Saturday, October 3, 2009

Y! Alert: The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com

Yahoo! Alerts
My Alerts

The latest from The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com

Not DOA But DIY: Resurrecting The Book Review Section Top
I know readers are supposed to mourn the loss of book review sections in newspapers and magazines across the country, but at this point -- well, in fact, for a long time now -- I'm not sure what it is we're losing. Don't we worry that as book sections decline, the standards of literary criticism are going down the drain? Hell, that happened years ago. Do we think that freedom of speech is being jeopardized in some profound but invisible way because fewer critics are reviewing fewer books? (Ditto and thank you, Patriot Act, corporate takeovers, foreign ownership and writing that is a snore, but more about that later). I don't think a Golden Era of literary criticism ever existed in America. It's true that at one time, say in the 1930s-50s, book review sections were the only consistent measure of literary quality. But even then, something was wrong with the idea of a chosen few dictating to the tastes of a vastly diversified America. (Who would put up with that today?) By the time consumer reviews started appearing on Amazon, newsprint book reviews had gotten stodgy, dull, laborious and self- indulgent. Traditional critics grumbled that consumers didn't know the difference between personal bias and literary standards, but very often there was more excitement and infectious appreciation about books in consumer reviews than in most newsprint sections edited by professionals. (I kind of blew up about this in a 2007 column called "Book Critics: Are We Driving Readers Away?" ) Today, as chaotic and messy as literary opinion can get on the Internet, the good news is that that no single book review section lords it over any other. Yes, the New York Times Book Review is still placed on the top of the literary hierarchy, but man, that is one hit-or-miss operation, and what a lot of gas is expelled in the reviewing of very few books. (I watch it closely -- who doesn't? -- but under protest; see below.) So while it's true, newspaper cutbacks have resulted in the loss of book review sections across the country, there is that other force (reader boredom, for one) coming from the Internet that has made us all impatient with the older, slower, duller, stuffier approach. Today instead of putting up with the only book review section that happens to land on the doorstep, readers are given the chance to dramatically open our horizons about books by compiling our own lists of book-reviewing sites, tailored to our personal interests and sent to us via email or RSS. Granted, you can spend way too many hours culling through book review sites that are themselves pretty dreary and meandering before finding the right ones for you. But look at the process another way: There's a river of critical energy streaming around us every moment of the day. We can enter that flow and snorkel around to our delight when we want to, leave it for a time or swim back to it (some editor is thinking, Look out -- runaway metaphor so I'll stop) and be constantly updated. This is not "wasted time" but rather the interwoven experience that leads us time and again to finding that great book we can't wait to dive into because so many different people from so many different walks of life and websites are funneling us new information. I check in with only about four or five sites at a time (always subject to remixing, of course) and keep running notes in a separate file on the desktop. Here for example are a few I've been following recently: ----- ReviewsofBooks.com Maybe too talky and visually a bit junky, this site tries hard to be the closest thing you'll find to a knowledgeable walk around the New Releases table at your local bookstore ... and it almost succeeds. Each title is the subject of three different reviews, and selections are lively (not academic or show-offy). The talky parts can make you wince: "We try to find full-length reviews of books that help the reader gather the information they seek to determine if the book is worth their time." But that's part of the fresh-discovery, rough-around-the-edges appeal. Alt Weeklies Wow: If you're weary of the received wisdom of official book review sites (like the big one mentioned below), here is a treasury of refreshing and often unpredictable takes from alternative weeklies all over the country, including the Las Vegas Weekly, Chicago Reader, Santa Fe Reporter, NOW Magazine, Texas Observer and Atlanta's own Creative Loafing. It's got links to intriguing blogs, author interviews and hot stories like "Bookstores Fight Back with Instant Paperbacks" (Boston Phoenix) you might have missed elsewhere. Powell's Books Daily book review Newsletter This great Portland, Oregon bookstore emails a book review a day that's selected from a universe of sources, so over time you get a critical take from quite a range of websites, for example from Harper's Magazine and Washington Post to Bitch, Virginia Quarterly and Powell's own staff. The approach is both quirky and sophisticated, the selections both mainstream and happily esoteric. Once you're on the Powell's site, sign up for the store's irreverent and knowledgeable newsletter with its many author interviews, industry news and updated-hourly Top Ten Bestsellers (decidedly not chain-store-generated). Book Slut The writing is personal, the reviews varied and timely, the tongue-in-cheek humor always peeking out from under the surface (see columns like "Bookslut in Training," "CookBookSlut," "Mystery Strumpet"), and a great blog page separates rumor from fact most of the time. Book Slut comes out monthly but is so packed with critical information you'll savor the month of visits it takes to explore all. New York Times Sunday Book Review It's astounding to me that the NYTBR is still considered the core of received wisdom in our recidivistic industry, but then the mainstream is in NY, the press is in NY, the inbred-everything is in NY, and blah blah blah. I find the online version not as stiff or self-congratulatory as it is Sunday in print, perhaps because more options have been. "Paper Cuts," the NYTBR's own blog, would be dreary except for videos and occasional energized writing. The Elegant Variation This engrossing "literary weblog" from Southern California novelist Mark Sarvas not only reviews serious books and offers original interviews but links the "best small presses," provides onsite videos, and follows "worthy readings" of authors to watch. It's so bubbling over with critical ideas and an investigative point of view that one visit can never be enough. ------ Well, I could go on (for years), but this is the kind of nucleus that indicates a brave new world of books is really out there: Sales may be flat, bookstores may be struggling and book sections may be dying, but the critical conversation about books continues to be robust, intelligent and adventurous. The best part is that thanks to the Internet, it's a Do-It-Yourself literary world that never stagnates, always surprises. Patricia Holt was book review editor and critic for the San Francisco Chronicle for 16 years. More on Newspapers
 
