Blackwater Iraq allegations prompt US review
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates is to review allegations of misconduct in Afghanistan by the security company formerly known as Blackwater.
The BBC Saturday, 6 March 2010
The review comes a day after a leading Democrat said the Pentagon should consider barring it from applying for a contract to train Afghan police.
The Pentagon said it could not bar the company from applying for the billion-dollar police training contract.
A spokesman for company, now called Xe, said it welcomed the review.
A spokesman for the company, Mark Corallo, said Xe has an excellent record of training security personnel in Afghanistan.
However, in a letter to Mr Gates at the end of February, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin cited allegations of misconduct against the firm made before the committee.
Women on the Verge
How good are the Academy Awards at discovering new talent?
By Ramin Setoodeh | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Hollywood might be a boy’s club, but the Oscars are all about the girls. When it comes to nominating the best performances of the year, there’s always a strange gender imbalance. Young, hunky actors (Christian Bale, Joseph Fiennes, Colin Farrell, James Franco, even Leonardo DiCaprio for Titanic) never seem to make the final cut. But when it comes to ingenues, it’s a different story. This year, two of the best-actress nominees played teenagers: Carey Mulligan (An Education) and Gabourey Sidibe (Precious). Both actresses are only in their 20s, which means one of two things. They’re either about to be superstars-or we’ll never hear from them again. The Academy has a mixed track record for recognizing young talent. Here’s a look back:
USA
Massa resigns; Democrats’ ethical lapses could threaten hold on power
By Perry Bacon Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Congressional Democrats reclaimed control of Congress in 2006 by pledging to “drain the swamp” after Republican ethics scandals rocked Capitol Hill. Now, a series of controversies involving Democratic members has robbed the party of its claim to hold the higher moral ground — and could threaten its hold on power in this fall’s elections.The announcement Friday by Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) that he will resign amid allegations that he sexually harassed a male staffer capped a week of near-daily ethical distractions for a party struggling to pass heath-care reform legislation.
Truck drivers raging on the road
They exchange insults and threats over CB radio, and sometimes pull over to settle the score. One such encounter in the Chicago area left a trucker dead and another charged with murder.
By Dan Simmons
March 5, 2010 | 8:50 p.m.
Reporting from Chicago – For about 11 miles, the two truckers dueled recklessly down Chicago-area expressways, swerving in front of each other and riding each other’s bumpers.Then one of them barked into his CB radio: “Let’s do it!”
With that, they pulled over and began a fistfight that ended when one allegedly plunged a buck knife into the other three times. David Seddon of Racine, Wis., has been charged with first-degree murder.
Several truckers said they didn’t find the Jan. 15 incident surprising.
Europe
Germany’s new wunderkind: the world’s smallest baby boy
Jo Adetunji
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 6 March 2010
The survival of the world’s smallest baby boy has been hailed as a medical miracle after he was prematurely born weighing only 275g (9.7oz) – lighter than a can of Coke.The baby boy, who was born in Göttingen hospital, Germany, last June, was born at 25 weeks old and was kept in an incubator for weeks before being allowed to go home with his parents in December.
A picture of the baby, just 27cm long at birth, with glassy skin and attached to the tubes keeping him alive, has been released by the hospital only now because doctors are confident he is strong enough to survive.
A spokesperson for the hospital said that doctors were confident the child would lead a normal, healthy life. He added: “The danger has passed.
Viktor Yanukovych gives Russia a chance to keep Black Sea Fleet in Crimea
From The Times
March 6, 2010
Tony Halpin Moscow
Ukraine’s new pro-Russian President offered the Kremlin a chance to retain a base for its Black Sea Fleet on his first visit to Moscow yesterday.Viktor Yanukovych suggested that the fleet could stay in Crimea beyond 2017, when a 20-year lease is due to expire, overturning former President Yushchenko’s policy of ordering the Russians to leave. The fate of the fleet at the port of Sevastopol was a key issue in talks with President Medvedev at the Kremlin, as Mr Yanukovych sought to repair ties that were all but severed under his pro-Western predecessor.
“Very soon we will have an answer to this question that will satisfy both Ukraine and Russia,” Mr Yanukovych told a joint press conference.
