What Caught My Eye Today

I'm not forgetting about the Michigan primary. It's just that the polls don't close for another 4 hours and I've got to get ready for the season premiere of American Idol tonight. I'll have a recap for you next time.

Kenya - Kenya's parliament narrowly elected the opposition party's choice as speaker setting up a new showdown between a president and the rivals who accuse him of rigging his re-election — allegations that have led to weeks of deadly violence. The session was the first time President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga were in the same room since Odinga accused Kibaki of stealing the Dec. 27 vote. While the opposition had the most seats in parliament, neither party had had the two-thirds majority needed to elect the speaker in a first round vote, meaning both had to court legislators from minority parties during the first parliament session since the Dec. 27 general election. Marende was elected on the third vote. A week of violence after the vote killed at least 612 people and displaced hundreds of thousands, a government commission said. The crisis has crippled the country's billion-dollar tourist industry.

Here's a related news items that shows just how extreme the violence has been... For two terrifying hours, the woman crouched inside her shop, watching as a gang attacked five men in the street, pulled down their trousers and sliced their genitals with rusty machetes. In the violence that has followed Kenya's disputed presidential election, a notorious gang has been mutilating the genitals of both men and women in the name of circumcision — inflicting a brutal punishment on members of a rival tribe that does not traditionally circumcise. Many of the mutilation victims belong to the Luo tribe of opposition presidential candidate Raila Odinga, say witnesses and even a recruiter for the gang itself. The gang, called the Mungiki, draws mostly from President Mwai Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe, which has long dominated politics and business in this East African country. It's hard to fathom how that sort of violence can come from a closely contested election. Honestly, how many of us could conceive of the Democrats and Republicans coming to blows like this after the 2004 U.S. presidential election debacle?

Guatemala - Alvaro Colom was sworn in as Guatemala's first leftist president in more than 50 years, promising to fight poverty in a nation where half the people live on less than $1 a day. Colom, who led Guatemala's efforts to coax thousands of refugees back home after its civil war ended, took office in a ceremony attended by world leaders including Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Colombia's Alvaro Uribe, who recently clashed over a hostage mission. Despite his ideology, Guatemala's new leader said he doesn't want to be identified with other leftist governments in Latin America, including that of Chavez. In recent years, left-of-center leaders have been elected in Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay and Venezuela. So a leftist leader invites a bunch of his leftist brethren to his inauguration, but says he doesn't want to be identified with them. So like maybe if Colom didn't invite them to his inauguration as dignitaries, he wouldn't have this perception of being associated with them. He's not the sharpest tools in the shed, is he?

Japan - Japanese whalers detained two activists accused of throwing acid at and illegally boarding their vessel in Antarctica. An official denied claims the men were assaulted and tied to the mast. An Australian and Briton from the environmental group Sea Shepherd — which has been tailing ships involved in Japan's annual whale hunt — forcibly boarded the Yushin Maru No. 2 and were being held in the ship's office, Japan's government-backed Institute for Cetacean Research said in a statement. Commercial whaling has been banned worldwide since 1966 but Japan conducts its annual whale hunts under a program it insists is for scientific purposes. Critics call it commercial whaling in disguise. In fairness to the whaling ships, if they were boarded illegally, then I think they had every right to detain the trespassers. One can only hope that the accusations of tying the trespassers to the ship mast are unfounded. Besides, I'm thinking these are rather large vessels. Do they even have masts on these things? Of course, Japan's assertion that it must kill whales to study them still has me scratching my head. How much studying can you possibly do on a whale? You'd think that after all these years, Japan could have figured out all it need to know about whales.

Minnesota - Undersized gusset plates in the Interstate 35-W bridge in Minneapolis were "the critical factor" in the bridge collapse last year that killed 13 people and injured 100, the National Transportation Safety Board said. the plates, which connected steel beams, were roughly half the thickness they should have been because of a design error. Once they made it into the completed bridge, there was little chance they would be noticed by inspectors. The Minneapolis bridge was deemed "structurally deficient" by the federal government as far back as 1990, and the state's maintenance of the structure has been questioned. But the NTSB investigation has found no evidence that cracking, corrosion or other wear "played any role in the collapse of the bridge." So with the facts now it the books, it remains to be seen how this information will be acted upon. Based on the current state of our nation's infrastructure, it appears that a lot of hard decisions will need to be made by state and federal government officials. Neither one exactly inspire much confidence, do they?

Economy - Consumer spending, the critical bulwark that has kept the country out of a recession, is showing signs of cracking. Retail sales plunged by 0.4 percent last month as consumers battered by a sinking housing market, rising unemployment and the credit crunch, handed retailers their worst Christmas in five years. Analysts said the worry is that all the problems weighing on the economy could prompt consumers — who account for two-thirds of economic activity — to sharply limit or even stop shopping. Already, consumer confidence has slipped significantly amid the oil price spiral and the continuing housing slump. At the same time, some of the nation's biggest financial institutions have reported billions of dollars in losses stemming from a meltdown in the mortgage market. Oh and by the way, that sucking sound you hear in the distance is the life being sucked out of the stock market, which lost another 281 points today on the Dow and almost 61 points on the NASDAQ exchange. In the 9 days of trading so far this year the Dow is down 5.76% and the NASDAQ is down 8.85%. But don't get me wrong. There's no indication that we're headed toward recession.

Austria - Okay folks, here is our first contender of 2008 for the "So bizarre, it must be true" title... Austria's Supreme Court has dashed hopes by animal rights activists to have a chimpanzee, named Matthew Hiasl Pan, declared a person. The court's decision follows in the footsteps of a similar ruling last fall. In September, a provincial judge dismissed the case, ruling the Association Against Animal Factories has no legal standing to argue on the chimp's behalf. The legal back and forth began in February, when the animal shelter where Pan and another chimp, Rosi, have lived for 25 years filed for bankruptcy protection. Activists want to ensure the apes don't wind up homeless. Both were captured as babies in Sierra Leone in 1982 and smuggled to Austria for use in pharmaceutical experiments. Customs officers intercepted the shipment and turned the chimps over to the shelter. Donors have offered to help with the upkeep costs, but under Austrian law, only a person can receive personal gifts. Organizers could set up a foundation to collect cash for Pan, whose life expectancy in captivity is about 60 years. But they argue only personhood will ensure he isn't sold to someone outside Austria, where he's protected by strict animal cruelty laws. First, don't get me started on why anyone in their right mind would name a chimp, Matthew Hiasl Pan. Seriously, what up with that? Secondly, one would think that there is a more sensible way that the welfare of these two chimps could be dealt with other than sending the case to the Supreme Court. Don't you folks have anything more important to deal with?