VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – After weeks of anticipation, Pope Benedict sent his first tweet on Wednesday.
“Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart.”
The tweet was sent when the 85-year-old pope tapped on a touch screen at the end of his weekly general audience in the Vatican before thousands of people.
(Reporting By Philip Pullella, editing by Paul Casciato)
Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Hugh Hefner, 86, officially confirms that he is once again engaged to Crystal Harris, 26, telling his Twitter followers, "I've given Crystal Harris a ring. I love the girl."
And to prove it, Harris posted photos of the big diamond sparkler, calling it "my beautiful ring."
Neither announced a wedding date, though sources tell PEOPLE they're planning to tie the knot at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles on New Year's Eve.
Whether that still happens remains to be seen.
This is the plan they had in 2011 – a wedding at the mansion – except that Harris called it off just days before the nuptials were scheduled to happen in front of 300 invited guests.
Hugh Hefner and Crystal Harris
David Livingston / Getty
A year later, Hefner's "runaway bunny" bounded back to him.
• Reporting by JENNIFER GARCIA
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Turmoil surrounding an unprecedented $3 billion cancer-fighting effort in Texas worsened Tuesday when its executive director offered his resignation and the state's chief public corruption prosecutor announced an investigation into the beleaguered agency.
No specific criminal allegations are driving the latest probe into the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, said Gregg Cox, director of the Travis County district attorney's public integrity unit. But his influential office opened a case only weeks after the embattled agency disclosed that an $11 million grant to a private company bypassed review.
That award is the latest trouble in a tumultuous year for CPRIT, which controls the nation's second-largest pot of cancer research dollars. Amid the mounting problems, the agency announced Tuesday that Executive Director Bill Gimson had submitted his letter of resignation.
"Unfortunately, I have also been placed in a situation where I feel I can no longer be effective," Gimson wrote in a letter dated Monday.
Gimson said the troubles have resulted in "wasted efforts expended in low value activities" at the agency, instead of a focused fight against cancer. Gimson offered to stay on until January, and the agency's board must still approve his request to step down.
His departure would complete a remarkable house-cleaning at CPRIT in a span of just eight months. It began in May, when Dr. Alfred Gilman resigned as chief science officer in protest over a different grant that the Nobel laureate wanted approved by a panel of scientists. He warned it would be "the bomb that destroys CPRIT."
Gilman was followed by Chief Commercialization Officer Jerry Cobbs, whose resignation in November came after an internal audit showed Cobbs included an $11 million proposal in a funding slate without a required outside review of the project's merits. The lucrative grant was given to Dallas-based Peloton Therapeutics, a biomedical startup.
Gimson chalked up Peloton's award to an honest mistake and has said that, to his knowledge, no one associated with CPRIT stood to benefit financially from the company receiving the taxpayer funds. That hasn't satisfied some members of the agency's governing board, who called last week for more assurances that no one personally profited.
Cox said he has been following the agency's problems and his office received a number of concerned phone calls. His department in Austin is charged with prosecuting crimes related to government officials; his most famous cases include winning a conviction against former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in 2010 on money laundering charges.
"We have to gather the facts and figure what, if any, crime occurred so that (the investigation) can be focused more," Cox said.
Gimson's resignation letter was dated the same day the Texas attorney general's office also announced its investigation of the agency. Cox said his department would work cooperatively with state investigators, but he made clear the probes would be separate.
Peloton's award marks the second time this year that a lucrative taxpayer-funded grant authorized by CPRIT instigated backlash and raised questions about oversight. The first involved the $20 million grant to M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston that Gilman described as a thin proposal that should have first been scrutinized by an outside panel of scientific peer-reviewers, even though none was required under the agency's rules.
Dozens of the nation's top scientists agreed. They resigned en masse from the agency's peer-review panels along with Gilman. Some accused the agency of "hucksterism" and charting a politically-driven path that was putting commercial product-development above science.
