generalspeaking

The Universe Unfolding

• Baghdad - State television yesterday reported that 18 boys were killed when a car bomb exploded in a park in Ramadi, and Iraqi and international officials were quick to deplore the slaughter. UNICEF, the UN's children's agency, issued a statemen saying "the loss of so many innocent children at play is unacceptable". (Oh, quite!)
  
• Afghanistan - A suicide bomber detonated his explosives just outside the gates to the main U.S. air base in Afghanistan, killing as many as 23 people, showcasing insurgents' growing capabilities in advance of a widely expected spring offensive. (World-wide Islamism on its inexorable move forward)
  
• The Hague - Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court yesterday named a Sudanese minister and a janjaweed militia leader as the first suspects to be tried for war crimes in the Darfur conflict. The pair was accused of 51 crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, torture and mass rape, as the stricken Sudanese region entered a fifth year of the civil war which has left more than 200,000 dead. (And we're still wringing our collective hands)
  
• Greenland - Twenty years ago, waters along the east coast of Greenland above the Arctic Circle would have been choked with ice at this time of year. The new norm is a fringe of sea ice, disintegrating along the edges up and down the rugged coastline. Warming linked not only to retreating sea ice but the demise of the ice sheets on Greenland among the remotest places on earth, with a huge impact on the plane. If the ice melts completely global sea levels are expected to rise six to seven metres, displacing millions of people from Florida to Bangladesh to Tuktoyaktuk. (Tentatively attributable to global warming)
  
• United States - Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, a leading voice in the fight against global warming, is being called a hypocrite by a conservative group claiming his Nashville mansion uses too much energy. Mr. Gore's documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth, won an Oscar for chronicling his campaign against global warming. The day following the award, the Tennessee Centre for Policy Research distributed a news release saying Mr. Gore was not doing enough to reduce his own consumption of electricity. Utility records show the Gore family paid an average monthly electric bill of about $1,200 U.S. for its 10,000-square-foot home. (Yet another inconvenient truth)
  
• Poland - Jozefa Tracz devised an ingenious early earning system to save the Jewish family hidden in the attic: the 15-year-old played the piano in the living room banging hard on the keys every time a stranger entered her house in Nazi-occupied Poland. Her Chopin drowned out the voices of the fugitives upstairs. At a tearful reunion with one of the women she saved, Miriam Schmetterling said: They knew the risk they were taking. If someone had found out we were there, they would have been killed." (Highlighting the saintly few among us)
  
• Paris - When Bingu Wa Mutharika, the president of Malawi, returned from a summit on Africa in France last week, he left behind a lasting impression of the poverty blighting his country. Calling for more international aid, he highlighted the problems facing a famine-ravaged society where the average monthly wage is just $47. His wife Ethel stayed in Paris a little longer than the official Malawi delegation, "We left the first lady in France because the president said she had to do her shopping", a government source told Malawi's Nyasa Times. Last seen, Malawi's first lady was filling her shopping bags in the designer boutiques and jewellery shops of Cannes, the millionaires' playground on the Cote d'Azur. (Despair!)
  
• Moscow - Yesterday, Russia threw its weight behind a power-sharing deal reached between Hamas and Fatah on February 8 in Mecca. "We are pushing for all members of the international community to support this process and make it irreversible, including efforts to lift the blockade," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. At a separate news conference, however, Hamas's top leader, Khaled Mashaal struck a less conciliatory tone, saying the group was not ready to recognize Israel, desite earlier giving assurances Hamas would halt the missile attacks and other violence toward Israel. (Recognize a pattern?)
  
• Gander, N.L. - A man accused of drowning his twin 3-year-old daughters as the Crown accused him of murdering the girls out of fear they would be taken by social srvices. "He didn't want his kids taken away by the social workers and given to his brother to raise." (Selfless parental love)
  
• Somalia - Somali authorities have arrested six suspected pirates in the hijacking of a UN-chartered cargo ship delivering food aid. Four heavily armed pirates still had control of the vessel and were holding 12 crew members hostage, said the UN food agency. The ship, the MV Rozen, had been contracted to deliver aid to Somalia, where about one million people are suffering after a drought that hit the region last year. (Compassion there is none)
  
• Sri Lanka - Rebels fired on Sri Lankan military helicopters carrying six foreign envoys yesterday, slightly wounding the U.S. and Italian ambassadors. Seven Sri Lankan security personnel were also hurt, but the envoys from Canada, France, Germany and Japan escaped without injury. (Oh dear, privileged dignitaries endangered; invoke the Geneva Convention!)
  
• Italy - A Milan school teacher lost her job after slashing the tongue of a 7-year-old student with a pair of scissors to punish him for talking too much. Holding a pair of scissors in her hand, the 22-year-old supply teacher apparently told the boy, who was of North African origin, "stick out your tongue so I can cut it. That way you'll stop talking!" Then she slashed his tongue so badly he needed five stitches. (Children can be such a nuisance; in this instance I might recommend returning the compliment)
  

Labels: World Crises

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, February 28, 2007