Republican Vice Presidential Candidate
Sarah Palin poses for fashion magazine VOGUE
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Some of these past photos of Sarah Palin are attracting the blogsphere’s attention. But Obama Campaign is advised not to focus on her, and instead point out McCain’s judgment and “flawed” decision making. Here is how one blogger put it:
“John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate can only be successful if the Democrats mistakenly focus on her, rather than using her selection to highlight what it says about John McCain. We need to look carefully at her, of course–something McCain apparently didn’t do–but we need to do so as a reflecting mirror in which to study McCain.
McCain’s selection of Palin is widely seen as a gamble that just might pay off. Not if the Obama campaign handles it properly, though. If they do, it has zero chance of success.” – Paul Rosenberg
A ER reader commented: “The Obama campaign will have to handle this very delicately, not to say anything that would sound demeaning to Palin, and yet try to send the message that it’s an insult to the intelligence of women for McCain to think they can just throw any woman at them, no matter how unqualified, and that they’ll run to him.” – TM
Ethiopians in Washington DC held a protest rally on Friday, August 29, 2008, demanding freedom for popular artist Teddy Afro who is currently languishing in Ethiopia jail on trumped up charges.
Kenenisa Bekele speeds to win the
5000 meters competition during the
IAAF “Weltklasse Zurich” Golden
League meeting at the Letzigrund
stadium in Zurich, Switzerland on
Friday, Aug. 29, 2008
[AP Photo/Daniel Maurer]
Approaching 9:35 pm in the Letzigrund Stadion on Friday night, Kenenisa Bekele picked up the pace at the front of the field with four laps remaining in the men’s 5,000m at the Weltklasse meeting. He pulled clear with seemingly effortless ease, much to the delight of the crowd jammed into the compact Swiss arena.
By the time the bell sounded, they had whipped themselves into a state of frenzy, shouting, screaming and banging their palms on the metal advertising hoardings skirting the track. In Mexican Wave fashion, they followed the Ethiopian’s progress around the last lap by raising both arms and bowing like 26,000 unworthy Wayne Campbells paying homage to an awesome Alice Cooper.
They know a class act when they see one in Zurich, and no one in the opening show on the post-Olympic European track-and-field circuit got the locals going quite like the breathtaking Bekele. Not even the headlining Usain Bolt, who performed all of his gallery-playing moves either side of coasting to victory in the men’s 100m in 9.83sec. Or the 18-year-old Kenyan phenomenon Pamela Jelimo, who crossed the line in the women’s 800m in 1min 54.01sec, a time that has been bettered only by the great Czech hulk of a woman Jarmila Kratochvilova (1:53.28) and the Russian Nadezhda Olizarenko (1:53.43).
No, Bekele was the show-stealer in the penultimate meeting of the season’s Golden League programme. And with good reason. Just six days previously he had been on the track in the Bird’s Nest in Beijing, running away from the field in the men’s 5,000m final.
In doing so, he became only the fifth man to complete an Olympic 5,000m and 10,000m double, following in the spike marks of Hannes Kolehmainen, Emil Zatopek, Vladimir Kuts and his fellow countryman Miruts Yifter – or “Yifter the Shifter,” as David Coleman rechristened the balding Ethiopian when he took his leave of Steve Ovett on the final scorching lap of the 5,000m at the Gateshead Games in 1977.
Quite apart from his Olympian exertions in China, before arriving in Zurich in the early hoursof Thursday Bekele had spent most of Wednesday back home in Addis Ababa receiving the kind of welcome that even Jamaica will struggle to match when the Lightning Bolt returns home with his three gold medals a week tomorrow. “The prime minister and the president were at the airport to meet myself and the rest of the Ethiopian team,” Bekele said. “On the road from the airport and in the main square in Addis there were so many people to greet us. One million,at least.
“It was an 11-hour flight from Beijing to Addis on Wednesday and then seven hours from Addis to here overnight, arriving Thursday morning. I am feeling a little bit tired but I am happy to win here and run the fastest time in the world this year [12min 50.18sec]. I have one race left now. I will concentrate on winning and not on the time.”
That race is the 3,000m in the Aviva British Grand Prix at Gateshead this afternoon. The organisers might not have the Lightning Bolt on the bill but they have the 5ft 4in Bekele, as giant a phenomenon in the distance-running world as the 6ft 5in Jamaican has become in the sprinting fraternity. At 26, Bekele has put the 5,000m and 10,000m world records beyond the reach of his contemporaries, and like Bolt he has three Olympic gold medals in his possession now, having pocketed the 10,000m in Athens four years ago.
“It does not upset me that Bolt is taking the spotlight,” he insisted. “Like everyone else, I enjoyed watching his performances in Beijing. They were very special. He broke three world records and I think nobody is going to do this again. He is a very special athlete.”
