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Man in court over N. Ireland police killing

Stephen Carroll's coffin is carried from St Therese's chapel in Banbridge, Northern Ireland, on March 13.
A 37-year-old man was due in court Wednesday morning outside Belfast, Northern Ireland, charged with the murder of a police officer two weeks ago.

The man, whose name was not released, was scheduled to appear at Lisburn Magistrates Court outside Belfast at 10:30 a.m. (6:30 a.m. ET), the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said. The man is also charged with possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life, the PSNI said. Three others — two men and a woman — remain in custody in connection with the shooting, police said. A 17-year-old male, appeared in court Tuesday charged with Carroll’s murder, possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life, belonging to a proscribed organization — namely the Republican splinter group, the Continuity IRA — and collecting information likely to be of use to terrorists, police said.

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Constable Stephen Carroll was killed two weeks ago in County Armagh as he responded to a call in the town of Craigavon. News reports said he was shot in the back of the head. The Continuity IRA, which does not accept the Good Friday peace accord, claimed responsibility for Carroll’s killing. The shooting happened two days after the murder of two soldiers at a base in Massereene, in County Antrim. It was the first fatal attack on British troops in the province for more than 12 years.

The shooting sparked fears of a return to the sectarian violence that Northern Ireland suffered until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, a period known as The Troubles. Another militant splinter group, the Real IRA, reportedly claimed it had carried out the attack on the soldiers.

2-Min. Bio: Accused Nazi John Demjanjuk

It took a special brand of cruelty to stand out amid the horrors of the Holocaust, but “Ivan the Terrible” was no ordinary sadist. As a Nazi guard, Ivan earned his sobriquet by ushering thousands of prisoners — sometimes hacking them with a sword as they passed — into the gas chambers at Poland’s Treblinka death camp. After the war, he vanished. Decades later, in the late 1970s, U.S. authorities fingered a suspect: John Demjanjuk, a retired auto worker residing in a Cleveland suburb.

Thus began Demjanjuk’s tangled journey toward justice—or, as political commentator Pat Buchanan put it, through a series of Salem witch trials. During the past three decades Demjanjuk, who has long maintained his innocence, became just the second Holocaust war criminal sentenced to death by the state of Israel. Released when exculpatory evidence withheld at his trial emerged, he has had his U.S. citizenship revoked, then reinstated. Earlier this month, a Munich court charged Demjanjuk with 29,000 counts of acting as an accessory to murder. The allegations stem not from Treblinka, but from his alleged role as a guard at Sobibor, yet another Nazi death camp. On March 24, the U.S. moved to deport the ailing Demjanjuk, 88.

Fast Facts:

• A native Ukrainian, John Demjanjuk has said he was conscripted into the Red Army in 1940 and captured by the Nazis in 1942. The following three years are up for debate. Prosecutors say he volunteered for the German SS and was trained as a camp guard. Substantial evidence places Demjanjuk at Nazi camps.

• After living in Bavaria immediately following World War II, Demjanjuk emigrated to the United States and settled in Cleveland. He toiled unremarkably until 1977, when evidence that he may have served as a Nazi guard sparked an investigation into his past. In 1981, an Ohio court ruled Demjanjuk was indeed an escaped Nazi war criminal and stripped him of his citizenship. Israeli police, acting on a tip from U.S. immigration officials, found several Treblinka survivors who identified Demjanjuk as the notorious “Ivan the Terrible.”

• In 1986 Demjanjuk was extradited to Israel. Two years later, after a much-heralded trial that featured testimony from five Treblinka survivors, he was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging.

• Demjanjuk’s case was reopened in 1993, after Israeli courts unveiled testimony from 37 former guards and laborers at Treblinka that suggested Demjanjuk was not their man. The aggregated statements — which had been withheld at trials — instead implicated another Ukrainian, Ivan Marchenko. The Israeli Supreme Court found that while Demjanjuk had served as a guard at three concentration camps, he was not, in fact, the infamous Nazi. His conviction and death sentence were vacated.

• Folllowing his release, Demjanjuk returned to the U.S., where his citizenship was restored in 1998. The following year, new evidence spurred the U.S. Justice Departmant to rekindle the case.

• He has since fought an ongoing battle against U.S. authorities seeking to deport him. In 2005, an immigration court ruled that he could be sent to Germany, Poland or his native Ukraine, and last May, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case. The charges brought against him in Germany this month were triggered by recently obtained lists of Jews transported to Sobibor during Demjanjuk’s alleged tenure at the camp in 1943.

