Yummy, Cluster Bombs! Despite persistent criticism of the nature of the food aid being delivered to Afghanistan, the menu, which includes Pop-Tarts and peanut butter, won’t be changed. But a change will be made to the color of the food parcels. Humanitarian groups say the bright yellow packages are too easily confused with cluster bombs of the same color.
Taking Their Time Last month an Arab living in the Philippines who was friendly with the bin Laden family tried to contact the U.S. Embassy with an “important message.” Weeks later he has still not been contacted by officials to find out the nature of his information. “As you can imagine, we’re totally swamped,” an embassy official explained to NEWSWEEK. Fair enough. But as a senior intelligence official for one foreign country says: “You always go after every lead immediately. Sometimes walk-ins are the best source of information.”
Trial Twins? Two law firms have filed negligence lawsuits against the U.S. government on behalf of the roughly 3,700 Kenyans injured in the 1998 Nairobi U.S. Embassy attack. If paid out, the damages will not necessarily come only from American pockets. The lawyers plan to sue Osama bin Laden and the Taliban to claim a share of their frozen assets. How ironic. The United States and bin Laden: enemies… and codefendants.
Sympathetic No Longer After an initial wave of sympathy for the United States, the tone across the Arab world has unsurprisingly taken on a harder edge. Often it’s mocking. One cartoon in a West Bank newspaper last week depicted two FBI agents scanning the streets of Manhattan looking for terror suspects; every pedestrian, from an elderly woman to a blind man, had the face of Osama bin Laden. From Gaza to Cairo, critics and cartoonists are having a field day.
