August 28, 2008
China Gets A Piece Of Iraqi Oil
 China and Iraq have signed a $3 billion deal to exploit one of the country's many underdeveloped oil fields.The oil field in question is called Ahdab. The deal is a revival of a 2003 agreement and a new incarnation of a 1997 deal. That means that if the China-Iraq contract goes through, it will be the first Saddam-era oil deal to be honored by the new regime. And there are dozens of others waiting. Most importantly, Iraq sits on more than 100 million gallons of crude. Once a solid oil revenue law is passed (finally,) future contracts might make the China deal look like peanuts in a few years. Is this good for Iraq? 0 Comments
Add a commentAugust 27, 2008
A Beatle Finally Makes It To Israel
 Forty-three years after the Beatles were banned from performing in Israel, Paul McCartney's people have confirmed the singer will perform in Tel Aviv on September 25th. The story that has endured for decades is that an Israeli official called off the 1965 Beatles concert for fear it would corrupt the nation's youth. But according to AP sources, the story may not be true: "With Israelis in a tizzy about McCartney's arrival, the official's son is taking the opportunity to try to clear his father's name." But according to the press release issued by McCartney's press office, Israel's ambassador to the U.K. apologized to the singer for the "misunderstanding." During a trip to Liverpool, the ambassador wrote in a letter: "There is no doubt that it was a great missed opportunity to prevent people like you, who shaped the minds of the generation, to come to Israel and perform." Which version is true?
Dead Sea Scrolls Go Digital
 A fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls, left, as seen by a high-resolution single-wavelength infrared imager, right.JERUSALEM (CNN) -- More than 2,000 years after they were written, the Dead Sea Scrolls are going digital as part of an effort to better preserve the ancient texts and let more people see them than ever before. The high-tech initiative, announced today, will also reveal text that was previously not visible to the naked eye. Over the next two years, the Israel Antiquities Authority will digitally photograph and scan every bit of crumbling parchment and papyrus that makes up the scrolls, which include the oldest written record of the Bible's Old Testament. The images eventually will be posted on the Internet for anyone to see. "These are the earliest copies of the Bible ever found," said Pnina Shor, head of treatment and conservation at the Antiquities Authority. "The Bible is sacred to us and to you and to all the monotheistic religions, and therefore [the scrolls] are national treasures and world treasures, and therefore it is our duty to preserve them at least for 2,000 years more." It is widely believed that the first set of Dead Sea Scrolls was discovered in 1947 by a Bedouin shepherd who ventured into a cave in the Judean Desert in search of a lost sheep or goat. The texts were found wrapped in linen inside earthenware jars. Eventually, 11 caves were found to contain scrolls -- some dating back more than 2,000 years. The texts shed light on life in the Holy Land around the time of Jesus, in the early days of Christianity and at a time of great upheaval for the Jewish people. "They show the connection between Christianity, Judaism and how everything evolved from the God -- the God is one God," Shor said. "The scrolls are meant to bring us all together." The thousands of scroll fragments were photographed in their entirety only once -- in the 1950s -- but some of those images have themselves disintegrated, the Antiquities Authority said. For years, there have been complaints that only a handful of scholars have been able to examine the scrolls, The Associated Press reported. Now, Israel has assembled an international team -- not of archaeologists and linguists, but technical wizards -- to reveal them as never before. Their imaging of the extremely brittle scrolls will allow people to read scores of fragments that were blackened or erased over the years. "Just by applying the latest infrared technologies and shooting at very high detail, lots of resolution, we are already opening up new characters from the scrolls that are either extremely indistinct or you just couldn't see them before," said Simon Tanner, the director of King's Digital Consultancy Services. Tanner, who has worked on previous digital projects involving antiquities, is on a team that also includes Greg Bearman, who recently retired as principal scientist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Bearman pioneered archaeological digital imaging and owns a company, Snapshot Spectra, that makes the imagers. "To switch over to digital is really the way to go, and people were resistant to it initially, because it was a new way of doing stuff," he said. "They want their light table and their magnifying glass." But with digital imaging, Bearman said, "You can see where the ink has broken away and you can see the texture of the animal skin, so you can see more detail than you can see with the naked eye." Another benefit of the imaging process, Bearman said, is that it enables scientists to determine the amount of water present in the parchment. That will help authorities determine whether the parchment is too wet or too dry, and enable them to keep the scrolls in conditions that are perfect for conservation. Americans who want an even closer look at the texts will be able to do so next month, when six of the scrolls will go on exhibit at the Jewish Museum of New York, according to The New York Times. The DNC On Arab News Channels
 --By CNN's Octavia Nasr From Denver, the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera has promised viewers minute by minute coverage of the Democratic National Convention. So far, the network has been delivering on its promise with special DNC programming showcasing a team of reporters and anchors. As a result, tens of millions of Arabic speakers around the world are getting a healthy dose of DNC coverage, updates, experts’ interviews and broadcasts of major speeches and events.