Quotes about:

• “The matter is closed, but not complete.”
—From the Israel Supreme Court’s 1993 ruling, which held that sufficient proof did not exist to find that Demjanjuk was “Ivan the Terrible.”

• “God help us. We are the Salem judges of our own time.”
—Pat Buchanan, arguing Demjanjuk’s 1988 conviction in Israel in 1988 was the result of a witch hunt.

• “Ivan the Terrible walked out a free man.”
— Efraim Zuroff, director of the Israeli office of the Simon Wiesenthal Institute, speaking after Demjanjuk’s 1993 release.

• “He has never hurt anyone — before, during or after the war. He is a good person, as his family, grandchildren, friends and neighbors have always maintained.” — John Demjanjuk Jr., son of the accused, after Germany filed charges against his father earlier this month.

• “To show the world that we have changed and that it’s not going to happen again.”
— Susanne Ehard, a 20-year-old German, on why Germany has sought Demjanjuk’s extradition.

Quotes by:

• “Please do not put the noose around my neck for the deeds of others.”
—Entry in People of the Holocaust, 1998 edition

• “I am an innocent man. I’ll appeal, and I’m sure that I will win.”
—Maintaining his innocence after being convicted and sentence to death by hanging in 1988.

Read “Ivan the Not-So-Terrible”
Read “The Case of Ivan the Almost-As-Terrible”

President Obama’s ‘Persistent’ Press Conference: Message Accomplished

President Obamas Persistent Press Conference: Message Accomplished

The first rule of the political press conference: You don’t really
have to answer the question, or at least you don’t have to dwell on it. You
can simply say what you came to say. This is even more true when you are a
popular President of the United States. So at the end of an otherwise drab
and detailed jousting with the White House press corps Tuesday over policy
projections and financial problems, Barack Obama seized his opportunity.

The last question was an East Room evergreen: Did the President
have confidence in his ability to forge peace between Israel and the
Palestinians The answer was predictable too. Yes, said Obama, but it would
be hard, and recent elections in Israel had made it harder. But then he
continued on to where he had always intended to go. “If you are persistent, then
these problems can be dealt with,” Obama said. “That whole philosophy of
persistence, by the way, is one that I’m going to be emphasizing again and
again in the months and years to come as long as I’m in this office.”

And then he was off. He would be persistent, he said, about passing a budget
that addressed his concerns about energy, health care and education. He would
be persistent about finding a way to solve the credit crisis, persistent
about finding a way to take on lobbyists and pork spending, and persistent
about finding new ways of working with Iran. “We are going to stay with it
as long as I’m in office,” he promised the American people, reminding them yet again that he has only been in office just over 60 days and is wrestling with problems he “inherited.” “This is a big ocean liner. It’s not a speedboat.”

So the message was delivered — though it was, one must say, a big shift from the
last time Obama messed up the prime-time television schedule for a press
conference. Six weeks ago, he had a different message: The nation was facing
a financial abyss, he explained, and lots had to be done, and fast, to prevent a
prolonged economic catastrophe. Now he had returned to the same format to
say that that the ship was slowly turning and the problems would be solved.
Teachers and police officers were keeping their jobs, he said in his
introduction, reading from a large TV screen. Stimulus tax cuts were finding
their way into paychecks. Mortgage interest rates were at historic lows. A
credit-crunch solution was in the pipeline. “So let’s look towards the
future with a renewed sense of common purpose, a renewed determination, and
most importantly, a renewed confidence that a better day will come,” Obama said.

As is often the case with Obama, his macro message was buffeted by
hard-nosed political tactics just beneath the surface. He made the rather
remarkable claim, for instance, that his budget proposal was “inseparable
from this recovery,” apparently tying his own long-range policy goals on education,
energy and health care to the end of the current recession. He also took
some jabs at his Republican critics, who have mostly been marginalized in
recent weeks by a lack of substantive arguments. “The critics tend to
criticize, but they don’t offer an alternative budget,” he said, sounding
exasperated.

Though he spoke of the cooperation of the world’s nations in addressing the
credit crisis, Obama also applied some pointed pressure on major economic
powers, including nations in Europe and Asia, that have yet to commit to
sizable stimulus programs. “We don’t want a situation in which some
countries are making extraordinary efforts and other countries aren’t, with
the hope that somehow the countries that are making those steps lift
everybody up,” he said.

