tonighon "worldfocus" -- a double truck bombing tears through on a site village in northern iraq, while a sing of ne blasts hits baghdad. the new ve of violence leaves me 50 dead. the p american commander in afghanistanives a gloomy acunting of the war afte

eight years sang the taliban have gained the upr hand. >>preparing for the big one. japan is one othe most earthquake-pro country in the world. something kyo was reminded of over the weekend. toght, a look at how that city is prepang for the worst. and china risi. our signature story looks how all across africa, china is increasing its infence and its image. is that go or bad? from the wld's leading repoers and analysts, heres what's happening from around the rld. this is "worfocus." madepossible, in part, by th following funder-- good evening i'm martin savidge. we're going to begin tonht with iraq, where foronths, the iraqi government and the u.s have been sending the messag that t security situation has steadilymproved. americanroops, 132,000 of them, are now in a supportole.

and in recendays the vernment has relaxed securit in baghdad. but on again today, there was violence. wave of it killing at least people and wounding re than 250. thattacks were in a town near mosul in theorth and in baghdaitself. the continuing vlence and why it is happening is our "le focus" tonight. we start with ho abdel hamid of al jazeera english. >> reporter: ear morning in iraq and dozens of people e alady confirmed dead in various attacks. each underscing one of the many conicts that still plaguehe country. in baghdad, officials safive bombs went off. thdeadliest ones targeted day laborers waiting for a j. one of the bombings in hayl amel ithe west of the capital, one of the few areashere sunnis and shias still live de by side. the bomb was hidden side a ment bag, says this man. moments later, a second blas further north in weste

baghdad, also killeday workers,his time in a edominantly shia neighborhoo attacking woers is a bid stop the already slow reconstruction effor which the americans are cusing on tbring stability, pouring million of dlars in projects. these attacks came less th 24 hours ter workers under government orders stard reving protective blast walls around theapital. the walls we central to the u.s. strategy during the miliry surge. but the deadest attacks were in khanzaa, a -called disputed territory 20 miles nth of mosul in the southern edgef the kurdish reon. teions in the area have risen considerly with both the government in baghd and the kurdish one erbil contending the land and its oil wealth as theirs.

khanzaa is now underontrol of the kurdish soldiers, the peshrga. monday's blastargeted the shabak community, a regious mirity which fled mosul as the city fell to the grip of violence. mosul is now considered the st dangerous ty in iraq, and the u.s. pullback out towns and cities seemso have left the door open r an increase in attacks here and arod the couny. a realitboth baghdad and washington are well awe of. lately prime minisr al maliki, during a visit to washinon, haalready warned that troopsould stay in iraq after 2011. thdeadline for the final withdrawal. abdel hamid, al jazeera. for more about ts latest outbreak of olence in iraq, we are joined tonight bdouglas ollivant. mr. ollint served two tours in ir as a lieutenant colonel in the army. and unl two months ago was direct for iraq policy at the is natial security council in both the bush and the ama administratis. welcome. >> thank you. >>e saw dozens of people killed in iraq on frid and dozens morunfortunately today. should we be concernedhat the

curity suation there is deteriorating now thathe u.s. troops have pulled ba and get ready to pull ou >> martin, these are tragic events especially if th people who e killed and their families but bottom line to your question is, no. these events are iolated acts of terrism. admiedly repeated isolated acts of terrorism buthey're not hang any strategic effect. >> who do we think is beind this? almost certainly al qaeda a iraq. >> and tir purpose? >> their purpose is to, first, try to reignite t civil war betwn the sunnis and the shia in iraq, and also to demonstre their relance,ta they're still a player in iraq. >> a why would they want to retrigr a civil war, as y ll it? >> well, al qaeda, which a radical sun muslim organizati, doesn't like the shia. they think that they a muslim apostas. ev worse know that the christians. and they would love for the iri suis to rise up against them, overthrow the sh government, and reestabli a

sunni caliphe in iraq. that's not going to happ but that's the aim. >> there w perior, not that long ago tt you wouldave a bombing say that the shias or the sunnis and then the shias would rpond against the sunnis. wharen't we seeing this tit for tat? >> i thinkchargely the tit for tat accelerated in civil war. we saw a civ war tween the sunni and theshia muslims in aq but that war is over. the shia have won. there's a sa government fully established. e sunnis have accepted that. they've reconciledith it, largel the akening movents of wich wee heard so muchave become aligned with the ceral governmentnd there's no longer reallynything for them to fight over. >> dyou think this wll slow wn in any way t u.s.lans to get o of iraq and the titable? >> not atall. so long as we knoto see that the government isn control a that the's not a

