By Andrew Ehrenkranz 

A single-engine Cessna carrying two Kenyan government ministers  crashes into the Masaii Mara hillside about 100 kms (60 miles) from Nairobi, killing everyone on board.  In the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, a Sudan Airways Airbus A-310 en route from the Syrian capital of Damascus explodes on landing at Khartoum International Airport. Miraculously, almost half of the passengers survive and manage to escape the burning fuselage. And this was just yesterday, Tuesday, June 10.

Africa is, far and away, the world’s most dangerous place to board an aircraft. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the number of major accidents per million takeoffs in Africa amounted to 4.31 in 2006, compared to a worldwide average of only 0.65. According to Giovanni Bisignani, the head of the IATA, Africa's accident rate is still nearly six times the global average.  This sorry record has led to the European Union including 74 African airlines on its 91-strong global blacklist of planes barred from EU air space. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the country's vast size and severely-limited road network makes it heavily dependent on air cargo, all 54 of the country's airlines are banned. With 20 crashes since 1996, including a Hewa Bora Airways DC-9 that killed 40 people, including 37 on the ground when it overran the runway in the east Congolese city of Goma on April 15, the D.R.C. has the worst  safety record in sub-Saharan Africa. In the United States, only two African airlines qualify for landing rights.

What causes the crashes? A combination of poor aircraft maintenance, old fleets, short runways and harsh weather environments all contribute. African governments are starting to fight back: in June 2007, a group of continental leaders approved AFRO-CAA, a Windhoek, Namibia-headquartered aviation agency designed to monitor and enforce air safety standards across the continent. The year-old body is modeled after the American Federal Aviation Agency and Europe’s Aviation Safety Agency. It's certainly a step in the right direction, but AFRO-CAA clearly has its work cut out if there are to be fewer of yesterday's nightmares in Africa.

By Karen MacGregor

The bad news from Zimbabwe just keeps on coming. With less than three weeks to go before Zimbabwe’s presidential run-off, forces loyal to President Robert Mugabe are cracking down rather than loosening up. On Wednesday, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was held by police for nine hours in a police station in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city. The reason for his detention? That he’d drawn a big crowd to one of his campaign rallies. Although the autocratic Mugabe avoided releasing the official results of the initial presidential ballot, it is widely accepted that Tsvangirai beat the aging autocrat who has led Zimbabwe since its independence from Britain in 1980. However, the run-off is taking place on June 27 because it is not clear that Tsvangirai won the necessary 50 percent of the vote to avoid a second round at the polls. As an angry Tsvangirai charged that his detention demonstrated the lengths that Mugabe was prepared to go to “try and steal” the runoff, rights activists said that alleged Mugabe supporters had thrown gasoline bombs at one of Tsvangirai’s party offices, killing at least two officials.

And in perhaps a more telling sign of how little Mugabe-currently attending the food summit in Rome-cares about international opinion, police and pro-Mugabe militants took the extreme step of attacking U.S. and British diplomats on Thursday. The diplomats were traveling in a convoy to investigate political violence ahead of the election. An official at the U.S. Embassy in Harare, who asked that his name not be used, told me about the high-speed diplomatic car chase and what the incident says about the upcoming vote. Some excerpts from our conversation:

MacGregor: What happened to the U.S. diplomats in Zimbabwe today?
Embassy official: A three-vehicle convoy set out from Harare this morning, heading for the town of Bindura about 80 kilometers [50 miles] to the north. The purpose was normal diplomatic activity - to find out what’s going on. Our diplomats like to get out of the embassy in Harare to talk to people, especially in view of recent violence in Zimbabwe and the coming election.
 
There were three U.S. diplomats and one Zimbabwean in one vehicle. A second was carrying four British diplomats. In the third were four Zimbabweans, including one U.S. embassy staff member. As the party was leaving a house in Bindura, they were accosted by police and told to accompany them to the police station. The diplomats called the embassy by cell phone, and were told by Ambassador [James] McGeee not to go to the station. The Vienna Convention allows for free movement of diplomats, so they told the police that if they had a problem, it should be taken up with the embassy.
 
The police tried to let air out of the tires of the U.S. car, and they fled, trying to make their way back to Harare. The U.K. vehicle also left the scene. There was a high-speed chase, with the police trying to run the US diplomats off the road, placing everybody in danger. The police then backed off - they knew there was a roadblock ahead near the town of Mazowe. Our car was stopped and police surrounded it with strips of spikes. They ordered the diplomats out of the car, but they refused. A crowd gathered - police, military intelligence officials and ‘war veterans’ [a shorthand for pro-Mugabe militias, some of whom fought in the 1970s liberation struggle against white minority rule.]
 
We were in constant contact with the diplomats, who told us that the war veterans were threatening to burn the car and kill them. They were very worried that the situation would escalate out of control. They stayed in the car. We sent a team to the scene - a security officer, a defense attaché and a local embassy staff member. They got there, and the police put strips of spikes around their vehicle too. At one point the British diplomats, who were trying to find their way back to Harare, also arrived at the roadblock and were detained. This impasse lasted several hours. The embassy meanwhile got in contact with the ministry of foreign affairs, which eventually sent a team out to negotiate with the police. The ordeal started at about 11am, and ended at 4pm - six hours.
 