The President also showed his own ability to play a bit of hardball.
When a reporter raised the issue of Obama’s greatest public-relations
bungle to date — the delayed response to news of impending bonuses at the
insurance giant AIG — Obama made it clear he was not interested in discussing
the matter at length. “I like to know what I’m talking about before I
speak,” he said, explaining the delay in making the information public and expressing outrage. Then he moved on while the reporter, CNN’s Ed Henry, tried without success to get him to elaborate.

The rest of the event mostly covered matters that had already
been handled. He defended his budget in the face of the extraordinary
deficits it would produce under economic projections by the Congressional
Budget Office, projections the White House believes are overly pessimistic. He
described his decision to fund expanded stem-cell research as a difficult
ethical one. He said that aside from some of the understandable elation around his
Inauguration, he did not believe that his race had figured much in
his first 64 days in office.

But all these finer points will not matter in the end. Over the
past week, Obama has barnstormed the nation’s televisions, with repeated
town halls in California, a seat on Jay Leno’s couch, a big 60 Minutes splash on Sunday, and now a prime-time press conference. Even those who eschew politics have most likely seen a clip or two of their President in charge, projecting confidence, explaining
that things will get better. And for the White House, that is the message that matters.

See the top 25 people to blame for the financial crisis.

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Florida: Drywall has material that can emit corrosive gas

Gas emitted from defective drywall corrodes copper wiring, turning it black, some Florida homeowners say.
Strontium sulfide, a material that can emit corrosive gases in moist air, was found at trace levels in testing of Chinese-made drywall, the Florida Department of Health said.

The drywall samples gave off a sulfurous odor when heated, and in at least one case, sulfide gases corroded copper coils in an air conditioner of a Florida home containing Chinese drywall, said the department, which commissioned the study. But more testing is needed to determine whether strontium sulfide was causing the odor and contributing to the corrosion, the department said. And more tests are required to determine whether the drywall poses a threat to human health — a process that probably will take at least several months, state toxicologist Dr. David Krause told reporters Monday. “It’s very hard to predict when we’ll have the answers [relating to possible health hazards]. … We’re moving as quickly as possible,” Krause said. Homeowners’ lawsuits against certain manufacturers and suppliers contend the drywall has caused them to suffer health problems such as headaches and sore throats, and left them facing huge repair expenses. The drywall is alleged to emit sulfur-based gases that smell of rotten eggs and corrode piping and wiring, causing electronics and appliances to fail. The Florida Department of Health said complaints there generally involve homes built between 2004 and 2007, around the time a building boom and post-hurricane reconstruction caused a U.S. drywall shortage and spurred builders to use imports.

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The latest tests did not deal with air quality inside affected homes, and previous third-party testing has “not identified any concentrations of chemicals that are in the homes that are at a level … that would pose a specific health risk,” Krause said. “That isn’t saying we’ve declared it safe,” Krause said. “We are continuing the evaluation and moving forward on a much more in-depth and broad scope of the investigation.” The latest testing, commissioned by the Florida Health Department and conducted by private laboratory Unified Engineering Inc. of Illinois, found that three samples of what the department believes is Chinese-manufactured drywall had “several physical and chemical differences” from a fourth, U.S.-manufactured drywall sample, Krause said. The samples suspected to be from China contained trace levels of strontium sulfide, and the U.S.-made product did not, according to Unified’s report. Strontium sulfide can react in moist air to form hydrogen sulfide — a gas that smells like rotten eggs, according to the Web site of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Hydrogen sulfide is corrosive, according to a Web page of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Exposure to low levels of the gas “may cause irritation to the eyes, nose or throat … [and] may also cause difficulty breathing for some asthmatics,” according to the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Two of the China samples were marked as having been made in China or by a Chinese manufacturer. The other was unmarked, but the department believes it to be Chinese-made because it appears to “have many of the same physical and chemical characteristics” of the other two products, Krause said. The Chinese-made drywall emitted a sulfurous odor when exposed to extreme heat in testing, while the U.S.-made product did not, according to Unified’s report. However, the report doesn’t conclude that the strontium sulfide contributed to the odor. “Because initial tests only detected small quantities of this substance, further tests are necessary to determine if it is the cause of odors and corrosive gases,” Krause said. Unified also found that the outer paper and core of two samples — a piece of Chinese-made drywall and a piece of the U.S.-made drywall — emitted trace levels of hydrogen sulfide and two other volatile, sulfur-containing gases when put into a chamber and exposed to 95 percent humidity. However, because the U.S. sample came from a home that also had Chinese-made drywall, cross-contamination could have occurred. More testing is needed, Krause said. One of the emitted gases was carbon disulfide, Unified’s report said. Breathing it at low levels for long periods “may result in headaches, tiredness, trouble sleeping and slight changes in the nerves,” according to the Web site of ATSDR, which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The emission tests were useful in determining what the drywall may produce, but conclusions cannot be drawn about health risks, Krause said. That’s in part because the concentrations of emissions captured in laboratory testing are not useful to determine what concentrations would be found in the much larger volume of air in homes, he added. “We shouldn’t interpret it for anything at this point,” Krause said. “These are not exposure measurements.” The Unified test results showed that heat and humidity play a key role in getting the drywall to emit the odors. “This may explain why the problem has developed in South Florida first, where hot and humid conditions prevail,” Krause said. A Unified test also showed that sulfide gases in a Florida home that contained Chinese-made drywall were the main reason that an air conditioner’s copper tubing corroded, Krause said. The report did not say whether the gases came from the drywall. Earlier testing by ENVIRON International, a private consulting firm hired by a Florida-based homebuilder, found that certain drywall manufactured in China was emitting sulfur gases capable of ruining copper coils in air-conditioning systems. However, it said it found air samples in the homes showed no indication that health hazards existed. The Consumer Product Safety Commission is “already sending additional experts from headquarters to Florida to further our investigation,” commission spokesman Joe Martyak said Monday.

