Leaders of the EU, Caribbean and Latin America meet for two days in Lima, Peru, for talks on topics such as trade and climate change. Meanwhile personal, political and ideological splits are on the unofficial agenda. It may well be that no big decisions will be made at the summit. However, the idea of a gathering under the slogan "addressing our peoples' priorities together" is to press forward on issues of common interest, like battles against poverty and climate change. And with 60 world leaders -- nearly one-third of the number of countries in the UN -- gathered at one place, EU officials have high hopes for at least one issue: climate change. The European commissioners for trade and external relations, Peter Mandelson and Benita Ferrero-Waldner, say they are set to present a plan in the Peruvian capital for the fight against global warming in Latin America which they hope will get the enthusiastic support of countries like Brazil, Argentina and Mexico.
It may well be that no big decisions will be made at the summit. However, the idea of a gathering under the slogan "addressing our peoples' priorities together" is to press forward on issues of common interest, like battles against poverty and climate change.
And with 60 world leaders -- nearly one-third of the number of countries in the UN -- gathered at one place, EU officials have high hopes for at least one issue: climate change.
The European commissioners for trade and external relations, Peter Mandelson and Benita Ferrero-Waldner, say they are set to present a plan in the Peruvian capital for the fight against global warming in Latin America which they hope will get the enthusiastic support of countries like Brazil, Argentina and Mexico.
Leaders from 50 European, Latin American and Caribbean nations are meeting in Peru to address poverty and the rise in world food prices. There have been few signs of compromise in trade negotiations ahead of the summit. Talks will be held in private. Simmering regional conflicts in Latin America threaten to overshadow any final agreement. Some 50,000 police have been drafted in for the summit, the fifth meeting of its kind in 10 years. Even before his arrival in Lima, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has already ruffled feathers both in Latin America and Europe.
Leaders from 50 European, Latin American and Caribbean nations are meeting in Peru to address poverty and the rise in world food prices.
There have been few signs of compromise in trade negotiations ahead of the summit. Talks will be held in private.
Simmering regional conflicts in Latin America threaten to overshadow any final agreement.
Some 50,000 police have been drafted in for the summit, the fifth meeting of its kind in 10 years.
Even before his arrival in Lima, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has already ruffled feathers both in Latin America and Europe.
RIYADH: With the price of oil hitting record highs, President George W. Bush used a private visit to King Abdullah's ranch here Friday to make a second attempt to persuade the Saudi government to increase oil production. And while Saudis initially appeared to rebuff the request, the Saudi oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, announced later that the kingdom had increased output by 300,000 barrels a day, starting May 10. The Saudis have previously rejected American requests to increase production, and Naimi insisted that the increase was in response to demands from some 50 "customers" worldwide. He did not give further details. "Our response is positive," he said at a news conference. "If you want more oil you need to buy it." The increase means that Saudi Arabia aims to produce 9.5 million barrels a day. Prince Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister, said at the briefing, "The president showed great concern for the impact on the American economy," adding, "We of course sympathize with that."
RIYADH: With the price of oil hitting record highs, President George W. Bush used a private visit to King Abdullah's ranch here Friday to make a second attempt to persuade the Saudi government to increase oil production. And while Saudis initially appeared to rebuff the request, the Saudi oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, announced later that the kingdom had increased output by 300,000 barrels a day, starting May 10.
The Saudis have previously rejected American requests to increase production, and Naimi insisted that the increase was in response to demands from some 50 "customers" worldwide. He did not give further details. "Our response is positive," he said at a news conference. "If you want more oil you need to buy it."
The increase means that Saudi Arabia aims to produce 9.5 million barrels a day.
Prince Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister, said at the briefing, "The president showed great concern for the impact on the American economy," adding, "We of course sympathize with that."
Saudis to boost oil output after US pressure Saudi Arabia said on Friday that it was increasing its oil production to its highest level in two years, bowing to intense US pressure after the price surged to a fresh record of almost $128 a barrel. The announcement of a boost to output by about 300,000 barrels a day came after a plea by George W. Bush, US president, to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia said on Friday that it was increasing its oil production to its highest level in two years, bowing to intense US pressure after the price surged to a fresh record of almost $128 a barrel.
The announcement of a boost to output by about 300,000 barrels a day came after a plea by George W. Bush, US president, to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in Riyadh.
