In Memoriaum
Stephen T. Johns
In Iran Race, Ex-Leader Works to Oust President
By ROBERT F. WORTH
Published: June 10, 2009
TEHRAN – In a makeshift campaign war room in north Tehran, two dozen young women clad in head scarves and black chadors are logging election data into desktop computers 24 hours a day, while men rush around them carrying voter surveys and district maps.
This nerve center in the campaign to unseat Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s hard-line president, is not run by any of the three candidates who are challenging him in a hotly contested election on Friday.Instead, it is part of a bitter behind-the-scenes rivalry that has helped define the campaign, pitting Mr. Ahmadinejad against the man he beat in the last election, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a two-term former president and one of Iran’s richest and most powerful men.
Swine flu ‘pandemic’ announcement imminent
The World Health Organisation prepares to hold an emergency meeting on the current state of swine flu outbreaks across the world
Associated Press
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 June 2009 06.30 BST
The World Health Organisation is gearing up to declare a swine flu pandemic, a move that could trigger both the large-scale production of vaccines and questions about why the step was delayed for weeks as the virus continued to spread.WHO chief Dr Margaret Chan quizzed eight countries with large swine flu outbreaks yesterday to see if a pandemic, or global epidemic, should be declared. The agency then announced that an emergency meeting with its flu experts would be held at 10am today.
Since swine flu first emerged in Mexico and the United States in April, it has spread to 74 countries around the globe. On Wednesday, WHO reported 27,737 cases including 141 deaths. Most cases are mild and require no treatment.
The world is in phase 5 of WHO’s pandemic alert scale, meaning a global outbreak is imminent. Moving to phase 6, the highest level, means a pandemic has begun. If that declaration is made, it will push drugmakers to fast-track production of a swine flu vaccine.
USA
At a Monument of Sorrow, A Burst of Deadly Violence
Guard Killed, Suspect Injured Amid Scene Of Fear, Chaos
By Michael E. Ruane, Paul Duggan and Clarence Williams
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, June 11, 2009
At 12:40 p.m. yesterday a man stepped through the doors of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He took two paces, lowered his rifle at a security guard and, before anyone could react, opened fire in a popular national landmark.
The guard, who did not have time to draw his gun, fell bleeding and fatally wounded to the polished floor. Other guards fired back, cutting down the assailant. Terrified patrons, many of them children, dived for safety. And what moments before had been a bright weekday in June became a tableau of violence.As described by bystanders and authorities, the attack inside the famed Holocaust museum turned the crowded building and Washington’s nearby tourist-thronged Mall into a scene of fear and chaos, with black-clad SWAT teams, hovering helicopters and racing emergency vehicles.
24 charged in crackdown on Native American artifact looting
All but one are arrested in the theft of ancient artifacts in the Four Corners region. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar calls the investigation the largest targeting of such looting on public lands.
By Nicholas Riccardi and Jim Tankersley
June 11, 2009
Reporting from Washington and Denver — Striking at a longtime practice in the Four Corners area, federal authorities Wednesday unsealed indictments against 24 people in what they called the largest investigation ever into the looting of Native American artifacts on public lands.Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the charges at a Salt Lake City news conference and said in a telephone interview that many of the stolen items, valued at $335,000, came from sacred burial sites. “The message that we’re sending is, we’re not going to tolerate this kind of activity,” he said.
The charges stem from a two-year undercover investigation into excavators and buyers of the artifacts in Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. Federal authorities developed an antiquities dealer as a source who wore a hidden microphone to record several illicit transactions, according to court records.
Asia
West blamed as aid agencies threaten to desert Pakistan’s Swat valley
• Rich nations urged to dig deep to avoid disaster
• Flight of refugees biggest crisis since Rwanda – UN
Mark Tran
The Guardian, Thursday 11 June 2009
Cash shortages and bottlenecks in delivering supplies to people uprooted by fighting in Pakistan’s Swat valley have triggered the biggest humanitarian funding crisis in a decade, relief organisations warn today.A group of nine international aid groups including ActionAid, Islamic Relief and Oxfam said efforts to help more than 1 million victims of the fighting were in jeopardy. The agencies face a cash shortfall of more than £26m.
“This is the worst funding crisis we’ve faced in over a decade for a major humanitarian emergency. Some 2.5 million people have fled their homes,” said Jane Cocking, Oxfam’s humanitarian director.<
China backs plan to search North Korean ships and halt arms deals
From The Times
June 11, 2009
James Bone in New York and Leo Lewis in Tokyo
The major powers, including the United States and China, agreed yesterday on a system to inspect suspect cargoes in and out of North Korea despite Pyongyang’s warning that it would regard such checks as an act of war.The draft UN resolution – a response to North Korea’s nuclear test on May 25 – would also expand the arms embargo on the country and clamp down on arms-related money transfers. The full 15-nation Security Council is expected to endorse the plan as early as tomorrow.
“This sanctions resolution, if passed by the Security Council, will bite and bite in a meaningful way,” Susan Rice, Washington’s UN Ambassador, said.
Europe
Rival seeks to lick Lindt in battle of the chocolate bunnies
Hauswirth disputes the validity of Lindt’s trademark, claiming that chocolate bunnies have been produced and wrapped in gold foil for many decades
Graeme Wearden
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 June 2009 09.14 BST
The issue has come before Europe’s top court following a long battle between Switzerland’s Lindt & Sprungli and fellow chocolate maker Hauswirth of Austria. Both companies make gold-wrapped chocolate rabbits, complete with ribbons around their neck. But only Lindt holds a trademark which it claims bars rivals from burrowing in on its territory.With its red ribbon, small bell, prominent ears, squatting posture and delicate paws, Lindt’s milk chocolate bunny is one of its flagship products, and tens of millions are sold each year. In 2000 the company applied for a trademark on the shape, which was granted the following year. Following that ruling, it launched legal actions against a number of other companies which make similar-looking confectionary.
