Mar
31
Al-Sadr calls off fighting, orders compliance with Iraqi security
Filed Under CNN News, News, Top Stories | Leave a Comment
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called on followers to stop shooting and cooperate with Iraqi security forces Sunday, a move Iraq’s government praised as a step toward ending six days of fighting that has left hundreds dead.
A Shiite fighter runs toward an Iraqi Army armored vehicle Sunday after clashes near a TV station in Basra.
“We announce our disavowal from anyone who carries weapons and targets government institutions, charities and political party offices,” al-Sadr said in a nine-point statement issued by his headquarters in Najaf.
The statement was accompanied by demands that the Iraqi government issue a general amnesty to his followers and release any being held. The statement was distributed across Iraq and posted on the Internet.
The move was welcomed by Iraq’s government, whose forces have been fighting al-Sadr’s militia, the Mehdi Army, in six days of clashes with so-called “outlaws” who had taken control of much of the southern city of Basra. U.S. and coalition troops have been supporting the Iraqi offensive.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who had vowed not to leave Basra until his government reclaimed control of the city, called al-Sadr’s statement a “step in the right direction” and said he hoped it would help to stabilize the region.
“We renew our assurance that the process of enforcement [of] the law in Basra does not target any political or religious group, including the Sadr movement,” al-Maliki said in a prepared statement.
Witnesses reported continued clashes throughout the day in Basra even after Sunday’s announcements. But Iraqi authorities said after al-Sadr’s announcement they would lift an indefinite curfew that had been imposed on Baghdad since Thursday. Watch how the cease-fire affects Shiite vs. Shiite fights »
Don’t Miss
Turkey: Rebels killed in Iraq
Death toll in Iraq fighting nears 300
Analysis: Basra fight not going well
Baghdad on lockdown as rockets fly
The curfew is scheduled to be lifted 6 a.m. Monday (11 p.m. Sunday ET), said Gen. Qassim Atta, an Iraqi military spokesman. But a vehicle ban will stay in place in three Shiite militia strongholds — neighborhoods in the capital, including Sadr City, Kadhimiya and Shulaa, Atta said.
A curfew that was imposed on Basra was lifted Saturday.
Al-Sadr’s statement came after what an aide described as direct talks between al-Sadr’s representatives and the Iraqi government in Najaf that started Saturday night.
Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh denied there were talks with al-Sadr’s representatives, directly or indirectly. But speaking on Iraqi state TV, al-Dabbagh said “A large number of people will listen to Muqtada al-Sadr’s call.”
“Life will return to all of Iraq as before,” he said. “The statement is positive and responsive; we as the government of Iraq believe this effort will be in the common interest and help the security efforts that the government is working to achieve.”
Death tolls are difficult to obtain, but reports from Iraqi and coalition authorities suggest more than 400 people have died since fighting began Tuesday. The fighting has been heaviest in Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city and major oil port, and a U.S. military analysis of the battle indicated the government push was not going as well as American officials had hoped, several U.S. officials said Friday.
In Washington, CIA Director Michael Hayden told NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday that about 70 percent of Basra was under the control of “criminal elements” when the assault was launched. Though the increase in violence was disappointing, he said, the government assault “was something that we all knew we had to go through.”
“This was inevitable. This had to be resolved. You just can’t have the second major city in the country — economically, the most important city in the country — beyond the control of the government,” Hayden said.
Top U.S. officials, including President Bush, have praised al-Maliki’s operation as a sign of a strengthening Iraqi government. But Hayden and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, said the Iraqis did not consult them before launching their offensive.
“We’ll see how well the Iraqi army fought. We’ll see how well it was planned and executed. And we may find that the Iraqi army did not do a very good job of planning and executing this effort,” Graham, a Senate colleague and close ally of Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, told “Fox News Sunday.”
Graham said the militia fighters that Iraqi troops are battling are backed by Iran, which he said was “killing Americans” by arming the militias. But Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed said Iran has close ties to all of Iraq’s Shiite factions, including al-Maliki’s Dawa party and the country’s largest Shiite religious party, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.
“The notion that this is a fight by American allies against Iranian-inspired elements is not accurate,” said Reed, a leading Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Al-Sadr’s political movement holds 30 seats in Iraq’s 275-member parliament and was once a partner in al-Maliki’s ruling coalition. The party quit the government in 2007 after al-Maliki refused to demand a deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
The cleric’s supporters have linked the government offensive to provincial elections slated to take place October 1. Nassar al-Rubaie, an official in al-Sadr’s political movement, said the army and police were being used “for political reasons.”
