The World
Palestinians Edge Toward Civil War
The Israeli hard-liners' case against Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has been that, for all his declared good intentions, he's a hopeless partner for peace because he won't take on the Islamic terrorists in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. In Abbas's defense, realists have warned that if the U.S.-backed Palestinian leader challenges Hamas and other radicals, he will have a civil war on his hands-one that he'd probably lose.
Last week in Gaza provided dramatic, bloody proof of the realists' point. Following the Bush administration's urgings for him to assert authority over Hamas, Abbas sent masses of his Presidential Guard troops-funded and trained by the United States-onto the mean streets of Gaza. It was an uncharacteristically bold attempt to show the Hamas gunmen who was boss. But in the ensuing days of urban warfare that claimed some 50 Palestinian lives, Hamas forces clearly got the upper hand.
Following an assertive strategy of their own-but one that never fails-Hamas terrorists also fired scores of rockets at the Israeli border town Sderot, killing no one but pressuring Israel into responding with lethal airstrikes against Hamas commanders. To no one's surprise, the deaths at Israeli hands solidified the radical movement's popular support-and its violent rule on the Gaza streets.
A Bit Too Wild About Prince Harry
The troops in Iraq will have to make do without Britain's Prince Harry, third in line to the throne. Just last month, the head of the British Army, Gen. Richard Dannatt, said the Sandhurst Military Academy-educated second lieutenant would deploy with his tank regiment to southern Iraq. Why now go, to use a Thatcherism, "all wobbly"? Both Sunni al Qaeda and Shiite militia pegged Prince Harry as a high-value target. After a quick trip to Iraq, Dannatt concluded that "these threats expose not only him but those around him to a degree of risk that I now deem unacceptable." Prince Harry-having declared that he didn't want to be left to "sit on my arse back home"-sent word that he was "very disappointed."
Looking Past Putin's Smile
The last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, was once described as a man with a "nice smile but iron teeth." The current president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, seems to share that bit of DNA. Last week, in a meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Putin turned on the smile and agreed, officials said, to tone down some of his anti-American rhetoric. That's nice, but he'll keep gnawing on U.S. relations over divisive issues such as Washington's European missile-defense plans.
Commodities Boom Is Good for Africa
It may seem there is rarely good news about Africa. But this is: Africa's economic growth rate is expected to rise to 6 percent this year, up from 5.5 percent last year and the best in two decades, as a result of the strong demand for oil and other commodities by China and other fast-developing nations. Still, growth needs to reach close to 8 percent annually for Africa to reach its 2015 goal of cutting by half the number of people living in extreme poverty.
Growth was strong in South Africa, Algeria, Nigeria, and Egypt, the continent's four largest economies, says the African Development Bank. The bad news: Zimbabwe's economy is collapsing, hit by hyperinflation and political unrest under the abusive mismanagement of dictator Robert Mugabe.
Justice in the Murder of a Nun
She was a 73-year-old missionary nun and Amazon rainforest defender originally from Dayton, Ohio. In 2005, Dorothy Stang was shot dead by two gunmen in a remote part of Brazil after braving many death threats because of her efforts to stop rampant jungle clearing by loggers and ranchers.
A Brazilian rancher was convicted last week of ordering the killing and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. In a separate trial, one of the gunmen testified (though later recanted) that the rancher, Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura, had offered $25,000 for the killing of Stang in a conflict over land.
The trial was seen as a test of whether powerful landholders can be held accountable in the Amazon state of Para, where there have been few such trials and convictions despite hundreds of land-related killings over the past 30 years. After Stang's death, the Brazilian government sent the Army into the region, suspended logging permits, and put large swaths of rain forest off limits to development.
With Larry Derfner in Israel and Associated Press
This story appears in the May 28, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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