Obama’s Toughest Sales Pitch Is Also His Most Critical
Analysis
By Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Since taking office, President Obama has preached the urgency of implementing the big items on his long list of policy priorities. And he has been largely successful at bending public opinion, and Congress, to his will — on the stimulus package, financial bailouts and his budget, with unprecedented new investments in education and renewable energy.But six months into his presidency, as Obama stood in the East Room of the White House on Wednesday night, he faced what is shaping up as his toughest and most critical sales pitch yet: explaining to an increasingly reluctant public that health-care reform is in its best interest.Obama used his fourth prime-time news conference to directly address the anxiety many Americans feel about emerging plans to revamp health care, plans that are reaching a critical juncture in Congress.
Wind power plan blown off course
Closure of turbine factory undermines Government’s green pledgesBy Michael McCarthy and Nigel Morris
Thursday, 23 July 2009
The Government was facing a growing credibility gap over green jobs last night as environmental campaigners and trade unionists united to fight the closure of Britain’s sole major wind turbine plant.Only last week, ministers proclaimed a green employment future for the UK involving 400,000 jobs in environmental industries such as renewable energy – yet this week they are declining to intervene over the forthcoming closure of the Vestas Wind Systems plant on the Isle of Wight, with nearly 600 redundancies.
Workers at the Newport factory, which makes wind turbine blades, were last night staging their third night of occupation of the plant in an attempt to prevent the closure which is scheduled for 31 July. In an alliance not seen before, they were being helped by climate-change campaigners who have set up an ad hoc camp outside the factory and yesterday helped to get food to the occupiers.
USA
U.S.-born militant who fought for Al Qaeda is in custody
Since his capture at an Al Qaeda training camp last year in Pakistan, Bryant Neal Vinas of Long Island, N.Y., is working with authorities in investigations rooted in many countries, authorities say.
By Sebastian Rotella and Josh Meyer
July 23, 2009
Reporting from Washington and Patchogue, N.Y. — An American Muslim convert from Long Island, N.Y., who was captured while fighting for Al Qaeda in Pakistan is now cooperating with authorities, opening a rare window into the world of Western militants in the network’s hide-outs, U.S. and European anti-terrorism officials said.Bryant Neal Vinas, 26, is one of the few Americans known to have made the trek to Al Qaeda’s secret Pakistani compounds, the officials said.
Vinas has admitted to meeting Al Qaeda chiefs and giving them information for a potential attack on New York commuter trains, conversations that resulted in a public alert in November, said the officials, who requested anonymity because the case was ongoing.
Pew study: Wireless Internet use up sharply
Growing use of smartphones for Net access cited as key reason for increase
Suzanne Choney
More Americans are accessing the Internet using wireless mobile devices such as smartphones and laptops, according to a study released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.
“Use of the Internet on mobile devices has grown sharply from the end of 2007 to the beginning of 2009,” with 56 percent of Americans saying that have “at some point used wireless means for online access,” the Pew Center said.
While laptops, game consoles and MP3 players were cited as some of the devices used for wireless Internet access, Pew’s findings show that smartphones – such as the iPhone or BlackBerrys which have Web access and e-mail – are playing a fast-growing role.
Europe
Who shot Natalia Estemirova?
In all probability, nobody will ever be brought to justice for the murder of yet another Russian human-rights campaigner
Luke Harding
The Guardian, Thursday 23 July 2009
It should have been a brief trip. Last Wednesday, Natalia Estemirova, known to her friends as Natasha, left her flat in the Chechen capital, Grozny, and set off towards the bus stop. Usually, it took her 15-20 minutes to get to work – a bumpy ride in a shared No 55 mini-van, down an avenue of green tower blocks, past giant posters of Chechnya’s warlord president Ramzan Kadyrov, and several of Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin.On this occasion, she didn’t make it. A hundred metres beyond the entrance of her 10th-floor flat – which overlooks a patch of grassy wasteland and a grove of shabby walnut trees – four gunmen were waiting. They grabbed Estemirova, bundled her into a white Russian-made Zhiguli car and drove off. A woman passer-by saw the abduction and heard her cry out.
The collapse of Moscow: Architectural heritage being destroyed
Historic buildings ‘demolished and neglected’ in push to transform city into hub of ultra-capitalismBy Shaun Walker in Moscow
Thursday, 23 July 2009
Moscow’s skyline and architectural heritage are on the verge of being destroyed forever because of low-quality renovations and thoughtless demolition, according to a report released yesterday by a group of Russian and international activists.“There is no other capital city in peacetime Europe that is being subjected to such devastation for the sake of earning a fast megabuck,” the Moscow Architecture Preservation Society stated in its report. The authors said that hundreds of important buildings – from 19th-century palaces to masterpieces of Stalinist architecture – were being neglected or demolished.
