The World
A New Attack of the Killer Waves
Once again, the sea rose up and swept away those living along the coast of Indonesia. This time, a tsunami--triggered by a magnitude-7.7 undersea earthquake 150 miles out in the Indian Ocean--struck along a 110-mile stretch of Java island's coastline. The waves, over 6 feet high, reached beyond 200 yards inland to destroy homes, restaurants, and hotels. The death toll: 531, with more than 270 missing. Indonesia's president vowed to have a nationwide tsunami warning system running by mid-2008, months ahead of schedule. Indonesia's island of Sumatra was hardest hit by the 2004 tsunami that killed at least 216,000 people on a dozen Indian Ocean islands.
In Mexico, It's Not Over Till It's Over
Former Mexico City Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador turned out more than 300,000 supporters--a crowd that overflowed the capital's central plaza--demanding a recount of Mexico's disputed presidential election. But the man who came out ahead by just 244,000 votes, conservative Felipe Calderón, said last week that he has begun work on forming his new government to take over on December 1. Calderón, of the pro-business National Action Party, is pushing back in the face of the popu-list sentiment stirred by leftist López Obrador, who has charged electoral fraud. The Federal Electoral Tribunal must decide on López Obrador's appeals by August 31 and declare a president-elect by September 6.
Trying Democracy in a Troubled Land
After suffering through more than four decades of coups, wars, and corrupt military rule since independence from Belgium's colonial rule, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is due to hold democratic elections July 30. Over 25 million of the African nation's 60 million people have registered to vote in a major U.N.-backed logistical operation in a country the size of western Europe. Ballot boxes will be transported to some 50,000 polling stations by airplane, helicopter, truck, and even dugout canoe. Nearly three dozen candidates are vying for the presidency and more than 9,000 for the 500-seat parliament in elections for a government to replace a transitional administration that took over following the country's 1998-2003 civil war. The presidential front-runner: current President Joseph Kabila, 35, who is credited with ending much of the fighting in a deal that gave rebels positions in the interim government. Aid groups estimate the civil war left some 4 million Congolese dead, many as a result of disease or hunger.
Still More Trouble Is Facing Somalia
Will this become Africa's next war? Several hundred troops from Ethiopia rolled into neighboring Somalia to protect that country's powerless, U.N.-backed transitional government from imminent attack by the radical Islamist militias that have already defeated local warlords. Militia leaders are threatening to declare a jihad unless the Ethiopians withdraw.
Look Who's Visiting the Pentagon
From the start, the Bush administration has been torn about whether to regard China as a friend or a foe. While those seeking to build on trade ties have mostly had the upper hand, the hawks have nervously eyed what they regard as China's worrisome, and potentially threatening, military modernization and its occasional saber rattling toward Taiwan. So what to make of last week's visit to the Pentagon by Gen. Guo Boxiong, China's most senior military officer, for talks with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld? Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said Guo's visit was affirmation of a consensus reached in recent high-level contacts--including Rumsfeld's visit to Beijing last October--that the two nations should have more military-to-military exchanges and discussions. These days, too, the administration is counting on China's friendly help with one of its most vexing security problems, reining in North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.
In Europe's Cities, How Hot Was It?
It was so hot in Britain that judges doffed their traditional wigs in court, so hot that people were urged to wear shorts to work, so hot that the unflinching guards at Buckingham Palace were cut back to one-hour shifts. In a nation used to July temperatures in the 70s, the mercury approached 100, breaking records. It was stifling across western Europe, where air conditioning remains more the exception than the rule. The Netherlands canceled its four-day Nijmegen March, the world's largest walking event, after two participants died in the upper-90s conditions and some 300 people became ill. There were heat-related deaths reported in Spain and France, which put into effect emergency plans developed after nearly 15,000 people, many of them elderly, died from heat-related causes in a 2003 heat wave.
With Associated Press
This story appears in the July 31, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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