malicious-style warfar sectarian war gng on underneath that there is n reliation for these bombings there is no job to sw down the u.s. withdraw. you seem to imply sort of a baseline of violenceor some time with iraq. >> ttely right. i mean iraq is going to coinue to be a violent place. the violence coming from these al qaeda attack th are going to contin to try to demonstratthat they are relevantn iraq. but that doesn't mn that there's goi to be a return of theiolence that we saw again in the badays of 20 and '07. >> okay just about out oftime. but do you think that the united states has moved on now, say, more focused on afghanistan th in iraq and is it too ear f that? >> militarily it's clearly time tohift to afanistan. iraqs now our test case for soft power. theyeed dlomacy. they need economic development. th need mmunications, but, nothe military effort is going to shift to afghantan. >> douglas olivant, thank you very much for joining us >> thank you vermuch, martin. with american sualties

rising sharp in afghanistan, the top ameran commander there says the talibanave gained the upper hand in the wa in an intervw with "the wall street journal," genal stanley chrystal said american casuties will regain high for months to come general mcchrystal saithe taliban are mong beyond their traditional strongholdin southern afgnistan to threaten formerly stabile aas in the north and west. "it's a very aggressive enem rit now," general mcchrystal said in the interview sarday his office in a fortified nato compound in kabul "we've g to stop their momentum." it's hard rk." mcchrystal said thu.s. is shifting i strategy by putting more troops ineavily populated areas to protect the civilia. there are no62,000 americans in afghanistan. >> this country istill sending more tops to afghanistan and so is australia, whi has just over 1,000 soldiers ere, but sending inore to help provide security during the esidential ection ten days from now. sally ra of australia's abc is

embedded with some of th in the midd east, as they prepare for their deplment to afghanistan. >> repter: they start training at dawn before themiddle east and sert heats up to 45 degrees. thesaustralian troops are only two days away from afghanian. after many mths of prepation, they are ready to take on the taliban. >> what we don't dis give these bastards an edge. if they want tkill us, then they are gng to fight for it all the way. because they would liknothg more for every o of us to dead that would me their day. >> rorter: for many of these soldiers, this is their last chance to practicehese drills before they toucdown in afghanisn. warrt officer alex mol watches over theoldiers with a mixture of pridend anxiety. his own son is already servi on the front line in afghanistan.

>> i have a n who is out on the groun fighti at the moment, so whe we have an incident, thatlways hits home. the sonsf many other families are on their way too. private patricgilmore from adelaide will be gng into combat for the firstime. he's been in the armfor less than t years. he's nerus about what's ahead, but confident his traini will get him thugh. >> there will always be ris but that'shat you signed up for. i y not to think about it too much. i'm not ally too wried. >> reporter: the troop receive a final first a lesson before ey fly out. thnumber one danger for these soldiers will be irovised explosivdevices, or ieds. the blasts have already claid australian caslties. e troops are going in to afghanistaat an extremely ngerous and sensitive time. it's not only n days to go until the presential election and now more than ev before there's a tal link between security a democracy. many of thesyoung soldiers will be puttg their lives on the line as coalion forces

ep up the fight against the taliban. sally sara, abc news. iran today, president hmoud ahmadinejad fired four senior intelligencministry officials, part of a pur targeting ficials who disagreed with that cracown on protters after the disputed presidentiallection in june. over the weekenda top prosecut acknowledged that so of those arrested had been tortured while in pris. healled such treatment "painful accents" that cannot be defended, and said the involved shoulbe punished. >>in asia, typhoon morakot has en downgraded to a tropical orm, but not before it cause widespre destruction in veral countries. thtyphoon dumped as much as 80 ches of rain in parts of taiwan, where 400 or more ople were reported buriednd are unaccounted for afr a mudslide

in one vilge yesterday moing. in china, hundreds of llages and towns re flooded and more than 2,000 hous collapsed. almost a million people were evacuate and in the philippes, the storm killed at least 22 peoe over the weeke. today, anoer typhoon, etau, slammeinto the west ast of japan causing floods and landslides that kied at ast 13 people. the typhoon is expecd to hit just east of heavi populated tokyo tomoow afternoon. tokyo was also jold yesterday by aowerful earthquake that rocked buildings and rtled furniture in t capital city but caused no major dage. e quake measured 7.1 but was cented well off shore, deep under the pacic ocean. japan's highly vulnerablto earthquakes d is struck by about 20% of the world's quas. experts t the chances of an earthquake cenred near tokyo at0% in the next couple of decades and rn that thousands could die.

