service)

At Arches National Park in Utah, Jake is surrounded by blue-green sage and fantastically twisted juniper trees. And he's discovering that this park isn't called "Arches" for nothing. Towering red rock arches frame a deep blue sky. As Jake munches on a sandwich, his dad explained why he loves this park.
 
 

Delicate Arch, Arches National Park, Utah (Photo - National Park Service)

 Many tourists who visit Arches National Park also drop by Moab, Utah, which is eight kilometers away. The former uranium-mining town has a population of only 5,000, but in recent years, it's become southeastern Utah's major recreation center.

 For six months of the year in the depths of winter and the hottest part of the summer - it's almost as quiet in Moab as it is along the hiking trails of Arches National Park. In fact, even in the downtown tourist district, the loudest sounds at dawn come from birds that flock to a tree-lined stream.

 All that changes during the spring and fall tourist seasons, when Moab's population can double. 

As the sun rises on these mornings, thousands of visitors pour out of their hotel rooms fire up their cars, trucks and jeeps then roar off into the countryside. At dusk, these same tourists jam the local restaurants.

 Perhaps the busiest week comes around Easter, when Moab hosts the annual Jeep Safari, which attracts over 1,500 jeep and sports utility enthusiasts, adding to the already large number of hikers, bicyclists and vehicle drivers who throng to Moab every spring.

 "The motels are all full. The restaurants are all full. People are buying gas and car parts and things, you know," Maggie Wyatt said.

 Maggie Wyatt manages much of the federal government land around Moab, which includes 800,000 hectares near Arches and Canyonland national parks. She said Moab depends on tourist dollars, and she wants recreation on these public lands to help the town prosper. But she doesn't want a thriving tourism industry to damage the parks. She said some groups are more considerate than others.

 "Our experience is that the Jeep Safari participants themselves are extremely well behaved," she said. "They don't want to lose their permit, they want to be able to continue doing this every year; they stay on existing routes that are approved for the Jeep Safari, they caution people not to be driving off those roads. They're very diligent about taking along a port-a-potty and picking up trash. They're just great. You know, I wish every one would behave that way." 

Unfortunately, Ms. Wyatt said, of the one million people who visit Moab's parklands every year, far too many are careless.

 "They drive off-road in places where they're not supposed to. They camp where they're not supposed to. They tear limbs off trees for firewood," she said. 

According to many experts, this damage is long lasting.

 "The U.S. Geological Survey in fact has done studies in this very area, and we now know that one tire track through fragile cryptobiotic soil may take 50 to 300 years to recover," Liz Thomas said.

 Ms. Thomas is a Field Attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. The cryptobiotic soil she refers to is a microscopic, living groundcover that helps bushes and trees survive in this harsh, semi-desert climate.

 To encourage responsible behavior on these lands, designated trails are marked, and the park service has the right to fence off areas that are improperly used. But there's so much public land, and so few people to monitor it, most of the visitors who break the rules never get caught, and most areas they injure must heal on their own.

 "You make your tracks off [the road], the next person doesn't feel so guilty about making their tracks off. They're just following somebody else," Ms. Thomas said. 

The damage that jeeps can do is clear in a popular tourist spot near the Moab town dump.

 The "Dump Bump" is a sandy piece of property that you can walk across in 10 minutes. Here, jeeps rev up for its star attraction - a long rock outcrop that is almost five meters high. Jeep drivers love to make a try at driving straight up and over that steep rock face.

 The Dump Bump is not an attractive site it's coated with burned tire rubber and motor oil. The soil leading up to that rocky ledge is barren of plants and has been churned by so many tires, it's as fine as talcum powder. Environmentalists have said that similar destruction happens on a less intensive scale, wherever vehicles go off-road.

 Back on the hiking trails of Arches, Jake's dad said that he enjoys both hiking and jeeping, and - like most recreational drivers - he stays on designated trails.

 "You know, you get this many people out anywhere and you're going to have a couple of yahoos that are going to damage something. But I think the majority of the people respect the land and enjoy it," he said. 

To minimize damage and protect the land for that majority of people, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance has proposed banning vehicles and other heavy use on some roads in sensitive habitat areas. The group also helps the park service build fences that encourage responsible off-road vehicle recreation. 

Email this article to a friend.
Printer Friendly Version