More Pain for Spain: The Cucumber Crisis' Bad Timing
Coach OutletAnytime a bunch of politicians go on television to eat cucumbers, you know something is up. On Monday, there was Clara Aguilera, agriculture councilwoman for the region of Andalucia, pointedly biting into a whole cuke. A day later it was the turn of Mariano Rajoy, head of Spain's opposition Popular Party, and Esperanza Aguirre, president Why Do Christian Groups in China Put Authorities on Red Alert? coach factory outletEvery Sunday at 8:30 a.m. sharp, you see them coming to the unwelcoming square in the middle of the university neighborhood in Beijing. Skinny young girls dressed in jeans and wearing ponytails, elegant couples in their 40s, distinguished men that look like retired teachers: they all gather here with a funny mix of hesitation and bravery on their faces. Minutes later, the anti-riot police intervene and arrest them without encountering any resistance. On the bus that takes them to the police station, they open their prayer book and start singing liturgical songs. The people who so bravely defy the formidable security forces every week belong to the Protestant Shouwang church, the biggest and best known "house" church in Beijing. Shouwang means "to keep watch" in Mandarin. Discount Coach Handbags Notoriously independent, they refuse to let themselves be absorbed by the official "patriotic" church, which sits entirely in the government's fold. This autonomous group of worshippers holds their services at one of their member's homes, or in a simple conference room rented especially for the occasion. (See pictures of the making of modern China.) The devotees elect their ministers the members of the small "elders" committee charged with governing the church and they are deeply dedicated to the life of their community. "We have absolutely no political agenda, and we are not opposed to the government," a Shouwang official who is now under house arrest recently said. "We only want one thing: to freely practice our religion." So why are the Chinese authorities so dead set against the church? Several dozen Shouwang devotees are detained every week. Since the beginning of the civil disobedience movement, more than 300 of them have been questioned by police and pressured into signing a disavowal of their spiritual guide before being eventually freed. cheap hermes birkinSix Shouwang members have nevertheless been assigned to house arrest in recent months, with rumors circulating that they'll soon be thrown in jail. According to Bob Fu from China Aid, an American NGO which focuses on the life of China's Christians, Beijing has always had a very bad opinion of organized groups, whatever they might be. (See pictures of China at 60.) Founded in 1993 by the charismatic minister Jin Tianming, who was then a young chemical engineering graduate of the prestigious Tsinghua University, the number of Shouwang devotees has grown from 10 to 1,000 over the past 15 years. This has attracted the ire of the authorities, who have constantly harassed them and even forced them to change headquarters more than 20 times. "Two recent events explain the government's attitude," says Bob Fu. cheap nike shoes store"First, there was the fact that in 2010 Shouwang was preparing to send 200 delegates from around the country to the international evangelical conference in South Africa." Alarmed by their capacity to coordinate and their desire to present themselves as the legitimate representatives of Chinese Protestantism, the government banned the delegates from leaving the country. "And then the 'jasmine revolutions' started. Fearing [the Arab world's revolutionary spirit] would spread, Beijing decided to break Shouwang down," says Fu. In 2010, Shouwang worshippers managed to gather $6 million in donations. The money would have bought them an entire floor of a building in the university neighborhood. But the sale was cancelled under pressure from authorities. The church had to settle instead for a big conference room, rented from a posh restaurant. Coach SneakersSeveral months later, that contract was cancelled as well, for the same reasons, leaving the devotees without any roof over their heads. (See TIME's photo-essay "A New Look at Old Shanghai.") of the regional government of Madrid to do the same with a mercifully sliced version. These days, the local media is full of images of politicians stuffing their faces with elongated green vegetables. It's a sign of just how desperate the situation for Spain has become in the wake of Germany's E. coli outbreak, as well as how tense trade relations between the two nations and elsewhere have become. One week after it began, the so-called "cucumber crisis" shows no signs of abating. Already 17 people have died and 1,500 have fallen ill, including a handful of victims in Sweden, Spain, the Czech Republic, and the U.K. (all of whom appeared to have recently traveled to Germany). The World Health Organization today announced that the strain of E. Coach Handbagscoli involved is a never-before-seen mutation, while the European Commission has lifted its warning against Spanish vegetables, noting that the origins of the outbreak remain undetermined. (See the Top 10 Most Dangerous Foods.) But that clarification came only after German officials prematurely attributed the problem to cucumbers imported from two Andalusian farms. Although the vegetables in question did test positive for the bacteria, they proved to