With Force, Mexican Drug Cartels Get Their Way
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CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — Mayor José Reyes Ferriz is supposed to be the one to hire and fire the police chief in this gritty border city that is at the center of Mexico’s drug war. It turns out, though, that real life in Ciudad Juárez does not follow the municipal code.
With Force, Mexican Drug Cartels Get Their Way
It was drug traffickers who decided that Chief Roberto Orduña Cruz, a retired army major who had been on the job since May, should go. To make clear their insistence, they vowed to kill a police officer every 48 hours until he resigned.
They first killed Mr. Orduña’s deputy, Operations Director Sacramento Pérez Serrano, together with three of his men. Then another police officer and a prison guard turned up dead. As the body count grew, Mr. Orduña eventually did as the traffickers had demanded, resigning his post on Feb. 20 and fleeing the city.
Replacing Mr. Orduña will also fall outside the mayor’s purview, although this time the criminals will not have a say. With Ciudad Juárez and the surrounding state of Chihuahua under siege by heavily armed drug lords, the federal government last week ordered the deployment of 5,000 soldiers to take over the Juárez Police Department. With the embattled mayor’s full support, the country’s defense secretary will pick the next chief.
Haylur @ March 1, 2009
At 11, a ‘Speechless’ Boy but a Confident Preacher
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MIAMI — The first time Terry Durham preached, he was not in front of a group of people or even inside a church. He was in the bathroom of his grandmother’s home in Fort Lauderdale, delivering his first sermon surrounded by toothbrushes, soap and towels. He was 6 years old.
At 11, a ‘Speechless’ Boy but a Confident Preacher
Five years later, Terry is an ordained minister who preaches almost every Sunday at True Gospel Deliverance Ministry, a 20-seat nondenominational storefront church that his grandmother founded in 2000.
“They say, ‘How can you be a preacher when you’re so young?’ ” said Terry, now 11. “But when they listen to me, they’re shocked.”
“God just put his Spirit upon me,” said Terry, who wore a baby blue suit with matching snakeskin shoes, the kind of outfit he usually wears on Sundays. “He said, ‘I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.’ But he didn’t say how old you had to be or anything like that.”
Haylur @ March 1, 2009
Pointing to a New Era, U.S. Pulls Back as Iraqis Vote
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BAGHDAD — Iraqis across the country voted Saturday in provincial elections that will help shape their future, but regardless of the outcome it is clear that the Americans are already drifting offstage — and that most Iraqis are ready to see them go.
An Iraqi woman voted in provincial elections on Saturday at a Baghdad school. Over all, the day passed peacefully.
The signs of mutual disengagement are everywhere. In the days leading up to the elections, it was possible to drive safely from near the Turkish border in the north to Baghdad and on south to Basra, just a few miles from the Persian Gulf — without seeing an American convoy. In the Green Zone — once host to the American occupation government, and now the seat of the Iraqi government — the primary PX is set to close, and the Americans have retreated to their vast, garrisoned new embassy compound. Iraqi soldiers now handle all Green Zone checkpoints.
Haylur @ February 1, 2009
Slain Exile Detailed Chechen Ruler’s Systematic Cruelty
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Umar S. Israilov saw the men who had come to kill him. They confronted him in the neighborhood where he lived in hiding in Vienna. He must have sensed their intentions, because he ran.
Umar S. Israilov’s funeral Jan. 22 in Vienna. He accused Chechnya’s president of torture.
For more than two years, Mr. Israilov, a Chechen in exile, had formally accused Russia’s government of allowing a macabre pattern of crimes in Chechnya. Even by the dark norms of violence in the Caucasus, his accusations were extraordinary.
A rebel fighter turned bodyguard of Ramzan A. Kadyrov, Chechnya’s current president, Mr. Israilov had access to the inner ring of Chechen power. Mr. Kadyrov’s career has been sponsored by Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who as president lifted him from obscurity with unwavering Kremlin support.
In written legal complaints, Mr. Israilov described many brutal acts by Mr. Kadyrov and his subordinates, including executions of illegally detained men. One executed man, Mr. Israilov said, had been beaten with a shovel handle by Mr. Kadyrov and Adam Delimkhanov, now a member of Russia’s Parliament. Another prisoner, the defector said, was sodomized by a prominent police officer and at Mr. Kadyrov’s order put to death.
Mr. Israilov said he and others had been tortured by Mr. Kadyrov, who amused himself by personally giving prisoners electric shocks or firing pistols at their feet.
Mr. Kadyrov and Mr. Delimkhanov refused to be interviewed for this article. A spokesman for Mr. Kadyrov released a statement decrying “a large-scale and purposeful campaign” to discredit Chechnya’s president and government. The campaign, the spokesman said, was the “deeply conspiratorial initiative of some ideologists of terrorism and an armed criminal underground.”
Haylur @ February 1, 2009
Geithner Sets Limits on Lobbying for Bailout Money
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WASHINGTON — The new Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, announced on Tuesday that he would crack down on lobbying to influence the $700 billion financial bailout program by companies that are receiving billions in taxpayer money.
Timothy Geithner at his swearing-in on Monday. The new Treasury secretary took steps Tuesday to block lobbying on the bailout program by its beneficiaries.
Mr. Geithner, who was confirmed on Monday, also said he would set new limits intended to prevent political interference with decisions about which companies received bailout money.
