WcP.Observer's blog

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(Above:) Pakistani tribesmen stand beside coffins of the victims of a suspected U.S. missile strike in Zharki village, near Miran Shah, the main town of Pakistan's tribal area along Afghanistan border, Saturday, Jan. 24, 2009. Suspected U.S. missiles killed 18 people on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border, security officials said Friday, the first attacks on the al-Qaida stronghold since President Barack Obama took office.

Pakistan urged President Barack Obama to halt U.S. missile strikes on al-Qaida strongholds near the Afghan border, saying Saturday that civilians were killed the previous day in the first attacks since Obama's inauguration.

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Photos courtesy of AP Photo/Hasbunallah Khan and AFP

Original Source: Huffington Post

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Pope Benedict XVI has made an unusual public acknowledgment of Vatican mistakes and turmoil in his church over an outreach to ultraconservatives that led to his lifting the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop. In an attempt to end one of the most serious crises of his papacy, he said in a letter released Thursday that the Vatican must make greater use of the Internet to prevent other controversies.

The Vatican took the rare step of releasing the German-born pope's personal account of the incident addressed to Catholic bishops around the world. Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said the letter — released in six languages — was "really unusual and deserving of maximum attention."  read more »

Does Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi deserve fifteen years in jail, or "a statue erected in his honor"?

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In a land replete with martyrs and miscreants, Iraqis are divided over which label applies to Muntazer al-Zaidi. The once obscure television journalist who shot to fame for hurling his footwear at then President George W. Bush during a Baghdad press conference late last year was sentenced on Thursday to three years in prison after being found guilty of "assaulting a foreign leader on an official visit." But despite the verdict of Baghdad's Central Criminal Court, many ordinary Iraqis still hail the 30-year-old Shi'ite shoe thrower as a national hero.

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On this day in 1915, The Valley of Fear by Arthur Conan Doyle is published in novel form.
Sherlock Holmes had been a popular character since he first appeared in the story “A Study in Scarlet,” published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887. The thin, highly strung detective with extraordinary deductive powers was modeled partly on Dr. Joseph Bell, a medical school teacher at the University of Edinburgh, where Holmes’ creator studied.

The Valley of Fear is the fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is loosely based on the Molly Maguires and Pinkerton agent James McParland. The story was first published in the Strand Magazine between September 1914 and May 1915.

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Image courtesy gutenberg.net.au The Valley of Fear is the fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is loosely based on the Molly Maguires and Pinkerton agent James McParland. The story was first published in the Strand Magazine between September 1914 and May 1915.

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It is not every day that a Wall Street bank finds itself in possession of a chunk of land 50 times the size of Manhattan, covered in pristine forest, windswept grassland and snow-capped mountains. But that's the position Goldman Sachs found itself in, in 2002 when it bought a package of distressed debt and assets from a US company called Trillium.

The resulting conservation project in the very south of Chile has been hailed by the bank and its partners, a US-based NGO, as an example of how the public and private sectors can work together to safeguard the world's last remaining wildernesses. Chilean environmentalists are more skeptical but, even so, have largely applauded the project.

The story of what is now known as the Karukinka nature reserve dates back to the 1990s when Trillium bought land on Tierra del Fuego - a cluster of inhospitable islands between Chile and Argentina - clinging to the southernmost tip of South America. The company planned to use the land for logging and wanted to cut down the lenga - a type of beech tree found only in this part of the world.

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Bolivia's President Evo Morales has enacted a new constitution that aims to empower the country's indigenous majority and allows for land reform. Mr. Morales is Bolivia's first indigenous president.

On January 25th, Bolivia held a referendum to adopt a new national constitution, one that dramatically shifts the country, reversing discriminatory practices and granting many rights and self-determination to the 36 indigenous nations within Bolivia. After a lengthy count, officials announced that the referendum passed with over 60% of the vote.

Much political and legal work remains to implement the changes, but soon most of the country's natural resources will be state-owned, land ownership will be capped at 12,000 acres, and Morales will be able to run for a second term. President Evo Morales welcomed the constitutional win by saying "Here begins the new Bolivia", claiming the changes would work to "decolonize" Bolivia.  read more »

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Family without a home
Sayed Abdul Karim, 80, sits with his 9-year-old granddaughter, Camina, left, on Feb. 8 in a camp for displaced Afghans three hours from their village in Galochi district, bombed in a recent U.S. military raid on militants in Laghman, Afghanistan. The military operation destroyed 270 homes, driving hundreds of families out of their villages.

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Photos courtesy of Paula Bronstein / Getty Images

Original Source: MSNBC