Shirin Ebadi – Nobel Peace Laureate and HR lawyer –
‘I will pursue those who kill the prtestors’ –
#Iranelection
Iran Admits Discrepancies in 3 Million Votes
By NAZILA FATHI and MICHAEL SLACKMAN
Published: June 22, 2009
TEHRAN – Locked in a bitter contest with Iranians who say the presidential elections were rigged, the authorities have acknowledged that the number of votes cast in 50 cities exceeded the actual number of voters, state television reported Monday following assertions by the country’s supreme leader that the ballot was fair.
But the authorities insisted that discrepancies, which could affect three million votes, did not violate Iranian law and the country’s influential Guardian Council said it was not clear whether they would decisively change the election result.The news emerged on the English-language Press TV as a bitter rift among Iran’s ruling clerics deepened over the disputed election. The outcome of the vote, awarding a lopsided victory to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has convulsed Tehran in the worst violence in 30 years, with the government trying to link the defiant loser to terrorists and detaining relatives of his powerful backer, a founder of the Islamic republic.
World Bank calls on west to help relieve trillion dollar drain on world’s poor
• Flow of money into developing world halving to $363bn in 2009
• Lack of capital means longer recessions in many poor countries
Ashley Seager
The Guardian, Monday 22 June 2009
The world’s poorest countries will see $1tn (£600bn) drain from their economies this year according to the first detailed analysis of how the global recession is hitting developing nations.Figures published today by the World Bank show the financial crisis taking a heavy toll, with the flow of money into the developing world halving this year after heavy losses in 2008.
Despite recent talk of economic green shoots in Britain and the US, the lack of international capital means many poor countries will stay in recession for longer as companies and governments are starved of investment.The World Bank is calling for greater international policy co-ordination and tighter regulation of the global financial system in response. Releasing its authoritative annual Global Development Finance report, the Washington-based institution singles out Africa, central and eastern Europe and Latin America as regions suffering most from the global recession even while rich nations are starting to talk about recovery.
USA
Recovery’s Missing Ingredient: New Jobs
Experts Warn of A Long Dry Spell
By Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 22, 2009
Despite signs that the recession gripping the nation’s economy may be easing, the unemployment rate is projected to continue rising for another year before topping out in double digits, a prospect that threatens to slow growth, increase poverty and further complicate the Obama administration’s message of optimism about the economic outlook.The likelihood of severe unemployment extending into the 2010 midterm elections and beyond poses a significant political hurdle to President Obama and congressional Democrats, who are already under fire for what critics label profligate spending. Continuing high unemployment rates would undercut the fundamental argument behind much of that spending: the promise that it will create new jobs and improve the prospects of working Americans, which Obama has called the ultimate measure of a healthy economy.“Our hope would be to actually create some jobs this year,” Obama said in an interview with The Washington Post in the days before taking office.
San Francisco D.A.’s program trained illegal immigrants for jobs they couldn’t legally hold
As she runs for state attorney general, prosecutor Kamala Harris faces questions over a program that trained illegal immigrant drug felons for jobs, kept them out of jail and expunged their records.
By Michael Finnegan
June 22, 2009
Reporting from San Francisco — The assault on Amanda Kiefer at dusk in San Francisco’s posh Pacific Heights was extraordinary enough for its cruelty.A stranger, later identified as Alexander Izaguirre, snatched her purse and hopped into an SUV, police say. The driver sped forward to run Kiefer down. Terrified, she leaped onto the hood and saw Izaguirre and the driver laughing. The driver slammed on the brakes, propelling Kiefer to the pavement. Her skull fractured. Blood oozed from her ear.
Only after the July 2008 attack did Kiefer learn of the crime’s political ramifications. Izaguirre, police told her, was an illegal immigrant who had pleaded guilty four months earlier to a drug felony for selling cocaine in the seedy Tenderloin area.
He had avoided prison when he was picked for a jobs program run by San Francisco Dist. Atty. Kamala Harris, now a candidate for California’s top law enforcement post. In effect, Harris’ office had been allowing Izaguirre and other illegal immigrants to stay out of prison by training them for jobs they cannot legally hold.
