Airpot Crisis

Moscow (CNN) -- Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev Tuesday criticized the management of Moscow's busiest airport, a day after 35 people were killed in a suicide bombing there.
Medvedev was quoted by several Russian news agencies saying that the management of Domodedovo Airport should be held responsible for the attack because of insufficient security measures.
"What happened at Domodedovo shows the airport lacked security," Medvedev said. "It's unbelievable that such a huge amount of explosives were brought into the terminal. Those officials responsible for security at Domodedovo must be punished for their decisions. This is a terror attack, a grief, a tragedy."
It is not yet clear what impact a recent decision to shake-up the Russian Transport Police, which is charged with protecting train stations and airports, may have had on the security perimeter at Domodedovo airport on Monday.
Last August, Medvedev fired at least 12 generals in the Transport Police branch of the Ministry of Interior, as part of a broader reform of the Russian security services.

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The blast occurred around 4:30 p.m. at the entrance of the international arrivals section.
Authorities were still trying to tally the exact number of people injured in the blast.
The Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations said that there were 110 wounded people still in hospitals.
On Monday, the Russian National Anti-Terrorist Committee had said 35 people died and 152 were wounded in the explosion.
Domodedovo is 22 kilometers (14 miles) southeast of Moscow. According to the airport's website, it is the largest of Moscow's three airports, as well as the busiest in terms of passenger traffic.
It was still not immediately clear who was responsible for Monday's blast, though previous terror attacks in Russia have been blamed on militants from the North Caucasus region.
Over the course of the last decade, bombers have hit trains and planes operating in and traveling out of Moscow at least four times, with a combined death toll more than 100 victims. In 2004, two planes blew up nearly simultaneously, after taking off from Domodedovo airport.
That attack was linked to Chechen suicide bombers.
An explosive device derailed an express train in November 2009, killing at least 26 people. Chechen rebels were blamed again.
Medvedev had strong words for the perpetrators of the attack.

"We must do everything in order for the criminals who committed this crime to be established, found and brought to justice. And the nest where these bandits are hiding, whatever their name is, should be exterminated," Medvedev said.

Shooting rampage suspect set to make first court appearance

From Drew Griffin, Kathleen Johnston and Scott Zamost, CNN

January 10, 2011 -- Updated 1426 GMT (2226 HKT)

Tucson, Arizona (CNN) -- The suspect in the weekend shooting at an Arizona political meet-and-greet is scheduled to make an initial appearance Monday before a federal magistrate.
Jared Lee Loughner will appear in a Phoenix, Arizona, courtroom at 2 p.m. Monday (4 p.m. ET), prosecutors said.
He is accused of opening fire outside a Tucson supermarket, where U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Arizona, was meeting with constituents Saturday. Six people were killed and 14 others wounded in the shooting.
Giffords remained in critical condition Sunday after being shot through the skull, while a federal judge, a congressional aide and a 9-year-old girl were among the dead.
Federal authorities have charged Loughner with first-degree murder, attempted murder and attempting to kill a member of Congress, counts that involve the shootings of federal employees. State prosecutors also could bring charges in the remaining cases.

