AFP/Mehdi FedouachDifferent view : An upside-down Christmas tree made out of lights hangs from one of the decks of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
Reuters/Toby MelvilleAn installation of Christmas lights made of recycled plastic containers hangs near the London Eye wheel, in central London December 21, 2006. The commission by British artist David Batchelor will be on display along the South Bank of the River Thames throughout December.
AP/Larry Wadsworth
AP/Vadim Ghirda
For generations, the United States has selected its diplomats through a two-stage test seen as a model of merit-based rigor. Pass hundreds of questions in a dozen subject areas and a day-long oral grilling by Foreign Service officers, and join the ranks. Fail, and find a different line of work.
No more. In a proposed overhaul of its hiring process slated for next year and to be announced to employees in coming days, the State Department would weigh resumes, references and intangibles such as "team-building skills" in choosing who represents the United States abroad, according to three people involved in the process. The written test would survive, but in a shortened form that would not be treated as the key first hurdle it has been for more than 70 years.
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The new approach would cut the hiring process roughly in half, to about six months, to better compete with companies that can offer promising candidates a job on the spot. The number of applicants is expected to decline, but to attract a greater range of experience and skills.
McKinsey acknowledged that the current hiring process is a proven predictor of candidate success. And for Foreign Service officers, the written test is a rite of passage, and source of pride. (my emphasis added)
"The sense that everybody passed this exam is important," said Richard C. Holbrooke, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who brokered the Dayton peace accords, which ended the Bosnian war in 1995. Holbrooke entered the Foreign Service fresh out of Brown University, in 1962.
Holbrooke recalled that in addressing his Foreign Service class, then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk "made a big point of telling us that we had come in on our merit, and neither he nor anyone else could influence the process."
Set against that backdrop, "this looks like a lowering of the standards for entry . . . at a time when their focus ought to be on training diplomats for the real challenges of the 21st century," Holbrooke said.
AP/Karim KadimBAGHDAD, Dec. 12 — At least 56 people, most of them Shiite laborers looking for work, were killed today when a pickup truck packed with explosives was detonated in a crowded square in the city’s center this morning, Iraqi officials and witnesses said. At least 220 more were wounded.
Also today, a bomb was discovered at the Golden Shrine in Samarra, a holy site for Shiites, the American military reported. A large bomb that was detonated there in February by Al Qaeda severely damaged the shrine and set off waves of sectarian killings and reprisals across the country.
The bomb found today by the Iraqi police went off while it was being removed, causing minor damage to a doorway but no injuries, the military said.
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In recent weeks, American military officials have described the battle for control of Baghdad as a steady stream of individual killings of Sunnis carried out by Shiite death squads, punctuated by bombings and larger attacks carried out by Sunni insurgents or Al Qaeda members against Shiites.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite, denounced the blast as the work of Sunni extremists and “their Saddamist allies.” The speaker of the Iraqi Parliament, Mahmud Mashhadani, a Sunni, also condemned the attack, and called on all armed groups within the country to observe a two-month truce.
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The acting director of the hospital, Dr. Flayeh Hassan, said that 53 survivors and 43 dead bodies had been brought to the emergency room there, an influx that presented a challenge to an already struggling institution.
“We suffer a lot because of lack of medical appliances as well as medicine,” Dr. Hassan said. “We suffer from lack of sufficient number of staff to take care of the cases admitted every day. Most of them have left the country.
“We didn’t get our salaries yet, and also the amount which we are supposed to receive from the ministry to enable us to buy supplies from the local market, such as beds and other necessities, hasn’t been received yet.”
Also today, the A.P. announced that one of its cameramen, Aswan Ahmed Luftallah, was shot by insurgents while covering clashes in the northern city of Mosul. He is the third employee of the news agency to be killed in Iraq.
A tally kept by the Committee to Protect Journalists shows that 89 journalists and 37 media support workers had been killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, prior to Mr. Luftallah’s death, the news agency said.
For lack of anything else to grip, Fiddler snagged the gelding's ears and pulled hard, backing the beast away even as it prepard to stomp on the guard's huddled form. Hiding his shock behind an even fiercer frown, the sapper unleashed a stream of Gral curses at the two remaining men, who had both backed frantically clear before lowering their pikes. "Foul snot of rabid dogs! anal crust of dysenteried goats!"
BAGHDAD, Dec. 9 — Bands of armed Shiite militiamen stormed through a neighborhood in north-central Baghdad on Saturday, driving hundreds of Sunni Arabs from their homes in what a Sunni colonel in the Iraqi Army described as one of the most flagrant episodes of sectarian warfare yet unleashed in the capital.
The officer, Lt. Col. Abdullah Ramadan al-Jabouri, said that more than 100 Sunni families, many with very young children, had left the Hurriya neighborhood aboard a convoy of trucks and cars under cover of the nightly curfew. Government officials tried to urge the families to return by promising army protection, but could not persuade them.
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The role of American troops in the turmoil was unclear. The Sunni cleric, Sayed Muhammad, said appeals for assistance from the First Cavalry Division, its headquarters about three miles southwest of Hurriya, had gone unanswered. But Colonel Jabouri said Iraqi commanders had told the Americans there was no need for their help. A First Cavalry Division spokesman said American advisers with Iraqi troops in Hurriya had reported only one instance of sectarian trouble, when Iraqi troops assisted a Shiite family under threat from Sunnis.(My emphasis added.)
Chinstrap penguins waddle atop blue icebergs that—along with an unforgiving sea—guard the South Sandwich Islands.
"Keeping us up here eats away at families," said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who typically flies home on Thursdays and returns to Washington on Tuesdays. "Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families -- that's what this says."
Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Calif.), who had intended to retire this year, only to be persuaded to run again, wondered whether the new schedule was more than symbolic. "If we're doing something truly productive, that's one thing," he said. "If it's smoke-and-mirrors hoopla, that's another."
House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), one of the architects of the lighter workweek, put the best Republican face on Hoyer's new schedule.
"They've got a lot more freshmen then we do," he said of the Democrats. "That schedule will make it incredibly difficult for those freshmen to establish themselves in their districts. So we're all for it."
AFP/Don Emmert
As Bolton's resignation was announced, the White House deliberated on a new nominee, with attention focusing on Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. The White House also has a crop of Republican lawmakers who lost reelection to consider. A number of senior ambassadors from around the world have expressed interest, but administration officials said Bolton's successor will be a political nominee. (my emphasis added)
AP/Adam HadeiThe Bush administration is deliberating whether to abandon U.S. reconciliation efforts with Sunni insurgents and instead give priority to Shiites and Kurds, who won elections and now dominate the government, according to U.S. officials.
The proposal, put forward by the State Department as part of a crash White House review of Iraq policy, follows an assessment that the ambitious U.S. outreach to Sunni dissidents has failed.
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Some insiders call the proposal the "80 percent" solution, a term that makes other parties to the White House policy review cringe. Sunni Arabs make up about 20 percent of Iraq's 26 million people.
Until now, the thrust of U.S. policy has been to build a unified government and society out of Iraq's three fractious communities. U.S. officials say they would not be abandoning this goal but would instead leave leadership of the thorny task of reconciliation to the Iraqis. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the deliberations.
The alternative being mooted here would put us directly on the Shiite side, and we'd be viewed as actively cooperating with a massacre of the Sunni minority no matter how hard we protested otherwise. It's hard to imagine a more disastrous end to a disastrous war.
For that reason, I suspect this proposal will be adopted.
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