U.S.-Afghan tensions threaten to undermine war against Taliban
By Dion Nissenbaum, Warren P. Strobel and Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers
KABUL, Afghanistan – As Afghan President Hamid Karzai was poised to begin his second term after a fraud-scarred re-election campaign last fall, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton led an American delegation to Kabul where she hailed Karzai for opening “a window of opportunity” for a new cooperative era at a critical time.That window appears to be closing quickly.
Relations between Karzai and the Obama administration soured dramatically this week, and the tensions threaten to interfere with the U.S.-led effort to take key Afghan cities back from the Taliban, hand them over to the Afghan government and begin withdrawing American troops by July 2011.
Lasting lessons of a teacher who delivered
Jaime Escalante’s former students reflect on what they learned — not just about math, but about life.
By Sandy Banks
April 3, 2010
High expectations.That’s been the shorthand explanation for the accomplishments of Garfield High math teacher Jaime Escalante, whose death on Tuesday prompted tributes from Washington, D.C., to East Los Angeles.
Escalante was lionized in the 1987 movie “Stand and Deliver” for turning barrio kids into calculus whizzes by stressing hard work and high standards.
But could it really be as simple as that?
I went to Escalante’s former students to find out what his legacy tells us.
USA
Airline Screening Plan Wins Tentative Praise
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: April 2, 2010WASHINGTON – Aviation security experts and industry officials said Friday that new screening protocols for air passengers coming to the United States were a marked improvement over an emergency plan that has required extra screening of every passenger from 14 countries since the attempted bombing of an airliner on Christmas Day.
They said that the new system promised to bring more complete and timely threat information to bear on decisions about who should be prevented from boarding an airliner.But they also said that the impact of the changes on both the safety and convenience of air travel would not be evident for months.
Colorado mom arrested in ‘JihadJane’ terror case
Jamie Paulin-Ramirez had been held and released in Ireland and was arrested when she returned to the U.S. Officials say she went to Europe with her young son to attend a training camp with ‘JihadJane.
By Nicholas Riccardi
April 2, 2010 | 8:49 p.m.
Reporting from Denver – A Colorado mother whose family said she flew to Ireland last year to join a possibly violent Islamic group was charged Friday with working with a Pennsylvania woman to attend a terrorist training camp in Europe.Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, 31, had been arrested in Ireland last month with six others on suspicion of planning to assassinate Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, whose drawing of the prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog outraged many Muslims. Paulin-Ramirez, from Leadville, Colo, was later released by Irish authorities.
Europe
Ready for your close-up, Nénette?
The director of ‘Etre et Avoir’ has chosen the oldest inhabitant of the oldest zoo in the world as the star of his new film. John Lichfield reports
Saturday, 3 April 2010
France’s newest female movie star is having a bad hair day. She is lying on her back, quite naked, playing with her toes. Her long red hair is covered with scraps of straw. She stares primly at her visitors and then, with a morose, bored expression – worthy of a Hollywood celeb – looks away.Meet Nénette, 40, the oldest inhabitant of the oldest zoo in the world. The female orang-utan, long a favourite of generations of Parisian schoolchildren, plays the undisputed leading role in a new film by France’s most successful documentary-maker, Nicolas Philibert.
Outrage at anti-Semitism comparison by Pope preacher
Jewish groups and victims of sex abuse by Catholic priests have condemned the Pope’s preacher for comparing criticism of the pontiff to anti-Semitism.
The BBC Saturday, 3 April 2010
US-based abuse victims’ group Snap said the remarks were “morally wrong”.
The head of Germany’s Central Council of Jews described the Easter sermon as unprecedented “insolence”.
The Catholic Church has been rocked by a wave of sex abuse scandals this year. The Vatican said Raniero Cantalamessa’s did not represent its official view.
Drawing such parallels could “lead to misunderstandings”, spokesman Rev Federico Lombardi told the Associated Press.
‘Repulsive and offensive’
However, Fr Cantalamessa’s sermon was printed in full on the front page of the Vatican’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.
