Out in the streets inspiration comes hard
The joker in the deck keeps handin’ me his card
Smilin’ friendly he takes me in
Then breaks my back in a game I can’t win
Who Are We? New Dialogue on Mixed Race
Jenifer Bratter once wore a T-shirt in college that read “100 percent black woman.” Her African-American friends would not have it.
“I remember getting a lot of flak because of the fact I wasn’t 100 percent black,” said Ms. Bratter, 34, recalling her years at Penn State.“I was very hurt by that,” said Ms. Bratter, whose mother is black and whose father is white. “I remember feeling like, Isn’t this what everybody expects me to think?”
Being accepted. Proving loyalty. Navigating the tight space between racial divides. Americans of mixed race say these are issues they have long confronted, and when Senator Barack Obama recently delivered a speech about race in Philadelphia, it rang with a special significance in their ears. They saw parallels between the path trod by Mr. Obama and their own.
USA
McCain Faces Test in Wooing Elite Donors
With attention focused on the Democrats’ infighting for the presidential nomination, Senator John McCain is pressing ahead to the general election but has yet to sign up one critical constituency: the big-money people who powered the Bush fund-raising machine.
As he reintroduces himself to voters this week with stops like one at the Naval Air Station in Meridian, Miss., where he was a flight instructor, Mr. McCain will also attend to another crucial task by courting donors in Mississippi, Florida and Tennessee.
Remains found of U.S. soldier captured in Iraq
Staff Sgt. Maupin, 20, had been missing since 2004, when his fuel convoy was ambushed west of Baghdad.
BATAVIA, OHIO — The military has recovered the remains of Staff Sgt. Keith Matthew Maupin, listed as missing-captured in Iraq since 2004, the soldier’s father said Sunday.Keith Maupin said an Army general told him DNA testing had identified his son, known as Matt. He said the Army didn’t say how or where in Iraq his son’s remains were discovered, only that officials found a shirt similar to the one his son had been wearing at the time of his disappearance.
“My heart sinks, but I know they can’t hurt him anymore,” Maupin said.
Middle East
Shia cleric orders followers to end Iraq clashes
· Ceasefire call comes after US jets target Mahdi Army
· Browne likely to tell MPs further troop cuts halted
The leader of Iraq’s Mahdi Army Shia militia ordered his followers to cease fire yesterday, raising hopes of a halt to the fierce internecine clashes with government forces that spread across the country from Basra last week and threatened the security gains from the US military “surge”.The cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said in a statement issued in Najaf: “Because of the religious responsibility and to stop Iraqi blood being shed … we call for an end to armed appearances in Basra and all other provinces. Anyone carrying a weapon and targeting government institutions will not be one of us.”
Despite Sadr’s apparent move back from the brink, British officials said the defence secretary, Des Browne, was expected to put further cuts in British troop numbers in southern Iraq on hold when he makes a Commons statement on the Basra situation tomorrow.
Israeli play makes link with Palestinians
· Leading Jewish actor to portray Arab peace activist
· Loss of a child unites both in fight for reconciliation
One of Israel’s most popular Jewish actors, whose son was killed while serving in the military, is to play the part of a Palestinian peace activist whose young daughter died in a bitterly disputed encounter with the Israeli border police.Bassam Aramin’s daughter, Abir, 10, was killed by a blow to the head in January last year as she walked home from a school maths exam in the village of Anata, just inside the occupied West Bank. Witnesses and lawyers for her family believe she was hit by a rubber-coated bullet fired by an Israeli border police unit. Prosecutors said there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone over her death. But her father has kept up a long campaign for a full inquiry and a trial of the policemen involved.
Asia
Killing Fields photographer Dith Pran dies
The Cambodian photographer whose life story under the brutal Khmer Rouge regime was recreated in the film The Killing Fields has died in New Jersey. Dith Pran, 65, had been ill with pancreatic cancer.His death was announced yesterday by Sydney Schanberg, a former New York Times correspondent who worked with Pran in the early 1970s covering the rise of Pol Pot and Cambodia’s civil war.
“Pran was a true reporter, a fighter for the truth and for his people,” Schanberg told the Associated Press.