David Wild: Paying The Cost To Be The Boss: A Playlist for David Letterman Top
I have always greatly admired David Letterman, and I consider him to be one of the most enduring and defining wits of our times. And no, I won't stop watching a TV show because consenting adults were having sex -- in fact, that's why I watch HBO. That said, David still might want to consider putting a plastic cover on that "Late Show" couch. DIRTY WORK - Steely Dan WHEN THE DEAL GOES DOWN - Bob Dylan FOR THE LOVE OF MONEY - The O'Jays WORKIN' DAY AND NIGHT - Michael Jackson FREE MONEY - Patti Smith INTO TEMPTATION - Crowded House FOUND OUT ABOUT YOU - Gin Blossoms TWO LOVERS - Mary Wells LET'S WORK TOGETHER - Canned Heat WORK TO DO - The Isley Brothers BIG BOSS MAN - Elvis Presley NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT - Sarah Vaughan PAYING THE COST TO BE THE BOSS - B.B. King That's my playlist. Now it's your time to play. More on The Late Show
 
Obamas' Anniversary (PICTURES): President, First Lady Celebrate 17th Wedding Anniversary At Blue Duck Tavern Top
WASHINGTON (AP)- There was no trip to New York and no fancy outing as the Obamas celebrated their first wedding anniversary since they moved to the White House. Instead they kept it simple, with a dinner out Saturday night at an elegant, American-fare restaurant near Georgetown. The evening was balmy and the moon almost full. President Barack Obama stayed in all day before taking a motorcade with Michelle Obama to the Blue Duck Tavern to mark their 17th wedding anniversary. Mrs. Obama stepped into the restaurant wearing a backless knee-length dress while the president wore a dark suit. Last year, the Obamas also had an understated anniversary with a simple dinner out in downtown Chicago. The Obamas were married Oct. 3, 1992 in a ceremony at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. The anniversary dinner came after a whirlwind week that saw the Obamas fly to Copenhagen to make an unsuccessful pitch for their hometown of Chicago to host the 2016 Olympics. More on Michelle Obama Style
 
