U.S. Gives New Rights To Afghan Prisoners
Indefinite Detention Can Be Challenged
By Karen DeYoung and Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Hundreds of prisoners held by the U.S. military in Afghanistan will for the first time have the right to challenge their indefinite detention and call witnesses in their defense under a new review system being put in place this week, according to administration officials.
The new system will be applied to the more than 600 Afghans held at the Bagram military base, and will mark the first substantive change in the overseas detention policies that President Obama inherited from the Bush administration.
New Chapter for Moscow’s Toy Story
By MARIANNA TISHCHENKO
Published: September 12, 2009
MOSCOW – Detsky Mir, a landmark here in the heart of Russia’s capital, was once one of the largest children’s stores in Europe, with a central atrium that had elegant balustrades, columns and elevator shafts.Generations of Muscovites and visitors have adored Detsky Mir, which means “children’s world” in Russian. Everything from baby clothes to toys to bobby pins has been sold in the store. Located not far from the Kremlin, Detsky Mir opened in 1957 and became a symbol not only of Soviet architecture but also of the Soviet era itself.But the store is now closed while it undergoes an estimated $200 million renovation to its interior. The project is raising concerns among preservationists that it could become the latest of the city’s architectural treasures to fall victim to commercial pressures.
USA
The Fading Public Option
NEWS ANALYSIS
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: September 12, 2009
WASHINGTON – It was just one line in a campaign manifesto, and it hardly seemed the most significant or contentious. As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama said he would “establish a new public insurance program” alongside private health care plans.
That proposal took on a life of its own, but it now appears to be dying, a victim of an ineffectual White House strategy, the president’s failure to argue passionately for the “public option” and all-out opposition by the insurance industry and much of the health care industry.
In the campaign, Mr. Obama said the public plan would compete with private insurers on the price and quality of care, thus benefiting consumers.
Massive crowd marches against Obama’s agenda
Tens of thousands of angry conservatives converge on Washington to denounce the president’s healthcare proposals and more, echoing Rep. Joe Wilson’s accusations.
By Mark Z. Barabak
September 13, 2009
Reporting from Washington – Tens of thousands of protesters marched on the U.S. Capitol on Saturday, airing a wide range of grievances rooted in a shared sentiment: seething anger at President Obama and his far-reaching agenda.Led by a fife and drum corps in period costumes, the demonstrators filled Pennsylvania Avenue and swarmed the Capitol grounds with a sea of bobbing placards and hand-lettered signs that spelled out a catalog of dissent.
There were antiabortion protesters and term-limit advocates. Critics of financial bailouts and the federal investigation into CIA interrogation techniques.
Asia
Pressure grows in Afghanistan for Hamid Karzai to strike a deal
More results show president above crucial 50% of vote, but UN-backed electoral commission orders growing number of recounts
Declan Walsh in Islamabad
The Observer, Sunday 13 September 2009
Five US soldiers were among dozens killed in a wave of violence in Afghanistan as pressure grew on President Hamid Karzai last night to strike a power-sharing deal with his rival, Abdullah Abdullah. It came after the country’s election commission failed to declare a winner in the hotly disputed presidential poll. The decision has coincided with a surge of violent unrest, with officials saying yesterday that 50 Afghan civilians, security force members and Taliban fighters were killed in different attacks across the country, including a bomb that left 14 Afghan travellers dead. The American soldiers died in two roadside bomb attacks.The deepening crisis increases the stakes for Washington and London, where public opinion is hostile to an ever more bloody war in support of a flawed and corruption-prone political process.
China uses fear to hush up poisoned children
From The Sunday Times
September 13, 2009
Michael Sheridan in Changqing, China
At first the villagers could not understand why their bouncing babies turned into small children who refused their food and complained of feeling ill all the time, agitated one moment but listless the next.Then, early this summer, so many of the youngsters began to sicken after playing in fields of corn around a giant lead smelter, that the puzzlement turned to foreboding.
“We took the children to local hospitals but every time the doctors told us there was no problem,” said one mother.
Eventually, one father became so worried by his son’s convulsions that he telephoned a relative in Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi province in the centre of China, which has first-class medical facilities.
Middle East
How Islamist gangs use internet to track, torture and kill Iraqi gays
Iraqi militias infiltrate internet gay chatrooms to hunt their quarry – and hundreds are feared to be victims
Afif Sarhan and Jason Burke
The Observer, Sunday 13 September 2009
Sitting on the floor, wearing traditional Islamic clothes and holding an old notebook, Abu Hamizi, 22, spends at least six hours a day searching internet chatrooms linked to gay websites. He is not looking for new friends, but for victims.“It is the easiest way to find those people who are destroying Islam and who want to dirty the reputation we took centuries to build up,” he said. When he finds them, Hamizi arranges for them to be attacked and sometimes killed.
