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Earthquake

The Chinese government has launched an immense rescue effort to help victims of the 7.9 magnitude earthquake that hit Sichuan province on Monday.  The death toll has risen to near 15,000 with an estimated 26,000 still buried and an additional 14,000 missing. The tragedies unfolding have been met with condolences and offers of aid from countries around the world.

Politics

Saturday was Chinese President Hu Jintao’s last day on a visit to Japan, the first visit by a Chinese leader in a decade.  On Thursday, he remarked, “The revival of Asia cannot do without cooperation between China and Japan.” Before departing, he visited Buddhist temples and bowed before a statue of a Chinese Buddhist monk, reportedly to ease an image of hostility to religion on the part of the atheistic Chinese Communist Party.  He also managed to squeeze in some ping pong diplomacy.

Three Chinese construction workers abducted in Nigeria were released unharmed on Saturday.  The employees of China Civil Engineering Construction Corp appear to have been wrapped up in a plot on the part of local staff to demand higher wages and better working conditions though it is still under investigation.

The Australian Olympic Committee said Saturday its athletes can say whatever they want in interviews and on blogs during the Beijing Olympic Games. Olympic rules prohibit demonstrations on the part of athletes, but the AOC interprets freedom of speech as separate from this statute.

China will "guarantee as much as possible" that internet sites will not be blocked during this summer's Olympics, but access to some sites will still be prohibited according to Technology Minister Wan Gang. Wireless internet will be widely available to facilitate timely reporting by journalists. As for knock-off Olympic goods, China says while it's making a great effort to curb copyright infringement, it can't guarantee that no pirated paraphernalia will be sold.

John Kamm of the Duihua Foundation which advocates for Chinese political prisoners, has requested Beijing release the remaining prisoners associated with the 1989 Tiananmen protests ahead of schedule coinciding with the Olympics as a goodwill gesture and a symbol of moving past the incident.

Economy

Wan Feng, president of China Life Insurance, said the earthquake will be "a huge test for the whole Chinese insurance industry." Life insurance claims in the wake of the earthquake will outstrip those from the snowstorm this past winter, but the brunt of claims will still be for property damage.

Apple’s iPhone is coming to India, Australia, Singapore, and the Philippines later this year, but no comment so far on whether when it’s China and Japan’s turn.

Lou Jiwei, the head of China's $200 billion sovereign wealth fund, China Investment Corp, said, "The current international market turbulence has produced unprecedented investment opportunities." CIC has allotted $90 billion to overseas investment, but pledges not to cause further economic destabilization by exploiting the current financial turmoil.

Taiwan

Four Taiwanese facilities are competing to receive the set of pandas offered by China. The acceptance of the pandas, which were offered in 2005, was guaranteed by the election of pro-mainland engagement candidate Ma Ying-jeou. Some facilities have already spent millions getting ready for the cuddly pair, both of which weathered the earthquake just fine.

Analysis

In today’s Seven Questions, Art Lerner-Lam of the Earth Institute at Columbia University talks about natural disasters and commends China’s preparedness and response, stressing that local terrain is providing logistical challenges to rescue operations.

Carnegie Endowment’s Minxin Pei discusses the survival and evolution of the Chinese Communist Party and looks at how they plan to exercise control in an ever-changing world in an article for the American Interest.

In The New Republic, Carnegie's Joshua Kurlantzick criticizes the Bush administration's China policy for its failure to stand up for human rights and looks ahead to the next administration.

Seven NATO states have signed on to support a new cyber-defense facility in Tallinn, Estonia. Estonia, nicknamed E-stonia, is one of the most wired countries in the world and has good reason to be concerned about a cyberterrorism. Last year, a massive botnet attack launched from inside Russia crippled the country's infrastructure for days after the government controversially took down a Soviet-era monument.

No word yet on whether "the Vetted" are involved in this new venture.

ROBERT ATANASOVSKI/AFP/Getty Images

For months, Greece has been threatening to veto Macedonia’s admittance into the EU, all because the two can't agree on the name issue.  But with violent outbreaks pock-marking Macedonia in the weeks before its June 1 elections, it appears the tiny Balkan state might just knock itself out of contention before Greece even gets the chance.

Last month, Macedonia’s parliament moved to disband and hold snap elections after months of deadlock (and the occasional headlock) over reform issues and rights for its 25 percent Albanian minority.

