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UNITED NATIONS, September 28, 2010 -- If 15 UN Security Council diplomats travel to a country run by an indicted war criminal but no one can take pictures of it, did the trip really take place?
That was a question being asked Tuesday at the UN, as details leaked out to Inner City Press about the Council's on again, off again and now on again trip to Sudan.
The sticking point had been whether Sudan would demand that the Council Ambassadors meet with President Omar al Bashir, indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and genocide, and secondarily whether the Council would first visit Khartoum or Juba in South Sudan.
Western diplomats bragged to Inner City Press on Tuesday morning that they had prevailed on both points. The trip would go to Juba, and in all probability to Darfur -- Darfur wasn't mentioned in the Council Tuesday, one participate said -- before going to Khartoum.
“The Council won't ask to meet with Bashir, and he won't ask to meet with us,” one seemingly excited diplomat told Inner City Press about the trip on Tuesday, adding that Bashir might conveniently be out of the country, in Libya, he said.
The “don't ask, don't tell” trip, Inner City Press has dubbed it.
UN's Ban & Bashir, with some distance: don't ask, don't tell?
Bashir has also been invited to visit Cote d'Ivoire. Inner City Press asked the UN's envoy to that country K.Y. Choi about this on Tuesday. Choi's response, strangely, was to repeat that inviter Laurent Gbagbo and his two main opponents are all committed to a peaceful first round of elections on October 31.
This perhaps is the approach of the UN Secretariat to questions about war crimes and impunity: to repeat talking points again and again, even if unrelated. We'll see.
Footnote: Just how dysfunctional things have become between the Security Council and the Office of the Spokesman of the Secretary General, which has already been barred from the Council consultation meetings they for years attended and summarized, is exemplified by that the fact that less than a week before the re-sche...
On past trips -- Inner City Press accompanied the Security Council to Sudan, the Congo, Rwanda, Cote d'Ivoire and elsewhere in 2008 -- the Council has let the OSSG invite the press, arrange for visas, and attend. Apparently not this time. Watch this site.
Dozens of firefighters were called to Kodak Park after a chemical reaction started a fire Tuesday.
It happened a little after 9 a.m. at the 218 Technology Building.
Rochester firefighters helped the Kodak Fire Department put out the flames after a 55-gallon drum of sodium had a chemical reaction which sparked the fire.
While the police advised motorists to keep off the roads connecting Parliament House and the Rashtrapati Bhawan, they said some nearby roads too could be shut for the general public if the need arises.
As the new president takes oath on Tuesday, motorists travelling to Lutyens’ Delhi in the morning and afternoon hours could face traffic restrictions on certain stretches, warned traffic police officers.
While the police advised motorists to keep off the roads connecting Parliament House and Rashtrapati Bhawan, they said some nearby roads too could be shut for the general public if the need arises.
Among those roads are Vijay Chowk between North and South Foundation area, the Rajpath and Rashtrapati Bhawan upto Janpath, Raisina Road between Rail Bhawan to Parliament House and Dalhousie Road between Krishna Menon Marg and Moti Lal Nehru Marg connecting Vijay Chowk.
Garima Bhatnagar, Joint CP (traffic), advised motorists to avoid these routes between 10.30 am and 2.30 pm. “Diversions will be made and alternative routes provided if we close these routes,” she said.
US crude oil prices edged up in early Asian trading on Thursday, supported by a fall in crude inventories after 10 straight weeks of builds, but oversupply and cheap oil are still dominating the broader market.
Crude inventories fell 3.6 million barrels in the week to Dec. 4, compared with analysts’ expectations for an increase of 252,000 barrels, U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data showed.
This, along with signs of dipping U.S. production, lent prices some support.
U.S. crude futures were at $37.40 per barrel at 0018 GMT, up 24 cents from their last settlement, although still not far off this week’s seven-year lows below $37 per barrel. Prices are down over 11 percent since the beginning of December.
“Energy markets still remain vulnerable to further weakness, with the focus firmly on OPEC,” ANZ bank said on Thursday.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries last week decided not to cut production in defence of prices. It also ditched even formal output quotas as member states compete for market share amongst each other and with outside competitors like Russia and North American shale drillers.
Between 0.5 and 2 million barrels of crude oil are being produced in excess of demand every day, creating a glut that has pulled down prices by almost two-thirds since 2014 and which is threatening a situation known as “tank-top”, in which the market runs out of available storage facilities.