Louis Belanger: Day one in Padang, Indonesia - aid worker arrives in earthquake zone Top
My colleague Ian Bray has just landed in Padang, Indonesia. Day one of his Diary. "Clean water is urgently needed." says Inel Rosnelli. As she queues up with a line for clean water at a neighbours well in quake hit Padang on the island of Sumatra. "The only other alternative is to get water from leaking pipes. Houses have been destroyed and people need tents and tarpaulin, as they don't have any shelter." Besides looking after her family Inel has also been looking after many others. Only hours after the quake struck she was distributing aid, as Oxfam had stock piled in the city for such events. Those stocks are now exhausted and she and the local aid organisation are desperate for more. Aid is starting to arrive. Oxfam is flying in three water purification plants that will provide enough clean water for more than 40,000 people and it will start tankering water today (Sunday). An assessment team arrived yesterday to see where best they can help and more team are on the way. But it is not only water that is needed. In some areas food is also in short supply and what food is available is soaring in price, along with the cost of the fuel to cook the food on. The petrol stations where paraffin is sold are the scenes of long queues of plastic jerry cans left there by people desperate to buy cooking fuel. Rice - the staple food - must be cooked. Driving through Padang at night is an errie journey. Most of the city is dark as the electricity supply is down in certain areas. But in some places the area is bathed in light from arc lights. These are the places the search and rescue teams are working round the clocking trying desperately to find the living trapped in the rubble of broken buildings. Time is running out to save those trapped. More search and rescue teams are arriving and so are teams of aid workers to supplement the initial work Inel and her colleagues did in the first hours. And as new information starts to emerge about the terrible extent of the damage in outer lying areas the challenge for the aid effort will be the logistical nightmare it will face with road swept aside by landslides. The aid effort is beginning to gear up but the aid system is facing one of its worst weeks as millions of people faced the weight of four consecutive days of humanitarian hammer blows. On Monday our TV screens were showing the devastation of Manila, the capital of the Philippines, drowning in the aftermath of a typhoon. The next day Oxfam launched an appeal for 23 million people in East Africa suffering from an extensive drought made worse by conflict. On Wednesday a tsunami hit the Pacific Samoan islands and washed away everything that was in its way. On Thursday the typhoon that hit Manila slammed into Vietnam and then moved on to Laos and Cambodia. Then on the same day a massive earthquake shook the Indonesian city of Padang to its foundations, burying thousands under tonnes of rubble and affecting hundreds of thousands more. In all my years of working in the aid world, starting in 1978 in Indonesia, I have never witnessed such a rapid and relentless series of crises. There have been bigger storms, greater tremors, grimmer death tolls but rarely have them come in quick succession. The people who have been buffeted by this week's shocks need our help. The people like Inel who were the first to help need it too. +++++++ Please visit Oxfam's site for more info. To donate, Oxfam America has also launched an appeal on the multiple emergencies that have hit Asia this week.
 
E. Coli: Woman Paralyzed After Severe Food Poisoning; The Unsafe System, Meat Top
Stephanie Smith, a children's dance instructor, thought she had a stomach virus. The aches and cramping were tolerable that firstday, and she finished her classes. Then her diarrhea turned bloody. Her kidneys shut down. Seizures knocked her unconscious. The convulsions grew so relentless that doctors had to put her in a coma for nine weeks. When she emerged, she could no longer walk. The affliction had ravaged her nervous system and left her paralyzed... Ms. Smith's reaction to the virulent strain of E. coli was extreme, but tracing the story of her burger, through interviews and government and corporate records obtained by The New York Times, shows why eating ground beef is still a gamble. Neither the system meant to make the meat safe, nor the meat itself, is what consumers have been led to believe. More on Regulation
 
Soichi Nakagawa Dead: Japanese Finance Minister Who Resigned After Appearing Drunk Is Found Dead Top
TOKYO (AP)- Police say a former Japanese finance minister who stepped down after appearing drunk at an overseas news conference has been found dead in his home. A spokeswoman for the Tokyo police says Shoichi Nakagawa was found dead Sunday in the bedroom at his Tokyo home. The cause of death was still under investigation. She says other details are not immediately available. Nakagawa caused an uproar when he appeared groggy at a news conference during the Group of Seven financial leaders in Rome in February. He resigned as finance minister in February, then lost his seat in parliament in Aug. 30 nationwide elections. More on Japan
 