Hamizi, a computer science graduate, is at the cutting edge of a new wave of violence against gay men in Iraq. Made up of hardline extremists, Hamizi’s group and others like it are believed to be responsible for the deaths of more than 130 gay Iraqi men since the beginning of the year alone.
US envoy in Mid-East peace push
The US envoy to the Middle East has arrived in Israel where he hopes to finalise an initial meeting between Palestinian and Israeli leaders.
The BBC Sunday, 13 September 2009
George Mitchell’s visit coincides with meetings between Israel’s prime minister and Egypt’s leader on Sunday.
The US hopes the Palestinians and Israelis can meet on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly this month.
The key stumbling block remains Israel’s expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
US criticism
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is making his second visit to Cairo since May.
He will meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak later on Sunday.
Africa
Jihad: The Somalia connection
Numbers of young Britons heading for war-torn African country have soaredBy Brian Brady
Sunday, 13 September 2009
British intelligence chiefs have targeted war-torn Somalia as the next major challenge to their efforts to repel Islamic terrorism, after scores of youths left the UK for “jihad training” in the failed African state. MI5 bosses have warned ministers that the number of young Britons travelling to Somalia to fight in a “holy war”, or train in terror training camps, has soared in recent years as the country has emerged as an alternative base for radical Islamic groups including al-Qa’ida.The Independent on Sunday understands that the number of young Britons following the trail every year has more than quadrupled to at least 100 since 2004 – and analysts warn that the true figure (which would include those who enter the country overland) will be much higher.
Freed, Sudan’s pant-wearing woman vows to fight on
Lubna Hussein was released Thursday from jail, where she had conducted an unorthodox journalism assignment – interviewing her fellow prisoners.
By Shashank Bengali | McClatchy Newspapers
from the September 12, 2009 edition
NAIROBI, KENYA – It was the fashion statement heard around the world.Lubna Hussein, a Sudanese woman who was arrested for wearing pants in violation of a so-called indecency law and went to jail this week in protest, spent less than 24 hours behind bars. By then, however, she’d already exposed the daily indignities that women suffer in one of the most authoritarian and male-dominated societies in Africa.
“I’m happy for all the people who supported me in Sudan … and all over the world,” Ms. Hussein, a journalist, said in a phone interview Thursday with McClatchy, two days after her release. “But I will, with all women in Sudan, continue our work to end this bad law. We are not stopping here.”
Few have dared go this far.
Europe
Switzerland’s explosive war effort threatens environmental disaster
Deformed fish are being landed and served as sightseers flock to view toxic Second World War munitions raised from the floor of Lake ThunBy Tony Paterson
Sunday, 13 September 2009
Down at the bottom of Switzerland’s deepest lake is one of the country’s murkiest secrets. For here is disturbing evidence of Switzerland’s little-known Second World War defence effort. It poses a potentially devastating threat to the Alpine nation, 70 years after the conflict.The placid waters of Lake Thun spread out for 11 miles beneath Faulensee village. Some 700 feet beneath the surface more than 9,000 tons of Swiss army munitions lie dumped on its watery floor. The ordnance includes artillery shells, hand grenades, and explosives that were meant to defend Switzerland against a Nazi invasion that never happened.
Sarkozy ‘wields butcher’s hook’
From The Sunday Times
September 13, 2009
Matthew Campbell in Paris
FRANCE’S former intelligence chief has accused President Nicolas Sarkozy of abusing his power to pursue a vendetta against a former prime minister and political rival.Yves Bertrand, head of the secret police for 12 years until 2004, alleged that Sarkozy had interfered in the judicial system to bring Dominique de Villepin, the prime minister from 2005-7, to trial for plotting against him.
“It’s about the president’s quest for revenge,” said Bertrand in his first interview with a foreign journalist. He claimed the president had made it clear to judges that he hoped de Villepin would be found guilty when he goes on trial next week accused of trying to smear Sarkozy as part of a dirty tricks campaign to keep him out of the Elysée Palace.
Latin America
Colombia fears rebels may get surface-to-air missiles
The arms would force Colombia to revise its air superiority strategy, which has dealt a blow to the FARC. Colombian and U.S. officials track attempted arms sales and have arrested three dealers.
By Chris Kraul
September 13, 2009
Reporting from Bogota, Colombia – Colombia and the United States have a recurring worry: This country’s largest rebel group succeeds in acquiring surface-to-air missiles and forces the government to alter a strategy that has knocked the insurgents on their heels and turned the tide in a decades-long conflict.There are reasons for concern. Last month, a Syrian arms trafficker was arrested in Honduras as he tried to sell missiles and other weapons to U.S. undercover agents posing as members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
The sting was the third in two years in which arms traffickers were caught allegedly trying to sell missiles to U.S. informants or agents posing as Colombians.