Ever since NBC announced that Conan O’Brien would be taking over “The Tonight Show,” the big question was whether Conan could attract the same numbers as former host Jay Leno. Determined by his performance so far, he’ll do just fine — even though official numbers from Nielsen won’t be available for another week, preliminary numbers suggest he may have reached more than 9 million viewers on his first night, making it the strongest Monday “Tonight Show” in more than four years. And all the buzz about Conan’s debut certainly helped the premiere: His audience was up 173 percent over his final “Late Night” episode. While it’s too soon to tell what kind of crowd he’ll draw in the future, there were enough prize moments in his first week (see photos) to keep the laughs coming.
Archive for June 7th, 2009
Deep in the Sahara Desert, along the remote southern borders of Algeria, lies an immense no man’s land where militants roam.
It is here that terrorists linked with al-Qaida traffic everything from weapons and drugs to illegal migrants. They have planted at least a half-dozen cells in Europe, according to French, Italian and Belgian intelligence. Last week, they announced on the Internet that they had killed a British hostage in Mali, and are still holding a Swiss hostage.
The al-Qaida of the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, is perhaps the best example of how al-Qaida is morphing and broadening its reach through loose relationships with local offshoots. The shadowy network of Algerian cells recruits Islamist radicals throughout northern and western Africa, trains them and sends them to fight in the region or Iraq, according to Western and North African intelligence officials who asked to remain anonymous because of the nature of their jobs. In turn, AQIM gets al-Qaida’s brand name and some corporate know-how.
“The relationship with the al-Qaida mother company works like in a multinational,” says Jean-Louis Bruguiere, France’s former top counterterrorism judge and an expert on North African networks. “There’s a strong ideological link, but the local subsidiary operates on its own.”
Another Western intelligence official compares AQIM to a local fast food franchise, “only for terrorism.”
A picture of AQIM and its ties with al-Qaida emerges from accounts by its victims, interviews with some of the dozens of intelligence officials following its activities and data pieced together by Western diplomats in Algeria.
It shows that the battle against radical Islam in Algeria has become crucial — and not only for North Africa. Intelligence officials throughout Europe are convinced that AQIM wants to expand in their region.
A senior counterterrorism official in France, who was not authorized to talk on the record, told The Associated Press that his services work “daily, constantly” with Algerian security to contain this threat. He says at least six AQIM-related cells, dormant or getting ready for action, have been dismantled across Europe in recent years.
Last month, the Spanish judiciary announced it had caught 12 Algerians from a suspected support cell. And last week, Italian authorities issued arrest warrants for two Tunisians, two Moroccans and an Algerian suspected of plotting attacks on a church and a subway line.
“For now, we’ve been good,” the French official says. “But we’ve basically been lucky.”
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Four years ago, the Algerian terrorists — then known as the Salafist Group for Call and Combat — were running out of steam.
Born in an insurgency in 1992, the group took part in a near-civil war the next decade that killed about 200,000 people. But its fighters had lost popular support after killing Muslim civilians. Many leaders had turned themselves in during government amnesties, and the group was weak from internal feuds.
So its new emir or leader, Abdelmalek Droukdel, reached out to the superstar of international jihad: Al-Qaida.
His emissaries met with Osama bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, or close associates of his in countries like Sudan, Lebanon or Yemen, the Western intelligence officials told the AP.
Al-Qaida said it couldn’t give its brand away to an unreliable group: Even by jihad standards, Algerian militants had a reputation for excess violence. But after a year of talks and tests, al-Zawahri issued a statement recognizing the “blessed union” on Sept. 11, 2006.
AQIM tried to focus more on Western targets in Algeria or tourists and Jews in Morocco. It also imported al-Qaida techniques, such as fine-tuned remote-controlled roadside bombs and suicide bombers.
In an apparent reference to al-Qaida’s attacks on the U.S. on 9/11, AQIM carried out its first suicide bombings on April 11, 2007. On Dec. 11 that year, it killed 37 people — including 17 United Nations staffers — in an attack that devastated the U.N.’s Algerian headquarters.
The key technology input seems to be public relations. Several times a month, AQIM now uses global jihadist forums on the Internet to issue political statements and videos of bombings or ambushes.
The Algerian group appears to raise its own money rather than get any from al-Qaida, according to Bruguiere and others.
“I don’t think there are many ties to headquarters other than ideological,” said Bruguiere, the European Union coordinator of the Terrorism Finance Tracking Program run jointly with the U.S. Treasury Department and CIA.