Dominating the coverage is what is referred to on Arab media as “the rift” between the Obama and Clinton camps and the drama it provides. Al-Jazeera’s Nasser Hussaini says: "the situation is very complex, with bitter divisions between Obama supporters and Clinton supporters.” He then asks a guest, “will the drama ever end?" On other networks, such as the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya, there is also special coverage of the DNC. A moving graphic promotes the coverage and sums up the issues of concern to the Arab world. U.S. Middle East policy, terrorism and global warming top the list. According to Al-Arabiya’s U.S. affairs analyst, Hisham Melhem, the Arab world genuinely cares about who wins the election. Although Hillary Clinton is officially out of the race, there seems to be a persistent interest in covering her on Arab media. In fact, Arab reporters and commentators have been mentioning Senator Clinton's name a lot more times than that of Senator Obama. In some cases five times to one. One Al-Jazeera reporter offers this explanation why, "She holds the key to unifying the Democratic Party and helping Obama win in November." Out of admiration or plain curiosity, another reporter asks his guest if there is still a role for Clinton to play in an Obama administration if that came to fruition. The status of Arab American voters and their participation at the DNC make up a good subject of debate on Arab media. One Al-Arabiya report concludes that the majority of Arab Americans are expected to vote Democratic even if the Democratic star ignores them. The reporter says, “No matter how much Obama ignores them, the majority of Arab Americans seem to prefer voting for him rather than endure another Republican term." August 26, 2008
The "Israeli Madeleine McCann"
 Marie Pisam in court in Ramle, Israel. Aug 26, 2008. (AP)This case has gripped Israel over the last few days. It involves a four-year old French girl, Rose Ron, who went missing three months ago. Israeli police now suspect her own grand-father, 45-year old Roni Ron, of having killed her. But here's where the story gets even more chilling: police say they believe Ron may have received help from the girl's mother, Marie Pisam, with whom he was in a relationship. From AP: At its heart lies a bizarre love triangle in which little Rose's grandpa also became her stepfather, falling in love with his son's young bride and fathering two more daughters with her. (...) The case has absorbed the Israeli media since police on Sunday launched a public appeal for information on Rose's whereabouts. The blue-eyed, brown-haired girl's picture filled the front pages of newspapers and featured on TV and radio newscasts, eclipsing a visit by the U.S. Secretary of State and the conflict with the Palestinians. The Septuplets!
 Remember the story of the Egyptian woman who gave birth to seven children - at once?Twenty-seven-year old Ghazala Khamis already had three daughters and was hoping for a son. After five years of unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant, she was given fertility drugs and carried seven babies for eight months. They were delivered by Ceasarian section in a hospital in the coastal city of Alexandria a few weeks ago. She's 27 and now has ten children. Let's hope she gets childcare help! (AP Photo Tarek Fawzy)
Rice To Head To Libya
 Who would have thought this would happen just a few years ago? U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says she will visit Tripoli and shake hands with the ex-Pariah state leader Moammar Ghaddafi before George W. Bush leaves office. She's currently in the West Bank. Above, meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. (Photo AP)
August 19, 2008
A Sporting Chance For Saudi Women (Part II)
 --By CNN's Mohammed JamjoomReaders of this blog most likely know that Saudi Arabia bans female athletes from representing the Kingdom during the Olympic Games. Many, though, might be surprised to find out that Saudi Arabia is, for the first time, allowing a woman to be part of their Olympic delegation in China. 