Mugabe impasse
1 Zimbabwe The world looked on, apparently helpless, as Robert Mugabe
was sworn in for a sixth term as president of Zimbabwe last Sunday. The
country’s electoral commission announced he’d won a landslide after the
opposition candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, pulled out in the face of
increasing violence. Mugabe then attended the African Union summit at Sharm
el Sheikh in Egypt, where fellow African leaders urged him to negotiate with
the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and signed a resolution
calling for the formation of a national unity government. But Tsvangirai,
the MDC leader, said Mugabe must end the violence and acknowledge the MDC as
rightful winner of the election before he would enter talks. Western
governments are increasing pressure on Mugabe. A German printing company,
Giesecke & Devrient, with the backing of the German government, has said
it will stop supplying banknotes to Zimbabwe.
Obama’s burden
2 America Barack Obama is a Muslim. No he’s not, he’s a Christian. The
religious smears and rebuffs flew thick and fast in America, as Obama tried
to fend off what Newsweek characterised as “rumours intended to frighten”.
Obama has never been a Muslim; he attended a Catholic church as a child and
was baptised at a Christian church in Chicago. But he has not been able to
silence speculation about his middle name, Hussein, which he inherited from
his Kenyan father. The New York Times noted that the name “has become a
political liability”.
Canada calling
3 Canada Canada wants you: A minister from the oil-rich state of
Alberta visited the UK last week to headhunt skilled workers dissatisfied
with life in Gordon Brown’s Britain. “We can offer cheaper housing, good
money, the best health system in the world and lots of open space,”
proclaimed Hector Goudreau, the minister of employment. Potential immigrants
can also look forward to the emptiest road in the world – the northern leg
of the Transamerica highway. Canada has more guns per person than America
but Canadians use them less frequently on each other. The other great
challenge to signing up for the maple flag is all that empty, empty space.
And the boredom, of course.
Covert ops
4 Iran President George W Bush has authorised a significant escalation
of covert operations inside Iran in an attempt to destabilise the country’s
government, it was claimed last week. Seymour Hersh, the veteran
investigative journalist, alleged in the New Yorker magazine that Congress
agreed late last year to a request from Bush for £200m to finance such
measures, which were described in a classified document intended to be seen
only by senior officials. Hersh said that contained in the papers, known as
a “presidential finding”, were plans to employ the elite units of the Joint
Special Operations Command alongside CIA operatives within Iran in an
attempt to capture and, if necessary, kill figures known as “high-value
targets”. He also suggested in the article that a number of dissident
terrorist groups had benefited from American support. Manouchehr Mottaki,
the Iranian foreign minister, gave a bullish response, predicting that the
US and Israel would not risk the “craziness” of attacking his country.
Up in smoke
5 Holland Dutch “coffee shops”, where the smoking of marijuana is
legal, were facing extinction after a ban on smoking in public places went
into effect on Monday. The smoking law does not prohibit cannabis but mixing
the drug with tobacco makes it illegal. Polls show that 60% (of owners) are
thinking of selling up and there has been a sharp rise in coffee shops up
for sale, from 1,350 in January to 1,600 in June. One pro-smoking lobby
group calls the law “unDutch”. Wait until they try to ban cannabis.
Uptown girl
6 America Two years after allegedly discovering her husband’s affair
with a young employee, former supermodel Christie Brinkley, 54, pictured
left, headed to the divorce courts on Wednesday in what People magazine
forecasts will be a “mudslinging insult-fest”. Peter Cook, her fourth
husband, has already challenged her mothering skills: “When her kids finish
their homework, was it her help or the maid?” Alexa Ray, Brinkley’s daughter
with songwriter Billy Joel, said her mother remains “strong, an uptown
girl”.
Camera killing
7 Germany Roger Kusch, a radical German politician, admitted last
Tuesday to helping an elderly woman to kill herself as part of his campaign
to change laws governing euthanasia. Kusch said that they had both decided
to film the suicide as an example to Germans of how they could be helped to
take their own lives with no legal consequences for the abettor. Afraid that
she would be moved to a care home, 79-year-old Bettina S ingested a cocktail
of medications on camera to show that Kusch was never “actively involved”.
“If accompanying me until shortly before my death gives you arguments that
could persuade politicians to change the law, then my death will have been
of use to some people,” she said. “Killing on request” is punishable in
Germany by between six months and five years in jail.
Sarkozy in a sulk
8 France President Nicolas Sarkozy will have been cheered, no doubt, by
support from David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, for his proposal
that Europe should develop its own defence capabilities. France’s presidency
of the European Union got off to a rocky start on Tuesday as the Irish “no”
to the Lisbon treaty was followed by Poland's refusal to ratify the scaled
down constitution. It seemed to throw Sarkozy into a filthy mood. He lashed
out at a hapless technician who failed to greet him when he arrived for an
interview at a television studio. “It’s a question of manners,” he snapped.
Earlier, the president had upbraided senior army officers for an incident in
which a soldier fired shots at a military show, injuring 17 people. “You’re
a bunch of amateurs, not professionals,” he was quoted as saying. This
prompted the resignation of General Bruno Cuche, the army chief of staff.
The irritable side of Sarkozy was also revealed in comments published in Le
Point magazine last week after France took over the rotating presidency of
the EU. “I see idiots all day long,” he is quoted as saying. “You can’t
imagine the amount of idiots I have to see.”
Torture test
9 America Despite a childhood fear of water and a serious cigarette
habit the journalist Christopher Hitchens submitted himself to the mercies
of men “who once trained American soldiers to resist waterboarding”. In the
magazine Vanity Fair, Hitchens, 59, described how he was hooded, trussed to
a board and tipped so that his head was lower than his feet. Towels were
wrapped around his hood and then he felt water going up his nose. He asked
his tormentors to stop after 17 seconds. “If waterboarding does not
constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture,” he wrote.
Baghdad deal
10 Iraq On Wednesday Iraq and America moved closer to an agreement on
American forces remaining in Iraq after their United Nations mandate runs
out at the end of the year. The Americans agreed to lift their insistence on
immunity under Iraqi law for foreign security contractors: the main obstacle
to the deal. The 25,000 private security guards in Iraq have been accused of
using excessive force. Their protected status became a cause célèbre in Iraq
last year after Blackwater guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad,
claiming they were under attack. Most Iraqis want the Americans to leave,
but not right now – they know that if the forces withdrew immediately, their
country could again be engulfed in internecine bloodshed.
