Energy crisis as gas row worsens between Russia and Ukraine
SWATHES of Europe have been plunged into an energy crisis after gas supplies to a number of countries were cut in an increasingly acrimonious dispute between Russia and Ukra 6 Jan 2009 at 6:00pm
Battling Korean MPs force delay on US free-trade vote
OPPOSITION MPs ended their violent 12-day siege of South Korea's parliament yesterday after successfully delaying a key vote on a US free-trade deal. 6 Jan 2009 at 6:00pm
US security contractors in court over killings of Iraqi civilians
FIVE Blackwater Worldwide security guards are expected to appear in a US court this week to answer to manslaughter charges in the 2007 shooting deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians i 6 Jan 2009 at 6:00pm
Obama's replacement as governor rebuffed
THE man appointed to take Barack Obama's vacant senate seat was turned away from Congress yesterday by Democrats angry that he was appointed by a governor facing corrupti 6 Jan 2009 at 6:00pm
US acts to save marine treasures
THE home of a giant land crab, a sunken island ringed by pink coral and equatorial waters teeming with sharks are being declared national marine monuments by the United State 6 Jan 2009 at 6:00pm
Blair is accused of siding with Israel
THE international community's Middle East envoy, Tony Blair, said there was a "basis" for an immediate ceasefire if the supply of arms smuggled into the Gaza Strip 6 Jan 2009 at 6:00pm
Enron chief loses appeal, but could have jail term cut
A UNITED States court yesterday upheld the convictions of former Enron chief executive Jeffrey Skilling for his role in the collapse of the energy trading company. But it 6 Jan 2009 at 6:00pm
Robber caught on camera
A PHOTOGRAPHER who caught an armed robbery suspect as the man fled before being shot by police said yesterday that he feared being held hostage. 6 Jan 2009 at 6:00pm
Nigerian authorities are cracking down on motorcyclists who try to dodge fines for not having a helmet by wearing dried pumpkin shells. 6 Jan 2009 at 8:27am
People's Daily Online
Senegalese leader congratulates newly elected Ghanaian president
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade on Monday expressed "the warmest congratulations" to Ghana's president-elect John Atta-Mills on winning "magnificent victory in legislative and presidential polls."
Wade also expressed hope that Ghana will soon form a new government, saying he is ready to work with the new Ghanaian president to strengthen friendly ties and cooperation between the two countries.
Prof. Atta-Mills of Ghana's National Democratic Congress was declared the winner of ... 6 Jan 2009 at 8:03am
Thai gov't worries about 2,600 Thai workers in Gaza Strip
Thailand's Labour Ministry is worried about the well-being of about 2,600 Thai workers now employed in the Gaza Strip as fierce fighting between Israeli troops and the militant group Hamas continues without any sign of ending soon, Deputy Permanent Secretary for Labour Pornchai Yooprayong said Tuesday.
Pornchai said there are about 2,600 Thai workers employed at 27 sites in the area.
The Ministry's Employment Department has been instructed not to dispatch new batches of Thai work ... 6 Jan 2009 at 8:03am
Israeli offensive kills 13 civilians in Gaza
The ongoing Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip killed 13 Palestinian civilians on Tuesday afternoon, adding the fatalities increased to 35.
According to witness and medical sources in Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Israeli air strikes hit a four-floor building in northern Gaza City, killing 12 members from a family, including a mother and her children.
Also on Tuesday afternoon, a woman was killed by Israeli shelling in Jabaria in northern Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, the P ... 6 Jan 2009 at 8:02am
Tony Blair to receive U.S. award
Britain's former Prime Minister Tony Blair is to receive the United States' highest civilian award next week, Sky news reported Tuesday.
Blair will be presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony on Jan. 13, during President George W. Bush's last week in office, the report said.
He will receive the award along with former Australian Prime Minister John Howard and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, "for their efforts to promote democracy, human rights ... 6 Jan 2009 at 8:02am
Consumer confidence in Britain plunges to record low
Consumer confidence in Britain has plunged to a record low following massive job losses amid the economic downturn, latest research shows.