A high-ranking Iraqi security official said at least 200 people have been killed and 500 wounded in Basra battles since Tuesday. More than 100 had been killed in Baghdad as of Sunday, with another 100-plus killed in clashes in other cities in southern Iraq, Iraqi authorities reported.
U.S. and British forces have supported Iraqi troops with airstrikes and shelling in Basra, as well as reconnaissance and intelligence, coalition military officials have said. U.S. troops have also conducted raids and engaged in gun battles with militia fighters alongside Iraqi troops.
U.S. airstrikes killed at least 15 people in Baghdad neighborhoods known to be Mehdi Army strongholds Sunday morning, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said. And Baghdad’s International Zone — where many Iraqi government buildings and embassies are located — was targeted again Sunday by rockets or mortars, but no injuries or damage was immediately reported, a U.S. Embassy official said.
Also on Sunday, roadside bombings in northern and western Iraq killed two U.S. troops, while attacks on Iraqi police and others left another 19 dead, Iraqi police and U.S. military officials reported.
One roadside bombing killed a U.S. soldier north of Baghdad, while a Marine died in another bombing in the western province of Anbar, the U.S. military headquarters there reported. No details of the attacks were released. The latest attacks bring the U.S. death toll in the 5-year-old war to 4,009.
Other developments
• In northern Iraq, five Iraqi police officers were killed and two bystanders were wounded when gunmen attacked a police patrol in the town of Dhuluiyah Sunday, Samarra police said.
• The U.S. military said Sunday it found a mass grave with 14 bodies near Muqdadiya. The bodies, which showed signs of torture, appeared to have been in the grave for two to six months. They were found 100 yards from where 37 bodies were found buried Thursday, the military said.
• Ten people were killed Sunday when a suicide car bomb struck a checkpoint manned by members of the Awakening Council, Baiji police said. Four members of the council were among the dead. Awakening Councils are largely Sunni security groups that have been recruited by the U.S. military.
• Also in Baiji, a child was killed and seven civilians were wounded when a mortar landed in a residential area Saturday afternoon, Baiji police said Sunday.
• In Samarra, gunmen stormed the home of an Awakening Council member, killing him and his son. His wife and daughter were wounded in the Saturday morning attack, Samarra police said Sunday
Mar
31
Zimbabwe pushed for quick release of election results
Filed Under CNN News, News, Top Stories | Leave a Comment
CNN) — Election observers called on Zimbabwe’s government to release the results of weekend elections as soon as possible to avoid political unrest, but government officials said the results won’t be out until Monday.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe campaigns in the capital of Harare last week.
1 of 3 Justice George Chiweshe, the chairman of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, announced the commission would begin releasing results at 6 a.m. Monday (midnight Sunday ET).
Appearing on Zimbabwe’s ZTV television network, he said commissioners had to verify results and would not be pressured into releasing them early.
“We are dealing with a matter with national dimensions … Our mandate is clearly laid down in terms of the Constitution and we have tried — actually, have followed — that,” Chiweshe said.
But Marwick Khumalo, a spokesman for the Pan-African Parliament observer mission, said he had no doubt the election commission knew “at least a larger part, if not all the results,” by Sunday evening.
“So really, it is frustrating not only for the Zimbabweans themselves, even for those of us who come from afar, to come and witness this historical event,” Khumalo said.
Saturday’s vote posed a serious challenge to President Robert Mugabe’s three-decade rule over Zimbabwe. Former finance minister Simba Makoni, and Morgan Tsvangirai of the main opposition party, Movement for Democratic Change, were vying to unseat the 84-year-old incumbent.
Defying a government order, MDC released its count of the votes Sunday and claimed an early victory for Tsvangirai. The party said it tallied the results posted outside each polling station — and based on one-third of the returns, that count showed Tsvangirai won 67 percent of the votes, journalists inside Zimbabwe told The Zimbabwean government has denied CNN and other international news organizations permission to enter the country to report on the elections.
Don’t Miss
Opposition cries foul as Zimbabwe votes
Blog: Reports from Zimbabwe border
Special: Inside Africa
iReport: Send us your stories, photos, videos
At its Sunday news conference, MDC also claimed it has won the majority of parliamentary seats in Zimbabwe’s urban centers, including Harare and Bulawayo. MDC enjoys widespread support in the cities. Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party has its base in Zimbabwe’s rural areas.
