U.N. Officials Say American Aide Plotted to Replace Karzai
By JAMES GLANZ and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
Published: December 16, 2009
As widespread fraud in the Afghanistan presidential election was becoming clear three months ago, the No. 2 United Nations official in the country, the American Peter W. Galbraith, proposed enlisting the White House in a plan to replace the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, according to two senior United Nations officials.
Mr. Karzai, the officials said, became incensed when he learned of the plan and was told it had been put forth by Mr. Galbraith, who had been installed in his position with the strong backing of Richard C. Holbrooke, the top American envoy to Afghanistan. Mr. Holbrooke had himself clashed with the Afghan president over the election.
Copenhagen: World leaders ‘face public fury’ if agreement proves impossible
Miliband warns heads not to stall on technicalities as some progress is made between the biggest polluters US and China
Suzanne Goldenberg, Jonathan Watts and John Vidal in Copenhagen
The Guardian, Thursday 17 December 2009
World leaders arriving at the Copenhagen climate change summit today and tomorrow face public “fury” if they fail to inject crucial new momentum into the talks, according to climate secretary Ed Miliband.Talks resumed late last night following many hours of delay as negotiators wrangled over the form a treaty to fight global warming should take. “People will find it extraordinary that this conference is being stalled on points of order,” said Miliband. “People will be rightly furious if agreement is not possible.”
USA
Recession hitting Ohio’s former steel towns hard
FALLOUT The Unrecovered
By Anne Hull
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 17, 200
WARREN, OHIO — All day long the front door buzzes at Uptown Gems & Jewels. The people come in with their trinkets wrapped in tissue or velvet boxes. They say their hours have been cut or they’ve been laid off. Some have their first names stitched in cursive on their uniforms, others wear safety-toe boots.
At campaign time, they are celebrated as the people who built America. Now they just want to know how much they can get for a wedding band.“Let me show you something,” says Dallas Root, standing behind the counter with a jeweler’s loupe strung around his neck.
Health bill held up by single Democrat and GOP tactics
Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska is holding out mainly for tougher antiabortion language. Republicans halt debate temporarily by insisting that a 767-page amendment be read aloud.
By Janet Hook
December 17, 2009
Reporting from Washington – New obstacles slowed Senate action on the healthcare bill Wednesday, as the hunt for supporters narrowed to a lone Democrat — Ben Nelson of Nebraska — and Republican delaying tactics brought debate to a temporary standstill.But Democratic leaders made progress toward bringing their party in line and remained hopeful that they would pass the bill through the Senate by Christmas — just barely.
The effort to win Nelson’s support hinges largely on abortion policy, the issue that nearly derailed action on the healthcare bill at the last minute in the House, where antiabortion Democrats insisted on tight restrictions on abortion funding under the proposed new health programs.
Asia
President Zardari under pressure as Pakistani judges rule amnesty is void
• Opposition calls for resignation after supreme court decision
• President faces legal battle over long-running allegations
Mark Tran and Associated Press in Islamabad
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 16 December 2009 20.42 GMT
President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan suffered a fresh blow to his precarious position today when the supreme court ruled that an amnesty protecting him from corruption charges was null and void.The main opposition party called for his resignation on moral grounds only hours after the ruling, but Zardari’s office said he had no intention of stepping down.
The ruling paves the way for legal challenges against Zardari at a time when he is deeply unpopular because of public perceptions that he is being too compliant with the US. The Obama administration has been pressing Islamabad to crack down on al-Qaida and Taliban insurgents using sanctuaries in Pakistan to launch operations against Nato forces in Afghanistan.
Beneath the beauty, the most traumatised place in the world
By Andrew Buncombe
Thursday, 17 December 2009
The elderly Kashmiri farmer had never enjoyed the best of health. But when his teenage son was shot dead by troops who suspected him of being a militant, things took a sharp turn for the worse. Mohammed Parray’s epilepsy attacks became more frequent and his moods turned increasingly aggressive. Even now, seven years later, he still snarls whenever soldiers pass.“He has no reason, no insight,” sighed his wife, Taja, as Mr Parray sat quietly, brushing tears from his mottled face. “I do not speak up, I do not blame him. I know this is something that he has internalised. If I don’t understand him, who will?”
Europe
Russia’s ‘economic shock therapist’ dies aged 53
Post-Communist reforms introduced by Yegor Gaidar blamed for 1990s hardship
By Shaun Walker in Moscow Thursday, 17 December 2009
The architect of controversial reforms that dragged Russia out of its Soviet economic system died yesterday in Moscow. Yegor Gaidar, 53, was a divisive figure blamed by many Russians for the years of chaos and economic hardship that the country endured in the 1990s.However, many believe that without the radical “shock therapy” reforms instituted by a team of young economists led by Mr Gaidar during the early days of Boris Yeltsin’s presidency, Russia’s fate could have been much worse.