So, for that matter, is Bekele. He has yet to losea 10,000m race. He haswon the main race at the World Cross Country Championships on a record six occasions. With his smooth, gliding gait he covers the ground on track, road and country with the ease of a Sunday-morning club runner.
In his private life, too, Bekele has found a serenity. In January 2005 he was training in woods outside Addis Ababa with his fiancée, Alem Techale, when she collapsed and died in his arms. In November last year he was married to Danawit Gebregziabher, an Ethiopian film actress. “For me right now, life is good,” the diminutive king of distance running reflected.
Somali students comprise only 6 percent of the Minneapolis school system, but one-quarter of the children in the city’s early childhood autism programs. Health officials are baffled.
Somali Children in Minneapolis Racked with Autism
Rates of childhood autism among Minneapolis’ Somali community have been slowly rising over the past several years, say local health authorities. In 1999, there were 1,773 Somali-speaking students in the Minneapolis public school system—none of whom were in autism programs. But last year, 43 of the 2,029 Somali-speaking students, or about 2.1 percent of those in the school district, were enrolled in special education programs for the condition.
Statistics reported by the MinnPost show a graver prognosis for Minneapolis Somalis, with more than 12 percent of autistic students in district preschool and kindergarten programs said to speak Somali at home. The paper writes that more than 17 percent of those in the district’s early childhood autism program are Somali speakers.
Whatever the exact number of Somali autistic children in Minneapolis, “We’re definitely seeing it, and something is triggering it,” Dr. Chris Bentley told the MinnPost. Bentley is the director of Fraser, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit organization that provides assistance to families with autistic children.
Anne Harrington, autism specialist for the Minneapolis Public Schools, told Twin Cities CBS affiliate WCCO that the Somali students “are showing the more severe forms of autism, not the broad spectrum of autism that we see in our general population,” which includes Asperger’s syndrome, a milder type of autism in which social development is more delayed than cognitive development.
Opinion & Analysis: Culture, health, history are all factors
A lack of awareness of the disorder as well as social taboos are hampering efforts to determine whether the high rate of autism among the Somali population is a statistical anomaly or if there are genetic or other risk factors at stake. Amelia Santaniello, reporter and anchorwoman for WCCO, asked Huda Farah, a Somali woman who works on refugee resettlement issues with the Minnesota Department of Health, “Is there autism in Somalia?” Farah answered, “Not many, not many.”
An unnamed Twin Cities Somali woman told the Star Tribune that she had contacted politicians, government officials and the media to raise awareness of the large number of Somali students in her son’s autism programs. Nevertheless, stigmas have forbidden her from telling her relatives about her son’s disorder.
Farah told WCCO, “Many things attracted Somalis to Minnesota to stay. Good health cover and good education.”
The Somali community began arriving in Minnesota in 1993 after the first phase of that country’s civil war. The MinnPost reports that estimates as to the Somali population number anywhere from 15,000 to 40,000—the largest population outside of East Africa. Some 67 percent of them arrived in 2000, however, primarily settling in Hennepin County, where Minneapolis is located. St. Paul and Rochester also have significant Somali communities but there is little data on autism rates for those cities.
Given the lack of formal research, Twin Cities doctors have not been able to confirm if there is indeed a higher rate of autism among local Somalis. Dr. Stacene Maroushek, a pediatrician at the Hennepin County Medical Center, was quoted as saying in the MinnPost, “the impression that there’s an increasing rate of autism in the Somali community is definitely there. And people are wondering what’s going on.” The Minnesota Department of Health is assembling a “pre-pilot program” to help measure rates of autism among the state’s immigrant populations. University of Minnesota researchers are conducting similar studies with the department.
Genetics have been listed as one possible reason for the high incidence of autism. Cousin marriage is common in the Muslim Somali community. A study that was published in Science Magazine in July showed evidence suggesting a link between autism and family intermarriage.
A lack of vitamin D has been suggested as another cause. Sweden’s Somali population has seen similarly high incidences of autism—so much, in fact, that the community there has dubbed the disorder “the Swedish disease.” Two doctors, Susanne Bejerot and Mats Humble, suggested in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter that due to the lower levels of sunlight, those with dark complexions do not build up the vitamin as easily when living at more northerly latitudes. According to the doctors, “With current knowledge we can not rule out that Vitamin D deficiency is a strong factor behind the so-called autism epidemic.”
Somali immigrant Farah Osman told WCCO that she blames immunizations for her son’s autism. “In rural Somalia, there’s no immunizations.” Harrington told the MinnPost, “They’re given more [vaccines] then we get, and sometimes they’re doubled up. Then their children are given immunizations. In Somalia, their generations have not received these immunizations, and then suddenly they’re getting just a wallop of them in the moms and then in the babies.”
Plus, some refugees staying at camps in Kenya and Ethiopia received the same vaccinations three or four times due to poor record-keeping.