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A federal public defender known for handling high-profile cases, Judy Clarke, has been appointed to represent Loughner, a federal judicial source said.
Clarke defended "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski and assisted in the case of confessed al Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui.
Loughner has invoked his right against self-incrimination and is not talking with investigators, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said over the weekend.
But court documents released Sunday show that investigators found a letter from the congresswoman in a safe at the house where Loughner lived with his parents, thanking him for attending a similar 2007 event.
"Also recovered in the safe was an envelope with handwriting on the envelope stating, 'I planned ahead,' and 'my assassination' and the name 'Giffords,' along with what appears to be Loughner's signature," the affidavit says.
A law enforcement official said investigators are interviewing "anyone, everyone, we can." Loughner's parents were cooperative when interviewed, the official said.
Investigators have not found anything connecting Loughner to extremist groups, the law enforcement official said. They believe Loughner was unemployed at the time of the shooting, according to the official.
Months before Saturday's shooting rampage, one of Loughner's former instructors said he saw Loughner as a threat and kicked him out of class.
Loughner was "physically removed" from the Pima Community College algebra course in June -- less than a month after it began -- instructor Ben McGahee told CNN.
McGahee said Loughner sometimes shook, blurted things out in class and appeared to be under the influence of drugs at times, McGahee said.
"I was scared of what he could do," McGahee said. "I wasn't scared of him physically, but I was scared of him bringing a weapon to class."
The 9mm pistol used in Saturday's shootings was purchased at a gun store in November, FBI Director Robert Mueller told reporters Sunday. And a law enforcement source said the suspect tried to buy ammunition at a Walmart store but was turned down because of his behavior. Another Walmart store later sold him the ammunition, the source said.
When he tried to enlist in the Army in 2008, the service rejected him for reasons it says it can't disclose due to privacy laws. But an administration official told CNN on Sunday that Loughner had failed a drug test.
In postings on the social-media sites YouTube and MySpace, Loughner railed against government "mind control," being surrounded by people he considered illiterate and the illegitimacy of the U.S. government. In class, McGahee said Loughner accused him of violating his free-speech rights: "And of course free speech is limited in the classroom."
One such outburst was "the straw that broke the camel's back," and McGahee -- who had already raised concerns about Loughner with administrators -- had him removed.
Loughner "needed psychological help," and McGahee said he was not surprised to hear his former student was the suspect in Saturday's bloodbath.
"This guy was mentally disturbed. He was very isolated," he said.
In a statement Saturday night, Pima Community College said Loughner was suspended after a series of run-ins with campus police between February and September, capped by the discovery of a YouTube video in which he accused the college of operating unconstitutionally. Loughner quit school after the suspension, the college said -- and it warned him that to return, he had to present a doctor's note stating that his presence would not be "a danger to himself or others."
McGahee said the school responded to complaints about Loughner but "they didn't do it early enough."

"I think they did the best they can do, but as far as the time frame goes it could have been shortened," he said.

CNN's Jeanne Meserve, Bill Mears, Jessica Yellin and Barbara Starr contributed to this report.

Royal Engagement

British royal weddings and the engagements that precede them have traditionally been occasions characterized by state-managed pageantry, popular euphoria and celebratory media coverage.

At first glance, reaction in the UK to the announcement of the forthcoming nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton conformed to type. London's Evening Standard newspaper hailed "a royal wedding to cheer the nation" while even the left-wing Guardian entered the fray, commenting: "Even the most hardbitten republican will be wishing them well."

Speculation over the date and venue filled hours of TV coverage and close-up images showed off the ring, once worn on the occasion of a previous royal engagement by William's mother, Princess Diana.

Yet, beyond the headlines and photo opportunities, it was not hard to detect notes of dissent and skepticism, especially on social media.

Much of the early reaction on Twitter focused on whether Britons could look forward to an extra public holiday in 2011. Elsewhere there was concern over who would foot the bill at a time when the UK is undergoing painful cuts to public services.

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Some even questioned the timing of the announcement on a day when the British government said it would pay compensation to detainees held at Guantanamo Bay and Prime Minister David Cameron dropped plans to put a personal photographer on the public payroll.

"On Twitter instantly there were a lot of cynical responses," media commentator Charlie Beckett told CNN. "There was a very strong response from a lot of republicans who don't like the monarchy, and from perhaps cynical journalists who can't bear the idea that they'll be covering this stuff for six months."

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Summing up the attitude of those caught in the crossfire, Matthew Norman of the Independent newspaper wrote: "Barring some heartrending split between this depressingly inoffensive young couple, we're stuck with months of mawkish drivel from determined royalists and vinegary carping from committed republicans. For those of us stuck somewhere in the indifferent middle, it's going to be hell on earth."

