The challenge of Kandahar
Nearly nine years into the U.S.-led war, it remains a Taliban stronghold, ill-served by corrupt Afghan officials, and patrolled by Western forces just now getting around to governance and development issues.
By David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times
July 2, 2010 | 5:00 p.m.
Reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan – Rahmatullah, a slender Afghan engineer who lives in Kandahar city, tried to be polite when young Shawn Adams of Digby, Nova Scotia, offered to help in his efforts to build a local school.Sgt. Adams, 23, was leading a Canadian foot patrol when he encountered Rahmatullah, who complained that he and his neighbors had donated land for a school that the Afghan government has refused to build.
Adams promised to pass the complaint up the chain to his military superiors.
Pornography’s .xxx factor
Apple’s Steve Jobs doesn’t like pornography. Nor do parents’ groups and campaigners. The new .xxx web domain that will be used by websites like fulltube xxx, was approved last week after a $10m battle, promises benefits to porn buyers and sellers, but does the internet need a red light district?
Susanna Rustin
The Guardian, Saturday 3 July 2010
Everyone at Gerrard Dennis’s online swimwear business, run out of a business park in Kent with his wife Jo, is enthusiastic about Apple. The marketing department use Apple computers, senior staff have iPhones. So it came as a shock when Dennis received an email from Apple earlier this year informing him the iPhone app he had spent several thousand pounds developing, advertising his Simply Beach range, had been banned due to sexual connotations.“We replied saying, ‘Are you sure? Have you had a complaint?'” he says, “but in true Apple style, absolutely nothing back.
USA
In a Refuge Haunted by Katrina, BP Swirls In
By DAN BARRY
Published: July 2, 2010
ARABI, La.
There stands a building on Aycock Street through which the recent troubles of St. Bernard Parish continue to flow. All the grief and all the hope and all the miseries borne by water run through this unassuming rectangle of window and brick.The two-story structure was once a parochial school, and the touchstone for a neighborhood boy, long ago. Then Hurricane Katrina filled it halfway with water.Then it became a time-frozen reflection of the surrounding emptiness. Then it became Camp Hope, where volunteers spent their nights after working to restore pockets of St. Bernard, as much as could be done with lawnmowers and drywall.
Economy lags as job growth remains weak
By Neil Irwin and Lori Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 3, 2010
The economic expansion is sputtering.
Private employers added only 83,000 jobs in June, the government said Friday, too few to keep up with growth in the working-age population. The unemployment rate fell to 9.5 percent from 9.7 percent, but only because hundreds of thousands of Americans dropped out of the labor force entirely.Combined with other recent data, the numbers depict a sluggish economy in which nearly 15 million people are out of work and job growth is mediocre.
Europe
Deadly skies: The bloody truth about the Battle of Britain 70 years on
Rarely in history has a battle been so mythologised as the conflict that took place in the skies above southern England between 10 July and 31 October 1940. But the truth about the Battle of Britain – and the brave young airmen who fought it – is far more complex, ruthless and bloody than we often care to remember.
By Robert Fisk Saturday, 3 July 2010
The corrugated steel wall of the gymnasium at Yardley Court School in Tonbridge, Kent, there was a jagged hole punched into the metal about five feet from the ground.By 1956, the outer edges had rusted red and white but we 10-year-olds could stick our fingers into it and feel the sharp edges inside. Maurice Bickmore, the obsessive and sadistic headmaster, would almost mellow when he told us how it had come to be there – whenever his anger frothed out at us we had learnt to ask him about the hole in the gymnasium wall to cool him down.
Ailing euro needs a cure
The gigantic eurozone rescue plan has succeeded, at least for now, in stabilizing the common European currency. But capital markets remain skeptical. The search for a remedy continues.
FINANCE | 03.07.2010
In the eyes of many experts, the euro is still ailing. But what they don’t know is whether it’s just a cold, which can be treated, or a terminal illness. No one seems to have the right remedy. That worries Hans-Olaf Henkel, the former president of the Federation of German Industries (BDI) who also served as managing director of IBM Deutschland: He believes the euro has failed and gives Germany part of the blame.“We have not complied with our own guidelines, which certainly would have made the euro a success,” Henkel said. Together with the French government, he adds, the German government weakened the stability pact by breaching its criteria – “without an emergency, without a financial or economic crisis, and without a euro crisis.”
Middle East
General Odierno: Al Qaeda in Iraq faces serious financial crunch
General Odierno, the top US commander in Iraq, said in a Monitor interview that US and Iraqi forces have broken large Al Qaeda in Iraq rings that extorted millions of dollars a year from companies.