mark willacy of c in australian, looks at howeople are tryingprepare. >> reporte this is how you shak rattle and roll tokyo style. inside this stimulator, pele are ven a taste of what it's li to experience a magnitude 7 earthquake. >> reporter: years ago at kobe, more tn 6,000 people st their lives. but it'seared that with a population of morehan 20 million,reater tokyo could suffer even more carnage. experts y the probability of a 7 quake striking too in the nextenerations is 70%. and it's estimated that it cld cause more thaa trillion dolls worth of damage. easily making it t most expensive calamity in worl

history. >> transtor: in the worst case 10,0 will d and more than 100,0 will needospital treatment. >> reporter: in 1923 the gre kantoarthquake measuring a mammoth 8.3 on the rishr scale truck too and yokohama. 140,000 ople perished. every year on the niversary, too is put through its paces but last night t city got a taste of the real thing with magnitude 7 que shaking buildis and stopping trains. luckily the tremor's epicenter was 300 kilometers offhe coast. it's feared thathe next big one uld be a lot closer to home. mark willacy, abc ws, tokyo. >>some health news tonight.

while the united stateand other countries epare for a poible large new outbreak of the h1n1 flu this fa, british researchers said today tha children 12 years old and der shld not take antiviral drugs like tamiflu. that's because the side effes may outweigh the befits. those side effts include naea and vomiting, while drugs spy shrtened the duration of the flu by only a y or so. >> that prospect of a oad new outbre of the h1n1 flu was one issue on president obama mind as he compled a summit meeting in mexico day with president felipe calderon and with prime minister stephen harbor. >> our three governmentsave worked close, collaboratively and responsibly with sciences our guide we resve to continue to take all necessary preparations and precaions to prepare r the upcoming flu season and protect t health of our pele. >> the president also addresd continuing attpts to crackdown mexico's violent drug carte and defended theexican governme's efforts in that battle. >> as ve said on many

casions, i heartily commend present calderon and his government f their determinion and courage in taking on these cartels. and the president reaffirmedis governnts committed to transparen, accountability and human rights as th wage this diffult but necessary fight. fomore on the president's trip to meco, we're joined he once again by sharon o'neil, a fellow in tin american stues at council on foreign relations here in ne york. welcome back >> thank you. so this is presidt obama's second trip to mexo. what is the signicance of this particar meeting? >>well, this is a meeting that's been ld nually for the st four years. it's a north america summit bringi together prime minister harper of canada, president obama off t united states and calderon of mexico. soart of thisarger rmat. >> i was looking a flu season just around theorner and i understa talking about wife is on the, the agenda here and it sa that there will be greater coeration p i'm just wondering, wh exactly is do

that an. >> unprecedented cooperation when swine flu bke now the april. weaw scientists from canada, theunited states, get together, scientis from mexico too to actually figur out what swine flu was and then to try to corol it. so we'llee that continue and may also see the movement o vaccines ofther types of treatments ithe fall season when sbf, when everyone thinks it will return. >> so we see good cooeration on swe flu. trade,hough has been a contentiousssue and i'm wondering what a the problems the and how are we doing in solving them? >> you then is a contentious issue. we obviously ha very close ties with bothf ourneighbors. they're both the first and the large laest trading partne for the unit states. they both worry about bio amican clauseses ithe stimulus pkages and tha that would continue and deepen a particarly on the mexican side there's a dispute over trucks d mexican trucks coming into the united states. under nafta, it was promis the u. would allow tse trucksn but theytill haven't andt's been over 15 years. >>ny progress made. >> you know they're working it and what thebama

administraon says that they're in discussis. trying to come up wi some sort of reement. worries on the ited states' si about safety but so fulfills our vigations under nast but still don't have th reslution. >> and drug violence. ju yesterday a gun lawyer w wned downin monterrey. >>$1.4 llion over three years. d we also see a lot of y-to-day communicationetween u.s. forc and bureaucracies and theexican burucracies but this will ally be a long-term soluon or a long-term issue forhe two countrieto resolve. >> if i were toask you, well, what'she biggest challenge at still existsay between the u.s. and mexico? is it somethi we've discussed or more to it? >> y know the bgest challee is the fact tt we're so interconnected as countesta all these issues are onhe table and you can't just look at one in olation. you can'just look at the ecomy, just look at heah, just look issues like climate change or jst secuty.

