The Never Ending Story
That’s Not Over Till It’s Over
‘This is like inviting Pol Pot to a human rights conference’
Julian Borger in Rome
The Guardian,
Tuesday June 3 2008
Robert Mugabe made a surprise appearance yesterday at a world food summit in Rome, drawing fierce criticism from the British government, which accused him of causing Zimbabwe’s food crisis.In his first official trip abroad since coming second in presidential elections in March, Mugabe attended the summit organised by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation to address the global crisis caused by dramatic increases in the prices of staple foods over the past year.
“This is like Pol Pot going to a human rights conference,” Mark Malloch Brown, the Foreign Office minister for Africa, Asia and the UN, told the Guardian. “Zimbabwe is one of the few countries whose food crisis is not due to climate change or global prices, but due to the disastrous policies pursued by Mugabe.”
USA
‘Relief’ nears for uncommitted superdelegates
By Eli Saslow
Washington Post
WASHINGTON – The novelty of famous suitors and media interviews long ago eroded into exhaustion, and now state Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter of South Carolina is just plain sick of all this.An undecided superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention in August, Cobb-Hunter opens her e-mail inbox each morning and deletes a handful of threatening notes sent by strangers. Campaign followers call her incessantly. She struggles to find time to run her own campaign for re-election.
Nearby Firing Ranges Complicate Soldiers’ Recovery From Stress
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 3, 2008; Page A01
FORT BENNING, Ga. — Army Sgt. Jonathan Strickland sits in his room at noon with the blinds drawn, seeking the sleep that has eluded him since he was knocked out by the blast of a Baghdad car bomb.
Like many of the wounded soldiers living in the newly built “warrior transition” barracks here, the soft-spoken 25-year-old suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. But even as Strickland and his comrades struggle with nightmares, anxiety and flashbacks from their wartime experiences, the sounds of gunfire have followed them here, just outside their windows.
Europe
Death and dirt collide in mafia violence
· Fourth victim in shootings targeting state witnesses
· Camorra gangs involved in Naples rubbish crisis
A “super-witness” who was due to testify on the links between politicians and mafia mobsters in Naples was gunned down in the street yesterday – the fourth victim in a month of shootings directed against witnesses who turn state’s evidence.The killing of Michele Orsi, the 47-year-old boss of a waste disposal firm, highlighted the Italian state’s inability to protect people prepared to give evidence against organised crime.
As security officials yesterday held crisis talks, Orsi’s murder gave a new and sinister twist to the Naples garbage crisis, where rubbish is still piled high on streets and roads in Campania, the region that includes the city.
Germans told how to avoid British tourists
By Allan Hall in Berlin
Tuesday, 3 June 2008
Germany’s biggest-selling newspaper has printed a guide to help readers going abroad to avoid British tourists.Bild’s contribution to the annual battle of the beach loungers was sparked when a British holidaymaker, David Barnish, was awarded £750 in compensation after suing his travel company over a vacation at a resort filled with Germans.
He complained of sun chairs being claimed at a record rate, of German-language-only programmes on the hotel’s television sets and of personnel at the luxury Grecotel Park Hotel on the Greek island of Kos only speaking German.
Asia
In darkened Rangoon, Burmese get resourceful
Power is spotty, spurring locals to rig car batteries and use pulleys in lieu of elevators to bring goods up from the street.
Rangoon, Burma – Unable to read street signs at 8 p.m., a Burmese driver was lost in the darkness somewhere in a western township of his native Rangoon (Yangon). Ghostly figures of people emerged in the headlights, like deer on a mountain road. In the flickering light of passing cars, shoppers milled around a bustling food market, fumbling for money and buying fruit and vegetables sight unseen.Four weeks after cyclone Nargis, electricity has not been fully restored to large areas of the largest city in Burma (Myanmar). “It hasn’t been fixed, and it might not ever be fixed,” says a student, reflecting an often-heard sentiment.
Power went out everywhere for three days after Nargis hit May 2 and May 3, knocking out communications across the south. Since then, government workers have gone door to door in Rangoon, demanding 50,000 kyat (about $50) to turn the lights back on in a home or office, locals say. Many families can’t afford to pay that, a sum that is more than their monthly income.
