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The Sun-Sentinel
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sns-ap-saddam,0,5157119.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines
Saddam Hanged for War Crimes in Iraq
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA
Associated Press Writers
December 30, 2006, 9:06 AM EST
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Saddam Hussein struggled briefly after American militaryguards handed him over to Iraqi executioners. But as his final momentsapproached, he grew calm.
He clutched a Quran as he was led to the gallows, and in one final moment ofdefiance, refused to have a hood pulled over his head before facing the samefate he was accused of inflicting on countless thousands during aquarter-century of ruthless power.
A man whose testimony helped lead to Saddam's conviction and executionbefore sunrise said he was shown the body because "everybody wanted to makesure that he was really executed."
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/29/AR2006122901066_pf.html
We Can't Ignore Iraq's Refugees
By Edward M. Kennedy
Saturday, December 30, 2006; A21
With the nation still at war in Iraq, each of us is deeply grateful to thebrave men and women in our armed forces who celebrated the holidays thisyear with half their hearts at home and half in Iraq. But this yearespecially it is essential that we also reflect on another human cost of thewar -- the hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and childrenwho have fled their homes and often their country to escape the violence ofa nation increasingly at war with itself.
The refugees are witnesses to the cruelty that stains our age, and theycannot be overlooked. America bears heavy responsibility for their plight.We have a clear obligation to stop ignoring it and help chart a sensiblecourse to ease the refugee crisis. Time is not on our side. We must actquickly and effectively.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/29/AR2006122901220_pf.html
Trounced at Polls, Kansas GOP Is Still Plagued by Infighting
Party Puts Ousted Official In His Opponent's Old Post
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 30, 2006; A02
CHICAGO, Dec. 29 -- Phill Kline is not one to slink away -- and theideological wars inside the Kansas Republican Party show no sign of ending.
The fiercely antiabortion Republican attorney general in Kansas lost hisreelection bid in November when moderate Republicans voted in droves forPaul Morrison, a longtime Johnson County district attorney who became aDemocrat in hopes of vanquishing Kline.
Statewide, Kline got barely 4 in 10 votes. In Johnson County, the state'smost populous county, his loss was more dramatic. That made it especiallyshocking after the election when Republican precinct leaders in the countychose Kline to finish the final two years of Morrison's term as prosecutor.
Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D), a vocal Kline foe, refused to sign hisnomination papers, a ceremonial task, lambasting a "small narrow group ofpartisan political operatives" for choosing him. At the Westside FamilyChurch in Lenexa, after precinct leaders backed Kline over a Morrison aide316 to 291, Republicans showed just how divided they are.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/29/AR2006122900142.html
Saddam Hussein Is Put to Death
Former Iraqi President Hanged Before Dawn in Baghdad to Divided Reaction
By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 30, 2006; A01
BAGHDAD, Dec. 30 -- Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was hanged in thepredawn hours of Saturday for crimes against humanity in the mass murder ofShiite men and boys in the 1980s, sent to the gallows by a government backedby the United States and led by Shiite Muslims who had been oppressed duringhis rule, Iraqi and American officials said.
In the early morning, Hussein, 69, was escorted from his U.S. militaryprison cell at Camp Cropper, near the Baghdad airport, and handed over toIraqi officials. He was executed on the day Sunni Muslims, of which he wasone, were to begin celebrating the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha.
Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser, described on statetelevision Hussein's last moments. The execution took place in theheadquarters of Hussein's former military intelligence service in Baghdad'sKadhimiyah neighborhood.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/30/world/middleeast/30hussein.html?ei=5094&en=adda570db73a7e34&hp=&ex=1167541200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
December 30, 2006
Dictator Who Ruled Iraq With Violence Is Hanged for Crimes Against Humanity
By MARC SANTORA, JAMES GLANZ and SABRINA TAVERNISE
BAGHDAD, Saturday, Dec. 30 - Saddam Hussein, the dictator who led Iraqthrough three decades of brutality, war and bombast before American forceschased him from his capital city and captured him in a filthy pit near hishometown was hanged just before dawn Saturday during the morning call toprayer.