Takura Zhangazha, a local media watchdog representative, said it is unclear if the government would actually release results Monday.
Speaking to CNN from Harare, Zhangazha warned the government needs to announce the results “as soon as possible to allay any fears of rigging or cheating in terms of the vote.”
“There’s too much speculation, and the speculation tends to lead to a lot of political tension,” said Zhangazha, part of the Media Institute for Southern Africa.
“I would not want to see people then fighting over the results or any political violence or tensions then occurring.”
MDC leaders have already dismissed the government’s unannounced results as rigged in favor of the incumbent leader and began declaring victory just hours into Saturday’s vote. But there are concerns that if each side claims victory, tensions could ignite and violence could erupt.
Simba Makoni, who was expelled from the Zanu-PF after announcing his bid to unseat Mugabe, said it was “premature to judge that the environment before the balloting has had some impediment.”
“Overall it was not a conducive environment” for voting, Makoni said, citing voter confusion and lack of access to the media. “But we know our people are clear about what they want and we expect they will express their will. We will wait and see the results.”
Critics of the government predicted the vote would be rigged or marred by fraud. The United States this week warned of a possible unfair election, and New York-based Human Rights Watch announced earlier this month that the elections were likely to be “deeply flawed.”
A hero of the country’s civil war against the white Rhodesian government, Mugabe became the country’s first black prime minister in 1980. But nearly three decades later, he has consolidated his rule over all aspects of Zimbabwean life.
His country was once revered for offering its citizens some of the best education and health care in Africa, but now, schooling is a luxury and Zimbabwe has one of the lowest life expectancies in the world.
Zimbabwe was once known as the breadbasket of southern Africa, but now it is difficult to get even basic food supplies. Inflation has skyrocketed to more than 100,000 percent while food production and agricultural exports have dropped drastically.
Part of the economic freefall is traced to Mugabe’s land redistribution policies, including his controversial seizure of commercially white-owned farms in 2000. Mugabe gave the land to black Zimbabweans who he said were cheated under colonialist rule, and white farmers who resisted were jailed.
In 2005, Mugabe launched Operation Clean Out the Trash, in which he razed slum areas across the country.
Mugabe denies mismanagement and blames his country’s woes on the West, saying sanctions have harmed the economy.
Mar
31
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Al Qaeda is training fighters that “look western” and could easily cross U.S. borders without attracting attention, CIA Director Michael Hayden said on Sunday.
The militant Islamist group has turned Pakistan’s remote tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan into a safe haven, and is using it to plot further attacks against the United States, Hayden said.
“They are bringing operatives into that region for training — operatives that wouldn’t attract your attention if they were going through the customs line at Dulles (airport outside Washington) with you when you were coming back from overseas,” Hayden said during an interview on NBC’s television show Meet the Press.
“(They) look western (and) would be able to come into this country without attracting the kinds of attention that others might,” Hayden said, without offering further details.
The United States went to war in Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks on U.S. cities in order to crush al Qaeda and hunt down its chief, Osama bin Laden, who Hayden confirmed was still believed by the United States to be hiding in the rugged Afghan border area.
The Washington Post reported on Thursday that the United States had stepped up unilateral attacks on al Qaeda targets in Pakistan because it fears the country’s newly elected leaders will soon curb U.S. actions on their soil. Pakistan’s pro-U.S. president, Pervez Musharraf, has been weakened by the defeat of his allies in the country’s recent elections.
Hayden declined to comment directly on the Post article, but he stressed that the tribal regions were very sensitive.
“The situation along that Afghanistan/Pakistan border presents a clear and present danger to Afghanistan, to Pakistan, to the West in general and the United States in particular,” Hayden said.
“It is very clear to us that al Qaeda has been able over the last 18 months or so to establish a safe haven along the Afghan/Pakistan border that they have not enjoyed before.”
Asked directly whether he feared Musharraf might not be around as president for much longer to support the United States, Hayden said he did not know, but praised what the country had already delivered.
“We have not had a better partner in the war against terrorism than the Pakistani government,” he said.
(Reporting by Alister Bull; Editing by Patricia Zengerle)
Mar
31
Thai temple fights off encroaching tide as world sea levels rise
Filed Under Most Pepular, News | Leave a Comment
KHUN SAMUT CHIN, Thailand (AFP) - Crabs scuttle across the wet floor of the near-deserted Khun Samut temple, the only building left in a Thai village that has disappeared beneath the rising and advancing sea.
