For Pundits The future Is Placed Squarely In The Past
China airdrop for quake survivors
China is mobilising 30,000 extra troops and 90 more helicopters to help with the rescue operation after Monday’s devastating earthquake.
About 10 million people in Sichuan province have been directly affected by the 7.9 quake that flattened entire villages, state media said.Nearly 15,000 people are known to have been killed, and another 26,000 are still trapped in the rubble.
Troops and helicopters will bring food and water to rescue survivors.
They will add to the efforts of almost 50,000 soldiers and police already despatched to the region to dig any remaining survivors out of the rubble and bring food, medicine and drinking water to those made homeless.
Winding Mountain Road Becomes Tenuous Lifeline
ZIPINGPU, China, May 14 — The road leading to the epicenter of Monday’s massive earthquake still wasn’t clear of obstacles, but stretches of it had been transformed into major staging areas. As workers arrived to check the safety of an ancient dam, soldiers and rescue teams massed before heading to remote mountain villages where thousands are believed to be trapped.
Trucks, ambulances and buses full of people and supplies jammed the winding mountain road, which is cracked or cratered in some places and narrows to half a lane in others because of rockslides. Some of the vehicles inching back down the road Wednesday were loaded with dazed passengers — those who had been strong enough to walk for hours on wooded paths from otherwise inaccessible mountain towns, carrying a few possessions and memories of devastation unlike anything they had ever seen.
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USA
Republican Election Losses Stir Fall Fears
WASHINGTON – The Republican defeat in a special Congressional contest in Mississippi sent waves of apprehension across an already troubled party Wednesday, with some senior Republicans urging Congressional candidates to distance themselves from President Bush to head off what could be heavy losses in the fall.
The victory by Travis Childers, a conservative Democrat elected in a once-steadfast Republican district on Tuesday, was the third defeat of a Republican in a special Congressional race this year. In addition to foreshadowing more losses for the party in November, the outcome appeared to call into question the belief that Senator Barack Obama of Illinois could be a heavy liability for his party’s down-ticket candidates in conservative regions.
United Way to Target Health, Education and Income
The United Way of America, alarmed at the nation’s fraying safety net, will announce today that it will direct its giving toward ambitious 10-year goals that would cut in half the high school dropout rate and the number of working families struggling financially.
The nonprofit organization also wants to increase by one-third the number of youths and adults considered healthy. The announcement comes as it releases a report detailing a precipitous decline in key education, personal finance and health indicators.The report finds that one in four high school students does not graduate on time, one in four families does not earn enough to provide for its household, and two in three young people and adults lead unhealthy lives, including those who engage in such risky behaviors as drug use, binge drinking and unsafe sex.
Asia
New aid setback as storm nears Burma
· Fear that survivors could be hit by second cyclone
· Government tells envoy situation is under control
Hopes of a diplomatic breakthrough to persuade Burma to accept desperately needed international aid for the victims of Cyclone Nargis suffered a further setback last night when the military tightened roadblocks to prevent relief workers reaching the worst-hit area of the Irrawaddy delta.Samak Sundaravej, the Thai prime minister, who was sent to Burma by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, returned unsuccessful from Rangoon after meeting his opposite number to plead for the regime to allow in relief workers.
The grim outlook 12 days after the disaster, which killed as many as 128,000 according to the Red Cross, was compounded by alarm that a second cyclone might be forming in the Bay of Bengal, possibly bringing further misery to destitute survivors. Yesterday, the UN humanitarian chief estimated that between 1.6 and 2.5 million people had been severely affected by Cyclone Nargis.
Afghanistan: What hope is there for the lost children of the bazaar?
Their trade is almost as old as the hills that encircle the Afghan capital. But the lives of Kabul’s rug-weavers reveal the fault-lines that scar this proud, complicated nation – and which condemn its people to poverty, desperation and addiction
On Chicken Street, under the serene azure sky, it is almost possible to imagine that the last 30 years never happened. Kabul’s craft market is open for business, its rows of glass-fronted, two-storey shops replete with the iconic wares of the hippy trail, that in the 1960s and 1970s found their way off this street and around the world. There are Afghan coats here, and hookahs. There are majestic kaftans here, and lapis lazuli jewels. There is brassware, and china, carved wood and turquoise pottery.And there are rugs, of course, Afghan rugs, hand-knotted from the finest wool, gleaming in the perfection of the skill of their making, seductive in the symmetry of their ancient patterns.