Lifelines: The Book That Sets Me Straight Top
Carolyn See walked into my house, twenty-some years ago, and started in simultaneously on a bottle of white wine and the plot of the novel she has completed that very day. Golden Days , about which she had divulged not so much up to that point, was about life in southern California's Topanga Canyon after the nuclear holocaust. Our other guests were mesmerized. I retreated into the kitchen and wondered what to say. No, it was worse than that. Having Carolyn as a friend was on my very short list of life imperatives but I was one of those hard-liners who believed that contemplating life after a nuclear war was the surest way to guarantee one. Didn't we trivialize nuclear combat by implying that we could survive it? Didn't anyone remember On the Beach? As a child, I'd been kept at school during the Cuban missile crisis because the principal thought we'd be blown off the map before we could run home, and he couldn't stand the notion of all us sweet kids turned into tater tots by the side of the road. I was raised under a mushroom cloud of fear. I could not imagine how Carolyn and I were going to hang out and have fun now that she had uttered the unspeakable at book length. And then I read Golden Days , and re-read it, and went through a phase where I bought extras to hand out when people came over, like after-dinner mints. The question at the center of my journalist life was too often, Says who? Carolyn glided instead through the realm of Why not, of Try this on for size, of sand like glass and a woman with jewels embedded in the backs of her hands. Golden Days is everything I can't prove but know, now, for a certainty, thanks to Carolyn. I won't quote the passage I read on the days when life gives me a hard time, because you have to read the whole book, build up a head of steam, before you can fully appreciate the last pages. I will say only that it begins with "Half a life before" and ends with the end of the book, and I defy you to get there without feeling better. I don't mean feeling better like you just had a great meal or a fun date or even, in this day and age, a promising job interview. I mean hearing a character say, "I see abundance everywhere!" although by the time he says it abundance means something quite different than it does at the end of a ten-course tasting menu or during Fashion Week and believing him with every little molecule of your being. Golden Days doesn't defy reason, though it may seem to until you get in the groove. It wafts above reason, where we all could stand to spend a little time. We'd like to make this a regular feature. Send in your lifelines.
 
Air India Pilots, Crew Brawl During Flight Top
NEW DELHI: The Maharaja witnessed his first in-flight Mughal-e-Azam at 30,000 feet above sea level on Saturday, as two members of the cabin crew--one male and one female--slugged it out with the pilot and co-pilot. More on India
 
Olympics Loss Puts Daley On Defensive And Chicago Plans In Limbo Top
CHICAGO — Chicago's dream of an Olympics-sized stimulus was dashed when the 2016 Summer Games were awarded to Rio de Janeiro, and the loss amounts to more than a bruised ego for the nation's third-largest city. Officials can no longer trumpet the $13.7 billion citywide economic impact local Olympics organizers estimated would come of games-related jobs, construction, tourism and transportation. They'll also have no excuse for distraction in a city grappling with a mounting deficit and violence that has led to dozens of deaths of city teens each year. The loss marked a stunning defeat for Mayor Richard M. Daley, who spent three years working to sell Chicago residents on the games, often highlighting job creation and a financial influx that would help the city emerge from a recessional slump. "I just know so many construction workers who thought their next seven years were going to be full of work," said Jane Zefran, 63, a semi-retired Chicago resident. "Now, heavens only knows what will happen. It's such a shame." Fresh off a plane Saturday from the International Olympic Committee meeting in Copenhagen, Daley said people shouldn't be disheartened about Chicago's future because the city lost the 2016 Summer Games. "We have a great city," he said. "These are great people. We have a future just as bright as anyone else." People around town seem doubtful the loss will scar Daley as he mulls whether to seek a seventh term in 2011 – at which point he will have 22 years in office and become Chicago's longest-serving mayor. "I don't think he will be looked at like a loser," said Angela Byrd, 40, a teacher's assistant from Chicago. Still, a recent Chicago Tribune/WGN poll showed Daley's approval rating had sunk to 35 percent in part because of skepticism over the Olympics and an unpopular deal to lease city parking meters to a private contractor. And the mayor was in Copenhagen as an unwelcome spotlight again shone on his city after a 16-year-old honors student was beaten to death while walking to a bus stop after school. Back at home, one of the first big issues the mayor will have to deal with comes Wednesday, when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan meet with school officials, students and residents to talk about chronic school violence. Daley is likely to be asked yet again what can be done to address the issue. As for jobs, at least some of the anticipated construction still should materialize because the city has pledged to move forward with redeveloping the site that would have been the Olympic Village. The plan calls for transforming the site of a shuttered South Side hospital complex into a mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhood. City contracts already are out for some demolition work and the city plans to sell the land to private developers. But without the games, many improvements to infrastructure, like public transportation, won't see the speed-up of federal assistance the city expected if were it chosen. "Unfortunately, not having the bid means that many of those projects will take much longer to complete, but they are still on the table and we will move forward," said Chicago Alderman Brendan Reilly. Advocates hoped the Olympics would provide the leverage needed in lobbying for funds to overhaul aging transportation systems that support trains on old tracks and crowded roads that need work. "It doesn't diminish the need to figure out how to fund this stuff, but it is disappointing," said Barry Matchett of the Chicago-based advocacy group Environmental Law & Policy Center. The Chicago Transit Authority's elevated subway system is perhaps the most troubled. Some of the worst track has been recently fixed, partly drawing on federal stimulus funds. But some stretches of the more than 240 mile-network remain so shoddy that trains meant to travel more than 50 mph must slow to the pace of a horse at trot. Chicago's Metra commuter trains are better off, but hardly trouble free. The International Olympic Committee's evaluation report had singled out Metra, saying it would be hard-pressed to handle what would be more than double the peak commuter traffic during the games. Alderman Tom Tunney said the city must move on quickly and refocus efforts on other growth areas like green technology, manufacturing and its reputation as the country's freight rail hub. "In this economy there is no time for sulking. No, no, no, no, no," he said. ___ Associated Press Writer Michael Tarm contributed to this story. More on Olympics
 