The Nationwide Building Society's consumer confidence index for December fell four points from November to 47, down by nearly half from 84 in December 2007, Sky news reported Tuesday.
Over 70 percent of the 1,000 people polled believe the current economic situation is bad while 57 percent think job losses have driven the index down.
So ... 6 Jan 2009 at 8:01am
PM: 30% of Cambodians live under poverty line
Some 30 percent of Cambodians now live under the poverty line, said Prime Minister Hun Sen here on Tuesday while addressing a bridge inauguration ceremony.
"We are making efforts to reduce poverty step by step and I couldn't achieve giant leap in this regard," he said.
Cambodia realized 1 percent reduction of poverty on annual basis in the past years, thanks to the government policy and the economic growth, he said.
Cambodia is one among the 49 least developed countries i ... 6 Jan 2009 at 8:00am
Pakistani President visits Afghanistan
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari arrived in Afghanistan capital Kabul Tuesday after a two-week postponement in the trip, an official in foreign ministry said on the condition of anonymity.
The road leading from Kabul international airport to Afghan Presidential palace in the capital city has been decorated with the portraits of Zardari, Pakistan national flags, billboards and banners inscribed with slogans "Long live Pakistan-Afghanistan friendship".
Zardari was due to visit ... 6 Jan 2009 at 7:59am
Profile: Bangladesh's new PM Sheikh Hasina
Bangladesh's new cabinet headed by Sheikh Hasina as Prime Minister was sworn in in the President House here Tuesday evening.
Hasina will rule the country as prime minister for a second time after her party Awami League won a landslide victory in the country's ninth parliamentary election held on Dec. 29, 2008, bagging 230 seats out of all 300 parliament seats.
Here is the profile of Sheikh Hasina.
Hasina, 61, was in power from 1996 to 2001 and served as leader of the oppo ... 6 Jan 2009 at 7:59am
Urgent: Bangladesh's new cabinet sworn in
Bangladesh's new Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and new cabinet were sworn in in the President House here Tuesday evening.
Bangladesh's President Iajuddin Ahmed administered the oath to Hasina first and then that to the 23 ministers of Hasina's new cabinet.
"I will be obedient to Bangladesh. I will do everything as per the constitution," Hasina said. She later signed on the oath letter.
Hasina, 61, who ruled the country as prime minister in 1996 to 2001, will be also in cha ... 6 Jan 2009 at 7:58am
Bangladesh's new Prime Minister and cabinet sworn in
Bangladesh's new Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her cabinet sworn in Bangabhaban (President House) here Tuesday evening.
Hasina, 61, the president of majority party Awami League, was sworn in as Prime Minister along with 31 members of her cabinet, completing the country's transition to democracy after two-year ruling of caretaker government.
Bangladesh's President Iajuddin Ahmed administered the oath to the Prime Minister Hasina first, who ruled the country as prime minister on ... 6 Jan 2009 at 7:57am
Most followers of contemporary art in this country will know of Anita Zabludowicz: she is a voracious collector who has recently opened a public exhibition space in London, called 176; her yacht is a regular sight moored near the Giardini during the Venice Biennale; and she is a frequent mingler on the British art scene (last spotted by the Diary as she sized up a David Altmejd sculpture with his dealers at the Liverpool Biennial this autumn). But how many art lovers are aware of the activities of her husband, the Finnish born billionaire Poju Zabludowicz? Mr Z, heir to an arms-dealing fortune, is the chairman and a major donor of the British Israel Communication and Research Centre. That body is a fantastically active and well-connected lobbying outfit that has been working behind the scenes during the current crisis in Gaza, organising press briefings and interviews with high-level Israeli officials in an attempt to push the Israeli case with British journalists.
Israel's assault on Gaza has exacted the bloodiest toll of civilian lives yet, when the bombing of UN schools being used as refugee centres and of housing killed more than 50 people, including an entire family of seven young children.
