This is an Open Thread: Get It On (Bang a Gong)

Headlines For Friday December 28: Under Attack, Drug Maker Turned Giuliani for Help: Clinton, Obama Seize on Killing: Bhutto Assassination Ignites Disarray: AL-QAIDA CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY

USA

Under Attack, Drug Maker Turned to Giuliani for Help

In western Virginia, far from the limelight, United States Attorney John L. Brownlee found himself on the telephone last year with a political and legal superstar, Rudolph W. Giuliani.

For years, Mr. Brownlee and his small team had been building a case that the maker of the painkiller OxyContin had misled the public when it claimed the drug was less prone to abuse than competing narcotics. The drug was believed to be a factor in hundreds of deaths involving its abuse.

Mr. Giuliani, celebrated for his stewardship of New York City after 9/11, soon told the prosecutors they were wrong.

In 2002, the drug maker, Purdue Pharma of Stamford, Conn., hired Mr. Giuliani and his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, to help stem the controversy about OxyContin. Among Mr. Giuliani’s missions was the job of convincing public officials that they could trust Purdue because they could trust him.

Clinton, Obama Seize on Killing

Reactions Illustrate Their Key Differences

DES MOINES, Dec. 27 — News of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination came just hours before Sen. Barack Obama delivered what his campaign had billed as the “closing argument” in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday, forcing his campaign to scramble to incorporate the Pakistani opposition leader into his message of change.

For his chief rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Bhutto’s death helped underscore the line she has been driving home for months — about who is best suited to lead the nation at a time of international peril. In her comments Thursday, Clinton described Bhutto in terms Obama (D-Ill.) could not: as a fellow mother, a pioneering woman following in a man’s footsteps, and a longtime peer on the world stage.

Asia

Bhutto Assassination Ignites Disarray

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan – Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistani opposition leader and twice-serving prime minister, was assassinated Thursday evening as she left a political rally here, a scene of fiery carnage that plunged Pakistan deeper into political turmoil and ignited widespread violence by her enraged supporters.

Ms. Bhutto, 54, was shot in the neck or head, according to differing accounts, as she stood in the open sunroof of a car and waved to crowds. Seconds later a suicide attacker detonated his bomb, damaging one of the cars in her motorcade, killing more than 20 people and wounding 50, the Interior Ministry said.

Times of India

AL-QAIDA CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY

ISLAMABAD: An Al-Qaida leader based in Afghanistan has claimed responsibility for the assassination of former Pakistan PM Benazir Bhutto, whom he described as “the most precious American asset.”

“We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat (the) ‘mujahadeen’,” Al-Qaida Commander and spokesman Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid told the Italian news agency Adnkronos International (AKI) in a phone call from an unknown location.

Al-Yazid was described by AKI as the “main Al-Qaida commander in Afghanistan”. It reported that the decision to kill Bhutto was made by Al-Qaida No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri in October.

Europe

Russia jails troops over Chechnya

Two Russian interior ministry troops have been convicted of killing three civilians in Chechnya.

Lt Yevgeny Khudyakov and Lt Sergei Arakcheyev were given sentences of 17 and 15 years respectively over the deaths at a checkpoint in January 2003.

Few Russian troops have been convicted for offences in Chechnya. These sentences are among the longest given to Russian officers serving there.

Chechnya is now relatively stable after two major wars in the past 13 years.

Set alight

The court heard that the Khudyakov and Arakcheyev executed three Chechen construction workers at a checkpoint outside Grozny five years ago.

France asks Chad to send jailed aid workers home

France has requested that Chad return the six French aid workers sentenced to eight years’ hard labour for trying to kidnap more than 100 children so they can serve their sentences on home soil.

The French Justice Minister, Rachida Dati, made the formal demand of her Chadian counterpart yesterday under the terms of a 1976 judicial accord between Paris and its former colony in central Africa.

The four men and two women working for the French organisation L’ Arche de Zoe (Zoe’s Ark) said they were helping rescue orphans from war-torn Darfur, east of Chad. But authorities found that most of the 103 children were from Chadian families near the border. Prosecutors said the group had duped parents into handing over their children with promises of schooling. Even the mildest of critics condemned the group for being so amateurish.

The rushed, four-day trial that ended with the hard labour verdicts on Wednesday had fuelled speculation that Chad and France would strike a deal using the judicial co-operation accord.

Middle East

Rival priests do battle in Bethlehem church

Robed Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests attacked each other with brooms and stones inside the Church of the Nativity yesterday as long-standing rivalries erupted in violence during holiday cleaning.

The basilica, built over the grotto in Bethlehem where Christians believe Jesus was born, is administered jointly by Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic authorities. Any perceived encroachment on one group’s turf can set off vicious feuds.

West Bank houses ‘killing peace process’

A meeting between Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority, failed yesterday to resolve a growing crisis over the construction of Jewish settlements that has stalled peace negotiations since the Annapolis summit last month.

The meeting at Mr Olmert’s Jerusalem residence was the first between the two leaders since the talks in Maryland, where they set the goal of reaching a statehood agreement before President Bush leaves office in January 2009.

The Palestinian negotiating team said that the peace talks had become contingent on one point – Israeli willingness to halt all settlement activity in the West Bank. While Israeli officials have announced that they would issue no new building tenders for construction in the settlements, they have allowed building to continue on all tenders that were issued in 2006 and the first quarter of this year.

Africa

Violence, rumour and tribalism dominate knife-edge election

Violence and allegations of vote rigging marred elections in Kenya yesterday as millions of voters turned out to cast ballots in the closest elections that the East African country has known since it gained independence from Britain in 1963.

Voters across the country waited for hours in lines several miles long to vote in what is effectively a two-horse race between Mwai Kibaki, the President, and Raila Odinga, the veteran opposition leader.

An early exit poll put President Kibaki ahead with 51.3 per cent of the vote, against 39.6 for Mr Odinga. The Institute for Education in Democracy, a respected nongovernmental organisation, gave the figures based on a sample of 273 of the 270,000 polling stations. A TV station gave Mr Odinga 50 per cent of votes cast, but on a voter sample of only 10,000. A close result could herald days of clashes as both sets of supporters cry foul. An official result is due later today.

Southerners to take Sudan posts

Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir has issued a decree appointing new members of the former southern rebel movement to the national unity government.

The ministers are due to be sworn in shortly under the terms of a 2005 peace deal that ended the 21-year civil war.

The southern ministers left the government in October but most differences have now been resolved.

Recent clashes between southern forces and pro-government militiamen have reportedly left 100 dead.

The fighting in Bahr el-Gazal has now stopped.

Southern leader Salva Kiir said the militiamen “were acting under local commanders only… the situation is now under control.”

Latin America

Bolivia’s Morales faces divided nation

The country’s first indigenous president is opposed in wealthier eastern regions where his vision of a socialist state finds few takers.

SANTA CRUZ, BOLIVIA — The graffiti on the walls of this verdant city tell a story of rebellion.

“Resistance!” urges one slogan. “We Will Defend Our Freedom!” declares another. And this: “Evo Dies in Santa Cruz.”

That would be President Evo Morales, who, in the chilly Andean administrative capital, La Paz, has his own message for these defiant lowlands.

“They want to divide Bolivia, but we won’t let them!” Morales told thousands of cheering supporters this month.

Two years after his historic election, the leftist Morales presides over a fractured nation separated by a vast cultural, geographical and political chasm.

Many Bolivians openly despair of a meaningful national dialogue, something everyone from the president to his bitterest enemies professes to support. Factions have dug into their positions, blunting the opportunity for compromise.