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.
