Gary Monro’s blog

In the US, when a man has sex with an underage girl they debate is about whether to jail him or not….

In the UK, underage sex is encouraged.

— NY Times article by free sign-up only - to read full story click (more…)

Nice to see Sunni Iraqis helping the coalition forces:

US warplanes bombed suspected safehouses being used by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s insurgent group near the Syrian border yesterday during what one local leader called an unprecedented push by a Sunni Arab tribe to drive out Zarqawi’s foreign-led forces.

Ali Rawi, an emergency-room director in the border city of Qaim, said at least 56 people — the majority of them apparently followers of Zarqawi — were killed in yesterday’s air strikes and ground fighting. Zarqawi’s group, Al Qaeda in Iraq, said in a statement posted in local mosques that it had lost 17 men.

The clashes between Sunni Arab tribes and insurgents, coupled with growing vows by Iraq’s Sunni minority to turn out in force for national elections in the coming months, coincided with US hopes for defusing the two-year-old insurgency. US military leaders have repeatedly expressed optimism that public anger at insurgent violence would deprive insurgents of their base of support.

Terrible news from the US as the death toll from Hurricane Katrina runs into the hundreds.

Hundreds of people are feared dead in Mississippi, and the Louisiana city of New Orleans is badly flooded.

The city mayor said rescuers were unable to retrieve the dead. “They’re just pushing them aside,” he said.

Amid worsening conditions, officials plan to evacuate a New Orleans stadium where up to 20,000 people took shelter.

I recall seeing the Mayor on television a few days ago ordering people to leave the area. It seems his advice, which I initially thought was a little dramatic, turned out to be prescient - to put it mildly.

Then in Baghdad we have more than 600 dead in a Shia march to a holy shrine.

The incident happened on a bridge over the Tigris River as about one million Shias marched to a shrine for an annual religious festival.

Witnesses said panic spread because of rumours that suicide bombers were in the crowd. Many victims were crushed to death or fell in the river and drowned.

The pilgrims had already withstood one attack:

Earlier, mortar rounds had been fired into the crowd, killing 16 people.

About 36 others were injured when four mortar rounds landed close to the Kadhimiya mosque.

Tension between the two main factions in Iraq - Sunni and Shia - may come to a head over the proposed constitution. Sunnis fear it will lead to a break-up of the country depriving them of the oil in the Shia south of the country.