Schanberg has credited Pran with coming up with the term the killing fields to describe the carnage exacted by Pol Pot, who tried to erase all western influence from Cambodia after he took control of the country in 1975. About 2 million Cambodians were killed in four years. The term became the title of the 1984 film.
Violence in Nepal as Tibetans protest Olympics
By Andrew Buncombe, Asia Correspondent
Monday, 31 March 2008More than 100 Tibetan protesters were detained by Nepalese police during demonstrations on the eve of the arrival of the Olympic torch in Beijing today – evidence that campaigners will continue to use this summer’s Games to draw attention to their cause.
The arrests in Kathmandu of up to 130 people came after demonstrators, including Buddhist monks and nuns, gathered outside the Chinese embassy chanting “We want free Tibet”. The demonstrators were chased by police who dragged them into waiting vans. Some were reportedly beaten with sticks.
Europe
Turkey court mulls party ban case
Turkey’s constitutional court is expected to rule whether or not to hear a case aimed at closing down the country’s governing AK party.
The chief prosecutor has filed a petition calling for the party to be closed for “anti-secular activities”.He also wants dozens of its members, including the prime minister and president, to be banned from politics.
The case revives a battle between Turkey’s secularist establishment and the AK party of devout Muslims.
Putin critic disappears in Berlin
German police and state security officers have launched a wide-scale hunt for a Russian artist and critic of Vladimir Putin’s government who disappeared from her Berlin flat 10 days ago.Anna Mikhalchuk, 52, who has lived in the German capital since November, went for a walk on Good Friday and failed to return.
At the weekend, police divers and sniffer dogs trawled a lake and searched allotments close to the home she shares with her husband, Michail Ryklin, a prize-winning philosopher and author.
“On that afternoon she said goodbye to me and said she wanted to go for a short walk,” Ryklin said. He went in search of her two hours later.
Latin America
Farc’s prize hostage is ‘ill and losing will to live’
The rumours are strong and persistent: Ingrid Betancourt, the most prized hostage being held by Colombian rebels, is in the jungles of remote Guaviare province, sick and losing her will to live.As recently as a week ago, one local peasant claimed to have seen her near the town of El Retorno, telling a priest she looked forlorn and had broken down in tears when she tried to speak. She is said to be suffering from leishmaniasis and hepatitis B, for which treatment is hard to come by in this area.
The buzz in the villages that dot this area of cattle ranches interspersed with jungle is that Betancourt is so sick that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, might be willing to hand her over to avoid having her die on their hands.
Steep price for a free trip to Peru
Europeans and others recruited to smuggle drugs often land in jail.
LIMA, PERU — It seemed a sweet deal: A free vacation to South America. All expenses paid, and a hefty cash bonus. Just bring a parcel back home to Europe.“I thought I had no worries,” said Vera Scheerstra, recalling when her boyfriend in the Netherlands suggested the trip. “I was stupid — and in love, I guess.”
For the Dutchwoman, it has turned into a life-transforming experience — but not in any constructive sense.
Scheerstra is among scores of Europeans now in Peruvian jails on charges of attempting to smuggle cocaine out of Lima’s airport. They are known as burriers, a fusion of “courier” and “burro.”
Many, such as Scheerstra, languish in jail for years awaiting trial as their cases proceed tortuously through Peru’s courts. Scheerstra and her boyfriend were caught in October 2005 with 16 kilos, about 35 pounds, of cocaine in suitcases.
Africa
Mugabe: the writing’s on the wall
By Daniel Howden in Bulawayo
Monday, 31 March 2008The writing was on the wall for Robert Mugabe last night. It was pinned to the side of polling tents, posted on school fences and written on the walls of community halls. The election results that Zimbabwe’s president had made every effort to rig were coming in against him.
First to go were his chief lieutenants as, one by one, they lost their parliamentary seats. The list read like a Who’s Who of corruption, fraud, intimidation and robbery: Joyce Mujuru, the vice-president and mistress of a vast confiscated estate outside the capital; Patrick Chinamasa the man who perverted the justice system to serve the regime; and Didymus Mutasa the man who amassed millions of pounds worth of stolen farms.
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