Our Goal Posts Are As Solid As The Mud They Are Set In.
Death toll rises in China quake
The most powerful earthquake to hit China in 30 years has killed at least 10,000 people in south-western Sichuan province, with thousands more trapped.
Chinese state media said that 10,000 people were thought to remain buried in one town alone near the epicentre of the earthquake in Wenchuan county.A team of 1,300 troops and medics has now reached Wenchuan, which was largely cut off by the quake.
But rescue efforts are being hampered by heavy rain and badly damaged roads.
Premier Wen Jiabao – a trained geologist – had urged rescuers to clear roads into the worst-hit areas as fast as possible.
‘No Hope’ for Children Buried in Earthquake
DUJIANGYAN, China – The children who were considered fortunate escaped with a broken bone or a severed limb. The others, hundreds of them, were carried out to be buried, and their remaining classmates lay crushed beneath the rubble of the schoolhouse.
“There’s no hope for them,” said Lu Zhiqing, 58, as she watched uniformed rescue workers trudge through mud and rain toward the mound of bricks and concrete that had once been a school. “There’s no way anyone’s still alive in there.”Little remained of the original structure of the school. No standing beams, no fragments of walls. The rubble lay low against the wet earth. Dozens of people gathered around in the schoolyard, clawing at the debris, kicking it, screaming at it. Soldiers kept others from entering.
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USA
Racist Incidents Give Some Obama Campaigners Pause
Danielle Ross was alone in an empty room at the Obama campaign headquarters in Kokomo, Ind., a cellphone in one hand, a voter call list in the other. She was stretched out on the carpeted floor wearing laceless sky-blue Converses, stories from the trail on her mind. It was the day before Indiana’s primary, and she had just been chased by dogs while canvassing in a Kokomo suburb. But that was not the worst thing to occur since she postponed her sophomore year at Middle Tennessee State University, in part to hopscotch America stumping for Barack Obama.
Here’s the worst: In Muncie, a factory town in the east-central part of Indiana, Ross and her cohorts were soliciting support for Obama at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and they ran into “a horrible response,” as Ross put it, a level of anti-black sentiment that none of them had anticipated.
Charges dropped against ’20th’ hijacker
U.S. officials have said Saudi was subjected to harsh treatment
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – The Pentagon has dropped charges against a Saudi at Guantanamo who was alleged to have been the so-called “20th hijacker” in the Sept. 11 attacks, his U.S. military defense lawyer said Monday.Mohammed al-Qahtani was one of six men charged by the military in February with murder and war crimes for their alleged roles in the 2001 attacks. Authorities say al-Qahtani missed out on taking part in the attacks because he was denied entry to the U.S. by an immigration agent.
Asia
Burma continues to reject help
Burma’s military government has said it is still opposed to letting foreign aid workers in to help the many victims of Cyclone Nargis.
Vice-Admiral Soe Thein, of the military leadership, said Burma was grateful for the aid shipment from the United States which arrived on Monday.But he said that so far there was no need for aid workers.
The US has said it hopes to send in two more transport aircraft carrying aid later on Tuesday.
Two lorries carrying relief supplies overland have also now arrived in Rangoon.
But aid workers complain that much of the aid delivered over the past week has not reached those who need it, because the Burmese military insists on controlling most of the distribution – despite lacking the equipment and expertise to do it well.
They describe delivering supplies in the Irrawaddy Delta with dugout canoes, and say they are badly overstretched.
Japan’s teenage smokers face wrinkle test
Teenage smokers in Japan could soon be taking their last illicit puffs thanks to the introduction of cigarette-vending machines that can spot underage customers just by looking at them.The machines are equipped with a digital camera that can compare users’ facial characteristics with a database of more than 100,000 people.
Their ability to spot sagging skin, wrinkles around the eyes and other signs of maturity means underage smokers – in Japan anyone under 20 – will have to look elsewhere for their nicotine fix.
Though the machines have yet to be approved amid doubts about their accuracy, their maker, Fujitaka, believes they will be indispensable to attempts to cut smoking rates among teenagers. A health ministry survey found that 13% of boys and 4% of girls aged 17 or 18 smoked daily.
Europe
Putin’s hardliners keep places in new cabinet
By Shaun Walker in Moscow
Tuesday, 13 May 2008Vladimir Putin, in his new role as Russia’s Prime Minister, announced a new cabinet of ministers yesterday that appears to bear out predictions that he will remain the real centre of power in the country.
Most of the key ministers who served under Mr Putin when he was President have retained their posts, while powerful allies have moved with their old boss from the Kremlin to the White House, seat of the Russian government.
