This an Open Thread: This wheel spins letting me off It’s not the lack of trying
Benazir Bhutto ‘died from severe head injury’
Benazir Bhutto died of a “severe head injury” and not a gunshot wound, Scotland Yard has said.An investigation by British police into the assassination of the Pakistan opposition leader found that she was killed by the impact of a suicide bombing, not bullets fired at her as she left a political rally.
British detectives have presented their report to the Pakistani authorities.
The report concluded that Ms Bhutto’s only apparent injury was a major trauma to the right side of the head, caused by hitting the escape hatch to her vehicle and not by a gunshot wound.All the evidence suggests a lone attacker fired the shots before blowing himself up.
The finding supports the Pakistani government’s contention that Miss Bhutto suffered a fatal head wound when she hit her head after the blast. She was killed on Dec 27.
USA
Miscalculations Dogged Romney From the Start
With Mitt Romney’s campaign for president nearly in tatters, he huddled with his senior advisers on Wednesday morning, jotting notes with pen and paper, to go over his options.
By the time the meeting ended, he seemed to want to stay in the race. His campaign went ahead with voter-turnout calls in Kansas and Washington for caucuses on Saturday, and priced out what it would take to compete in primaries next week in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C.His son Tagg, a senior campaign adviser, urged him to continue, but by evening, Mr. Romney had decided to pull out. He then phoned each of his sons individually to break the news.
Airport Security Technology Stuck In the Pipeline
Development, Deployment Move Slowly
In the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, government officials and industry leaders talked excitedly about how they expected technology to plug many of the gaps in airport security.
They envisioned machines that would quickly detect explosives hidden in luggage, spot plastic explosives or other weapons through people’s clothing, identify a flicker in the eye of a suspicious character.But six years later, little has changed at airport checkpoints. Screeners still use X-ray machines to scan carry-on bags, and passengers still pass through magnetometers that cannot detect plastic or liquid explosives.
Asia-Pacific
Australia ends ‘Pacific Solution’
The last asylum seekers have left Australia’s detention camp on Nauru, putting an end to the controversial “Pacific Solution” immigration policy.The group of 21 Sri Lankans boarded a plane for Australia after 10 months in the Nauru camp, leaving it empty.
The move fulfils a pledge by new PM Kevin Rudd to end the policy, under which people arriving by boat were sent to remote camps for refugee assessment.
The regional head of the UN refugee agency UNHCR welcomed the move.
Asia
House arrest: judge’s daughter tells of family’s plight
· Ex-chief justice, wife and children held in Islamabad
· No school or check-ups for disabled eight-year-old
Declan Walsh in Islamabad
Friday February 8, 2008
The GuardianPakistan’s youngest political prisoner lives in a house on a hill just a few hundred metres from President Pervez Musharraf’s soaring presidential palace in Islamabad. Little about him is typical. He is physically disabled, spends his days watching cartoons on TV, and is eight years old.
Bilaj Chaudhry is the son of Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Pakistan’s former chief justice. Since he was fired by Musharraf three months ago, the judge, his wife and four children have been locked in their house. Barbed wire barricades block the street, armed police and intelligence agents swarm outside, and visitors are forbidden. The phones have been cut, the water supply disrupted, and an employee who delivers food is carefully searched. Even stepping on to the front lawn is forbidden.
Restaurant in Vietnam remembers role in Tet offensive
HO CHI MINH CITY: The pho bo is tasty at the Pho Binh soup restaurant, but in truth no better than at other places in Vietnam. The broth is hearty, the noodles are chewy, the small slices of beef tender even if the accompanying pieces of lime and chili pepper looked a bit tired. The price is right: 22,000 dong, or about $1.30.But the pho bo, however filling, is not the reason to visit the Pho Binh, or Peace Soup, restaurant.
Instead it is a historic site as Ho Chi Minh City (don’t say Saigon), along with the rest of the country, celebrates the three-day Lunar New Year holiday known here as Tet.
Europe
Kremlin incensed by watchdog refusal to monitor elections
· OSCE says restrictions prevent it doing its job
· Russia accuses observers of double standards
Luke Harding in Moscow
Friday February 8, 2008
The GuardianRussia and the EU are embroiled in another row after the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe said it would not monitor next month’s presidential elections in Russia because of severe restrictions placed on it by Moscow.