The UN protested at a "complete absence of accountability" for the escalating number of civilian deaths in Gaza, saying "the rule of the gun" had taken over. Doctors in Gaza said more than 40 people died, including children, in what appears to be the biggest single loss of life of the campaign when Israeli bombs hit al-Fakhora school, in Jabaliya refugee camp, while it was packed with hundreds of people who had fled the fighting.
Most of those killed were in the school playground and in the street, and the dead and injured lay in pools of blood. Pictures on Palestinian TV showed walls heavily marked by shrapnel and bloodstains, and shoes and shredded clothes scattered on the ground. Windows were blown out.
Hours before, three young men who were cousins died when the Israelis bombed Asma elementary school in Gaza City. They were among 400 people who had sought shelter there after fleeing their homes in Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza.
Abed Sultan, 20, a student, and his cousins, Rawhi and Hussein Sultan, labourers aged 22, died. Abed Sultan's father, Samir, said the bodies were so mangled that he could not tell his son from the cousins. "We came to the school when the Israelis warned us to leave," he said. "We hoped it would be safe. We were 20 in one room. We had no electricity, no blankets, no food.
"Suddenly we heard a bomb that shook the school. Windows smashed. Children started to scream. A relative came and told me one of my sons was killed. I found my son's body with his two cousins. They were cut into pieces by the shell."
The UN was particularly incensed over targeting of the schools, because Israeli forces knew they were packed with families as they had ordered them to get out of their homes with leaflet drops and loudspeakers. It said it had identified the schools as refugee centres to the Israeli military and provided GPS coordinates.
Israel accused Hamas of using civilians as cover, and said the Islamist group could stop the assault on Gaza by ending its rocket attacks on Israel.
The Palestinian authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, last night delivered an impassioned plea to the UN security council to act immediately to stop the Israeli operation, which he described as a "catastrophe" for his people. Israel has agreed a "humanitarian corridor" to allow Palestinians to get essential goods.
The rising casualty toll, more than 640 Palestinians killed since the assault began 12 days ago, gave fresh impetus to diplomatic efforts. The White House offered its first hint of concern at Israel's actions by calling on it to avoid civilian deaths. The president-elect, Barack Obama, broke his silence by saying he was "deeply concerned" about civilian casualties on both sides. He said he would have "plenty to say" about the crisis after his swearing in.
Gordon Brown said the Middle East was facing its "darkest moment yet" but hoped a ceasefire could be arranged soon.
Explaining its attack on al-Fahora school, the Israeli military claimed that a mortar was fired from the playground, and it responded with a single shell whichkilled known Hamas fighters; the resulting explosion was compounded because Hamas "booby-trapped the school". Two Hamas militants were among the dead, both part of a rocket-launching cell.
The head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency, John Ging, said three shells landed at the perimeter of the school. "It was entirely inevitable if artillery shells landed in that area there would be a high number of casualties," he said.
He said UN staff vetted those Palestinians who sought shelter at the school. "So far we've not had violations by militants of our facilities," he said, though responding to questions he accepted there had been clashes between Hamas and the Israeli army in the area.
Earlier in the day, Ging visited Gaza's hospital and was shocked at the scale of civilian casualties. "What you have in this hospital is the consequences of political failure and the complete absence of any accountability for actions that are being taken. It's the rule of the gun now, and it has to stop," he said.
At least 12 of one family, seven children aged from one to 12, three women and two men, were killed in an air strike on their house in Gaza City. Nine others were believed trapped.
Israel continues to insist most of those killed by its forces are Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters - although its assertion it is going to extraordinary lengths to target only "terrorists" has been undermined by a tank firing on a building used by Israeli troops, killing four of them, on Monday.
Another soldier was killed yesterday as Israeli forces continued their push into Gaza City. Tanks and troops also moved on the southern town of Khan Yunis.
The invasion has yet to achieve what Israel says is its goal of stopping rocket attacks. Hamas fired more than 30 into Israel yesterday, one to within 20 miles of Tel Aviv at Gadera, wounding a baby.
The de facto Hamas prime minister in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, issued a statement from hiding, saying that the Gazans would defeat Israel. "[Israel] has failed to force the population to surrender," he said.
