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28. februar 2006
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The bird flu virus has now been found across the border in Sweden.
Swedish Minister of Agriculture Ann-Christin Nykvist told a press conference Tuesday afternoon that the discovery was "serious, but not unexpected".
Norway's Food Safety Authority said that the situation was being followed closely and that they would be stepping up the monitoring of wild birds in cooperation with the National Veterinary Institute, saying that it was now highly probable the deadly H5N1 strain would infect wild birds in Norway.
The enormous public attention about this, albeit serious, issue is way out of proportion. There are two totally separate issues at play here, and I think much of the public confuses them. First, the threat that bird flu is to poultry and wild birds. Second, the fear that bird flu may just possibly mutate and become a pandemic killing millions. But whether bird flu spreads to Sweden or Norway or wherever doesn't really increase the chance of such a mutation, whatever the chance may be. The virus is extremely unlikely to mutate here, where contact between humans and birds is very scarce. That is still far more likely to happen in the Far East, where the disease first became known.
10:27:52 PM 
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The men who blew up the Golden Mosque of Samarra weren't your usual al-Qaeda attackers, if they were at all affiliated with the group. For one, the terrorist organisation isn't exactly famous for worrying about collateral damage, but in the bombing, all eight guards were found tied up and unharmed. Four of them have now been arrested, suspected of being involved in the incident.
Iraq's national security adviser said on Tuesday four guards protecting the Shi'ite shrine bombed last week were being held as suspects in the attack that pushed the country to the brink of civil war.
"We have two strong leads of their involvement but I don't like to discuss them because it will jeopardise the investigation," Mowaffaq al-Rubaie told Reuters, adding six other people had been arrested over the dawn blast, blamed on al Qaeda militants seeking to sow sectarian violence in Iraq. [...]
[Minister of State for National Security Abdul Karim al-]Enazy, a Shi'ite, said the attackers had all night to plant the bomb after they had tied up the guards.
"We suspect some of the guards. One of them is a relative of a terrorist and another was an ex-Baathist commander, we are still investigating," he said.
Whoever were behind the devastating but (initially!) bloodless attack on the shrine had at least understood one fact, brought home also by the Mohammad cartoon wars: To really get a rise out of people in Muslim countries, murdering and butchering people by the thousands have minimal effect. But attack some religious symbol, and all hell breaks loose.
10:19:50 PM
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In the category most stupid criminal, we have a strong contender here:
A woman didn't have to look far to figure out who likely broke into her home and took a camera from her purse. Police said the burglar left behind his probation and parole card.
Via Fark.
10:09:24 PM
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Mr Alifi, a Sudanese man, made the unpleasant discovery that a man was having his way with one of his goats. He took the man, named as Mr Tombe, to a council of elders. They suggested that instead of taking him to the police, the rather desperate man should pay Alifi a dowry of 15,000 Sudanese dinars, almost £40 (~$70).
Good punchline from Mr Alifi:
"We have given him the goat, and as far as we know they are still together," Mr Alifi said.
10:02:04 PM
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Enraged Muslims are burning Danish flags, but the cartoons have really been spread around the world. The Danish online news-source eJour, published by journalism students, has done some online research, and found that at least 143 newspapers in 56 countries have printed at least some of the original Danish cartoons.
The page is in Danish, but it contains links to a huge body of information, and I think you'll be able to read the names of the countries, ranging from Algeria to Yemen. I think journalist Helle Nissen Kruuse's summary of the BBC's position deserves my translation, though.
BBC has both on the net and on the TV screen shown pictures of people who read newspaper pages with the drawings, has described them in words and has linked to other websites with the drawings. Online editor Steve Herrmann explains the policy. BBC had early on a serious error (claiming that the French pig-howl picture belonged to the JP [Jyllands-Posten] collection, and that page was later - discretely- corrected (the proganda factor). This would maybe have been avoided, if the BBC had published the 12 'correct' drawings....
The article also points to Wikipedia which has good coverage of the controversy, including big versions of the caricatures and an extensive timeline.
9:53:54 PM
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The Washington Post says it has obtained death figures from the riots and secterian violence following the bombing of a Shia shrine.
Grisly attacks and other sectarian violence unleashed by last week's bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine have killed more than 1,300 Iraqis, making the past few days the deadliest of the war outside of major U.S. offensives, according to Baghdad's main morgue. The toll was more than three times higher than the figure previously reported by the U.S. military and the news media.
It is, however, not entirely clear from the wording that the 1,300 included only those killed in violence, or whether it is all recorded deaths in the city of Baghdad over the last few days.
Morgue officials said they had logged more than 1,300 dead since Wednesday -- the day the Shiites' gold-domed Askariya shrine was bombed -- photographing, numbering and tagging the bodies as they came in over the nights and days of retaliatory raids.
In six days, Wednesday thru Monday, using normal rule-of-thumb death figures for a large city like Baghdad, we'd expect almost 1,000 people to die from natural causes. Presumably, the morgue (and the WaPo) has reported only deaths from violence. In that case, this is a dramatic escalation.
The Mahdi militia, Moqtada al-Sadr's militants, are widely blamed for retaliatory attacks on Sunnis. It denies this, claiming others must have dressed up in their black outfits, a claim it is hard to believe.
All signs that al-Sadr would become a serious problem for Iraq were there from the first days of the coalition occupation. As I wrote in June 2003,
He seems to be an extremist that will be a serious danger to the US presence and the future of democracy in Iraq. His people are now using violence and intimidation to target Christians and more moderate Muslims alike. Any appeasement towards this wannabe Ayatollah may well have the same tragic consequences as Ayatollah Khomeini's return from Paris to Tehran.
It would not have been without risk to handle him early on, but it could hardly be worse than the situation is now.
3:23:26 PM
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© Copyright 2006 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.03.2006; 11:08:48.
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