29. april 2003

Who won Palestinian power struggle? A good overview of the arguments both ways about whether Abu Mazen's appointment as Palestinian Prime Minister is a victory for reform or if Arafat still holds the upper hand. Arafat sure doesn't look like he's irrelevant yet. 11:11:54 PM    comment []

WHO lifts Toronto travel warning After meetings with Canadian health officials, WHO has decided to withdraw its advise to avoid Toronto. There has been no new cases of Sars for three weeks, and WHO seems satisfied that the outbreak has been contained. 9:41:59 PM    comment []

Where al-Sahaf went into hiding Nicholas Kirstof in the New York Times indicates we have pinpointed where the Iraqi information minister has gone into hiding. A North Korean news item claimed: "Military experts said that a war between North Korea and the U.S. will end with the delightful victory of North Korea, a newly emerging military power, in 100 hours. . . . The U.S. [will] be enveloped in flames . . . and the arrogant empire of a devil will breathe its last." Let's hope they never find out how pitifully wrong they are. 9:15:02 PM    comment []

Norwegian student party In Norway, it is a tradition that final year high school students dress up in blue or red coveralls, properly decorated, and drink themselves out of their skulls to make sure they fail at the final exams. The last term students are calling themselves "russ" for reasons that are not entirely clear. Another tradition is that older people start whining and complaining about how badly the "russ" are behaving, insisting it is getting worse every year. The tradition includes not only unhealthy amounts of alcoholic beverages. It's not unusual that quite a few students who start the festivities as virgins no longer are, reaching our Constitution Day May 17th. The poster on the right is annoucing a large student party in Kristiandsand, southern Norway, Wednesday. Some female students have reacted negatively to the obviously sexual references in the picture. Others think all the fuss is just "silly." The sponsors are also reported to not be too happy about the poster. But I guess it's going to be a great party, if anybody remembers anything. 6:06:08 PM    comment []

Deep throat No, not the porn movie, but the famous inside source to the Watergate scandal. Timothy Noah of Slate's Chatterbox thinks the evidence is "surprisngly strong" that it was Fred Fielding. 5:56:19 PM    comment []

Witnesses: US troops kill civilians According to eyewitnesses US forces killed at least 13 civilians demonstrating against their presence at a school in the town of Falluja. US military says the troops came under fire from armed men and returned fire, while civilians say the victims were all unarmed. Whatever the truth of the case is, this incident is likely to cause further tension in Iraq. 4:22:18 PM    comment []

Exit Spammunition The Outlook anti-spam addin Spammunition, which I installed the other day, is now uninstalled. It was quite good at identifying spam with very little training, but alas, it didn't leave Outlook running long enough to really find out. Being able to read my non-spam mail is rather crucial. It made Outlook freeze frequently. Oh well, it is still a beta. Maybe I'll have a look at it again in some months. 1:22:02 PM    comment []

US forces will withdraw from Saudi Arabia Donald Rumsfeld announced that the US has decided to pull its troops out of Saudi Arabia. The decision was reached by mutual agreement with the country's government. Wasn't this Osama Bin Laden's most important goal? 12:43:07 PM    comment []

Women want men to lie ...sometimes! A poll is She magazine shows that women want men to lie about some things, like their weight and whether their bottom looks big in a certain dress. The study also revealed, to nobody's surprise, that women are liars. A whooping 98% said they lied about their own weight or how much they ate. Fully 70 % admitted lying about drinking or smoking habits. And 36% of women said they lied about the sexual performance of their partner. Men do, too! 2:59:18 AM    comment []

Iraqi postwar talks In what should be considered a success for the coalition forces, about 250 prominent Iraqis representing diverse groups had extensive talks, in which they agreed to hold a national conference in four weeks to choose an interim government. Ironically, the talks were held on the birthday of Saddam Hussein. The US insists it will not impose its will, but is also clear that no other government than a real representative democracy will be tolerated. In a sign the transition to an interim government will be far from easy, delegates said splits emerged between returned Iraqi exiles and those who had lived through the Saddam years. Most former exiles wanted a lesser U.S. role, arguing that only Iraqis should rule the country, while those who had remained at home said they wanted more U.S. supervision because they did not trust the exiles. They trust the Americans more than the exiles. Interesting. 12:03:52 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.05.2003; 03:01:12.