It must rank as one of the most awkward editorial conclaves ever held. On December 5, three senior personnel from The New York Times were summoned to the Oval Office by George W Bush to discuss an investigation the newspaper was conducting on surveillance of United States citizens.
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/ 9 December 2005
The robust defence of ”rendition” (flying terror suspects abroad for interrogation) offered recently by the United States Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, marks the export to a European audience of a position on torture that is becoming increasingly uncomfortable for the George W Bush administration.
Sudan’s Islamist regime, once shunned by Washington for providing a haven for Osama bin Laden as well as for human rights abusers during decades of civil war, has become an ally in the Bush administration’s ”war on terror”. Only months after the then United States secretary of state, Colin Powell, accused Khartoum of genocide in Darfur, Sudan has become a crucial intelligence asset to the CIA.
Brazil this week became the first country to take a stand against the Bush administration’s massive Aids programme, which is seen by many as seeking increasingly to press its anti-abortion, pro-abstinence sexual agenda on poorer countries. Campaigners applauded Brazil’s rejection of -million for its Aids programmes because it refuses to agree to a declaration condemning prostitution.
On the neo-Nazi websites where the teenage loner aired his admiration for Adolf Hitler’s notions of ethnic purity, he was known as Todesengel — German for Angel of Death. Late on Monday, in a secluded Indian reservation in northern Minnesota, he played out those dark fantasies. Jeff Weise (16) shot dead his grandfather, five teenagers, a teacher and two other adults before turning the gun on himself.
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/ 29 October 2004
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It took a good hour of trudging through the autumn leaves to the side doors of people’s homes, poring over voter lists and sheaves of pamphlets, and looking out nervously for dogs, before Grace Brookins struck gold. Robbie Phillips (68), a retired factory worker, was at home, was willing to answer the door to a stranger, and was inclined to vote for John Kerry.
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/ 26 October 2004
The wealth gap between white households and Hispanic and African-American families in the United States has widened significantly, with the last recession inflicting a heavy toll on minority households. An analysis of US census data by the Pew Hispanic Centre revealed that the 2001 economic downturn deepened a legacy of economic discrimination, with Hispanics and African-Americans harder hit and taking longer to recover.
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/ 15 October 2004
Former United States president Bill Clinton, forced to sit out the US presidential campaign after heart bypass surgery, is expected to record a number of radio adverts from his home. With only two weeks of campaigning left, the scramble is on to capture selected audiences with a final blitz of TV advertising.
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/ 7 September 2004
Some towns measure time as a state of constant expansion. In Eden, a mill town in North Carolina, life registers in terms of loss: the factories that closed and the jobs that went with them, the lives interrupted. Janice Armstrong lost her job when one of Eden’s last giant textile companies closed its gates. ”The day it closed, our insurance was gone, our pension was gone. It was devastating,” she says.
The United States coast guard, accused of failing to secure sea access to the US, is to dispatch inspectors to more than 100 international ports to monitor new anti-terror measures, officials said this week. The inspection regime was outlined in a week when Americans’ notions of safety were again severely challenged by specific threats to New York and Washington.