Since the beginning of the campaign last Sunday, a member of the Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA) has been stabbed to death and members of the rival Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), have been beaten, shot at, and had their offices attacked. In the latter cases, the DUI has blamed the violence on DPA supporters.

EU leaders have expressed concern over Macedonia’s pre-election troubles, saying that "violence has no place in an election campaign."  

This seems like an awfully understated response on the part of the EU, for whom Macedonia is quite close to the front of its new membership queue.  A candidate country since 2005, Macedonia is on track for EU membership in the coming years. But if the country can’t better control its pre-election tensions, is it really ready?  After all, as Bulgaria has shown, EU membership is not just going to make crime and corruption disappear.  But on the flip side, the promise of an EU future may be the only thing keeping countries like Macedonia on track toward an eventually stable government.

So back to Greece and its veto-happy approach to its northern neighbor. Is prolonged regional instability really worth it for one little modifier?

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Responding to a question from the Politico about why he hasn't played golf in recent years, U.S. President George W. Bush said:

"… playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

Admittedly, it's probably a bigger sacrifice than most Americans have made so far, as suggests the recent FP article, "The War We Deserve."

(Note: A quick search of Getty Images seems to confirm Bush's sacrifice: The site doesn't appear to have any photos of Bush playing golf after Oct. 13, 2003. There are, however, many photos of him driving golf carts, such as the one here of Bush giving his wife Laura and Afghan President Hamid Karzai a ride at Camp David, Maryland, in August 2007.)

In today's Washington Post, Mike Gerson quite rightly lambasts the "Coburn Seven" -- seven Senate Republicans who are all but blocking expanded funding for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

Unfortunately, what Gerson ignores is the GOP's long history of failure and ignorance on the HIV/AIDS front. This sad history dates to the very founding of the contemporary conservative movement. It was Ronald Reagan, the revered Godfather, who remained silent as tens of thousands of Americans died and a pandemic was spread to more than 100 countries around the globe. Even as Reagan did nothing to combat AIDS, his surrogates in the extreme right opined that the disease was a divinely-inspired retaliation on liberalism. It was Pat Buchanan, Reagan's White House communications director, who called AIDS "nature's revenge on gay men." Such sentiments proliferated as the power of the GOP's religious right-wing coalesced in the 1990s. Former Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, for instance, famously called for those infected with HIV/AIDS to be "isolated from the general population" in 1992. He stood by the statement in his 2008 presidential campaign.

When historians sit down to assess the modern conservative movement a generation or two from now, among the most severe tarnishes on the GOP's legacy will be Guantanamo and record deficits. There also will be the string of painfully ignorant policies the party has held on HIV/AIDS. To his credit, George W. Bush has probably done more than any conservative politician of his generation to reverse this tragic legacy -- more, perhaps, than any liberal politician, too. PEPFAR has provided life-sustaining anti-AIDS drugs to 1.4 million patients in the countries hardest hit by the disease. It may be the most favorably remembered foreign policy initiative of Bush's entire tenure. And in his January State of the Union address, the President proposed a long-overdue doubling of the effort.

It looked as though the GOP had finally found its moorings on combating a disease that, in a number of African countries, now affects more than 1 in 5 adults. But a small GOP minority once again appears poised to force the United States to take a backseat in the fight. As Gerson says, it will come at a price paid in lives. Unfortunately, it won't be the first time.

This is disturbing news. Chinese officials are now warning that earthquake-damaged dams in Sichuan province may be strained to the breaking point:

Two hydropower stations in Maoxian county, where 7,000 residents and tourists remain stranded near the epicenter, were "seriously damaged". Authorities warned that dams could burst. Landslides had blocked the flow of two rivers in northern Qingchuan county, forming a huge lake in a region where 1,000 have already died and 700 are buried, Xinhua said.

Luckily, the massive Three Gorges Dam appears to have been unaffected.

Amy Sussman/Getty Images

You may have been wondering what Rudy Giuliani has been up to since the ignominious end of his presidential campaign. It turns out that "America's mayor" is getting back into urban politics...in Ukraine.

Giuliani was in Kiev on Tuesday, speaking with former world heavyweight boxing champion Vitaly Klitschko, who is running for mayor. Giuliani has signed on as an advisor to Klitschko's campaign. At yesterday's press conference he offered this advice:

"If Vitaly is elected mayor of Kiev, my first piece of advice for him would be to say ... no more corruption, corruption is over."