Dominic Sandbrook, author of "State of Emergency," a new history of the UK in the early 1970s, told CNN that Britain had become a "post-deferential society" since the engagement of Prince William's parents, Prince Charles and Princess Diana, in 1981.

"With Charles and Diana there was a much greater sense of awe for the monarchy and reverence for institutions," said Sandbrook. "Even though it wasn't that long ago we were a much more deferential society. What has changed is that we live now in a much more populist individualist society. Although monarchist sentiment is still very strong, people are uneasy with kowtowing to institutions."

The tragic trajectory of Princess Diana from fairy-tale bride to her messy breakup from Charles and death in a Paris car crash in 1997, and the fact that three of Queen Elizabeth's four children have been through divorce, has led some to wonder whether the country will fall so easily for another royal romance.

"It's still the same in that everyone loves a royal marriage and everyone loves a princess, particularly a princess who is going to be queen, but I don't think we believe in fairy tales any more," Andrew Neil, the former rector of the University of St. Andrews where both William and Kate studied and former editor of the Sunday Times, told BBC radio.

"Looking back at the wedding in the early '80s it did seem to have a fairy-tale quality to it. I don't think we'll be conned a second time. I think we're a little bit more cynical, maybe a bit more realistic."

Yet the fact William and Kate have had a "normal" relationship, with the bride coming from a wealthy middle-class background rather than blue-blooded aristocracy, also demonstrates the monarchy's enduring ability to reinvent itself for the times, says Sandbrook.

While royal marriages for centuries were arranged affairs of dynastic diplomacy, the course of William and Kate's eight-year relationship shares something in common with many modern couples.

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"Their story is that of an awful lot of young married couples; they met in their late teens at university, they've been going out for a long time, they've been on and off... That's something that a lot of us can relate to in one way or another," said Sandbrook. "It makes it easier for society at large to see them not necessarily as role models but as reflecting the experience of the majority of the population."

In the 18th and 19th centuries, when the royal family was often extremely dysfunctional, it just kept going anyway and people thought it was funny.
--Historian Dominic Sandbrook

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Republicans however argue that the forthcoming royal wedding should be used to highlight the irrelevance of the institution of monarchy in a modern democracy.

"The monarchy thrives on people not giving it any serious thought, not treating it as any more than a tax-funded soap opera. But big events like this push the issue up the agenda, force people to think critically about the monarchy," said Graham Smith, a spokesman for the Republic campaign group, which claims on its website that it has 10 million supporters.

But Sandbrook said the suggestion that the endurance of the monarchy was dependent on public support or that members of the royal family should behave as role models was a relatively modern idea.

Far from being respected, the monarchy had been popularly mocked and lampooned for most of its history, he said. In one cartoon of the Prince of Wales published in 1792 by the infamous caricaturist James Gillray, the future George IV is portrayed as a dissolute figure, picking his teeth after a heavy meal surrounded by empty bottles, pills, unpaid bills and gambling dice.

"One of the great myths of the monarchy is that its survival rests on enormous popular admiration. Actually in the 18th and 19th centuries, when it was often an extremely bizarre, dysfunctional family, it just kept going anyway and people thought it funny," said Sandbrook.

"You could hardly have a greater soap opera than Henry VIII and his wives or George IV carrying on like a debauchee. The anomaly was from the 1920s to the 1970s when the monarch tried to brand itself as the absolutely perfect family."

Still, says Beckett, responses to the engagement on Twitter suggest that many Britons will happily enjoy the spectacle and distraction of a royal wedding, without worrying too much about the modern-day relevance of the monarchy.

"You've got a stream of people saying that this is going to be fun, that in very difficult days economically this is going to be one hell of a party. So even if people are a bit cynical about the royals, even if they don't have the same respect that they used to, they are going to enjoy this."

the odessy of pakistan

the nation of Pakistan have not had both internal and external peace in along while, but i think its time for them to bury the hatchet and come together. with floods like this one can not but help his or her enemy. even their arch enemies are coming to their help; India, china, USA. well nature has a way of giving something big enough to swallow you sentiments and pride and force you to rethink of your options in life.



