briefs

(MCT) RAFAH, Egypt – Chaos ruled this weekend at a dismantled Egyptian-Palestinian border… (MCT) RAFAH, Egypt – Chaos ruled this weekend at a dismantled Egyptian-Palestinian border crossing where security forces on Saturday tried and failed once more to stop the influx of families entering Egypt to stock up on household goods that are hard to come by in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Reluctant to use force against fellow Muslims and doubtful about a speedy political solution to the crisis, the Egyptian government tested a new tactic for shooing home the Palestinians. Security forces ordered shopkeepers and hotel clerks to stop serving customers from Gaza, according to several business owners in the border towns of Rafah and Arish. A spokesman for the provincial government confirmed the orders.

Early Saturday many Egyptian-owned stores were shuttered, with groups of Palestinians gathering outside and pleading with shopkeepers to allow them to purchase food and supplies in anticipation of a more heavy-handed effort to reseal the border.

The episode underscored the inability of Egyptian security forces to rein in the tens of thousands of jubilant Palestinians who have poured into Egypt to stock up on necessities since Wednesday, when Hamas militants blew up parts of the Rafah crossing and used bulldozers to clear other sections. The Gaza Strip’s 1.5 million residents have been squeezed by an economic embargo that Israel began imposing last June after the militant group seized control.

The storming of the border puts Egypt in a high-stakes diplomatic dilemma.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak risks angering the Arab world if he resorts to military force against the Palestinians, who have been hailed as heroes for breaking free from Israel’s stranglehold on the Gaza Strip. However, the longer the border stays open, the greater the risk that militants can infiltrate Egypt and strengthen like-minded Islamist factions, which lead the opposition movement against Mubarak’s authoritarian administration. – Miret el Naggar and Hannah Allam, McClatchy Newspapers

(MCT) BAGHDAD – Officials in Iraq’s mostly Sunni Muslim Anbar province are refusing to raise Iraq’s new national flag, which the parliament approved last week.

“The new flag is done for a foreign agenda and we won’t raise it,” Ali Hatem al Suleiman, a leading member of the U.S.-backed Anbar Awakening Council, said. “If they want to force us to raise it, we will leave the yard for them to fight al-Qaeda.”

U.S. officials credit the Anbar Awakening Council with driving al-Qaeda in Iraq, which once largely controlled the province, out of Anbar.

The dispute over the flag is a more accurate symbol of Iraq today than the flag is itself. “On nothing we are completely united,” Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish lawmaker, said.

Although parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani said the new flag would be raised immediately across Iraq after the parliament approved it Tuesday, it’s nowhere to be seen.

A slim minority of parliamentarians approved the new flag, which doesn’t have Saddam Hussein’s handwriting or the three stars that represented his Sunni-dominated Baath Party.

It was rushed through parliament before a pan-Arab parliament meeting that’s planned for March in Irbil, in the Kurdish north, because the Kurdish Regional Government prohibits flying Iraq’s Saddam-era flag. The Kurds consider that flag a symbol of Saddam’s oppression. – Leila Fadel and Hussein Kadhim, McClatchy Newspaper

(MCT) RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – When stock markets across the globe fell like dominoes last week on fears of a U.S. recession, it begged an important question: Hasn’t the global economy grown less dependent on the United States as its main engine?

Plunging global stocks suggested that the answer is no.

As fears subside and stock markets rebound, important developing nations such as Brazil seem to have weathered the storm well. Thanks to China, they’ve been able to withstand a U.S. downturn, at least partially.

“Today, the global economy has two motors, China and the U.S.,” Welber Barral, trade secretary at Brazil’s Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade, said. “There’s been a diversification away from depending just on the United States.”

This is an upside of globalization, which Americans more often associate with lost jobs and unfair competition. But the fact that other countries are no longer as economically dependent on the U.S. economy as they once were matters to ordinary Americans.

Here’s how. If the global economy slumps in tandem with the U.S. economy, that would be terrible news for U.S. exports, which have grown by 12.3 percent to $1.48 trillion during a 12-month period ending in November 2007.

A strong global economy matters to Americans because exports arguably have kept the United States out of recession by offsetting the effects of the worst U.S. housing market since the Great Depression.

A decade ago, when the U.S. economy sneezed, Brazil and other developing nations caught colds. In 1999, Brazil’s exports to the United States totaled $10.7 billion, and its exports to China were a miniscule $676 million.

Now, Brazilian trade data for 2007 show its exports to the United States totaled $25.1 billion, more than twice the value of 1999, and its exports to China had mushroomed to $10.7 billion.

“It’s a completely different picture than it was just 10 years ago,” Ricardo Cotta, an executive with the Agriculture and Livestock Confederation of Brazil, said. “We’re much better prepared for an American crisis than before.” – Jack Chang and Kevin G. Hall, McClatchy Newspapers

(MCT) NAIVASHA, Kenya – Hundreds of Kikuyus wielding stones, sticks, machetes and wooden planks studded with nails confronted rival tribes Monday on a main road, whooping and wailing for blood as violence from last month’s disputed election raged in Kenya’s Rift Valley.

Having borne the brunt of the violence since the election, Kenya’s dominant tribe, the Kikuyu, is fighting back with ferocity.

Kenyan police, who’ve been unable – many Kenyans say unwilling – to calm the tribal tensions in much of the country, fired shots into the air, scattering the mob. But it was clear that the post-election violence has entered a grim new phase of tit-for-tat attacks.

On Sunday, a Kikuyu mob burned several people alive in a home in Naivasha. On Monday, police reported finding another 14 bodies, bringing the two-day death toll to 28, according to Kenyan news reports.

As word of the Naivasha killings spread to the Luo stronghold of Kisumu, 130 miles west, gangs of youths rampaged through the streets Monday.

The violence exploded as former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s efforts to lead peace talks between President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leaders stalled.

More than 800 people have been killed since Kibaki, a Kikuyu, declared himself the winner of the Dec. 27 election despite huge voting irregularities. The outcome unleashed pent-up hatred against Kikuyus, who make up less than one-quarter of Kenya’s 37 million people but have long had outsized influence on business and politics. – Shashank Bengali, McClatchy Newspapers