Gordon Brown came under pressure yesterday to impose a British arms embargo on Israel in protest at its actions in Gaza, and to call on the EU to join the boycott.
The call was made by Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, in an article in the Guardian, and represents the first serious political pressure on the prime minister to do more to condemn Israel.
Clegg accused Brown of sitting on his hands and speaking like an accountant about the crisis, remarks that were likely to deeply offend the prime minister.
Downing Street insists that Brown has been acting tirelessly behind the scenes alongside Tony Blair, now a Middle East envoy, and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, to secure a ceasefire that the Israeli government will accept, including an international force to police the tunnels reportedly taking weapons into Gaza. The Labour MP Richard Burden said that 100 parliamentarians had signed a letter condemning the attacks on Gaza.
But Clegg, ahead of an expected Commons statement on Monday by the foreign secretary, David Miliband, writes in the Guardian: "The EU is by far Israel's biggest export market, and by far the biggest donor to the Palestinians. It must immediately suspend the proposed new co-operation agreement with Israel until things change in Gaza, and apply tough conditions on any long-term assistance to the Palestinian community.
"Brown must also halt Britain's arms exports to Israel, and persuade our EU counterparts to do the same. The government's own figures show Britain is selling more and more weapons to Israel, despite the questions about the country's use of force. In 2007, our government approved £6m of arms exports. In 2008, it licensed sales 12 times as fast: £20m in the first three months alone.
"There is a strong case that, given the Gaza conflict, any military exports contravene EU licensing criteria. Reports, though denied, that Israel is using illegal cluster munitions and white phosphorus, should heighten our caution. I want an immediate suspension of all arms exports from the EU, but if that cannot be secured Brown must act unilaterally."
He wrote that it was intolerable that Brown, like Blair, was making UK policy subservient to the US and condemned what he described as "the aching silence" of the US president-elect, Barack Obama.
Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, claimed last night a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip was "not far off" as he unexpectedly returned to Egypt after talks in Syria, which is the chief Arab ally of the Hamas movement fighting Israel's invasion.
Sarkozy flew from Beirut back to Sharm el-Sheikh on the Red Sea for a second, unscheduled meeting with President Hosni Mubarak, a major player in international attempts to engineer a truce between Israel and the Palestinians.
The move, as diplomats gathered at the UN in New York to discuss the crisis, suggested the possible beginnings of shuttle diplomacy to call a halt to Israel's 11-day onslaught.
Sarkozy gave no details, but said during a visit to French troops serving with the UN in south Lebanon: "I'm convinced there are solutions. We are not far from that. What is needed is simply for one of the players to start for things to go in the right direction." Gordon Brown also said he was hopeful of finding the basis for a ceasefire.
Earlier, a Hamas delegation held talks in Cairo with General Omar Suleiman, Mubarak's intelligence chief, who has brokered previous ceasefires in Gaza.
The meeting was Hamas's first contact with a main regional player since fighting began on 27 December, and afterwards Egypt said it proposed an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Gaza, an end to the blockade of Gaza, and talks on border arrangements.
Osama Hamdan, the Hamas representative in Lebanon, said later that nothing had been agreed. "Israel is attempting to kill as many civilians as they can to exert pressure on the people of Gaza," he said.
In Jerusalem, an Israeli official said Sarkozy had presented Israel with a serious initiative, in partnership with Egypt. Discussions were focused on the size and equipment of an "international presence" to be deployed on the border between Egypt and Gaza.
Later Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said Israel was to set up a "humanitarian corridor" into Gaza, allowing periodic access to the Strip to allow the transfer of "people, foodstuffs and medicines".
Tony Blair, representing the Middle East Quartet - the US, EU, UN and Russia - spoke of the need to cut off the supply of arms and money through tunnels under the border. "I think if there were strong, clear, definitive action on that, that would give us the best context to get an immediate ceasefire and to start to change the situation," Blair said.
