Palestinians cross the destroyed border between the Gaza strip and Egypt after Hamas members exploded part of it, Jan. 23.

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The Gazans crossed on foot, in cars or riding donkey carts to buy supplies made scarce by an Israeli blockade of their impoverished territory. Police from the Islamist Hamas movement, which controls Gaza, directed the traffic. Egyptian border guards took no action, according to AP.
The gunmen began breaching the wall dividing Rafah before dawn, according to witnesses and Hamas officials, who told The Associated Press that they later closed all but two of the gaps in the wall.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, said they were allowing Palestinians to move freely through the two gaps.
Thousands of Gazans began crossing into Egypt and returning with milk, cigarettes and plastic bottles of fuel, the Hamas officials and witnesses said.
An Associated Press reporter arrived after first light and saw that about two-thirds of the Rafah wall had been demolished. The reporter also saw the crowd of Palestinians crossing into Egypt swell into the tens of thousands.
Guards directed the crowds over the fallen metal through two main crossing areas, inspecting some bags.
The identity of the gunmen who breached the border was not immediately clear. But in a statement, Hamas expressed support for the move, saying, “Blowing up the border wall with Egypt is a reflection of the ... catastrophic situation which the Palestinian people in Gaza are living through due to the blockade.“
Meanwhile, the UN Security Council on Tuesday kicked off an emergency session on the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip as Israel eased its crippling blockade of the territory, AFP reported.
The meeting, which kicked off 45 minutes behind schedule at 10:45 am (1545 GMT), had been requested by Arab and Islamic states.
The 15 ambassadors were negotiating on a draft statement submitted by Libya, the council chair this month that would call on Israel to end its lockdown of Gaza and ensure “unhindered access for humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people“, according to a copy of the text obtained by AFP.
The statement would also urge Israel “to abide by its obligation under international law, including humanitarian and human rights law, and immediately to cease all its illegal measures and practices against the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip.“

WASHINGTON, Jan. 23--US Senate majority leader Harry Reid on Tuesday asked President George W. Bush to slash aid to Pakistan if upcoming elections in the troubled Asian nation are not free and fair.
He made the call after talks with Pakistan cricket legend Imran Khan, the leader of a marginal opposition party, who told the Senate leader that the February 18 parliamentary polls could be rigged by President Pervez Musharraf, AFP wrote.
“I believe that the United States needs to look closely at the assistance we send to Pakistan,“ said Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate.
“If President Musharraf does not allow full and free elections and does not restore freedoms, we need to consider reducing non-development aid to Pakistan,“ he said in a statement.
Reid recently sent Bush a letter urging him to consider cutting off non-development aid to Pakistan unless Musharraf reinstates the previous Supreme Court, restores all freedoms and allows a full investigation into the recent assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
Bhutto, Pakistan’s main opposition leader was killed in a gun-and-suicide-bomb attack last month.
Khan, who leads Pakistan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf party, expressed “deep concern“ about the Pakistani judiciary, saying Pakistan could not have true democracy, or free and fair elections, without reinstating the head of the Supreme Court and the rest of the judges whom Musharraf had dismissed.
Musharraf pledged during a visit to France Tuesday that the elections would be “free and fair and peaceful“.
The meeting Tuesday also discussed US development assistance to Pakistan and the importance of ensuring that US taxpayer dollars helped the Pakistani people in areas like education and healthcare, the statement said.

HARARE, Zimbabwe, Jan. 23,--The leader of Zimbabwe’s main opposition Movement for Democratic Change Morgan Tsvangirai was briefly detained by police on Wednesday ahead of a planned anti-government march, his lawyer said.
In a bid to prevent MDC supporters converging in downtown Harare, police also mounted roadblocks on major highways leading into the capital, AFP reported.
Tsvangirai, who was badly beaten by President Robert Mugabe’s security forces when he tried to lead a protest rally last year, was taken into custody after police arrived at his home in the early hours.
“He was picked up by the police around 4:00 am on Wednesday but he has since been released,“ his lawyer Alec Muchadehama told AFP.
“I was on my way to Harare Central Police Station but I am no longer going there since he has been released,“ he said, adding that no charges had been laid againt Tsvangirai.
National police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena confirmed that Tsvangirai had been briefly detained.
“We invited Morgan Tsvangirai, Ian Makone (the MDC’s director for elections), Denis Murira (another top MDC official) here.“
“They held discussions with the officer commanding law and order and then they went home. We wanted to establish what they intended to do following recent utterances.“
The detention came after the MDC, hoping to end Mugabe’s 28-year rule in presidential and parliamentary elections due in March, vowed to push ahead with Wednesday’s rally despite a police prohibition order.
The opposition say they have been given initial approval to stage the march after consultations with the police only for the authorities to renege on the agreement on Monday.
With joint parliamentary and presidential elections due to be held in March, the government recently watered down its strict laws on the holding of protests and any ban should be open to appeal.