The group pays its dues back to “headquarters” by trying to expand a new front for jihad in North Africa that could also serve as a forward base to hit Europe. Terrorists from Algeria or of Algerian descent have already been implicated in several devastating attacks, including the 2004 Madrid train bombings and a series of blasts in the Paris metro in the 1990s.
The Western and North African intelligence officials said expansion is under way, to a limited extent, in Tunisia and Libya.
And Moroccan security said police dismantle at least a half-dozen suspected terrorist cells on average each year. The Interior Ministry recently ordered 267 local bank branches to close because they were too vulnerable to holdups that could fund militants.
The Pentagon’s new Africa Command is also striving to prevent the Algerian group’s expansion south into the desert. U.S. troops or Special Forces help the weak military in Saharan states increase patrolling and cross-border cooperation.
The need is pressing. The British and Swiss hostages were among four European tourists and two senior U.N. envoys kidnapped this winter near the Mali and Niger borders. The Swiss hostage is still being held, but the others have since been released. Likely kidnapped by local gunmen, they were transferred to AQIM, which asked for a huge ransom and the release of a radical Islamist preacher held in Britain.
But the bulk of the militants’ activities remain in densely populated northern Algeria, where nearly every day they traffic goods, plunder drivers at fake road blocks, kidnap, and extort money from small businessmen in exchange for safety.
“They’re not al-Qaida, they’re just a mafia,” said Majid Benhamiche, who regularly dons his military uniform to join the army in raids against terrorist camps across the Kabylie mountains.
Benhamiche never drives without a Kalashnikov, and carries a pistol at all times. He is part of a village militia armed by the Algerian Defense Ministry. His isolated family house has been turned into a fortress-like compound with high walls and at least three armed family members on guard.
“It’s a war out there, and we don’t even know who we’re fighting,” he said. “But we’re not frightened. We’re well-armed.”
In this deeply macho society, Benhamiche has even taught his wife to use a Kalashnikov in case militants mount the raid they have been expecting every night for more than a decade. “She’s a pretty good shot,” he said.
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Algerian authorities describe the militants as on the run. In a rare interview with the AP during the presidential election in April, Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni said “the armed elements are currently being cornered.”
Authorities have indeed dismantled several large cells this year. Important local “emirs,” or militant leaders, have turned themselves in, and several former high-profile leaders — known as “repentants” in Algeria — are calling on militants to stop fighting. Algerian authorities believe there are 500-800 active fighters left, a mere fraction of what there used to be.
These die-hards “are hard to catch because they’re taking refuge in remote mountains and forests,” Zerhouni told the AP.
Still, violence is persistent. Data obtained by the AP from Western diplomats in Algeria shows 85 significant bombings in 2008. Some 639 people died that year because of terrorism-related violence: 409 suspected militants, 158 security force members and 72 civilians.
This year, there were 64 bombings from January to April alone, with deaths of 19 civilians and 61 security force members. The data also shows 167 suspected militants killed amid police sweeps, army raids and aerial bombardments.
Construction entrepreneur Mohammed remembers his terror in February, when he and his son returned late from a construction site, unarmed. They saw five gunmen blocking the road and waiting for them, said Mohammed, who asked to be identified only by his first name for fear of retaliation.
“They told me, ‘You know who we are,’” the businessman recalls, still visibly shaken. “I answered, ‘Yes, you are the mujahedeen.’” Mohammed describes the men as young, clean-shaven and wearing nice sport shoes. “They could have been anybody.”
The gunmen brought Mohammed and his son to the edge of the forest near their local base. Then they released him so he could collect a ransom for his child.
The kidnapping occurred within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of a police and army barracks. The AQIM fighters told Mohammed not to contact police, but he said he did anyway. They offered no assistance. An emergency law passed in the 1990s forbids discussing security matters, and officials declined to comment on any aspect of this article.
The militants asked Mohammed for euro40 million ($55 million). The father negotiated it down to 2 million dinars, about euro20,000, or $28,000. Though considerable, Mohammed said this is only about half the going rate for ransoms among the 39 people he knows or has heard of as being recently kidnapped in his region.
Mohammed retrieved his son safely and thought the terrorists would kill him after taking the money.
“But they didn’t even behead me. What kind of al-Qaida is this?” he asked, speaking with a blank voice and a shadow of fear in his eyes, convinced AQIM will come back to get him sooner or later.
