Web produces new generation of China activists
Community of tech-savvy users are unafraid to challenge the government
By Anita Chang Associated Press
BEIJING – Lin Xiuying believes her daughter bled to death after being gang-raped two years ago by a group of thugs that had ties to the police in their southern Chinese town.For more than a year, the illiterate mother appealed to various government departments in Fujian province’s Mingqin county, pleading for someone to take a closer look at the death of 25-year-old Yan Xiaoling that police blamed on an ectopic pregnancy.
Lin, 50, was sobbing outside a government office last summer when she met self-taught legal expert Fan Yanqiong.
Separating fact from fiction in Iraq war films
The Times’ former foreign editor assesses ‘Green Zone,’ ‘The Ghost Writer’ and ‘The Hurt Locker.’
By Marjorie Miller
March 20, 2010
Familiarity is not necessarily the friend of the Iraq moviegoer.As The Times’ foreign editor from 2002-08, I visited Baghdad before and after the U.S. invasion, then followed the occupation and sectarian war for nearly six years. In short, I am a journalist and I know the story. So while I understand that filmmakers marry truth to fiction, and that “Green Zone,” “The Ghost Writer” and “The Hurt Locker” are entertainment above all, I can’t help but worry that cinema’s altered reality will be taken as fact, which it most certainly is not. I instinctively scrutinize the films for accuracy, enjoying a sense of deja vu in the moments they get right, and cringing at the distortions when they don’t.
USA
Acorn on Brink of Bankruptcy, Officials Say
By IAN URBINA
Published: March 19, 2010
BALTIMORE – The community organizing group Acorn, battered politically from the right and suffering from mismanagement along with a severe loss of government and other funds, is on the verge of filing for bankruptcy, officials of the group said Friday.
Acorn is holding a teleconference this weekend to discuss plans for a bankruptcy filing, two officials of the group said. They asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the news media.Over the last six months, at least 15 of the group’s 30 state chapters have disbanded and have no plans of re-forming, Acorn officials said.
North Dakota residents on tenterhooks, eyeing Red River’s rise
Associated Press
Saturday, March 20, 2010
FARGO, N.D. — A year ago, weather forecasters changed late in the game their estimate of just how high the Red River would rise. That stoked an 11th-hour sandbagging flurry here that proved unnecessary: The new prediction was wrong.Now, as the Red swells again toward an expected crest Sunday, tens of thousands of Fargo residents are weighing the latest National Weather Service forecasts, well aware that predicting what happens on the river is anything but an exact science.
Europe
The Norway town that forgave and forgot its child killers
n 1994, in Trondheim, five-year-old Silje Redergard was beaten to death by two little boys. Today, the girl’s family still suffers and one of the boys is in trouble again – the echoes of the Bulger case are clear. So why has the public reaction in Norway been so startlingly different?
Erwin James and Ian MacDougall
The Guardian, Saturday 20 March 2010
On the afternoon of 15 October 1994, three young children, a girl aged five, and two six-year-old boys, were playing on a football field covered in freshly fallen snow. Their parents were neighbours who did not know each other, but the children had played together before. The three had been making “snow castles”, until the fun stopped. Nobody knows why. A childish disagreement? A tantrum, perhaps? Whatever it was it triggered a reaction in the boys that devastated a family and the community. At some point while playing, the boys turned on the little girl, punching and kicking her and beating her with stones before stripping off her clothes. Then they ran away, leaving her to die in the snow.
‘I was a victim of abuse. This is what the Pope must do to stop it’
By Colm O’Gorman Saturday, 20 March 2010
It was not being raped by a priest at the age of 14 that shattered my faith; it was the horrifying realisation that the Catholic Church had wilfully, knowingly abandoned me to it, the knowledge that they had ordained the priest who abused me despite knowing he was a paedophile and set him free to abuse with near impunity, ignoring all complaints.And so it is difficult not to be cynical about the likely merit of the pastoral letter that Pope Benedict XVI will publish today.
For a start the letter is intended for the “Irish faithful”. The Pope will write not to those who have left or fled his Church traumatised or outraged by acts of depravity and cover-up, but to those who somehow hold faith despite it.
Middle East
Netanyahu heads to US as settlement row rumbles on
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem Saturday, 20 March 2010
The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is expected to meet top US administration figures in Washington next week after sharp international condemnation yesterday of his government’s most recent plans to expand a Jewish settlement.Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said Mr Netanyahu had offered the US “useful and productive” proposals to defuse one of the most serious diplomatic rows between the two countries in decades.
In tight Iraq parliament vote, upsets point to future battles
By Mohammed al Dulaimy and Hannah Allam | McClatchy Newspapers
BAGHDAD, Iraq – The count in the Iraqi elections isn’t yet over, but tallies released this week reveal upsets in restive provinces that portend a weak and fractious Iraq with battles looming on several fronts: Arab-Kurd rivalries, an internecine Shiite Muslim power struggle and what role Sunni Arabs will play in the next government.Iraq’s election commission, under heavy criticism for a tortuous ballot-counting process, now has about 92 percent of votes recorded from the March 7 parliamentary election, the landmark poll that Iraqi and U.S. officials considered a gauge for the kind of nation American forces will leave behind next year.
Asia
Arabs throw in their lot with ‘global terrorists’ in war against the infidel
From The Times
March 20, 2010
Anthony Loyd in Peshawar
They have been attacked from the air by American drones and on the ground by the Pakistan Army. Hundreds have been killed or injured on the battlefields of Afghanistan – but the foreign fighters, or “global terrorists” of the North West Frontier Province, remain a formidable presence.First-hand accounts from locals in the lawless areas of Pakistan close to the Afghan border, combined with those of Pakistani officers in the region, suggest that there is no shortage of Islamic foreigners willing to join the fray. Britain claims that these fighters are still the source of 75 per cent of terror plots against it.
Former captive’s silence speaks volumes
Mar 20, 2010
By Donald Kirk
What really happened to missionary Robert Park during the 43 days in which he was held in North Korea before disavowing all his criticism of the regime and flying on to Beijing?Park’s non-appearance at news conferences is revealing in itself. The less he talks, the more intense is the sense that he suffered abuse after crossing the Tumen River from China on Christmas Eve with a message demanding Dear Leader Kim Jong-il close the gulag system in which tens of thousands of prisoners are held, tortured and often executed.
Africa
Minister: Sierre Leone rattled by disaster hoax
Report that 200 killed in mining accident is false, he says
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI Associated Press
DAKAR, Senegal – A top official in Sierre Leone’s government said he raced to a town in the country Friday after news reports said at least 200 people had been killed in a mining accident there, only to find out it was a hoax.Minister of Mineral Resources Alpha Kanu said that when he, dozens of police officers, soldiers and firefighters arrived in the quiet African mining town, they found miners at rest and preparing for customary Friday prayers.
Latin America
I am infected by the peace virus, says President Lula as he seeks UN job
From The Times
March 20, 2010
Dom Phillips in São Paulo, James Bone in New York
President Lula Da Silva of Brazil, who joked recently that he was “infected by the peace virus”, is considering an attempt at becoming the next UN Secretary-General.Diplomats say that Mr Lula Da Silva, who must leave office in January, may seek the world’s top diplomatic post when Ban Ki Moon’s first term expires at the end of 2011. The idea is understood to have been first floated by President Sarkozy at the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh in September.
Veja, a Brazilian magazine, reported that “more than one person” had sounded out Mr Lula Da Silva out for the job.