Klitschko is one of the front runners in a wild election that has drawn 79 candidates, but the ex-boxer known as Dr. Iron Fist has been mocked by his opponents for his perceived lack of intelligence and poor command of Ukrainian. (Like many Ukrainians, he grew up speaking Russian.) The former champ, who actually has a doctorate in physical education, seems to be longing for the simplicity of his sport:

"Sometimes I wish I could meet people inside the ring, where there are clear rules," said Klitschko, who has 34 career knockouts and literally towers over the political field at 6-foot-7 (2 meters). "But physical power decides nothing in politics."

Indeed, in addition to running for mayor Klitschko is training for a shot at retaking his title this summer, two goals that might seem contradictory.

But Giuliani seems confident in his new protege and sees parallels between Klitschko's rise and another slow-talking muscleman turned transformational leader, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Kiev's squeegee-men better watch out.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Top Story

As expected, Hillary Clinton won big in West Virginia's presidential primary, beating Barack Obama by a margin of two to one. Obama maintained his lead in overall delegates.

Asia

Fifty thousand Chinese troops have been deployed to Sichuan province to help those affected by Monday's earthquake.

Burmese police are blocking aid workers from helping cyclone victims.

Sixty people were killed in bombings in the Western Indian city of Jaipur.

North Korea has handed over details of its nuclear program to the U.S.

Middle East

George Bush arrived in Israel to take part in the country 60th anniversary celebrations.

Israeli PM Ehud Olmert says he has found "understandings and points of agreement" with Palestinian Mahmoud Abbas.

The Arab league has sent mediators to Lebanon.

Africa

A ship owned by U.S. oil company Chevron has been hijacked on the Niger delta.

A UN delegation has arrived in Burundi to facilitate a truce between the government and rebels.

Former Liberian leader Charles Taylor's vice president testified at his war crimes trial.

Latin America

Colombia extradited 14 former paramilitary leaders for trial in the U.S. on drug trafficking charges.

Mexico's police are fighting back after the assasination of high ranking officers by drug cartels

Brazil's environment minister has resigned, possibly in protest over development in the Amazon.

Europe

A car bomb exploded in Spain's Basque country, destroying a police barracks.

Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi may be questioned by prosecutors about his role in CIA renditions.

Space aliens have been visiting the UK for decades.

Today's Agenda

• President Bush meets with Ehud Olmert
• The Cannes film festival begins

Yesterday on Passport

• Tuesday Map: Abkhazia, what's really at stake
• Moving the process along
• The bounty on this guy's head? $250 mil

The smaller the renegade province, the bigger the pawn -- at least so it seems in the world of post-communist geostrategic positioning.  Just as the dust has begun to settle around the Kosovo independence issue, Georgia’s breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia now find themselves front and center in the separatist question lime light.

In recent months, the U.S. has pushed for Georgian memebership in NATO, rebel pockets and all; while Russia has upped its ties with both of Georgia's de facto independent states. And just this week, the EU threw in its two cents, declaring support for Georgian territorial integrity.

With Moscow-Tbilisi tensions running high, let’s take a look at what Abkhazia and South Ossetia really have to offer...beyond their mad drone-downing skills:

Map by Phillipe Rekacewicz - UNEP/GRID-ARENDAL

According to this week’s Tuesday Map of Georgia’s environmental and security issues from the IDMC (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre), the two rebel provinces come complete with two refugee camps (orange triangles), two nuclear waste sites (yellow markers), and one “large aging Soviet industrial complex still generating pollution” (red circle).

Abkhazia does have a beautiful coast -- so beautiful, in fact, that the most famous Georgian of them all incorporated it into Georgia proper back in 1931, setting the province on course for decades of ethnic tension and the economic isolation. Beautiful or not though, this week's map shows that much of Abkhazia's shore line is actually chock full of “pesticides and/or heavy metals (mainly inherited from the Soviet period)” (yellow patches).

All in all, I can see why neither Georgia nor Russia will give up their influence over this diamond in the rough -- what country wouldn't forsake regional stability for a few more nuclear waste sites?

Uriel Sinai/Getty Images

Speaking in Jerusalem today, George Bush was uncharacteristically modest about his expectations for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process during the rest of his term:

"I'm not running for the Nobel Peace Prize. I'm just trying to be a guy to use the influence of the United States to move the process along," Bush said.

