Oh
The Pain
Of
Opening Ones
Mouth
John McCain
Obama Lands in Afghanistan
By JEFF ZELENY
Published: July 20, 2008
WASHINGTON – Senator Barack Obama arrived in Afghanistan early Saturday morning, opening his first overseas trip as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee by meeting with American commanders there, and later in Iraq, to receive an on-the-ground assessment of military operations in the two major U.S. war zones.
Mr. Obama touched down in Kabul at 3:15 a.m. Eastern time, according to a pool report released by his aides. In addition to attending briefings with military leaders, he hoped to meet with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan before flying to Iraq later in the weekend.His trip was cloaked in secrecy, which advisers said was due to security concerns set forth by the Secret Service. His whereabouts have been unknown since he departed Chicago.
Giant steelworks’ leap lets Beijing breathe in time for the Olympics
From The Times
July 19, 2008
Martin Fletcher
For 89 years the great black furnaces and mills of the Beijing Capital Iron and Steel Company – commonly known as Shougang – have been churning out pipes, plates and girders on the edge of the Chinese capital.For nine decades, as it has transformed trainloads of iron ore into steel for everything from Peoples’ Liberation Army tanks to the new Olympic stadium, this flagship of Chinese heavy industry has also been blanketing Beijing in soot, dust and noxious chemicals.
In recent times the chimneys of its huge plant 11 miles (18km) west of Tiananmen Square have spewed forth 18,000 tonnes of particulate dust a year – the equivalent of 100 average-sized factories – and equally alarming quantities of sulphur dioxide, making it Beijing’s worst polluter.
USA
Bush agrees to ‘time horizon’ for Iraq withdrawal
In a video call with Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki, he says troop withdrawals still would be tied to security conditions. The shift is seen as an effort to break a deadlock in talks on security pact.
By Julian E. Barnes and Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
July 19, 2008
WASHINGTON — President Bush has agreed to a “general time horizon” for withdrawals of U.S. combat troops from Iraq, the White House announced Friday in a marked softening of his long-standing opposition to deadlines for reducing the American presence.Administration officials portrayed the shift, which was announced a day after a video conference between Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, as an evolution in policy rather than a fundamental change. They emphasized that withdrawals still would be tied to improvements in security conditions.
But military officials acknowledged that by setting targets for troop reductions, the new agreement was a step toward a timeline.“The bottom line is I think there has been a little bit of a shift, or at least a shuffle,” a senior Defense official said.
McCain backer’s comments anger Muslims
By Marc Caputo and Beth Reinhard | The Miami Herald
Riling Muslim leaders, one of John McCain’s fellow Vietnam POWs defended the Iraq War Friday by saying, “The Muslims have said either we kneel or they’re going to kill us.””I don’t intend to kneel and I don’t advocate to anybody that we kneel. And John doesn’t advocate to anybody that we kneel,” Col. Bud Day added in a conference call with reporters arranged by the Republican Party of Florida on behalf on McCain.
Muslims and Arab-American groups quickly denounced what they described as the ”bigoted” comments from Day, a Pensacola resident, Medal of Honor recipient and member of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attack machine from 2004.
Europe
Cafe that linked east and west Germans to close
Kate Connolly in Berlin
The Guardian,
Saturday July 19, 2008
It may seem like just another motorway service station, but for generations of Germans it was treasured as one of the few places where those from the communist east could meet those from the west.Michendorf restaurant and petrol station on the outskirts of Berlin was where people exchanged news and sometimes presents over a cheap bite or a beer – albeit under the watchful eye of the east German secret police, the Stasi.
For west Germans it was the last place to fill up with cheap petrol before they crossed the border into the US sector of divided Berlin. For east Germans it was a chance to meet relatives from the west.
Was Ahmet Yildiz the victim of Turkey’s first gay honour killing?
By Nicholas Birch in Istanbul
Saturday, 19 July 2008
In a corner of Istanbul today, the man who might be described as Turkey’s gay poster boy will be buried – a victim, his friends believe, of the country’s deepening friction between an increasingly liberal society and its entrenched conservative traditions.Ahmet Yildiz, 26, a physics student who represented his country at an international gay gathering in San Francisco last year, was shot leaving a cafe near the Bosphorus strait this week. Fatally wounded, the student tried to flee the attackers in his car, but lost control, crashed at the side of the road and died shortly afterwards in hospital. His friends believe Mr Yildiz was the victim of the country’s first gay honour killing.
Asia
Desperate rescue bid to save climbers on ‘Killer Mountain’
By Andrew Buncombe, Asia Correspondent
Saturday, 19 July 2008
A dramatic rescue operation was under way last night to save two climbers stranded for three days on a Himalayan peak, nicknamed Killer Mountain.Rescue teams supported by the Pakistani army were readying themselves for an attempt to reach the two men, stranded at a height of around 7,000 metres on Nanga Parbat, the world’s ninth highest peak, which gets its grisly nickname from the large number of climbers who have died attempting an ascent.