Woman gives birth on airliner, leaves baby in trash

Baby Grace was born aboard a Pacific Blue flight to New Zealand from Samoa.
Fate, police say, saved baby Grace from being tossed out with the trash.

Were it not for a cleaning lady who chanced upon the newborn waving a feeble arm from a blue trash bag in an airplane bathroom, Grace would have met the fate her mother apparently intended for her, authorities said. On Wednesday, police in New Zealand charged the 29-year-old woman with abandonment and assault — for giving birth to the child on an international flight and then leaving her, without alerting anyone, in a toilet bin amid bloodied paper towels. The woman, whose name was not released, faces up to seven years in prison if convicted. The case has made headlines in the island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The woman is a kiwi fruit picker who was returning from Samoa when she walked off a Pacific Blue flight in Auckland on Thursday, reported the New Zealand Press Association, a cooperative of the country’s newspapers. About 20 minutes later, a cleaning lady discovered the baby in a restroom inside the Boeing 737. Her fellow custodians wrapped the baby in a blanket and handed her to authorities. About the same time, police spotted the mother in the airport, “looking pale and bloodstained” after she said she had mislaid her passport, said TV New Zealand, a CNN affiliate. Su’a William Sio, a Kiwi lawmaker of Samoan descent, said cultural stigma and the shame of bearing a child out of wedlock were two reasons why a mother might abandon her child. “This is mostly derived firstly by fear,” he told the New Zealand Herald newspaper. “Fear that they’ve done something wrong and fear of shame of the ‘unmarried’ mother bringing to the family.” Grace did not suffer significant injuries or long-term damage, police told reporters. She is in the care of government officials who are looking at long-term arrangements that would be best for her.

Indians line up to drive away Nano car

Suraj Suroj and his two sons weave through the streets of Delhi on his motorcycle.
Suraj Suroj uses his motorcycle for all of his family’s transportation needs. In his case, that means transporting himself, his wife and his two sons to and from work and school. Typically, all four of them squeeze onto the motorbike together on the crowded streets of Delhi, India.

“We need more space,” Suroj says with one of his sons sitting in front of him and the other clinging to his back. “We can only travel about 20 kilometers or 25 kilometers, after that we get tired traveling on the scooter.” Never mind the fact that it’s a very dangerous way to travel. The traffic is chaotic, constant, and congested and neither of Suroj’s sons have helmets. Millions of people travel this way in India because helmet laws are not enforced and a two wheeler is the best they can afford. Not any more. Monday, Tata Motors finally released what has become known as the “world’s cheapest car.” With the basic model going for about $2,000, the Tata Nano is being touted as an alternative to motorbikes and scooters. In dramatic fashion, three versions of the Nano were driven onto a dark stage with headlights flashing and invited guests clapping in Mumbai, India. Tata Motors says the Nano will be available for purchase on April 9 but won’t be delivered to customers until July. Watch as Nano is unveiled » The vehicle has received international attention since it was first revealed in January 2008 at an Auto Expo in Delhi. Tata promised it at an incredibly low price. As the economy began to falter last year and the cost of materials started to rise, analysts began to doubt whether Tata could pull it off. Chairman of Tata group, Ratan Tata, answered those critics at the launch. “We made a promise and we’ve kept the promise. We hope this day we will usher in a new form of transport,” Tata said. But the launch of the Nano is months behind schedule. The company ran into trouble when a land dispute sparked angry protests over the building of the Nano plant in the communist stronghold state of West Bengal. Farmers said the land belonged to them. In the end, Ratan Tata decided to stop operations and move to another state which caused a delay and cost Tata Motors millions. But the Nano has finally arrived. Industry experts say the base model is really basic but looks modern, is surprisingly spacious and handles well. “I think it will live up to what has been promised but it will not live up to what some people may imagine,” auto analyst Murad Baig said. “If some people may imagine that this is going to be a golden chariot, no it won’t. But it will be an economical, safe, practical, economical to buy, economical to run and a very cute little car, I must say.”