contain a different strain of E. coli than the deadly enterohaemorrhagic one at the root of this outbreak. In the meantime, grocery chains throughout Europe have suspended their orders, and Russia went so far as to ban all produce imports from Spain and Germany. hermes birkin handbagsOn June 2, it went further, blocking all imports from the entire European Union. The financial cost to Spanish agriculture, which exports roughly 9% of its produce to Germany has been enormous, with the government estimating losses of 200 million euros in the first week of the crisis. Costa de Almería is one of the agricultural collectives that was originally accused of contamination. Even with its name cleared, however, the company is not seeing sales pick up. The collective has already dismissed most of its 250-person crew, and has lost an estimated 500,000 euros in revenue, after it was forced to throw out much of its cucumber harvest. And the damage is hardly over. "We have 550,000 kilos of cucumbers that we can keep in storage for three days," says Pelegrín García, Costa de Almería's director of financial administration. "After that, we'll be destroying them as well." Nor is it just the cucumber farmers who are affected. Nike outletJuan Antonio Baños, president of the agricultural cooperative Ejidomar, laughed bitterly when questioned if his company, which grows only melons and zucchini, was also suffering. "Are you kidding?" he asked. "Prices are in the dirt. Before this we were getting .45 a kilo for melons, and now it's .18 or .20." His company too has had to let some of their workers go and this in a region that already has the highest unemployment rates (27%) in Spain. (See the Top 10 Terrible Epidemics.) Both men blame German imprudence for their losses. "It's not just that they accused us without evidence," says García. "They also leaked these accusations to the media rather than going the proper channels. I found out about the problem when I showed up to work last Thursday, and there was a battery of television cameras waiting." The false accusation, coupled with what he called the "slowness" of the European Commission's response, prompted Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to announce today that he would demand "sufficient reparations" from the European Union. Coach ShoesHis agriculture minister, Rosa Aguilar, had already gone further, noting at a June 1 meeting of European agriculture ministers that, "We reserve the right to hold Germany to account in this affair, and consequently we also ask for Germany to contribute financially to compensate the damage caused to Spanish production." The two cooperatives originally cited as sources of the infection are also considering legal action against Germany, for both financial and moral damages.
Yemen's Growing Chaos: When a Dictator Loses His Grip
Coach OutletResidents of Yemen's capital Sana'a awoke on Tuesday to a dawn chorus of bird song and machine- gun fire. An uneasy truce between rebel tribesmen and loyalist troops had prevailed over the weekend. But now the two sides were back at it, launching shells at each other as windows rattled across the city and plumes of dark smoke rose into the crystal blue sky. Despite four months of mass protests and defections from within his army, party and tribe, President Ali Abdullah Saleh has remained defiantly in place, seing off one effort to oust him after the next, while all the time maintaining that he is the pole who holds up the tent. Shortly after snubbing a third attempt at mediation by Gulf Arab neighbours last Sunday, Saleh sent his forces to take on the leaders of Yemen's most powerful tribal organization, the Hashed, the leaders of which have been bankrolling the opposition and supporting the upkeep of hundreds of thousands of protesters camping out on the capital's streets. (See pictures of clashes in Yemen.) It was a dangerous fight to pick. The week's worth of gun battles between the rebel tribesmen and Saleh's troops has already claimed the lives of 150 people; and the confrontations are briskly fanning the fears of civil war. Luxury Coach OutletThe two sides, now separated only by a few residential blocks, are firing anti-aircraft missiles at each other as they scramble for control of government buildings and the airport, their battle slowly encroaching the center of the city. Life in the capital is growing fierce and desperate. Sana'a's eastern suburb of Hasaba the crux of the clashes so far is now a ghost-town where Kalashnikov-wielding tribesmen in camouflage stalk streets empty of all humanity except for a few dazed looking old men sitting in the dust oblivious to the bullets and rockets flying around them. (See more about Yemen's death spiral.) The violence in Hasaba has spread panic throughout the city.hermes birkin Long lines of cars and buses with bags strapped to the roofs filtered their way out of the city on Tuesday. Many of those staying put are hoarding, withdrawing their savings from banks, filling buckets with petrol and barricading themselves indoors. "No safety, no electricity, no water, no phone network, and people with no jobs, the situation is very bad these days," says Ahmed Zaid, a man from old Sana'a who scratches a living by ferrying people to Tagheer Square, the epicenter of the protests, on his battered Suzuki motorbike. "I myself I'm terrified for my family, we're leaving tomorrow, inshallah," he says in broken English and using the Arabic for "God willing." The rebel tribesmen are holed up in a bullet-pocked gothic-style mansion belonging to Sadeq al-Ahmar, the grizzly-bearded leader of the Hashed, Yemen's largest and most powerful tribal federation. Sadeq's men are gradually fanning out and now have control of several government buildings including the ministry of trade and interior. Nike outlet"This started as self-defense but now we're fighting for his downfall," says Sheikh Mohammed al-Farasi, a scrawny man with bloodshot eyes guarding the entrance to Ahmar's crumbling garrison which is stocked with ammunition and supplies."There's no bigger shame for a tribal leader than having his house attacked. The only way this can end is if Saleh goes, the Hashed have spoken: enough is enough," he says loading his AK-47 with cartridges. (See scenes from Yemen.) On Wednesday, the jostling for buildings continued. Special Police Units recaptured the Ministry of Local Affairs from the Ahmar clan, while the latter took Hasaba's police station. At least 37 people died in the clashes on Tuesday night bringing the overall death toll from this latest round of fighting to over 200. Sadeq, one of the wealthiest and most outspoken figures on the Yemeni tribal landscape, had been allied with Saleh until March when he announced his support for the "peaceful youth movement".Coach New Arrivals Now he's being looked on as the power that might unsettle Saleh from his perch. Sadeq's brother Hamid, a business tycoon and founder of the opposition party Islah, has positioned himself as a potential successor to Saleh and accuses the president of violating the constitution by turning Yemen into his family enterprise. Saleh has ordered Sadeq's arrest but the tribal chief remains defiant. Last week he called Saleh a "liar" and said the President would leave the country "barefoot."
coach factory outletIs the federal government reading your e-mail? That may sound outrageous, but it may well be perfectly legal. The Constitution protects your home, your car, and your body from unreasonable searches. But the courts have been much less clear about whether it protects your Gmail or Yahoo! Mail account. So while the courts continue to deliberate, Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont is now trying to give email new protections by upgrading the main federal Internet privacy law. E-mail is one of the biggest battlegrounds in privacy law and for good reason. Luxury Coach OutletPeople use it to communicate with their most intimate friends and relatives and they say many things they wouldn't want the government to know about, from talking about having cancer to insulting the President. Still, one of the revelations of the NSA spying scandal a few years back was that the government was intercepting a lot of private e-mail. (See how companies mine your data.) The e-mail privacy problem starts with the Fourth Amendment, which prevents unreasonable searches or more precisely, with how the Fourth Amendment has been interpreted. cheap hermes birkin The Fourth Amendment requires law enforcement in most cases to get a search warrant before they enter a home. To obtain a warrant, the government must have "probable cause" to believe a crime is being committed. The Fourth Amendment gives similar protection to first-class mail sent through the postal service. Generally, the government needs a warrant to open it. The rules for listening in on phone calls are even tougher. To comply with the Fourth Amendment, the government generally needs a "super-warrant," with its own set of procedural safeguards. These strong constitutional protections for private communications fall apart, however, for e-mail. The courts have not definitively decided whether the Fourth Amendment requires the government to get a warrant before obtaining an individual's e-mails from their email provider and then reading them. nike sb shoesGovernment lawyers like to emphasize the ways in which e-mail could be seen as deserving of less privacy; some of the most popular e-mail programs, for example, such as Gmail or Hotmail, are held by a third party, and the law often gives less protection to information that we let third parties keep for us. Last December, the Cincinnati-based United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled that a warrant is required to search stored e-mail but that decision only applies in four Midwestern states. (Watch "10 Simple Gmail Tricks You Might Not Know.") There is a second source of legal protection for e-mail privacy: the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. But its protections are limited. ECPA requires government to get a warrant when it intercepts e-mail in transit, but once an e-mail lands in your inbox, the protections are weaker. The government does not have to get a warrant, for instance, to read e-mail you have stored for over 180 days. That is a huge loophole, since many people use their e-mail accounts as electronic filing cabinets.Coach Shoes The federal government has also taken the position that once you open an e-mail it loses its protection, and it does not need a warrant to read it.
coach factory outletTalking to its enemies is not something that has ever come easily to America, a
country that believes in good and evil, black and white, with few shades of gray. Nevertheless, thats the way most wars end. And as President Obama has at
last acknowledged, its the way the 10-year war in Afghanistan must and should end.
