Katrina’s poisoned legacy
Five years on from the floods that devastated New Orleans and fatally damaged the Bush presidency, the waters have gone, but many of the wounds remain.
By Philip Sherwell in New Orleans
Published: 8:00AM BST 22 Aug 2010
To the roar of the faithful, the New Orleans Saints ran out at the Superdome stadium for their first home game since the perpetual under-achievers claimed American football’s top prize this year.
For the long-suffering fans of a team popularly known as “the Aints” during the lean decades, their crowning as Superbowl champions for the first time was reason enough to celebrate.
But as New Orleans prepares for Sunday’s fifth anniversary of the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina, it is just as important for the soul of the city that the Superdome has finally shed its status as a grim reminder of that spectacle of human suffering and despair.
Pirate radio tries to beat repression in paradise
Fiji’s democratic opposition hopes to evade military leader’s draconian censorship
By Roger Maynard Sunday, 22 August 2010
This is a story about repression in what many people would think of as some kind of paradise.In a move inspired by pirate radio stations of the 1960s, political activists in the South Pacific are planning to position a Dutch-registered merchant vessel in international waters off the coast of Fiji to defy censors in the military dictatorship.
Opponents of the coup leader and self-appointed Prime Minister, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, hope to have the station broadcasting news and interviews by the end of next month in an effort to circumvent draconian media laws imposed on the island state’s press, radio and television.
USA
In Striking Shift, Small Investors Flee Stock Market
By GRAHAM BOWLEY
Published: August 21, 2010
Renewed economic uncertainty is testing Americans’ generation-long love affair with the stock market.
Investors withdrew a staggering $33.12 billion from domestic stock market mutual funds in the first seven months of this year, according to the Investment Company Institute, the mutual fund industry trade group. Now many are choosing investments they deem safer, like bonds.If that pace continues, more money will be pulled out of these mutual funds in 2010 than in any year since the 1980s, with the exception of 2008, when the global financial crisis peaked.
Before salmonella outbreak, egg firm had long record of violations
By Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 22, 2010
The Iowa egg producer that federal officials say is at the center of a salmonella outbreak and recalls of more than a half-billion eggs has repeatedly paid fines and settled complaints over health and safety violations and allegations ranging from maintaining a “sexually hostile work environment” to abusing the hens that lay the eggs.
In the past 20 years, according to the public record, the DeCoster family operation, one of the 10 largest egg producers in the country, has withstood a string of reprimands, penalties and complaints about its performance in several states.
Europe
Irish terror groups target Conservative party conference in Birmingham
• Republican dissidents see attack as ‘top prize’ on hit list
• Tory MP Patrick Mercer says threat to mainland is ‘worrying’
Mark Townsend and Toby Helm
The Observer, Sunday 22 August 2010
Irish republican dissident groups are targeting the Conservative party conference this autumn, raising fears of a repeat of the 1984 Brighton attack that nearly killed the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher.Sources in Northern Ireland said that the October conference in central Birmingham had emerged as the prize target on a hit list drawn up by resurgent republican paramilitaries. Patrick Mercer, ex-chairman of the Commons subcommittee on counter-terrorism, said former senior police and army intelligence officers had informed him that dissident splinter groups had discussed targeting David Cameron’s first conference as prime minister.
Russia kills suspected mastermind of Moscow Metro disaster
Russia says its security forces have killed Magomedali Vagabov, a top militant thought to have been behind the attacks on the Moscow Metro, which killed 40 people in March.
The Islamist militant suspected of being the mastermind behind two suicide attacks on the Moscow subway in March has been killed during a clash with police in the Caucasus region of Dagestan, according to Russia’s national anti-terror committee.Magomedali Vagabov, whom Russia describes as the number-two figure after Doku Umarov in the Islamist insurgency that is plaguing the Russian Northern Caucasus, was killed in the city of Gunib in the mountains of Dagestan, along with four other militants.
“Vagabov was the organizer of the suicide bombings on the Moscow Metro, was actively involved in recruiting youth for the underground and organized the training for the suicide bombers,” the committee said in a statement.
Middle East
Israeli army’s female recruits denounce treatment of Palestinians
Facebook images of an Israeli servicewoman posing with blindfolded Palestinians have caused a storm. Now two former female conscripts have spoken out about their own experiences
Harriet Sherwood
The Observer, Sunday 22 August 2010
It was a single word scrawled on a wall at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem that unlocked something deep inside Inbar Michelzon, two years after she had completed compulsory military service in the Israeli Defence Force.The word was “occupation”. “I really felt like someone was speaking the unspoken,” she recalled last week in a Tel Aviv cafe. “It was really shocking to me. There was graffiti saying, ‘end the occupation’. And I felt like, OK, now I can talk about what I saw.”
As Mission Shifts in Iraq, Risks Linger for Obama
NEWS ANALYSIS
By PETER BAKER
Published: August 21, 2010
WASHINGTON – The official end of America’s combat mission in Iraq next week will fulfill the campaign promise that helped vault President Obama to the White House, but it also presents profound risks as he seeks to claim credit without issuing a premature declaration of victory.As columns of vehicles crossed the border and troops arrived to happy homecomings last week, Mr. Obama released a restrained written statement and made a one-sentence reference at a pair of fund-raisers.
Asia
Debts pushing Pakistan to the brink of ruin
The flooding crisis has weakened an economy already struggling to cope with its heavy financial burden. Omar Waraich reports from Islamabad
Sunday, 22 August 2010
Pakistan’s already creaky economy has been pushed to the verge of ruin by the devastating floods of the past month.With foreign aid only now beginning to trickle in, the impoverished country has been forced to take out further loans while pleading for outstanding ones to be restructured.
Already burdened by heavy debt, the country’s economy has suffered a major setback. Funds will have to be poured into reconstruction efforts while many sectors of the economy, especially agriculture, will suffer losses for up to several months, if not years. So far, the floods have covered a fifth of the country, cost at least 1,600 lives, displaced 4.6 million people, destroyed roads, bridges and schools, damaged power stations and dams, and swamped millions of acres of agricultural land.
Japan and India in nuclear co-operation talks
The BBC 22 August 2010The Indian and Japanese foreign ministers have held talks on a civil nuclear co-operation agreement.
The Japanese minister, Katsuya Okada, said the decision to start negotiations had been one of the toughest he had ever had to make.
Speaking at a news conference in Delhi, he said that if India conducted nuclear tests Japan would suspend cooperation.
Japan has been hesitant to sign a deal because India is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Mr Okada was holding talks with his counterpart, S M Krishna, during the two-day state visit, an Indian foreign ministry statement said.
Africa
Somali fighters killed in blasts
SUNDAY, AUGUST 22, 2010
Ten Somali anti-government fighters have been killed by their own bombs after the devices they were preparing went off prematurely in the capital, Mogadishu, the government says.The mostly foreign fighters died in two separate incidents, 10 while preparing a car bomb and another as he planted a roadside bomb, the information ministry said on Saturday.
“They are three Pakistanis, two Indians, one Afghani, one Algerian, and two Somalis, [and] a leader who was in charge of praying for suicide bombers before they were dispatched,” the ministry said in a statement.