The latest shake-up at CPRIT caught Gilman's successor off-guard. Dr. Margaret Kripke, who was introduced to reporters Tuesday, acknowledged that she wasn't even sure who she would be answering to now that Gimson was stepping down. She said that although she wasn't with the agency when her predecessor announced his resignation, she was aware of the concerns and allegations.
"I don't think people would resign frivolously, so there must be some substance to those concerns," Kripke said.
Kripke also acknowledged the challenge of restocking the peer-review panels after the agency's credibility was so publicly smeared by some of the country's top scientists. She said she took the job because she felt the agency's mission and potential was too important to lose.
Only the National Institutes of Health doles out more cancer research dollars than CPRIT, which has awarded more than $700 million so far.
Gov. Rick Perry told reporters in Houston on Tuesday that he wasn't previously aware of the resignation but said Gimson's decision to step down was his own.
Joining the mounting criticism of CPRIT is the woman credited with brainstorming the idea for the agency in the first place. Cathy Bonner, who served under former Texas Gov. Ann Richards, teamed with cancer survivor Lance Armstrong in selling Texas voters in 2007 on a constitutional amendment to create an unprecedented state-run effort to finance a war on disease.
Now Bonner says politics have sullied an agency that she said was built to fund research, not subsidize private companies.
"There appears to be a cover-up going on," Bonner said.
Peloton has declined comment about its award and has referred questions to CPRIT. The agency has said the company wasn't aware that its application was never scrutinized by an outside panel, as required under agency rules.
___
Follow Paul J. Weber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/pauljweber
LONDON (Reuters) - Stock futures pointed to a fractionally higher open on Wall Street on Wednesday, with futures for the S&P 500, the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq 100 rising by 0.1 to 0.2 percent.
* The U.S. Federal Reserve is expected to announce a fresh round of bond buying on Wednesday as part of its efforts to support a fragile economic recovery threatened by political wrangling over the government's budget.
* Negotiations to avert the "fiscal cliff" ahead of a year-end deadline intensified as President Barack Obama and U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner spoke by phone on Tuesday after exchanging new proposals.
* India's government announced an inquiry into lobbying practices by Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
* Costco Wholesale Corp
* Chesapeake Energy Corp
* Sprint Nextel Corp
* European shares steadied in early trade on Wednesday, keeping alive their sharp three-week rally as investors bet the Fed would deliver on stimulus.
* The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> closed up 78.56 points, or 0.60 percent, at 13,248.44 on Tuesday. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 9.29 points, or 0.65 percent, at 1,427.84 - its highest since November elections. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 35.34 points, or 1.18 percent, at 3,022.30.
(Reporting by Atul Prakash; editing by Patrick Graham)
CAIRO (Reuters) - Nine people were hurt when gunmen fired at protesters camping in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Tuesday, according to witnesses and Egyptian media, as the opposition called for a major demonstration it hopes will force President Mohamed Mursi to postpone a referendum on a new constitution.
Supporters of the Islamist leader, who want the vote to go ahead as planned on Saturday, were also gathering in the capital, setting the stage for further street confrontations in a political crisis that has divided the Arab world's most populous nation.
Police cars surrounded Tahrir Square in central Cairo, the first time they had appeared in the area since November 23, shortly after a decree by Mursi awarding himself sweeping temporary powers that touched off widespread protests.
The upheaval following the fall of Hosni Mubarak last year is causing concern in the West, in particular the United States, which has given Cairo billions of dollars in military and other aid since Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979.
The Tahrir Square attackers, some masked, also threw petrol bombs which started a small fire, witnesses said.
"The masked men came suddenly and attacked the protesters in Tahrir. The attack was meant to deter us and prevent us from protesting today. We oppose these terror tactics and will stage the biggest protest possible today," said John Gerges, a Christian Egyptian who described himself as a socialist.
The latest bout of unrest has so far claimed seven lives in clashes between the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and opponents who are also besieging Mursi's presidential palace.