38 year-old Arwa Mutabagani is a professional show jumper. She’s in Hong Kong as we speak, making history as the first Saudi female member invited to be part of her country’s Olympic Delegation. I was curious to know how this development was sitting with some of the more outspoken Saudis I’ve interviewed in the past, to find out if they feel this signals some kind of profound social change in the deeply religious and extremely restrictive Kingdom. Wajeha Al-Huwaider is one of the most well known women’s rights activists in Saudi Arabia. In the past six months, she’s gained notoriety for protesting the ban on women’s driving in Saudi Arabia and for publicly asking Saudi officials to allow women to participate in the Olympic Games. When I spoke to Al-Huwaider, she explained how she feels the Saudi Government, by doing this, is simply trying to placate the IOC. Al-Huwaider believes this is a response to the mounting criticism the Saudis have come under of late. “They’re doing this for the people organizing the Olympics to show they are working on the issue,” she told me. I next asked Ahmed Al-Omran, who blogs at http://www.saudijeans.org/, what kind of reactions he was seeing from Saudis online. According to him, attitudes towards Saudi women participating in the Olympics seem to be breaking down along gender lines. “From what I see on the internet and the people I talk to,” says Al-Omran, “the women are all for it and the men are divided. It’s another issue in this country that’s dividing people.” Al-Omran recently posted a short entry about women and sports and says it sparked a raging debate in the talk back section of his blog. For Ahmed, the answer is simple: he believes Saudi women should be allowed to take up sports in public schools AND go to the Olympics. “If we already have some qualified female athletes we should allow them to compete on the international level, in basketball or in other sports. It’s is important to introduce sports to girl schools, but that should not be a precondition for having female athletes in the Olympics.” As for Al-Huwaider, she will continue to try to affect change, but she doesn’t think it will come anytime soon. For her, having one female member among the Saudi Olympic Delegation doesn’t amount to much. “It’s just like a false pregnancy,” she says, “nothing will happen.” (AP photo of the women's 100m final in Beijing on Sunday) Fire Erupts In Egyptian Parliament Building
 Flames shoot out of the windows of the 19th century parliament building in Cairo today. No word on how the fire started. Five people were treated for smoke inhalation. LeIt's a gorgeous colonial era structure. Let's hope there isn't too much damage! (Photo AP) August 18, 2008
You'd Look Exhausted Too
 Septuplets!Egyptian mother Ghazala Khamis, picture in the hospital, after giving birth a day earlier to four boys and three girls at a hospital in the Mediterranean coastal city of Alexandria, Egypt, Sunday, Aug. 17, 2008. A day after giving birth to seven babies, the 27-year-old woman said Sunday she's only seen her babies on television and hopes to hold them and give them names soon. (AP Photo) August 17, 2008
A Cockroach Conspiracy In Egypt?
 Nile fishermen like Salah Zayed – in the blue galabeya - so despise American crayfish clawing through their nets, they call them “cockroaches of the Nile.” --By CNN's Alphonso Van Marsh In my some fifteen years living and reporting out of the Middle East, I thought I’d been exposed to every possible conspiracy theory. But on a recent assignment in Cairo for CNN’s EcoSolutions program,I heard a whopper. My story is about an American crayfish invasion of the Nile river. With no natural predators in Egypt to stop them, the clawed crustaceans are increasingly a threat to Nile fishermen as well as farmers who depend on Nile water to irrigate their crops. That’s because the crayfish claws through fish nets and eat the catch – and because they can burrow up to three feet into the ground, crayfish infestations are causing some Nile delta water canals to collapse. There are serious economic implications for Egyptians carrying out these river livelihoods since the time of the Pharaohs. As the story goes, in the 1980’s an Egyptian fish farmer imported crayfish eggs from the United States – thinking they were some sort of shrimp or prawn. But when they clawed and burrowed their way to destroying his farm, the businessman was so enraged that he dumped the crayfish in to the Nile. The man, apparently, got away with it. No prosecution or charges. No accountability. No confirmed reason why he simply didn’t leave the crayfish to die within the constraints of his fish farm. One Egyptian government official accompanying CNN on our shoot told us – with a serious face – that the crayfish invasion was a conspiracy by at least one Western government. The plan, he insisted, was to plague one of Egypt’s greatest symbols with the Louisiana crayfish to tarnish Egypt’s image, and keep this emerging economy firmly in the Third World. It was one of those moments when people just stop and stare at the speaker – but say nothing. Had we not been in a moving vehicle on a crowded Cairo street, we likely would have heard crickets. Is it a conspiracy? Watch my “cockroach of the Nile” story then let us know what you think.
