8A
INTERNATIONAL
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
TUESDAY MARCH 6.2007
Help is on the way
Dado Galdieri/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Children protect themselves from heavy rain in the outskirts of Timidna, Bolivia. Monday, A.U.S. cargo plane delivered more than $1.1 million worth of medicine and supplies to Bolivia's flood-ravaged eastern lowlands, yet American and was dragged by the $15 million pledge from ideological rival Venezuela.
》 ECONOMICS
World markets continue to fall; Yen stays strong
LONDON — European and Asian markets fell again Monday, extending their slide into a second week as investors worried about a possible global slowdown and dumped stocks that had surged in recent weeks. U.S. stocks fell after trying to steady themselves.
Britain's benchmark FTSE 100 fell 0.94 percent, while France's CAC 40 slid 0.73 percent and Germany's
DAX dropped 1.041 percent after declines in Tokyo and other Asian markets.
"The fact that the FTSE closed Friday's session virtually unchanged may have left some thinking that the recent slide in equity markets may be at an end, but triple-digit losses on the Dow ahead of the weekend break have taken their toll on Asian markets," said Matt Buckland, a trader at CMC Markets.
Also sparking jitters was the yen's jump to a three-month high against
the dollar as investors reversed so called yen carry trades. A decline in this trading practice, which involves borrowing money at Japan's ultra-low interest rates to invest in higher-yielding assets elsewhere, could hurt global liquidity.
U. S. markets fluctuated as investors tried to size up where the market was headed. The Dow Jones industrial average traded in a 150-point range before closing near its session lows, falling 63.69, or 0.53 percent, to 12,050.41.
Major Latin American markets all extended their recent downturn. In Brazil, Sao Paulo's Bovespa index finished down 2.8 percent, Mexico City's IPC index shed 2.0 percent and the IPSA index in Santiago, Chile ended 1.1 percent lower. In Buenos Aires, Argentina, the benchmark Merval index gave back 3.0 percent.
Tokyo's Nikkei 225 index tell for a fifth day, tumbling 575.68 points, or 3.34 percent, to 16,642.25 points.
Journalist suffers suspicious death
RUSSIA
ASSOCIATED PRESS
MOSCOW — A military correspondent for Russia's top business daily died after falling from a fifth-story window, and some media speculated Monday that he might have been killed for his critical reporting.
Ivan Safronov, the military affairs writer for Kommersant, died Friday in the fall from a window in the stairwell of his apartment building in Moscow, according to officials. His body was found by neighbors shortly afterward.
According to the newspaper, the 51-year-old's hat was found on the landing between the fourth and fifth floors, along with a spilled bag of oranges. His apartment was on the third floor.
Safronov, who had served as a colonel in the Russian Space Forces before joining Kommersant in 1997, frequently angered authorities with his critical reporting and was repeatedly questioned by the Federal Security Service, the main KGB successor agency, which suspected him of divulging state secrets. No charges were ever filed because Safronov was able to prove his reports were based on open sources, Kommersant said.
The paper cited neighbors and other residents of the building as hearing nothing unusual at the time of the incident, around 4 p.m. Friday.
With prosecutors investigating the death, Kommersant and other media suggested foul play.
"The suicide theory has become dominant in the investigation, but all those who knew Ivan Safronov categorically reject it." Kommersant wrote in an article Monday.
Safronov's colleagues and
relatives have described him as a strong, cheerful person who would be extremely unlikely to kill himself.
In December, Safronov angered the authorities when he was the first to report the third consecutive launch failure of the new Bulava intercontinental ballistic missile, which President Vladimir Putin had hailed as a basis of the nation's nuclear might for years to come. Authorities never acknowledged the launch failure.
"For some reason, it is those journalists who are disliked by the authorities who die in this country," the daily Moskovsky Komsomolets said Monday. "Ivan Safronov was one of those. He knew a lot about the real situation in the army and the defense industries and he reported it."
The Moscow prosecutor's office did not respond to repeated calls for comment about the investigation into his death, and neighborhood prosecutors could not immediately be reached.
In a report that may have been aimed to quash speculation of foul play, the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted an unidentified law enforcement source as saying investigators had "not even any minimal information" pointing to the possibility of murder.
Russia is among the most dangerous countries for journalists and is plagued by attacks on reporters who seek to expose official corruption and other abuses. The problem was highlighted by the October killing of Anna Politikovskaya, an investigative reporter and a harsh critic of human rights abuses in Chechnya.
The New York based Committee to Protect Journalists said in January that 44 Russian journalists have been killed since 1992, making Russia the third-deadliest country for journalists after Iraq and Algeria during that time. Thirteen journalists have been killed in contract-style murders since Putin took office in 2000, the group said.
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The violence — after a relative three-day lull in Baghdad — was seen as another salvo in the Sunni
extremist campaign to provoke a sectarian civil war that could tear apart the Shite-led government and erase Washington's plans for Iraq.
BAGHDAD, Iraq — A suicide car bomber turned a venerable book market into a deadly inferno and gunmen targeted Shite pilgrims Monday as suspected Sunni insurgents brought major bloodshed back into the lap of their main Shite rivals. At least 38 people died in the blast and seven pilgrims were killed.
The Shitte Mahdi Army militia so far
Suicide bombers destroy Shiite book market
BY BRIAN MURPHY ASSOCIATED PRESS
An expected Cabinet reshuffle could take a serious bite out of al-Sadr's voice in government — a move strongly encouraged by Washington.
on the defensive.
Al-Sadr also opened the door for U.S. and Iraqi troops to enter the Mahdi stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad — under a painstaking deal with authorities — but his loyalists are still being hunted outside the capital.
"Al-Sadr and his forces could be inside siege under siege," said Alreza
"Papers from the book market were floating through the air like leaflets dropped from a plane"
NAEEM AL-DARAJI Health Ministry worker
resisted full-scale retaliation through a combination of self-interest and intense government pressure. But the militia's leader, the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, is now being cornered in new ways that have put him
Nourizadeh, chief researcher at the London-based Center for Arab-Iranian Studies. "That makes them less predictable. That means they are more dangerous."
One possible sign of brewing
troubles was 30 bullet ridden bodies found across Baghdad. Many of those killings are blamed on Shiite death squads, and Monday's figure was the highest in weeks.
And the Sunni extremists keep
pressing.
Within seconds, flames engulfed open-air stalls and shops brimming with books and magazines. Gas-powered generators — needed because of frequent power cuts — exploded one by one.
The suicide bombing tore through booksellers and other stores on narrow Mutanabi Street, a mostly Shisler-run commercial area in Baghdad's historical heart along the Tigris River.
Bloodstained pages that escaped the fire were carried away in a wind-whipped pillar of black smoke.
Firefighters had to spray huge arches of water from blocks away because their trucks were too large for the warren of lanes in old Baghdad. At least 38 people died and 105 were injured, said Raad Jabar, a Health Ministry official.
"Papers from the book market were floating through the air like leaflets dropped from a plane," said Naeem al-Daraji, a Health Ministry worker.
But the final casualty count may not be clear until Tuesday. Fire crews still battled the blazes more than 12 hours after the attack, said civil defense Maj. Gen. Abdul Rasoul al-Zaidi.
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