POLICE POWERS
The elite Republican Guard which protects the palace has yet to use force to keep protesters away from the graffiti-daubed building, now ringed with tanks, barbed wire and concrete barricades.
The army has told all sides to resolve their differences through dialogue, saying it would not allow Egypt to enter a "dark tunnel". For the period of the referendum, the army has been granted police powers by Mursi, allowing it to arrest civilians.
The army has portrayed itself as the guarantor of the nation's security but so far it has shown no appetite for a return to the bruising front-line political role it played after the fall of Mubarak, which severely damaged its standing.
Leftists, liberals and other opposition groups have called for marches to the presidential palace later on Tuesday to protest against the hastily arranged constitutional referendum planned for Dec 15, which they say is polarising the country and could put it in a religious straightjacket.
Mohamed ElBaradei, a prominent opposition leader and Nobel prize winner, called for dialogue with Mursi and said the referendum should be postponed for a couple of months due to the chaotic situation.
"This revolution was not staged to replace one dictator with another," he said in an interview with CNN.
Outside the presidential palace, anti-Mursi protesters huddled together in front of their tents, warming themselves beside a bonfire in the winter air.
"The referendum must not take place. The constitution came after blood was spilt. This is not how a country should be run," said Ali Hassan, a man in his 20s.
Opposition leaders want the referendum to be delayed and hope they can get sufficiently large numbers of protesters on the streets to change Mursi's mind.
Islamists, who dominated the body that drew up the constitution, have urged their followers to turn out "in millions" in a show of support for the president and for a referendum they feel sure of winning.
OPPONENTS ANGERED
Leftist politician Hamdeen Sabahy, one of the most prominent members of the National Salvation Front opposition coalition, said Mursi was driving a wedge between Egyptians and destroying prospects for consensus.
As well as pushing the early referendum, Mursi has angered opponents by taking extra powers he said were necessary to secure the transition to stability after the uprising that overthrew Mubarak 22 months ago.
"The road Mohamed Mursi is taking now does not create the possibility for national consensus," said Sabahy. He forecast polarisation if constitution were passed.
The National Salvation Front also includes ElBaradei and former Arab League chief Amr Moussa.
The opposition says the draft constitution fails to embrace the diversity of 83 million Egyptians, a tenth of whom are Christians, and invites Muslim clerics to influence lawmaking.
But debate over the details has largely given way to street protests and megaphone politics, keeping Egypt off balance and ill equipped to deal with a looming economic crisis.
Mahmoud Ghozlan, the Muslim Brotherhood's spokesman, said the opposition could stage protests, but should keep the peace.
"They are free to boycott, participate or say no; they can do what they want. The important thing is that it remains in a peaceful context to preserve the country's safety and security."
The disruption is also casting doubts on the government's ability to push through economic reforms that form part of a proposed $4.8 billion IMF loan agreement.
(Writing by Edmund Blair and Giles Elgood; Editing by Peter Graff and Janet McBride)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A recently announced hacking of the U.N. nuclear agency’s computer servers was not the first time an attempt had been made to break into the organization’s computer system, the head of the agency said on Thursday.
Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said that a few months ago a group broke into the agency’s computer system and stole personal information of scientists working on peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
In response to questions at a Council on Foreign Relations event in Washington, Amano repeated what he said last week after the hacking was revealed: no sensitive information about the IAEA‘s nuclear inspections had been stolen.
The IAEA has shut down the server that had been hacked and is continuing an investigation, Amano said. But he also said it wasn’t the first attempt to break into the system.
“If you ask if this is the only case? I would say there have been some other tries but we are doing our best to protect our system,” Amano said.
The hackers – a group using an Iranian-sounding name – have posted scores of email addresses of experts who have been working with the U.N. agency on a website, and have urged the IAEA to investigate Israel’s nuclear activity.