Europe
Ancient bust of Caesar found in French river
He was a military leader turned dictator who had such a complex about his receding hairline that he perfected the Roman comb-over and liked laurel crowns that disguised his bald patch.In flattering posthumous portraits Julius Caesar was often portrayed as a dashing, healthy-haired, divine being. But now a realistic marble bust believed to be the oldest representation taken during his lifetime has been discovered at the bottom of the river Rhône in France.
The life-sized bust, which has thrilled French archaeologists, shows a man in his fifties with the receding hair said to have given him a complex after taunts from his battlefield enemies.
EU broadens inquiry into drug market
BRUSSELS: European antitrust investigators are expanding the scope of a major inquiry into the €484 billion pharmaceutical market in a bid to determine whether companies are blocking generics makers from getting less-expensive medicines to market quickly.Lawyers and European Union officials said Neelie Kroes, the European Union competition commissioner, was also casting her net widely in a bid to determine whether drug companies’ efforts to block competitors by extending patents were also distracting them from developing new medicines, which have been slow in coming to market in recent years.
Africa
Immigrants are hit by township violence
The name scrawled across the door of the flimsy wooden shack offered some protection. The angry mob baying for the blood of foreigners recognised it as South African and moved on.A little down the street, however, Willex Katundu, a Malawian who has lived in Alexandra township in Johannesburg for 23 years, was not so fortunate. A gang of ten broke into his house, ransacked his belongings and beat him up – he was only one of dozens to be attacked over the past 48 hours.
“I was beaten just because I am not South African,” he said, as he sought sanctuary in the grounds of the township’s main police station, along with about 1,000 others mainly from Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
Middle East
Political clashes underline limits to intelligence reform
Analysts are forced to defend their controversial Iran report, which was intended as a symbol of change.
WASHINGTON — As head of analysis for all U.S. spy agencies, Thomas Fingar was making final edits last summer on a long-awaited intelligence report on Iran.The draft concluded that Tehran was still pursuing a nuclear bomb, a finding that echoed previous assessments and would have bolstered Bush administration hawks. Then, just weeks before the report was to be delivered to the White House, new intelligence surfaced indicating that Tehran’s nuclear weapons work had stopped.
Fingar was acutely aware of the stakes. Five years earlier, grave errors helped start a war in Iraq that most Americans now regret. “This was a WMD issue in the country adjacent to Iraq,” Fingar said of the Iran intelligence. “We wanted to get this right.”
Bridging a cultural Gulf promises a new media era in Middle East
The past two years have seen the beginnings of a transformation in media in the Gulf, helped by rulers willing to risk a hands-off approach towards English-language television and, now, from newspapers. Media freedom is far from complete, but early signs are encouraging in a region where there is a limited tradition of free media.The most obvious sign of the new liberalism is the launch of The National, an English-language quality daily, based in Abu Dhabi. Led by Martin Newland, a former editor of The Daily Telegraph and the National Post of Canada, the venture, bankrolled by a company ultimately controlled by the emirate, is staffed by 200 journalists.
Latin America
Chavez tells Colombia not to build base for US
CARACAS, Venezuela – President Hugo Chavez on Wednesday warned Colombia not to allow a U.S. military base on its border with Venezuela, saying he would consider such an act an “aggression.”
Chavez said he would not permit Colombia’s U.S.-backed government to establish an American military base in La Guajira, a region spanning northeastern Colombia and northwestern Venezuela.The Venezuelan leader said if Colombia allows the base, his government will revive a decades-old territorial conflict and stake a claim to the entire region.
“We will not allow the Colombian government to give La Guajira to the empire,” Chavez said, referring to the U.S. during a speech to a packed auditorium of uniformed soldiers. “Colombia is launching a threat of war at us.”