Chinese police officers pull parents away from protest over school construction
The Associated Press
DUJIANGYAN, China: Chinese police dragged away more than 100 parents Tuesday while they were protesting the deaths of their children in poorly constructed schools that collapsed in last month’s earthquake.The parents, many holding pictures of their dead children, were pulled down the street away from a courthouse in Dujiangyan, a resort city northwest of the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu.
“Why?” some of them yelled. “Tell us something,” they said as black-suited police wearing riot helmets yanked at them.
Middle East
Ayatollah vows Iran’s nuclear program will go on
TEHRAN, Iran – Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vows that his country will continue with its nuclear program, but says that he rejects nuclear weapons
He says his country seeks the peaceful use of nuclear energy and “we will strongly pursue and reach it despite the envy of our enemies.”Khamenei says “no wise nation” is interested in nuclear weapons.
He spoke at a ceremony Tuesday honoring the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic republic. Khamenei has the final say on all matters in the country.
UN atomic watchdog to investigate claims of secret Syrian reactor
· Unclear if inspectors will be allowed at bombed site
· IAEA chief criticises US for not telling him before raid
UN inspectors are to visit Syria to investigate claims by the US that a secret nuclear reactor was being built on a remote site that was bombed by Israel last year, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, said yesterday.Diplomats said it was unclear whether the inspectors would be allowed on the al-Kibar site. If they are, the IAEA is likely to shed new light on an episode that remains shrouded in mystery, with flat denials from Damascus, uncharacteristic silence from Israel and US insistence that the facility was being built by North Korea – which also denies any involvement.
If the UN team is not allowed on the site it will add to the suspicion that President Bashar al-Assad has something to hide. “I look forward to Syria’s full cooperation in this matter,” ElBaradei told a Vienna meeting of the IAEA’s board of governors, adding: “We are treating this information with the seriousness it deserves.”
Latin America
Argentine farmers extend strike
Argentine farmers have extended their six-day strike by a further week in protest at what they call crippling taxes on their exports
The decision came after a day of angry protests by farmers across the country.The farmers refuse to allow the export of grain but have decided to lift their ban on the export of beef.
The Argentine government says the farmers can afford to pay and that it needs the money to fight poverty and control inflation.
Argentina’s farm leaders are angry at what they say is government intransigence.
The government accuses the farmers of being greedy and says it will not back down.
Toll mounts in Mexico’s drug war
President Felipe Calderon says the violence is one measure of success: It shows that the cartels have been hurt badly and are now are lashing out at the government and one another.
TIJUANA — Mexico is at war.Helmeted army troops steer Humvees past strip malls in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, some of the 40,000 soldiers and 5,000 federal police officers President Felipe Calderon has deployed to secure large swaths of the country against entrenched drug traffickers.
The No. 2 police officer from Ciudad Juarez dies in a hail of bullets, and his boss resigns after receiving threats over the police force’s own radio frequency.Criminals unleash machine guns and grenades in urban battles that the State Department describes as “equivalent to military small-unit combat.”
In the year and a half since Calderon launched a crackdown against drug gangs, about 4,100 people have died, the government says.At least 1,400 have been killed so far this year, including 170 in Tijuana, about 400 in Ciudad Juarez and 270 more in the western state of Sinaloa.
Africa
Navies to tackle Somali pirates
The UN Security Council has unanimously voted to allow countries to send warships into Somalia’s territorial waters to tackle pirates.
The resolution permits countries that have the agreement of Somalia’s interim government to use any means to repress acts of piracy for the next six months.Twenty-six ships have been attacked by pirates in the waters in the past year.
The vote came as the UN launched separate peace talks with factions involved in Somalia’s conflict.
But the Islamist opposition said face-to-face talks would not happen at the meeting in neighbouring Djibouti until the government set a timetable for the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops, who are supporting the government.
1 comment
we’ve been really busy moving back to our farm so sometimes i don’t get here til very late….but i’m still very appreciative of your efforts to bring me news!