“Oil markets are likely to run out of onshore crude storage in 1Q16,” PIRA Energy said this week.
The Forge of Empire 1.62 update will be going live on October 20, 2015. This is just before the regular Halloween event takes place with riddles from Jack O’ Lantern and the list of quests, which we will feature once the event starts in a few days.
As always, you will see Forge of Empire servers go down for a short time in a couple of days. The outage won’t last long, but once you can login again without any problems you will notice a few changes. Top of the list is the messaging system, as this October update “focuses almost entirely” on that part of the online ...
You can see the full changelog above for Forge of Empire update 1.62. The list is broken down into improvements and bug fixes, so take a look to see if any problems you’ve experienced have been fixed. Of course, if you have any new issues after the update, we’d love to hear about them below.
High plains rancher Bill Lassey recently made a pilgrimage that nature hadn't allowed him to repeat for 67 years: He walked across the Yellowstone River and barely got wet.
Normally, fording the storied river's girth as it flows here through the eastern part of North Dakota would require a boat, but Mr. Lassey needed only a pair of worn galoshes.
"I never thought I'd see the Yellowstone so low again in my lifetime," says the rancher, recalling his childhood in the 1930s Dust Bowl era.
The languid condition of the Yellowstone the longest free-flowing river in the US is symbolic of a worsening dry spell that, for large swathes of the country, is shaping up to be the worst drought of the past 100 years.
From Georgia to Maine, officials are issuing water conservation measures as blue skies across the East Coast continue to show little sign of impending snowfall or rain. It's not the only region declared to be in a state of "severe" or "extreme" drought. In the croplands of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas, wheat-crop rating...
New Jersey, which has just experienced the driest February on record, has instituted drought restrictions such as banning car washing and forbidding restaurants to serve water to customers unless it is requested.
Boat launch ramps at Lake Marburg in Codorous State Park, Harrisburg, Pa., have been closed as the water levels across the state continue to sink as if someone had pulled a bath plug.
The Los Angeles Times reports that drought conditions in the wild are encouraging coyotes to venture into L.A.'s hillside neighborhoods.
Few areas of the country, however, are struggling as much as the "inner West." Five consecutive years of drought have been nearly invisible to outsiders, yet devastating to locals, who see no relief in sight.
"This is turning out to be a staggering event for a lot of rural people and communities," says Jess Aber, who sits on a special drought task force created by Montana's governor. "Before the drought, there were many towns sliding downward because of the challenging economics of agriculture, but now they're being pushed ...
Not long ago, a group of county commissioners from Montana's "Golden Triangle" wheat-growing belt, which stretches across north central Montana, warned that ripple effects could be far- reaching. Last year, the Montana Agricultural Statistics Service reported that there were 1,000 fewer farms in the state than the year...
Small-town economies that anchored the state's $1 billion agriculture industry are also drying up. Lower crop yields mean farmers can't pay off bank debt and, in turn, are unable to secure loans for necessary supplies, machinery, and pick-up trucks. "Auto dealerships and implement stores, which were the anchors of thes...
In an effort to maintain financial solvency, ranchers in a large portion of the heartland covering thousands of square miles are dramatically cutting back the size of their cattle herds. Auction yards, which usually do brisk winter business with bull sales, for example, are finding few buyers, forcing owners to sell th...
While Mr. Lassey never believed the Yellowstone would again be reduced to a trickle, the talkative agrarian admits that most of his life he had no reason to incorporate the words "El Niño" or "La Niña" into his provincial vocabulary either.
But the increasing regularity of those weather phenomena both linked to the warming of the Pacific Ocean is causing Lassey's younger neighbors to worry about the potential onslaught of another ominous threat: global warming.
The National Weather Service recently announced that the past three months formed the warmest documented stretch of winter weather in 120 years of modern record keeping.
In Montana, it's also been the driest period Roy Kaiser has witnessed in his 26 years as a water-supply specialist with the US Department of Agriculture. "I always use the example of a sponge. You've got to get it wet before it will soak up water," Kaiser says. "In many places, the fields are so dry and hard that water...
The paradox, Kaiser says, is that even as the snowpack continues to build to average depths in the Western mountains, the flows it generates in the spring will not be nearly enough to alleviate drought.
