2010 U.S. census count could be tricky
Next year’s U.S. Census count may be one of the most challenging ever undertaken because of the nation’s growing immigrant population and the lingering effects of the recession.
By Lornet Turnbull
Seattle Times staff reporter
Where will you be on Census Day – living in your RV, couch surfing at your friends’, squatting in your parents’ basement?The U.S. Census Bureau is preparing to count the more than 308 million men, women and children living in the country April 1, 2010.
With just 10 questions on next year’s form, this would seem simple enough. Yet the count is likely to be not just the most costly but possibly one of the most difficult ever staged.
“We are studying a population that is harder to count than the 2000 population,” census director Robert Groves told a group of journalists recently.
The world is winning the landmine war
The global fight to clear unexploded bombs and landmines gets little coverage, but the work is changing millions of lives. David Randall reports
Sunday, 6 December 2009
Square foot by square foot, the world is winning one of its few good wars: the one against landmines.Last week, at a virtually unreported conference in Colombia, organisations tackling the mines – which continue killing and maiming long after the cause in which they were planted has been won or lost – heard that vast areas of the planet’s former conflict zones are being cleared. There is still much work to be done, but progress so far offers the hope that, one day, they will be eradicated.
USA
A child’s illness spurs action on marrow transplants
A 4-year-old girl of mixed race needs a hard-to-find transplant. Her parents are crusading for her and others.
By Ching-Ching Ni
December 6, 2009
When Mina and Sam Chamberlin fell in love, they knew they might have to overcome some cultural barriers to make their interracial marriage work.But they never imagined that their South Asian and white genetic backgrounds would in any way put their children in potential harm’s way.
Then in September, the couple’s 4-year old daughter, Maya, was diagnosed with a rare blood disease known as HLH. Only a bone marrow transplant could save her life.
Colton Harris-Moore, the barefoot boy bandit, outfoxes sheriffs
From The Sunday Times
December 6, 2009
In the forests and remote islands around Seattle, police are setting traps for a barefoot teenage outlaw who has eluded them for nearly two years.Police say 18-year-old Colton Harris-Moore, whose escapades are turning him into a folk legend, is a one-man crime wave, responsible for 50 burglaries as well as stealing light aircraft, which he taught himself to fly from video games, and several speedboats.
He lives in the woods, shuns shoes and catches his own food. His only technological aid is a pair of thermal-imaging goggles to hunt at night and his weakness is pizzas, which he asks to be delivered at the edge of the woods.
For some Harris-Moore is a modern Butch Cassidy: a surprisingly agile 6ft 5in cat burglar who thanks his victims by leaving them notes and cheeky photographs of himself, which have sold for £300 on eBay.
Middle East
Baghdad’s night life falls foul of religious right
Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki accused of colluding with fundamentalists to shut down night clubs
Martin Chulov, Baghdad
The Observer, Sunday 6 December 2009
The raids came just before midnight a week ago. At the start of Eid al-Adha, the four holiest days on the Islamic calendar, hundreds of Iraqi police and soldiers stormed each of Baghdad’s 300 or so nightclubs. Officers from the most elite units stood outside as soldiers slapped owners’ faces, scattered their patrons and dancing girls, ripped down posters advertising upcoming acts, and ordered alcohol removed from the shelves.They left many of the clubs with a warning – any owner who tried to reopen would be thrown into prison, along with his staff.
The official reason for the mass raids is that none of the premises had licences.
Alan Johnston returns to land of his kidnap and hears, amid the Palestinian ghosts, the sound of laughter
Kidnapped BBC journalist Alan Johnston, who was freed in July 2007 after nearly four months in captivity, reports from Nablus on the brittle peace in the city and the threat of renewed violence if no progress is made towards a Palestinian state
Alan Johnston
The Observer, Sunday 6 December 2009
I arrived as the sun was setting and a gloom gathering in the alleyways. But the lads kicking a ball about played on, laughing and shouting. Every wall around them was scrawled with graffiti – political slogans and names of those killed by the Israelis.It was a scene you might come across on any corner, in any Palestinian refugee camp. Inevitably perhaps, back in that setting, memories stirred of my kidnap in Gaza. It was the noises of the street that did it – the kids and the traders and the calls to prayer from the mosques. They were the same sounds of the outside world that used to drift into the room where I was held captive.