Either way, Saudi Arabia's production has been declining or stagnant over the past 3 years. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
DAGAARI, Somalia: The global food crisis has arrived at Safia Ali's hut. She can't afford rice or wheat or powdered milk anymore. At the same time, a drought has decimated her family's herd of goats, turning their sole livelihood into a pile of bleached bones and papery skin. The result is Safia, a 25-year-old mother of five, has not eaten in a week. Her one-year-old son is starving too, an adorable, listless boy who doesn't even respond to a pinch. Somalia -- and much of the volatile Horn of Africa, for that matter -- was about the last place on earth that needed a food crisis. Even before commodity prices started shooting up around the globe, civil war, displacement and imperiled aid operations had pushed many people here to the brink of famine.
DAGAARI, Somalia: The global food crisis has arrived at Safia Ali's hut.
She can't afford rice or wheat or powdered milk anymore.
At the same time, a drought has decimated her family's herd of goats, turning their sole livelihood into a pile of bleached bones and papery skin.
The result is Safia, a 25-year-old mother of five, has not eaten in a week. Her one-year-old son is starving too, an adorable, listless boy who doesn't even respond to a pinch.
Somalia -- and much of the volatile Horn of Africa, for that matter -- was about the last place on earth that needed a food crisis. Even before commodity prices started shooting up around the globe, civil war, displacement and imperiled aid operations had pushed many people here to the brink of famine.
He was a carefree Italian with a recent law degree from a Roman university. She was "a totally Virginia girl," as she puts it, raised across the road from George Washington's home. Their romance, sparked by a 2006 meeting in a supermarket in Rome, soon brought the Italian, Domenico Salerno, on frequent visits to Alexandria, Va., where he was welcomed like a favorite son by the parents and neighbors of his girlfriend, Caitlin Cooper. But on April 29, when Mr. Salerno, 35, presented his passport at Washington Dulles International Airport, a Customs and Border Protection agent refused to let him into the United States. And after hours of questioning, agents would not let him travel back to Rome, either; over his protests in fractured English, he said, they insisted that he had expressed a fear of returning to Italy and had asked for asylum. Ms. Cooper, 23, who had promised to show her boyfriend another side of her country on this visit -- meaning Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon -- eventually learned that he had been sent in shackles to a rural Virginia jail. And there he remained for more than 10 days, locked up without charges or legal recourse while Ms. Cooper, her parents and their well-connected neighbors tried everything to get him out. Mr. Salerno's case may be extreme, but it underscores the real but little-known dangers that many travelers from Europe and other first-world nations face when they arrive in the United States -- problems that can startle Americans as much as their foreign visitors.
But on April 29, when Mr. Salerno, 35, presented his passport at Washington Dulles International Airport, a Customs and Border Protection agent refused to let him into the United States. And after hours of questioning, agents would not let him travel back to Rome, either; over his protests in fractured English, he said, they insisted that he had expressed a fear of returning to Italy and had asked for asylum.
Ms. Cooper, 23, who had promised to show her boyfriend another side of her country on this visit -- meaning Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon -- eventually learned that he had been sent in shackles to a rural Virginia jail. And there he remained for more than 10 days, locked up without charges or legal recourse while Ms. Cooper, her parents and their well-connected neighbors tried everything to get him out.
Mr. Salerno's case may be extreme, but it underscores the real but little-known dangers that many travelers from Europe and other first-world nations face when they arrive in the United States -- problems that can startle Americans as much as their foreign visitors.
such "arriving aliens" are not considered to be in the United States at all, even if they are in custody, they have none of the legal rights that even illegal immigrants can claim. (...) "The border patrol officer said to my face that Domenico said he would be killed if he went back to Italy," she recalled, voicing incredulity that, in his halting English, he could express such a thought. "Also, who on earth would ever seek asylum from Italy?" [LOL - maybe because of this: The youngest son of a prosperous contractor in Calabria, Mr. Salerno helps out in his brother's law firm in Rome] (...) he was taken to the Pamunkey Regional Jail in Hanover, Va., where he ended up in a barracks with 75 other men, including asylum-seekers who told him they had been waiting a year. (...) "They were pretty shocked that the government could do this sort of thing, because it doesn't happen that often, except to people you never hear about, like Haitians and Guatemalans."
(...)
"The border patrol officer said to my face that Domenico said he would be killed if he went back to Italy," she recalled, voicing incredulity that, in his halting English, he could express such a thought. "Also, who on earth would ever seek asylum from Italy?"
[LOL - maybe because of this: The youngest son of a prosperous contractor in Calabria, Mr. Salerno helps out in his brother's law firm in Rome]
he was taken to the Pamunkey Regional Jail in Hanover, Va., where he ended up in a barracks with 75 other men, including asylum-seekers who told him they had been waiting a year.
"They were pretty shocked that the government could do this sort of thing, because it doesn't happen that often, except to people you never hear about, like Haitians and Guatemalans."