Mohammed said the kidnappers left him with a warning for police: They planned to attack its headquarters in the nearby town of Les Ouacifs. Some 30 militants did indeed attack on March 26, spraying the station with bullets for a half-hour and injuring four officers.
“They’re afraid of no one,” Mohammed said.
Algeria has ramped up its security. These days, the capital is surrounded by rings of police and army checkpoints. With 100,000 military police, 80,000 government-funded militia members and 150,000 police, the Defense and Interior ministries are by far the biggest employers in this nation of 35 million people — except possibly for the regular army, whose numbers are kept secret.
Together, the two ministries spent 656 billion dinars ($9.1 billion), according to Algeria’s 2008 budget. That was more than a quarter of the state’s functioning budget, more than the education, justice and industry ministries combined.
For now, Algeria can pay for this vast security apparatus because it is one of the world’s largest oil and natural gas exporters. But in the global economic downturn, the burden is getting heavier.
In the meantime, poverty is rampant, unemployment is widespread, development falls far short and 70 percent of the population is under 30. The resulting tinderbox continues to stoke militancy that spreads far beyond Algeria’s borders, especially with the help of al-Qaida.
Sobbing relatives waited outside a morgue Saturday to claim the bodies from a day-care fire that killed 38 children in northern Mexico despite desperate attempts to evacuate babies and toddlers through the building’s only working exit. A father crashed his pickup truck through the wall in an effort to rescue his child.
The family of 2-year-old Maria Magdalena Millan held a funeral for her, dropping white roses onto her tiny coffin and attaching a Dora the Explorer balloon to the cross marking her grave. One woman held a framed picture of her.
“I love you and I don’t want to leave you here!” her mother screamed.
President Felipe Calderon arrived late Saturday with his health minister and interior secretary to visit victims in two hospitals. He wished the children a speedy recovery and promised families a full investigation to determine the cause of a tragedy he said was painful to all Mexicans, according to a statement from his office.
The death toll rose to 38 after three more children died Saturday, Sonora state health secretary Raymundo Lopez Vucovich told a news conference. Most of the victims had died of organ collapse caused by smoke inhalation, he said.
Delfina Ruelas, 60, said her grandchild German Leon died of his burns Saturday morning, three days after his fourth birthday. She and her husband saw television news reports that the ABC day care was on fire Friday and rushed over that evening.
“I thought he wasn’t that burned and that we would find him OK, but he was very burned,” said Ruelas, dissolving into tears outside the morgue in the northern city of Hermosillo, where she waited along with 30 other relatives. “They operated on him yesterday, and he held on, but today he couldn’t hold on.”
Firefighters carried injured children through the front door — the building’s only working exit — and through large holes that a civilian knocked into the walls before rescue crews arrived, according to a fire department official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the fire.
Noe Velasquez, an employee at a nearby auto parts store who helped pull out five toddlers, said the father of one of the children rammed his pickup truck through a wall. Velasquez did not know if the man’s child survived.
“I didn’t sleep last night. I’ve never gone through anything like that in all my life,” he said.
The tragedy in Hermosillo, capital city of the northwestern state of Sonora, population about 560,000, again raised questions about building safety in Mexico. Officials cracked down on code violations last year following a deadly stampede at a nightclub that killed 12 and a deadly disco fire nine years ago that killed 21. Both clubs were in Mexico City.
There were an estimated 142 children in the day care at the time of the fire, their ages ranging from 6 months to 5 years, and six staffers to look after them, Sonora state Gov. Eduardo Bours said at a news conference.
The ratio is in keeping with legal standards, said Daniel Karam, the director of Mexico’s Social Security Institute, which outsourced services to the privately run day care.
A May 26 inspection found that the day care building — a converted warehouse with a few windows mounted high up — complied with safety standards, Karam added.
Asked if the single functioning exit constituted a safety code violation, Karam only repeated that the building had passed the inspection, although he conceded that the security requirements might have to be re-evaluated.
“We always have to be open to improvements, especially when we have a tragedy that has so moved us,” Karam said.
Guadalupe Arvizu, who was visiting her injured 2-year-old grandson at a hospital, said the building has an emergency exit but it could not be opened on the day of the fire. She did not know why.
“The place is in bad condition. It’s a warehouse. There are no windows in the classrooms,” said Arvizu, whose daughter — the boy’s mother — is a caretaker at the day care but was not injured in the fire.