Middle East
Israel arrests soldier Anat Kam over targeted-killings ‘leak’
From The Times
April 3, 2010
James Hider, Jerusalem
Israel has placed a former soldier under house arrest for allegedly leaking details of a controversial policy to kill wanted Palestinian militants, and has slapped a gagging order on the national media to prevent it from covering the story, according to sources in the Jewish state and abroad.The moves are being challenged by the media in a country that prides itself on its freedom of speech. An appeal is expected to be lodged this month by a television news channel and by the centre-left newspaper Haaretz, while the mass-market daily Maariv has satirised both the gag and the lack of media defiance by declaring: “Due to a gag order we cannot tell you what we know. Due to laziness, apathy and blind faith in the defence establishment we know nothing at all.”
Nasa technology used on Mars ‘could prevent water wars on Earth’
Nasa technology used on Mars to find underground ice could be used to search for water hidden throughout the world’s deserts, a UN conference has heard.
By Andrew Hough
Published: 8:00AM BST 03 Apr 2010
Equipment used by the space agency’s probes could eventually be used to stop the world plunging into conflict and war, Nasa scientists claimed.
The probe, launched in 2007, discovered that desert which covers Mars sat on enough frozen water to submerge the Red Planet.
It used equipment, dubbed Marsis, that consisted of a radar sounder with a 131 ft (40 m) antenna fitted to an orbiter that was then able to bounce radio waves 2.3 miles (3.7km) beath the surface of Mars.
As a result that same radar technology should be used in the vast deserts of the Middle East and North Africa, said Essam Heggy, a planetary scientist.
Asia
The Struggle for Tibet by Wang Lixiong and Tsering Shakya
John Gittings welcomes two books that articulate China’s internal debates
John Gittings
The Guardian, Saturday 3 April 2010
Few will have heard of Tibet’s Joan of Arc, the young Trinley Chodron, who believed that a bird sent by the Dalai Lama had given her magic powers and led a troop of “warrior-heroes” against the Chinese. Chodron was executed in 1969 during the cultural revolution.
And before reading The Struggle for Tibet I, too, was unaware of the Tibetan monks who, more recently, were ordered to write down that the Dalai Lama “is the biggest obstacle to Tibetan Buddhism”. By adding a barely visible dot to the script, they were able to convert “is” to “is not”. Nor did I know that many educated Tibetans can only communicate in Chinese with Tibetan exiles they meet when travelling abroad, because their grasp of their own language is so poor.
The Kandahar warlord who has presidential protection
In the first in a series of reports from southern Afghanistan, Julius Cavendish investigates Ahmed Wali Karzai – terrorist, and half-brother of the country’s leader
Saturday, 3 April 2010
To the inhabitants of Kandahar City, Ahmed Wali Karzai is a symbol of everything wrong with their home, an emblem of the murky nexus of warlords and criminal syndicates controlling southern Afghanistan’s largest city.In the words of some residents, the half-brother of Afghanistan’s president is accused of being a “warlord, a terrorist”, a narcotics trafficker, and a contract monopolist. Others won’t even mention his name. “I can’t tell you anything about this. I’m too scared. Someone might kill me,” one resident said.
Africa
Nollywood success puts Nigeria’s film industry in regional spotlight
From The Times
April 3, 2010
onathan Clayton, on location at Ijora Olopa lagoon, Lagos
“Cut,” shouted the director, Jeta Amata. “Oh, that was perfect. You see, man, that’s what happens when you shoot in Lagos – everything’s here. You just hang around, and it comes to you,” he told The Times with a grin.One of Nigeria’s top film-makers, accompanied by his crew and an armed police escort, Amata had barely arrived at this encampment of stilted shacks and wooden huts beside one of Lagos’s filthy lagoons when three young boys fishing from a canoe drifted by.
Senegal to inaugurate controversial $27m monument
Senegal is set to inaugurate a massive $27m (£18m) monument – higher than the Statue of Liberty – that has drawn huge criticism over its cost and symbolism.
The BBC Saturday, 3 April 2010
The 49m (160ft) Monument of African Renaissance will be unveiled in Dakar as the highlight of the nation’s 50th anniversary of independence.
Some scholars have called its scantily-clad figures un-Islamic while others have condemned the huge cost.
Supporters say it represents Africa’s rise from “intolerance and racism”.
The bronze statue, the brainchild of President Abdoulaye Wade, depicts three figures – a man holding a woman behind him and a child aloft, pointing out to sea.
‘Monument of shame’
About 30 heads of state are set to attend the inauguration on Saturday, along with the US civil rights activist, Jesse Jackson.
However, some Muslim scholars have called the monument idolatrous.