2 Afghans allege abuse at U.S. site
Teenagers say they were interrogated at secretive Bagram holding center
By Joshua Partlow and Julie Tate
Saturday, November 28, 2009
KABUL — Two Afghan teenagers held in U.S. detention north of Kabul this year said they were beaten by American guards, photographed naked, deprived of sleep and held in solitary confinement in concrete cells for at least two weeks while undergoing daily interrogation about their alleged links to the Taliban.The accounts could not be independently substantiated. But in successive, on-the-record interviews, the teenagers presented a detailed, consistent portrait suggesting that the abusive treatment of suspected insurgents has in some cases continued under the Obama administration, despite steps that President Obama has said would put an end to the harsh interrogation practices authorized by the Bush administration after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Some Indians Find It Tough to Go Home Again
By HEATHER TIMMONS
Published: November 27, 2009
NEW DELHI – When 7-year-old Shiva Ayyadurai left Mumbai with his family nearly 40 years ago, he promised himself he would return to India someday to help his country.
In June, Mr. Ayyadurai, now 45, moved from Boston to New Delhi hoping to make good on that promise. An entrepreneur and lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with a fistful of American degrees, he was the first recruit of an ambitious government program to lure talented scientists of the so-called desi diaspora back to their homeland.
USA
Motorists, experts say throttles, not floor mats, to blame for sudden acceleration in Toyota, Lexus models
Amid widening concern over acceleration events, Toyota has cited ‘floor mat entrapment.’ But reports point to another potential cause: the electronic throttles that have replaced mechanical systems.
By Ken Bensinger Ralph Vartabedian
November 29, 2009
Eric Weiss was stopped at a busy Long Beach intersection last month when he said his 2008 Toyota Tacoma pickup unexpectedly started accelerating, forcing him to stand on the brakes to keep the bucking truck from plowing into oncoming cars.Toyota Motor Corp. says the gas pedal design in Weiss’ truck and more than 4 million other Toyota and Lexus vehicles makes them vulnerable to being trapped open by floor mats, and on Wednesday announced a costly recall to fix the problem.
The Death of Fifth Avenue
The rise and fall, and rise again, of New York’s waterfront.
By Tony Dokoupil | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Nov 27, 2009
When Charles Dickens toured North America in 1842, the English author-known for chronicling squalor in his own country-found a scene near the water in lower Manhattan that even he struggled to stomach. Rotting houses, low-slung taverns, drunken sailors, loose women, and free-roaming pigs slopped through polluted streets. “Poverty, wretchedness, and vice are rife,” he wrote of the area known as Five Points. Behavior was so degraded, in fact, that Dickens questioned whether the pigs “wonder why their masters walk upright in lieu of going on all fours.”
Yes, Manhattan may be surrounded by water, but few people over the years would have mistaken it for any sort of island paradise-especially at its aqueous edge.
Middle East
Russia and China Endorse Agency’s Rebuke of Iran
By HELENE COOPER and WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: November 27, 2009
WASHINGTON – The United Nations nuclear watchdog demanded Friday that Iran immediately freeze operations at a once secret uranium enrichment plant, a sharp rebuke that bore added weight because it was endorsed by Russia and China.
The governing body of the watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, meeting in Vienna, also expressed “serious concern” about potential military aspects of Iran’s nuclear program.Administration officials held up the statement as a victory for President Obama’s diplomatic efforts to coax both Russia and China to increase the pressure on Iran.
Dubai: Who says the bubble’s burst?
It will take more than bad debt to stop the partying in Dubai, as Collette Lyons found out when she took a job on a magazine in the hedonists’ paradise
Collette Lyons
The Guardian, Saturday 28 November 2009
This morning, the expats in Dubai have woken up on the last day of their Eid long weekend a little poorer, but probably not in the way you think. Chances are drinks at Nobu, dinner at Gary Rhodes’ Mezzanine, followed by a little light pouting at Buddha Bar have left them a couple of hundred pounds lighter. You see, Dubai’s committed hedonists are still living in a bubble. A champagne bubble at that.When I arrived in the city early in 2008, clutching two small suitcases filled with Topshop and Primark clothes and a job offer for work on a glossy magazine, I genuinely had no idea what to expect. I soon learned. In my first week, I was commissioned to write a feature on It bags.