Think back to an even bloodier conflict in another faraway land. In early 1968 the U.S. Army and Marines won a famous victory at great cost against an
insurgent armys mass assault. But the dean of American television journalists, Walter Cronkite, wasnt fooled by the defeat of the Tet Offensive. Touring
South Vietnam that February, he soon concluded that, contrary to U.S. generals optimistic predictions, the best military outcome America could hope for was
a bloody stalemate. replica coach handbagsOn Feb. 27, 1968, he went on the CBS Evening News and told the
American people that the only rational way out will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who have lived up to their pledge to defend
democracy, and did the best they could. His wise words caused a political earthquake. Within a few weeks, President Johnson had decided not to run for
reelection and had launched what became the Paris peace process.
Americas troops in Afghanistan have done the best they can. But despite their many tactical and local victories, they cannot by themselves defeat an
insurgent force whose chief aim is to expel foreign forces from its home country. The political settlement America and its allies have been struggling to
uphold is unsustainable unless and until the forces of conservative religious nationalism as represented by the Taliban are somehow dealt into the game. hermes birkin The truth is that when the West helped the northern Afghan warlords drive the Taliban from
power, we did not defeat the Taliban. Instead, we merely pushed them backeast and south and underground.
Worse, the peace that was then brokered, at the December 2001 Bonn conference and afterward, was a victors peace. nike sb shoesThe Taliban were not dealt into the agreement. And so they came creeping back, tentatively at first,
but now in full and violent spate. The West has unwittingly become involved in a multiplayer, multidimensional, multidecade conflict, a struggle between
Islam and secularism, conservatism and modernism, communism and capitalism, town and country, the Pashtun and their ethnic rivals, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, and
Turkmen.
With the death of Osama bin Laden, the Obama administration has at last been freed to acknowledge that there will be no military solution. What is needed, as
the president told the BBC on the eve of last weeks visit to London, is a new political settlement for Afghanistan. It was a tacit acceptance of what
Americas greatest contemporary diplomatmy late friend, colleague, and sparring partner Richard Holbrookeoften said: we are attacking the wrong enemy in
Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, in dozens of other places in the Middle East, and even in some of the great cities of the West. However much we may dislike the
Talibans social agenda, they are not global jihadists. Their only real quarrel with the West is the presence of our forces in their homeland.
At memorial for tornado victims, Joplin vows to heal, rebuild
Coach OutletThose who have survived a devastating tornado in Joplin, Missouri, should do their utmost to live up to the example set by those who died while helping others escape the storm, President Barack Obama said Sunday at a memorial service for the victims. Obama spoke about two of the heroes from the twister, which barreled into Joplin packing 200-mph winds a week ago Sunday. One of them, Dean Wells, directed his co-workers and customers at Home Depot to safety, returning again and again for more people until a wall of the store fell on top of him, the president said. And Christopher Lucas, 26, a manager at a Pizza Hut, herded employees and customers into a walk-in freezer, finding a bungee cord to hold the door shut from the inside and wrapping the other end around his arm. coach outletLucas held on as long as he could, Obama told the crowd Sunday, "until he was pulled away by the incredible force of the storm. He died saving more than a dozen people in that freezer. Faith comes to the forefront on Sunday in Joplin "There are heroes around us all the time," the president said. "And so, in the wake of this tragedy, let us live up to their example, to make each day count, to live with a sense of mutual regard, to live with that same compassion that they demonstrated in their final hours. cheap hermes birkin We are called by them to do everything we can to be worthy of this chance we've been given to carry on." The tornado swept a 13-mile path, the National Weather Service said Sunday, raising its earlier estimate of six miles. It destroyed neighborhoods, stripped the bark from trees, reduced homes in its path to unrecognizable rubble and killed more people than any other U.S. tornado since modern recordkeeping began in 1950. Early Sunday morning, Joplin City Manager Mark Rohr told CNN the death toll was 142. State officials have released the names of 87 victims. Authorities have 146 sets of human remains, Andrea Spillars, deputy director of the Missouri Department of Public Safety, said Sunday. nike dunk shoesSome of the remains may belong to the same person, she said, cautioning the figure should not be considered a death toll at this point. "It seems inconceivable that just one week ago, the people of Joplin were going about their daily lives, doing the ordinary things that people do on a Sunday evening -- cooking dinner, watching TV, walking the dog, attending their sons' and daughters' graduation," said Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, who spoke before Obama at the memorial service. "This tragedy has changed us forever," Nixon said. "This community will never be the same. We will never be the same ... but those we love, those we lost, are safe with God and safe in our hearts. And in our hearts the joy they gave us lives on and nothing can take that from us. We can and we will heal ... by God's grace, we will restore this community and by God's grace we will renew our souls." Coach Leather CollectionsEarlier, the Rev. Aaron Brown told those present, "I think God is saying to you right now, death doesn't get the last word. Death doesn't win ... Life wins."
