John McCain won
a close Florida primary last night, solidifying his
status as the frontrunner in the race to be the Republican nominee.
Rumors suggest that Rudy Guiliani, who
finished a distant third, will endorse McCain today in
advance of the last Republican debate in the Ronald Reagan Presidential
Library. And Russia, apparently, is beautiful from the hard court to
the barracks.
Top Stories
>>An internal report on Israeli leadership during the
2006 war in Lebanon is
set to be released today, both threatening the government
of PM Olmert and putting Defense Minister Ehud Barak in a tight spot.
Barak has pledged to pull the Labor Party out of the government
coalition when the report is release, which would bring down the
government at a time when the right-wing Likud Party is riding high in
public opinion.
>>The IMF has
lowered its global forecast for economic growth this year,
but stopped short of predicting a global recession. The forecast for
the U.S. is depressing, but for Africa -- not too bad. The
IMF also smirked at the idea of "de-coupling." Meanwhile the
House passed
the President's stimulus plan, now on its way to the Senate.
>>Be careful what you post on YouTube. The White
House slapped
U.S. Ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad on the wrist today for
sitting next to Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki at Davos.
Jonny Goldstein, proprietor of Jonny's Par-tay, a live video webcast program, invited me to be his guest on tomorrow's show. Jonny specializes in new media issues and he asked me to talk a bit about blogging about the UN, as well as some of UN Dispatch's partners such as On Day One and Nothing But Nets. The format looks quite innovative as viewers have the opportunity to write in and ask questions during the show. Tune at 9 pm EST.
A conciliatory political leader in Kenya was shot to death in his driveway last night. The indispensable Jeffrey Gettleman reports from the scene
Mr. Were was an opposition politician who had resisted his party's often belligerent talk. He had married a woman of another ethnic group, built bridges in the slums with his own money and sponsored teenage mothers to go to college. As Kenya slid into chaos this past month after a disputed election, he shuttled between leaders of different ethnic groups and was actually organizing a peace march the night before he died.
"Whoever did this," said Elizabeth Mwangi, a friend, "has killed the dreams of many."
As violence persists in Kenya, the diaspora here in the United States is taking action. Last week, we told you about Ushahidi, the interactive website that uses a google maps mash-up to let users report acts of violence in Kenya. Vuma Kenya, the group behind Ushahidi, is also raising money to help fill the $15 million gap faced by relief agencies such as the Kenya Red Cross Society as they respond to the emerging humanitarian crises.
You can help by donating to the Kenyan Red Cross Society. Readers in the Boston area should also head to The Roxy on Tremont Street, where Vuma Kenya is hosting a benefit concert.
Public health workers in Europe have
found significant resistance to Tamiflu, as the number of
bird flu deaths in Indonesia eclipses
100. Roche, the company that manufactures Tamiflu, has sold
220,000,000 treatments for stockpiles in 85 countries.
>>
Gorbachev has openly criticized
the state of the Russian electoral system, while Putin's chosen
successor, Medvedev, has ruled
out TV debates with his remaining opponents. The Kremlin also
warned the U.S. and EU that it would
take unidentified measures if Kosovo declares independence.
>>
The worst snowstorm in a half century has
paralyzed large swaths of China as many are travelling for
the Lunar New Year celebration. Twenty
four have died, and as many of 600,000 train passengers are
stranded in Guangzhou.
>>
An opposition MP, Melitus Were, was
killed yesterday, sparking yet another wave of violence
through a Nairobi slum. Fighting continued in the Rift Valley.
Reports suggest that helicopters
firing rubber bullets, made an attempt to curb attacking
Kikuyu in Naivasha.
The UN marked Holocaust remembrance day yesterday. From the UN News Center
As the global community today marked the third International Day in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the occasion should serve to honour the victims and educate future generations.
In a message on the Day, the Secretary-General said it is not enough to remember, honour and grieve for the dead. "As we do, we must also educate, nurture and care for the living."
Then, in a not so subtle swipe at the leader of a member state, Ban added.
"To those who claim that the Holocaust never happened, or has been exaggerated, we respond by reiterating our determination to honour the memory of every innocent man, woman and child murdered at the hands of the Nazis and their accomplices."
Obama won the S.C. democratic primary, and today he picks up a
key endorsement.