The final stages for Mr. Hussein, 69, came with terrible swiftness after helost the appeal, five days ago, of his death sentence for the killings of148 men and boys in the northern town of Dujail in 1982. He had received thesentence less than two months before from a special court set up to judgehis reign as the almost unchallenged dictator of Iraq.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/30/science/earth/30ice.html?pagewanted=print
December 30, 2006
Arctic Ice Shelf Broke Off Canadian Island
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
A 25-square-mile shelf of floating ice that jutted into the Arctic Ocean for3,000 years from Canada's northernmost shore broke away abruptly in thesummer of 2005, apparently freed by sharply warming temperatures andjostling wind and waves, scientists said yesterday.
The Ayles ice shelf, as the ancient 100-foot-thick slab was called, driftedout of a fjord along the north coast of Ellesmere Island when the jumbledsheath of floating sea ice that tended to press against the coast there evenin summers was replaced by open waters because of the warming, thescientists said.
The change was first noticed by Laurie Weir of the Canadian Ice Service asshe examined satellite images taken of Ellesmere and surrounding ice on andafter Aug. 13, 2005. In less than an hour, around midday that day, a broadcrack opened and the ice shelf was on its way out to sea.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/30/opinion/30sat1.html?pagewanted=print
December 30, 2006
Editorial
Sex Offenders in Exile
Of all the places that sexual predators could end up after prison, the worstis out of sight, away from the scrutiny and treatment that could preventthem from committing new crimes. But communities around the country aretaking that risk, with zoning laws that banish pedophiles to the literaledges of society.
There is a powerful and wholly understandable impulse behind laws thatforbid sex offenders to live within certain distances of schools, day carecenters and other places that children gather. Scores of states andmunicipalities have created such buffer zones, then continued adding layerupon layer to the enforcement blanket.
This has placed a heavy burden on law enforcement agencies, which alreadymust struggle to meet exacting federal and state requirements forregistering and monitoring the ever-growing population of released sexoffenders, many of whom must be tracked for life. Lawmakers have shown nohesitation in piling on the administrative load, but frequently are lessquick to pay foradditionalpeople to do the work.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Edwards-2008.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
December 30, 2006
Edwards Wraps Up Early Campaign Blitz
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:00 a.m. ET
RENO, Nev. (AP) -- In the three-day blitz launching his 2008 presidentialcampaign, John Edwards has prodded enthusiastic crowds to get active.
''We cannot stay at home and wait for the next election. The power is notwith the politicians in Washington, the power is with you,'' he told nearly1,000 people gathered in the convention hall of a Reno casino Friday.
Still in the first blush of presidential courtship, Nevada Democratswelcomed the former North Carolina senator and Democratic vice presidentialcandidate with a standing-room-only crowd and pointed questions about thedeficit, immigration and the war in Iraq.
Reno was the fourth stop on Edwards' six-state tour announcing his secondbid for the Democratic presidential nomination. His next stop Saturday wasBrookland Baptist Church in Columbia, S.C., one of the largest blackchurches in the state. He was wrapping up his tour Saturday evening with a arally in Chapel Hill, N.C.
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The Advocate
http://advocate.com/print_article_ektid40734.asp
Senate control still with Democrats as Johnson recovers
South Dakota Democratic senator Tim Johnson (pictured) won't be present asthe new Congress convenes next week, but he is continuing to improve afterundergoing emergency surgery to repair a brain hemorrhage.
Julianne Fisher, a spokeswoman for South Dakota Democratic senator TimJohnson, said Johnson won't be present in the first days of the new Congressnext week but that he is continuing to improve two weeks after he hademergency surgery to repair a brain hemorrhage that has left him in criticalcondition. Johnson, who turned 60 on Thursday, is responsive to directionsfrom his wife but has not yet spoken, Fisher said, adding that it's tooearly to tell how long recovery will take.
The senator's sudden illness raised questions about the Democrats' one-votemajority in the upcoming Senate session. South Dakota's Republican governor,Mike Rounds, would appoint a replacement if Johnson's seat were vacated byhis death or resignation.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/30/opinion/30karim.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
December 30, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
Justice, but No Reckoning
By NAJMALDIN KARIM
Washington
MY personal battle with Saddam Hussein - which began in 1972 when Iabandoned my medical career in Mosul, Iraq, and joined the Kurdish armedresistance - is at an end. To execute such a criminal, a man who reveled inhis atrocities, is an act of justice.
The only issue for me is the timing - executing him now is both too late andtoo early. Too late, because had Saddam Hussein been removed from the scenemany years ago, many lives would have been saved.