Calls for a Gaza ceasefire dominated a debate last night at the UN security council, with attention focused on the US position. Last weekend Washington blocked a Libyan-sponsored call for an immediate truce, arguing that it had to be "durable".
The UN security council in New York last night became the stage for a war of words between the Israelis and Palestinians, amid frantic diplomatic efforts to secure a durable ceasefire within days.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, asked the security council to act immediately to stop the Israeli operation in Gaza, which he described as a catastrophe for his people. He said the "massacre" at the UN school in the Jabaliya refugee camp was "proof of the heinous crime being committed against our people. Children fall before their mothers, roofs fall down on entire families, and the cries of the innocents in their agonies rise."
Any delay from the UN in imposing a ceasefire on Israel, he said, would deepen the tragedy. Young Palestinians would conclude in that event that "hope in peace, commitment to international law are all mirages that will never come true - that the present and future is only open to extremism".
The Israeli ambassador to the UN, Gabriela Shalev, adopted equally stark language to defend before the security council the military operation, insisting that Israel took every possible measure to prevent civilian casualties. The Israeli government had no choice but to launch the assault "in the face of terrorism. We have to defend ourselves not from the Palestinian people but from the terrorists who have taken over their streets."
The foreign secretary, David Miliband, addressed the security council immediately after the Palestinian and Israeli envoys, saying their speeches underlined the challenge facing the UN. "The UK believes the crisis in Gaza is an indication of our collective failure - all of us - to bring about a two-state solution," he said.
He said the task was to give substance and permanence to a ceasefire. That would involve finding ways to curb the smuggling of weapons to Hamas, and the opening of crossings under Palestinian control to undercut smuggling.
More than 15,000 Gazans are sheltering in UN schools because they have been forced to flee their homes in the face of the Israeli air and ground offensive, or even ordered out by Israeli troops.
The UN has opened 27 of its schools as shelters, most in the northern town of Jabaliya, where food, blankets and counselling are being provided.
It is the UN that has stepped in to help because it is by far the largest humanitarian resource in Gaza, particularly the UN Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa), which supports Palestinian refugees across the Arab world. More than 1 million Gazans are refugees: either they or their families were forced from their homes or fled in the 1948 war that brought the creation of Israel.
In Gaza, they rely on the UN, which provides them with regular food deliveries, now vital in the face of Israel's economic blockade of the strip, as well as housing, health services and education - which takes up most of the agency's budget.
The UN's humanitarian role is crucial, but it has often found itself at odds with Israel. This sometimes fractious relationship is conducted mostly behind closed doors, but sometimes their disagreements break out into the open.
Yesterday, presented with reports of the heavy civilian death toll after the Israeli bombing of two UN schools serving as shelters in Gaza, some Israeli officials were quick to argue that militants had used UN property from which to launch rockets in the past.
But the UN underlined the fact that it had passed on the coordinates of the schools to the Israeli military to prevent these kind of killings, and called for an inquiry. "These tragic incidents need to be investigated and if international humanitarian law has been contravened those responsible must be held accountable," said Max Gaylard, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinians.
While Israel says that its war in Gaza is "unavoidable", it also argues there is no humanitarian crisis and it is allowing in sufficient aid. Unrwa has been critical of Israel's blockade of Gaza in recent years, presenting evidence of a mounting humanitarian crisis, particularly in the last 11 days of conflict. John Ging, Unrwa's director of operation in Gaza, yesterday described Israel's war as a "completely unjustified and unnecessary conflict".
It is not the first time the UN has found itself in the Israeli line of fire. During the Lebanon war two years ago four unarmed UN military observers were killed when their clearly marked UN position was bombed by the Israeli military in Khiyam, in southern Lebanon. Israel apologised and later said the building, which had been on the same spot since 1972, had been wrongly identified as a Hezbollah target.
A decade earlier, in 1996, the Israeli military fired artillery shells into another UN site, at Qana in southern Lebanon, killing more than 100 Lebanese civilians who were among 800 sheltering from heavy fighting. Israel apologised and blamed incorrect targeting.