President Bush delivers
his final State of the Union tonight.
And Bono is engaging in iPod
diplomacy.
Top Stories
>>Right-wing ally of ousted PM Thaksin
Shinawatra, Samak Sundaravej, was
elected Prime Minister of Thailand, returning the nation to
civilian rule. As
well as being a former governor, PM Sundaravej was once a popular TV
chef. Some
suspect that his only goal as PM will be to rescind the
five-year political ban on Shinawatra, so that he can then return to
his former position.
>>In what appears to be Kikuyu retribution for previous
violence undertaken by opposition leader Odinga's Luo tribe, gangs
armed with rods and machetes rampaged
through Rift Valley towns over the weekend, leaving up to 70 dead.
In Naivasha, the home of Kenya's flower industry, eight were
burned alive locked inside a house. In a continuing effort to
stem the violence, former Secretary General Kofi Annan met
with opposition leader Odinga.
>>As Russia completed the last
of eight uranium shipments for Iran's Bushehr nuclear
reactor, the Kremlin has barred
Michael Kasyanov, the last liberal opponent of Dmitri Medvedev, from
the presidential election, claiming that a significant portion of the
signatures he needed to register his candidacy were faked.
>>Former Indonesian dictator Suharto died
yesterday after a protracted illness that left the country split on
whether he was 'father of the nation' or a 'criminal.'
>>Representatives from more than 100 nations metin
Bali at a UN anti-corruption conference to develop new ways to stem the
flow of billions of dollars taken by corrupt governments from their
people.
Quotes of the Day
"There will be no celebration. I will continue with my normal
life." -New Thai PM Samak
Sundaravej "We have moved out to revenge the deaths of
our brothers and sisters who have been killed, and nothing will stop
us," -Anthony Mwangi, Kikuyu
involved in the bloodshed over the weekend
On UN Plaza this week, Scott Paul of The Washington Note and Citizens for Global Solutions explains why the US Senate should ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Click here to tell your senator to support ratification.
It is easy to get bogged down in the details of today's New York Times piece on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearing on alleged improprieties involving the United Nations Development Program's (UNDP) operations in North Korea. The basic story is this: Last year, the United States Mission to the UN accused the UNDP of channeling millions of dollars to the regime of Kim Jong Il. Amidst these allegations, the UNDP, which coordinates development and aid assistance across UN agencies, suspended its operations.
At the time, news outfits predisposed to bashing the United Nations, notably Wall Street Journal's editorial page, decided that this was the next Oil for Food scandal. In a January 19, 2007 op-ed, Melanie Kirkpatrick "broke" the story by obtaining a letter to the UNDP from an official at the US-UN mission, Ambassador Mark Wallace, that detailed the allegations. Kirkpatrick alleged that hundreds of millions of UN development dollars may have been diverted to the coffers of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. The WSJ promptly branded this "Cash for Kim" scandal.
Ambassador Mark Wallace subsequently said that the amount of money alleged to have illegally gone from the UNDP to North Korea was somewhere in the $2-3 million range and was used by Kim Jong Il to purchase weaponry and real estate abroad. To be sure, this is a far cry from the hundreds of millions of dollars floated by the Wall Street Journal. Still, it is not an insignificant sum, and rightly deserved to be investigated.
The senate subcommittee did its due diligence. And what did Senate investigators find? Well, mostly that the initial allegations were baseless. From the New York Times:
At the hearing the chairman, Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, pressed Mr. Wallace repeatedly to say whether, with what he knew now, he could still make the same charges he had made last year.
Mr. Wallace said that he did not know the specific amounts of money involved because of the difficulty of tracking transactions in North Korea, and added that they could be even higher than he had estimated.
In an interview outside the hearing room, Mr. Levin expressed frustration at the answer. "I gave him a chance on at least three occasions to acknowledge that some of the points that he made back in May were inaccurate at the time, perhaps based on information that he interpreted, but that nonetheless, he could not make those statements now," Mr. Levin said.
"That doesn't mean he lied," Mr. Levin added. "It does mean that he said things at the time that he now knows are not accurate."
The real scandal here is that editorialists with an axe to grind at the Wall Street Journal could turn this nonsense into a "scandal" in the first place.