In earthquake-ravaged Haiti, daunting challenges hobble relief efforts
By Mary Beth Sheridan, Michael E. Ruane and Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, January 16, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI — The United States and other countries rushed more emergency stocks of aid and supplies to Haiti on Friday in an intensifying effort to resuscitate the earthquake-ravaged nation from a state of collapse.
Like doctors working on a dying patient, foreign governments labored to establish a kind of life- support system that would bring Haiti back after the 7.0-magnitude quake that struck Tuesday.
Patrick Cockburn: The US is failing Haiti – again
There is nobody to co-ordinate the most rudimentary relief and rescue efforts
Saturday, 16 January 2010
The US-run aid effort for Haiti is beginning to look chillingly similar to the criminally slow and disorganised US government support for New Orleans after it was devastated by hurricane Katrina in 2005.Five years ago President Bush was famously mute and detached when the levees broke in Louisiana. By way of contrast, President Obama was promising Haitians that everything would be done for survivors within hours of the calamity.
The rhetoric from Washington has been very different during these two disasters, but the outcome may be much the same. In both cases very little aid arrived at the time it was most needed and, in the case of Port-au-Prince, when people trapped under collapsed buildings were still alive. When foreign rescue teams with heavy lifting gear does come it will be too late. No wonder enraged Haitians are building roadblocks out of rocks and dead bodies.
USA
A Gangland Bus Tour, With Lunch and a Waiver
LOS ANGELES JOURNAL
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Published: January 15, 2010
LOS ANGELES – The tour organizer received assurances, he says, from four gangs that they would not harass the bus when it passed through their turf. Paying customers must sign releases warning of potential danger. And after careful consideration, it was decided not to have residents shoot water guns at the bus and sell “I Got Shot in South Central” T-shirts.
Borrowing a bit from the Hollywood star tours, the grit of the streets and a dash of hype, LA Gang Tours is making its debut on Saturday, a 12-stop, two-hour journey through what its organizer calls “the history and origin of high-profile gang areas and the top crime-scene locations” of South Los Angeles. By Friday afternoon, the 56-seat coach was nearly sold out.
Healthcare overhaul may depend on Massachusetts Senate race
President Obama and other Democrats are in a fight for Ted Kennedy’s seat and his cause, campaigning for Martha Coakley over Republican Scott Brown, who could vote down the bill if seated in time.
By Janet Hook
January 16, 2010
Reporting from Washington – President Obama on Friday threw himself into the Massachusetts Senate race where a surging Republican candidacy imperils his signature healthcare plan.A Republican win Tuesday in the race to replace the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) would strip Democrats of their 60-vote supermajority in the Senate and allow the GOP to block legislation with filibusters. Healthcare legislation has passed both chambers on party-line votes, but a reconciled final version must still be written and approved by both houses.
Asia
Chinese lawyer goes missing after being detained
Policeman said Gao Zhisheng, a fierce critic of the government, had ‘lost his way’
Jonathan Watts in Beijing
guardian.co.uk, Friday 15 January 2010 13.31 GMT
Fears are growing for the Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng after his brother said police admitted he “went missing” in September, seven months after being taken into detention.The firebrand critic of the Communist party has been repeatedly detained by public security agents and has testified that he was tortured and threatened with death. Gao disappeared from his hometown in Shaanxi province on 4 February last year. His family told reporters and human rights groups at the time that he was whisked away by local police and security agents from Beijing.
Afghan MPs back Karzai’s foreign minister choice
The Afghan parliament has backed the appointment of Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasul, part of President Hamid Karzai’s second list of cabinet nominees.
The BBC Saturday, 16 January 2010
Mr Rasul, formerly President Karzai’s security adviser, is the first of 17 new nominees being voted on by MPs.
The vote comes two weeks after MPs rejected most of Mr Karzai’s first choices, dealing him a serious blow.
Correspondents say concerns remain over some of the candidates and it is unlikely they will all be approved.
After the first vote on 2 January, Mr Karzai ordered MPs to cancel their winter break to speed up progress towards getting a functioning government in place.
The rejection of 17 of Mr Karzai’s 24 original choices was seen as a blow to his authority, already damaged after an election marred by fraud in August.
