Tibetan exiles prayed as they took part in a candlelight vigil in Dharamsala, India. The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, said he was willing to meet Chinese leaders, including President Hu Jintao, as Chinese authorities acknowledged that the unrest in Tibet had spread to other provinces.
Photo: Gurinder Osan/Associated Press
Pictures of the Day, March 20 - The New York Times, Slide Show, Slide 2 of 16
Kevin Frayer/Associated Press
Palestinians carried goods from Egypt back to Gaza on Friday, passing a damaged section of the Rafah border wall.
Steven Erlanger, Egypt Tries to Plug Border; Gazans Poke New Hole - New York Times, January 26, 2008
GAZA — Egypt tried to restore its border with Gaza on Friday, stationing riot police officers in an effort to block Palestinians from entering. But Palestinians used a bulldozer to knock down another portion of the wall separating Egypt and Gaza.
The Egyptians announced on loudspeakers that the border would be closed at various times of the day on Friday, but allowed Palestinians who were inside Egypt to return to Gaza laden with goods, even as cranes lifted pallets of supplies over another part of the border barricade. The barrier on the Egyptian side is a low concrete wall topped with barbed wire.There were small clashes throughout the day, with short episodes of rock-throwing. Egyptians fired guns into the air and aimed water cannons above the heads of the those in the crowd to keep them back. The new breaches in the wall were large enough for cars and trucks to drive through, and some Egyptian guards then retreated.
Egypt is under pressure from Israel and the United States to restore the international border and regulate it, but does not want to use excessive force against the Gazans, whom the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, has insisted are starving under the pressure of Israeli restrictions on imports and travel.
But often in the past, Egypt has used force, including water cannons and automatic-rifle fire, against Palestinians who have breached the border, and the government will be calculating when its effort to respond generously to a crisis veers into instability or chaos. Nor does Egypt want responsibility for serving the population of Gaza, removing the burden from Israel.
Mahmud Hams - AFP/Getty Images
Gazans Stream Into Egypt As Border Wall Is Breached - washingtonpost.com, January 24, 2008
RAFAH, Gaza Strip, Jan. 23 — Gunmen destroyed vast sections of the seven-mile-long barricade that divides the Gaza Strip and Egypt on Wednesday, allowing tens of thousands of Palestinians to stream across the border and revel in a day away from a territory where Israeli restrictions have stifled the economy and caused blackouts and food shortages.
Jubilant Gazans flooded unhindered into Egypt, then hauled back purchases ranging from cigarettes and diesel fuel to goats, cows and camels. Other Palestinians walked for miles along Egyptian roads until their enthusiasm subsided and they sank, exhausted, onto curbs to rest.
“We were not able to go out!” Amial Tarazi, a 28-year-old office worker in Gaza City, said after clambering over broken stubs of the border wall in heels and a dress. She stepped into Egypt alongside two co-workers who had scaled the rubble in jackets and ties.
“We don’t care about buying anything,” Tarazi said. “We just wanted to see Egypt. We just wanted to get out.”
Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times
A prayer circle formed in the room where the Huckabee campaign holds a Caucus watch party.
Evangelicals not on same page - Los Angeles Times, Jan 18, 2008
GREENVILLE, S.C — The Christian heart of the Republican Party beats fiercely on the broad boulevard where one finds both the gated entrance to Bob Jones University and the headquartersof His Radio network, home to an AM Christian station and a sister music station, “FM With Love From Jesus.”
But the two bastions of Southern evangelism mirrored the split in the ranks of conservative voters before the state’s Republican primary Saturday.
Host Tony Beam of the network’s “Christian Talk” became a warrior for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee from the moment he turned on his microphone at 6 a.m. Thursday.”We need a leader in America who has the core value system that’s built on the eternal truths of the Bible,” Beam told listeners. “We need a lighthouse, a guiding force to get us in the right direction.”
Prominent conservative and Bob Jones University dean Robert Taylor made an opposing pitch on the university’s radio station earlier in the week.”Mitt Romney is the only candidate who shares our values and can win in November,” Taylor said. “That’s why it’s so important that conservatives rally around him.”
KOSOVO Pecinci, Srem District
NATO KFOR soldiers patrol a deserted Serbian village. The residents, fearing their Albanian neighbours, have fled from the settlement and many have left their possessions, such as this wedding photograph, behind.
Photographer Martin Roemers
Date 2000
Sven Torfinn/IRIN
Girls abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army are beaten and sexually abused.
OCHA IRIN | In-depth | Life in northern Uganda | UGANDA: Overview
Since 1986, northern Uganda has been racked by insurgencies. The latest and longest of these rebellions, that of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), has devastated Acholi, an area close to Uganda’s border with Sudan, and has now spread to the neighbouring subregions of Teso and Lango. No one knows for sure how many people have died, but estimates run into the tens of thousands.
The war between the LRA and the national army, the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) has had a telling effect on the inhabitants of northern Uganda. The three districts of the Acholi subregion, Gulu, Kitgum and Pader, have been particularly hard hit. Death and disease rates are high, and food is scarce. About 80 percent of Acholi’s people live in “protected villages” and camps for IDPs, which are often overcrowded, and lack adequate water, sanitation and health services. Devoid of any means of livelihood in the camps, a people of farmers and cattle rearers have been reduced to near-total dependence on donated food and other humanitarian aid.