Killing Saddam now, however, for ordering the massacre at Dujail in 1982,means that he will not face justice for his greatest crimes: the so-calledAnfal campaign against the Kurds in the late 1980s, the genocidal assault onthe Marsh Arabs in the 1990s, and the slaughtering of the Shiite Arabs andKurds who rose up against him, with American encouragement, in 1991.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/30/AR2006123000254_pf.html
Edwards Wraps Up Early Campaign Blitz
By KATHLEEN HENNESSEY
The Associated Press
Saturday, December 30, 2006; 3:00 AM
RENO, Nev. -- In the three-day blitz launching his 2008 presidentialcampaign, John Edwards has prodded enthusiastic crowds to get active.
"We cannot stay at home and wait for the next election. The power is notwith the politicians in Washington, the power is with you," he told nearly1,000 people gathered in the convention hall of a Reno casino Friday.
Still in the first blush of presidential courtship, Nevada Democratswelcomed the former North Carolina senator and Democratic vice presidentialcandidate with a standing-room-only crowd and pointed questions about thedeficit, immigration and the war in Iraq.
Reno was the fourth stop on Edwards' six-state tour announcing his secondbid for the Democratic presidential nomination. His next stop Saturday wasBrookland Baptist Church in Columbia, S.C., one of the largest blackchurches in the state. He was wrapping up his tour Saturday evening with a arally in Chapel Hill, N.C.
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The Washington Post
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/needtoknow/2006/12/china_colonizing_africa.html
Panelist's View
China Colonizing Africa?
William Gumede - Is China becoming Africa's new colonizer? In what isreminiscent of a new scramble for Africa, China has rushed to plant its flagon the continent, offering soft credit, bricks and mortar investment andpromising non-interference in local politics. China's political clout inAfrica has never been greater.
But is this all too good to be true? In November, China hosted an Africasummit in Beijing attended by 50 African leaders, the biggest showcase ofChina's new foreign policy shift towards the developing world, to expand itspolitical reach and to secure raw materials to feed its rapidly growingeconomy. Beijing offered Africa US$3bn in preferential loans and US$2bn inexport credits over the next three years. China envisaged annual trade withAfrica to reach $100bn by 2010. Whereas Western nations such as the US,France and UK have year-on-year slashed development aid, China promised todouble aid by 2009. Most of the Chinese aid to Africa is tied to businessdeals. Nevertheless, China has offered aid without insisting on onerousconditions as Western donors do. This is sweet music to African nations, whofor long now have protested the hypocritical insistence by Western countriesthat they must open their markets, while they (Western nations) heavilysubsidize their own agriculture sectors and maintain prohibitively hightariff barriers.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/29/AR2006122901354_pf.html
The Status Quo Is Rejected
By Kevin Eckstrom
Religion News Service
Saturday, December 30, 2006; B07
Elections, the late columnist Franklin P. Adams once said, "are won by menand women chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than forsomebody."
And whatever Americans were voting for in 2006, it seems clear that whatthey were voting against was the status quo. Episcopalians, for one, decidedto give a woman a shot and elected their first female leader, PresidingBishop Katharine Jefferts Schori. U.S. Muslims turned to Ingrid Mattson asthe first woman to lead the Islamic Society of North America. SouthernBaptists, dissatisfied with the old guard, chose a relative unknown, FrankPage, to lead the nation's largest Protestant denomination.
In church basements, school gymnasiums and fire stations across the country,Americans in November registered their frustration at the voting booth andgave control of Capitol Hill to the Democrats, making 2006 a year whenvotes -- sacred and secular -- became the year's biggest religion newsstory.
After years of vowing to "get religion," Democrats saw modest gains amongreligiously minded voters after a concerted effort to cast their policiesthrough a moral lens. The party gained ground among Catholics, weeklyworship attenders and those who rarely or never attend worship services.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/30/opinion/30sat3.html?pagewanted=print
December 30, 2006
Editorial
Dealing With Congressman Inc.
As the Democrats regain power in Congress next week they would be wise tolook to one of their own - Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania - forironic inspiration in enacting the ethics reforms they promised voters. Evenin the minority, Mr. Murtha made himself a legend at mastering the same quidpro quo culture that Democrats denounced in running against the Republicans'manipulations of Washington's money trough. His deliverance of masses ofpork to favored campaign donors and lobbyists has been laid bare in a reportby The Washington Post, detailing the sort of classic money churn thathelped drive the Republicans from power.