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At only three meters long, the Nano fits four adults relatively comfortably. Critics point out that the cheapest version of the vehicle comes without air conditioning, airbags or power windows and it only has one side-view mirror. The Nano’s speeds top out at 105 kilometers (65 miles) per hour. Tata says the Nano, which meets Indian environmental standards, has the lowest emissions among cars in its class. But environmentalists are not cheering its arrival. They are worried the Nano will simply add to the number of vehicles already choking the roads. “We are not saying no to Nano. We are saying no to all cars,” said Amanita Roychowdry, a representative of India’s Center for Science and Environment. “What is happening right now is that already when car numbers are exploding in Indian cities what cheap motorization is going to do is going to give that extra push. And that is what worries us. Anything that increases the number of cars on our roads is a bad news.”

No one knows, however, if the Nano will increase numbers or simply replace other cars in its class. For now, the Nano sounds like a fantastic alternative for those families in India who are trying to navigate crowded streets while crammed together on a motorcycle. “We will definitely be able travel farther with a Nano,” motorcycle driver Suraj Suroj said. “Why not We will be able travel comfortably. There will also be more safety.”

YouTube blocked in China

A general screenshot of YouTube, which was blocked in China as of Wednesday.
China has blocked the popular video-sharing Web site YouTube but did not offer a reason for the ban.

Google, which owns YouTube, said it began noticing a decline in traffic from China about noon Monday. By early Wednesday, site users insider China continued to encounter an error message: “Network Timeout. The server at youtube.com is taking too long to respond.” “We do not know the reason for the blockage and we are working as quickly as possible to restore access to our users,” said Scott Rubin, a spokesman for Google, which owns YouTube. It’s not the first time users in China have been unable to access the site. In March 2008, China blocked YouTube during riots in Tibet. At the time, protesters burned vehicles and shops, some advocating independence from China, and others demonstrating against the growing influence of the Han Chinese in the area. The subsequent crackdown left 18 civilians and one police officer dead, according to the Chinese government. Tibet’s self-proclaimed government-in-exile put the death toll from the protests at 140. Many in the country speculated the latest ban may be an attempt to filter access to footage that a Tibetan exile group released. The videos show Tibetans being kicked and beaten, allegedly by Chinese police officers after the riots. “Though there is much footage of the protests taking place throughout Tibet last year that were splashed across the world, the following is rare footage of police beating of protesters, the suffering and death of a captive, and paramilitary presence in Lhasa (the Tibetan capital), which managed to make its way to the outside world,” the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India, said of the videos. Xinhua, China’s state news agency, accused the supporters of Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, of doctoring the video to “deceive the international community.” China, with 298 million Internet users, has routinely blocked access to Web sites it considers politically unacceptable, including the Voice of America and The New York Times. The Chinese government has also censored television broadcasts, including those by the BBC and CNN, during coverage of issues such as its policy in Tibet and Taiwan. The Chinese government did not directly address whether it has blocked YouTube. “China is not afraid of the Internet,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang on Tuesday. “We manage the Internet according to law … to prevent the spread of harmful information.” YouTube, which allows users to upload and share videos, has been banned periodically in other countries as well. Bangladesh, Pakistan, Thailand and Turkey temporarily shut off access to the site after users uploaded content the countries’ governments considered politically embarrassing.

Behind South Africa’s Snub of the Dalai Lama

Behind South Africas Snub of the Dalai Lama

Nobody ought to have been surprised that South Africa chose to heed
China’s concerns and deny a visa to the Dalai Lama — not because of the
South African government’s poor record of responding to human-rights crises
in its own neighborhood, but because of China’s growing diplomatic influence
and assertiveness thanks to its status as the great hope of an ailing world
economy. Regardless of their rhetoric, most governments
make foreign policy decisions less on moral grounds than on
cold-blooded assessments of national interest. And the South African
government said bluntly that it was not in the country’s national interest
to host the Tibetan spiritual leader at a conference that was to discuss
using the soccer World Cup to fight racism.

