Monitor: The News of the World

Kosovo Genetically Modified Food The World Cup Texas Killing The Rolling Stones Ulrika Jonsson

KOSOVO

Reactions to the escalating tensions between Serbs

and ethnic Albanians

Die Welt

Germany

IT is vital that NATO demonstrates to the president of the Republic of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, that his military actions against the civil population in Kosovo are no longer appropriate. If Milosevic is still unmoved, NATO has to increase its potential threat. At the moment, it is difficult to judge what support the moderate powers of the population, keen for autonomy, still have. Therefore, it is questionable whether the Kosovo conflict can be solved with only a few measures. It is more likely that NATO will be brought into action, which would be a lengthy and difficult operation. Is this really what is wanted?

Salon Magazine

Internet

Ever since Milosevic's crackdown in Kosovo began three months ago, the West has responded with hand-wringing meetings by NATO foreign ministers, the six-nation Balkan "Contact Group" (Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the United States), the European Union in Luxembourg, the White House and the National Security Council. The upshot of those meetings has been a mantra-like recitation of demands for Milosevic to desist and get down to talking to Kosovo's civilian leaders, or face possible military wrath.

Sydney Morning Herald

Australia

The bloodshed must be stopped, the violence contained, and a demonstration be made that there are standards of civilised behaviour everyone must observe. But care must be taken not to play into Mr Milosevic's hands. Kosovo is not (yet) a case of Bosnia revisited. The response from the international community, and NATO in particular, must reflect this. Military action against Serbia eventually may be required but not before all other efforts are exhausted to isolate Mr Milosevic and reverse his latest folly.

Washington Post

USA

Klaus Naumann, head of NATO's military committee, said the studies concluded that well-executed air strikes could end the conflict, if a political decision is made to intervene. "If we were assigned the task of enforcing an end to the fighting we could ensure that goal with air strikes, just as we did in Bosnia."

The Economist

UK

Slobodan Milosevic, perhaps the most incompetent nationalist in modern history, continues to hack away at what is left of Yugoslavia. This is horribly familiar. Familiar, too, is the dilemma faced by western leaders: should they watch the bloodshed, as they did for too long in Bosnia, or risk compatriots' lives and their own political careers by getting involved in somebody else's war, as America did in Vietnam.

You are what you eat - a scary thought

GENETICS & FOOD

A call for caution over genetically modified food by The Prince of Wales - and the responses

Prince Charles, The Daily Telegraph

I personally have no wish to eat anything produced by genetic modification, nor do I knowingly offer this sort of produce to my family or guests. There is increasing evidence that a great many people feel the same way. But if this is becoming a widely held view, we cannot put our principles into practice until there is effective segregation of genetically modified products, backed by a comprehensive labelling scheme based on progress through the food chain.

The Economist

Genetically modified crops have great potential to improve plant and human health. If the first product on the market had been a nutritionally enhanced rice rather than a high-tech tomato, consumer response might now be very different. Today's debate offers scientists another chance to engage the public and assuage their fears. For the future of bio-technology, these are seeds worth sowing.

New Statesman

I favour both nuclear and genetic technologies. I find it difficult to see how the western developed world will sustain its standard of living into the next millennium and avoid a runaway greenhouse effect without recourse to the energy that is locked up inside the atomic nucleus. Similarly, there are more than 4,000 single gene defects known to afflict humanity. Many of them result in diseases that inflict terrible suffering, usually upon children but also upon parents who have to live with the knowledge that the genetic constitution they passed on to their child was responsible. There is now real hope that in many instances this burden of human suffering may be alleviated.

Malcolm Walker of Iceland Stores, The Sun

I have banned genetically modified soya from own-label products sold in all 770 Iceland stores and will only use suppliers who know exactly where their soya comes from, because to me it is the most worrying problem in the food industry we are likely to face.

TEXAN LYNCHING

The murder of James Byrd, who was beaten, then chained to a car and dragged to his death

Los Angeles Times

USA

We are told these are "isolated incidents" despite the fact that there have been copycat killings of black men in America for at least 110 years. And yes, there is a name for them: lynchings.

About this our society is in determined denial. Even to use the word "lynching" is to risk being accused of the worst kind of

demagoguery. The fact is that unlike school-shootings, lynching is a well-understood American social phenomenon. There is a deep social understanding not only of what lynching is, but of how it is done ... part of our collective American unconscious.

Dallas Morning Post

USA

How do you quantify the generalised - and historically justifiable - unease that many black Americans feel when driving down lonely country highways? Or when a police cruiser tails their car even though they're obeying the speed limit? The constant trickle of racially motivated horrors - the Jasper murder, the police officer and West African immigrant killed by a skinhead in Denver last year, the Rodney King beating - stokes anxiety and distrust. To root out hatred, we must all teach tolerance, not once in a while, but every day.

El Pais

Spain

The phenomenon of racial hatred is worldwide, but it certainly seems to be most prevalent in this country of macabre ends. In his celebrated monologue in Memphis, on the eve of his murder, Martin Luther King said that one day justice and racial harmony would come to the United States. The disturbing facts of the Jasper county lynching distance his dream again.

Daily Mail

UK

The truth is that America has tried to sweep its deep racial problems under a carpet of political correctness and positive discrimination. No, James Byrd's death is not an aberration. It is part of a trend that is casting a dark shadow over America.

ULRIKA JONSSON

Following the attack on the TV presenter by her (now ex) boyfriend, footballer Stan Collymore.