Barack Obama

Hillary Clinton

LAVEEN, Arizona,
Jan. 23--Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama traded new cross-country salvos in their Democratic feud Tuesday, as the global financial panic reverberated through the 2008 White House race.
Though at opposite sides of the country, the foes cranked up the heat after Monday’s acerbic presidential debate, while the Democratic race broadened as potentially pivotal “Super Duper Tuesday“ clashes loom on February 5, AFP wrote.
Clinton traveled to California, as a new poll gave her a double digit lead in the delegate-rich western state, then south to Arizona, while Obama anchored himself in South Carolina, hoping to lock in a morale-boosting win in Saturday’s primary vote.
The tense Republican race for the White House, meanwhile, claimed another victim, as former screen star and conservative senator Fred Thompson pulled out, after a lame early showing in early primaries.
The surviving pack fought it out in Florida, ahead of the high-stakes January 29 primary that may be a make-or-break moment for New York’s former mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
Before jetting across country to California to accept the endorsement of the United Farm Workers union, New York Senator Clinton said Obama was ’frustrated’ by her recent wins in Nevada and New Hampshire.
She accused him of making pre-planned attacks on her in Monday’s debate in South Carolina, to disguise what she said were contradictions in his own record.
Obama meanwhile upped the battle with Clinton by accusing her of reversing over the years on issues including free trade.
“In my 25 years of public service, my positions haven’t changed when the politics got hard, and neither will the policies I pursue as president,“ he said in South Carolina.
But in a campaign memo released as she flew west, the Clinton team signaled a forensic examination of her rival’s record.
“While much of this campaign has focused on Senator Obama’s rhetoric, there has not been much attention paid to Senator Obama’s record,“ the memo said.
“Last night that changed. With the fireworks now receding, it’s time to focus on the substance.“

MOSCOW, Jan. 23--Ukraine and Georgia have slim chances of joining NATO, said Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s Permanent Envoy to NATO.
“Strictly speaking, Ukraine, not to mention Georgia, do not meet the standards required of candidates to join NATO,“ Rogozin said in an interview with Interfax on Wednesday.
“I really doubt that some hotheads in NATO would resort to inviting Ukraine and Georgia at such a difficult moment in our relations with the alliance,“ Rogozin said.
In addition, joining any international union or coalition, especially a military one, means that one voluntarily cedes part of his sovereignty and the right to make decisions on many issues in such areas as defense, security, military and foreign policy and delegates this right to a supranational institution, he said.
“That is, this step is fraught with radical changes and complications in these states themselves, as the matter implies their geopolitical choice and the acceptance of the fact that NATO membership implies the renunciation of their neutral and independent status,“ he said.
The implications of Ukraine’s and Georgia’s accession to NATO would be negative and would lead to the destruction of their military- technological cooperation with Russia and “horizontal relations between the industrialists“ in these countries, Rogozin said. “I am not even talking about psychological and humanitarian consequences. I view this situation as dramatic,“ he said.

NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan. 23--Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan was Wednesday to attempt to revive mediation in Kenya’s political crisis with the violence, which has killed hundreds of people, showing no sign of let-up.
Nationwide rioting that followed the re-election of President Mwai Kibaki after the December 27 vote has morphed into tribal revenge killings mainly in the Nairobi slums and western regions displacing some 260,000 people, AFP reported.
Opposition chief Raila Odinga, who is due Wednesday to attend a requiem mass for dozens of violence victims in Nairobi, accuses Kibaki of rigging the elections.
As the African Union and the United Nations condemned rights violations, the feuding sides upped the rhetoric with the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party filing a complaint with the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
The government responded by accusing some opposition leaders of being involved in planning “mass genocide“ and promising to file its own complaint with the ICC.
Several previous attempts by international leaders to bring the two sides together have failed, with rival sides fortifying their hardline positions and violence escalating in the slums and the western ranges.
Annan said he had no solutions for the Kenyan crisis, which threatens the stability of the east African nation, but would “count on the will, maturity, resourcefulness and judgment of the leaders“.
“We have not come with a solution. We are here to insist on a solution for the sake of Kenya and its people, and for the sake of Africa,“ he told reporters after arriving in Nairobi.
“We expect all parties to enter into dialogue in good faith, and to seize this opportunity to end the suffering and uncertainty that has plagued the lives of Kenyans everywhere.“
“There can be no solution without genuine dialogue,“ he explained.