This is an Open Thread: There is no time limit
Obama Wins South Carolina Primary
COLUMBIA, S.C. – Senator Barack Obama won a commanding victory over Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the South Carolina Democratic primary on Saturday, drawing a wide majority of black support and one-quarter of white voters in a contest that sets the stage for a multistate fight for the party’s presidential nomination.
In a bitter campaign here infused with discussions of race, Mr. Obama’s convincing victory puts him on equal footing with Mrs. Clinton – with two wins each in early-voting states – and gives him fresh momentum as the contest plunges into a nationwide battle over the next 10 days.
USA
At Florida Polls, Touch Screens and Crossed Fingers
MIAMI — There will be no “hanging chads” this time around in Florida. The punch-card voting that plagued the 2000 presidential election in the state is long gone.But with Florida’s primary on Tuesday, some in the state are bracing for more potential ballot trouble because the new electronic touch-screen machines in much of the state have aroused doubts of their own.
Florida legislators voted essentially to ban them earlier this year, after confusion in a 2006 congressional contest in Sarasota wound up in court. But the next set of machines will not be ready until the general election in November, forcing election officials to press the controversial machines back into use one more time.
Pundits in early rush to judge Bush’s legacy
Paul Harris
Sunday January 27, 2008
The ObserverBeing ignored is bad enough for anyone. But when you are President of the United States it must be doubling humiliating. Yet Democrats are too busy fighting each other to mention him and Republicans fear to be associated with his record.
Now George W Bush – whose successor won’t take office until January 2009 – is also suffering the indignity of having his historical legacy unfavourably examined while still having almost a year left of his second term. A slew of books and a planned major film are all starting to judge Bush’s place in history even as he keeps the seat warm in the Oval Office.
Africa
Dozens die in Kenyan riots
Kofi Annan calls for probe into civil rights abuses as machete gangs and arsonists settle old scores, reports Tracy McVeigh
Kenyan police were yesterday fighting to control gangs who have killed at least 27 people over three days of chaotic violence in the town of Nakuru, capital of the Rift Valley region.Burnt bodies were being removed from the streets and more than 100 people were in hospital suffering injuries from burns to machete and arrow wounds. Hundreds more were forced to shelter in local churches after homes were set on fire by mobs settling tribal scores. The town, in western Kenya, had previously been spared the scenes that erupted across the country after December’s deeply flawed presidential re-election that left some 700 people dead. Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has joined efforts to resolve weeks of unrest and yesterday he called for an investigation into ‘gross and systematic’ rights abuses in Kenya.
Mugabe sets election date
President Robert Mugabe said yesterday that Zimbabwe will hold general elections on 29 March, but the opposition denounced the date as a snub to regional mediation efforts to guarantee a fair vote.The 83-year old leader, who has ruled the country since independence in 1980 and is running for another five-year term, said parliament would be dissolved the day before Zimbabweans vote in presidential and parliamentary elections.
Middle East
Gaza’s falling wall changes Middle East map for ever
The tide of humans pouring over the frontier from Gaza into Egypt for days has now become a vast convoy of carts, cars and lorries. Peter Beaumont joined the jubilant throng who watched as the borders of a conflict that has lasted for generations were crossed
They came and went in lorries and gas tankers, in flatbed trucks loaded with cattle and sheep, in coaches and mini-buses, loaded by the dozen in the backs of trucks, all shuttling across Gaza’s southern border. Four days ago they went on foot like refugees, but yesterday for the first time the trucks drove through and it felt like an unstoppable momentum had been reached.They carried generators and goats, diesel and huge piles of carrots and cabbages. But most of all they carried the message that Israel’s long blockade of Gaza is over. ‘I want to get some cheese,’ says Ameera Ahmad, after crossing the border from Gaza into Egypt yesterday. ‘And honey. Look, crisps! I haven’t seen a bag of crisps for months.’