So many implicit (or not-so-implicit) assumptions laid bare in that article... In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
The larger problem is what, if anything, the next administration will do to prevent a recurrence of these policies in subsequent generations. What I, on a visceral level, would like to see done probably would not be good policy and would "set a bad president" (and vice president--on 8 foot x 3" sharpened hickory stakes planted in the White House lawn.) I can only hope that more effective deterents can be devised. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
While Israelis celebrate the 60th anniversary of their state's founding, Palestinians around the world are mourning the "Nakba" -- or "catastrophe" -- that drove so many into exile. Scholar Lila Abu-Lughod has taken a close look at the way Palestinians see the past and present. SPIEGEL ONLINE: This week Palestinians all over the world mark the sixtieth anniversary of what they have come to call the "Nakba," or catastrophe -- the expulsion from their homes in 1948 in the wake of the founding of the State of Israel. You have studied the phenomenon as an anthropologist, but you yourself are the daughter of a Palestinian. What does this day mean to you? Lila Abu-Lughod: Only my father was Palestinian, but for both my parents the political injustice of the situation was clear. Every child of a Palestinian refugee feels the burden of the events of 1948, not just through what a parent or grandparent might tell her or through sensing their hollow feeling of exile, but because the results are with us today in the continuing violence. Those who live in the US are faced daily with a kind of symbolic violence -- misconceptions and untruths conveyed by the media about Israel. I don't see the anniversary as a time of mourning but as an occasion for trying to get the world to listen to what really happened and to think about how this should shape our vision of a solution. SPIEGEL ONLINE: The Nakba is a national trauma for the Palestinians, hundreds of thousands had to leave their homes and villages behind. But of course the number of those who actually lived through it decreases every year. Has this changed the meaning of commemorating the Nakba? Abu-Lughod: This is a wonderful question. Dr. Rosemary Sayigh, who has been interviewing Palestinians about their experiences for decades, describes her work as a race against time. But Diana Allan, an anthropologist from Harvard who has been videotaping old men and women in the refugee camps all over Lebanon to create a Nakba Archive, would be the first to insist that though it is important to get these stories, it should not distract us from the contemporary problems Palestinians face, in Lebanon and elsewhere. I have been following with interest, though, the way this particular Nakba commemoration has galvanized people and spurred storytelling: a good example is the series of "untold stories" on the Web site of the Institute for Middle East Understanding.
While Israelis celebrate the 60th anniversary of their state's founding, Palestinians around the world are mourning the "Nakba" -- or "catastrophe" -- that drove so many into exile. Scholar Lila Abu-Lughod has taken a close look at the way Palestinians see the past and present.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: This week Palestinians all over the world mark the sixtieth anniversary of what they have come to call the "Nakba," or catastrophe -- the expulsion from their homes in 1948 in the wake of the founding of the State of Israel. You have studied the phenomenon as an anthropologist, but you yourself are the daughter of a Palestinian. What does this day mean to you?
Lila Abu-Lughod: Only my father was Palestinian, but for both my parents the political injustice of the situation was clear. Every child of a Palestinian refugee feels the burden of the events of 1948, not just through what a parent or grandparent might tell her or through sensing their hollow feeling of exile, but because the results are with us today in the continuing violence. Those who live in the US are faced daily with a kind of symbolic violence -- misconceptions and untruths conveyed by the media about Israel. I don't see the anniversary as a time of mourning but as an occasion for trying to get the world to listen to what really happened and to think about how this should shape our vision of a solution.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: The Nakba is a national trauma for the Palestinians, hundreds of thousands had to leave their homes and villages behind. But of course the number of those who actually lived through it decreases every year. Has this changed the meaning of commemorating the Nakba?
Abu-Lughod: This is a wonderful question. Dr. Rosemary Sayigh, who has been interviewing Palestinians about their experiences for decades, describes her work as a race against time. But Diana Allan, an anthropologist from Harvard who has been videotaping old men and women in the refugee camps all over Lebanon to create a Nakba Archive, would be the first to insist that though it is important to get these stories, it should not distract us from the contemporary problems Palestinians face, in Lebanon and elsewhere. I have been following with interest, though, the way this particular Nakba commemoration has galvanized people and spurred storytelling: a good example is the series of "untold stories" on the Web site of the Institute for Middle East Understanding.