Some of the children had third-degree burns, the Hermosillo fire department official said.
“As a doctor I have confronted death on many occasions,” said Lopez, the state health secretary, his voice cracking. “But I’m seeing so much misfortune and suffering now, it breaks my heart.”
Thirty-three children remain hospitalized, 23 of them in Hermosillo, including 15 who are in critical condition, Lopez said. One of them is brain dead.
Nine children have been transferred to other Mexican hospitals, eight of them to the western Mexican city of Guadalajara that has a special burn unit, and one to Ciudad Obregon in Sonora, he said.
A 3-year-old girl with burns over 80 percent of her body was sent by military transport to be treated at Shriners Hospital for Children Northern California, said Carlos Gonzalez Gutierrez, Consul General for Mexico based in Sacramento, California.
The girl’s injuries could require months of treatment, which will be free of charge, Gonzalez Gutierrez said. One parent is traveling with the girl, and will be housed nearby.
“It’s going to be challenging. The survivability is about 50 percent. A lot of it is how deep the burn is and where it’s located and how bad is the smoke inhalation,” said Dr. Tina Palmieri, assistant chief of burns for Shriners’.
Four children have been released from the hospital, along with two of six adults who had been admitted, Lopez said. The hospitalized adults included five of six women who took care of the children at the center, plus a security guard. The four still hospitalized are in stable condition, Lopez said.
Lopez encouraged citizens to donate blood because he said many of the children are going to need it.
Velasquez said he and several other people rushed to the day care when they saw smoke. Teachers already had lined up some of the children outside but the very smallest were trapped inside, some of them in their cribs. Velasquez said he pulled out limp toddlers without knowing if they were dead or alive.
The fire started at an adjoining tire and car warehouse leased by the state government, Bours said. The blaze eventually spread to the roof of the day care, sending flames raining down on the children, according to the fire department official.
Firefighters took two hours to control the blaze, the cause of which was still unconfirmed. Police trucks cordoned off the block surrounding the cavernous salmon-and-blue day care, while forensic investigators gathered material, searching for clues to what started the blaze.
Europe was leaning to the right ahead of European Parliament elections Sunday, with voters in many countries favoring conservative parties against a backdrop of economic crisis.
Opinion polling showed right-leaning governments with edges over their opposition in Germany, Italy and France. Conservative opposition parties were tied or ahead in Britain, Spain, and some smaller countries.
The parliament has evolved over the past 50 years from a consultative legislature to one with the right to vote on or amend two-thirds of all EU laws.
It increasingly makes vital decisions on issues ranging from climate change to cell-phone roaming charges. It can amend the EU budget — euro120 billion ($170 billion) this year — and holds hearings to approve candidates for the European Commission, the EU administration and board of the European Central Bank.
The outgoing assembly passed 1,355 laws in its five-year term, slashing mobile phone costs, banning toxic chemicals from toys and barring the import of dog and cat fur and seal products, among other issues.
But with unemployment high across Europe, many voters expressed dissatisfaction with all mainstream national parties, and skepticism over the EU’s ability to help spur recovery.
Reflecting the disenchantment, polls predicted record low turnout for the EU vote, and small but symbolically important gains for far-right groups and other fringe parties in countries from Britain to Hungary.
Polls also show voters consider their European Parliament members — who earn euro7,665 ($10,430) a month — to be overpaid, remote and irrelevant.
“I know they run up heaps of expenses. They don’t seem to miss too many meals!” Mary McAllister, 32, said after voting Friday inside a Catholic church social hall in Dublin.
For many voters and politicians, the Europe-wide elections were most important as a snapshot of national political sentiment.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats were ahead of the center-left Social Democrats in Germany, which holds national elections in September. Merkel hopes to form a center-right government after the national vote with the pro-business Free Democrats, whose ratings have strengthened during the recession.
In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative UMP party has steadily held the lead in polls, with the Socialist Party second.
Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s Freedom People’s Party held a two-digit lead over his main center-left rival in the most recent polling despite a deep recession and a scandal over allegations he had an inappropriate relationship with an 18-year-old model.
In Britain, dissident Labour legislators said a plot to oust Prime Minister Gordon Brown could accelerate when expected dismal results in the European elections were announced.
Opponents say the Labour leader has been so tainted by the economic crisis and a scandal over lawmakers’ expenses that Conservatives are virtually guaranteed to win a national election that must be called by June 2010.