Waging a battle against an encroaching tide that has sent all the villagers fleeing inland, a monk in orange robes and faded tattoos meant to ward off evil spirits stalks the newly-built sea wall, planting mangrove shoots.
Somnuek Atipanya points 20 metres (65 feet) out to sea, where electricity pylons poke out of the water, now useful only for resting marine birds.
“The waves attacked here and they will destroy everything,” says Somnuek, chief abbot of this Buddhist temple south of Bangkok which is surrounded by water and accessible only by a concrete walkway.
“I don’t know what happened, but when the experts came they told me it was global warning and melting ice in the North Pole.”
Over 30 years, the sea around Khun Samut Chin village has engulfed more than one kilometre (0.6 miles) of land, World Bank figures show, mostly because fishermen have cut down mangrove forests — the Earth’s natural sea barrier.
Tourism development, sand mining and damming rivers upstream have also taken their toll in an area naturally prone to coastal erosion.
The community have realised their errors and are trying to replant the mangroves, but the situation may soon be out of their hands as global warming sends sea levels rising and powerful storms lashing the coast.
“The process has been occurring over some time and accelerating with land use changes and local human activity,” says Jitendra Shah, the World Bank’s environmental coordinator in Thailand.
“Climate change impacts are likely to accelerate the pace and make things worse in the future.”
Coastal erosion of varying degrees affects 21 percent of Thailand’s coastline, says Greenpeace climate campaigner Tara Buakamsri, citing figures from Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.
Along the Gulf of Thailand, seaside areas seriously affected by erosion are receding at a rate of five to 20 metres per year.
Climate scientists say that as global warming heats the Earth up, glaciers and polar ice caps will melt and sea waters will expand, sending oceans rising by at least 18 centimetres (7.2 inches), or possibly a great deal more by 2100.
World sea levels rose 3.1 millimetres per year from 1993 to 2003, the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says.
This is not good news for the five monks who remain at Khun Samut temple. Despite their best efforts, they may not be able to save the site from the same fate that befell Khun Samut Chin’s sunken school and homes.
Visanu Kengsamut, 26, has already moved three times in his life, while his mother — the village chief — has fled the crumbling coast and rebuilt her home eight times, and each time the village has paid for its own relocation.
Khun Samut Chin now sits about one kilometre inland from the temple.
“We know that the cause of this is the effects of global warming,” says Visanu.
“This problem, everybody should take responsibility and the government should help. If possible, the international community should come to help because they started the problem.”
As the world tries to work out a new pact to battle the threat posed by global warming, poorer countries — who the IPCC says will suffer the most from climate change — are battling to have their voices heard.
They argue that because the industrialised world was historically most responsible for global warming, they should contribute generously to a fund to help poor countries adapt to the changing world.
The so-called adaptation and mitigation fund will likely be discussed at key United Nations climate change talks in Bangkok from March 31 to April 4.
“Whether or not it is a small contribution or major contribution related to climate change in the past, this community needs to be taken into account when they discuss about the mitigation measure or adaptation fund,” says Greenpeace’s Tara.
“Because they are facing the impact — they are one of the first groups in Thailand that is facing the impact.”
Mar
31
Doctors wary after cholesterol drug flop
Filed Under Most Pepular, News | Leave a Comment
CHICAGO - Leading doctors urged a return to older, tried-and-true treatments for high cholesterol after hearing full results Sunday of a failed trial of Vytorin.
Millions of Americans already take the drug or one of its components, Zetia. But doctors were stunned to learn that Vytorin failed to improve heart disease even though it worked as intended to reduce three key risk factors.
“People need to turn back to statins,” said Yale University cardiologist Dr. Harlan Krumholz, referring to Lipitor, Crestor and other widely used brands. “We know that statins are good drugs. We know that they reduce risks.”
The study was closely watched because Zetia and Vytorin have racked up $5 billion in sales despite limited proof of benefit. Two Congressional panels launched probes into why it took drugmakers nearly two years after the study’s completion to release results.
Results were presented at an American College of Cardiology conference in Chicago Sunday and published on the Internet by the New England Journal of Medicine.
Doctors have long focused on lowering LDL or bad cholesterol as a way to prevent heart disease. Statins like Merck & Co.’s Zocor, which recently came out in generic form, do this, as do niacin, fibrates and other medicines.