By Jane Arraf, Correspondent / July 2, 2010
Baghdad
A money crunch is fueling Al Qaeda in Iraq’s recent string of robberies and attacks on banks as the weakened organization tries to reconstitute itself, the top US commander in Iraq said.
Gen. Ray Odierno, in an interview with The Christian Science Monitor on Friday, said US and Iraqi operations have arrested or killed dozens of AQI leaders and broken large AQI rings that extorted millions of dollars a year from Iraq’s oil distribution network and major companies.“Major cellphone companies, for example – they would threaten them, if you don’t pay us we’ll go after towers and networks,” he said, crediting intelligence gained from those arrests and killings for cracking the extortion network. “It’s more difficult for them to get funding, so they’re turning to outward criminality in order to fund their operations.”
Despite Raid, Mostly Business as Usual for Israel and Turkey
By DINA KRAFT
Published: July 2, 2010
TEL AVIV – Since the deadly Israeli raid on the Gaza flotilla, Turkey has recalled its ambassador from Jerusalem and banned Israeli military planes from the country’s airspace, while its prime minister has called the Jewish state “a lying machine.” Israel, for its part, has warned its citizens not to travel to Turkey.
But in most other respects, it is still business as usual between the longtime allies.A military and government delegation from Turkey is in Israel right now, its officers and soldiers rumbling through the sands of the Negev learning how to operate the same pilotless aircraft often used by Israel to hunt Palestinian militants in Gaza.
Asia
Behind the facade of Chinese rule in Tibet
A state-sponsored visit to the Himalayan enclave was supposed to mollify journalists with an image of happy co-existence. The truth, as Clifford Coonan discovered, was very different
Through the haze of incense and the smoke of yak butter candles in the Jokhang temple, a nervous 29-year-old monk is making a remarkable confession.Two weeks after the deadly Tibetan riots in 2008, Norgye was one of a group of monks who rushed towards journalists at the temple, shouting demands for freedom. Now he stands before another group of journalists, on a rare state-sanctioned trip to the Himalayan enclave, casting continual glances towards his minder to make sure he’s on message.
Peace sacrificed in shrine attack
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
ISLAMABAD – The twin suicide attacks on Thursday on the shrine of a Sufi saint in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore in which more than 40 people were killed and nearly 200 injured will most likely force the government to reluctantly take action against Punjabi militants while also derailing Washington’s efforts to open dialogue with the Taliban through Pakistan.The attacks in the capital of Punjab province – also known as the country’s cultural capital – took place in the late evening, with the first bombing in the basement reserved for ablutions followed a few minutes later by one in the major prayer area. The shrine is dedicated to 11-century Persian Sufi saint Syed Ali Hajweri, also known as Data Gunj Baksh, who significantly contributed to the spread of Islam.
Africa
Diallo declared front-runner in Guinea election
July 3, 2010
(CNN)Certified presidential election results announced Friday in Guinea put conservative Cellou Dalein Diallo in first place out of a field of 24 contestants, followed by liberal Alpha Conde, an election observer told CNN.
Diallo won 39.72 percent of the vote; Conde took 20.67 percent, said the observer, Abdel-Fatau Musah.
That means Diallo and Conde will compete in a runoff for the presidency late this month or early next month, said Musah, who is political affairs director for the Economic Community of West African States.
Africa’s last hope can’t seize victory
Barry Wilner, Associated Press
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Not the shot kicked away at the goal line. Not the block ruled a handball an instant later as extra time ticked to a close. Not the subsequent penalty kick that sure-footed Asamoah Gyan sent bouncing straight up off the crossbar.And not two more tries in the shootout as Uruguay, suddenly still alive, made four kicks and won the tiebreaker 4-2 on Friday night after a 1-1 draw. The South Americans were headed to the World Cup semifinals for the first time in 40 years.
Latin America
Drug violence clouds Mexican vote
SATURDAY, JULY 03, 2010
Voters in 14 of Mexico’s 31 states will head to the polls on Sunday amid the spectre of heightened drug violence.At least three candidates have been assassinated in the run-up to the regional polls, blamed on drug cartels seeking to cement their influence.
The ballot is increasingly seen as a referendum on the handling of the country’s drug war by Felipe Calderon, the Mexican president.
The highest-profile attack targeted Rodolfo Torre, a leading candidate for governor in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, who was assassinated on Monday.
1 comment
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