Polls showed good news for left-leaning parties in countries such as Greece and Portugal.
But an informal forecast by the political science Web site http://www.predict09.eu site anticipated Conservatives winning 262 seats against 194 for the Socialists and 85 for the Liberals in 736-seat European Parliament, roughly the same proportions as in the last parliament.
The EU assembly has been a forum for consensus politics, and right-leaning parties have taken up business regulation and social protection initiatives more traditionally associated with the left.
In Spain, where the recession has driven unemployment to 17.4 percent, Europe’s highest, a close race was expected between the ruling Socialists and conservative opposition. A poll published May 31 in the El Mundo newspaper showed the conservatives taking a few more seats.
Poland’s governing pro-business Civic Platform party was expected to claim around half of the country’s 54 seats, followed by the conservative nationalist Law and Justice party — a shift to the right for Poland at the European parliament.
Center-right and -left parties in Austria were expected to lose seats to smaller groups like the far-right Freedom Party, which has campaigned on a strong anti-Islam platform. Its posters proclaim “The Occident in Christian hands” and describe voting day as “the day of reckoning.”
Hungary’s governing Socialist Party has been burdened by a highly unpopular former leader and Hungary’s deep economic crisis, which has forced a series of austerity measures like higher taxes and lower social subsidies.
Pollsters expect the main center-right opposition party, Fidesz, to win at least 15 of 22 seats. Jobbik, a far-right party that is accused by critics of racism and anti-Semitism and is not in the Hungarian parliament, was expected to win one or two seats.
Voters in eight nations, including Britain, Ireland and the Netherlands, cast ballots in the three days leading up to Sunday’s voting in the rest of the 27-nation EU.
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Associated Press writers Geir Moulson in Berlin, Elaine Ganley in Paris, Daniel Woolls in Madrid, David Stringer in London, Constant Brand in Brussels, Ryan Lucas in Warsaw, George Jahn in Vienna, Derek Gatopoulos in Athens, Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Alison Mutler in Bucarest, Romania and Veselin Toshkov in Sofia, Bulgaria contributed to this report.
It’s been a confrontational week in politics — gauntlets thrown down, threats issued, dueling speeches — and it’s only Wednesday.
Don’t say it: Conservative radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh has issued a unique challenge to cable network MSNBC. On his radio show Tuesday, the ever-modest Limbaugh said that the cable network is trying to “build its ratings on my back.” From his website:
“I challenge you, MSNBC! Thirty days without anything mentioning me. No video of me, no guests commenting on me. See if you can do it … Let’s see if you can do Rush withdrawal. Let’s see if you can run your little TV network for 30 days without doing a single story on me, and then let’s take a look at your ratings during those 30 days and see what happens.
Since the election, Limbaugh has emerged as the defacto “voice” of the GOP — or at least, the loudest one. In January, Limbaugh made his infamous “I hope Obama fails” comment, and was featured in a Vanity Fair article titled “The Man Who Ate the GOP.” Earlier this month, Limbaugh took aim at former Secretary of State Colin Powell, telling him to “become a Democrat, instead of claiming to be a Republican.” Cheney joined the fray, remarking (on Limbaugh’s radio show, of all places):
” … my take on it was Colin had already left the party. I didn’t know he was still a Republican.”
Powell fired back at Cheney and Limbaugh last night, telling an audience in Boston that there was room for him in “another version of the Republican Party waiting to emerge once again.”
Rush, being Rush, responded on his show Wednesday, saying “The only thing emerging here is Colin Powell’s ego. Colin Powell represents the stale, the old, the worn-out GOP that never won anything.” Ball’s in your court, Colin.
Our prediction: A draw. If MSNBC takes Limbaugh’s challenge, everyone will be watching the “little TV network” to see if it’s keeping its promise; ratings will rise and both sides will get a whole lot of free publicity. Done and done.
This is not American Idol: Michael Steele, the outspoken new leader of the RNC, is never lacking for a snappy sound bite. Steele spoke to state party leaders this week, telling them it was time to take on President Obama. From AP:
“He’s young. He’s cool. He’s hip … he’s got all the qualities America likes in a celebrity, so of course he’s going to be popular … but this is not American Idol. This is serious … and we are going to take them on.”
But even while Steele is trying to unite Republicans in going after Obama, he’s facing opposition within his own party. Fox News reports that Steele is threatening to “step aside” if RNC committee members vote to take away his authority to manage RNC funds.