A Pakistani woman and her son, displaced by floods, rest on higher ground on the outskirts of Thatta.

A Pakistani woman and her son, displaced by floods, rest on higher ground on the outskirts of Thatta.
Photograph by: Rizwan Tabassum, Getty Images, Vancouver Sun

When natural calamities strike, disaster relief always comes too little and too late.

But how and with what speed the international community responds to a natural catastrophe is influenced by a host of factors.

In the case of the devastating monsoon floods that have ravaged about one-fifth of Pakistan, killed at least 1,600 people and displaced over 20 million more, aid agencies and umbrella organizations like the United Nations are reporting reluctance, especially among the traditionally dependable donors in the West, to dig deep and give. The UN launched a "flash appeal" on Aug. 9 to raise nearly $500 million to cover the first 90 days of disaster relief aid.

Ten days later only half this money had been pledged, in sharp contrast to the response to the earthquake in Haiti earlier this year when nearly $600 million was raised in the same initial 10-day period.

As is to be expected, explanations for donor reluctance have tended to focus on the nature of Pakistan itself.

More generous analysts have contented themselves with saying that perhaps Western donors mistrust the corruption and apparent double-dealing of the government of President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Gillani.

A vituperative minority say the hesitant response is just another example of the West's ingrained "Islamophobia": dislike of Muslims.

As is usually the case, the reality is not so simple.

There appear to be many reasons why donors, including national governments, have been slow to respond to the Pakistan crisis starting with the nature of the catastrophe itself.

Unlike the earthquakes in Haiti this year or Kashmir in 2005, or the tsunami that hit Indonesia, Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka and India in 2004, the Pakistani floods have not been an instant calamity that killed tens of thousands of people in a matter of minutes or hours.

In Pakistan the floods started on July 29, nearly a month ago, when unusually heavy monsoon rains caused flash floods and landslides in northwestern Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

These are largely no-go areas for government officials and military at the best of times. So it was not until a few days later, when the waters, constantly bolstered by fresh monsoon rains, swept down the valley of the Indus River into the Punjab heartland and then on to Sindh in the south, that the extent of the devastation and threat of further destruction became apparent.

Within Pakistan the government's response was woeful and much criticism was levelled at Zardari, who embarked on a planned trip to Europe despite the need for action at home.

He compounded his sins by taking a side trip to visit, by helicopter, his chateau in Normandy in northern France. This crass act of insensitivity not only reminded people both in Pakistan and abroad of the president's reputation for corruption -he's known as "Mister Ten Per Cent" for his alleged rake-offs from government contracts -but also highlighted the government's lack of resources such as helicopters to bring aid to people isolated in the floods.

Only the army in Pakistan, which is the country's sole institution that functions reliably, was able to mount any credible and sustained effort to rescue the stranded and distribute aid.

The slow, gathering and spreading nature of this calamity meant that it was not until Aug. 8 that the UN warned of a human disaster unmatched in recent years, and another three days before it launched its appeal for $500 million.

The ponderous progress of the crisis is undoubtedly a major reason why the Western donor response, especially among traditional private big givers in the U.S., has been slow.

Another factor so far as the U.S. is concerned is geography. American donors are fatigued by the crises on their doorstep like the earthquake in Haiti, Hurricane Katrina which hit New Orleans in 2005 and the oil pollution in the Gulf of Mexico.

Pakistan is a long way away and few Western aid agencies have outposts there to act as hubs on which a network for delivering relief aid can be built.

And there is a good deal of skepticism over whether Pakistan is a worthy recipient of Western aid.

Much blame for this crisis is aimed at Pakistan's semi-feudal ruling classes of landowners who, since the country's creation in 1947, have avoided investing in the infrastructure which could have minimized the impact of the monsoon rains and floods.

That lack of investment sits uncomfortably beside the huge amounts of money Pakistan spends on its military and especially on developing and building nuclear weapons.