Vytorin, which came out in 2004, combines Zocor with Schering-Plough Corp.’s Zetia, which went on sale in 2002 and attacks cholesterol in a different way.
The study tested whether Vytorin was better than Zocor alone at limiting plaque buildup in the arteries of 720 people with super high cholesterol because of a gene disorder.
The results show the drug had “no result - zilch. In no subgroup, in no segment, was there any added benefit” for reducing plaque, said Dr. John Kastelein, the Dutch scientist who led the study.
That happened even though Vytorin dramatically lowered LDL, fats in the blood called triglycerides and a measure of artery inflammation - CRP.
Some doctors noted that hormone pills for menopausal women and torcetrapib, a promising cholesterol drug Pfizer Inc. recently abandoned, also lowered cholesterol but were found in big studies to raise heart risks, not lower them.
Another ominous sign was the decision Friday by other researchers to expand enrollment in a more pivotal study of Vytorin to 18,000 people because early results suggest it will be harder than anticipated to see if it is any better than Zocor alone.
“It will be 2012 - ten years after the drug was introduced - before we know the answer,” said Dr. Steven Nissen, a Cleveland Clinic cardiologist who has no role in the studies and has criticized the drugmakers over the one reported Sunday.
Dr. Robert Spiegel, chief medical officer for Schering-Plough, said the study was done “with the highest integrity” and that doctors can believe the results “because of the time we took to make sure the data are right.”
“We were disappointed that it was not a very balanced panel discussion” by the heart doctors who urged their peers to focus on more established treatments.
However, Kastelein said the data were far more consistent than anticipated and ample to show that the drug simply did not work.
“A lot of us thought that there would be some glimmer of benefit,” said Dr. Roger Blumenthal, a Johns Hopkins University cardiologist and spokesman for the American Heart Association.
Many doctors have prescribed Vytorin without trying older, proven medications first, as guidelines advise. The key message from the study is “don’t do that,” Blumenthal said.
No one should ever stop any heart drug without talking with their doctors, heart specialists stressed.
However, doctors “should be thinking twice,” said Duke University cardiologist Dr. Robert Califf. He takes the drug himself because he cannot tolerate the high dose of statins he otherwise would need.
Dr. James Stein, director of preventive cardiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said many doctors prescribe Zetia and Vytorin because they seem to be safe ways to get cholesterol down quickly, without annoying side effects like flushing that some other medicines carry.
Stein, who has consulted for Schering-Plough, said that after six years on the market, it would have been good to see better results on a drug so many doctors believed would help, “but the reason we do research is so we don’t have to rely on our ‘beliefs’ - we can rely on data.”
The New England Journal also published a report showing that Vytorin and Zetia’s use soared in the United States amid a $200 million advertising blitz. In Canada, where marketing drugs directly to consumers is not allowed, sales were four times lower.
Merck is based in Whitehouse Station, N.J.; Schering-Plough, in Kenilworth, N.J.
In addition to the two Congressional committee probes, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo subpoenaed the companies in a similar probe in January.
“While these corporations profited, Americans were left in the dark,” Cuomo said in a written statement Sunday. “The millions who take this drug, taxpayers who subsidize its use through the Medicaid and Medicare programs, and Merck and Schering-Plough’s investors deserve to know why it took so long for the results to be made public. This new information underscores our concerns and advances our investigation, which we will pursue aggressively.”
Source: Yahoo News
Mar
31
Farmer finds mystery space junk
Filed Under Most Pepular, News | Leave a Comment
CANBERRA (Reuters) - A cattle farmer in Australia’s remote northern outback on Friday said he had found a giant ball of twisted metal, which he believes is space junk from a rocket used to launch communications satellites.
Farmer James Stirton found the odd-shaped ball last year on his 40,000 hectare property, about 800 kilometers (500 miles) west of the northern Queensland state capital of Brisbane.
But Stirton only started inquiring into what the ball of metal really was, and where it had come from, in the past week.
“I was riding out to check some cattle, and I came around the corner and there it was in a paddock,” Stirton told Reuters on Friday.
“I know a lot about sheep and cattle but I don’t know much about satellites. But I would say it is a fuel cell off some stage of a rocket.”
He said the object was hollow, and covered in a carbon-fiber material. He has contacted some U.S.-based aerospace companies to try to find out what the object really is.
Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum said it was not uncommon for people to find spacejunk in remote areas of Australia.