Among other steps, the Treasury department said it would make public a log of all contacts by public officials and bank officials regarding specific financial institutions.
The log will be posted on the department’s Web site and updated weekly, it said.
Haylur @ January 28, 2009
Yang’s Era at Yahoo Ends With a Loss
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SAN FRANCISCO — Will Carol A. Bartz sell Yahoo’s search business to Microsoft?
Analysts asked the question time and again after Ms. Bartz delivered Yahoo’s financial results to Wall Street for the first time since becoming chief executive earlier this month.
Time and again, Ms. Bartz said she had not yet made up her mind. If anything, Ms. Bartz suggested that breaking off the search business would not be easy and that any decision would not come soon.
“It is my job to make sure that as a company we look at anything that makes sense long term for the company and creates shareholder value,” Ms. Bartz said in a conference call with analysts on Tuesday. “So yes, everything is on the table.”
Haylur @ January 28, 2009
At a Border Crossing, Drivers and Truckloads of Aid for Gaza Go Nowhere
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EL AUJA BORDER CROSSING, Egypt — France sent technical equipment to help Gazans draw water from the ground. The Swiss sent blankets and plastic tarps. Mercy Corps, a relief agency, sent 12 truckloads of food. And on Tuesday all of it, including dozens of other trucks carrying sugar, rice, flour, juice and baby formula, sat in the hot sun here going nowhere.
An Egyptian driver waited on Tuesday at the El Auja crossing on the border with Israel. The trickle of trucks that had been going through there has all but stopped, officials and drivers there said.
This normally quiet commercial crossing between Egypt and Israel has been turned into a parking lot of stalled, humanitarian aid, and in the city of El Arish there are even greater quantities of food, clothing and essential supplies, sitting, waiting and baking in the sun. Some supplies are loaded onto dozens of trucks parked on city streets, but much more is stored in the open areas of a local sports stadium, also waiting, also going nowhere. Only medical supplies seem to be getting through to Gaza.
Haylur @ January 28, 2009
Stimulus Plan Would Provide Flood of Aid to Education
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WASHINGTON — The economic stimulus plan that Congress has scheduled for a vote on Wednesday would shower the nation’s school districts, child care centers and university campuses with $150 billion in new federal spending, a vast two-year investment that would more than double the Department of Education’s current budget.
The proposed emergency expenditures on nearly every realm of education, including school renovation, special education, Head Start and grants to needy college students, would amount to the largest increase in federal aid since Washington began to spend significantly on education after World War II.
Critics and supporters alike said that by its sheer scope, the measure could profoundly change the federal government’s role in education, which has traditionally been the responsibility of state and local government.
Responding in part to a plea from Democratic governors earlier this month, Congress allocated $79 billion to help states facing large fiscal shortfalls maintain government services, and especially to avoid cuts to education programs, from pre-kindergarten through higher education.
Haylur @ January 28, 2009
Radio Spreads Taliban’s Terror in Pakistani Region
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PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Every night around 8 o’clock, the terrified residents of Swat, a lush and picturesque valley a hundred miles from three of Pakistan’s most important cities, crowd around their radios. They know that failure to listen and learn might lead to a lashing — or a beheading.
Pakistani Taliban punished a man accused of impersonating one of them to extort money in Matta, in the volatile Swat Valley.
Using a portable radio transmitter, a local Taliban leader, Shah Doran, on most nights outlines newly proscribed “un-Islamic” activities in Swat, like selling DVDs, watching cable television, singing and dancing, criticizing the Taliban, shaving beards and allowing girls to attend school. He also reveals names of people the Taliban have recently killed for violating their decrees — and those they plan to kill.
“They control everything through the radio,” said one Swat resident, who declined to give his name for fear the Taliban might kill him. “Everyone waits for the broadcast.”
International attention remains fixed on the Taliban’s hold on Pakistan’s semiautonomous tribal areas, from where they launch attacks on American forces in Afghanistan. But for Pakistan, the loss of the Swat Valley could prove just as devastating.
Unlike the fringe tribal areas, Swat, a Delaware-size chunk of territory with 1.3 million residents and a rich cultural history, is part of Pakistan proper, within reach of Peshawar, Rawalpindi and Islamabad, the capital.
After more than a year of fighting, virtually all of it is now under Taliban control, marking the militants’ farthest advance eastward into Pakistan’s so-called settled areas, residents and government officials from the region say.
Haylur @ January 25, 2009
Leading Russian Rights Lawyer Is Shot to Death in Moscow, Along With Journalist
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MOSCOW — A prominent Russian lawyer who spent the better part of a decade pursuing contentious human rights and social justice cases was killed on Monday in a brazen daylight assassination in central Moscow, officials said.
Investigators standing over the body of the lawyer Stanislav Markelov in Moscow on Monday. He and Anastasia Baburova, a freelance journalist, were killed after he held a news conference.
The lawyer, Stanislav Markelov, had just left a news conference where he announced that he would continue to fight against the early release from jail of Yuri D. Budanov, a former Russian tank commander imprisoned for murdering a young Chechen woman.
Anastasia Baburova, a 25-year-old journalist who was with Mr. Markelov, was also killed, according to a spokeswoman for a newspaper where she worked as a freelancer, Novaya Gazeta, which is highly critical of the government. The two were shot.
Haylur @ January 20, 2009