More often their disagreements have a strong political dimension. Last month Israel refused entry to, and then deported, Richard Falk, a Jewish American academic who is the UN special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories. Israel said he was being denied entry because in 2007 he described the Israeli blockade of Gaza as a "holocaust in the making".
More broadly, Israel objects to the UN special rapporteur position because it does not document what Israel sees as the other side of the story: Palestinian abuses of Israeli human rights.
Israel also objects to the UN Human Rights Council, which it says focuses unfairly on Israel's behaviour in the occupied Palestinian territories. So in 2007 Israel declined several times to give an entry visa to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African Nobel laureate, because he had been sent by the UN council to investigate the Israeli shelling of a house in Gaza in which 18 civilians, members of the same family, were killed. Israel blamed a technical error in the artillery gun.
Undeterred, Tutu made a rare crossing into Gaza from Egypt last year. He emerged from his interviews in what he described as a state of shock and called for an end to the "abominable" Israeli blockade. He later reported to the UN there was a "possibility" that the shelling was a war crime.
But as well as providing aid and investigating rights abuses, the UN is supposed to play a key political role in the Middle East. It is part of the Quartet of Middle East negotiators, alongside the EU, the US and Russia. But it does not hold political talks with Hamas.
A revealing insight into the frustrations of working in a high-level UN post in Jerusalem emerged in 2007, when the Guardian obtained a confidential "end of mission" report by the retiring UN Middle East envoy, Álvaro de Soto. He said the Quartet had become a "sideshow" and that in its role as an impartial negotiator the UN had been "pummelled into submission" by the US and its pro-Israel stance.
The bombing, shelling and shooting will stop one day. The electricity and water will be restored. And the windows of the Mousa family's flat, every one of them blown out by Israeli air force strikes on the Palestinian president's palace next door, will be replaced.
But the trauma of the four Mousa children, aged three to nine years old, will not so easily be erased. For nearly two weeks now they have endured a constant barrage of shells from navy ships they can see through the plastic now covering the windows of their seafront flat in Gaza city, as well as the air force strikes on buildings nearby.
"The children scream and cry when there's shelling. It goes on all night," said their father, Raed, 35. "Every night, all night. The building shakes. We moved into the kitchen and sleep there. It's the safest place in the house. But my children are very scared, their faces turn yellow. The sound of the guns is very loud. We try to keep them busy playing and with their toys."
Their mother, Ahlan, is pregnant. "I look at them at night when they are sleeping and they are dreaming bad dreams. Safud [aged four] jumps from her bed screaming and crying," she said. "All the time they are shelling. It's terrifying. I don't know what to tell the children. I say the sound is loud but it is still far away. But I can see they are afraid and that makes me afraid."
That trauma may last a lifetime, with devastating consequences for Palestinian society, according to psychologists who have studied the impact of two decades of bloody conflict in the Gaza strip on children who have grown up under army watchtowers, dodging bullets, seeing classmates shot as they sat at the next desk, watching tanks and bulldozers destroy thousands of homes.
Even after the Israelis pulled Jewish settlers out of Gaza in 2005, children and their parents have had to endure regular rocket attacks and punishing sonic booms when Israeli jets broke the sound barrier over the territory. Now there is the bombing and fighting that has left more than 600 Palestinians dead in less than a fortnight.
Gaza's leading child psychiatrist, Dr Abdel Aziz Mousa Thabet, who has studied the effects of violence and trauma on children for 20 years, said about 65% of young people in the enclave suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.
"There are many other traumatic symptoms, like headaches and abdominal pain and vomiting. There's an inability to concentrate, panic, anxiety, irritability," he said. "I've observed much change in the children. They are more anxious, more fearful. Children are panicky because of the explosions. Children want to leave. You hear it. They feel there is no hope, that the world can't do anything for them and they can't do anything for themselves."
Thabet says the impact of trauma on older children combines with other experiences to push them to extremes.