It began with Mr. Murtha's securing $500,000 in federal start-up money for anonprofit agency created by a staff member who eventually left to run theagency and, in turn, lobby his old boss. The nonprofit, with a goal offinding jobs for the disabled, soon became a magnet for Murtha-friendlylobbyists, contractors and other insiders. They became members of its boardand raised money for the cause. In the process, they reaped millions infederal contracts with the congressman's help. And, needless to say, theyclosed the loop with regular donations to Murtha campaign kitties.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/29/AR2006122900253_pf.html
Apple Admits Wrongdoing But Rallies Around Leader
By Alan Sipress and Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, December 30, 2006; A01
Apple Computer disclosed yesterday that it had falsified approval of 7.5million stock options for its chief executive and innovative co-founder,Steve Jobs, raising new questions about the role he may have played in ascandal that has swirled around the dynamic technology company for months.
Apple said in a pair of overdue earnings filings to the Securities andExchange Commission that it had recorded a fictitious meeting at whichJobs's options were ratified and that he may have recommended the dates forsome of the stock options issued to company employees. The company repeatedyesterday that Jobs did not benefit from the options.
Apple's board, which includes former vice president Al Gore, gave Jobs itsfull support. "The board of directors is confident that the Company hascorrected the problems that led to the restatement, and it has completeconfidence in Steve Jobs and the senior management team," said the statementby Gore and Jerome York, who heads Apple's audit and finance committee.
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The New York Times
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/12/30/opinion/30patterson.html?pagewanted=print
December 30, 2006
Guest Columnist
The Last Race Problem
By ORLANDO PATTERSON
When W. E. B. DuBois, the patrician black leader, predicted in 1903 that theproblem of the 20th century would be the color line, he had in mind anethno-racial problem with a dual character. One side was the near completeexclusion of African-Americans and other minorities from the upper echelonsand leadership of American society, public life and national identity. Theother was the segregation of blacks from the social, communal and intimatecultural life of white Americans.
America's resolution of the public side of the color line would have amazedDuBois. The nation stands today as a global model in the sophistication andenforcement of its civil rights laws, the diversity of its elite, theparticipation of blacks and other minorities in its great corporations andits public cultural life, and in the embrace of blacks as an integral partof the nation and what it means to be an American.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/30/world/middleeast/30assess.html?pagewanted=print
December 30, 2006
News Analysis
Joy of Capture Muted at the End
By JEFF ZELENY
CRAWFORD, Tex., Dec. 29 - The capture of Saddam Hussein three years ago wasa jubilant moment for the White House, hailed by President Bush in atelevised address from the Cabinet Room. The execution of Mr. Hussein,though, seemed hardly to inspire the same sentiment.
Before the hanging was carried out in Baghdad, Mr. Bush went to sleep hereat his ranch and was not roused when the news came. In a statement writtenin advance, the president said the execution would not end the violence inIraq.
After Mr. Hussein was arrested Dec. 13, 2003, he gradually faded from view,save for his courtroom outbursts and writings from prison. The growing chaosand violence in Iraq has steadily overshadowed the torturous rule of Mr.Hussein, who for more than two decades held a unique place in the politicsand psyche of the United States, a symbol of the manifestation of evil inthe Middle East.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/30/opinion/30sat2.html?pagewanted=print
December 30, 2006
Editorial
Obstacles in Turkey's Path
It came as no surprise when the European Union recently suspended some ofits planned membership talks with Turkey. The sticking points pertain to thestrained relations between Turkey and Cyprus, which have long threatened toundermine Turkey's membership bid. What is surprising - and dismaying - isthat the union is treating this as primarily a legal problem. That's adistortion.
Turkey is indeed in violation of European law on the proper treatment ofCyprus. But the problem is mainly political, and of the union's own making.The E.U. blundered when it allowed a divided Cyprus to join the union in2004. Reunification - of Greek Cypriots in the south and Turkish Cypriots inthe north - should have been a precondition. Still, it's widely acknowledgedthat Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots did their utmost to reunite the islandso that both Cyprus and Turkey could peacefully join the E.U. But the GreekCypriots scotched a United Nations reunification plan.
That has left Turkey in an untenable position. Other European leaders shouldbe pressuring the Greek Cypriot leadership to end the impasse and workingwith Turkey to find a solution. Instead, some are using the stalemate as anexcuse to hamstring Turkey's entry.
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