Now, where did I put that? The New York Times reports that an external hard drive containing “a huge quantity of personal information” from the Clinton Administration has gone missing from the National Archives. Some of the information on the hard drive includes: Social Security numbers and addresses of White House employees, Secret Service procedures and personal information about one of former Vice President Al Gore’s daughters.
He said, he said: On Thursday, President Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney will be giving dueling speeches on national security. Cheney’s speech, which was planned several weeks ago, will be held at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, reports Politico. Cheney has been in the media spotlight recently, defending Bush-era interrogations and criticizing Obama’s anti-terror policies.
The theme of Obama’s speech will be the closing of Guantanamo Bay, and advisors say the speech will be more of an “effort to describe and defend his policies and the political and intellectual assumptions behind them.” Today, the Senate broke with Obama, voted 90-6 to block $80 million in funding to close Guantanamo and transfer detainees to the U.S.
There were plenty of serious moments during NBC’s special report, “Inside the Obama White House,” but just as quickly, things would take a turn for the silly. One conversation began with Obama discussing his numerous concerns, including North Korea, Pakistan and GM: “I didn’t ask for all these challenges, and so I’m always puzzled when people say you’re taking on too much. Well, what exactly would you have me give up?”
But then it ended with “Saturday Night Live” funnyman Fred Armisen’s struggle to nail down an impression worthy of a president. “The ears aren’t quite as big on the show as they are in person,” noted Obama. “That’s presumably a makeup situation they can do something about that.” And what does he think we he sees an Obama bobblehead? “Huh,” answered the president.
And while we’re not really sure why it’s such interesting news (again) that the president likes cheeseburgers, it’s pretty amazing to see him carting around greasy bags of what look like good eats to his staff. The limo ride to the diner also provides Obama a chance to put his feet up (literally) and compare cable news chatter to WWF wrestling. The trip was a bit of a hokey, planned moment, for sure, but OK, we watched.
People who stayed up late enough to catch “The Tonight Show” got a second helping of the president, who gave props to new host Conan O’Brien. Obama also admitted that his White House had discussed “how to manage this transition between Leno and Conan,” but warned O’Brien there’d be no bailout from Washington if he “screws it up.” And then the president smiled.
But we think David Letterman had the last (and best) laugh. Watch his own musical intro for the NBA program, starring Natalie, Tootie and all the “Facts of Life.”
And just because you made it to the bottom of the page, we’ll give you what you really want. Presidential pooch Bo Obama licks the camera and paws the NBC microphone like a toy. Good dog.
Lebanese streamed to their hometowns on the Mediterranean coast and high up in the mountains Sunday to vote in crucial elections that could unseat a pro-Western government and install one dominated by the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah.
The race for the 128-member parliament is viewed by many as setting Lebanon’s political course for the next four years, with repercussions beyond this tiny Arab country’s borders. A win for the Shiite militant group, which the United States considers a terrorist organization, and its allies could bring isolation to Lebanon and possibly a new conflict with Israel.
It could also set back U.S. Mideast policy and boost the influence of Shiite Hezbollah’s backers Syria and Iran.
Lebanon has long been a main front in what many see as a power struggle between two main camps in the Mideast — the U.S. and its moderate Arab allies Saudi Arabia and Egypt on one side, and Iran and Syria and militant groups such as Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas on the other.
A steady stream of vehicles headed south, north or east from Beirut on highways to outlying parts of the country early Sunday morning, a weekend here, carrying voters to hometowns. Some vehicles had flags of political groups fluttering to show loyalty.
Voters lined up outside polling stations in government buildings and public schools across the country after polls opened at 7 a.m. (0400 GMT). Voting ends 12 hours later. There are some 3.2 million eligible voters out of a population of 4 million. Early unofficial returns were expected late Sunday and official results as early as Monday afternoon.
Army troops in armored carriers and in trucks took up positions on major highways to ensure peaceful voting. Authorities have deployed some 50,000 soldiers and police.
Scores of foreign observers, including former President Jimmy Carter, will monitor the vote.
Going into the election, the race for a majority appears too close to call. In the outgoing parliament, the pro-Western bloc had 70 seats and Hezbollah’s alliance had 58.
The vote is the latest chapter in four tumultuous years for Lebanon that began with the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005 in a car bombing. The pro-Western factions swept into power in elections the same year on a sympathy vote. But the government has been virtually paralyzed since by the power struggle with Hezbollah.
