War on drugs: why the US and Latin America could be ready to end a fruitless 40-year struggle
Mexico’s president Felipe Caldéron is the latest Latin leader to call for a debate on drugs legalisation. And in the US, liberals and right-wing libertarians are pressing for an end to prohibition. Forty years after President Nixon launched the ‘war on drugs’ there is a growing momentum to abandon the fight
Rory Carroll and Paul Harris
The Observer, Sunday 8 August 2010
The birthday fiesta was in full swing at 1.30am when five SUVs pulled up outside the house. Figures spilled from the vehicles and ran towards the lights. They burst into the house and levelled AK-47s. “Kill them all!” A shouted instruction, only three words, and the slaughter began.Gunfire and screams drowned the music. Some victims were cut down immediately, others were caught as they tried to escape. By the time the killers left there were 17 corpses, 18 wounded and 200 shell casings. Among the dead was the birthday guest of honour, a man local media named only as Mota, Mexican slang for marijuana.
Jimi Hendrix: ‘You never told me he was that good’
On the the 40th anniversary of the great guitarist’s death, Ed Vulliamy speaks to the people who knew him best and unearths a funny, if driven, superstar
Ed Vulliamy
The Observer, Sunday 8 August 2010
On the morning of 21 September 1966, a Pan Am airliner from New York landed at Heathrow, carrying among its passengers a black American musician from a poor home. Barely known in his own country and a complete stranger to England, he had just flown first class for the first time in his life. His name was James Marshall Hendrix.On 18 September 1970, four years later, I picked up a copy of London’s Evening Standard on my way home from school, something I never usually did. There was a story of extreme urgency on the front page and a picture of Hendrix playing at a concert – still ringing in my ears – at the Isle of Wight festival, only 18 days earlier.
USA
Across Nation, Mosque Projects Meet Opposition
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: August 7, 2010
While a high-profile battle rages over a mosque near ground zero in Manhattan, heated confrontations have also broken out in communities across the country where mosques are proposed for far less hallowed locations.
In Murfreesboro, Tenn., Republican candidates have denounced plans for a large Muslim center proposed near a subdivision, and hundreds of protesters have turned out for a march and a county meeting.In late June, in Temecula, Calif., members of a local Tea Party group took dogs and picket signs to Friday prayers at a mosque that is seeking to build a new worship center on a vacant lot nearby.
Look at Macy’s: U.S. tax code encourages companies to rack up huge debt
By David Cho
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Macy’s has become the great American department store, with 850 locations scattered across all but four states. And it has gotten there the great American way, by running up huge debts and flirting with default, or worse.
Like other U.S. corporations, it also has had a uniquely American incentive for its borrowing habits: the nation’s tax laws.These rules offer extensive tax breaks to companies that borrow money and penalize those that raise cash in safer ways, such as issuing stock.
Europe
Pope acts against incest priest’s group
Immensely wealthy Catholic organisation, set up by controversial Mexican cleric and favoured by John Paul II, likely to be closed down
By Hugh O’Shaughnessy Sunday, 8 August 2010
The Legionaries of Christ, the Roman Catholic group that combines an estimated £21bn fortune with intense moral turpitude and extreme conservatism, is facing its nemesis this month. For years the organisation was protected by John Paul II, the Polish pope, and his former secretary Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, Archbishop of Krakow. Now the reputation of Father Marcial Maciel, a Mexican who founded the group in 1941 when he was studying for holy orders, is at last falling victim to the reforming drive of John Paul II’s German successor, Benedict XVI.Incestuous father of three – or perhaps six – children, serial paedophile, morphine addict, lover of la dolce vita, and pretend CIA agent, Maciel, who died in 2008, aged 87, built up a huge religious empire.
Michelle Obama chooses quiet dinner over celebrity gala
Michelle Obama chose a quiet dinner with friends over a star-studded charity gala on the last night of her holiday in Spain, disappointing guests who had hoped to meet her.
By Fiona Govan in Marbella
Published: 12:34AM BST 08 Aug 2010
Expectation had been high that the First Lady would be the special guest at Marbella’s event of the year – a celebrity charity dinner hosted by Hollywood stars Antonio Banderas and Eva Longoria.
Mrs Obama had been widely tipped to attend the event at the Villa Padierna, where she was spending a four day mini-break with her youngest daughter Sasha, nine, after she received a personal invitation from Ms Longoria, star of Desperate Housewives, who lent her support to Barack Obama during his presidential campaign.
Middle East
Robot to explore mysterious tunnels in Great Pyramid
For 4,500 years, no one has known what lies beyond two stone doors deep inside the monument
By Andrew Johnson Sunday, 8 August 2010
For 4,500 years, the Great Pyramid at Giza has enthralled, fascinated and ultimately frustrated everyone who has attempted to penetrate its secrets.Now a robotics team from Leeds University, working with Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, is preparing a machine which they hope will solve one of its enduring mysteries.