Daily Mail

She's already appeared drunk on stage once, and behaviour that can appear funny and outrageous at 25 can appear slaggish and rather disgusting at 35. Her salvation, she says, lies with her son, who she adores, though she has a full-time nanny looking after him. He is, she says, the centre of her life. And yet on the eve of the World Cup she'd rather be in a bar pinching men's bottoms that reading him a bed-time story.

The Sun

WHAT is the matter with footballers? Soccer thug Stan Collymore smacks Ulrika Jonsson and has to be pulled off her in a bar. What a lout. What an appalling example he sets to fans.

Behaviour like that is intolerable.

Daily Star

Ulrika has shocked pals with her capacity for booze - she's even been know to carry around a hip-flask full of Scotch.

MISCELLANEOUS

Sydney Morning Herald

Australia

A culture of sexual intimidation and harassment exists at the Australian Defence Academy because a flawed concept of discipline is applied. Instead of discipline, group loyalty and obedience is inculcated in first-year cadets largely through the tyranny of senior cadets. Loyalty becomes a case of not "jacking" (informing) on mates and not "crossing the road" (complaining to superiors). Under a forced code of silence based on a perverse loyalty code, seniors abuse their juniors and males harass and assault females. This is not discipline, but a gross caricature of it.

Copenhagen Post

Denmark

An erotic sex pressure group has threatened to hijack this year's summer solstice festivities by staging a Bible-burning stunt. The main organiser of the sex trade fair `Erotic World', Kenneth Strandby, has pledged to set alight over 10,000 Bibles. . "The Bible represents nothing good. It's a 2000-year-old lie, and the Church and the Bible are to blame for almost all things evil."

Business Week

USA

The sacred Japanese rite of Sumo which dates back 1,500 years is fighting its toughest opponent: Japan's economic slump. The drop in attendance which began a year ago is a grim omen for the more than $100 million-a- year sport. Yen-pinching customers are less willing to fork out over $15 for seats near the stadium's rafters. And companies are terminating expensive box-seat reservations and sponsorships.

Football, a metaphor for war

THE WORLD CUP

The beginning of the world's most popular sporting event

Herald Tribune

France

For good or not so good, football mobilises people, admits their participation in rejoicing or disappointment, introduces excitement and suspense in their various lives. It is something in which all who choose can share. They have other differences, but this is a meeting of hopes. Vive le foot!

Liberation

France

Cheered on by a chauvinist crowd and crushed by its brutal supporters, each team symbolises what is most intolerant about each nation. Football becomes a metaphor for war, a pedagogy of hatred. Each football war is fought according to strict rules: on what battlefield could a referree interrupt and send off those who are fighting dirty? After which war would the vanquished batallion accept defeat and promise to do better next time? Perhaps football is a metaphor. Or rather, perhaps it is a state of law in which the man in black regulates conflicts and tames instincts.

The Express

UK

The World Cup has become a football tournament for people who don't actually like football ... But once the fanfare is over and the new fans have stopped wittering on about Glenn Hoddle's puritanism robbing England of their one true star; once the epicentre of football has shifted from bourgeois France where the wine is fine, the food is fabulous and the footballers spout poetry, to Bradford or Burnley where it isn't, and they don't how many of these fans will still be around? If you think you've recently caught football fever try going to watch Leyton Orient on a damp drizzly day. It's amazing how quickly your temperature can drop.

Time

USA

(Advice to Scottish fans.) "... just remember one thing: Despite what Del-boy says, Bonjour does not mean goodbye."

THE ROLLING STONES

Reaction to the band's decision to postpone its British tour because of changes in tax law

The Mirror

TONY Blair's favourite record is the Rolling Stones' Beggars Banquet. He might like to reconsider. The band's members are far from being beggars yet have shown that they care only for themselves.

Between them they have amassed a pounds 350m fortune. Yet still they cancel their British concerts to avoid tax.

The fault lies entirely with the selfishness and greed of the Stones. If they never appeared on stage again, or sold another record, they would still live in luxury for the rest of their lives.

Instead they have decided to let down the fans who have provided their fabulous wealth. One of the songs on Mr Blair's favourite album is Sympathy For The Devil.

There will be no sympathy for the Rolling Stones after this.

The Times

When Tony Blair was no more than an Ugly Rumour, there was nothing he wanted more than to be Mick Jagger. Now it is Jagger who wants to swap places.

While Jagger might prefer a soiree at Buckingham Palace, and the chance to swap tips on tax minimisation with the monarch, Mr Blair would until now have loved to have the Stones round for a jam. But, as either man could now say to the other: you can't always get what you want.

Daily Record

If this were merely an argument about four old rockers and their money, then of course the verdict would be obvious - The Stones simply ought to pay up, and play on. But their showdown with the taxman has wider implications. It finally dispels the myth that rock'n'roll is a bohemian art which somehow remains aloof from the mundane questions of how to earn cash and how to hold on to it.

Quotes of the Week

"The packet of biscuits I opened for my elevenses this morning was wrapped up in more layers than a pensioner going out in the snow" - Playwright and commentator Keith Waterhouse

"Being blonde means never saying anything you don't understand unless you want to be predictable" - TV personality Mariella Frostrup

"Gardening is the new rock 'n' roll. When I was little, it was all fuddy- duddy Percy Thrower. Now it's very social and very, very fashionable" - Ex-supermodel Ali Ward, who has switched careers to become a model gardener

"I would rather be round and jolly than thin and cross" - Shadow Health Secretary Ann Widdecombe, talking about her "enormous" appetite.

"Apparently God is a Europhile" - Former Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer, Norman Lamont