Israel, which has an undeclared nuclear arsenal, and the United States accuse Iran of seeking to develop a nuclear weapons capability. Tehran denies such ambitions.
Amano would not say if he believed Iran was behind the attacks on the IAEA, whose missions include preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and which is investigating Iran’s disputed nuclear activities.
“The group … they have what looks like an Iranian name. But that does not mean that the origin is Iran,” he said.
There has been an increase in suspected Iranian cyber attacks this year, coinciding with a deepening standoff with the West over Tehran’s nuclear program.
(Reporting by Deborah Charles. Editing by Warren Strobel and Doina Chiacu)
Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Hayden Panettiere and Scotty McKnight
Splash News Online
Nashville star Hayden Panettiere has broken up with her boyfriend of more than a year, New York Jets wide receiver Scotty McKnight, a source confirms to PEOPLE.
But the split doesn't appear to be the stuff of a sad country song. The actress, 23, is still friends with McKnight, 24, and one source tells TMZ that their pals wouldn't be surprised if they got back together.
This is Panettiere's second go at a relationship with an athlete. Before dating McKnight she was with Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko for about two years.
– Julie Jordan
WASHINGTON (AP) — It's about to get faster and easier to diagnose food poisoning, but that progress for individual patients comes with a downside: It could hurt the nation's ability to spot and solve dangerous outbreaks.
Next-generation tests that promise to shave a few days off the time needed to tell whether E. coli, salmonella or other foodborne bacteria caused a patient's illness could reach medical laboratories as early as next year. That could allow doctors to treat sometimes deadly diseases much more quickly — an exciting development.
The problem: These new tests can't detect crucial differences between different subtypes of bacteria, as current tests can. And that fingerprint is what states and the federal government use to match sick people to a contaminated food. The older tests might be replaced by the new, more efficient ones.
"It's like a forensics lab. If somebody says a shot was fired, without the bullet you don't know where it came from," explained E. coli expert Dr. Phillip Tarr of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that losing the ability to literally take a germ's fingerprint could hamper efforts to keep food safe, and the agency is searching for solutions. According to CDC estimates, 1 in 6 Americans gets sick from foodborne illnesses each year, and 3,000 die.
"These improved tests for diagnosing patients could have the unintended consequence of reducing our ability to detect and investigate outbreaks, ultimately causing more people to become sick," said Dr. John Besser of the CDC.
That means outbreaks like the salmonella illnesses linked this fall to a variety of Trader Joe's peanut butter might not be identified that quickly — or at all.
It all comes down to what's called a bacterial culture — whether labs grow a sample of a patient's bacteria in an old-fashioned petri dish, or skip that step because the new tests don't require it.
Here's the way it works now: Someone with serious diarrhea visits the doctor, who gets a stool sample and sends it to a private testing laboratory. The lab cultures the sample, growing larger batches of any lurking bacteria to identify what's there. If disease-causing germs such as E. coli O157 or salmonella are found, they may be sent on to a public health laboratory for more sophisticated analysis to uncover their unique DNA patterns — their fingerprints.
Those fingerprints are posted to a national database, called PulseNet, that the CDC and state health officials use to look for food poisoning trends.
There are lots of garden-variety cases of salmonella every year, from runny eggs to a picnic lunch that sat out too long. But if a few people in, say, Baltimore have salmonella with the same molecular signature as some sick people in Cleveland, it's time to investigate, because scientists might be able narrow the outbreak to a particular food or company.
But culture-based testing takes time — as long as two to four days after the sample reaches the lab, which makes for a long wait if you're a sick patient.
What's in the pipeline? Tests that could detect many kinds of germs simultaneously instead of hunting one at a time — and within hours of reaching the lab — without first having to grow a culture. Those tests are expected to be approved as early as next year.
This isn't just a science debate, said Shari Shea, food safety director at the Association of Public Health Laboratories.
If you were the patient, "you'd want to know how you got sick," she said.