Middle East
Fiercely fought campaign ends with Iraq’s divisions deeper
No matter who wins Sunday’s election, months of rancorous talks loom over who is to be the next prime minister
By Patrick Cockburn Saturday, 6 March 2010
Iraqis go to the polls tomorrow in an election which has led to increased tensions between the country’s three main communities after a fierce campaign in which some candidates were banned as former supporters of Saddam Hussein’s party.Iraqis who are among the two million refugees in Syria and Jordan started voting yesterday, and in Baghdad the security forces will try to prevent suicide bombers penetrating their checkpoints. Twelve people were killed by bombs in Baghdad on Thursday and 33 in Baquba, the capital of Diyala province north-east of the capital, on Wednesday.
Azerbaijan president’s son, 12, ‘buys £30m worth of luxury Dubai property’
The 12-year-old son of the Azerbaijan president has gone on a multi-million pound property spending spree, buying up a series of luxury Dubai waterfront mansions.
By Andrew Hough
Heydar Aliyev, the son of Ilham Aliyev, the oil-rich country’s president, allegedly spent almost £30 million (US$44 million) on nine waterfront mansions in the southern Gulf emirate earlier this year, reports said.
The boy, who was 11 at the time, made the purchase in the Palm Jumeirah development over two weeks, the Washington Post reported on Friday.Heydar’s name and his date of birth appeared on Dubai Land Department records, which were obtained by the paper.
The details listed on the property records were the same as those of the son of the former Soviet Republic’s president, whose annual salary is about £150,000 ($228,000).
Asia
Japan’s hate-filled top web forum
Japan’s biggest internet forum, where anonymous netizens trade anything from cooking tips to death threats, has long been an anarchic zone of uninhibited free speech and a magnet for controversy.
By Hiroshi Hiyama, in Tokyo for AFP
This week the raw commentary on 2channel – which with 10 million visits a month is one of the world’s largest online bulletin boards – saw tempers flare.
A massive hacker attack from South Korea crippled the site in retaliation for users’ online slights against Kim Yu-Na, the Olympic skater, after she beat Japanese rival Mao Asada to take gold at the Vancouver Winter Games.
The site was attacked on Monday, the anniversary of a 1919 uprising in Korea against Japanese colonial rule, and shut down for two days.
Japanese web users counter-attacked by bombarding South Korean sites, including that of the presidential office, according to South Korea’s JoongAng Daily, which called the tit-for-tat flaming “infantile”.
Wen plugs concerns over stimulus exit
China Business
By Olivia Chung Mar 6, 2010
HONG KONG – Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao used the annual gathering of the National People’s Congress (NPC) on Friday to ease concerns that the central government is poised for an early unwinding of its economic stimulus support, and pledged that sustainable economic growth will be maintained.He also outlined measures aimed at boosting domestic spending and reducing the income gap between urban and rural ares, from increasing support for agriculture to relaxing controls over movement by workers from the countryside to cities.
Africa
Rebels with a grudge and the anatomy of a damning smear
The BBC’s claim this week that $95m of aid to Ethiopia had in fact been spent on weapons was incendiary, threatening to undermine future aid efforts. But, says Paul Vallely, it does not stand up to scrutiny
Saturday, 6 March 2010
Live Aid millions spent on arms,” headlines have said all over the world in the past few days after a year-long BBC investigation announced it had found evidence that millions of dollars earmarked for victims of the Ethiopian famine of 1984-85 went to buy weapons.It was, on the face of it, a highly damaging story which could undermine the extraordinary generosity of the public to give to the appeals launched whenever a major disaster strikes, as it has in Chile and Haiti in recent weeks. But examine the BBC report and it slips like sand through the fingers. What follows is the anatomy of a slur.
Latin America
Fear and anger in Chilean town devasted by forces of nature
From The Times
March 6, 2010
Dom Phillips, Dichato
The picturesque fishing village of Dichato was once popular with tourists of modest means who stayed in wooden chalets: Chile’s Clacton-on-Sea. Now it is a destruction zone, flattened by last Saturday’s earthquake and the three tsunamis that followed. Barely anything is recognisable of the restaurants that lined the beach.The town centre is a pile of broken wood. Debris is piled up along the main streets outside the handful of gutted houses that survive. Dichato is where the earthquake wreaked its worst havoc in the whole of Chile.