Unfortunately, with the National Weather Service predicting another El Niño weather pattern forming in the Pacific, many agrarians have literally been brought to their knees in prayer vigils and in asking for mercy from banks.
The reason: The current drought began with the last El Niño cycle which causes flooding for some parts of the country but left others parched.
Not only that, forestry officials blame El Niño for bringing intense summer heat, strong winds, and lack of precipitation that created the epic wildfire season of 2000 which left millions of acres of forests and grasslands burned in the West.
Farmers, ranchers, even suburban residents watching their groundwater wells dry up in places like Bozeman and Helena, Mont., need a deluge of rain.
Bracing for the worst, Montana Gov. Judy Martz has notified Agriculture Secretary Ann Venneman that she may ask the Bush administration to declare her state a drought disaster area in the months ahead.
Back in Cartwright, Mr. Lassey holds out hope that the big river that passes through his land will regain its formidable sparkle.
"We've had some tough times over the years, but we're tough people and we always find a way to get through," he says. "The only difference is that there might be fewer of us left out here when the drought finally breaks."
I was standing in Magic Image Photo on Forest Hill Blvd. picking up some photos on September 11, 2001 when the first plane struck one of the Twin Towers. The television was on as those in the shop watched in disbelief.
Everyone has a story about where they were and how they felt that morning. It’s what we do, remember.
Back then I’d read somewhere that one of Osama bin Laden’s goals was to bring America down by hitting us where it hurts—in our pocketbooks, financial arenas and the economy. Don’t know if that truly was a goal of his, but let’s take a little look at how our money things have changed between then and now.
On Sept. 10, 2001 the DJIA closed at 9,605 down 15.5 percent from the high it had reached on May 21, 2001 of 11,372. Yesterday, Sept. 10, 2009, the DJIA closed at 9,627. Not much difference in closing prices in spite of a few falls, a screaming bull market and a crash.
As you may recall, the markets reopened on Sept. 17, 2001 after being closed for 4 trading days because of the terrorist attacks. It closed that day at 8,920.
•Over the eight years, our population has grown. In 2001 there were around 285 million of us; today we number over 304 million.
•The median income for a household of four in 2001 was $42,228. Now it’s $50,303.
•Our unemployment rate stood at 4.7 percent in 2001. Today’s it’s hovering under 10 percent at 9.7.
•The Iraq War has taken the lives of more than 4000 of our men and women.
•The cost of the Iraq War is over $681.6 billion. The war in Afghanistan, over $226.5 billion. FYI, the Vietnam War cost $686 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars and World War II cost $4 billion, according to a Lost Angeles Times story written in April 2009.
•The minimum wage was $5.15 in 2001; today it’s $7.25.
•On Sept. 10, 2001, our total national debt stood at $5.7 trillion and today it’s $11.7 trillion, according to http://www.treasurydirect.com .
•In 2001 there were around 3.3 million millionaires in America. At year-end 2008, that figure had doubled to 6.7 million.
I love to be an optimist too, but where are your figures on poverty and uninsured Americans. There are more millionaires. That is only because in that same time frame the wealth distribution gap has spread. Bye-bye middle class. Sure was easy for you to brush off that unemployment number… glad it’s not been an issue fo...
On Feb. 22, 2012, following the 2011 Arab Spring, a presidential election was held in Yemen. Yemen is an impoverished and conflict-stricken country on the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula which, like many other countries in 2011, experienced a youth-led revolution.
It was a buoyant moment in Yemen following the long-awaited end to Ali Abdullah Saleh’s oppressive and dictatorial two-decade rule.
On Feb. 22, 2012 there was only one candidate on the ballot: former vice president to Saleh, Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi.
There was only one candidate on the ballot, but Yemenis were relieved — Yemenis were excited. That day could have been marked by violence, protests, or brutal and bloody attacks by any number of opposition groups, including the most dangerous branch of Al Qaeda — Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula — but on Feb. 22, 2012...
And so they should be. It is 2015 and Yemenis are still tired of the killing. They have yet to see another democratic election, even though one was scheduled for the beginning of this year — before the Houthi takeover of the capital and most of the country following September 2014.
In March 2015, amid the Houthi takeover and fears of a regional power struggle with Iran, Saudi Arabia launched a brutal, unrelenting air assault on Yemen which has reduced the terrorized country to ashes. The sight of peace once again blurred by bombs.