Being that guy may force a president desperate for a foreign policy victory to back away from one of his administration's central stated principles: the refusal to negotiate with regimes hostile to the U.S. and Israel. In a new web-exclusive argument for FP, journalist Laura Rozen explores the possibility of Bush overhauling his diplomatic posture in the Middle East this late in the game:

Though the Bush administration seems unlikely to do a “Nixon goes to China” with Iran at this late date, in some isolated cases it does appear to be at least flirting with a different approach. Recent weeks have seen numerous reports of indirect proximity talks and back-channel diplomacy between Israel and Syria, on the one hand, and between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas, on the other. In both cases, Washington’s role is curious, officially condemning calls for any sort of dialogue with Hamas while at the same time, seemingly tacitly endorsing Egypt’s role as a cease-fire broker between Israel and Hamas.

 Read the full piece here.

It's getting harder for the Burmese state to hide the truly profound level of its own dysfunction:

The Burmese generals were visible all right. State television showed them handing out boxes of the small amount of aid allowed in from neighbouring Thailand. Unwittingly, it also showed that the Burmese leadership had plastered their own names over the true origins of the food aid to fool their own people into believing that the emergency relief supplies had come from them.

You know things are bad when a military dictatorship can't even get its own propaganda right.

(Hat tip: Reason's Kerry Howley)

sudantribune.com

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir is not pleased about last weekend's brazen attack by Darfur rebels. It was the first time fighting has reached the outskirts of Khartoum not just in the bloody five years of fighting in Darfur, but in  the decades of conflict in Sudan.

Bashir is so peeved that he's put an astonishing $250 million reward on the head of rebel leader Khalil Ibrahim (pictured). For reference, that's 10 times the reward for Osama bin Laden.

Why the enormous bounty? Perhaps Ibrahim's fighting words have Bashir concerned. Here's Ibrahim in an interview yesterday, according to the IHT:

This is just the start of a process, and the end is the termination of this regime...Don't expect just one more attack. This is just the beginning."

Bashir also cut diplomatic ties with Chad on Sunday, accusing Chadian President Idriss Deby, who is from the same tribe as Ibrahim, of backing the attack. This is going to get worse before it gets better. 

UPDATE: If $250 mil sounds like an absurd amount (and it does), then that's because it is. When it was reported by the Sudanese state media yesterday, it came across as just another attention-getting ploy, and that if someone actually caught Ibrahim, Bashir and his cronies would make the bounty hunter an offer he couldn't refuse, and he'd go away with far, far less. But try three zeros less: Apparently, there was currency confusion in the Sudanese government. The reward of 500 million Sudanese pounds (the equivalent of $250 mil) was offered in new Sudanese pounds, according to state media. The country revalued its currency last year, and the new pounds are worth 1,000 times the old ones. But the information office came out today and said that they're using old Sudanese pounds for some reason, so we're talking peanuts for Ibrahim: $250,000.

Invoking the United Nations' "Responsibility to Protect" clause, the EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana joined French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner in calling for the international community to aid the population of Burma, even without the consent of their government.

"We have to use all the means to help those people," Javier Solana said before an emergency meeting of EU ministers in Brussels. "The United Nations charter opens some avenues if things cannot be resolved in order to get the humanitarian aid to arrive."

China's veto pretty much precludes a Security Council resolution which is why some, like journalist (and top public intellectual) Anne Applebaum are calling for a new "coalition of the willing" to deliver aid without the junta's cooperation. Applebaum acknowledges that the phrase has been "tainted forever" by its association with the war in Iraq, but she isn't the only one drawing that parrallel. The Christian Science Monitor quoted one Burmese merchant who wondered why his country didn't meet the criteria for humanitarian intervention:

"I want to talk to Mr. George Bush. What are you doing? United Nations, what are you doing? We have no food, no water. This is the worst government in the world. Same as Saddam Hussein. Why you cannot help us?"

Apparently, Chinese President Hu Jintao totally dominates at the ping pong table and put on quite a show while visiting Japan last week.

VLADIMIR RODIONOV/AFP/Getty Images

An interesting bit of political theater from Moscow:

When Putin came to his old office in the Kremlin on Monday to propose the names of ministers for his government, the former president made for his customary seat on the left of the desk.

"But he paused before sitting down and told President Medvedev: "Now this is your place," Russia's Kommersant daily reported.