In 1979, large parts of the Skylab space station fell to earth near a tiny outback town in Australia’s west. A local council sent NASA a ticket for littering and then United States President Jimmy Carter rang a local motel to apologize.
(Reporting by James Grubel; Editing by David Fox)
Mar
31
Muslims more numerous than Catholics
Filed Under Most Pepular, News | Leave a Comment
VATICAN CITY - Islam has surpassed Roman Catholicism as the world’s largest religion, the Vatican newspaper said Sunday.
“For the first time in history, we are no longer at the top: Muslims have overtaken us,” Monsignor Vittorio Formenti said in an interview with the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. Formenti compiles the Vatican’s yearbook.
He said that Catholics accounted for 17.4 percent of the world population - a stable percentage - while Muslims were at 19.2 percent.
“It is true that while Muslim families, as is well known, continue to make a lot of children, Christian ones on the contrary tend to have fewer and fewer,” the monsignor said.
Formenti said that the data refer to 2006. The figures on Muslims were put together by Muslim countries and then provided to the United Nations, he said, adding that the Vatican could only vouch for its own data.
When considering all Christians and not just Catholics, Christians make up 33 percent of the world population, Formenti said.
Spokesmen for the Vatican and the United Nations did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment Sunday.
Source: Yahoo News
Mar
31
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Republican Party and the religious right have been brothers-in-arms for nearly three decades, but values voters are fragmenting and Democrats are now refusing to cede the spiritual vote.
The alliance between the evangelical movement’s muscular Christianity and the God-fearing tub-thumping of the Republican right reached its apogee in President George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004.
But in this year’s history-making presidential election, the powerful coalition that propelled president Ronald Reagan and the “Moral Majority” to Washington in 1981 could be breaking up.
Republican candidate John McCain is held in intense suspicion by evangelicals. But Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton also wear their faith proudly, and “progressives” are now speaking out to reclaim Jesus Christ’s teachings for their own political beliefs in social justice.
Geoffrey Layman, author of “The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics,” traced the fraying of the evangelical-Republican coalition to the Iraq war, new Christian leadership, and the Democrats’ soul-searching after John Kerry’s defeat to Bush four years ago.
“It certainly fits with what Democratic leaders have been talking about ever since the 2004 loss: we really can’t let Republicans be the only religious party in American politics,” said Layman, a University of Maryland professor.
“And for a new crop of evangelical pastors, moral values doesn’t just mean being against gay marriage, or abortion, or stem-cell research,” he told AFP.
“It also means helping the poor, protecting the environment, and fighting for justice.”
The problem is most acute for McCain, whose running clashes with evangelical leaders in the 2000 election, and “liberal” record on issues such as campaign finance reform and immigration, have alienated evangelicals.
According to a poll in the conservative National Review, McCain would lose the Christian vote to either Democratic hopeful by 36 percent to 45. The Republican draws even among Protestants but lags badly among Catholics.
James Dobson, founder of the hugely influential evangelical group Focus on the Family, said last month: “I cannot and I will not vote for Senator John McCain as a matter of conscience.”
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee looked at one point to be the new savior for the religious right, but the former Baptist preacher never won more than a narrow band of support in Bible-belt states.
Meanwhile the Democrats no longer escape to a secular refuge whenever religion enters into the political debate.
Obama this month pointed to Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, which starts “Blessed are the poor,” as being a more fundamental tenet of Christianity than “obscure” passages of the Bible denouncing homosexuality.
And while dogged now by incendiary sermons by his former pastor, the Illinois senator has placed the “audacity of hope” squarely in a Christian tradition that does not embrace left-right divisions.
For her part, Clinton has described how her Methodist faith helped her survive the personal anguish of her husband Bill’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.
The former first lady has accepted an invitation to an April 13 event in Pennsylvania called “The Compassion Forum,” an inter-faith dialogue taking place just before the state’s April 22 primary. Obama and McCain have also been invited, organizers say.
The success today of best-selling books such as “The Great Awakening,” by nationally prominent preacher Jim Wallis, also suggests a blurring of the old divide in religion and politics.
“Those on the religious right did it wrong, allowing their religion to become too partisan, too narrow, and too ideological,” Wallis writes.
“They were used by politics and did plenty of using themselves — using both people and issues to further their own agenda. But I believe their day is over, and we have now entered the post-religious right era.”
