Monday Morning News

Ostentatious Magnificence Thread
US

Democrats See Wedge Issue in Health Bill
By CARL HULSE
Published: October 8, 2007
WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 – Representative John R. Kuhl Jr. of New York received just his second telephone call ever from his state’s Democratic governor, Eliot Spitzer, last week and was not surprised at the topic: children’s health insurance.
“He said, ‘I am calling you to come over to the dark side,’ ” said Mr. Kuhl, who was urged by the governor to drop his opposition to health care legislation and join the effort to override President Bush’s veto of the bill.

It’s too bad they don’t see anything else as a Wedge Issue.

Christian nation? Not now, not ever
By Tom Blackburn

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Monday, October 08, 2007

Sen. John McCain spoke in religious code. Sadly for him, he didn’t know the code.

First, in an interview on Beliefnet, he tried this: “I would probably have to say, yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation.” Self-selected spokesmen for Jews, Muslims and atheists expressed shock and dismay even as they added Sen. McCain’s name to the text of their next fund-raising letters.
He tried to chip out of the rough last week by saying that he meant to say that this is a “Judeo-Christian nation.”

Smog Traps Calif. Community
Arvin’s Bad Air Blamed on Geography, Weather Patterns

By Sonya Geis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 8, 2007; Page A03

ARVIN, Calif. — This small farming community at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley has a distinction that often brings tears to the eyes of its residents. It is the smoggiest place in the United States.

Arvin averages 73 “bad air days” per year — more than any other city in the country. On those days, to drive over a mountain pass and into the city is to cross a brown line into a smelly, stinging haze. Schools hold recess in the gym. Wheezing children crowd the waiting room at the health clinic.

Asia

S.Korea sure of early nuclear settlement
By HYUNG-JIN KIM, Associated Press Writer
SEOUL, South Korea – The South Korean president said Monday the global standoff over North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs will soon be resolved, as U.S. experts prepared to travel to Pyongyang to form a plan for disabling the country’s reactors.
“I’m confident the North Korean nuclear issue will rapidly arrive at a complete resolution,” South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said, citing a detailed multilateral agreement aimed at the North’s denuclearization that was approved by the leaders of the two Koreas.

India holds key in NATO’s world view
By M K Bhadrakumar

Summing up the 10-year ties between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a Russian military analyst wrote, “Relations between the two are a marriage of convenience, where husband and wife live together, often socialize with others as a couple, and show every sign of respect for each other.

“At the same time, they sleep in different rooms, and have separate households and personal expenses.

Japan mourns journalist killed in Myanmar

4 hours ago

TOKYO (AFP) – Mourners paid their final respects Monday to a Japanese freelance journalist shot dead by troops in Myanmar while covering mass pro-democracy demonstrations last month.

Kenji Nagai, 50, was killed on September 27 in Yangon as he filmed the crackdown on protesters by Myanmar’s junta after demonstrations led by Buddhist monks.

He appeared to have been shot at close range by security forces, according to television footage. Nagai’s family members, journalists and refugees who fled the junta lamented his death at the funeral held in Tokyo.

“Journalists keep records and report at the sites of news, and that’s their job,” said Jiro Ishimaru, the chief editor of Asia Press International, a Tokyo-based cooperative of Asian photo and video journalists.

“He was killed doing his job. This very fact breaks my heart and makes me feel frustrated,” said Ishimaru, who met Nagai when reporting at the border between China and North Korea.

Police said Nagai died of massive blood loss after a bullet pierced his liver.

Myanmar insists the killing was an accident but Japan is sceptical of the explanation and has set up a taskforce to investigate whether the shooting was deliberate.

Nagai was employed by APF News, a small agency based in Tokyo that specialises in reports from countries where most Japanese television networks dare not tread.

Much of mainstream Japanese media stay away from combat zones, but a small group of Japanese independent journalists is famed for heading on tough assignments.

Americas

PATAGONIA ANTI-DAM CAMPAIGN DRAWS SUPPORT IN SOUTHERN CHILE

“We Want A Different Future For Patagonia,” Say Citizen Groups

(Oct. 8, 2007) More than 100 demonstrators marched through downtown Aysén last Friday to protest the planned US$4 billion HidroAysén dam electricity generation project slated for Chile’s Patagonia region. They group also aimed to draw attention to this Wednesday’s launch in Coyaique of a book opposing dam construction in Patagonia, “Patagonia Chilena Sin Represas.”

Africa

Egypt plan to green Sahara desert stirs controversy
By Will Rasmussen
CAIRO (Reuters) – It looks like a mirage but the lush fields of cauliflower, apricot trees and melon growing among a vast stretch of sand north of Cairo’s pyramids is all too real — proof of Egypt’s determination to turn its deserts green.
While climate change and land over-use help many deserts across the world advance, Egypt is slowly greening the sand that covers almost all of its territory as it seeks to create more space for its growing population.

No male rulers please — there’s a curse on them
by Aminu Abubakar Sun Oct 7, 7:11 PM ET

KUMBWADA, Nigeria (AFP) – In six generations no man has ever spent more than a week as ruler of Kumbwada, a kingdom in Muslim northern Nigeria. All have died mysteriously just after ascending to the thone.
The father of Hadiza Ahmed, the current female monarch, was no exception.

“My father decided to see if he could break the spell but he failed.