Sao Paulo—A massive
blackout plunged tens of millions in Brazil’s
larg-est cities into darkness, sparking major
disruptions, fears of crime and energy supply
concerns Wednesday for the newly named Olympic
hosts. The outage across much of southern Brazil
started at 10:15 Tuesday pm (0015 GMT) and
lasted some four hours. Neighboring Paraguay
also suffered a 30-minute na-tionwide blackout.
It originated at the Itaipu hydroelectric plant
that straddles the border be-tween Brazil and
Paraguay, supplying both with much of their
energy needs. Police in Sao Paulo and Rio,
recently named as the host of the 2016 Olympics,
feared an opportunistic crime wave and accidents
because of non-functioning traffic lights.
Ramallah—Tens of thousands of
Palestinians gathered Wednesday to honour their
iconic leader Yasser Arafat, with president
Mahmud Abbas due to address the rally amid a
brewing political crisis. The fifth anniversary
of Arafat’s death finds Palestinians more
divided than ever and his successor Abbas
pondering resignation because of stalled US-led
peace efforts that have failed to bring about an
independent Palestinian state. A crowd waving
Palestinian flags and banners of Abbas’s Fatah
party crammed the government compound that
contains Arafat’s tomb to honour the man who
catapulted the Palestinians’ struggle onto the
world stage and led them through nearly four
decades of armed struggle and sputtering peace
talks.
San’a,
yemen—A radical American imam who communicated
with the Fort Hood shooting suspect and called
him a hero was once arrested in Yemen on
suspicion of giving religious approval to
militants to conduct kidnappings. Yemeni
authorities are now hunting for Anwar al-Awlaki
to determine whether he has al-Qaida ties. Al-Awlaki,
who has used his personal Web site to encourage
Muslims around the world to kill U.S. troops in
Iraq, disappeared in Yemen eight months ago,
ac-cording to his father. Yemeni security
officials say they believe he is hiding in a
region of the mountainous nation that has become
a refuge for Islamic mili-tants. After his
arrest in 2006, investigators were unable to
prove any links to al-Qaida, and he was released
in late 2007, according to two Yemeni
counterter-rorism officials and an Interior
Ministry official. They spoke Tuesday on
condi-tion of anonymity because they were not
authorized to talk to the press.
Nairobi—Somali
pirates on Wednesday seized a cargo ship in the
Indian Ocean with 22 crew members on board, the
European Union Naval Force said. Naval spokesman
Cmdr. John Harbour said that there are three
Greeks and 19 Fili-pinos among the crew of the
Greek-owned Filitsa. The ship is registered in
the Marshall Islands.
HAMID Karzai begins another term as
Afghanistan’s president with a long to-do list.
The Obama administration has made clear to him
that he must crack down on corruption, install a
team of technocrats to run the country and weed
out war-lords and narco-traffickers. Those are
all-important priorities, but there is something
else he should be doing as well: acting as a
wartime leader. So far, Karzai has been oddly
disengaged from the war raging around him.
Rarely if ever does he visit his own troops in
the field, go to hospitals to comfort the
wounded or honor the dead, as US President
Barack Obama did so stirringly with his recent
middle-of-the-night visit to Dover Air Force
Base. Karzai does-n’t even give speeches to
rally his people in the effort to defeat the
Tailbone.