Obama Told Olympics Trip Could Have Clinched Chicago's Bid: Jarrett Top
In the run-up to the Olympics vote, the White House was getting a clear message from the architects of Chicago's bid: Balloting would be tight, and a personal visit to Copenhagen from President Obama just might lock in a victory. More on Barack Obama
 
Stanley Ikenberry, Former University Of Illinois President, Named Interim Head After Scandal Top
URBANA, Ill. — Trustees at the University of Illinois have accepted the resignation of the school's president in the wake of an admissions scandal. Joseph White will officially leave his job at the end of this year. The trustees also named former university president Stanley Ikenberry as the temporary replacement for White. Ikenberry was president at the University of Illinois from 1979 through 1995. The university has been caught up in a scandal over political influence affecting which students are admitted. Officials kept a special list of applicants who got special treatment based on who they knew. In at least one case, White passed along an admissions request from then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
 
Fatally Beaten Teen Derrion Albert Mourned At Funeral: 'The Eyes Of The World Are Watching' Top
CHICAGO — The funeral of a Chicago teen who was beaten to death on his way home from school drew civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan on Saturday, both calling for an end to youth violence. Farrakhan said he came to the funeral because he was "deeply pained" by the death of 16-year-old honor roll student Derrion Albert. The boy was walking to a bus stop after school when a group of teens attacked him during a street fight late last month. "Naturally, we wonder why such a beautiful life? Such a future we thought was waiting for this young man," Farrakhan said. "This was a special young man of righteous bearing who God took from us so young." Cell phone video footage shows Albert being kicked and hit with splintered railroad ties. Four teens are charged in his death. President Barack Obama is sending U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who once led Chicago Public Schools, to Chicago on Wednesday to meet with school officials, students and residents and talk about school violence. "The eyes of the world are watching," Pastor E.F. Ledbetter Jr. told mourners at the Greater Mount Hebron Baptist Church on the city's South Side. "This has affected people all over the globe." Mayor Richard Daley, just off a plane Saturday from an International Olympic Committee meeting in Copenhagen where Chicago lost the 2016 Summer Games, said he would work with police, the community and school officials to break the "code of silence" that happens after street violence. Police, ministers and community leaders have been asking people to come forward with information about Albert's killing. "The code of silence is unacceptable in this day and age where we have young children being killed," Daley said at a news conference at O'Hare International Airport. Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weis and Chicago Public Schools chief Ron Huberman also both attended the funeral along with other city and public officials. Huberman called the Christian Fenger Academy High School sophomore a "bright light." Jackson demanded children and teens to be given safe passage to and from school. "Derrion didn't have to die," Jackson said. "He was murdered. His pain, his suffering, his death have shook the world." As mourners filed into the church, video screens scrolled through pictures of Derrion as a baby and with his family, as well as photos of his academic awards. Some mourners wore T-shirts with Derrion's picture that read "We will always remember you." The program included a poem Derrion's mother, Janette Albert, wrote to her son titled "May I Go Now?" "I know you're sad and afraid because I see your tears," she wrote. "I'll not be far. I promise that." Farrakhan also called for communities to support their youth. "Let's go get our young people," Farrakhan said. "His righteousness was to serve as a redemptive force to command us to get up and get busy and save our children."
 