A government spokesman said that no visa would be issued for the Dalai
Lama to visit South Africa before the soccer tournament, which is to be held next
year in South Africa. “We want the focus to remain on South Africa,” said
Thabo Masebe, spokesman for President Kgalema Motlanthe. “A visit now by
the Dalai Lama would move the focus from South Africa onto issues in Tibet.”
And, of course, there’s the little matter of the Chinese embassy’s warning to the South Africans that the visit would be “inopportune” and
would put bilateral relations at risk.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the longtime antiapartheid campaigner who had
personally invited his fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate to the conference, was
outraged. He condemned the decision as “disgraceful, in line with our
country’s abysmal record at the U.N. Security Council, a total betrayal of
our struggle history,” adding that “we are shamelessly succumbing to Chinese
pressure. I feel deeply distressed and ashamed.” The conference has been
postponed.

But the South African government appears to have concluded that the
outrage of Tutu and other human-rights campaigners is preferable
to the wrath of the country’s major trading partner and foreign investor.
After all, France is still paying a serious diplomatic price for President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to
meet with the Dalai Lama last year. China immediately canceled a planned
summit with the European Union; Premier Wen Jiabao avoided France on a
European tour that was lucrative for local business; and Beijing will again
snub the French leader at the forthcoming G-20 summit. South Africa, with its
high unemployment levels, is in a far more economically vulnerable position
than France is. China has in recent years invested some $6 billion in the
South African economy, which accounts for about 20% of Africa’s booming trade
with China.

It could be argued that because the Dalai Lama had been invited to a
civil-society event, the South African government might have tried to
assuage the Chinese by simply refraining from meeting him in any official
capacity — as the government of German Chancellor Angela Merkel did when
the Tibetan spiritual leader visited Germany last May. Last year’s riots in Tibet, and the fact that this year is the
50th anniversary of the Chinese military’s roll into Tibet and the Dalai
Lama’s flight into exile, have made Beijing move more aggressively to limit
the Dalai Lama’s access to international platforms.

“Regarding the Dalai Lama’s overseas activities, we resolutely oppose
any country’s government having official contact with the Dalai Lama or
enabling or offering a platform for his splittist activities,” Chinese
Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters this week. Although the
Dalai Lama has limited himself to calling for autonomy, Beijing accuses him
of leading a secessionist movement.

While Tutu and other activists admonish the South African government for the
decision, and liken it to the nation’s passivity in the face of President
Robert Mugabe’s violent suppression of democratic opposition in next-door
Zimbabwe, the South African stance is hardly unique. Just this week, the
government of Taiwan — hardly a flunky of Beijing — urged a local
journalists’ organization to cancel a planned Dalai Lama visit to the island, saying the time was not “opportune” for such a visit.

China is not only Africa’s most important economic partner; it is
increasingly the most important economic partner of the major Western
European economies. Its economic role will inevitably boost its diplomatic
influence. It can be argued, of course, that China’s economic ties are
based on self-interest and would not be jeopardized if governments could
find ways of symbolically acknowledging the plight of the Dalai Lama and his
people while giving priority to relations with China. That’s something the
U.S. will hope to continue to do. But given France’s experience and the
state of South Africa’s economy, Pretoria clearly feels it is in no position
to test the limits of Beijing’s tolerance for what China sees as meddling in
its internal affairs.

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Jindal defends those who want Obama to fail

Gov. Bobby Jindal is offering a spirited defense of Republicans who say they want President Obama to fail.
It’s OK for Republicans to want President Obama to fail if they think he’s jeopardizing the country, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told members of his political party Tuesday night.

