Desperate Haitians learn to tackle earthquake aftermath alone
From The Sunday Times
January 24, 2010
Tony Allen-Mills in Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Every day, the relief trucks roar past the high pink walls of the New Hope Ministry in Mariani, on the coast road west of Port-au-Prince.Every day, people shriek and wave in the hope of persuading them to stop. Some drivers slow down and shout that they will come back tomorrow.
Yet by Friday morning, 10 days after Haiti’s earthquake struck, nobody from the government or any relief agency had walked through the heavy metal gates of the American-owned missionary compound to confront the mayhem within.
Public frustration with the slowness of the aid effort and the government’s declaration that the search and rescue operation had been terminated increased yesterday with the freeing of a young man who had been trapped for the 11 days since the earthquake struck Port-au-Prince.
You need a brave heart to stomach haggis
A Slice of Britain: A Scottish butcher is making waves in the Wirral as his offal offerings – for Burns Night tomorrow or not – prove as popular as beef
By Emily Dugan in Wallasey Sunday, 24 January 2010
A stench like halitosis from the worst demon in hell threatens to bludgeon everyone out of the room. A cauldron of steaming livers, hearts and lungs disappears into the maw of an industrial mincer and slops out of the other end into a bucket of oatmeal. A crate of beef fat and onion is added to create a glistening mound of carnivore porridge. It is 10am in Braveheart Butchers and flame-haired John Potter has already been up for five hours boiling the ingredients for his Burns Night batch of prize-winning haggis. His rolled-up sleeves reveal a tattoo, “Scotland the Brave”, as he plunges his hands into the vat and stirs.
Despite the name of his shop and the words stencilled on his arm, Potter and his haggis are a long way from Scotland. The shop sits on a drizzly high street in the Wirral. Oh, and the tattoo was picked up during a Butlin’s holiday in Bognor Regis.
USA
2009 Democratic agenda severely weakened by Republicans’ united opposition
One year later Dealing with Congress
By Shailagh Murray, Michael D. Shear and Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, January 24, 2010
The breathless pace that President Obama set after taking office last January jolted lawmakers from the soporific haze of the final George W. Bush years, revving up dormant committees and lighting up phone lines with a frenzy of dealmaking.Wielding large Democratic majorities, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) relied on their expert vote-counting skills to send Obama 13 major bills and bring an overhaul of the nation’s health-care system to the brink of final passage. By Christmas Eve, when the Senate finally adjourned, lawmakers were exuberant, if exhausted.
Firms, trade group held fund GOP legislators’ retreat
Companies pressing an agenda in Sacramento, including oil and tobacco firms, funneled $120,000 to a group that covered much of the three-day event at a luxury resort in Santa Barbara.
By Patrick McGreevy
January 24, 2010
Reporting from Sacramento – When Republican state legislators decided last month that they needed to escape Sacramento and kick back in a more relaxed environment to hash out issues, they headed for a luxury beach resort in Santa Barbara.Such sojourns don’t come cheap, so oil and tobacco firms and other companies that are pressing an agenda in the Capitol funneled $120,000 to a group that picked up much of the tab. About 25 Republican senators and Assembly members and a dozen aides attended the retreat at Fess Parker’s Doubletree Resort.
Asia
Future of Okinawa base strains U.S.-Japanese alliance
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 24, 2010
GINOWAN, JAPAN — The people of Okinawa and the U.S. Marine Corps agree on at least one thing: The Futenma Marine air station is a noisy dinosaur that needs to move elsewhere — and soon.Smack in the middle of this densely packed city of 92,000 and taking up about a quarter of its land, the air base torments its neighbors with the howl of combat helicopters and the shudder of C-130 transport planes.”The noise is unbearable,” said Harumi Chinen, principal of Futenma No. 2 Elementary School, where about 780 children study in buildings next to the airfield. “A school should be very comforting and safe. That is not the case here.”