Will California Become America's First Failed State? Top
California may be the eighth largest economy in the world, but its state staff are being paid in IOUs, unemployment is at its highest in 70 years, and teachers are on hunger strike. So what has gone so catastrophically wrong? More on The Bailouts
 
Earl Ofari Hutchinson: The GOP was Right to Cheer Obama's Olympic Defeat Top
The GOP cheered wildly at President Obama's Olympic bid folly. In a rarity they actually got some of the reasons they cheered for his defeat right. The games would have been a nightmare for Chicago. There was the excessive cost, massive hikes in taxes, a city rife with corruption and cronyism, no evidence the games would do much to generate jobs and business growth in the most impoverished areas of the city, and the blatant impropriety of a president plugging his own home city. The GOP also got it right in knocking Obama for wasting time chasing Olympic windmills when his time should be spent on health care reform, fixing the economy, confronting the Iran nuclear threat, and doubling down on his efforts to wind down two crippling wars. The GOP offers no real solutions on any of these problems. And they happily used Obama's Olympic flop to bludgeon him and his administration as a failure. But that doesn't let Obama off the hook for self-diverting his time and attention from these crucial issues. That's not the only reason to give the GOP a one time prop for getting it right about Obama and his Olympic pipe dream. In the last year more than forty young blacks have been stabbed, shot, and bludgeoned to death within miles, and some within blocks from Obama's home. The violence stirred a mild national outcry when a cell phone video showed 16 year old honors student Derrion Albert being bludgeoned to death on a Chicago street. Before the Albert killing, black community leaders and activists had begged, pleaded with and implored Obama to speak out on the violence. Apart from a few oblique platitudes and moral finger wagging to blacks at a black church and later at an NAACP convention about the perils of the street, the silence from the White House has been deafening on the violence. The murders literally in Obama's own backyard are more than just a shame and an embarrassment to him. They represent a missed teaching moment for Obama. They were a tailor made opportunity to connect the dots and show just how failing public schools, Great Depression unemployment highs among young black males, soaring incarceration rates, the paucity of recreation facilities, breakdown in family support services, and the unwillingness of public agencies and private businesses to invest in job skills, training, and education programs for youth is the direct line to the shocking murder of innocents such as Albert. The paid lobbyists, high profile PR firms, well-heeled corporate donors, high powered political connections, and major civic and industry groups happily designated Obama as their point man on the Olympics. They had the political muscle and money to send him scurrying on a wild goose chase thousands of miles away to plug the Olympic Games. Meanwhile, the Derrion Alberts who are at mortal risk from street violence only a few blocks from the president's home are forced to play a much deadlier game; a game called survival. GOP may have cheered for the wrong reason Obama's Olympic smack down, but the cheer was well deserved. Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book, How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press) will be released in January, 2010. More on GOP
 