Was anybody hurt?
At one point the police put their hands on the U.S. security officer, but he was not injured. In Bindura, when the group was accosted by the police, they started punching one of the Zimbabweans from the third car. He was hurt, but not seriously. The Zimbabwean car managed to make it safely back to Harare. The police have given as reasons for the incident that they were checking to see whether the vehicles had been stolen, and that the diplomats had not complied with the government’s rule that diplomats need official permission 48 hours before traveling outside a 40 kilometer [25 miles] perimeter around Harare. Under the Vienna Convention, diplomats are not required to notify authorities of their movements at all, but under protest we do notify the authorities of the movement of diplomats - and had done that ahead of today’s trip, although 24 hours rather than 48 hours in advance.
 
How does the U.S. view today’s diplomatic incident?
We view it very seriously. This comes at a time when the Zimbabwean government and ruling party are ignoring their own laws, and now they are also ignoring international conventions that they are party to. There is a systematic effort to win the election at any cost by intimidating local people to the extent that they are too scared to vote, and stopping diplomats and others from seeing what is going on. We are certainly going lodging a protest with Zimbabwe’s foreign minister, and U.S. officials are trying to speak to Mugabe directly in Rome. We are also talking to the British government about the incident.
 
What in are the implications of this and other incidents - the arrest of Tsvangirai, the expulsion of food aid agencies, ongoing violence, etc - for the 27 June election?
Diplomatically, this is a very serious incident, but it is not serious relative to Zimbabweans being beaten, arrested and tortured. Or Morgan Tsvangirai, the presidential candidate, being detained, opposition MPs being arrested, and opposition supporters being killed. What portends ill for the election is the widespread violence, and the intimidation of Zimbabwe’s people. With only three weeks to go to the election, we are deeply concerned about the difficulty of it being free and fair.
 
Would the US consider pulling its diplomats out of Zimbabwe?
I don’t think we will be pulled out. The U.S. being here provides some support to Zimbabwe’s people.

By Joanna Chen 

Barack Obama is trying to persuade Jewish voters that he will maintain Washington’s pro-Israel stance. Israelis, however, are less convinced. Shortly after the newly minted Democratic presidential nominee delivered a strong-and well received-speech to the American Israel Political Action Committee’s policy conference on Wednesday, political analysts in the Jewish state remained skeptical about Obama. “People have a major problem with him here in Israel,” says Yaron Deckel, a political analyst for Channel One TV. “"When I ask Israelis who would be their choice for U.S. president, Obama always comes last, after John McCain and Hillary Clinton. He’s an unknown candidate.”

Obama is unlikely to stay unknown for long. But no matter how aggressively he courts Jewish Americans, Israelis are likely to remain leery of a candidate they perceive as lacking in foreign policy experience. "We are the kings of history,” says one Israeli government official who asked to remain anonymous because he has close ties to Washington. “And he has no history. There is a real fear that Obama may be less aggressive and less forthcoming than his predecessor.”

Israelis are especially worried about how an Obama administration would handle Iran. In spite of his promise to prevent Iran developing nuclear weapons, commentators here think that he just may not be tough enough. "Given the likelihood that Iran will cross the nuclear threshold in the near future, it is critical that the next U.S. president will deal decisively with the Iranian threat," Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, told NEWSWEEK. Nahum Barnea, political commentator for the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronot, expresses similar misgivings. "Obama's basic approach is softer and he may be willing to speak with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad under certain conditions," says Barnea  "This is of course a problem for Israel, which certainly advocates a military solution." Ofer Shelach, a leading Israeli commentator, concurs that "the main question Israelis are concerned with is Iran and there is serious apprehension that Obama will quite simply not do enough."

While Israelis fretted over Iran, Palestinians had their own concerns. Some, like Sameeh Shabeeb, a Palestinian analyst at Bir Zeit University, said he was “not at all optimistic” after Obama’s “dangerous” AIPAC speech. “Obama is saying that he is no different from any other American who has given full support for Israel,” Shabeeb said in an interview with Ma’an News. Palestinian political analyst Hani el-Masri was also disappointed about Obama’s AIPAC address. “We do not want another Bush policy and are hoping that [Obama] will be less extreme in his vision towards the Arabs and their rights,” he said. Nonetheless, el-Masri did harbor some hope that Obama could “create a positive impact on events in the Middle East.”

By Anna Nemtsova

On a sunny afternoon two Georgian police commanders stood on a tiny bridge over a dizzying mountain gorge and the roiling water of the Kodori River. They waved to Russian peacekeepers on the other side, inviting them to come across and talk to a group of foreign correspondents. After a few minutes, two Russian soldiers slowly walked to the middle of the bridge, but only to ask the reporters to please stop taking pictures of them. "We will not come over for any discussions," one said, and walked back.

The Georgian commander in this obscure but seemingly ever worsening standoff in the Caucasus Mountains, Soso Bregvadze, said the tension is increasing to "the boiling temperature" after the Russians deployed an additional 400 paratroopers and artillery men in Kodori. In an ominous sign, Russian peacekeepers, he noted, stopped saying "Hi" to Georgians on the other side of the bridge. "Only a few weeks ago, we could have tea with Russians and take pictures of each other on this bridge," he said with a sigh. "Not any longer.

The tension between Russia and Georgia over Abkhazia, the Georgian separatist republic, has been growing steadily since last year - and many Georgians fear that tensions will boil over into full scale armed conflict soon.