Glimmers of hope as Nato targets hearts and minds in Afghanistan
There is now a belief in Nato circles that a change in Taliban tactics means Afghanistan’s four-year spiral into violent anarchy might still be halted
Julian Borger
The Observer, Sunday 24 January 2010
Seven men wearing explosive vests drove into Kabul last week and showed how easy it is to bring a city of more than three million to a halt if you are prepared to die doing it.The burning buildings and prolonged gunfights with the army shattered the Afghan government’s always tenuous claims that it could protect its capital, or even its ministries. But there was another striking aspect of Monday’s attack that may have a longer-term significance. In all the mayhem caused by the four-hour battle – involving rocket-propelled grenades, a shoot-out in a shopping centre and the final detonation of their vests by the surviving insurgents – only five civilians were killed. That was a much smaller toll than the one caused by a similar, less ambitious, attack last February.
Europe
Iceland’s children paying for slump
Public health experts have noticed signs of family breakdown in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown that left most adults in serious debt
Ben Quinn, Reykjavik
The Observer, Sunday 24 January 2010
Dr Geir Gunnlaugsson, Iceland’s director of public health, has no doubt who was worst affected by the economic crisis that gripped the country 15 months ago – children.There has been a surge in reports to child protection agencies tasked with monitoring everything from maltreatment to mental health and who have been on the alert for problems in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
“We believe that there have been increasing strains in intra-familial relations – conflicts among parents for example, but also pressures on family budgets – and that this in turn impacts on the children,” said Gunnlaugsson.
La bolshie vita: Fury in the Fellini family
The late, great Italian film director’s niece resigns in high dudgeon from his foundation – taking four of his Oscars with her
By Andrew Johnson Sunday, 24 January 2010
Federico Fellini is one of the finest film directors the world has known. His works La Dolce Vita – with its famous scene filmed at the Trevi fountain in Rome – and 81/2, are often cited on lists of the greatest European films ever made, and ensured that Fellini was a regular guest at Oscar ceremonies.Now, as his home town of Rimini, in northern Italy, gears up to celebrate what would have been his 90th birthday this month – he died in 1993 – a furious row has broken out between the eponymous foundation in Rimini, which preserves his legacy, and his niece.
Middle East
PM on Mitchell meet: Interesting ideas raised on renewing talks
24/01/2010
By Barak Ravid and Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondents
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said that he was presented with several interesting ideas of how to restart peace talks with the Palestinians during his meeting with U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell.“The Palestinians must accept these ideas and I expressed hope that they will show a readiness to renew of the process,” Netanyahu said the start of the weekly cabinet meeting Sunday and after his meeting with Mitchell.
Mitchell was set to hold separate meetings with Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday, despite the appearance that his efforts to restart talks between the two sides have failed once again.
Africa
Bodies pulled from wells after mob rampage in Nigeria
Hundreds feared dead after Christian gangs armed with guns and machetes target Muslim villagers
By Shuaibu Mohammed in Jos, Nigeria Sunday, 24 January 2010
Mosque and government officials have pulled more bodies from wells and sewage pits in a village near the Nigerian city of Jos, victims of what the US-based Human Rights Watch said appeared to have been a targeted massacre.Four days of clashes between Christian and Muslim mobs, armed with guns, knives and machetes, resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people in Jos and surrounding communities last week before Vice President Goodluck Jonathan deployed the military to contain the violence.
Latin America
Venezuelan cable television channel taken off air
From Times Online
January 24, 2010
Anne Barrowclough
A Venezuelan cable television channel critical of President Hugo Chavez has been taken off the air after refusing to air footage of the president’s speeches.Radio Caracas Television, an anti-Chavez channel known as RCTV disappeared from TV sets shortly after midnight after the government cited noncompliance with new regulations requiring that Mr Chavez’s speeches be televised on cable as well as terrestrial television.
RCTV was dropped from cable and satellite programming just hours after Diosdado Cabello, the director of Venezuela’s state-run telecommunications agency, said several local channels carried by cable television had breached broadcasting laws and should be removed from the airwaves.