Its Sunday And The Talking Heads Come Out
To Play
But As Usual Have Nothing To Say
Child malnutrition: Old stain on new India
Half of young Indians are malnourished. In a nation seen as a rising power, combating the problem ‘has not been a policy priority . . . for the last 40 years,’ a U.N. expert says.
By Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 24, 2008
SARAIYA, INDIA — Sitting in the basket of a hanging scale, 20-month-old Deep Kumar epitomizes the silent but monumental crisis gripping this country: The needle stops at 14 pounds.
A healthy child his age ought to weigh nearly twice as much. But very little about Deep is healthy. Whereas a normal toddler would run around, the boy seems to struggle to keep his stunted frame sitting upright. His limbs are pitifully thin, the bones within as fragile as glass.These are classic signs of severe malnutrition, and they are branded on the wasted bodies of millions of youngsters across India.
Astonishingly, an estimated 40% of all the world’s severely malnourished children younger than 5 live in this country, a dark stain on the record of a nation that touts its high rate of economic growth and fancies itself a rising power.
Al-Qaeda Masters Terrorism On the Cheap
Financial Dragnet Largely Bypassed?
By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 24, 2008; Page A01
LONDON — Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, al-Qaeda has increasingly turned to local cells that run extremely low-cost operations and generate cash through criminal scams, bypassing the global financial dragnet set up by the United States and Europe.
Although al-Qaeda spent an estimated $500,000 to plan and execute the Sept. 11 attacks, many of the group’s bombings and assaults since then in Europe, North Africa and Southeast Asia have cost one-tenth as much, or less.
The cheap plots are evidence that the U.S. government and its allies fundamentally miscalculated in assuming they could defeat the network by hunting for wealthy financiers and freezing bank accounts, according to many U.S. and European counterterrorism officials.
USA
Choice of Biden is a demographic calculation too
Joe Biden adds experience and foreign policy expertise, yes, but he could also help with Catholics, blue-collar whites and women.
By Peter Wallsten, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 24, 2008
Barack Obama’s Harvard pedigree, soaring rhetoric and professorial demeanor have helped critics paint him as an elitist. So when he stood Saturday next to his running mate, a new set of characteristics was on display: a public university graduate of modest means, a Roman Catholic who talks like regular folks.
It is true that Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s foreign policy experience may help assure voters who wonder whether the youthful Obama is ready to be commander in chief, and may give the Democrats a voice of gravitas to challenge the Republicans’ war-hero presidential candidate.
But it was clear Saturday that Biden’s potential appeal to white, blue-collar Democrats — those who did not support Obama during the primaries and remained wary of his candidacy — was also important in Obama’s selection of the Delaware senator.
The newly minted partners made no secret of such a goal.
As they shared the stage for the first time as the Democratic ticket, they invoked Biden’s native Scranton, Pa., no fewer than five times, and Obama called the 65-year-old Biden the “scrappy kid from Scranton.”
Did you ever check out what measures are used to define how much species are threatened? Since I have been using the terms repeatedly in my photo essays, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to summarize them.