The pyramid, known as the Pyramid of Khufu after the king who built it around 2,560BC, is the only wonder of the ancient world still standing. At its heart are two rooms known as the King’s Chamber and the Queen’s Chamber.
Iran Expatriates Get Chilly Reception
By WILLIAM YONG and ROBERT F. WORTH
Published: August 7, 2010
TEHRAN – Over the past year, conservatives here have often fulminated against the role played by Iranian exiles, who helped organize protests against the disputed 2009 presidential election across the globe. But last week, the Iranian government paid for several hundred “highly placed” Iranians living abroad to come back for a three-day, all-expenses-paid trip. They were invited as part of a high-profile effort to repair Iran’s pariah image, win over some of the expatriates and, not least, draw some much-needed foreign capital to Iran’s troubled economy.
Asia
Millions in despair as Pakistan floods spread
Downpours are preventing helicopters from rescuing stranded people and delivering badly needed food and clean water
By Nina Lakhani and David Randall Sunday, 8 August 2010
More rain fell yesterday upon a Pakistan already inundated with floods, prompting the displacement of untold numbers of villagers and the despair of millions more. The United Nations said the disaster was, in terms of damage caused and the people in need, now “on a par” with the 2005 Kashmir earthquake which killed 73,000. Even heavier deluges are forecast for coming days.Downpours Friday and early yesterday again swelled rivers and streams, and heavy rains in Afghanistan are expected to make things even worse over the next 36 hours, as the bloated Kabul River surges into Pakistan’s north west.
Afghanistan war: Deadly ambush of medical mission roils one of safest provinces
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the ambush of a medical mission that killed six Americans, one Briton, one German, and two Afghans. The attack highlights the difficulty of limiting the reach of insurgent activity in the Afghanistan war.
By Ben Arnoldy, Staff Writer / August 7, 2010
New Delhi
In one of Afghanistan’s safest provinces, 10 members of a medical mission – including six Americans – were killed by militants. The attack highlights the trouble coalition forces have had containing the reach of insurgent activity in the Afghanistan war.
The six Americans, one Briton, one German, and three Afghans, were returning from a two-week mission providing eye treatment in Nuristan Province. All were found shot in Badakhshan Province except for one of the Afghans, who escaped.Some reports suggested the attack might stem from criminal activity, but a Taliban spokesman claimed the killings, telling the Associated Press that the group was “spying for the Americans” and “preaching Christianity.” The group, International Assistance Mission (IAM), is a Christian organization, but on its website the group says it does not use aid to further a religious view.
Africa
Kenya: clouds of doubt overshadow constitutional new dawn
When President Mwai Kibaki exits in 2012, it will be in a changed political landscape marked by worries over a reshaped executive, limits on landholdings and abortion rights
Alex Kiprotich
The Observer, Sunday 8 August 2010
With Kenyans overwhelmingly voting to adopt a new constitution, the country is optimistic about a new dawn, just as it was in 2002 when the victory of the National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) party ended 24 years of President Daniel arap Moi’s rule.According to the results released by Kenya’s Interim Independent Electoral Commission, the yes vote won by 6.09 million votes against 2.8 million, a victory for President Mwai Kibaki and the prime minister, Raila Odinga.
Why the hero of Hotel Rwanda fears for his people
As Rwandans prepare to vote in their presidential elections, many are questioning the rule of incumbent President Paul Kagame.
By Mike Pflanz in Nairobi, Hereward Holland in Kigali, Colin Freeman and Alex Hannaford
Published: 8:00AM BST 08 Aug 2010
If, as he fears, Rwanda returns to the bloodshed of its past, Paul Rusesabagina and his wine cellar will no longer be coming to the rescue.
The former manager of the Hotel des Milles Collines, he famously sheltered more than 1,200 Tutsi refugees during the 1994 genocide, persuading local militiamen to turn a blind eye by plying them with best Burgundy.
But 16 years after the slaughter that killed 800,000 people, the man whose quiet tact inspired the Oscar-nominated film Hotel Rwanda has abandoned the role of diplomatic maitre d’. Instead, he is an outspoken critic of the other Rwandan hailed as a hero in the West – President Paul Kagame, the shoo-in favourite to be returned to power in tomorrow’s elections.
Latin America
Mexico drug cartels thrive despite Calderon’s offensive
Nearly four years after President Felipe Calderon launched a military-led crackdown, the cartels are smuggling more narcotics into the U.S., amassing bigger fortunes and extending dominion at home.
By Tracy Wilkinson and Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times
August 7, 2010|8:47 p.m.
Reporting from Mexico City – Nearly four years after President Felipe Calderon launched a military-led crackdown against drug traffickers, the cartels are smuggling more narcotics into the United States, amassing bigger fortunes and extending their dominion at home with such savagery that swaths of Mexico are now in effect without authority.The groups also are expanding their ambitions far beyond the drug trade, transforming themselves into broad criminal empires deeply involved in migrant smuggling, extortion, kidnapping and trafficking in contraband such as pirated DVDs.