This is an Open Thread:
And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but its sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
US moves to expand its role in Pakistan
Intelligence centers, aid package planned
WASHINGTON – US officials are quietly planning to expand their presence in and around the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan by creating special coordination centers on the Afghan side of the border where US, Afghan, and Pakistani officials can share intelligence about Al Qaeda and Taliban militants, according to State Department and Pentagon officials.The Bush administration is also seeking to expand its influence in the tribal areas through a new economic support initiative that would initially focus on school and road construction projects. Officials recently asked Congress for $453 million to launch the effort – a higher request for economic support funds than for any country except Afghanistan.
The expansion of US efforts in the tribal areas – made possible, in part, by rising Pakistani anger at a string of suicide attacks by militants from the region – also includes the deployment of about 30 US counterinsurgency trainers to teach an elite Pakistani force to fight Al Qaeda and indigenous extremists.
USA
Finding Political Strength in the Power of Words
Oratory Has Helped Drive Obama’s Career — and Critics’ Questions
The 2008 presidential campaign has witnessed the rise of a whole arsenal of new political weapons, including Internet fundraising and sophisticated microtargeting of voters. For Sen. Barack Obama, however, the most powerful weapon has been one of the oldest.
Not since the days of the whistle-stop tour and the radio addresses that Franklin D. Roosevelt used to hone his message while governor of New York has a presidential candidate been propelled so much by the force of words, according to historians and experts on rhetoric
Ford Is Pushing Buyouts to Workers
WOODHAVEN, Mich. – The Ford Motor Company is applying the hard sell these days – piling on incentives, doling out marketing DVDs and brochures, and making offers it hopes are too good to pass up.
But Ford’s big new push is not to sell cars. Instead, it is trying to sign up thousands of workers to take buyouts, partly by convincing them that their brightest future lies outside the company that long offered middle-class wages for blue-collar jobs.
So, Ford is pitching a buffet of buyout packages that are easily among the richest ever offered to factory workers, including one-time cash payments of $140,000 or college tuition plans for an entire family.
Asia
US concert diplomacy in N Korea
One of the most eminent US cultural institutions, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, is preparing to play a groundbreaking concert in North Korea.The concert has been called a remarkable show of cultural diplomacy.
It is the largest US presence in the reclusive state since the Korean war ended more than half a century ago.
The concert comes as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visits neighbouring China to exert pressure over North Korea’s nuclear programme.
2.5 million lack water in China
Almost two and a half million people are without sufficient drinking water because of the bad weather in the north of China, according to the state drought relief organisation. Areas that were lucky enough to avoid this winter’s heavy snowstorms are suffering from a drought affecting as much as 11m hectares (27.5m acres) of land.Water shortages are a long running problem in northern China, exacerbated by rapid economic growth.
Europe
The Last Supper – now how about a nice game of chess?
Sole copy of a manual of early puzzles excites Leonardo Da Vinci experts
For centuries, it lay unnoticed in one dusty private library after the next. Then just over a year ago it was revealed to be a fabled volume – the only surviving copy of De Ludo Schacorum by Luca Pacioli, the Franciscan friar and mathematician. Yesterday, a new claim was put forward for the priceless, leather-bound manuscript: that its innovative and idiosyncratic illustrations are by Leonardo Da Vinci.If true, it would mean the Tuscan polymath, while not only painting the Last Supper and inventing everything from a hang glider to a mechanical lion, had earned the humbler distinction of being the world’s first, modern chess-puzzle illustrator.
De Ludo Schacorum, written in about 1500, is a collection of the sort of conundrums to be found today at the back of any up-market daily, in which the challenge is to get to checkmate in a set number of moves. It was not the first of its kind, but one of the most striking things about it, apart from the
originality of its teasers, is the novelty and beauty of its illustrations.
Putin’s legacy is a massacre, say the mothers of Beslan
By Shaun Walker in Beslan, North Ossetia-Alania
Tuesday, 26 February 2008The darkest event of Vladimir Putin’s Russian presidency – the Beslan school massacre – has cast a shadow over the expected victory of his anointed successor, Dmitry Medvedev, in Sunday’s election.