Officials: Afghan Cop Shoots, Kills 2 U.S. Troops Top
KABUL — An Afghan policeman on patrol with U.S. soldiers opened fire on the Americans, killing two of them before fleeing, officials said Saturday, raising questions about discipline in the ranks of the Afghan forces and possible infiltration by insurgents. Training and operating jointly with Afghan police and soldiers is key to the U.S. strategy of dealing with the spreading Taliban-led insurgency and, ultimately, allowing international forces to leave Afghanistan. But Afghan forces have periodically turned their guns on international soldiers. The U.S. military said two American troops were killed by "an individual wearing an ANP (Afghan National Police) uniform" in Wardak province on Friday. Shahidullah Shahid, a spokesman for the Wardak provincial governor, said the policeman fired on the Americans while they were patrolling together Friday night, killing two and injuring two. Halim Fidai, governor of Wardak, said two people who recommended the alleged assailant for his job were in custody for questioning. Fidai also said a joint team of American and Afghan officials was investigating the attack, interviewing both the American soldiers and the Afghans who had been on the patrol to learn what happened and how the gunman escaped. "However tragic, this event will not hamper the close partnership and combined security efforts" of Afghan police and international forces, said Zemarai Bashary, spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, said as part of the U.S. statement on the deaths. A third U.S. service member died Friday of wounds from a bomb attack in Wardak, the province neighboring Kabul, the day before. Over a period of less than a month last year, Afghan policemen twice attacked American soldiers in the east. In October 2008, a policeman hurled a grenade and opened fire on a U.S. foot patrol, killing one soldier. In September 2008, an officer opened fire at a Paktia police station, killing a soldier and wounding three before he was fatally shot. Most recently, in Kabul, an American service member and an Afghan police officer argued because the American was drinking water in front of police during the Ramadan fast, prompting the police officer to shoot the American. Other American troops responded and seriously wounded the Afghan. In violence Saturday, a remote-controlled bomb on a motorbike exploded in a busy market in northern Kunduz province, killing three Afghans in a region that has recently seen a spike in attacks. Elsewhere in the north, a Finnish convoy hit a roadside bomb in Balkh province, destroying one of the vehicles and injuring four soldiers, Afghan and Finnish officials said. In western Afghanistan, a Taliban attack on a NATO supply convoy killed a civilian contractor escorting the trucks, said Raouf Ahmadi, a regional police spokesman. U.S. and NATO deaths dropped in September over the previous two months – possibly due to the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan or because no major offensives were launched. But since President Barack Obama's decision to send 21,000 more troops to curb the growing Taliban-led insurgency, international and civilian tolls have risen steadily. U.S. forces mounted major operations in July and August in southern Afghanistan to try to dislodge the Taliban from longtime strongholds and improve security ahead of the Aug. 20 presidential election, the outcome of which remains in doubt because of allegations of massive fraud by supporters of President Hamid Karzai. One of those operations, in Helmand province, has proven to be a relative bright spot, as American and British forces hold territory in a region long plagued by Taliban violence. Lt. Aiden Katz, a Marine platoon commander in Helmand, said his forces came under Taliban fire on Friday while on foot patrol in the countryside. After a 30-minute firefight with Taliban militants hiding in trees and behind walled-off fields, the Americans called in air support and the gunmen disappeared after Marine Harrier jets strafed the area. Locals complain that the Taliban "are using their homes, using them to fight Afghan forces," said Katz, 23, of New York City. "We're maintaining pressure on Taliban areas." ___ Associated Press Writer Rahim Faiez contributed to this report. More on Afghanistan
 
WATCH: Bill Maher Auditions Sarah Palin's Writers (VIDEO) Top
It takes a special person to work with a special former governor. Bill Maher shows us who would have been the perfect writer to pair with Palin, and the titles they would have come up with. They're all more apropos than Going Rogue . Let us know which one you think hits the mark. More on Thomas Friedman
 
Mark Joseph: Damah Film Festival Announces Winners Top
After a weekend of exclusive screenings of unreleased films (The Least Of These, ) starring Isaiah Washington and Robert Loggia and controversial documentaries ( Lord, Save Us From Your Followers), the Damah Film Festival wrapped up with an awards presentation that presented the top prizes to three films: First prize winner was the short film And What Remains , a documentary about reconciliation between a father and son. Second place was awarded to The Old Man & The Ceiling, a dramatic piece about a man who wakes up for the first time after his wife of 50 years has passed away. Third place went to Weathered, a short about a woman who copes with the death of her fiance by scheduling doctor's appointments. The three filmmakers won prizes of $5,000, $2,500 and $1,000 respectively and audience awards were also voted on by festival attendees in the following categories: Cinematography: Sam J. Stanton, Pink Shorts Screenplay: Steve Walters, A Mysterious Way Director: (Tie) Taylor Ray, Old Man & The Ceiling , Jeff Huston, Pink Shorts Actress: Nicole Parker, Weathered Actor: Steve Walters, Mysterious Ways Film: Weathered You can watch all of the nominated films here where they'll be posted until Tuesday.
 

CREATE MORE ALERTS:

Auctions - Find out when new auctions are posted

Horoscopes - Receive your daily horoscope

Music - Get the newest Album Releases, Playlists and more

News - Only the news you want, delivered!

Stocks - Stay connected to the market with price quotes and more

Weather - Get today's weather conditions




You received this email because you subscribed to Yahoo! Alerts. Use this link to unsubscribe from this alert. To change your communications preferences for other Yahoo! business lines, please visit your Marketing Preferences. To learn more about Yahoo!'s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy. Yahoo! is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089.
at

No comments:

Post a Comment