Death Of Reuters Cameraman In Gaza: The Debate
 An AP file photo dated last April, showing Palestinian cameraman Fadel Shana's vehicle after it was hit by an Israeli tank.A very interesting discussion on this week's International Correspondents, hosted by my colleague Fionnuala Sweeney. A representative from the IDF and Reuters Jerusalem bureau chief Alastair Mcdonald discussed the death of Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana, killed by an Israeli tank shell last April in the Gaza strip. The Israeli troops involved were this week cleared of all wrongdoing. But critics say there is almost never any accountability within the Israeli military in such cases and that the IDF uses lethal force with impunity. What do you think? Check out the discussion here.
August 15, 2008
Fallen Comrades Laid To Rest
 Tripoli, August 14th, 2008. An event in a sports stadium honoring eleven soldiers killed in a roadside bomb attack the previous day in northern Lebanon. Hundreds gathered to pay respects to the victims, including this man, holding a framed photo of his friend Habib Batsh. Batsh was one of 18 military and civilians killed in the attack.(Ap photo)
August 14, 2008
All Smiles In Damascus
 It hasn't happened in three years: a Lebanese President on an official state visit to Damascus. This photo, taken August 13th, shows Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad with Lebanese president Michel Suleiman and both men's wives.Will this visit help normalize relations between the two countries? Behind The Scenes Of A "Truce"
-- By CNN's Paula Hancocks
It starts with a phone call at 8:30pm as we are sitting down to dinner in Gaza City. The Popular Resistance Committees tells us to be at a certain place in half an hour - they are training. No further details. A phone call to our Jerusalem bureau chief to weigh up the risks, we all decide it is rare enough an opportunity not to be missed. We grab our equipment and jump in the armored car. Revered as freedom fighters by many here, reviled as terrorists in the West, the PRC, just one of the many Gaza based militant groups, has been involved in countless rocket attacks on Israel and the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit two years ago. The “training ground” is basic... a dead end road for marching drills, a wall with tires stacked up against it for target practice. Burning tires surround the area, giving off putrid thick black smoke… so nightly training is invisible to Israeli eyes in the sky. The gunmen say they are training for what they see as an imminent Israeli incursion into Gaza. As a Western female journalist working in Gaza, I rarely have to wear a headscarf… but here I am told to cover my head, the militants cover their faces. One masked man brings me a chair and a heavily sugared tea so I can watch target and hostage-taking practice in comfort. It is horribly surreal. One fighter tells me he will never let his son fire a gun… he says he only fights to make a better future for his family. But he’s wearing a balaclava, with a rocket-propelled grenade over his shoulder and vowing to destroy any Israeli who enters Gaza. I struggle to marry the two. The next morning, another phone call. The same group wants to show us and other news organizations, a rocket factory… precautions this time are more stringent. We drive just outside Gaza City and are transferred into the back of an unmarked van - we are blindfolded and our phones taken away. You know this is standard procedure to protect the location of the factory, but allowing yourself to be blindfolded by a masked gunman in Gaza feels incredibly unnatural. It’s hard to stop the worst-case scenario playing out in your head. My arrival at the location caused some surprise, a woman in a rocket factory is hardly the norm. I am closely watched and discussed. I have covered my head and dressed conservatively, but it’s not enough - I am given a jilbab, a long loose-fitting coat to cover my whole body before I am allowed to enter the “factory.” Once the novelty wears off, I am completely ignored. The “factory” is anything but; it’s a tiny room with rockets lining the walls and masked men trying to light a fire from a gas canister to heat the explosives. First the lighter doesn’t work, then there’s a gas leak and the room becomes filled with suffocating gas. You hear of unexplained explosions in Gaza from time to time, euphemistically called “workplace accidents”. That thought is enough to make us squeeze out of the room and wonder if we’ve gotten just a little too close to the “story”. In a more ventilated area, the preparations begin… I’m struck by the relaxed manner these men handle deadly ingredients and warheads… one slip and the story would be very different and we probably wouldn’t be around to tell it. As I watch the rockets being made by men who have clearly done this many times before, I glance at the row of rockets made earlier lining the walls - I wonder which will be fired first and will there be civilian casualties. Hamas, which controls Gaza and all militant factions, including the PRC, are two months into a truce with Israel… not that you’d know it here. They even unveil a new longer-range rocket, which could reach some of Israel’s larger cities. We’re told it is a drop in the ocean of Palestinian surprises should Israel return to Gaza. There’s no doubt the PRC wants Israel to see these pictures… rocket makers are positioned to give the camera the best angle - the production of deadly weapons is highly choreographed. It’s a militant’s PR event. An event the Israeli prime minister's spokesman tells us could force an Israeli response if the truce is just a front for militants to rearm and regroup. |
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