Jindal described the premise of the question — “Do you want the president to fail” — as the “latest gotcha game” being perpetrated by Democrats against Republicans. “Make no mistake: Anything other than an immediate and compliant, ‘Why no sir, I don’t want the president to fail,’ is treated as some sort of act of treason, civil disobedience or political obstructionism,” Jindal said at a political fundraiser attended by 1,200 people. “This is political correctness run amok.” Since conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh said that he hoped that Obama would fail, Republicans have been pressed by Democrats and the media about Limbaugh’s comments. Jindal, a potential 2012 presidential candidate, told the Republican audience he would “not be brow beaten on this, and I will not kowtow to their correctness.” “My answer to the question is very simple: ‘Do you want the president to fail’ It depends on what he is trying to do.” Jindal, who served two terms in the U.S. House, returned to Washington to help his former colleagues raise more than $6 million for the 2010 midterm elections. And he likely picked up important political chits, should he decide to run for president. So far, Jindal has sidestepped questions about 2012. But on Tuesday he seemed to be laying the groundwork in case he eventually decides the political climate is right. A video of favorable back-to-back TV reports about Jindal preceded his introduction to the audience. And Jindal used his remarks to deep-pocketed Republican donors to emphasize his vision for how the Grand Old Party can get back on track. He made a point to criticize Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for a “spending spree” that he said “is costing the taxpayers more than the Iraq war, more than the Vietnam War, and, near and dear to my heart, even more than the Louisiana Purchase.” Jindal singled out House Republicans for standing up to Obama and helping the GOP return to its conservative roots. The governor took a controversial stand when he refused to accept $98 million in federal stimulus money to expand unemployment benefits in Louisiana, because he said it would force an unfair tax on businesses when the funding ran out.

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Jindal does damage control after speech

Jindal has a fan in John McCain’s daughter

Democrats and other critics blasted Jindal’s decision, saying he was influenced by presidential ambitions. But many conservatives saw his decision as a principled stand. Moments after Jindal wrapped up his remarks Tuesday, Obama held his second prime-time news conference 12 blocks away at the White House. Last month, Jindal delivered the Republican response following Obama’s joint address to Congress. The governor was widely panned for his performance, which he addressed Tuesday at the top of his speech. “Many of you have asked that I reprise my State of the Union response speech,” Jindal said. “That was a joke by the way. It’s OK to laugh about it. “I have just learned that because of President Obama’s opposition to torture, it is now illegal to show my speech to prisoners at Gitmo,” he added. The governor’s speech then took on a serious tone when he emphasized the need for Republicans to put the 2008 election behind them and embrace the role of loyal opposition party. “It’s time to declare our time of introspection and navel-gazing officially over,” Jindal said. “It’s time to get on with the business of charting America’s future. So, as of now, be it hereby resolved that we will focus on America’s future, and on standing up for fiscal sanity, before it is too late.” With the next presidential election three years away and the fact that he has to face Louisiana voters in 2011 if he seeks re-election, it is not surprising that Jindal does not publicly express interest in running in 2012. But if the governor is considering a presidential bid, he must now focus on learning to become a national candidate and building a political operation. Unlike potential 2012 rivals such as Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, Jindal doesn’t have a national infrastructure in place, nor the experience the two men gained crisscrossing the country in their failed 2008 bids for the White House. And Jindal lacks the name recognition of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a former vice presidential nominee who is said to be considering her own campaign in 2012. GOP operative Alex Vogel said it is critical for Jindal or any other Republican candidate to begin amassing a list of national supporters similar to what Obama created for the 2008 campaign. “It is all about data,” said Vogel, a former senior aide to the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and ex-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. “The best candidate in the world is only as good as his database. How many cell phone numbers, e-mails and mailing addresses can you collect You can’t collect that in a presidential campaign. You have to do that now.” Vogel also said that beyond “fine-tuning his message,” Jindal needs to continue giving speeches, attending political events and appearing on television if he wants to get used to running for national office. At 37, Jindal potentially has a long political future, whether or not he runs for president in 2012. “There is plenty of time between now and the primaries for him to tighten his game,” said Jonathan Grella, a GOP strategist who has worked for former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “He obviously has got a long ways to go before he performs at a presidential level, and particularly at the Obama level. That is a tall order. But Bobby Jindal is an above-average political performer now, and he has plenty of room to grow.”

‘Hillary: The Movie’ gets high court attention

The Supreme Court is tackling a First Amendment case involving a movie about Hillary Clinton.
The star of the show did not appear — and the film in question was not shown — but Hillary Clinton’s big-screen moment was all the talk Tuesday at the Supreme Court.

The justices heard arguments in a free-speech case over a 2008 documentary, shown in theaters, that was sharply critical of the onetime presidential candidate and current secretary of state. At issue was whether the 90-minute “Hillary: The Movie” and television ads to promote it should have been subject to strict campaign finance laws on political advocacy or should have been seen as a constitutionally protected form of commercial speech. The high court’s decision will determine whether politically charged documentaries can be regulated by the government in the same way as traditional campaign commercials. A ruling is expect by late June. A conservative group behind the movie wanted to promote it during the heat of the presidential primary season last year, but a federal court had blocked any ads, as well as airings on cable TV video-on-demand. The film later aired in several theaters and was released on DVD, outlets that were not subject to federal regulation. The Supreme Court justices appeared divided on how to find balance between Congress’ expressed desire to control the power of well-financed private groups to spread their political messages and concerns over the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech. “This is targeted at a specific candidate for a specific office to be shown on a channel that says ‘Election ’08’,” said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “Now if that isn’t an appeal to voters, I can’t imagine what is.”