Asia
Afghanistan: Get set for surge in bloody battles y
From The Sunday Times
December 6, 2009
Christina Lamb in Washington and Miles Amoore in Kabul
Jan Mohammad, a bus driver on Highway One, the notoriously dangerous Kabul-to-Kandahar road, found out about Barack Obama’s plan to send more troops to Afghanistan when a fight broke out in the back of his bus on Thursday.His passengers were discussing last week’s announcement by the president when one, from Zabul province, said: “I think Afghanistan needs more troops. It is a good thing. Without them we will never have peace in our country.”
On hearing this, a man from Kandahar shouted: “You are a supporter of infidels! The Americans are robbing this country. They don’t care about our people.”
Philippines arrests under martial law
Philippines police have arrested more than 60 people and found a major arms and ammunition cache, in raids after a poll-related massacre in the south.
The BBC Sunday, 6 December 2009
The crackdown, on a clan linked to the massacre, came after President Gloria Arroyo declared martial law in Maguindanao province.
It is the first time martial law has been used in the country since the fall of autocrat Ferdinand Marcos in 1986.
Fifty-seven people including 30 journalists died in the massacre.
Officials said they acted after receiving reports that armed groups loyal to the Ampatuan clan were planning an insurrection.
The clan has long controlled Maguindanao and its members have been loyal supporters of President Arroyo.
Europe
Stitch-up? Now France excludes Britain from special talks on EU farm spending
France has triggered a fresh row over EU power-broking by excluding Britain from key-Europe wide talks on the future of farm subsidies to be held in Paris this week.
By Kim Willsher in Paris and Patrick Hennessy, Political Editor
Published: 8:15AM GMT 06 Dec 2009
The French government has summoned a meeting of what it called the “G22” – senior ministers from 22 European states – in an attempt to influence a rethink of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
However, it has not invited Britain or other so-called “reform nations” – the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Malta – all of which have argued for a full overhaul of EU farm subsidies.
Bruno Le Maire, the French agriculture minister, said the aim was to “produce a battle plan to defend a strong common agriculture policy, to support a renewed CAP.”
Italian police arrest two Mafia bosses
Italian authorities achieve a coup with the arrests of two out of three of the Sicilian Mafia’s most powerful men. It comes as the country’s prime minister faces allegations of connections with the mob.
CORRUPTION | 06.12.2009
Italian police have arrested two of the mafia’s most senior bosses a day after claims that Prime Minister Sylvio Berlusconi had links with the crime group.The man believed to be the crime group’s second-in-command, 28-year-old Gianni Nicchi, was found hiding in an apartment, the Italian prime minister told journalists.
At roughly the same time on Saturday, Milan police arrested third ranked Gaetano Fidanzati while he was walking along a street in the city.
Announcing the arrests, Berlusconi appeared to make references to the allegations that had he had helped the Mafia and that the organization held the country in its grip.
Africa
Aid for Relatives Offers Alternative to African Orphanages
By CELIA W. DUGGER
Published: December 5, 2009
MCHINJI DISTRICT, Malawi – The Home of Hope orphanage provides Chikodano Lupanga, 15, with three nutritious meals a day, new school uniforms, sensible black shoes and a decent education.
Her orphaned cousin Jean, 11, who balked at entering the orphanage and lives with her grown sister, has no shoes, raggedy clothes and an often-empty belly. Repeating third grade for the third time, Jean said she bitterly regretted that she did not grow up in the orphanage where Madonna adopted a boy. Had she stayed, she whispered, “I would have learned to read.”
Latin America
Hard times take a toll on Mexico City’s subway
Fares could go up for cheapest Metro trip in world as country struggles to ride out recession
By William Booth
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, December 6, 2009
MEXICO CITY — The subway here is a real deal, the cheapest in the world, at 15 cents a ride. But those days could soon be over as the city government plans to increase fares by 50 percent — to 3 pesos, or about 23 cents a ticket.“A peso is a peso, so naturally some people will complain,” said Gabriel Zapata, a young troubadour who spends the afternoon rush hour riding Line 3, plinking out Beatles tunes on his amplified guitar in the aisles of the rubber-wheeled trains in the hopes of garnering tips from a few of the 4 million daily riders.