Word: secondings
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...unrelenting drumbeat of bad news confirms what many have sensed for some time. First, the globe is being cursed with more natural calamities than before. Second, the distribution of disaster is unequal. A U.N. report released in May studied natural disasters between 1975 and 2007 and found not only that the frequency of catastrophe is increasing because of climate change, unsafe cities and environmental degradation, but also that the brunt of tragedy is borne by poor countries least equipped to deal with such misfortune. In 2008, 98% of natural disaster - related fatalities occurred in Asia, according to the Worldwatch Institute...
Days later, the IEC discovered that sticking to its published safeguards would exclude enough fraudulent Karzai ballots to keep his total below 50%. This would lead to a second-round runoff, which Karzai desperately hoped to avoid. The IEC reconvened and voted 6 to 1 to drop safeguards, explaining that the commissioners had just read the Afghan election law and discovered that they had no authority to throw out fraudulent votes. This novel and inventive reading of the law did not convince many Afghans. My boss, however, sided with Karzai, and I was ordered to drop the matter. Four days...
There is no easy solution to Afghanistan's election mess. If the ECC removes enough fraudulent votes, Karzai will fall below 50%, and there will be a second round of voting. However, the factors that caused problems on Aug. 20 - ghost polling stations, corrupt election staff and a partisan commission - are still present. Dealing with those factors will require leadership that the head of the U.N. mission has yet to demonstrate. If Karzai emerges the winner of the rushed and incomplete audit process now under way, Afghanistan's internal peace will depend on Karzai's opponents accepting - or at least...
...second question, in one sense the rules are different for celebrities than for politicians. But in another way, Letterman is exactly like a pol. With politicians and personalities alike, we tend to overlook transgressions, barring an actual crime, if they deliver for us, be it laughs or pork. Of course, we are always ready to be deeply outraged by moral failings of the people we didn't like to begin with. (See the top 10 disastrous Letterman interviews...
...stance has been twofold: feelings of frustration that the bishops hadn't been negotiating in good faith, and a broader confusion over where the bishops actually stood. The confusion appears to have been particularly pervasive at the White House. On Sept. 8, a few weeks after the second Rigali letter, senior Obama officials convened a meeting in the Roosevelt Room that included Nancy-Ann DeParle, the Administration's lead health-care official, Joshua DuBois, head of the White House faith-based office, and John Carr, executive director of the USCCB's Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development. Both sides...