Europe
Europe trains’ history of intrigue isn’t over
Popularized in fiction between the wars as places for skulduggery and worse, trains and their stations have played a key role in modern-day plotting and attacks by Islamic terrorists.
By Sebastian Rotella
June 22, 2009
Like many spy tales in fiction and reality, “Background to Danger” begins in a train station.A down-and-out freelance journalist awaits a night train alone on a platform in Nuremberg, Germany, hands in overcoat pockets, shoulders hunched against a November wind. Soon a frightened Russian offers him cash to smuggle documents across the Austrian border, and the plot steams into a labyrinth of treachery.
The 1937 novel by Eric Ambler was part of a genre that explored Europe between wars, a cloak-and-dagger underworld where trains recur as a motif. “Stamboul Train” by Graham Greene depicts death and espionage aboard the Orient Express. In Alfred Hitchcock’s film version of John Buchan’s “The 39 Steps,” the hero — framed for murder by foreign agents — dodges police on a train in Scotland.
Fast-forward six decades into a transformed landscape. Europe has erased internal borders. Instead of fighting Nazis or communists, spy agencies use satellites and wiretaps to track Islamic terrorists who conspire on the Internet.
The Big Question: Why has the Eta problem flared up again, and can it ever be resolved?
By Elizabeth Nash in Madrid
Monday, 22 June 2009
Why are we asking this now?A policeman responsible for conducting anti-terrorist operations in the Basque country died on Friday when his car exploded as he started it up in a car park in Bilbao. The blast was caused by a car bomb blamed on Eta, the armed separatist group’s first killing in six months, and came after it warned that it would shortly resume armed action against the Spanish government, which they describe as “fascist”.
Hadn’t Eta been brought into line?
That’s what Spain’s government keeps saying, and the organisation has suffered a number of heavy blows in the last year, with three of its top military commanders arrested in the past seven months. But what usually happens is that younger leaders step in to replace them, less experienced but more radical and more ruthless.
Friday’s bomb blast came days after the Interior Minister met national, regional and local security bodies to tighten cooperation further against separatist violence.
Middle East
Mousavi defiantly calls for continued protests
Associated Press
Monday, 22 June 2009
Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi and a popular reformist former president are boldly defying the country’s supreme leader by supporting continued protests of a disputed presidential election, but it was unclear today whether protesters would dare to continue massive demonstrations after a bloody crackdown.
“The country belongs to you … protesting lies and fraud is your right,” Mousavi, who claims hardline Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won re-election through fraud, said in a statement on his website.The statement flies in the face of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who holds ultimate power in Iran and who last week said the claimed landslide victory of Ahmadinejad was valid.
Echoing Mousavi, former president Mohammad Khatami said in a statement that “protest in a civil manner and avoiding disturbances in the definite right of the people and all must respect that.”
But aside from the bold words, the opposition today appeared to be scrambling for a strategy to continue the momentum of the protests that have riveted world attention without putting its supporters in peril.
Three remaining British hostages ‘may still be alive in Iraq’
The handover of the remains of two of five British hostages in Iraq suggests the remaining three are still alive, a respected military expert said.
Published: 7:00AM BST 22 Jun 2009
Captain Doug Beattie, who recently retired from service with the Royal Irish Regiment, said the bodies were a “signal” to the British Government and the security company which employed the two dead captives.
The evidence would suggest “deep, deep negotiations” are ongoing behind the scenes, Mr Beattie, who served in Iraq and was later decorated for bravery in Afghanistan, added.
The soldier, author of the hit book An Ordinary Soldier, said: “The release of these bodies is no coincidence – it suggests a very deliberate act on behalf of the captors.
“We must all be very careful not to endanger the lives of those still being held, but there is every reason to hope and believe they are still alive.
“There will be deep, deep negotiations going on.”