Child abductions have long been a major feature of the conflict, but the number shot up after the UPDF launched an offensive against the LRA in March 2002. The rebels kidnapped more than 10,000 children between June 2002 and October 2003, up from 101 in 2001. This brought the total number abducted by the LRA since the start of the conflict to more than 20,000.
Abductees are made to carry heavy loads over long distances. Those who lag behind or fall ill are beaten or killed. Some are forced to kill, maim, beat or abduct innocent victims, or to look on as such abuses are committed. Sexual violence against girls and women is rampant. They are used as domestic servants or forced into sexual slavery as LRA commanders’ ‘wives’. They are subject to rape, unwanted pregnancy and the risk of infection, including HIV.
Pakistani former premier Benazir Bhutto (L) and party vice president Makhdoom Amin Faheem (R) look on during her last election campaign rally in Rawalpindi 27 December 2007.
Photo from Getty Images by AFP/Getty Images - Daylife, December 27, 2007
Adi Schwartz, A courageous journey, Haaretz, December 27, 2007
“The Himmler Brothers: A German Family History” by Katrin Himmler, translated from German into English by Michael Mitchell, Macmillan, 352 pages, 14.99 pounds sterling
The media in the United States recently reported the story of an elderly American Jew, a Holocaust survivor, the resident of a well-to-do California suburb. One day a new tenant, also elderly, moved into the house next door, beyond the small garden. Courteously, the Jewish man decided to call on the new neighbor and perhaps greet him with a warm apple pie. But the moment the door opened, the Jew recalled that he had already seen this person. It was then, back there, more than 60 years ago, on the train platform at Auschwitz - a German facing a Jew, an executioner facing a victim. More than 60 years had elapsed, but the Jew’s heart began to beat wildly….
Katrin discovers the fact that never, until their deaths in the 1970s, had any of that generation of the family expressed any sign of regret for the disaster they had brought upon their country and upon humanity.
From the author’s hands has emerged a fascinating document reminiscent of Christopher Browning’s book “Ordinary Men.” Instead of dealing with the institutional aspect of the slaughter of the Jews, Katrin Himmler tries to follow the dynamics and psychology of the ordinary German - the one who was in the party “like everyone else,” who perhaps had not been at Hitler’s side from the Beer Hall Putsch on, but ultimately impelled him to help make the terrible disaster possible….
This story has a fascinating final note: Katrin Himmler is in a relationship with an Israeli man, a grandson of Holocaust survivors, and the couple has a son. At the end of the book, the author writes that she is still afraid of the moment when her son discovers that one side of his family had done everything it could to kill the other side.
Roman Vishniac, A farmer of Vrchni Apsa, ca. 1935-38
Kenro Izu, “School Boys Near Tamshing Lhakhang Bumthang, Bhutan” (2007)
Kenro Izu, Life in Bhutan, The New York Times, Slide 5 of 7, December 2007
Sudan, 1993. Famine victim in a feeding center.
Afghanistan, 1996. Land mine victims learn to walk on prosthetic legs.
Albania 1999. Deported Kosovars in refugee camp.
Kalandia, near Ramallah. A few days after the Six-Day War, an Israeli officer studies a proposal from the ICRC, under the gaze of a Palestinian boy (1967). Jean Mohr
Jean Mohr, Israelis and Palestinians: “Side by Side or Face to Face”
Aftermath
The fighting in Lebanon spread to the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp, where the dust settles after several days of fighting. Ben Curtis / AP
Photo by Aman Sharma, AP. Millions of Hindus celebrate Ardh Kumb Mela, a 45-day festival that commemorates a mythical battle between gods and demons over the nectar of immortality.
Cleansed of Sin by the River Ganges, washingtonpost.com, January 17, 2007
Ajit Solanki/Associated Press
Bharatiya Janata Party supporters celebrating Sunday in Ahmadabad, India, after the announcement of state election results.
Somini Sengupta, Hindu Radical Is Re-elected in India - New York Times, December 24, 2007
NEW DELHI — He has been likened to the Emperor Nero, who fiddled while Rome burned. He has been denied entry into the United States for violations of religious freedom, yet praised as a business-friendly politician who has allowed private industry to flourish in his state.
On Sunday, voters re-elected the politician, Narendra Modi, arguably India’s most incendiary officeholder, as the chief minister of the western state of Gujarat. His victory, by a wide margin, was a stunning defeat for the country’s governing Congress Party and signaled that Mr. Modi and his charismatic, often pugnacious, brand of Hindu supremacist politics would be a force to be reckoned with in the future.Gujarat is considered a test case for national politics because it is viewed as a laboratory for radical Hindu politics in contemporary India.
Mr. Modi, a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, is accused of sanctioning or taking no steps to stop Hindu mobs from massacring at least 1,000 of their Muslim neighbors in February 2002, after a mysterious fire engulfed a train carrying members of a Hindu nationalist organization, killing 59 people on board. Ten months later, voters in Gujarat returned Mr. Modi to power.
In elections held earlier this month, Mr. Modi’s B.J.P. captured 117 seats in of the 182-member state legislature, falling just short of a two-thirds majority; the Congress Party, which leads the nation’s governing coalition, trailed with 59 seats, while 6 went to other parties. The results were announced Sunday by the Election Commission of India.