PulseNet has greatly improved the ability of regulators and the food industry to solve those mysteries since it was launched in the mid-1990s, helping to spot major outbreaks in ground beef, spinach, eggs and cantaloupe in recent years. Just this fall, PulseNet matched 42 different salmonella illnesses in 20 different states that were eventually traced to a variety of Trader Joe's peanut butter.
Food and Drug Administration officials who visited the plant where the peanut butter was made found salmonella contamination all over the facility, with several of the plant samples matching the fingerprint of the salmonella that made people sick. A New Mexico-based company, Sunland Inc., recalled hundreds of products that were shipped to large retailers all over the country, including Target, Safeway and other large grocery chains.
The source of those illnesses probably would have remained a mystery without the national database, since there weren't very many illnesses in any individual state.
To ensure that kind of crucial detective work isn't lost, the CDC is asking the medical community to send samples to labs to be cultured even when they perform a new, non-culture test.
But it's not clear who would pay for that extra step. Private labs only can perform the tests that a doctor orders, noted Dr. Jay M. Lieberman of Quest Diagnostics, one of the country's largest testing labs.
A few first-generation non-culture tests are already available. When private labs in Wisconsin use them, they frequently ship leftover samples to the state lab, which grows the bacteria itself. But as more private labs switch over after the next-generation rapid tests arrive, the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene will be hard-pressed to keep up with that extra work before it can do its main job — fingerprinting the bugs, said deputy director Dr. Dave Warshauer.
Stay tuned: Research is beginning to look for solutions that one day might allow rapid and in-depth looks at food poisoning causes in the same test.
"As molecular techniques evolve, you may be able to get the information you want from non-culture techniques," Lieberman said.
___
Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick
PARIS (Reuters) - Stock futures pointed to a higher open on Wall Street on Tuesday, with futures for the S&P 500 up 0.18 percent, Dow Jones futures up 0.18 percent and Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.23 percent at 5:25 a.m. EDT.
* European shares gained ground on Tuesday morning, helped by data showing German investor confidence unexpectedly rose in December after a sharp fall in the previous month, with Italian shares recovering from the previous day's selloff sparked by Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti's announcement that he plans to resign.
* Monti said on Tuesday he still wanted to influence political debate in whatever role he fills after elections next year, leaving his political future open following speculation he may remain in politics.
* Texas Instruments Inc
* Intel
* Industrial machinery maker SPX Corp
* Contract manufacturer Flextronics International Ltd
* Morgan Stanley
* A group of Chinese companies, including Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), is in talks to buy nearly all of American International Group Inc's aircraft leasing unit for about $5.5 billion, AIG said on Friday.
* On the macro front, investors awaited U.S. international trade for October, due at 8:30 a.m. EDT, the consumer confidence index, due at 10 a.m. EDT, as well as wholesale inventories, due at 10 a.m. EDT.
* U.S. stocks edged higher on Monday as technology shares bounced back after recent weakness and McDonald's posted strong monthly sales.
* The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 14.75 points, or 0.11 percent, to 13,169.88 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> inched up just 0.48 of a point, or 0.03 percent, to 1,418.55. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> advanced 8.92 points, or 0.30 percent, to close at 2,986.96.
(Reporting by Blaise Robinson)
GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - When Congo's government army retreated in panic from the eastern city of Goma last month, many observers blamed the poor morale and leadership, ill discipline and corruption that have sapped its fighting capacity for years.
In the hours before Goma fell to M23 rebels on November 20, drunk and terrified Congolese soldiers roamed the streets or huddled in doorways before melting away, witnesses said.
M23's 11-day occupation of the city was one of the worst battlefield defeats for Democratic Republic of Congo's armed forces (FARDC), which at 150,000-strong are among the largest in Africa. They are also backed by 17,000 U.N. peacekeepers.
As recriminations swirl over the Goma defeat, which forced President Joseph Kabila to accept talks with a group he says is a creation of Rwanda, allegations have emerged that betrayal in the army's ranks may have precipitated the rout.