Asia
My job is too big for one man, says Dalai Lama
After 500 years of autocracy, Tibetan leader calls for democracyBy Andrew Buncombe, Asia Correspondent
Monday, 22 June 2009
In a speech that underscored the pressures he has had to bear during his life serving as both a spiritual and political leader, the Dalai Lama has said there is no need for his successor to perform the two roles.In a video clip shown to hundreds of monks, nuns and lay people gathered in the mountain town of Dharamsala, the 73-year-old said it was essential that the Tibetan community in exile embraced democracy if it were to keep step with the wider world.
“The Dalai Lamas held temporal and spiritual leadership over the last 400 to 500 years. It may have been quite useful.
Shotgun weddings on rise in Japan as attitudes to pregnancy shift
From The Times
June 22, 2009
Leo Lewis, Asia Business Correspondent
The happy couple’s first dinner as husband and wife will be a magnificent banquet rich in iron, calcium and complex carbohydrates: the perfect menu for the most chic of shotgun weddings.During the marriage ceremony, the bride, Wakako Iwatani, will carry a scent-free, low-pollen bouquet up the aisle of the wedding chapel in Yokohama and take her seat – carefully – at a pew with twice the normal amount of padding.
A team of assistants will hover nearby at all times as she exchanges vows with the groom, Keisuke, ready to pounce with iced water if she is overcome by morning sickness.
Everything, from the generously elasticated rental dress to the special anteroom for napping, is part of the “Double Happy” service – once a niche market for pregnant brides, but one that now represents nearly a third of the hugely lucrative Japanese wedding industry.
Africa
Niger Delta militants vow more attacks
Chevron has evacuated hundreds of employees from the oil-rich region of Nigeria after a string of attacks on oil pipelines.
By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the June 21, 2009 edition
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA – Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta – a major supplier of oil for US markets – is taking another turn toward violence.Militants based in the Niger Delta have taken credit for a series of attacks against Shell and Chevron pipelines in recent days, prompting Chevron to evacuate hundreds of its employees from the region.
The most organized of these militant groups, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), has also threatened to expand its war from the delta into northern parts of Nigeria. That region is home to President Umaru Yar’Adua, whom they blame for not doing more to resolve the conflict as he promised during the 2006-2007 election campaign.
“It [the renewed violence] is happening simply because we want to negotiate from a position of strength,” writes MEND spokesman Jomo Gbomo in an email to the Monitor. “The government has simply refused to address the root issues even in its so called amnesty offer, and it is about time we confront 50 years of beating about the bush head on.”
Ex-Zambian Leader’s High Life Awaits a Verdict
By CELIA W. DUGGER
Published: June 21, 2009
LUSAKA, Zambia – As the gleaming black Mercedes-Benz pulled up to the courthouse, an aide rushed to the passenger door, bowed deeply and then ceremoniously opened it. A foot, finely shod in a dove-gray shoe, appeared, followed by the rest of the man, Frederick Chiluba.
For a decade, he was president of Zambia. Now, more than seven years after he left office, a court is deciding whether he stole from his impoverished people. A verdict is to be announced July 20.As common thieves and drug peddlers milled about, Mr. Chiluba strode through the corridors to his hearing, shaking hands, smiling magnanimously, throwing an arm around a co-defendant to chuckle over a private joke.
Latin America
Secret of the swamps: Colombia’s cocaine submarines
Mangrove boatyards build to order for traffickers supplying US market
Sibylla Brodzinsky in Colombia
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 21 June 2009 22.15 BST
Slicing through milky green waters, a Colombian navy patrol wove through the maze of mangroves in the remote Sanquianga national park on the Pacific coast, following a tip.After eight days, the search paid off. Hidden deep within the boa-infested swampland, the patrol came upon a 60ft hull propped up on a scaffold under a tin-roofed hangar. This was no ordinary shipyard, and it was no ordinary vessel.
Shipbuilders had been putting the finishing fibreglass touches to the hull of what is known here as a narco-sub. Had they finished, the vessel would have been loaded with as much as four tonnes of cocaine and put to sea, headed north, to the US market.
It has been a triumphant month for Colombian navy patrols trying to make a dent in what has become a booming cottage industry: narco-sub shipbuilding. Four narco-subs were discovered in the Sanquianga park operation alone and another two were found on the Caribbean coast.