Priest who sparked Ceausescu’s demise warns of 20 more hard years
From The Times
December 17, 2009
Lucy Bannerman in Tirgu Mures
The priest who helped to spark the 1989 Romanian revolution has warned that political bickering and an economic crisis risk handicapping the Eastern European nation for another 20 years.Father Laszlo Tokes, an ethnic Hungarian dissident, became a fulcrum for protests after he was hounded by the Communist regime for denouncing the policies of Nicolae Ceausescu, the country’s despotic leader.
Parishioners who defied the authorities to protest against the harassment of their pastor by the secret police inspired wider dissent, which culminated in the overthrow of the regime and the execution of Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, on Christmas Day, 1989.
Middle East
Iran condemned by Western leaders over test of long-range missile
From The Times
December 17, 2009
Catherine Philp, Diplomatic Correspondent and James Hider, Middle East Correspondent
Western governments united to denounce Iran’s test-firing of a long-range ballistic missile yesterday, warning that it would only increase international determination to press for more sanctions on Tehran if it refused to negotiate over its nuclear programme.Gordon Brown led the call for stricter sanctions, calling the missile test a cause for serious concern that drew further into question Iran’s professed peaceful intentions over its nuclear programme.
The United States, France and Germany joined in the condemnation. Germany called the test alarming, and France described it as “a very bad signal to the international community”.
Why the PLO extended Abbas’s term
Some say the PLO’s move Wednesday to allow Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to stay in office beyond January was aimed at salvaging the PLO’s legitimacy. Hamas rejects the extension.
By Ilene R. Prusher Staff writer / December 16, 2009
Jerusalem
Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority (PA), was given a green light Wednesday to stay in office beyond next January, when his term was due to expire for the second time.The Central Council of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) voted Tuesday to extend indefinitely the tenure of Mahmoud Abbas. The decision was seen as a stop-gap measure aimed at avoiding a potential collapse of the PA.
Some view the extension as primarily a political move on the part of heavyweights in Fatah, the PLO’s main political faction, to stave off political crisis and questions over Abbas’s legitimacy. According to the Palestinian Constitution, Abbas’s term expires in late January.
Africa
Millions at risk as East Africa rains fail, Oxfam says
Aid agency Oxfam warns that a failure of rains across swathes of East Africa is putting millions of lives at risk.
The BBC news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8417516.stm
This is the sixth successive season of failed rains in an area already hit by its worst drought in 20 years.
Some 20 million people face starvation in vast areas of Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, the UN has already warned.
Oxfam says November rainfall was less than 5% of normal in much of Turkana in northern Kenya, all of Somaliland and Ethiopia’s Central Highlands.
In Turkana, one of the worst affected areas, nearly one person in three is malnourished.
The crisis is most severe in parts of Somalia, where worsening conflict and the drought have left 3.6 million people – a third of the country’s population – in need of aid.
In Timbuktu, a race to preserve Africa’s written history
Ancient manuscripts in Timbuktu, that prove a written history often overlooked by the rest of the world, are crumbling due to lack of funding for preservation
By Scott Baldauf Staff writer / December 16, 2009
Timbuktu, Mali
Ahmed Saloum Boularaf is holding a leather-bound sheaf of documents that date back to the 13th century. The manuscript contains a poetic rendition of the life of the Prophet Mohammad, written in the lacy Arabic handwriting of an African scholar who knew how to read before some Europeans even knew of the existence of books.Like most of the 1,700 manuscripts in Mr. Boularaf’s private collection – which includes ancient books on medicine and history, astronomy and mathematics — this one is beginning to crumble, and Boularaf knows that in a very short time, his manuscripts and the knowledge they contain, could be lost forever.
Latin America
Mexican forces kill drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva
One of Mexico’s most-wanted drug lords has been killed in a shoot-out with state security forces, officials say.
The BBC Thursday, 17 December 2009
Arturo Beltran Leyva and four alleged members of his cartel died in a raid on a flat in Cuernavaca, just south of Mexico City.
The Beltran Leyva cartel, based on the Pacific coast, is one of Mexico’s most powerful and violent drug gangs.
Separately, the severed heads of six policemen were found near a church in the north of the country, police said.
They said the beheadings in Durango state were a revenge attack by the Gulf cartel for the killing of 10 gang members last week.
The severed heads, left in plastic bags outside the church before dawn, were discovered by garbage collectors, the state attorney general’s office said.