Asia
Hamid Karzai pulls out of historic TV debate just hours before broadcast
• President’s team claims network is biased
• Campaign falls back on deals with tribal leaders
Jon Boone in Kabul
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 22 July 2009 21.04 BST
In a country where politics is dominated by tribal chiefs, village mullahs and unsavoury warlords, the people of Afghanistan will tomorrow be treated to a unique exercise in modern democracy.Millions of Afghans are expected to tune their televisions and radios in to the country’s first televised debate between the leading contenders in next month’s presidential election.
The organisers had hoped the debate, modelled on the set pieces of US presidential politics, would see the incumbent, Hamid Karzai, square off against his two main rivals – his former finance minister, Ashraf Ghani, and his former foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah.
China censors block President’s son from internet search results
From Times Online
July 23, 2009
Jane Macartney in Beijing
China’s censors have added a new word to the list of those banned on domestic search engines: the name of the son of President Hu Jintao.The latest brick to be added to the Great Firewall of China was added this week when it became clear that the technology channels of leading Web portals, Sina and Netease, could not be opened for several hours after they posted news about a company linked to Hu Haifeng, 38.
Even though the articles about an investigation in Namibia into corruption allegations against Nuctech, a Beijing company that produces scanning equipment – mainly for airport security – did not mention the name of the younger Mr Hu, they quickly disappeared.
Middle East
Clinton says US would arm its allies against a nuclear Iran
From The Times
July 23, 2009
Richard Lloyd Parry, Asia Editor
The US would extend its “defence umbrella” across the Middle East to defend its allies against a nuclear-armed Iran, Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, said yesterday.Mrs Clinton’s comments provoked an anxious reaction from the Israeli Government. Israel’s Minister for Intelligence and Atomic Energy, Dan Meridor, bristled at the implication that Iran’s nuclear status might be regarded as a strategic reality to be offset by other defence capabilities.
“I was not thrilled to hear the American statement that they will protect their allies with a nuclear umbrella, as if they have already come to terms with a nuclear Iran,” he told Israeli army radio. “I think that’s a mistake.”
Iran’s Guards keep on marching
By Babak Rahimi
Established in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution to defend the Islamic Republic against domestic and foreign threats, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has been accused of playing a decisive role in the re-election of the incumbent president, Mahmud Ahmadinejad.Together with the Basij, a volunteer militia force charged with the task of internal security and suppression of anti-government demonstrations, the IRGC’s role in the June 12 presidential election and its aftermath has largely consisted of campaign activities, the organization of rallies for the president, monitoring the elections and conducting crackdowns on anti-government demonstrations.
While the highest authority in the country continues to be Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the June 12 election marks a new stage in the paramilitary’s emergence as a major political force within Iran’s theocracy, entailing a shift in the balance of power towards the militant right faction within the conservative establishment.
Africa
Court ruling looms on disputed Sudan oil-town
Over four years after a peace agreement ended Sudan’s bloody civil war a ruling in the Hague may resolve control of a rich oil field, but may also spark more conflict.
By Max Delany | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
Local residents wade ankle-deep in mud past bombed-out buildings and the carcasses of buses, a scenery of destruction that has become part of their everyday existence. Life like this seems close to normal after years of war between Sudan’s government and southern rebels over who would control this town and the rich oil fields that surround it.But any calm has been precarious, with Abyei along one of the most hotly disputed borders on the planet- the phantom line dividing northern Sudan from the semi-autonomous South. Some of Sudan’s most prized oil fields are just north of here.
On Wednesday, after years of legal wrangling and war, the Permanent Arbitration Court at The Hague is scheduled to rule on where Abyei’s borders lie and whether the town – and its surrounding oil fields – will remain under northern control or could eventually become part of an independent South Sudan.
Latin America
Ambushed by a Drug War
Mormon Clans in Mexico Find Themselves Targets of the Cartels
By William Booth
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 23, 2009
COLONIA LEBARON, Mexico — Mormon pioneer Alma Dayer LeBaron had a vision when he moved his breakaway sect of polygamists to this valley 60 years ago: His many children would live in peace and prosperity among the pretty pecan orchards they would plant in the desert.
Prosperity has come, but the peace has been shattered.In the past three months, American Mormon communities in Mexico have been sucked into a dust devil of violence sweeping the borderlands. Their relative wealth has made them targets: Their telephones ring with threats of extortion. Their children and elders are taken by kidnappers. They have been drawn into the government’s war with the drug cartels.