Neither the OSCE’s election monitoring arm nor its parliamentary assembly would observe the election on March 2, a move that has incensed Russia and dealt a blow to the election’s international credibility.
Christian Strohal, head of the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), said he was forced to pull his mission out because of the restrictions.
Italian and US police arrest 80 in strike at heart of the Mafia
By Peter Popham in Rome
Friday, 8 February 2008Police in Italy and the FBI in New York have arrested dozens of alleged gangsters belonging to the most notorious Sicilian crime families in a closely co-ordinated international operation.
More than 80 alleged gang members were rounded up in New York and Palermo in what the head of Italy’s parliamentary anti-mafia commission described as “one of the most important operations of the past 10 years”. Those arrested in New York included the entire Gambino family hierarchy, and important figures in the Genovese and Bonanno families. Also in the net were union and construction industry officials.
Africa
Chad imposes curfew as rebel forces regroup
By Sebastien Berger in N’Djamena
Chad’s regime imposed a curfew yesterday, as rebel forces who stormed the capital last week warned they were regrouping in the east.The curfew was needed to “uncover” any “enemies who are still hidden,” said President Idriss Deby’s government, which claims to be back in full control. It will apply to the capital, N’Djamena, and six other areas of the vast desert country.
Days after government tanks and helicopter gunships fought thousands of rebels in the streets of N’Djamena, the city is still strewn with burnt out vehicles and smashed buildings and its hospitals are still attending the injured.Soldiers stand at junctions near the presidential palace, some with lorryloads of rocket-propelled grenades and tanks nearby.
Mbeki seeks to calm economy fears
South African President Thabo Mbeki is to make his annual state of the nation address, amid an electricity crisis that has sparked fears of a recession.Mr Mbeki is expected to use the official opening of parliament to defend his economic record.
Business confidence has plunged to a four-year low amid recent blackouts, which have infuriated the public.
And analysts say Mr Mbeki has cut an increasingly lonely figure since losing the ANC presidency to rival Jacob Zuma.
Deep rifts remain to be healed inside the ruling party following December’s power struggle, which resulted in Mr Zuma and his allies taking most of the top jobs, BBC Southern Africa correspondent Peter Biles says.
Latin America
Bolivia seeks aid to battle floods
LA PAZ, Bolivia – Bolivia’s foreign minister said Thursday that the world has an obligation to send aid to flood-ravaged areas of Bolivia, linking a disaster that has killed 49 people to global climate change.
As Bolivia faces a second straight year of devastating floods, David Choquehuanca argued that developed nations who produce most of the world’s greenhouse gases are morally obligated to pitch in when the negative effects of climate change strike poorer countries.“The international community has the obligation to help to Bolivia because these are the consequences” of global warming, he told media.
Mexican Robin Hood Figure Gains a Kind of Notoriety in U.S.
HOUSTON – Jesús Malverde has been revered for almost a century in northwestern Mexico. According to folklore, he was a Mexican Robin Hood who took from the rich and gave to the poor until he was killed by the police in 1909.
Now, immigrants have brought his legend to the United States. His image, which is thought to offer protection from the law, can be found on items that include T-shirts and household cleaners.Malverde is widely considered the patron saint of drug dealers, say law enforcement officials and experts on Mexican culture. A shrine has been erected atop his grave in the remote city of Culiacán in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, which has long been associated with opium and marijuana trafficking.
Middle East
In Egypt, high-risk blogging
The mission of Cairo resident Wael Abbas is to document abuse and repression, despite the dangers.
CAIRO — It was not the most comforting of e-mails: “May God honor my sword by slaying Wael Abbas.”Cyberspace can be a messy, dangerous place, especially if you’re Abbas, who with keyboard, digital camera and a bit of cunning has become one of Egypt’s most popular bloggers. His posts, often with scratchy video, catalog police torture, political oppression, labor strikes, sexual harassment and radical Islam. He’s been vilified and threatened, but has managed to stay out of jail, operating in an uncensored realm beyond the independent and state-controlled media.
“What matters to me is publicizing violations against human rights. I don’t care about scandals or private lives. I care about abuses,” said Abbas, 33, who outlined his mission while repeatedly checking his cellphone, which had a soft, if disconcerting, Bee Gees song as ring-tone.
“I try to avoid being arrested. There are activists who want to get arrested to add to their resume. I don’t need to get arrested to prove that I’m authentic or a patriot.”
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