My friend is not eager to be identified as a Palestinian, because of the stigma which has been laid upon them in the US media. An injustice to one people does not justify their perpetuating an injustice on another people. It is not a question of the ends justifying the means. The means can only be justified in terms of the ends they produce, if by that. Einstein said "If we do not treat them,(the Palestinians), better than we were treated by the Germans we will have learned nothing and will deserve anything we get." As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
GENEVA: Believe the advocates of a treaty banning cluster munitions and the international community is about to take a decisive step toward curbing the use of a weapon that inflicts terrible suffering, particularly on civilians. Believe the U.S. government, and the measure they propose threatens to undermine the NATO alliance that has underpinned Western security since World War II. Delegates from more than a hundred countries will open a conference in Dublin on Monday that will try to hammer out a treaty banning the production, use, stockpiling or transfer of cluster munitions - bombs or artillery shells packed with up to several hundred bomblets or submunitions that are sprayed over wide areas of territory. Major producers and stockpilers of cluster munitions, the United States, Russia and China, will be absent and are opposed to a treaty, but disarmament experts liken the cluster treaty to the Ottawa Treaty of 1997 banning land mines, which was shunned by the major powers but has proved influential in shaping the policies of countries outside the convention.
GENEVA: Believe the advocates of a treaty banning cluster munitions and the international community is about to take a decisive step toward curbing the use of a weapon that inflicts terrible suffering, particularly on civilians. Believe the U.S. government, and the measure they propose threatens to undermine the NATO alliance that has underpinned Western security since World War II.
Delegates from more than a hundred countries will open a conference in Dublin on Monday that will try to hammer out a treaty banning the production, use, stockpiling or transfer of cluster munitions - bombs or artillery shells packed with up to several hundred bomblets or submunitions that are sprayed over wide areas of territory.
Major producers and stockpilers of cluster munitions, the United States, Russia and China, will be absent and are opposed to a treaty, but disarmament experts liken the cluster treaty to the Ottawa Treaty of 1997 banning land mines, which was shunned by the major powers but has proved influential in shaping the policies of countries outside the convention.
Believe the U.S. government, and the measure they propose threatens to undermine the NATO alliance that has underpinned Western security since World War II.
A country that believes in torture cannot possibly see a problem with cluster bombs. I believe the UK will cling to them as well.
"If we didn't have them, everybody else would be able to use them against us" keep to the Fen Causeway
Myanmar state television said the official death count from the May 3 cyclone was 77,738, with 55,917 others missing. <...> "More than two weeks after the event, we are at a critical point," said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. "Unless more aid gets into the country -- quickly -- we face the risk of an outbreak of infectious diseases that could dramatically worsen today's crisis."Jean-Maurice Ripert, France's ambassador to the U.N., criticized the junta for refusing to allow a French navy ship to deliver 1,500 tons of food, drugs and medication to the Irrawaddy delta using small boats.He said refusing to allow aid to be delivered to those in need "could lead to a true crime against humanity if we go on like that."
"More than two weeks after the event, we are at a critical point," said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. "Unless more aid gets into the country -- quickly -- we face the risk of an outbreak of infectious diseases that could dramatically worsen today's crisis."
Jean-Maurice Ripert, France's ambassador to the U.N., criticized the junta for refusing to allow a French navy ship to deliver 1,500 tons of food, drugs and medication to the Irrawaddy delta using small boats.
He said refusing to allow aid to be delivered to those in need "could lead to a true crime against humanity if we go on like that."
Many survivors were found on Saturday, five days after the disaster, including a German tourist who was pulled from rubble in Wenchuan after being buried for 114 hours, Xinhua news agency said. <...> In earthquakes elsewhere in the world, survivors have been found a week or more after the disaster. In Baguio in the Philippines in 1990, a cook was found alive after two weeks in the rubble of a shattered hotel. <...> Zhang Xue's parents and aunt have been looking for the 15-year-old girl ever since the quake brought down the Ju Yuan High School in Dujiangyan. In a hospital, distraught, they looked at the body of a girl, lowered their eyes and shook their heads. "The girl has the same name and age, but she's not our child," her mother said. <...> Offers of help have flooded in and foreign rescue teams from Japan, Russia, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore have arrived.
In earthquakes elsewhere in the world, survivors have been found a week or more after the disaster. In Baguio in the Philippines in 1990, a cook was found alive after two weeks in the rubble of a shattered hotel. <...>
Zhang Xue's parents and aunt have been looking for the 15-year-old girl ever since the quake brought down the Ju Yuan High School in Dujiangyan.
In a hospital, distraught, they looked at the body of a girl, lowered their eyes and shook their heads.
"The girl has the same name and age, but she's not our child," her mother said. <...>
Offers of help have flooded in and foreign rescue teams from Japan, Russia, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore have arrived.