Middle East
Raising Iraq’s ghosts has left Brown feeling their icy chill
The PM called an inquiry to distance himself from Blair. Instead, rightly or not, the current Labour cabinet will take the flak
Polly Toynbee
The Guardian, Saturday 16 January 2010
They thought it was all over. The boys were home at last and Iraq was history. Who but historians were interested now? Besides, Iraq was Blair’s history, nothing to do with the present regime. But it’s not over, not at all. Instead, the Chilcot inquiry is quietly but surely turning into a new disaster for Labour. The old ghosts are raised day after day. Old questions are asked – not just of Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell, but of all the cabinet and every MP who voted for war. The drubbing on the BBC’s Question Time of hapless Peter Hain shows what’s afoot. Iraq has leaped out of the grave, seeking its bloody revenge.Jack Straw and Geoff Hoon give evidence next week, another uncomfortable reminder of how undead the war will be at the election. The main event – Tony Blair soon – may be an anti-climax, despite thousands entering the ballot for seats.
Senior Iranian envoy quits in disgust over regime’s brutal ways
From The Times
January 16, 2010
Martin Fletcher
A veteran Iranian diplomat based in Norway has resigned his post, denounced his government and urged colleagues around the world to do the same after the regime’s brutal suppression of huge opposition demonstrations last month.Mohammed-Reza Heydari, Iran’s consul in Oslo, is the first Iranian diplomat to publicly quit and condemn the regime. He revealed that it sought to lure him back to Tehran after rumours of his defection surfaced last week. At the time, the Iranian Foreign Ministry insisted that the rumours were baseless.
Europe
Why are so many of St Petersburg’s renowned art-nouveau mansions being left to rot?
The city’s impressive houses were built for the aristocrats and millionaires of their day.
By Michael Church Saturday, 16 January 2010
peter nasmyth unwraps Exhibit A with elaborate care: a Russian book entitled Deshevia Pastroiki: Dachnaya Arkhitektura – Cheap Buildings: Dacha Architecture. Its pages are falling out, visibly eaten away by time. He’d found it 15 years ago in a second-hand bookshop in sub-tropical Sukhumi – once the Black Sea’s smartest resort, latterly the war-torn capital of Georgia’s breakaway state of Abkhazia – and it had cost him a dollar. Then he tells me what he’s done with it: made a smart new English edition in facsimile – with the more explanatory title, The Art Nouveau Dacha: Designs by Vladimir Story, Published 1917 St Petersburg – and an accompanying exhibition of his own photographs.
Romanian Health Minister Attila Cseke to introduce ‘fat tax’ in battle against obesity
From The Times
January 16, 2010
David Charter, Europe Correspondent
Fast-food restaurants are bracing themselves for Europe’s first “fat tax” as the battle against obesity gathers momentum.The Romanian Health Ministry has outlined plans to levy an extra charge on fatty, salty and sugary foods; a move that will tackle two problems simultaneously – the poor quality of its citizens’ diets and a plunging public-sector budget as a result of the recession.
Attila Cseke, the Health Minister, announced that he was setting up a nutrition commission aimed at raising £860 million from the planned tax on fast food – an extra source of revenue that would be very welcome in Bucharest. The Government’s austerity budget this week outlined a freeze in public sector pay and a cut of 100,000 jobs.
Africa
Pirates take new territory: West African Gulf of Guinea
Pirates are making headway off the West African coast – the Gulf of Guinea is second only to Somalia in terms of pirate attacks.
By Scott Baldauf Staff Writer / January 15, 2010
Lagos, Nigeria
It was Nov. 24, and the German-owned oil tanker MT Cancale Star was plying the blue ocean water 18 miles from shore when the crew spotted a speedboat full of pirates, approaching fast.If this sounds like just another day in Somalia, think again. The MT Cancale Star was off the coast of the West African country of Benin, and the pirates were Nigerian.
The Gulf of Guinea is second only to Somalia in terms of such attacks, with some 32 pirate strikes reported in the first nine months of 2009.
Already home to an insurgency in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta – where attacks on oil facilities routinely cause world prices to spike – piracy is now turning the Gulf of Guinea into a region of increasing international concern.