The World
Iran Finds Itself Short of Friends
The international test of wills over Iran 's suspected nuclear weapons ambitions moves into a new phase, with Tehran's radical leadership effectively slapped down by the world's major powers--the United States, Britain, France, Russia, and China--and lesser ones. It remains unclear whether the diplomatic pressure that comes from the 35-nation board of the International Atomic Energy Agency--and the threat of eventual U.N. Security Council sanctions--will be enough to force Iran to back down. Predictably, Tehran raised the ante by threatening to bar spot IAEA inspections, ramp up nuclear enrichment activities, and walk away from the potential Russian compromise--a deal that would supply the fuel for nuclear power on the condition that Iran abandon the enrichment activities that could be used to make bombs. Still, the Bush administration's emphasis on diplomacy over military threats seemed to have at least achieved an initial goal of further isolating Iran. The IAEA plans a report by March 6 assessing evidence of Iran's clandestine nuclear weapons activities.
Popping Up on the World's TV Screens
For days after the January 13 U.S. airstrike in Pakistan 's badlands, meant to take out Osama bin Laden's No.2 man, the question was well, did they or didn't they? Last week, the answer came in the form of a videotape, in which Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's second-in-command, taunted President Bush in a variation on Where's Waldo? for having missed the target. In the videotape, aired on the al Jazeera TV network, Zawahiri called Bush a "failure" in the war on terrorism and a "butcher" and invited him to convert to Islam. The airstrike killed four al Qaeda figures and 13 villagers. Terrorism experts were struck by how quickly Zawahiri's tape surfaced, since such things usually must pass through many hands to cover the tracks. The speedy response suggested he was not in hiding with bin Laden, who is thought to be in a more remote location.
A Titanic Tragedy on the Red Sea
Until last Friday, the 35-year-old Egyptian ship Al-Salaam Boccaccio 98 hardly seemed likely to be mentioned in the same breath as the tragically famed British ocean liner Titanic. Some 1,400 people, mostly poor Egyptian workers returning from Saudi Arabia, packed aboard the aged ferry for the 120-mile night passage across the Red Sea. Shortly after midnight, disaster struck. The ship sank during bad weather, taking with it more than 1,000 of the passengers--a horrific toll that puts it in a class with the Titanic's 1,500 deaths.
Taking a Little off the Top
In his State of the Union address last week, President Bush said, "Our coalition has learned from our experience in Iraq ... and changed our approach to reconstruction." None too soon, judging from a recent audit of the thousands of reconstruction contracts awarded in Iraq that found programs riddled with ineptitude, mismanagement, and graft. The 9,000 contracts under review by a contracting office that reports to the U.S. Army are worth some $5.8 billion in Iraqi money and cover a range of reconstruction jobs, from providing hand radios to building hospitals.The spending of U.S. reconstruction dollars has also come under scrutiny, as a growing share of money approved by Congress for rebuilding has been diverted into establishing Iraqi security forces. The special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction said in a report that only about a third of the planned water and sewage projects and two thirds of the electricity projects will be completed. Stuart Bowen asked for more money, saying that the $18.4 billion originally awarded by Congress was not going to be enough.
Memoirs of a Controversy
Now that A Million Little Pieces author James Frey has had his 15 minutes of fame, another memoir's accuracy controversy is stirring. The government of China banned the showing of the Steven Spielberg-produced film Memoirs of a Geisha because, well, famous Chinese film stars are cast as Japanese geishas. With already rocky Sino-Japanese relations, authorities reportedly are concerned that the film could bring back memories of the Chinese "comfort women "forced to work in Japanese military brothels during World War II. Ironically, popular Chinese stars Ziyi Zhang, of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Gong Li were chosen in part to boost the film's marketability in China. It's a setback for Sony Pictures, which planned to distribute the Columbia Pictures film, but pirated DVDs already are on the streets of China's cities for 20 yuan, or $2.50.
With Ilana Ozernoy and Associated Press
This story appears in the February 13, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.