Global News Journal

Allah, Antarctica and Ancient Inca-The best reads of 2009

When I have time to lavish on reading something other than news, I want to spend it on stories that leave me saying, “Wow!” A great read should tell readers something they don’t already know, enlighten them about the world and its people, inform them about the human condition. Readers should be moved to laughter, tears, anger, action through superb writing and extraordinary reporting.  Here are my picks for the best reads of 2009.

As Spain’s jobless lose homes, tensions mount

A packet of cigarettes is enough to cause a fight among the Spaniards and immigrants shivering in the dark outside an emergency homeless shelter in Madrid, set up for a bitter winter and depression-era unemployment. Police push past jobless Romanian and Hungarian construction workers.  ”One day this place is going to explode,” says unemployed waiter Miguel Roa, a Spaniard.

Pakistani newlyweds live in fear of honour killing

Pervez Chachar and his young wife live in the police headquarters in the Pakistani city of Karachi. Their crime? They fell in love and married without their families’ permission. In traditional rural society in Pakistan, getting married without permission is such a serious slight to the “honor” of a family or a tribe that death is seen as fitting retribution. They share a cramped room with another young couple in the same position.

Sometimes admiration comes from unlikely places

Barack Obama’s American admirers are not the only ones who compare former U.S. President John F. Kennedy to the current U.S. leader. Leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a vociferous critic of the United States, also invokes the charismatic late president when he talks about Obama, who, like Kennedy 48 years earlier, was a young senator when he was elected to the White House.

Chavez brought up Kennedy again this week, as he railed against Washington over the coup in Honduras, which many observers have called an unwelcome reminder of the ousters of Latin American leftists during the Cold War — waged partly under Kennedy.

Obama must “stop dithering” and prove that he is not supporting the coup, Chavez thundered during “Alo Presidente,” his weekly television show.  ”I want to remember President Kennedy,” Chavez said, during the seven-hour broadcast.

“U.S. imperialism killed him, and I hope it does not kill   Obama, because Obama is in the same shirt of 11 rods, a shirt of 11 rods,” Chavez said, using a Spanish idiom referring to a situation too large for someone to handle.

 Chavez has been no fan of recent U.S. leaders. He repeatedly called George W. Bush “the devil.” And he has said he fears Obama has the “stench” of his predecessor, whom he accused of backing a brief coup against him in 2002.

But Kennedy is Chavez’s favorite U.S. president and the fiery ex-paratrooper has reminisced about his childhood admiration for the slain leader, despite his anti-Communism and backing of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, which sought to oust Chavez’s mentor, Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

from Africa News blog:

Eritrean passions

I hesitate to blog again on Eritrea, given some of the vitriol that greeted a post last year. For some, Reuters was an apologist and mouthpiece for Eritrea’s President Isaias Afwerki, simply for interviewing him in May 2008. For others, we were doing the CIA’s work by taking some awkward lines of questioning to Asmara.

The passion on both sides reminded me of the torrent of deeply felt responses I used to receive when reporting on Fidel Castro from Cuba between 1998 and 2002.

Yet here I am again in Asmara, in May 2009, fresh from another lengthy interview with Eritrea’s ever-controversial leader. Whereas last year, he was quite formal with me, this time he was much more relaxed as we sat down for several hours in the colonial-era presidential palace, even poking fun before the interview at my old-fashioned tape-recorder.

We politely discussed hiking before getting down to business.

I questioned the president closely on plenty of issues, including Eritrea’s economic prospects and his views on various hot issues around the region. I was also able to discuss some of President Isaias’ life philosophy and thoughts on the past and future. Before I mentioned them, he anticipated inevitable questions on human rights and his own political longevity, saying he was used to visiting journalists raising such questions due to ‘misinformation’ from outside.

The interview was one of two dozen or so Eritrea’s leader has given in recent days in the run-up to Independence Day, mainly to African and Arab media. Eritrea feels it gets a raw deal in the international arena, and especially from the Western media. The marathon of interviews was an attempt to redress that.

I must have asked 20 or so questions over a 2 ½-hour period. Soon they’ll be playing the interview on state media here.

Pirates, Pawnbrokers and a Pint: the best reads of April

Hi, is that the Somali pirates?” Your best source is jailed. You track high-sea hijacks by text and email, get through to captors on a satellite phone. Reporting on Somali piracy can be surreal. During the saga of American Richard Phillips, Reuters reporters in Somalia contacted Phillips’ captors on their lifeboat stalked by U.S. warships.

Online ‘blood plague’ offers lessons for pandemics In 2005, a plague called “Corrupted Blood” caused mayhem in the online game World of Warcraft. An estimated 4 million players were affected by the pandemic. The Corrupted Blood plague accidentally provided something unprecedented — a chance to safely study a pandemic in a uniquely complex virtual environment in which millions of unpredictable individuals were making their own decisions.

Public pawnbroker keeps Parisians’ secrets safe In the ornate rooms where Auguste Rodin once pawned a hand from one of his sculptures to raise cash, immigrant mothers with toddlers queue to pledge their dowry gold or secure a loan. From Napoleon III’s mistress to cash-strapped modern-day bankers, Parisians have stored their jewels and secrets in a discreet building not far from the Seine: the public pawnbroker.

Researchers hope to clear mystery from clouds Wearing 3-D viewing goggles, scientists peer at virtual pink, blue and purple clouds billowing in cyberspace at a research laboratory in Delft. By tracking how particles move in and around computer-simulated clouds, they hope to shed light on one of the unknowns of climate forecasting: how these masses of water droplets and ice crystals influence changing temperatures.