Category: News
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From the Washington Post: As he left, national intelligence director John Negroponte, surrounded by stiff-armed bodyguards, ignored a reporter’s shouted question about leaks. The closest the director got to controversy was when he was asked by an audience member (the questions were filtered by a moderator) about the warrantless wiretapping program. “Yes, well,” the director…
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Thrills and spills as Epic riders get down and dirty
From the Cape Times: Mossel Bay: The 1 046 cyclists in the 2006 Cape Epic had a baptism of rain, mud and more mud on the first day of their eight-day mountain bike race that started in Knysna on Saturday. They were so dirty I’m sure even their mothers wouldn’t have recognised them. Here.
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Armenian Student Killed by Skinheads
From The Moscow Times: “I was there yesterday and talked to the police chief,” Abramyan said. “I can’t understand how a group of people could simply stab a person in the metro in the very center of Moscow and get away. How did the police manage not to arrest anyone? What about their video cameras?”…
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Google's China Problem
From the New York Times Magazine: When I spoke to Kai-Fu Lee in Google’s Beijing offices, there were moments that to me felt jarring. One minute he sounded like a freedom-loving Googler, arguing that the Internet inherently empowers its users. But the next minute he sounded more like Jack Ma of Alibaba — insisting that…
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Fast & Pray for Mr. Right?
From the Daily Sun, Nigeria’s King of the Tabloids: Bimbo Akinyele If by age 29-32, I am still single? Then it must be a curse. Ehn! God forbid sha. That is not my portion. I know there are ladies who are in the habit of snubbing men. I am really sorry for them. They don’t…
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Somali Islamists declare jihad on warlords
From the Mail & Guardian: “Let us eliminate these warlords and set up a peaceful administration supported by the vast majority of people in Mogadishu,” Sulley said, prompting the crowd to chant angry slogans denouncing the warlords. “Down with the agents of America and down with agents promoting Satanic teaching,” they yelled, according to an…
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Gang War Panics Mall
From the Cape Argus: Shoppers ran for their lives when bloody warfare between two rival Cape Flats gangs spilled over into a crowded Wynberg shopping mall. The confrontation, between members of rival Hanover Park gangs the Ghetto Kids and the Americans, began outside the magistrate’s court where a gang leader was appearing yesterday. It then…
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Bringing it all back home
From the New York Times: A practiced escape artist, Charles Taylor knows he is better off in Europe than in Sierra Leone, where thousands of people would happily administer vigilante justice. Any escape from the protection of the United Nations detention center in Freetown would be a death sentence. Here.
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The Armenian Genocide
From the New York Times: The documentary honors the victims of the Armenian genocide and also pays tribute to dissidents in Turkey who are brave enough to speak out despite government censorship. And that makes it all the odder that so many public television stations here censored the follow-up program as soon as a few…
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'Gotcha' Master Tastes His Own Medicine
From the New York Times: But Mazher Mahmood, a reporter whose modus operandi is to dress up as a wealthy Arab businessman and secretly record conversations with his unwitting victims, recently met his match in George Galloway, a member of the British Parliament and frequent critic of Israel and the United States. Here.
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Giant Mao statue erected in Tibet
From the BBC: “Many Tibetan people suggested we should have a statue of Chairman Mao to show our gratitude,” a local Communist Party official told Xinhua: Here.
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Why the Secrecy? Only the Bureaucrats Know
From the New York Times: Why do bureaucrats insist on spending the taxpayers’ money to keep aging government paperwork from the taxpayers? The question has arisen anew because of the discovery that military and intelligence agencies have pulled some 55,000 pages of decades-old documents from public access at the National Archives. Some documents were photocopied…
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A General Misunderstanding
Machael DeLong, from the New York Times: This is why the much-repeated claims that Mr. Rumsfeld didn’t “give us enough troops” in Iraq ring hollow. First, such criticisms ignore that the agreed-upon plan was for a lightning operation into Baghdad. In addition, logistically it would have been well nigh impossible to bring many more soldiers…
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In Iraqi Divide, Echoes of Bosnia for U.S. Troops
From the New York Times: “You talk to people here and it’s literally the same conversations I heard in Bosnia,” Colonel Donahoe said. “I had a police colonel tell me the other day that all the people in Jurf,” a predominantly Sunni town, “are evil, including the children.” Here.
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Generals Break With Tradition Over Rumsfeld
From the New York Times: Yet Mr. Kohn said he found the chorus of attacks disquieting. He was disturbed, he said, by an assertion made by Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, who retired from the Marines, in an essay for Time magazine, that he was writing “with the encouragement of some still in positions of military…
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Khat Trade Rules in Somalia
From the Washington Post: “If the country was ever normal, I’d quit and return to teaching,” said Ali, 40, who guards her stash with an AK-47 and has a gold tooth that she says makes her appear “tough.” “What else can I do to survive?” Here.
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Death, famine, drought: cost of 3C global rise in temperature
From the Guardian: Global temperatures will rise by an average of 3C due to climate change and cause catastrophic damage around the world unless governments take urgent action, according to the UK government’s chief scientist. In a stark warning issued yesterday Sir David King said that a rise of this magnitude would cause famine and…
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The Ruthless Truth
From The Moscow Times: The war on the Eastern Front remains largely “undiscovered country” for the Western reader despite the fact that the Red Army was responsible for nearly 75 percent of German military losses, including soldiers killed in battle, wounded, taken prisoner and otherwise unaccounted for. The best guide to this terrain is Vasily…
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Dying for Water in Somalia's Drought
From the Washington Post: “Even when local people are good and plan out water catchment systems, warlords just take it over. That’s why we have so many people drinking horrible water with worms and dirt and getting very ill,” said Abdul Rashid, a Somali nurse in Rabdore who works with the International Medical Corps, a…
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At Trial, Flight 93 Myth Finally Becomes Reality
From the Washington Post: It began with a muted series of thumps from a sharp knife or maybe clenched fists. The sounds were muffled but unmistakable, one body blow after another, ending with a squishy thud. “No, no, no, no, no. No,” came the high-pitched voice of a crew member or flight attendant being subdued.…