Monday, August 21, 2006

Midnight News -- 8/21/06

Despite condemning Israel's commando raid in Baalbek, Kofi Annan is expected to announce that the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon will be allowed to use force to keep the peace. Perhaps Israel's raid sent a sufficiently loud message to the world that Israel would take the provisions of resolution 1701 even if no one else did, thus spurring Annan to make a change in UNIFIL's rules of engagement.

South Korea is taking a keen interest in whether the North is planning to test a nuclear weapon. This despite saying that U.S. claims of an impending North Korean nuclear test were unfounded.

The human oddity that has claimed the murder of JonBenet Ramsey flew in style from Bangkok to Los Angeles. Sitting in business class, John Mark Karr sipped champagne, had a beer, then enjoyed a supper of chardonnay and fried prawns. Some commentators have suggested that indulging Karr was a ploy by Boulder, Colorado investigators, an attempt to soften Karr up for an interrogation. Others, by which I mean myself, have suggested the cops who escorted Karr were too distracted by the man's weirdness to think to say no. It has also been reported that while in Thailand, Karr visited a sex change clinic. Drunkablog has been covering the Karr case more than is probably healthy.

Controversy during a cricket match between England and Pakistan on Sunday exposed tensions between citizens of Muslim countries and those of Western countries. I frankly have no idea how cricket works, but the drama surrounding it, as described at Samizdata, is intelligible and captivating.

The Maori queen has died. Long live the Maori king.

Teachers at my old grade school in Scottsdale are making special efforts to make sure kids attend the first week of classes. The problem is that many families are on vacation through August, and that many are newcomers who don't realize school starts on before Labor Day. Life is good for a public school educator when those are the worst problems.

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