The government has launched an investigation but says it has reached no conclusions; little evidence has come to light beyond anonymous allegations against officers from subordinates who accuse their commanders of selling them out. The general blamed by some denies any such deals with rebels he once commanded.
But the scandal alone shows how deep suspicion runs within an army that has absorbed successive waves of former enemies as a series of civil wars has ended.
One senior FARDC officer who fought the M23 uprising said he believed Goma was lost because of what he called sabotage of the army's fighting capability.
"All of our intelligence was given to M23," the officer alleged, saying that throughout the fighting "there was intense communications with them" from within the government ranks.
Speaking on condition of anonymity because army regulations forbid him from commenting publicly, he said he was convinced former land forces commander, Major General Gabriel Amisi had been in contact with the rebel side. He said he had served alongside the general in the field.
A member of Amisi's military entourage said the general "rejects categorically" allegations of betrayal: "He could never do that, he wants nothing from the rebels," the aide said. "He only just escaped with his life, five of his own men died."
Amisi himself, dressed in colorful robes and sandals, greeted a Reuters reporter at his guarded residence in Kinshasa on Friday. He declined to discuss the allegations. The aide said the general had been ordered by President Kabila not to talk to media about the subject.
An army spokesman, Colonel Olivier Hamuli, said "many factors" led to the debacle, which is being investigated: "As to whether there was treason by General Amisi, I can't say yes or no to that."
Amisi, widely known as "Tango Four" from his old radio call sign, was suspended just days after the rebel capture of the city following a report by U.N. experts alleging he sold weapons to armed groups accused of killing civilians.
TANGLED RELATIONSHIPS
Amisi's ties to a previous, Rwandan-backed eastern rebellion during Congo's 1998-2003 war highlight the confused integration process over the last decade that has seen the FARDC absorb tens of thousands of former rebels and militia fighters.
M23 itself is formed largely of men who were rebels, then were brought into the army and then mutinied again, accusing the Kabila government of breaking a deal signed on March 23, 2009.
Congo's army is widely seen as a symptom of the vast central African nation's dysfunctional state, weakened by years of mismanagement, graft and conflict.
This has produced a security vacuum, particularly in the volatile eastern borderlands, a tinderbox of ethnic conflicts where regional powers and local elites compete for political influence and also for resources of gold, tin and coltan, the latter used in the making of mobile phones.
FARDC spokesman Hamuli said the defeat at Goma was "understandable" because "we were fighting the Rwandan army".
Experts tasked by the U.N. Security Council have issued reports alleging Rwanda, Congo's small but militarily powerful eastern neighbor, created, trained and equipped M23 and directly supported its capture of Goma.
Rwanda has repeatedly dismissed this as "fiction".
M23 fighters withdrew from Goma on December 1 under a deal mediated by regional states. But there is little confidence inside or outside Congo that the city can resist a fresh M23 assault.
"WE WERE ABANDONED"
Reuters journalists who covered the fighting around Goma in November noted the contrast between M23's well-armed fighters, with crisp uniforms and practical rubber gumboots, and the often rag-tag government soldiers, some shod only in flip flops.
M23 rebels showed reporters the abandoned FARDC barracks in Goma - ramshackle buildings littered with fly-infested garbage, where tall marijuana plants grew among military maize plots.
"You see how the Congolese army lived. What kind of army is this?" Amani Kabasha, M23's deputy spokesman, said.
Nevertheless, observers on the ground still struggle to fully explain the abruptness of the army's collapse at Goma.
The FARDC's flight led to MONUSCO peacekeepers choosing not to go on resisting M23's advance. U.N. chiefs rebuffed intense criticism, saying their men could not back an army that was no longer present on the ground.
"They put up a formidable fight the first day, then for reasons we don't understand, they just stopped fighting, turned their backs and left," said Hiroute Guebre Sellassie, who heads the local office of Congo's U.N. peacekeeping force, MONUSCO.