Following the 2011 revolution, and in spite of the government’s efforts to regulate firearms, most Yemenis remain armed in and around Sana’a. Young men can be seen casually carrying weapons through public parks, squares and streets. After the United States (88 guns per 100 people), Yemen has the highest number of guns ...
The 2015 election was supposed to see leadership campaigns, more than one candidate on the ballot, inclusive policy negotiation and a redrafting of Yemen’s constitution; a monumental step in this country’s sluggardly and bloody march towards democracy. People took to the streets, but the march was silenced by the deafe...
This story isn’t unique or novel. In dozens of countries around the world people champion, fight, and die for a glimpse of democracy, no matter how elusive it might seem. In dozens of countries around the world corruption, greed and terrorism make democracy a cruel joke that people still line up to die for. In dozens o...
I write about Yemen because it is what I know. I know Yemen. I called Yemen home before a sudden coup brought danger, literally, to my doorstep. Right now I’m living in Iraq. I don’t know Iraq yet, but I know that, like Yemen, their story of democracy is also a grim one.
I also called Canada home, for most of my 27 years of life. I was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland. I grew up in Canada, I got my education in Canada and I have paid my taxes in Canada. I am a Canadian, but I come to realize I don’t know Canada. I don’t understand Canada anymore.
I am young, but not too young to remember when Canada was a beacon of hope and opportunity for those from other countries. When Canadians were thought of as good-natured, educated, critical, warm, welcoming, open-minded peace-keepers. When Canada was a leader in freedom of speech, free press, freedom of religious and o...
We live in a nation that has been completely alienated from it’s own identity.
Without rejecting the extremely nuanced nature of a functioning democracy, these seem to be the two arguments loosely threaded through our electoral discourse. But where did we, as Canadians, go wrong? Because surely while people around the world in their 20s are suffering at the deadly end of a gun for the right to vo...
Surely while people around the world in their 20s are suffering at the deadly end of a gun for the right to vote, we can do more than sit back, wipe our hands and lament that democracy has failed us.
While living in Sana’a, people would often ask me, “Where are you from?” When I told them Canada, they would sometimes reply “Oh, America!”.
“Same thing,” they would casually respond.
I could feel my blood boiling. It’s not the same thing, we’re different, we’re better.
We’ve been better, guys. We could be better. So on Oct. 19, 2015, vote.
Vote because you have an idea. Vote because you have an ideal. Vote because you’re a small business owner, a student, a mother of five, a single father, an immigrant, a former refugee, a veteran. Vote because you fought, and still fight, for this country. Vote because you’ve been homeless. Vote because you’re jobless. ...
Vote with excitement, with anger, with frustration, with cautious hope, with unbridled optimism, with love or with hatred. Vote with compassion.
I don’t care how or why, just vote. Please.
We have wasted our own democracy while complaining that we don’t have one. Don’t let waste become our story, and don’t let apathy become our legacy. We are, and have always been, too good for that.
Don’t wait for Stephen, Tom and Justin to tell you what our country needs. You tell them. Tell them what you need, what we need and what future Canadians need — those born in Canada and those who will choose Canada for a better life.
Tell them because you can tell them—you can demand it—without the threat of losing your job, your freedom or your life. We need to make sure our government is ready to step up and give us that better life. Speak for those who cannot speak for themselves, so we can create a forum and platform where they will be able to ...
Maria Mulcahy is a 27-year-old teacher from St. John’s, Newfoundland who has worked in education in Canada, Qatar and Yemen. She currently lives and works in Erbil, Kurdistan, Iraq and helps run the Castle Art Project, which engages young teenage girls in art therapy at the Akre Syrian Refugee Camp in northwestern Iraq...
The ‘burkini’: What will you be wearing to the beach this season?
Fleckenstein Capital's twelve-year-old short-selling fund that shut down last December is planning to start hunting around again for opportunities.
Yet they're waiting until after earnings season, and could even wait until early next year.
For Fleckenstein Capital, while 2010 could be a very rough year for the market, 2009 could end strong. Even these shorts don't want to step in front of earnings season right now.
Bloomberg: Future bets against U.S. stocks will "almost certainly" include technology companies, especially semiconductor makers, Fleckenstein said.

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