Bush’s folksy spin

1 America President George W Bush sought to calm the financial markets at a White House press conference with a folksy tale about witnessing a run on a bank in Texas. “I’ll never forget the guy standing in the bank lobby saying your deposits are good . . . You don’t have to worry about it if you’ve got less than $100,000 in the bank. The problem was, people didn’t hear.” Bush sought to reassure Americans, saying, “I think the system basically is sound, I truly do.” Robert J Samuelson, a commentator on The Washington Post, said that there was a “yawning gap” between the US economy’s actual performance – “poor, but not horrific” – and its mass psychology – “almost horrific”.

Canadian anger

2 Guantanamo Bay Videotapes of the interrogation by Canadian agents of Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen accused of killing a US soldier during a gun battle in Afghanistan in 2002, were released last Tuesday. They show Khadr, now 21 but 16 in the tapes, weeping and disturbed. He claimed mistreatment at the hands of his US guards and, in one section, repeatedly cried out “Help me”. Khadr is the youngest detainee at Guantanamo and the last Western citizen still being held in the prison. Canada’s government has refused to apply for his release, fearing he would act as a rallying point for extremists. The Globe and Mail in Toronto called on the government to “negotiate the terms under which he can be returned to Canada”.

Flemish battle

3 Belgium The country was plunged into another political crisis when Yves Leterme, the prime minister, resigned last Wednesday after failing to break a deadlock over Belgium’s language divide between French and Flemish. Leterme, dubbed the “dull one” by the Belgian press, failed to find a solution by a deadline last week to devolve more power to the rival French and Flemish-speaking regions. Leterme, 47, has proved to be a lacklustre leader, and a Flemish newspaper, De Tijd, accused his government of barely governing during its four months in office.

Heroic tsar

4 Russia Josef Stalin, the dictator who sent millions of his countrymen to their deaths, and Tsar Nicholas II, the autocratic ruler who was deposed and murdered in 1918, have been voted the country’s two greatest historical figures in a television poll. The tsar received 267,385 votes to Stalin’s 262,997 after a last-ditch appeal by monarchists, who said a victory for Stalin would shame Russia internationally.

In similar shows, Britons chose Winston Churchill, Americans Ronald Reagan and South Africans Nelson Mandela. The state-controlled Rossiya television channel will broadcast programmes on the finalists, who include the cosmononaut Yuri Gagarin, the poet Alexander Pushkin and Tsar Peter the Great, in the autumn. The run-off between Stalin and the Tsar will be in December.

Shark snapped

5 America Kem McNair, a surfer and amateur photographer captured an image, below left, of a 6ft “spinner” shark leaping from the waves as he took pictures of fellow surfers in Florida, where the “spinner” is blamed for many attacks.

“I saw something in the background and I thought, ‘What was that?’,” said McNair. “I looked back at the display on my camera and there it was – a spinner shark.” Some locals at New Smyrna beach, where the photograph was taken, have questioned its authenticity but the University of Florida has asked McNair if it can use the picture in its research.

Burqa ban

6 France A government minister welcomed a court ruling that a woman who dresses in a burqa, the all-enveloping Islamic robe, should be refused French citizenship. “The burqa is a prison, a strait-jacket,” declared Fadela Amara, the urban affairs minister who is herself Muslim, on Wednesday.

Faiza Mabchour, 32, a Moroccan mother of three, had her request for citizenship turned down because, a court ruled, the dress symbolised sexual inequality and her isolation from French society. The decision was widely welcomed both on the left and the right.

Olivier Roy, an Islamic specialist, told Le Monde: “Wearing a burqa in France means crossing a line. It’s a provocative gesture and it has no basis in the sharia [Muslim law].”

Out of control

7 Zimbabwe The official inflation rate reached 2.2m%, driving the price of a loaf of bread to about a third of a teacher’s monthly salary. Independent economists put the figure at closer to 10m% as the economy approached meltdown.

President Robert Mugabe threatened a clamp down-on businessmen who profited from high prices. He told the state-run Herald newspaper that profiteers would be put “behind doors and behind bars”.

Jolie good show

8 France When Angelina Jolie gave birth to her first child by Brad Pitt in Namibia in 2006, People magazine paid $5m-7m for the photographic rights of daughter Shiloh. This time, the price has doubled. Meanwhile, the French resort of Nice has been inundated with paparazzi anxious to capture the first picture of Jolie’s twins, delivered last weekend. A decision was taken to sell the first pictures of Vivienne Marcheline and her brother Knox Leon, for a reported $11m (£5.5m) to an unnamed American magazine. The couple intend to give the money to charity.

National angst

9 Israel A prisoner swap, in which five Lebanese militants and the remains of 200 Lebanese and Palestinian fighters were exchanged for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers, sparked euphoria in Lebanon but gloom in Israel.

One of the freed prisoners, Samir Kuntar, 46, was convicted of an attack on Israel in 1979 in which he killed a four-year-old girl, her father and a policeman. The family’s two-year-old daughter also died as her mother tried to smother her cries. Amir Rappoport wrote in the daily Maariv that Kuntar’s release was another defeat for Israel: “While we were depressed, we saw pictures of jubilation from the other side of the Lebanese border.”

Ivory fears

10 China Pity the African elephant – Britain joined countries voting on Tuesday to allow China to become a licensed buyer of ivory. Conservationists warned that the decision to allow China, which wants to continue its ivory-carving traditions and already has the world’s largest black market in the material, to buy 108 tonnes of ivory from four African nations will fuel elephant poaching across the African continent. Robbie Marsland, UK director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said: “The decision plays Russian roulette with wild elephants. Allowing new ivory to be imported into China will stimulate demand and create a smokescreen for illegal ivory to be laundered into the legal market.” The UK and Bulgaria voted for the move, on behalf of the European Union, at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in Geneva.

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