Congo government spokesman Lambert Mende said the inquiry would probe allegations of racketeering and betrayal among the commanders: "Questions of loyalty have regularly been asked, not just about Amisi," he said. "But there has to be proof."
The FARDC officer who denounced Amisi's role highlighted one incident early in the battle for Goma when he says the general ordered his men to stop fighting after inflicting heavy losses on M23 at Kibumba, 30 km (20 miles) north of the city.
"Suddenly we received the order to stop," the officer said.
"It didn't make sense; it just gave them the chance to regroup and pull together a force that went on to take Goma."
Rejecting the allegations on Amisi's behalf, the member of his entourage in Kinshasa blamed the difficulties of fighting a rebel force that, he alleged, was being supported from beyond the border with Rwanda that runs through Goma's suburbs.
"We didn't have the orders to attack Rwanda, even though we were being fired on from there," the aide to Amisi said.
"You saw the morale of our men - everyone was fleeing pell mell. That's when we realized we couldn't hold Goma."
Despite Rwanda's denials of any backing for M23, a Reuters reporter in Goma during the rebel occupation came across several fighters who did not speak local languages, including one who said: "I am Rwandan, a soldier, we're here to help M23.
"There are lots of us and more are coming every day."
REBELS IN THE RANKS
Amisi is a former commanding officer of many of the M23 fighters. He fought with them in an earlier, Rwandan-backed rebellion as a member of the RCD (Congolese Rally for Democracy) during Congo's 1998-2003 civil war that sucked in neighboring states and in which several million people died.
Independent analysts say he has been under suspicion before.
"This is not the first time Amisi has been accused in undermining the army. There is deep suspicion among officers that he has been a fifth columnist for Rwanda," said Jason Stearns, a Congo expert and author who has written a study of M23 for the Rift Valley Institute's Usalama project.
The integration of rebel and militia fighters into the Congolese army was a major plank of the peace accords that ended the last Congo war. This has meant rebel groups often maintaining command structures - and loyalties - once inside the FARDC. That is the case with M23, which includes Tutsi commanders and fighters who participated in a 2004-2009 rebellion led by Tutsi general and warlord Laurent Nkunda.
M23 commanders like Sultani Makenga and Bosco Ntaganda, who is sought for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, were given high ranks in the army after their re-integration following Nkunda's rebellion. They have now rebelled again.
"While desertion is considered the gravest form of indiscipline in other armies, in the DRC, defected units and commanders have instead regularly been welcomed back into the army - often even rewarded with better opportunities when reintegrated," said Maria Eriksson Baaz, a researcher at the Sweden-based Nordic Africa Institute.
She said this was "very demoralizing" for the troops.
PREDATORS RATHER THAN PROTECTORS
Critics say Kabila has little incentive to improve the national armed forces because a strong military could eventually turn against him.
In April, a report by international and Congolese NGOs said the failure to reform Congo's large and ill-disciplined army had kept much of the civilian population in poverty and insecurity despite billions of dollars of foreign aid for the country.
As a result, more than $14 billion of international aid over 5 years had ended up having "little impact on the average Congolese citizen", the report noted. It faulted international powers for not pushing the government to reform the army.
A little over one percent, or $85 million, of official development aid for the Congo was spent on direct security sector reform between 2006 and 2011, according to the report.
Without reform, Congolese soldiers often act more like predators than protectors and whatever the government probe into allegations of treachery may find, people around Goma remain fearful a cycle of revolt and violence will continue.
Residents in the nearby town of Minova spoke of a three-day rampage of drinking, shooting, stealing and rape by thousands of retreating government troops last month. One local man, Mbogos Simwerayi, recalled: "Everyone suffered with the army here."
The U.N. said on Friday investigations showed FARDC soldiers raped and pillaged in Minova, but it added M23 insurgents also killed civilians and looted when they held Goma.
(Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Janet McBride)
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