Socialists hold key to power in Serbia
A pro-EU alliance emerged today as the biggest party after Serbia’s snap general election, but it may have to rely on the support of the late Slobodan Milosevic’s Socialist Party, in order to form a government in an extraordinary demonstration of the complexity of Balkan politics.Boris Tadic, the reformist President of Serbia, hailed his party’s 39 per cent share of the vote as a victory for modernising forces that see the country’s future as a member of the European Union, after an election triggered when the province of Kosovo declared independence in February.
Despite his better-than-expected showing at the polls, however, Mr Tadic was warned by his nationalist rivals that they could still build an anti-EU coalition to keep his Democrat Party from office as a frantic round of power-sharing talks began today.
Middle East
The gulf that separates the sexes in Saudi Arabia
RIYADH: The dance party in Atheer Jassem Al-Othman’s living room was in full swing. The guests – about two dozen girls in their late teens – had arrived, and Othman and her mother were passing around cups of sweet tea and dishes of dates.About half the girls were swaying and gyrating, without the slightest self-consciousness, among the overstuffed sofas, the heavy draperies, the tables larded with figurines and ornately covered tissue boxes. Their abayas, balled up and tossed onto chairs, looked like black cloth puddles.
Suddenly, the music stopped, and an 18-year-old named Alia tottered forward
“Girls? I have something to tell you.” Alia faltered, appearing to sway slightly on her high heels. She paused anxiously, and the next words came out in a rush. “I’ve gotten engaged!”
Hizbullah capture of mountain village seen as threat to Israel
Hizbullah yesterday took control of a strategic mountain-top village in Druze heartlands south-east of the capital after fierce fighting with government allies, consolidating strategic gains that analysts said would be used in confrontations with Israel.“Hizbullah will very soon spread all over. They will not leave any strategic part of the country in the hands of their so-called enemies,” said Ahmad Moussali, a professor at the American University of Beirut and an expert on Islamist groups.
Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah last week branded the western-backed, Sunni-led government “Israelis dressed in suits speaking Arabic”, after ministers ordered a crackdown on his group’s secure telecoms system. In response, Shia Hizbullah fighters and allies overran Sunni strongholds in west Beirut, then withdrew following a government climbdown.
Africa
U.S. high court allows apartheid claims against multinationals
The US Supreme Court has affirmed a lower court ruling that multinational companies can be sued in a US court for allegedly aiding and abetting the former apartheid government in South Africa.
The high court announced Monday that it could not hear a case involving 11 consolidated lawsuits against more than 50 international corporations. Four justices recused themselves from consideration of the case apparently due to potential conflict, leaving only a five-justice court to consider whether to take up the suit.In a brief order, the court said it lacked the necessary quorum. “Since a majority of the qualified justices are of the opinion that the case cannot be heard and determined in the next term of the court, the judgment [of the lower court] is affirmed,” the unsigned order says.
South Africa: Markets Take ANC Left Turn in Their Stride
FINANCIAL markets are giving economic policy changes proposed by the new leadership of the African National Congress (ANC) the benefit of the doubt, despite growing signs of a significant shift to the left
Part of the reason is widespread recognition that it is time for change, given that the policies which spurred growth of about 5% in the past few years will not have the same effect in the existing global or domestic environment.Another reason for market composure is that there is still a large degree of uncertainty over what exactly will change, and over what sort of time frame.
Since he was elected ANC president last December, Jacob Zuma has gone out of this way to reassure foreign investors that the policy mainstays that have won SA credibility in global markets, will remain in place.
Latin America
Roots of Haiti’s food crisis run deep
As the price of U.S. rice soars, experts urge a return to corn and other homegrown staples. But farmers say there are too many obstacles.
BOKOZEL, HAITI — Although her countrymen can no longer afford the imported rice that has come to dominate their diet, Josiane Desjardin sees little hope of reviving the domestic crop that once grew abundantly in the fertile estuary of the Artibonite River.There’s no turning back the clock, farmers here say dejectedly, in a countryside ravaged by floods, soil erosion, misguided trade policy and ongoing landownership disputes.
Subsidized U.S. rice began flooding in 30 years ago, so cheap that Haitians began eating it instead of the corn, sweet potatoes, cassava and domestic rice that had sprouted from plains and mountainsides from the colonial era to the late 1980s.“Miami rice,” as Haitians call the U.S. import, drove rice farmers out of business and incited a rural exodus that swelled the slums of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
1 comments
Until George Bush admits it followed by Danna Perino stating that he never said it. Yet the charges where dropped against the “So called 20 hijacker.” Why? Because he had been tortured.