China facing Three Gorges fallout; Turkey says US Armenian genocide resolution strains ties; UN calls for Iraq contractors to face justice...

11 October :: China plans to relocate some 4 million additional people to curb ecological fallout from massive reservoir, "irrational development", ecological collapse around Three Gorges Dam; move comes after top officials, engineers at site warned gov't the project could lead to "environmental catastrophe"; ENN reports "Environmentalists have long criticized the project, saying silt trapped behind the dam is causing erosion and warning that the dam's reservoir will turn into a cesspool of raw sewage and industrial chemicals backing onto Chongqing"... Turkey's gov't has condemned a resolution passed by the US House recognizing the WWI massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide; PM Tayyip Erdogan, head of the conservative ruling party, has been preparing to push for permission from Parliament for a military incursion into Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, says US resolution will damage strategic relationship "make relations with a friend and ally, and a strategic partnership nurtured over generations, more difficult"... Reuters reports "The United Nations wants probes to determine whether private security contractors in Iraq have committed war crimes and for governments to ensure that the rule of law is applied, U.N. officials said on Thursday"; statement comes after a shooting incident in which a Dubai-based security firm allegedly "shot randomly" at security checkpoint, killing two female civilians, amid mounting pressure to rein in security firms after Blackwater guards allegedly killed 17 Iraqi civilians in mid September shooting... Monks detained by Burmese junta reportedly told "you are no longer monks", as guards abused, threatened them, forced them to stand in cages for days with no toilet or wash area...