In truth, it is probably too early to tell. America’s culture wars have not gone away, but may be taking a back seat to the preeminent issues of the day such as Iraq and the crisis-hit economy.
What hurts McCain is not the prospect of Bush’s stalwart supporters all voting Democratic in November. Lower turnout by disaffected evangelicals contributed to the Republicans’ defeat in the 2006 congressional elections
Source: Yahoo News
Mar
31
Driver found shot in LA freeway wreck
Filed Under Most Pepular, News | Leave a Comment
LOS ANGELES - Rescue crews responding to a wreck on a Los Angeles freeway found a driver fatally shot in the head early Sunday, while another driver was shot and wounded in a separate attack about 30 miles away, authorities said.
The shootings were the latest in a string of attacks on Southern California freeways that have alarmed motorists and authorities.
Investigators did not know what led to the fatal shooting on the 101 Freeway in the San Fernando Valley on Sunday. The wreck snarled traffic for several hours near Van Nuys.
“There’s absolutely no witnesses at this time, no information,” Los Angeles police Officer Norma Eisenman said.
The car crashed near a freeway onramp, so it was possible the victim was shot before entering the highway, Eisenman said.
The second shooting was in Long Beach, where the victim was able to drive himself off the freeway and phone for help on Saturday night, Officer Jackie Bezart said.
The man told officers another motorist shot at him as the result of road rage along the 710 Freeway, Bezart said. The man was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.
Investigators do not think the cases were related to three other shootings, two that were fatal, in the past several weeks on Southern California freeways.
In Virginia, authorities on Friday arrested two teenagers in connection with random shootings along Interstate 64 and potshots taken at a credit union and a residence a day before. Two people were slightly injured, prompting investigators to briefly shut down a 20-mile stretch of the highway between Waynesboro and Charlottesville.
Those shootings stirred memories of the Washington-area sniper shootings six years ago that killed 10 people.
Mar
31
CAIRO (Reuters) - New evidence of a sick, deprived population working under harsh conditions contradicts earlier images of wealth and abundance from the art records of the ancient Egyptian city of Tell el-Amarna, a study has found.
Tell el-Amarna was briefly the capital of ancient Egypt during the reign of the pharaoh Akhenaten, who abandoned most of Egypt’s old gods in favor of the Aten sun disk and brought in a new and more expressive style of art.
Akhenaten, who ruled Egypt between 1379 and 1362 BC, built and lived in Tell el-Amarna in central Egypt for 15 years. The city was largely abandoned shortly after his death and the ascendance of the famous boy king Tutankhamun to the throne.
Studies on the remains of ordinary ancient Egyptians in a cemetery in Tell el-Amarna showed that many of them suffered from anemia, fractured bones, stunted growth and high juvenile mortality rates, according to professors Barry Kemp and Jerome Rose, who led the research.
Rose, a professor of anthropology in the University of Arkansas in the United States, said adults buried in the cemetery were probably brought there from other parts of Egypt.
“This means that we have a period of deprivation in Egypt prior to the Amarna phase,” he told an audience of archaeologists and Egyptologists in Cairo on Thursday evening.
“So maybe things were not so good for the average Egyptian and maybe Akhenaten said we have to change to make things better,” he said.
Kemp, director of the Amarna Project which seeks in part to increase public knowledge of Tell el-Amarna and surrounding region, said little attention has been given to the cemeteries of ordinary ancient Egyptians.
“A very large number of ordinary cemeteries have been excavated but just for the objects and very little attention has been paid for the human remain,” he told Reuters.
“The idea of treating the human remains … to study the overall health of the population is relatively new.”
Paintings in the tombs of the nobles show an abundance of offerings, but the remains of ordinary people tell a different story.
Rose displayed pictures showing spinal injuries among teenagers, probably because of accidents during construction work to build the city.
The study showed that anemia ran at 74 percent among children and teenagers, and at 44 percent among adults, Rose said. The average height of men was 159 cm (5 feet 2 inches) and 153 cm among women.
“Adult heights are used as a proxy for overall standard of living,” he said. “Short statures reflect a diet deficient in protein. … People were not growing to their full potential.”
Kemp said he believed further excavations in Tell el-Amarna would “firm-up” the conclusions of his team.
“We are seeing a more realistic picture of what life was like,” he told Reuters. “It has nothing to do with the intentions of Akhenaten, which may have been good and paternal toward his people.”
(Writing by Alaa Shahine, editing by Mary Gabriel)