“Do you like the picture I have put up here?” asks Valery Nazarov, pointing to a newspaper front page with a photograph of Mr Putin and Mr Medvedev under the headline “Medvedev’s Course”. But Mr Nazarov is no fan of either politician. He has hung the cutting atop a wreath of flowers inside the charred skeleton of Beslan’s School No 1.
Middle East
Gazans form human chain in protest against Israeli blockade
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Tuesday, 26 February 2008A non-violent protest by Palestinians against the Israeli blockade of Gaza was clouded yesterday by a lower than hoped-for turnout and the wounding of a 10-year-old Israeli boy in a series of rocket attacks by militants. About 5,000 people – including many placard-waving schoolchildren and university students – formed a “human chain” outside Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza to demonstrate against the deepening hardship caused by the seven-month closure of the Strip.
The largely peaceful outcome of the demonstration belied doom-laden Israeli media speculation, reinforced by thousands of heavily armed military and police around Gaza, that protesters would seek to storm through the crossings with Israel after last month’s breach of the border with Egypt.
41 more Kurdish rebels killed in Iraq, says Turkish military
Turkey’s military said it had killed 41 more separatist Kurdish rebels in clashes in northern Iraq, raising the reported guerrilla death toll in a cross-border operation to 153. Rebels disputed the claim and warned that Turkey had entered a conflict that it cannot win.A statement posted on the military’s website yesterday also said two more soldiers were killed in fighting, but gave no details. The deaths would bring the total Turkish military fatalities since the start of the incursion last Thursday to 17. It said the military had hit some 30 targets of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, in a 24-hour period.
The military did not say whether it had counted the bodies of the dead rebels, and there was no way to independently verify the claim.
Africa
Animal rights outrage over plan to cull South Africa’s elephants
With barely a grunt, the powerful elephant yanked the trunk of the decades-old mopane tree out of the reddened earth of the South African bush. The party may soon be over, however.Yesterday, in a move that will anger armchair conservationists worldwide, South Africa said that it would reintroduce culling for the first time since 1994 to control elephant numbers, which environmentalists say are threatening the country’s game reserves.
Nigeria election verdict expected
A Nigerian tribunal is expected to rule on whether President Umaru Yar’Adua’s election should be annulled.Opposition candidates have alleged last year’s vote did not take place in many states and that the incumbent People’s Democratic Party rigged the vote.
International observers said the April polls fell short of expected standards.
But the government says the opposition’s case is weak and the five-judge panel should rule in favour of President Yar’Adua.
The case is likely to go to the Supreme Court for the final decision.
Latin America
Mexico police detain 4 bomb suspects
MEXICO CITY – Police are holding four suspects in connection with an explosion that killed a man as he apparently tried to plant a bomb targeting a police commander, Mexico City’s top prosecutor said Monday.The four were placed under house arrest over the weekend, said Mexico City Attorney General Rodolfo Felix Cardenas. One of the detainees is Tania Vazquez, 22, who was wounded in the Feb. 15 blast after surveillance cameras captured her walking with the dead man. She is being held at a local hospital where she is undergoing treatment for burns.
Cardenas did not identify the other three suspects, but an employee of the prosecutor’s office said they are believed to be minor drug dealers.
Plaza in Peru may be the America’s oldest urban site
The circular structure at the ruins of Sechin Bajo is about 5,500 years old, archaeologists report.
LIMA, PERU — An ancient stone plaza unearthed in Peru dates back more than five millenniums and is the oldest known urban settlement in the Americas, according to experts here.Archaeologists say the site, uncovered amid a complex of ruins known as Sechin Bajo, is a major discovery that could help reshape their understanding of the continent’s pre-Columbian history.
Carbon dating by a German and Peruvian excavation team indicates that the circular plaza is at least 5,500 years old, dating to about 3,500 BC, said Cesar Perez, an archaeologist at Peru’s National Institute of Culture who supervised the dig.
That would make it older than the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Sechin Bajo, 230 miles north of the capital, Lima, thus eclipses the ancient Peruvian citadel of Caral, some 5,000 years old, as the New World’s oldest known settlement
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