Alarm in Baltic as Kremlin seizes control of Soviet past
Medvedev bans the ‘falsification of history to the detriment of Russia’By Shaun Walker in Riga
Thursday, 11 June 2009
In Russia it is not only the future that is unpredictable; often the past is equally in doubt. One minute Leon Trotsky was a hero of the Revolution, the father of the Red Army and a strong contender to succeed Lenin; the next minute he never existed. Until the late 1980s, the 1917 Revolution was the pinnacle of human achievement; suddenly in the 1990s it was seen as an utter failure.And today again history in the region is turning into an ideological battlefield. When the Red Army poured into the Baltic states at the end of the Second World War, it liberated them from Nazi tyranny – but from the perspective of the subsequent decades of Soviet domination, was it liberation or merely another invasion?
The Russians, of course, have no doubt on the matter: for them it was an heroic national achievement. But for the states which less than two decades ago managed to crawl out from under the Soviet boot, things are not so simple.
Middle East
Has President Ahmadinejad finally met his match in Mrs Mousavi?
The wife of Iran’s moderate opposition leader has ignited Iran’s election campaignBy Kim Sengupta
She has become one of the most high-profile figures in one of the most exciting Iranian election campaigns – and she is not even running for office. It would be easy to downplay the importance of Zahra Rahnavard as a creation of the Western media seeking an exotic angle. Married to opposition candidate Mirhossein Mousavi, she has even been dubbed Iran’s Michelle Obama.But the 64-year-old academic, artist and grandmother has, in fact, created enough of a stir to rattle the re-election campaign of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And in a country where virtually nothing is known about Mrs Ahmadinejad, she is rewriting the role of political spouse and attracting growing numbers of followers in her own right.
Judge orders release of 3 U.S. contractors held in Iraq
Thursday, 11 June 2009<
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN)
Three of five Americans contractors detained in Baghdad have been ordered released by an Iraqi judge, because of insufficient evidence, a court spokesman said Thursday.
The other two other contractors remain in custody, according to Judge Abdul Sattar al-Beeraqdar, a spokesman for Iraq’s Higher Judicial Council.One of the men has been released on bond, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad confirmed Thursday.
The embassy did not identify the man, who was released Wednesday. However, a spokesman for his employer, Corporate Training Unlimited, said it was Donald Feeney. Judy Feeney, Donald’s wife, also confirmed his release.
The contracting company said the release of the others has been delayed because of a procedural issue.
Judy Feeney said her son, Donald Feeney III, and Mark Bridges were to be released Thursday morning, but it may take more time to release the other two, Jason Jones and Micah Milligan.
Africa
WITNESS: Third time lucky in crime-ridden Johannesburg
Serena Chaudhry, Johannesburg correspondent for Reuters, moved to South Africa from Britain in 1995 and joined Reuters full-time in 2008 to report on companies in Africa’s biggest economy. In the following story, Serena writes about her experiences in one of the world’s most dangerous cities.
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters)By Serena Chaudhry
– When the white sports utility vehicle pulled up as we backed out of our driveway, I thought it was the delivery man my mother was waiting for.
Until one of the passengers jumped out, pulled a bright orange mask over his head and ran toward our car: in seconds he stood in front of us with his finger on the trigger of an AK-47 rifle, pointing it directly at me.
It was just days before the election and African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma was telling millions of South Africans the party had accomplished many things, including its fight against crime and how it would make the streets safe before hosting the 2010 World Cup.
“Oh no,” I said to my father, who first thought it was some kind of practical joke. I froze. It was only when the man trained his weapon at my father that I ducked. The thought of watching my father getting shot through the windshield was too much.
Zuma has promised stepped-up efforts against crime, particularly organized crime and offences against women and children. So far little has changed since 2000, when two men appeared outside our house with pistols as we waited for the electronic gate to open.
Latin America
Indigenous Peruvians vow more attacks over control of the Amazon
Clashes with government forces left more than 30 dead last week, sparking concerns about a full-scale revolt. Protesters are fighting laws that would open their rainforest home to energy and agribusiness development.
By Kelly Hearn | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the June 10, 2009 editionQUILLABAMBA, PERU – In a low-slung concrete building packed with poor, angry, indigenous Peruvians, protester Carlos Collado speaks in hard, revolutionary terms. “We are not the assassins the government makes us out to be,” he says. “But we will not let our brothers die. This meeting is illegal. But we are here. This shows that we are ready.”
One by one, amid the sullen faces, they stood to speak, some in Spanish, others in their ethnic language. Each spewed hatred at the Peruvian government, which they say orchestrated a deadly clash that killed more than 30 and injured more than 150 last week in Bagua, an area in the northern Peruvian Amazon.
“Bagua” has become shorthand for an indigenous resistance boiling over throughout remote swaths of the country, as poor Amazonian Indians engage in strikes and blockades to protest laws that would open their rainforest home to energy and agribusiness development. For two months, they have blocked roads, strung cable across rivers, and taken over jungle oil facilities with spears and arrows. The protests had been peaceful until Bagua – the country’s worst political violence since the Shining Path guerrillas were quelled in the mid-1990s – but now it is starting to feel like a revolt.