"Oh, what's the difference?" Medvedev answered and immediately sat on the right of the desk, where Putin's guests traditionally perched for the eight years of his presidency.

Get the message?

MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images

Top Story

The estimated number of deaths from yesterday's earthquake in Sichuan province is nearing 12,000. Thousands are still buried but severe storms are making the rescue effort difficult. As many as 900 children may have been killed in one school collapse

Middle East and Africa

The U.S. has offered the Lebanese government military aid to fight Hezbollah. The army may be readying for a confrontation with the militants.

Hamas has rejected calls to release captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Israeli police raided Jerusalem's city hall as part of the ongoing corruption investigation of PM Ehud Olmert.

The situation is quickly degenerating on the Chad-Sudan border.

Asia

Heavy rains have complicated the relief efforts in Burma as well.

Rising food prices are leading to record inflation in China.

East Timor's President asked U.N. peacekeepers to stay for another four years.

2008 U.S. Election

Hillary Clinton has a big lead headed into the West Virginia primary.

Barack Obama's campaign is seeing a growing racist backlash to his candidacy.

Former congressman Bob Barr will run for president on the Libertarian ticket.

South America

Bolivian president Evo Morales has set Aug. 10 as the date for a planned recall election.

Hugo Chavez ordered the nationalization of Venenezuela's largest steel mill.

Europe

Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko tried to make a spech to parliament but was blocked from taking the podium by MPs loyal to PM Yulia Tymoshenko.

A car bomb exploded in Northern Ireland injuring one police officer.

Today's Agenda

• West Virginia will hold its presidential primary.
• President Bush will arrive in Israel.
• German Chancellor Angela Merkel will kick off a tour of Latin America.

Yesterday on Passport

• Serbia: new election, same results
  
• The world's responsibility to Burma
• China quake will test Beijing's transparency, crisis management

Samuel Aranda/Getty Images

Boris Tadic, Serbian president and leader of the coalition “For a European Serbia,” declared victory after elections Sunday in which his party took an estimated 103 of the national assembly’s 250 seats.

True, yesterday’s large pro-Europe voting turnout did come as a pleasant surprise to Serbia’s EU supporters. In light of Kosovo’s recent, and polarizing, declaration of independence, analysts were predicting a slight lead for Serbia’s ultra nationalist Radical Party (SRS), despite some pretty serious efforts on the part of the EU to win over Serbian voters.

But “victory,” this election was not. If anything, Sunday has shown just how little has changed in Serbia this year -- despite Kosovo and despite the EU.

Once again, the SRS, whose founder currently stands trial at the Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, garnered its standard 29 percent of the vote, while the democratic bloc again proved too uninspiring to pull Serbia out of its muck of power hungry political personalities. Just as in Serbia's elections in January of last year (a vote that produced a strained government lasting less than ten months), its two dominant parties again find themselves courting strange bed fellows to form a majority coalition.  And ironically, this year, it’s a small coalition of Milosevic’s Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) and a party of stodgy retirees (PUPS) that will play the role of kingmaker.

But the take away message from Sunday's results is not one of Milosevic’s inescapable legacy or of inevitable stagnation. Rather, it’s the recognition that Serbia’s future will not be determined from the outside -– by break away provinces or EU promises -- but will be decided by Serbia itself. 

Inner change was the message of Serbia’s magnetic former prime minister Zoran Djindjic, a leader with tremendous potential, cut short by his tragic assassination in 2003. But if inspiring leadership in Serbia could happen once, it can happen again –- just probably not from today’s batch of leaders.

I don't think I'm alone in considering "Obama girl" and her imitators the most annoying Internet meme of the 2008 U.S. election (including the entire Ron Paul campaign). But I suppose it was only inevitable that the phenomenon would go global. Anonymous Russian Internet jokers have redubbed the entire "I've Got a Crush on Obama" video into Russian to make it about new president Dmitry Medvedev.

Apparently, many Russians feel that Medvedev can come across as a bit of a nerd compared with his macho, judo-practicing, shirtless-fishing predecessor. If that's the case, the derivative "Medvedev girl" is going to have to up her game to top girl group Poyushchiye Vmeste's 2002 classic, "Someone like Putin," which had the memorable chorus: "I want someone like Putin, full of strength / Someone like Putin, who doesn't drink / Someone like Putin, who doesn't hurt me / Someone like Putin, who won't run away."

Just try to get it out of your head: