User:Sj/Digest

<< The Wikipedia Digest

Feel free to edit this page.

This page holds the most recent Digest entries. Please remember to prefix any entries with a general category, such as Politics, Business, Science, Arts, &c. This page will then be distributed regularly among topical digest pages.

Please include Digested on 20:48, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC) by +sj+ . at the top of your digest entries.

Technical future: Even further into the future, digest entries will be stored individually in their own database table, will allow more than one 'category', and will be individually searchable. Wait for it.

The Economist vol 372 # 8383, July 10, 2004. US Edition. Cover: The dream ticket? (John Kerry and John Edwards). Digested on 20:48, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC) by +sj +.

Politics
 * Kerry picks Edwards as vice-presidential running mate, collects $34m in campaign funds in June (ntew total: $180m).
 * Freedom Tower construction begins at the WTC site in NYC
 * The Roman Catholic archdiocese in Portland, Oregon declares bankruptcy
 * Mohamed ElBaradei of the IAEA visited Israel, suggesting the middle east should become nuclear-free.
 * Italy's PM Silvio Berlusconi, after removing his finance minister Giulio Tremonti, becomes the FM himself. Soon after, Standard & Poor's downgrades Italy's debt.
 * Turkish Cypriots in Northern Cyprus wanter to endorse a UN reunification plan in April, but Greek Cypriots in southern Cyprus rejected it. The European Commission has offered support and money to the north.
 * Austria's president Thomas Klestil died of sudden heart failure, just before his succession by Heinz Fischer.
 * The chief of staff to Mexican prez Vincente Fox resignd this week.
 * In Venezuela, a recall referendum on prez Hugo Chavez is planned for August. It may be observed by the Organisation of American States and the Carter Center, but under restrictions which those observing orgs may not accept.
 * Leader: Kerry's dream ticket? VP candidates are supposed to be safe bets, who won't steal the limelight, and reliably repeat the main campaign messages.  So why does Kerry's choice of Edwards, a more energetic and differently focused running-mate, seem right?  The positives: an unusual move, grabbing some attention; broadening the campaign's appeal, across class and geography.  The negatives: inexperience, unconvincing on foreign affairs, and unpopular with business.  Edwards seems right in part because of the poor alternatives -- McCain and Hillary said no, leaving Edwards, Tom Vilsack, and Dick Gephardt, who seemed closest to Kerry in the primaries. Choosing Edwards over Gephardt highlights two key facts - 1) Kerry may not get elected simply as the anybody But Bush candidate; and 2) Kerry has yet to say clearly why he should be president or define a strong platform, so Edwards ideas are a help and there is little risk of Edwards contradicting him.

Business
 * Russia's main oil exporter, Yukos, facing an eventual tax bill of $10B, may fold completely if it cannot work out a deal with the government. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, on trial for fraud and tax evasion, offered his shares to offset the bill.
 * Enron's Kenneth Lay was indicted.
 * The EC approved a government loan to the Fr engineering firm alstom to the tune of 2.5B Euros.
 * EasyJet's founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou is planning to take the airline private, following recent drops in the company's shares after a surge in fuel costs.
 * Delta Air Lines claims it must cut $2.5B/yr to avoid bankruptcy; it plans to ask its pilots for concessions worth $1B/yr.
 * Microsoft also plans to cut costs by $1B this year, after expenses outgrew revenues for the third straight year.
 * Wal-Mart has appealed the granting of a class-action sex-discrimination suit that could cost it billions.
 * Apollo Management acquired Borden Chemical from Kohlberg Kravis Roberts for $655M, expanding the diversity of its investments.
 * Russia's Guta Bank added to fears of an impending banking crisis in the country when it announced that it did not have cash to cover certain withdrawals after a recent run on deposits.  Other Russian banks have had liquidity trouble since the Russian Central Bank revoked the licences of Sodbiznesbank and CreditTrust.
 * Arab Bank in Jordan has been sued for $875M by relatives of Americans killed or injured in Palestinian attacks in Israel, who claim the bank laundered money through its New York branch to transfer money to Palestinian militant groups including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Sport
 * The Greek soccer team won the Euro 2004 football championship in a surprise upset.

Health
 * Asian bird flu reappears in Thailand, China, and Vietnam.

Science
 * China's space agency chief announced plans for an unmanned mission to the moon in 2007.

Obit
 * Dmitry Dudko - Russian dissident and recanter; died June 28, age 82. A quite from his Easter Sunday sermon, 1977 : We are in the front linees, and this front line is everywhere.  We are surrounded by atheists on all sides.  There is no place where there is no shooting going on.  The press, art, theatre, schools, institutions -- everything ha been occupied by the atheists.  The laws are all directed towards our suffocation...but we are alive!  In 1980, he was arrested for distributing "slanderous materials" to a New York Times contact.  After six months in jail, he appeared on television and nervously recanetd.  In the 1990s, Father Dimitry began to write articles for Zavtra, an ultra-nationalist and anti-western paper, in which he remembered fondly the authoritarian past and revered Stalin as "a man given to us by God".

Military
 * British military - Britain is slated to spend 35 billion pounds on defence in 2005, an issue on which the various parties seem to agree. Since the end of the cold war, when New Labour rejected unilateral nuclear disarmament, defence stopped being a hot political issue.  Nevertheless, it is undergoing great change.  In 1998, the Strategic Defence Review marked a move from preparing for major war to sending forces around the world.  In December 2003, a Defence White Paper was published which revealed essentially nothing; in July 2004 the House of Commons  Defence Committee stated "We are disappointed that an important policy document has been presented with little or no information on the relevant procurement decisions, funding questions or likely changes in force structures."  Bagehot's view : Britain should stick to doing what they do best -- "the roughest end of peace enforcement", boots on the ground.
 * Japanese military - Japan has recently begun to extend its military reach, and prime minister Junichiro Koizumi has presided over a changing view of pacifism in the country. Two landmark events : 1) in December of 2001, Japanese coastguard vessels were given orders to chase down a North Korean spy ship, which had been patrolling just outside Japan's territorial waters.  They sank the ship in the East China Sea, and insisted on their right to salvage it.  2) earlier this year send over 500 troops from its Japan Self-Defense Forces group to help rebuild Iraq, the furst time since WWII that Japan has sent soldiers abroad without an explicit international mandate.  Some american officials think that as Japan gains confidence in its military ability, US-Japan relations will improve and become more flexible.  Voters are uncertain about recent pledges by Japan to take part in peacekeeping forces in Iraq, but the threat of a mischievous and active North Korea right next door provides extra support for these military developments.

The Economist vol 372 # 8384, July 17, 2004. US Edition. Cover: Sincere deceivers (George Bush and Tony Blair). Digested on 2:48, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC) by +sj +.

Politics
 * USA agriculture secterary Ann Veneman ended a policy protecting 60m acres of national forest in the western UN from road construction. Each state will be allowed to submit their own proposals for developing the nature preserves to the federal government.
 * Israel announced it would continue building its security barrier despite the ICJ's issuance of an advisory that this is illegal.
 * Pakistan's US ambassador, Ashraf Qazi, is appointed the new UN special rep to Iraq, replacing Sergio Viera de Mello who was murdered in Iraq in August 2003.
 * Report from Kenya : British envoy says the members of Kibaki's new government eat like gluttons, then vomit all over donors' shoes, adding that the names of honest civil servants would "fit on a postcard, or possibly a postage stamp".
 * EU constitution : France announced it would also hold a referendum on the document, probably next year.
 * Japan's opposition party won partial elections for the upper house of its legislature; the ruling Liberal Democratic Party still maintains a majority in both houses.
 * The Philippines announced withdrawal of its ~50 troops from Iraq a month earlier than expected, after one of its citizens was kidnapped there.
 * Afghanistan's [[electoral commission] has set its upcoming presidential election for October 9, and its elections for local and national assemblies for April, 2005. A poll in the summer of 2004 showed that over 80% of Afghans planned to vote in the election.
 * Thousands of passengers were stranded for two days in Peru when the largest Peruvian airline was grounded after its insurance was cancelled. The cancellation came after the US accused its owner, Fernando Zevallos, of drug-trafficking.
 * Alberta, Canada became Canada's only debt-free province after its Conservative premier, Ralph Klein, announced he woudl pay off its outstanding debt.

Business
 * Diamond giant De Beers agreed to plead guilty to price-fixing and pay $10m to settle charges of conspiracy with General Electric to fix prices for industrial diamonds. This allows De Beers to operate directly in the USA once again.
 * Google chooses to list on NASDAQ, a boost for the exchange.

Culture
 * Hoax of racist attack : the French public were horrified by news of a racist attack on a French train, in which a young woman had swastikas daubed on her body... but it was a hoax.

Books and arts
 * Birds Without Wings, by Louis de Bernieres. Coming out in August 2004.   This is a story of a network of friendhips and relationships in an interconnected community of Turks and Greeks in Ottoman Anatolia, near the end of the Ottoman empire, as war approaches.  The Christian priest and the Muslim hodja and their families get along; a group of Christian and Muslim children spend all their time together and talk of marriage.  When war starts, the Armenians are suddenly exiled or killed, the Muslims are taken off to fight, and the Greek Orthodox Christians are sent into forced labor; after the war, the remaining Christians are sent off to the foreign surroundings of Greece.  The story is presented in a series of first-person accounts, and in part as a history lesson, with an interwoven biography of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk to provide context.  *: Louis de Bernieres was most recently know for his book Captain Corelli's Mandolin.
 * The broad course of this novel is somewhat reminiscent of Dido Sotiriou's brilliant Farewell Anatolia, from the 1960s.
 * Canarino, by Katherine Bucknell. A novel with more than a twist of social commentary, by the beautiful wife of an investment banker, about the investment banker husband of a beautiful wife, who, in the middle of marital turmoil, discovers that his success and wealth of support staff have insulated him from the rest of the world.
 * The Cairo House, by Samia Serageldin. Gigi, A modern woman, born into a traditional Egyptian family, enters adulthood as some in her family are choosing exile rather than live by the rules of the new Nasser regime.  She finds she cannot stand her arranged marriage, and, losing custody of her child, flees herself into exile and a second marriage to a European journalist.  Though she finds a new life with him, she never loses the sorrow of exile.

Obit
 * Paul Klebnikov - A US journalist, editor of Forbes Russia, Klebnikov was fatally shot by gunmen as he left his Moscow office on July 9. He was an idealist who thought that Russia had changed permanently over the past years, that grievances there were no longer settled via contract killing, and that investigative journalism was relatively safe.  However, there have been 15 journalists killed since 2000, and noone has been charged with any of their killings.  The one balanced political talk show, "Freedom of Speech", on the last independent television station, NTV, aired its final episode a few hours before Mr. Klebnikov was killed.  As for motives for his death, the second edition of Forbes Russia, which came uot in May, published a list of Russia's 100 richest people, noting that Moscow had, at 36, more billionaires than any other city in the world.  These hundred and other people about whom Klebnikov wrote could have done without the publicity.  People who he had not yet written stories about might have been worried that he would eventually investigate them.  He also wrote books; his last one, "A Conversation with the Barbarian", appealed to Europe to defend Christian civilization against Islamic extremism, something which must have offended many in Chechnya.