The image of Mohammed al-Dura, the 12-year-old Gaza boy shot dead as his father vainly tried to protect him from Israeli gunfire at the beginning of the second intifada, is seared on the Palestinian consciousness. To many Palestinian adults it symbolises Israeli indifference to the lives of their children. But psychologists say that to many children its principal impact is to see a father who cannot protect his son.
With that - and humiliations such as Israeli soldiers beating Palestinian men in front of their children - has come a collapse in respect for the regular systems of authority.
The perpetual killing has also drawn many children into the cult of the "martyr" and led them to expect an early death.
Thabet said the traumatising of children was having a profound effect on Gaza's future. The children he studied in the early 1990s are now adults.
"They become fighters. I warned about this 15 years ago, that in 15 years these traumatised children will be more aggressive, they will want to fight, there will be more violence in the community. You saw it in the factional fighting in Gaza in 2007," he said.
"So now we will have another generation of more aggressive behaviour. They will go to more extremes because they have no future. This is a problem. I've been warning people of this but nobody was listening. It's a cycle of aggression.
"Children see their parents killed in front of them. What do you expect?"
The controversy over Barack Obama's vacant Senate place took a twist yesterday when the man controversially appointed to replace him tried and failed to take his seat amid chaotic scenes on Capitol Hill.
Roland Burris, appointed last week by the scandal-hit Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich, managed to get through the front doors of the Senate and up three flights of marble stairs. But he was denied entry to the chamber.
Back outside, Burris, said: "My credentials were not in order, I will not be accepted, I will not be seated." According to aides, he was planning to consult his lawyers about his next move.
Burris, who flew from Chicago on Monday, had threatened to turn up at yesterday's swearing-in ceremony for new senators on the opening day of the new Congress, even though senior Democrats had warned they would not accept him.
Both Obama and the leader of Democrats in the Senate, Harry Reid, oppose Burris because he was appointed by Blagojevich, who last month was arrested by the FBI for allegedly trying to sell Obama's seat.
The episode is proving an embarrassment for the Democrats in Congress and a distraction for Obama in the run-up to his inauguration on 20 January. And there is little sign of an early resolution.
Burris and his supporters say Blagojevich was legally entitled to make the appointment and that the Senate authorities have no right to bar him.
The row has racial overtones since Democrats are denying a place in the 100-member chamber to a man who would be, with the departure of Obama, the only African-American. Burris, who is 71 and realises this could be his last chance of high office, burst through the Senate front doors in a media scrum just before 10.30 am, 90 minutes before the swearing-in ceremony. After officials tried to restore order, he was taken to see the Senate authorities on the third floor, within about 100 metres of the Senate chamber - as close as he was to get - where he was told he could not take his seat.
Blagojevich's appointment needs to be signed off by the Illinois secretary of state, Jesse White, who is refusing to do so.
Burris said later: "I am not seeking to have any type of confrontation. I will now consult with my attorneys and we will determine what our next step will be."
He is still hoping he can do a deal with Reid. The Democrats appear to have offered him a compromise in which he could take the seat until the next election, at which point he would stand down, but Burris wants to stay in the job beyond that. He is scheduled today to meet Reid, who has said there may be room for manoeuvre.
A legal challenge is an option. An attorney for Burris, Timothy Wright, said: "We were not allowed to proceed to the floor for purposes of taking oath. All of which we think was improperly done and is against the law of this land."
The Democrats have a majority of 57 in the Senate, and if Obama's seat is eventually filled and Al Franken, who is facing a Republican legal challenge after winning a recount in Minnesota, is allowed to take his place, that will jump to 59, just one short of the majority of 60 needed to overcome any Republican obstructionist tactics.
Illinois lawmakers were scheduled to meet yesterday to try to speed up impeachment against Blagojevich; if he were ousted quickly, his deputy would take over and a new appointment to the Senate in place of Burris would be made. But if the impeachment drags on, then so too could the Burris affair.
Burris's supporters have reportedly complained of a racial slant to the rejection. Bobby Rush, the former Black Panther who is now an Illinois lawmaker, supports Burris, and has described the Senate as "the last bastion of plantation politics". But there has been little support from other African-American leaders, in part because they see Blagojevich's appointment as a cynical attempt to exploit the race issue.