The campaign has been bruising, with accusations of vote-buying by both sides.
Hezbollah’s coalition includes the Shiite movement Amal and a major Christian faction led by former army chief Michel Aoun. Opposing it are the overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim supporters of current majority leader Saad Hariri, allied with several Christian and Druse factions.
Lebanese tend to vote mainly along sectarian or family loyalties. Sunni Muslim and Shiite Muslim districts around the country are largely locked up, so the battle has been over the Christian districts, where some races are a tossup. There are no reliable, independent polls.
Hezbollah’s Christian allies argue that a victory by their coalition will not have such a dramatic impact and will ensure peace in a nation divided by sectarian tensions. They say that involving Hezbollah more deeply in the political process — rather than shunning it — is the only way to bridge the sectarian divides.
Their opponents counter that the heavily armed Hezbollah would be driving Lebanon into the arms of Iran, which could use it as a front in the Islamic republic’s confrontation with Israel.
When agents for Hollywood actor Samuel L Jackson came looking for Andrew Mwangura in Kenya, he could not meet them — he was on the run.
The man they call the “Pirate Whisperer” was dodging both local authorities and well-connected criminals who were chasing him for exposing the international links of a wave of hijackings afflicting the busy international shipping routes off Somalia.
“I said I was in trouble, come back again when the coast is clear,” Mwangura told Reuters in an interview at Mombasa port.
Tinseltown plans to make an action movie about the piracy scourge. Jackson is to play Mwangura — the quiet 47-year-old founder of the non-profit East African Seafarers’ Assistance Program with seemingly unrivalled contacts with maritime groups, ships, ports and even pirates around east Africa.
Himself a former seaman, Mwangura breaks news time and time again on seizures and releases of ships by Somali pirates, revealing details of ransom payments in what has become a multimillion dollar business.
He is a hero to seamen, but a pain for the pirates’ financiers, said to be sitting in Nairobi, Dubai and London, managing the business by calls to the gangs’ satellite phones. There are strong suspicions that officials in the region could be involved, and Mwangura has not been shy of saying that.
FILM RIGHTS
Now Jackson and filmmaker Andras Hamori have secured the rights to his life story — but getting a chance to sit down and talk scripts has been more difficult than expected.
Mwangura fell foul of the Kenyan government last year after the MV Faina, a Ukrainian ship carrying 33 tanks, was hijacked en route to Mombasa. Mwangura said the consignment was really for south Sudan — and not Kenya, as officially claimed.
In October, on his way to a talk-show where he was due to speak to the relatives of the Russian and Ukrainian crew, Mwangura was arrested.
“They were waiting for me in Moscow and Kiev on camera. But I was taken to police headquarters for interrogation.”
Mwangura spent nine days in jail. One frightening night, he said he was woken by security agents who wanted to take him out of the prison for reasons unknown.
“I think maybe they wanted to harm me,” he said.
His cellmates joined hands to prevent the guards from taking him, and he was left in jail.
Mwangura was charged with making alarming statements to foreign media and for possessing $2 worth of marijuana. The government called him a frontman and spokesman for the pirates.
He says the charges were trumped up to silence him, and the marijuana was planted. Charges were dropped last month.
“They were trying to stop me but they lost. You cannot stop a calling,” he said.
FEAR OF ATTACK
Mwangura still fears he may be attacked, not by the government now but by criminals unhappy with the light he shines on their activities. But he is now in contact with the filmmakers, and ready to collaborate with the project.
At first, the father-of-two was hesitant. “I’m not a movie actor, I don’t want to spoil their movie,” he said.
The film makers reassured him that they just wanted to capture the real Mwangura for their story. Experts will shadow him for a couple of weeks to get the feel of his mannerisms.
At first he kept the film quiet, even from his wife, but now the news is out.
“Local media, TV and radio. People are calling, congratulating. Others come up with ideas — they say to do the film in a few different languages: Chinese, Pinoy, Arabic and Vietnamese, to represent the seafarers of the world. But I have no power on that, it is up to them.”
Mwangura is amazed at how often his name appears in a Google search, and the National Museum of Kenya wants to record his story for posterity too.
He says he has no time to watch films and still has not seen a Samuel L Jackson movie. But he hopes the film project will help to raise public awareness of seafarers, the “forgotten people” as he calls them, who keep sea trade alive.
