The World
A Real Takedown and Two Phantoms
The name, Muharib Abdul-Latif al-Jubouri, may not be familiar, but his alleged activities certainly are. U.S. officials linked al-Jubouri, propaganda chief of al Qaeda in Iraq, to the kidnapping of Christian Science Monitor correspondent Jill Carroll and the abduction-murder of Virginia peace activist Tom Fox, among other misdeeds. U.S. military officials reported that al-Jubouri was killed last week north of Baghdad.
That news capped several days of confusion as Iraqi authorities claimed to have killed the al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the rumored Islamic State leader Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, or both. U.S. officials expressed puzzlement about those reports and questioned whether al-Baghdadi "even exists." Meanwhile, the U.S. military released al-Jubouri's body to his tribe for burial, but it was subsequently seized twice by Iraqi forces before finally being returned to the tribe.
A Clash of Political Visions in Turkey
It wasn't a military coup, but the decision of Turkey's supreme court to annul parliament's first round of voting for president was a strong test of the nation's ongoing effort to reconcile democracy with Islam.
Picked as the compromise candidate from the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), Abdullah Gul, the current foreign minister, was thought to be less of a threat to Turkey's secular establishment than the party's highly popular prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. As head of the mildly Islamist party, Erdogan has compiled an impressive record of clean government, steady economic growth, and respect for separation of mosque and state.
But to many defenders of Ataturk's secularist legacy, including some of Turkey's top generals, Erdogan is a fundamentalist in moderate's clothing, not least because his wife wears a Muslim head scarf. As it turns out, so does Gul's. And when Gul received 357 votes in the first round of parliament voting-10 short of the two thirds required for an outright victory-it became clear that Gul was not enough of a compromise. The opposition Republican People's Party successfully challenged the results on grounds of an insufficient quorum, while the military leadership made vague threats to intervene to bar a Gul presidency.
The next step is to come with national elections July 22, which are expected to strengthen the AKP and could again put it in conflict with Turkey's secular establishment.
A Decade On, It's Bye-Bye, Blair
Ten years after storming into 10 Downing Street, propelled by his Labor Party's landslide victory, British Prime Minister Tony Blair is bowing out. He's announcing this week his imminent resignation and says that Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer, will be the new premier within weeks. Blair leaves office a much less popular figure in Britain than the day he took over, mainly because of the highly unpopular Iraq war.
That point was driven home last week when Labor took a drubbing in nationwide municipal elections that were seen as a referendum on Blair. Still, he's looking to exit on a high note: His statement will come a day after the Northern Ireland Assembly reconvenes, thanks to a settlement he helped broker. Beyond peace in Ulster, Blair can point to a number of successes, including constitutional reform, an improved and better-funded National Health Service, and the war to avert genocide in Kosovo. He's also the first Labor leader to win three consecutive general elections.
Indeed, a new poll found that 61 percent of Britons think that, overall, he did a good job as prime minister. Nevertheless, 69 percent also said the Iraq war will be Blair's legacy. Those results show an astute public, says Rodney Barker, a government professor at the London School of Economics. "In many ways, he's been the most successful prime minister since the beginning of the last century ... and then came Iraq and total disaster."
More to a Better Life Than Afterlife
File this under interesting statistics: Mexico has lost more people to migration to the United States than to death since 2000, according to the country's demographics agency. An average of 577,000 people up and moved to the United States annually during the 2000-2005 period, while 495,000 people a year died in Mexico. The agency reports that about 11 million Mexicans are living, legally or not, in the United States.
With Jay Tolson, Thomas K. Grose and Associated Press
This story appears in the May 14, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.