they're all intertwed so solutions to each one are going to involve oer one and so thinkingbout it ints holistic way is really e biggest challenge. >> shannon o'neil, as always, thank you very much. >> my pleasure. secrety of state hillary clinton continued her 11-d visit africa today. in the democtic republic of cong clinton drew attention to the wideread problem of sexual violence in that country wre e army and rebel groups continue tattack villages and kill and assault civilians. clinton has alsoeen in angola, whe she praised steps that country has taken toward democracy. shrefused to comment on what is seen as a gwing rivalry for influence inhat oil-rich cotry between the united states and china. and in tight's signature stor we want to take another look at the increasingly

important trade relationsh between china and afca. china recently surpassed the unit states as africa's biggest ading partner to the tune of $107 billion lasyear. that's a remarkable teold increase justhis decade. some of this trade does inlve untries such as angola, suda zimbabwe, which ve been implicat in human rights abuses. but as "worldfocus" specia correspondent mart seemungel first repoed last year from kenya and tanzania, cha's influence is much broader. >> reporter: these young kenyans already eak english. aegacy of the british emfire africa but now they have decided learn -- chinese. this is theconfucus institute nairobi university. for these stents taking chinese is, as they say, no-brainer. >> this language is important.

because of eir -- because china growi so much. and the influenc of china in africa and most of the wld is higher than it was lt year. >> reporter: africa's one benet of chin's economic boom. the cinese are bullish on africa. they want the raw materials to fuel their raveus econoy. one-third ofwhat's exorted from afrca tohina is oil. bumore and more goods are moving in the other direction. from china to afra. arriving, as it were, rht on thecontinent's doorstep. all the gds that come from china to east afca arrive here at the port of momba. in fact, the msive cranes unloading the containerships are also made in china. it is just the first ue of the china nnection. the mombasa to nairobi road, the vitalink from theast coast

the interior of africa. it used to be the worst 350-mil stretch of road i the region. eight years ago a section was reilt by the chinese. ahmed abllah has just begun hi1,200-mile journey from mombasa on the etern edge of afca to congo. so what source of things impoirted from cna are those trks carrying? just about everything you imagine from pots and pan to the most shisticated computer, all chea go to the electnic sho and you'll finthem. shoesrom cha seem to be everywhere. >> y can see they are from china. >> reporter: from chin >> eah. >> reporte the cheapest ones? >> yeah.

>> reporter: there a loads and loads of them, overwhelming african shoakers like this man. hi name is emnuel and he lives in dasa lam tanzaa whe we travel next. onemployee makesshoes, also belts and hadbags. heesz it difficult for us to compete chine products. they are sold at mh lower prices than what w sel they are eap. for a pair of the inese shoes. about $4 les than the tsanian shoes. in a country where people don' have mh money, no contest. u.s. diplomat george aridge monitors chine commerce in st africa. >> this might behe great irony of our new century so far. that an ostensibly comnist country hasecome theost ruthless capitalist count row in the orld. undercuttingproducers, not st american oducers, but aican producs. >> reporter:his is a fairly

typical mark by african standards. and many of the products here, a growing numberf the products here, are chinese. buit's not just the produc thatre from china. many of the people who own these shs are from china. the man if t sh next door blames the chinese for undercutting eveone. if we cod chase them awa, he says, we would. it woulde better if ty weren't here. the big surpri in all this is that ina doesn't see itself a a competitor or the so-cald ruthless capilist aggressor. >> and since we e both belonging to t -- countrynd we hav similar experience and similar sks for inese and rican comnso lift teir economy. >> reporter: if u drive around the catal of tanzania, it doesn't ta long to find the chinese at wok. we were allowed onto one building site and it helps

undetand how chinese comnies are consistently able to win contras over western companie eight chinese construction workers. 50 tansanians. so far as thchinese go, they get no vations to china, no holidays the entire time they're on this poject and it lasts 24 years. th --lasts two years. they only have one more year go. meals theycook themselves. theyork longours but there is a noticeably relaxed interaction between the chinese an the tansania. some of the chinese haveworked in tnzania before and a bit likehe young kernians learng mandolin theyre learning swahili. not necessarily to makefriends. it's clear ty'reere to do siness, ju like the chinese sending theheap shoes, builng roads anduying the

oil. i'm mart sea mungel reporti for "worldfocu in east africa. coming ulater this month on the pbs series ide angle," another storabout how china s staked its claim in africa in fact,he discovery of a vast derwater oil reserve in the st african nation of equarial guinea caught the attention of not only e u.s. and china, butlso some soldiers of fortunbent on taking or the country and making its oil riches theiown. it's called "oncupon a coup." check your local listis for the program on pbs later ts month and you n also find it online at pbs.org/deangle. that's "worldfocus" he in monday eveni. i'm martin savge in new york. as always, we thank yofor joining us and we pe to see you back her tomorrow ad anytime on theeb. until then, ve a good night.

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