Related Topic: The debated link between autism and vaccinations
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maintains that no link has been determined between vaccinations and autism. Some parents of autistic children, like Jon and Terry Poling, disagree. In March the Polings won a lawsuit against a federal vaccine oversight body alleging their daughter Hannah became autistic after receiving a large dose of vaccine after she had fallen behind in her immunization schedule.
Thimerosal, a mercury compound used as a preservative in some pharmaceuticals such as vaccines, has been blamed for causing autism on the grounds that it allows toxins to leak into the nervous system.
A study published in 1998 in British medical journal The Lancet suggested a connection between the Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine and an increased risk of autism on such grounds. Many of the study’s co-authors withdrew support from the study when it was discovered that the rates of autism diagnoses increased in areas where there was a lower rate of MMR vaccination, however.
The supposed link between autism and heavy metals sparked a push by National Institute of Mental Health researcher Dr. Thomas Insel for a federally funded study of chelation as a cure for the disorder. “So many moms have said, `It’s saved my kids,’” he said. Chelation, traditionally used to cure lead poisoning, washes out heavy metals. Critics counter that it is unsafe and can cause the leaching of essential minerals such as iron and manganese from the body. Safety concerns have put Insel’s proposed study on hold for the time being.
BENGHAZI, Libya (AFP) — Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Saturday apologised to Libya for damage inflicted by Italy during the colonial era and signed a five-billion-dollar investment deal by way of compensation.
Berlusconi made the apology during a visit to the Mediterranean city of Benghazi for a meeting with Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi to seal a cooperation accord with the oil-rich north African nation.
“It is my duty, as a head of government, to express to you in the name of the Italian people our regret and apologies for the deep wounds that we have caused you,” said Berlusconi, whose comments were translated into Arabic.
He and Kadhafi then signed a “friendship and cooperation agreement” aimed at recompensing Libya for damage incurred during the colonial era.
“The accord will provide for 200 million dollars a year over the next 25 years through investments in infrastructure projects in Libya,” Berlusconi said.
“This agreement should put an end to 40 years of discord. It is a concrete and moral acknowledgement of the damage inflicted on Libya by Italy during the colonial era,” he earlier told reporters.
The signing ceremony took place in the garden of a palace occupied by the Italian governor in colonial times.
Berlusconi then bowed before the son of the hero of Libyan resistance against the Italian occupiers, Omar Mokhtar, in a symbolic gesture.
“This is an historic moment when two brave men acknowledge the defeat of colonialism,” Kadhafi said, raising his arms in a sign of victory.
“The Libyan people endured injustice and were attacked in their homes and they deserve an apology and compensation,” he added before a crowd which included diplomats and the children and grandchildren of Libyan resistance heroes.
Formerly part of the Ottoman Empire, Libya was occupied by Italy in 1911 before becoming a colony in the 1930s. The country gained its independence in 1951 after a brief period under a UN-mandated Franco-British administration.
Italy and Libya have spent years negotiating a wide-ranging treaty to cover compensation for Rome’s military occupation and colonisation.
An association representing Italians expelled from Libya in 1970 denounced Rome in a statement on Saturday for compensating Libya and not repatriated Italians.
It said Berlusconi should have “a sudden burst of dignity, humanity and respect so as to finally give satisfaction… to the 20,000 Italian citizens who are still waiting for fair compensation from their government.”
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is set to follow in Berlusconi’s footsteps next week, for the first visit by such a high-ranking US official to Libya since 1953.
Berlusconi, on his second trip to Libya since June, said that among the major projects to be financed by Italy will be a coastal motorway from the Tunisian border to Egypt.
Rome will also fund house construction, scholarships for Libyan students to study in Italy and pensions for those mutilated by landmines laid by the Italian military.
The agreement will also cover cooperation on the fight against illegal immigration, which Berlusconi termed a battle “against slave traders.”
Funding for the coastal highway — previously estimated to cost three billion euros (4.65 billion dollars) — was promised by Berlusconi on a visit to Tripoli in 2004, when he headed a previous administration.
When the two leaders met in June, Berlusconi was pushing for the rapid implementation of a December 2007 accord on joint maritime patrols to curtail the flow of thousands of illegal immigrants from Africa to Europe.
Italian shores, especially the small island of Lampedusa south of Sicily, are a favourite destination for those making the crossing from North Africa in the hope of a new life in Europe, despite the perilous journey.
Also on Saturday Italy returned a Roman statue of the goddess Venus dating back to the second century which was found in 1913 by Italian troops near the ruins of the Greek and Roman settlement of Cyrene, on the Libyan coast.
Berlusconi’s visit to Benghazi 1,000 kilometres (650 miles) east of Tripoli coincides with the anniversary of the coup that brought Kadhafi to power on September 1, 1969.
BENGHAZI, Libya (AFP) — Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Saturday apologised to Libya for damage inflicted by Italy during the colonial era and signed a five-billion-dollar investment deal by way of compensation.