Barack Obama's choice of Leon Panetta to head the CIA met with scepticism from Democrats and Republicans in Congress yesterday because of his lack of intelligence experience.
A hostile response from Dianne Feinstein, the Democrat who is to head the Senate intelligence committee, was followed by similar comments by Democrats as well as Republicans.
Obama had planned to appoint an experienced intelligence officer, John Brennan, but he turned the job down. The president-elect then opted to go outside the CIA and fulfil his promise on the campaign trail to increase civilian involvement in intelligence services. Panetta, like Obama, is opposed to torture techniques such as waterboarding sanctioned by George Bush and his vice-president, Dick Cheney.
Feinstein complained she had not been consulted about the appointment, and made it clear she had reservations about the nomination of an intelligence outsider. "My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time," she said.
Christopher Bond, the senior Republican on the intelligence committee, said: "In a post-9/11 world, intelligence experience would seem to be a prerequisite for the job of CIA director. I will be looking hard at Panetta's intelligence expertise and qualifications."
The appointment needs Senate approval and the negative reaction suggests his confirmation could be problematic.
The CIA has had a troubled decade: it was blamed for failing to anticipate the 9/11 attacks and for faulty intelligence about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction. Former CIA agents said the White House subverted intelligence to suit political ends.
Panetta, though his experience is mainly in reducing budget deficits, was a member of the non-partisan Iraq Study Group, which more than two years ago recommended an early withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, which Bush ignored.
Panetta, 70, urged the president-elect to close Guantánamo and end torture. "Issuing executive orders on issues such as prohibiting torture or closing Guantánamo Bay would make clear that his administration will do things differently," he wrote last month in his regular column in the Monterey County Herald.
Panetta will not be the first outsider appointed to head the CIA. George Bush Sr was a congressman and diplomat before Gerald Ford made him director of central intelligence in 1976.
A French sailor whose yacht capsized in the South Pacific during the Vendée Globe solo round-the-world race was rescued last night by his friend, a fellow competitor, after he was trapped inside the hull of his upturned boat in heavy seas for 16 hours.
Jean Le Cam, 49, was helped to escape by Vincent Riou, who, with a third competitor, Frenchman Armel Le Cléac'h, had diverted to help him after hearing his distress call. Le Cam's 60-foot boat VM Matériaux capsized after losing its keel 200 miles west off Cape Horn.
A rescue operation by the Chilean navy and emergency services, which had dispatched a tug with divers and a helicopter, had been launched but would not have arrived before this morning. A tanker had also been standing by to assist.
Riou, on board his yacht PRB, was able to get alongside the wreck and could hear his friend's shouts, though in heavy seas and with winds at 25 knots it took over three hours for Le Cam to climb out of his vessel, whose emergency hatch was submerged, and get aboard the other boat, which itself sustained damage in the rescue.
A race spokesman said: "Jean Le Cam has been rescued safe and sound. A full-scale rescue operation was in place ... but in the end it was Vincent Riou who recovered [his] fellow skipper and friend. Riou circled repeatedly to retrieve the skipper from the water and on the fourth attempt he successfully rescued Le Cam.
"Le Cam appears to be unhurt as Riou reported that both skippers worked on deck to stabilise PRB's mast."
The yachtsman sent a distress call from his boat at 12.26am yesterday as he prepared to navigate around the southern tip of South America. About nine hours later a Chilean spotter plane said it had found the yacht. Philippe de Villiers, the race president, said Le Cam had been speaking to another sailor by phone when there was a sudden loud noise and he said: "My boat is capsizing."
His phone went dead shortly after midnight and a distress beacon was activated at 1.40am. At the time of his disappearance, Le Cam was third in the 26,000-mile race, which started last November. He came second when the quadrennial race was last run, in 2005.
Thirty competitors started the race, including seven Britons, but more than half have dropped out, with one sailor having to be rescued in the Southern Ocean after breaking his leg. Two competitors have died in previous races.
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