Europe
Bomb suspected in Russia train crash
• 22 dead, more than 50 injured according to reports
• Terrorism fears after ‘small crater’ found under rails
Aidan Jones
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 28 November 2009
At least 22 people were feared dead and many more injured last night after an express train carrying hundreds of passengers from Moscow to St Petersburg derailed.Early indications from government officials suggest a bomb may have been the cause, after investigators found a three-foot crater beneath the rails.
Russian Railways, the state-owned train operator, said four carriages of the luxury Nevsky Express came off the tracks near the town of Bologoye, 200 miles from Moscow, just after 9.30pm local time.
In addition to those killed, more than 50 injured passengers required treatment at hospitals in St Petersburg.
John Lichfield: Forget the gas – Europe needs to get tough with Russia
World Focus: Russia
Saturday, 28 November 2009
The Russian government may be brutal and incompetent domestically, but it has learnt to play the game of European politics with subtlety and skill. Not that the western Europeans are particularly hard to play against. They can be relied upon to score own goals.France yesterday became the latest EU country to be drawn into Moscow’s plans to build two new pipelines, avoiding Ukraine and Poland, which will make western European cooking stoves and central heating boilers dependent on Russian gas for decades to come. During Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s two-day visit to Paris, the French electricity giant EDF signed a contract to help the Russian state enterprise Gazprom to build the new “South Stream” pipeline under the Black Sea to Greece, Serbia, Hungary and western Europe.
Asia
The ‘black whistle’ of corruption that is poisoning football in China
From The Times
November 28, 2009
Jane Macartney in Beijing
Ask a young Chinese man about Manchester United or Liverpool and the chances are he will reel off the names of the 11 players who started the match last week. Ask him about football in his country and he will most probably give you a list of corruption, on-the-pitch violence and dodgy officials – “black whistle” referees.The arrest of 16 people this week for match fixing and bribery was hailed as a breakthrough after a six-month operation, but even Communist Party officials know that it is just the tip of the iceberg. Xi Jinping, the Vice-President and leader-in-waiting, said recently: “As for soccer, we need to improve and this could take quite a long time.”
In Pakistan, end of amnesty could spark fresh political turmoil
In Pakistan, end of amnesty that protected senior officials from prosecution of criminal charges will expire Saturday, deepening the woes of the embattled government.
By Issam Ahmed | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the November 27, 2009 edition
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN – The imminent expiration of a controversial decree that provides amnesty against criminal charges to top Pakistani politicians could further weaken the country’s embattled civilian government, according to analysts here.The National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) was passed by former President Pervez Musharraf in 2007 as part of a political deal, brokered with the assistance of the United States, that allowed the late Benazir Bhutto back into the country to contest 2008 elections without having to face charges related to money-laundering and kickbacks on government contracts. More than 8,000 individuals, mainly bureaucrats, are currently protected by the decree.
The NRO was ostensibly aimed at putting an end to politically motivated corruption cases that had led to bitter fighting between the two major parties during the 1990s, Pakistan’s so-called “decade of democracy.” But a sustained political campaign led by the main opposition PML-N party and backed by the right-wing media has meant that the NRO “has now become a byword for corruption,” according to Cyril Almeida, assistant editor of Dawn, a leading English daily.
Africa
Geldof’s return to Ethiopia
Paul Vallely watches the rock star receive a hero’s welcome in the country whose suffering inspired the next chapter in his life
Saturday, 28 November 2009
The first time Bob Geldof saw Birhan Woldu was on television. It was 1984 and the face of the child was one of the most haunting images in the BBC report which alerted the world to the famine in Ethiopia in which as many as a million people died.At the end of a harrowing sequence of images of malnourished children, the camera stopped on a child whose eyes were closed by pain and whose parched lips were swollen with dehydration. The nurses said she would be dead within minutes. Her name was Birhan Woldu.
Uganda proposes death penalty for HIV positive gays
From The Times
November 28, 2009
Philip Webster, Political Editor, in Port of Spain
Britain and Canada protested yesterday over a proposed law that would result in gays in Uganda being imprisoned for life or even executed.Gordon Brown followed Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister, in telling Uganda that the legislation was unacceptable.
Mr Brown made his views plain in a breakfast conversation with President Museveni of Uganda on the margins of the Commonwealth summit.
Homosexuality remains criminalised in many Commonwealth countries, but the more liberal countries have been horrified by the new legislation.