Then there's Pakistan's ambiguous-at-best attitude toward the Taliban insurgents fighting NATO forces in neighbouring Afghanistan and the evidence that Pakistani army and intelligence agencies continue to support terrorist groups.

It will take many more pictures of distraught people struggling through flood waters and, sadly, reports of rising numbers dying from disease and lack of food, for donors to overcome their reluctance.

the red shirts versus the camouflag

i was watching on BBC yesterday, the story of the people of Thai, who are protesting against a prime minister they do not believe in. the first day i saw the mammoth crowd of the red shirt protesters on Thailand main streets i was excited that such crowd can leave their businesses to come out and declare their stand as regards what they believe in. but is a pity that the once peaceful move has taking a different dimension, with 8 people dead as at last night, i wonder how many more will die of this poor and working class citizen who are fighting for a better living conditions for their children.
The tentative agreement reached last week between the Thai government and the “red-shirt” protesters should be reinstated, and elections should proceed in November, as reasonably offered by Abhisit Vejjajiva, the Prime Minister.

The protesters have no clear leadership, and it seems that elements among them who want a confrontation disrupted the agreement – these may have included Khattiya Sawatdiphol, a general in the Thai army who purported to be in charge of security for the protesters and was shot in the head on Thursday by snipers, while he was talking to a reporter from the New York Times.

After two months of demonstrations that have obstructed normal activities in much of the centre of Bangkok, the government is right to no longer tolerate their indefinite continuation. A deadline has passed for the sealing off of the protesters’ camp. Such a siege, making life in the camp inconvenient, would be reasonable, as would a slow but steady clearing of the protest area. If the government authorized the snipers, it overreached in risking the lives of civilians, though General Khattiya and others may indeed be genuinely dangerous figures who are trying to exacerbate conflict.

Despite some irrational behaviour by protesters, such as the shedding of their own blood, the sentiments behind the demonstrations are deep-seated. The rural poor have a strong sense of exclusion from a country dominated by the upper-middle class – hence, the government has now proclaimed a state of emergency in 17 provinces, to prevent even more of the rural poor from descending upon the capital to swell the demonstrators’ numbers.

Unfortunately, this discontent has manifested itself in support for the demagogic and corrupt billionaire former prime minister, Thaksin Sinawatra, as well as in the demonstrations themselves.

Eventually, the Thai elite may have to tolerate a democratically elected government led by Mr. Thaksin or – if he is excluded because of criminal convictions – one of his lieutenants. Mr. Thaksin was deposed in 2006 by a military coup, for which the revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who has usually stood up for democracy, expressed approval.

In the end, government with the consent of the governed must prevail, but so should due process and the rule of law. The protesters should leave their urban camp and start preparing for a fair election.


Thai PM defends deadly army crackdown in Bangkok

By VIJAY JOSHI (AP) – 4 hours ago

BANGKOK — Thailand's prime minister defended Saturday the deadly army crackdown on the Red Shirt protesters besieging the capital, saying there was no turning back as clashes raged in the center of Bangkok.

"The government must move forward. We cannot retreat because we are doing things that will benefit the entire country," Abhisit Vejjajiva said in a national broadcast, striking a defiant tone that made it clear he was in no mood for a compromise.

The spiraling violence has raised concerns that Thailand — a longtime tourism magnet that promotes its easygoing culture as the "Land of Smiles" — was teetering toward instability. The political uncertainty has spooked foreign investors and damaged the vital tourism industry, which accounts for 6 percent of the economy, Southeast Asia's second largest.

The demonstrators Saturday accused government snipers of picking people off with head shots.

The army says it is not shooting to kill, but protesters crawled along sidewalks to slowly drag away bodies of three people near the city's Victory Monument traffic circle in the Ratchaprarop area Saturday. They accused army snipers of shooting all three in the head.

"The situation right now is getting closer to civil war every minute," a protest leader, Jatuporn Prompan, said. "We have to fight on. The leaders shouldn't even think about retreat when our brothers are ready to fight on."