Thursday, March 30, 2006

Reaction to the news: Olmert, Taylor, and Livingstone

I don't have the time to comment properly on these stories right now, but they're all worth following. All links are to The Washington Post:

-- Ehud Olmert's Kadima Party (founded by Ariel Sharon) won the most Knesset seats in Tuesday's Israeli elections (28 of 120). Israel uses a List-PR (proportional representation) electoral system, with seats apportioned according to the popular vote. Olmert will now look to build a governing coalition, likely with Amir Peretz's Labour Party. (For more, see here.)

-- Former Liberian President Charles Taylor has been arrested in Nigeria. He was trying to leave the country after President Olusegun Obasanjo agreed to hand him over to international authorities: "So ended, for now anyway, the political career of one of the most-wanted men in the world, a charismatic warlord-turned-president-turned-fugitive who finished the day in the custody of a U.N.-backed tribunal that has indicted him on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his long reign of terror across this fragile region." (For more, see here.)

-- On a lighter note, London Mayor Ken Livingstone called U.S. Ambassador Robert Holmes Tuttle "a chiselling little crook" and a "car salesman" on Monday. It's all about traffic congestion fees. (For more, see here.)

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