This is an Open Thread: That will never be closed
Daring to Believe, Blacks Savor Obama Victory
For Sadou Brown in a Los Angeles suburb, the decisive victory of Senator Barack Obama in Iowa was a moment to show his 14-year-old son what is possible.
For Mike Duncan in Maryland, it was a sign that Americans were moving beyond rigid thinking about race.For Milton Washington in Harlem, it looked like the beginning of something he never thought that he would see. “It was like, ‘Oh, my God, we’re on the cusp of something big about to happen,’ ” Mr. Washington said.
USA
Justices to Consider Death Penalty Issue
Legality in Case of Child Rape at Stake
By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 5, 2008; Page A02The Supreme Court said yesterday that it will decide whether the death penalty may be imposed on someone who rapes a child, reopening the issue of which crimes are punishable by death.
The court said in 1977 that execution was an “excessive penalty for the rapist who, as such, does not take human life.” But the victim in the case was an adult, and while 45 states now ban the death penalty for any kind of rape, the others allow it if the victim is a child.
Louisiana is one, and Patrick Kennedy was sentenced to death for the rape of his 8-year-old stepdaughter in 1998. Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas also make the death penalty an option, but only Louisiana has pursued an execution.
Ex-Bush official sued over terrorism memos
Lawsuit claims legal opinions led to mistreatment, illegal detention
MIAMI – Convicted terrorism conspirator Jose Padilla sued a key architect of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policies Friday, claiming the official’s legal arguments led to Padilla’s alleged mistreatment and illegal detention at a Navy brig.The lawsuit claims that John Yoo, a former senior Justice Department official, wrote several legal memos that led President Bush to designate Padilla as an enemy combatant shortly after the U.S. citizen was arrested in May 2002 at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on suspicion of involvement in an al-Qaida plot.
Middle East
46,000 Iraqis Have Left Syria
Returns Reflect Security Gains, Aid Workers Say
BAGHDAD, Jan. 4 — Nearly 50,000 Iraqi refugees returned home from Syria in the final 3 1/2 months of 2007, the latest sign of diminishing violence in this war-pocked country, according to new data from relief workers.“Security has definitely improved, and improved by far,” said Said I. Hakki, president of the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization, the aid group that compiled the statistics. “And yet the return is really not that dramatic, when you consider that there are almost 2 million Iraqi refugees out of the country.”
The new figures, contained in a report scheduled for release Monday, are significantly lower than those provided by some Iraqi officials. One Iraqi spokesman said nearly 50,000 returned in October alone.
Guardian’s Tehran correspondent expelled without explanation
* The Guardian,
* Saturday January 5 2008The Guardian’s Tehran correspondent, Robert Tait, has been expelled from Iran without explanation after nearly three years of reporting from the country.
Tait was forced to leave the country after the Iranian authorities declined to renew his visa and residence permit, despite an appeal on his behalf from the Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, to Iran’s culture and Islamic guidance ministry, which supervises the activities of all foreign and domestic media. He is now back in the UK, along with his Iranian wife.
The ministry gave no reason for its decision but said the newspaper was free to propose another journalist as its correspondent in Iran.
Tait, 43, was originally ordered to leave the country in March after officials expressed displeasure over his reporting. He was allowed to remain after the Guardian successfully appealed for his residence permit to be renewed
Africa
Opposition Seeks New Vote as Violence Ebbs in Kenya
NAIROBI, Kenya – If the price of cabbage is any indicator, things here in Kenya’s capital may be edging back to normal.
Before last week’s election, a head of cabbage in Mathare, an enormous slum, cost 15 shillings, or about 20 cents. After the much-debated results were announced on Sunday and the country exploded into chaos, cabbage prices doubled. By Thursday, as the police tear-gassed protesters in the streets and gangs from opposing tribes hacked one another to death – some of it right here in the sour-smelling, garbage-strewn footpaths of Mathare – cabbage prices shot up to 100 shillings.
Can Tutu heal Kenya’s wounds?
Uhuru Park was filled with Kenyans curious to hear what Archbishop Desmond Tutu would have to say.He showed the crowd he understood their aspirations, gave them encouragement and at one point ventured criticism of the authorities over detentions.
There was an audible murmur among the people around me on a grassy bank.
That was in the 1980s when there was one-party rule in Kenya and then President Daniel arap Moi did not take too kindly to criticism – particularly from outsiders.