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“There’s a possibility,” said Justice Antonin Scalia, “that the First Amendment interest is greater when what the government is trying to stifle is not just a speaker who wants to say something, but also a listener who wants to hear what the speaker has to say,” noting that viewers would have paid to see the film on cable television. On its Web site, Citizens United promoted its film as featuring 40 interviews.as well as a “cast to end all casts.” It promised, “If you want to hear about the Clinton scandals of the past and present, you have it here! ‘Hillary: The Movie’ is the first and last word in what the Clintons want America to forget!” The group, a Washington-based nonprofit corporation and advocacy organization, had balked at campaign finance rules that would have required them to disclose their financial backers and would have restricted when the film could air. The film was partially financed with corporate funds. A three-judge U.S. District Court panel last spring rejected the group’s arguments that the documentary was more akin to news or information programs such as PBS’ “Nova” or CBS’ “60 Minutes.” During Tuesday’s oral arguments, the justices seemed uneasy about arguments from both sides. “This sounds to me like campaign advocacy,” said Justice David Souter. But attorney Theodore Olson, representing Citizens United, said the law “smothered” free speech. He said groups like General Electric (which owns NBC News), National Public Radio and progressive financier George Soros (who often privately funds his political projects) could air such films in the name of informing the American people, but not his clients because of the film’s perceived negative tone. “If it’s all negative it can be prohibited, and it’s a felony. Or if it’s all favorable, you can go to jail. But if you did half and half, you couldn’t” be convicted, said Olson, criticizing the law’s “incomprehensible” regulations. Several on the court wondered whether a 90-minute message was different than a 30-second commercial. “It seems to me you can make the argument that 90 minutes is much more powerful in support or in opposition to a candidate,” said Justice Anthony Kennedy. “We have no choice, really, but to say this is not issue advocacy, this is express advocacy saying don’t vote for this person,” which is subject to regulation,” Souter said. “The difference between 90 minutes and one minute is a distinction that I just can’t follow.” The comprehensive 2002 McCain-Feingold law bans broadcast of “electioneering communication” by corporations, unions and advocacy groups if it would be aired close to election dates and would identify candidates by name or image. The law also requires an on-screen notice of the groups financing such ads, as well as public disclosure of all donors to the sponsoring organizations. Lawyers representing the Federal Election Commission urged the justices to subject the ads to the disclosure law, arguing that without it, voters would be “unable to know who’s funding the ads.” Justice Department attorney Malcolm Stewart called it “an easy case.” Some on the bench were not sure, probing the limits of the definition of candidate advocacy. “So if Wal-Mart airs an advertisement that says we have candidate action figures for sale, come buy them, that counts as an electioneering communication,” asked Chief Justice John Roberts. Justice Samuel Alito wondered about the differences between broadcast or cable TV, where the film could not be run, and the Internet or theaters where it could. When Stewart implied “additional media” could also be subject to future regulation, the newest justice replied, “That’s pretty incredible. You think that if a book was published, a campaign biography that was the functional equivalent of express advocacy, that could be banned” Most book publishers are corporations subject to campaign finance restrictions, he noted. Legal observers say Alito and Roberts’ votes could be key to the case’s outcome. At the time of the movie’s premiere, Clinton was locked in a tough primary fight with then-Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination for president. Critics slammed her qualifications and character. People say, “Well, she’s flipping, she’s flopping. No, she’s not flipping and flopping, she’s lying,” Bay Buchanan, a political commentator and regular analyst for CNN, said in the film. “We must never understate her chances of winning,” warned Dick Morris, a former political adviser to President Clinton. “And we must never forget the fundamental danger that this woman poses to every value that we hold dear. You see, I know her.” Ads for the movie were available on the Internet, which is not subject to federal regulation. “I’ve seen this movie,” Justice Stephen Breyer wryly noted, “It’s not a musical comedy.” David Bossie, head of Citizens United and producer of the “Hillary” film, was also behind several conservative documentaries, including a rebuttal to Michael Moore’s anti-Bush film “Fahrenheit 9/11.” The case is Citizens United v. FEC (08-205).