Mass evacuation in Pakistan
MONDAY, AUGUST 16, 2010
An evacuation effort on a massive scale is continuing in Pakistan as tens of thousands of people flee another wave of floodwater in the south of the country.The swollen Indus river has burst its banks in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province on Monday, swamping hundreds of towns and villages.
In the province’s city of Jacobabad, the Pakistani army continued helicopter flights to rescue people stranded by the rising water.
Collector doesn’t want these tracks in the trash
Murray Gershenz said he hoped a museum or college would acquire his rare 400,000-album collection. That hasn’t worked out, so his next stop could be a dumpster.
By Bob Pool, Los Angeles Times
August 15, 2010|6:25 p.m.
For the record, “Music Man Murray” has tried his best to keep his rare 400,000-album collection intact.Murray Gershenz has spent 72 years amassing his music trove, after all. He has century-old operatic performances captured on Edison cylinder tubes, 1930s-era Big Band crooners on fragile 78-rpm discs, early rockers on 45s, show tunes on LPs and pop artists on cassette tapes and CDs.
The collection is crammed into homemade shelves in a two-story cinderblock building on Exposition Boulevard, as well as two nearby warehouses.
USA
From Vietnam to New Orleans, he’s no stranger to catastrophe
To shrimper Kha Van Nguyen, the sea has always been his life, his savior. But since the gulf oil spill, the future looks bleak.
By My-Thuan Tran, Los Angeles Times
August 16, 2010
Reporting from New Orleans – On the sea, it doesn’t matter that Kha Van Nguyen knows few phrases of English. On his 92-foot boat he is Captain Nguyen, a man who understands the subtle clues of the wind and water.He doesn’t dwell on the backaches that remind him he’s no longer a young man. He dreams of discovering a huge school of shrimp so he can shout to his deckhands, Chien thang! Victory!
In venture with Temple U., Park Service combats looming shortage of rangers
By Lorraine Mirabella
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 16, 2010
Lytia Solomon had never met a park ranger or taken a family vacation to a national park. And growing up in Philadelphia as a “complete urban city girl,” she never knew what a park ranger did.Yet the rising college sophomore with an interest in criminal justice discovered that such a career path could be right up her alley, thanks to a new initiative that’s recruiting college students to help combat a looming shortage of National Park Service rangers.
Europe
Danish naval team sent to ‘take on’ Greenpeace ship
Special forces to confront vessel targeting ‘dangerous’ deep sea oil drilling sites in wake of BP oil rig disaster
Press Association
The Guardian, Monday 16 August 2010
A special forces naval team has been sent to confront a Greenpeace ship which is on a mission to target “dangerous” deep sea oil drilling sites, the environmental group claimed yesterday.The Esperanza left London last week to highlight problems with oil that go “far beyond” the disaster at BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
Greenpeace has not revealed which of 10 deep water drilling locations, including Brazil, the Arctic, Nigeria and the Atlantic west of Shetland, it plans to target but has pledged to confront the industry head-on over its “reckless” pursuit of oil.
Battle over legacy of father of Art Nouveau
Prague authorities are demanding Mucha’s masterpiece be moved to the capital
By Tony Paterson in Berlin Monday, 16 August 2010
He is perhaps best-known for his distinctive Art Nouveau lithographs depicting robust, goddess-like maidens with elaborate tresses, bared flesh and flowing robes that were used to advertise mundane items like French roll-your-own cigarette papers a little more than a century ago.Suddenly, however, the work of Alphonse Mucha, the acclaimed Czech painter, has become the focus of a blistering row in his homeland where the Prague city government, a provincial town council and his grandson are all at loggerheads over a huge collection regarded as the artist’s masterpiece.
Middle East
Gaza doctor writes book of hope despite death of three daughters
Izzeldin Abuelaish’s moving book charts harsh realities of life in Gaza and details harrowing family tragedy that may have halted Israeli offensive
Harriet Sherwood in Jabalia
On a cool but sunny December day in Gaza, Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish took his eight children to the beach for the simple pleasures of paddling in the Mediterranean and playing in the sand.Two months earlier, the children’s mother had died from acute leukaemia, and Abuelaish was comforted to see his older daughters laughing and chatting as they wrote their names in the damp grains close to the water’s edge: Bessan, Maya, Aya. “It was as close to heaven and as far from hell as I could get that day,” he later wrote.
Former Israeli official acknowledges ‘mistakes’ over storming of ships
The Israeli intelligence service made mistakes during the deadly storming of ships taking aid to the Gaza strip, a former military official has acknowledged.
Published: 6:00AM BST 16 Aug 2010
Nine civilians were killed after Israeli commandos boarded the flotilla carrying 10,000 tonnes of aid en route from Cyprus in May.
Retired Major General Giora Eiland, who led the Israeli military inquiry into the storming of the Mavi Marmara, told the BBC’s Panorama programme that planning for the operation had been lacking.
He explained: “Certain mistakes were made by the Israeli forces, both by the intelligence and by the commanders of the navy … there was under estimation of the potential resistance on the ship.
Asia
China denies milk powder caused infant breasts
By Clifford Coonan in Beijing Monday, 16 August 2010
The Chinese health ministry said yesterday it has found no evidence that baby milk powder caused three infant girls to grow breasts. Parents and doctors in the central province of Hubei had said they were concerned that milk powder produced by Synutra International had caused at least three girls to develop prematurely.Experts tested products made by Synutra and 20 other brands to compare the levels of oestrogen in dairy products. Deng Haihua, a health ministry spokesman, said the probe found the hormone content of the milk powder was within normal standards. “The Ministry of Health experts’ group believes that there is no relationship between the premature development of breasts in the three infants in Hubei and Synutra milk powder,” he said.
Japan GDP figures show sharp slowing of economic growth
Economic growth in Japan weakened significantly in the last financial quarter, official figures show.
The BBC 16 August 2010
Between April and June this year gross domestic product – the sum of the nation’s goods and services – grew by 0.1%, much lower than expected.Analysts say the country’s export-led recovery appears to be faltering as the value of the yen appreciates.
Japan’s close rivals, Germany and the US, recently reported far superior GDP figures for the same period.
Germany registered a 2.2% rise, while the US economy grew at an annualised rate of 2.4%.
Africa
Kenya referendum: How groups came together to prevent violence
Ahead of the historic Aug. 4 Kenya referendum, observers warned of a recurrence of the ethnic violence that killed more than 1,300 after the 2007 presidential vote. But key groups helped make sure that did not happen.
By Mike Pflanz, Correspondent / August 15, 2010
Eldoret, Kenya
For Robert Kipkorir, sipping tea by the roadside while young men washed his pickup truck early one recent morning, the fact that this month’s highly charged Kenya referendum passed peacefully was no surprise.”There was no reason to fight, because no one had been cheated, no one felt they were an enemy to anyone else,” the passionfruit farmer says.He concedes that he opposed the country’s new Constitution – passed with 67 percent support in the Aug. 4 vote – but he has accepted the result because “we lost fair and square.”