generalspeaking

The State of the World

• It's hurricane season again. Tropical storms in alphabetical nomenclature, are posing ever more serious threats to human habitation, and in the process human sanity. Ernesto hit one of the poorest countries in the Americas with predictable results, killing several people and flooding out thousands in Haiti, then went on to eastern Cuba with hurricane-strength winds doing its utmost to make everyone terrified and dreadfully unhappy.
  
• At Cape Canaveral, space shuttle Atlantis didn't see liftoff, delayed because of a week-end lightning storm, then was delayed again because of the onset of Ernesto.
• Another space cookie, John Mark Karr, was cleared of the decade-old, as-yet-unsolved murder of a minuscule model; despite his proud declaration of accidently killing the 6-year-old child he was subsequently cleared by order of DNA sampling.
• Iran has delivered due warning to its female citizenry to cover up decently in public for police there will no longer turn a blind eye to women wearing the flimsiest of veils or displaying painted toenails in open sandals. Thousands of women are being stopped, scolded and warned daily. Implementation of strict Islamic codes have been increased under Iran's President AhMADinejad.
• In an article on Islamists headlined "Kashmir on the Thames", the New Republic has painted Britain's Muslim communities as a breeding ground for violent extremism, thus declaring Britain as posing the "biggest threat to U.S. security".
• UNESCO, the UN organization that oversees 830 World Heritage sites has red-flagged its concerns about mining and other potentially disruptive activities near the world-famed Nahanni and rocky Mountain national parks in Canada.
• Bomb blasts in Turkey's largest city, Istanbul and the coastal resort of Marmaris injured 27 people. A Kurdish rebel group believed to be linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party said yesterday it carried out those attacks.
• Israeli foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, visiting Berlin, urged world leaders to confront the threat posed by Iran, saying the Islamic Republic is trying to buy time to build a nuclear weapon. The United States has raised the prospect of unilateral sanctions against Tehran if the Security Council fails to agree.
• Commenting after the fall-out of the Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon, Khalil Bou Azzedine, a Lebanese Druze who runs a dry-goods shop in the mountain town of Bakleen said: "We are different. We like life. We like to educate our kids. We like to grow old. Hezbollah loves death."
• U.S. Senator Barack Obama, visiting his native Kenya, lamented studies that indicate corruption to be the largest obstacle to investment and a major complaint of Kenyan citizens in their daily lives, which has nefarious consequences for human rights and health.
• The Sudanese government is ignoring U.S. and UN pressure to accept UN troops in Darfur, as the UN Security Council debated quelling violence in Sudan's western region. Seems it's quite all right with the Sudanese government that its Black Muslim population continues to be murdered at an unbelievable rate; they'll straighten things out themselves, and they definitely do not want the deployment of UN peacekeepers to the region. Infringement of sovereignty.
• A suicide blast tore through a crowded bazaar in Lakshar Gah, southern Afghanistan, killing 17 people and wounding nearly 50. Witnesses said a man with bombs strapped to his body grabbed Khan Mohammad, a prominent businessman and former police chief, and detonated the explosives.
• Sri Lanka's Liberation tigers of Tamil Eelam said at least 20 civilians were killed and 26 wounded in air force raids yesterday in the island's east, as the army launched a new push into Tiger territory. Eight soldiers were killed and 28 wounded during the fighting to take rebel-held villages. Hundreds of people have been killed in violence this month.
• Somalia's powerful Islamists have sent a high-level delegation to meet the interim government at talks intended to defuse tensions between the two sides vying for authority in the lawless nation.
• Ahmed Sheikh, editor-in-chief of al-Jazeera television ruminated in an interview that: "five years after the 9/11 anniversary the Arab world is much more divided than it used to be. the image of Islam has been tarnished to a great extent. We are weaker than we used to be against Israel. Development is absent." Jihadist battles have actually produced what the arabs call "fitna", or self-destructive internal strife.
• Mike Tidwell, director of the U.S. Climate Emergency Council states that for every emergency preparedness oficial whose hair has turned white praying for good luck, global warming represents a state of permanent misfortune. With three feet of sea-level rise, we are in essence creating permanent high-tide conditions in the D.C. region and everywhere else in North America, guaranteeing that even Category 2 storms like Gloria will become surge-tide heavyweights.
• In Ecuador a simple funeral was held yesterday for Maria Esther de Capovilla, the oldest person on earth according to Guinness World Records. She died of pneumonia Sunday at the age of 116. Shortly before she died, her granddaughte said, she kept repeating, "I want to be young again".
  

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, August 29, 2006