Seeking More Oil
Bush Leaves With A Fruit Basket
China Faces Economic Aftershocks
Fearful After the Quake, People Shun Jobs, Homes
SHIFANG, China, May 18 — Statistically speaking, Zhang Zhengjie and his factory are fine.Number of workers injured: zero. Number dead: zero. The factory’s steel-reinforced walls shook but held during last week’s massive earthquake. After it was over, the only evidence that something nightmarish had taken place in other parts of the city was the presence of minor fractures in pipes that were easily fixed.
USA
McCain to Rely on Party Money
Pivoting toward the general election, Senator Barack Obama is turning again to his history-making fund-raising machine, which helped to anoint him as a contender against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and then became a potent weapon in their battle for the Democratic nomination
To confront the Obama juggernaut, Senator John McCain, whose fund-raising has badly trailed that of his Democratic counterparts, is leaning on the Republican National Committee. Mr. McCain’s efforts to raise money suffered a blow this weekend when a key fund-raiser, Tom Loeffler, resigned because of a new campaign policy on conflicts of interest.
Medical marijuana and organ transplants don’t mix
Patients who have used doctor-prescribed pot are being turned away from hospital transplant programs.
SEATTLE — Should using doctor-prescribed marijuana be a deal-breaker for someone needing an organ transplant? It is not a theoretical question but a pressing and emotional one confronting hospitals and patients in states where medical use of marijuana is legal.This month, Timothy Garon, 56, a Seattle musician, died after being turned down for a liver transplant. He was rejected partly because he had used medical marijuana.
Now, a second critically ill patient in Washington state says he has been denied a spot in two organ transplant programs because he uses doctor-prescribed marijuana.
Jonathon Simchen, 33, of Fife, a town south of Seattle, is a diabetic whose kidneys and pancreas have failed.
Asia
Burma neighbours in cyclone talks
The Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) is holding urgent talks to discuss ways of helping Burma’s cyclone victims.
Foreign ministers meeting in Singapore hope Burma’s military rulers – who have so far blocked most large-scale foreign aid offers – will accept Asean help.But correspondents say the grouping cannot force a solution on a member, as decisions are only made by consensus.
Burma says some 78,000 people have died since the cyclone hit on 2 May.
The last photo of Zhou Yao, 14 – one of thousands of children killed at their desks
Zhou Yao, aged about six, beams at the camera as she poses in a garden. Then she is a confident nine-year old, hands on hips, head cocked. At 14, she is deliberately pensive, with the self-consciousness of a girl who knows she will soon become a woman.That photograph is the last one in her mother’s pile. There will be no more.
Yao’s casket of ashes now stands in her parents’ home in Dujiangyan. They found her body hours after the Juyuan Middle School collapsed in an earthquake last Monday. Like families across the province of Sichuan, her parents are angry and disbelieving.
Almost 7,000 classrooms across the quake zone were destroyed, the government has acknowledged.
Europe
Royal seeks second chance in battle to depose Sarkozy
The struggle to become the Next Big Thing on the French left wing exploded into open warfare at the weekend as the defeated presidential candidate Ségolène Royal announced a bid to become the First Secretary, or leader, of the Socialist Party.On Thursday, the Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë, who is likely to be her main rival, will publish a book called De l’Audace! (Courage!), setting out his political philosophy and ambitions. With six months to go before the Socialists choose their new leader at a conference in Reims, the pair have, in effect, joined battle for the right to be both the party chief and the candidate-elect for the presidential elections in 2012.
Car bomb explodes in Basque town in Spain
MADRID, Spain – Suspected members of a Basque separatist group allegedly exploded a car bomb in a northern Basque town Monday causing considerable damage but no injuries, police said.
The blast, which happened in the early morning hours, followed an attack last Wednesday on a police barracks housing officers and their families in the Basque town of Legutiano. That bombing left one police officer dead and four wounded.Monday’s explosion outside a nautical club in the town of Getxo, near the Basque port of Bilbao, came after a warning call, claiming to be from the ETA separatist group, to road traffic authorities, a police spokesman said. The spokesman spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with department regulations.
Africa
South Africa gangs kill foreigners
Mobs rampaged through poor suburbs of Johannesburg in a series of attacks against foreigners, mainly Zimbabweans, over the weekend, killing seven people, injuring at least 50 and forcing hundreds to seek refuge at police stations.Two of those killed were burned to death and three beaten to death. The injured suffered gunshot and stab wounds. Johannesburg police were warning motorists to avoid the city’s business district. “It’s spreading like a wildfire and the police and the army can’t control it,” said Emmerson Zifo, a Zimbabwean.
Could unity government talks eclipse Zimbabwe runoff vote?
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was invited for talks with President Robert Mugabe, says a top official. Would the talks negate a runoff presidential election scheduled for June 27.
Johannesburg, South Africa – Zimbabwe’s opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai canceled a trip home from South Africa this weekend, citing a rumored assassination plot against him.The trip was timed for a celebration of his party’s gaining a parliamentary majority in the March 29 elections and to gear up for the newly announced June 27 presidential runoff vote.
But a senior member of President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party tells the Monitor that he had met with Mr. Tsvangirai over the weekend in Johannesburg, and that Tsvangirai had indicated that he had been invited back to Harare to begin power-sharing talks with Mr. Mugabe himself.
Middle East
Gulf states may soon need coal imports to keep the lights on
They are countries so rich in oil and gas that they would never want for fuel to drive their booming economies and the lavish lifestyles of their rulers.Now, however, in a role reversal that makes selling sand to Saudi Arabia look like a sensible business transaction, the oil-rich Gulf states are planning to import coal.
An acute shortage of natural gas has led to the city states of the United Arab Emirates seeking alternative fuels to keep the air cool, the lights on and the water running.
US: 500 youths detained in Iraq; 10 in Afghanistan
NEW YORK – The U.S. military is holding about 500 juveniles suspected of being “unlawful enemy combatants” in detention centers in Iraq and has about 10 detained in Afghanistan, the United States has told the United Nations.
A total of 2,500 youths under the age of 18 have been detained, almost all in Iraq, for periods up to a year or more in President Bush’s anti-terrorism campaign since 2002, the United States reported last week to the U.N.’s Committee on the Rights of the Child.Civil liberties groups such as the International Justice Network and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) denounced the detentions as abhorrent, and a violation of U.S. treaty obligations.
In the periodic report to the United Nations on U.S. compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the United States confirmed that “as of April 2008, the United States held about 500 juveniles in Iraq.”
Latin America
Heart of Quito gets an urban revival
Ecuador’s capital, home to colonial-era churches and historic treasures, had been beset by crime and urban flight. But a revitalization program has paid off
QUITO, ECUADOR — Once a jewel of the Spanish colonial empire, the historic core of this capital city spent decades in a downward spiral, reeling from urban flight, high crime and official neglect.By day, the narrow cobblestone streets were clogged with legions of sidewalk vendors who harassed pedestrians and blocked traffic. By night, thugs and prostitutes lurked among the colonnades and alleyways. *
Tourists risked their lives and wallets by strolling after dark through San Francisco plaza, which, with the baroque facade of its namesake church, the cordon of 17th century buildings and the majestic Mt. Pichincha looming overhead, is one of Latin America’s most breathtaking tableaux.
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