Uhuru – or Freedom – Park has been much in the news this week as the place where supporters of Orange Democratic Movement leader Raila Odinga wanted to demonstrate that they consider him to be the winner of the disputed election and the “people’s president”.
Latin America
Farc admit ‘hostage boy’ not held
Farc rebels in Colombia have confirmed a boy living in foster care in Bogota is the same three-year-old who was due to be part of a hostage release deal.The rebels said Emmanual Rojas had been transferred there for his own safety.
DNA tests had shown he was almost certainly the son of Clara Rojas, who is still being held by the rebels.
A much-anticipated release, mediated by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, of mother, son and a third hostage planned for last weekend never took place.
Chávez purges government after defeat in referendum
· Venezuelan vice-president among reshuffle casualties
· Class war rhetoric toned down as inflation climbs
Rory Carroll in Caracas
Saturday January 5, 2008
The GuardianPresident Hugo Chávez has announced a sweeping cabinet shuffle as a result of last month’s referendum defeat, which put the brakes on his self-styled socialist revolution in Venezuela.
Chávez said he would make at least 13 changes to his top team, including the vice-president, in an effort to revitalise the government and its ambition to reshape South America’s oil giant.
The purge punished ministers who were blamed for failing to muster support for the referendum to extend presidential powers against a backdrop of galloping inflation and creaking public services.
Europe
Naples rubbish crisis turns nasty
By John Phillips in Rome
Published: 05 January 2008Anger over Naples’ refuse crisis took a macabre turn yesterday as residents awoke to find 21 tailor’s dummies resembling Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi and town mayor Rosa Jervolino dangling from trees and lampposts.
Anti-terrorist police from the Digos, Italy’s equivalent of Special Branch, said the home-made dummies were hoisted on the trees overnight by militants from a branch of the right-wing opposition party, the National Alliance.
Many of the mannequins in the southern city carried placards bearing the words Addio a ‘stu munno ‘e munnezza – Neapolitan dialect for “Good riddance to this rubbish.”
Placards pasted around the Bay of Naples also attacked the powerful left-wing president of the regional government, Antonio Bassolino.
How Sir Cliff fell foul of Franco’s music police
By Graham Keeley in Madrid
Published: 05 January 2008It may come as a surprise his army of blue-rinsed fans, but Cliff Richard once fell foul of the Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco because of the supposedly sexually explicit lyrics in one of his songs.
The Peter Pan of Pop’s 1961 hit “Theme For A Dream” was banned by the state broadcaster Radio Nacional de España (RNE) because it contained such suggestive lines as “When I dream I kiss you/Music fills with star-light/Every time I touch you”.
Sir Cliff’s ditty shared the same fate as far more notorious records such as “Je T’Aime Moi Non Plus”, the Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin hit banned on release in Britain in 1969.
Jose Manuel Rodriguez, who has written a history of Spanish radio censorship, has documented how the public’s ears were shielded by overzealous officials during Franco’s rule. Among the singers whose records were banned were Nat King Cole, Edith Piaf and Yves Montand. A version of Gene Vincent’s 1956 hit “Be-Bop-A-Lula” was also outlawed, and another record was banned simply because it was named after the French actress Brigitte Bardot.
Asia
Bhutto murder evidence under microscope in Pakistan
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (AFP) – British anti-terrorism police are expected to begin examining evidence connected to the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, officials said.The Scotland Yard team is meeting senior Pakistani police and has been briefed on what they know about the slaying of the two-time prime minister in a gun and suicide bomb attack here last week, officials said.
Over the coming days they were expected to visit the scene of the attack, which the government has blamed on Al-Qaeda, and examine potentially crucial pieces of evidence such as the car Bhutto was in when she was killed.
North Korea Says Earlier Disclosure Was Enough
By CHOE SANG-HUN and STEVEN LEE MYERS
Published: January 5, 2008SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea said Friday that it had already explained enough about its nuclear programs to meet a deadline for declaring its nuclear activities, saying the information was in a nuclear declaration it prepared in November and gave to the United States.
The statement from the North Korean Foreign Ministry on Friday was carried by the Korean Central News Agency, North Korea’s voice to the outside world. It was the country’s first official pronouncement after it missed a Dec. 31 deadline to disable its main nuclear complex at Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, and, according to other nations involved in six-nation talks, failed to provide a full list of its nuclear activities, including weapons, facilities and fissile material.
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