A rough guide to Hebron: The world’s strangest guided tour highlights the abuse of Palestinians
Yehuda Shaul is a religious Israeli who served in the army. Now he runs guided tours highlighting the abuse of Palestinians. It’s controversial and dangerous work – so hy does he do it? Donald MacIntyre finds out on a unique tragical history tour
Close to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the site holy to both Muslims and Jews in Hebron’s city centre, Yehuda Shaul, a religious Israeli who served in an elite Army combat unit in the city during the worst of the Palestinian uprising, is trying to guide a tour round four Jewish settlements in the heart of an overwhelmingly Arab city.It starts in Shuhada Street, which runs through what is now the settlers’ security zone, the rows of empty Palestinian shops and houses boarded up with steel shutters, many daubed with Stars of David to show who is in charge here. The only permitted vehicles are those of the settlers and the Israeli military.
Europe
Rogue trader Jerome Kerviel held by police
THE rogue trader accused of single-handedly orchestrating the world’s biggest investment bank fraud was being questioned by French police last night about whether he had an accomplice.Jérôme Kerviel was taken into custody after police searched his home and his office at Société Générale. The bank claims that unauthorised trading by the 31-year-old cost it £3.7 billion. Daniel Bouton, the beleaguered chairman, insisted yesterday that the trader had acted alone, like an “arsonist” who “burnt down a big factory”.
Margaret Thatcher told navy to raid Swedish coast
MARGARET THATCHER ordered the Royal Navy to land Special Boat Service (SBS) frogmen on the coast of Sweden from British submarines pretending to be Soviet vessels, a new book has claimed.The deception involved numerous incursions by British forces into Swedish territorial waters in the 1980s and early 1990s, designed to heighten the impression around the world of the Soviet Union as an aggressive superpower.
Sometimes the boats landed commandos, but often their job was to fool the Swedes by mimicking the sonar signals given off by the Soviet vessels that stalked the same waters.
Latin America
Mexico: Arrest in cardinal’s 1993 murder
TIJUANA, Mexico – An alleged drug cartel hit man who is among the suspects in the 1993 slaying of a Mexican cardinal was arrested in the border city of Tijuana, authorities announced on Saturday.Alfredo Araujo Avila, also known as “Popeye,” allegedly worked for the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix drug cartel for more than two decades, Gen. German Redondo, commander of the local army base, told reporters.
Roman Catholic Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo was riddled with bullets on May 24, 1993, while he was sitting in his car at the airport in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city.
Asia
Top agents in secret trip to Pakistan
WASHINGTON – The top two U.S. intelligence officials made a secret visit to Pakistan in early January to seek permission from President Pervez Musharraf for greater involvement of American forces in trying to ferret out al-Qaida and other militant groups active in the tribal regions along the Afghanistan border, a senior U.S. official said.The official, speaking on condition of anonymity given the secret nature of the talks, declined to disclose what was said, but Musharraf was quoted two days after the Jan. 9 meeting as saying U.S. troops would be regarded as invaders if they crossed into Pakistan to hunt al-Qaida militants.
Disgraced and vilified, Suharto dies aged 86
Indonesia’s former dictator Suharto, an army general who crushed Indonesia’s communist movement and pushed aside the country’s founding father to usher in 32 years of tough rule that saw up to a million political opponents killed, died today. He was 86.“He has died,” Dr Christian Johannes said that he died at 1.10pm local time.
Finally toppled by mass street protests in 1998, the US Cold War ally’s departure opened the way for democracy in this predominantly Muslim nation of 235 million people and he withdrew from public life, rarely venturing from his comfortable villa on a leafy lane in the capital.
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Yet another brutal killer/kleptocrat that the US was good friends with. And he ended up in a comfortable villa, instead of a jail cell.
But in the fairy tale hour they “hate us for our freedom” and if the US has “an image problem” it started with Bush.
Disabled spy satellite threatens Earth . . .
Panic is something we can all share.
The Cold War was good.
It offered distractions, mostly harmless, and provided stimulation for some good things, like the space race.
Said to my then wife when the Soviet Union collapsed that the U.S. would suffer from lack of a major competitor.
Little did I anticipate the evils of corporate globalism that flourished in the one-superpower world that came into being.
If he had knowledge of working systems in adminisration I can understand how he could work his numbers, even on accounts as large as these. He may have had to recruit one or two other people for small matters but I can see him getting around the system.
Any system is slow to change, even when there is a known error, often the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing and numbers are just numbers.