That tally grew yesterday when the stranded men’s colleague, the renowned Italian climber Karl Unterkircher, perished after falling into a ravine.
A spokesman for the climbers’ expedition said his two fellow Italians, Simon Kehrer and Walter Nones, had been unable to find their way back to base-camp because storms and heavy rain had opened up a number of crevasses.
Thailand and Cambodia teeter on edge of conflict at cliff-top temple
From The Times
July 19, 2008
Richard Lloyd Parry, Asia Editor
With its friezes of kings, gods and elephants, its ancient buildings and its location at the top of a beetling cliff, the temple of Preah Vihear is one of the most spectacular and historic sites in South-East Asia. Now it is threatening to make history for a different reason, as the first World Heritage Site to become a battleground.Thai and Cambodian troops pulled guns on one another in a tense stand-off in the 1,100-year-old Hindu temple, after several days of increasing military tension. Stoked by a build-up of soldiers, accusations of corruption and a developing political crisis in Thailand, Preah Vihear has emerged as Asia’s newest flashpoint.
Middle East
Hezbollah’s formidable weapons arsenal under fresh scrutiny
Lebanon’s new government is slated to review the militant Shiite party’s weapons as part of a national defense strategy once it takes office. The prisoner swap with Israel has given Hezbollah new leverage.
By Nicholas Blanford | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
BEIRUT, Lebanon – The successful conclusion of a prisoner swap between Israel and Hezbollah has won the militant Lebanese Shiite party new leverage against its domestic opponents, even as fresh challenges over the fate of its formidable weapons arsenal loom.With the Hezbollah-led opposition having recently secured a one-third, veto-wielding share of a new coalition government, the Shiite party is in its strongest domestic position since the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. His death presaged the collapse of what was then a pro-Syrian political order in favor of a new Western-backed regime.
“Hezbollah is in a much stronger position than it was after the Hariri assassination,” says Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a Lebanese political analyst and specialist on Hezbollah. “The political victory [gaining veto power in the new government] and the prisoner exchange has consolidated its position. But the challenges it faces remain the same and the struggle has not ended.”
Iraqi village shows hope for wider stability
By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
KHIDR, Iraq – Brick by brick and one cinderblock at a time, the residents of this Euphrates River village about 45 miles southwest of Baghdad are rebuilding homes that the U.S. military says al-Qaida destroyed while they occupied the area in 2006.
Their determination to restore normalcy here is an example of what U.S. officials hope will fuel Iraqi’s future, which is threatened less now by mass violence than by the psychological weight of decades of conflict.What’s happening in this small Shiite village says two important things about the role of U.S. forces in Iraq at this stage of a war that is growing quieter by the week:
Africa
‘A Tremendous Day for International Justice’
How the International Court pieced together its case against Sudan’s Bashir.
By Travis Wentworth | Newsweek Web Exclusive
With the controversial indictment of Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, earlier this week, the International Criminal Court is putting its reputation on the line. The court has taken years to assemble its case against Bashir, in large part because it is by design a passive institution: it can neither conduct its own investigations, nor make arrests. Perhaps more significantly, international reaction to the move is divided, with Russia and China complaining that it violates Sudan’s sovereignty and NGOs worrying that the charges will endanger peacekeepers and aid workers in the country.
War-crimes investigator Tom Parker served as a special adviser on transitional justice for the United Kingdom during the trial of Saddam Hussein before going to Chad in 2004 for the U.S. State Department’s Genocide Assessment Team to investigate crimes in Darfur. He talked with NEWSWEEK’s Travis Wentworth about the evidence against Bashir and what it will mean for Sudan’s troubled region. Excerpts:
A prayer for the world’s poor on Mandela’s 90th
By Claire Soares
Saturday, 19 July 2008
He may be the world’s adopted grandfather, but it was with his actual grandchildren that Nelson Mandela chose to celebrate his 90th birthday yesterday in the rural South African village he calls home. Sitting in his favourite yellow armchair, his legs covered with a blanket, Mr Mandela said he wished he had been able to spend more time with his family, although he was quick to stress he had no regrets about a life spent fighting apartheid and becoming the nation’s first black president.
Latin America
Mexican navy seizes cocaine sub
The Mexican navy says it has seized nearly six tonnes of cocaine found inside a 10m-long (31ft) makeshift submarine in the Pacific Ocean.
The BBC
A naval spokesman said they had known about such submarines but this was the first time they had seen one. US intelligence helped in the operation.Four Colombian crew members have been taken into custody.
In a separate development Mexico’s army seized at least 12 tonnes of marijuana in the city of Tijuana.
The haul is the largest since President Felipe Calderon sent thousands of troops to the region along the border with the US.
US help
The submarine had been carrying its cargo from Colombia towards the coast of Mexico when it was intercepted on Wednesday. It took the navy two days to tow it to shore.