Argentine President Cristina Kirchner’s push for a new media law has pitted her against one of Latin America’s biggest news empires.
If passed, the law would limit the amount of broadcast licences any one organisation can hold. Kirchner says the law would increase competition.
Her opponents argue that it is a power grab. Al Jazeera’s Latin America editor Lucia Newman reports.
Carla Robbins of The New York Times editorial board and David Andelman, editor of the World Policy Journal and a former foreign correspondent, join Daljit Dhaliwal to discuss the weeks top stories. They look at President Barack Obama’s reversal on a missile defense plan for Europe, the battle against Islamic militants and this week’s United Nations report on the war in Gaza — including charges that conduct by Israel and the Palestinian militants amounted to war crimes.
Rebel forces have been fighting government troops in Central African Republic (CAR) for four years.
Lawlessness and violence have forced more than 120,000 people from their homes.
Many have fled to the bushland, leaving ghost towns behind them.
Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons sent this report from a community near the north west town of Bodoli, where he found people close to starvation.
For thirty years, CAR went through a turbulent period, under the rule of mostly military governments.
The most infamous was the brutal decade-long rule by self-proclaimed emperor, Jean-Bedel Bokassa.
In 1993, civilian rule was established and lasted for 10 years. Instability led to a military coup in March 2003.
With a population of just over four million people, CAR is one of the poorest in the world and ranks among the ten poorest African nations – a plight made worse by the global economic downturn.
The GDP per capital – how much each citizen would get if the country’s wealth were to be evenly divided – stands at only $394.
This is made worse by the fact that CAR suffers from a notoriously uneven distribution of wealth. And, the grants from France and others in the international community are simply not enough to address the country’s vast humanitarian needs.
There have been mixed signals coming from Iran. The country is prepared for new talks on its nuclear program with the United States and other world powers. The Obama administration has given Iran until the end of this month to respond to its overtures.
But on Friday, at an annual political event known as Quds Day to show solidarity with the Palestinian cause, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made some harsh comments about Israel and the West, calling the Holocaust a lie.
The event brought out tens of thousands of demonstrators for — and against — the government.
Ervand Abrahamian, a distinguished professor of history at the City University of New York, joins Daljit Dhaliwal to discuss the state of the protest movement in Iran and talks about the countrys nuclear program.
More from the New York Times:
Tens of thousands of green-clad protesters chanted and carried banners through the heart of Tehran and other Iranian cities on Friday, defying tear gas and truncheons as they turned large swaths of a government-organized anti-Israel march into the largest opposition rally in two months.
Amid the protests, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered a fiery anti-Israeli speech in honor of the annual Jerusalem Day ceremonies, calling the Holocaust “a lie,” among his harshest statements on the topic, and impugning the West again for its criticisms of Iran’s disputed June 12 presidential election.
Through a tumultuous day of street rallies, police were often on the sidelines as protesters faced off against huge crowds of government supporters — many of them bused in from outside the cities — and chain-wielding Basij militia men. There were reports of arrests in Tehran and the southern city of Shiraz, but no shootings or deaths, with the police apparently showing greater restraint than at earlier protests.
Conservatives had warned against using the annual pro-Palestinian march as an excuse for renewed protests against Mr. Ahmadinejad, whose election plunged Iran into its worst internal crisis in three decades.
But the protesters turned out anyway, often walking alongside larger groups of state-sanctioned marchers bearing huge banners denouncing Israel. The protesters even flouted the day’s official message, chanting “No to Gaza and Lebanon, my life is for Iran.” And when government men shouted “death to Israel” through loudspeakers, protesters derisively chanted “death to Russia” in response. Many opposition supporters are angry about Russia’s quick acceptance of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s electoral victory.
Opposition leaders Mir Hussein Moussavi, Mehdi Karroubi, and Muhammad Khatami joined the crowds in Tehran, drawing appreciative cheers and chants of support. Later, Basij militia members tried to attack Mr. Khatami and Mr. Karroubi, but defenders fought them back, opposition Web sites reported.
The government had largely halted street protests in July, with a harsh government crackdown that left dozens of marchers dead and thousands in jail. But the authorities have been unable to silence the opposition’s leaders, who have kept up their criticism of the election and the government’s violent response. The opposition leaders raised tensions when they leveled accusations that some protesters were tortured and raped in prison. The rape accusations have been especially embarrassing for the government, which has denied them while acknowledging that some prisoners were tortured.
There were reports of similar demonstrations and clashes in other cities Friday, including Isfahan, Tabriz, Yazd, and Shiraz, where protesters skirmished with Basij militia men, and freed a group of fellow protesters who were being arrested, opposition Web sites reported.
In the capital, police and huge crowds of government supporters blocked most protesters from approaching Mr. Ahmadinejad as he arrived in a bullet-proof car at Tehran University to deliver a speech before the formal Friday prayers sermon. But as he began his remarks, chants of “Resign! Resign!” could be heard, according to witnesses cited on opposition Web sites.
Mr. Ahmadinejad said confrontation with Israel was a “national and religious duty” and that the Holocaust was “a lie” used as a pretext for the country’s creation in 1948. Although he has called the Holocaust a “myth” in the past, provoking angry reactions in the West, he does not appear to have used the word “lie” in connection with it before.
In Washington, the White House responded sharply to the remarks about the Holocaust from the Iranian leader. The president’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said that by denying that the Holocaust took place was “ignorant, hateful and would isolate Iran further from the world.”
“Obviously, we condemn what he said,” Mr. Gibbs told reporters.
The speech came a day after President Obama, in a major national security reversal, scuttled his predecessor’s missile-shield plan to focus instead on protecting Israel and Europe against short and medium-range Iranian missiles. The Iranian government has not responded to that announcement, which came during the Iranian weekend and just before the start of the Jerusalem Day ceremony.
Both the revised missile plan and Mr. Ahmadinejad’s anti-Israel rhetoric are likely to elevate the tensions surrounding his visit to the United Nations for its General Assembly meeting in New York next week.
The United States ambassador to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, said Friday that President Obama would not meet with Mr. Ahmadinejad next week when world leaders meet in New York City for the U.N. General Assembly meeting.
“I don’t think there is much likelihood that there will be an interaction,” Ms. Rice said. “There is no obvious venue where that would occur.”
When President Barack Obama took office, he inherited a controversial plan from former President George W. Bush for a missile defense system in Europe, to be based in the Czech Republic and Poland. The idea was to counter a perceived threat to Europe posed by long-range missiles from Iran.
On Thursday, President Obama announced that he is dropping that plan for eastern Europe. Instead, he said, the US will develop an alternative plan to counter what is now perceived as the more immediate threat of short- and medium-range missiles from Iran.
Heather Conley, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former Assistant Secretary of State, joins Daljit Dhaliwal to discuss the motivations behind Obama’s decision and how it will be received in Europe.
Indian gay rights activists have heralded a landmark court decision that has legalised homosexual sex.
But the decision, a milestone in a decades-long battle for acceptance by the India’s gay community, has angered religious leaders, some of whom are calling for the ruling to be repealed.
Al Jazeera’s Prerna Suri met one gay man celebrating the move towards equality.