Spiegel's Daily Take "Burn in Hell, Zarqawi!"
Chanting "Burn in hell, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi", tens of thousands of Jordanians marched through the streets of Amman on Thursday night to vent their outrage at the three hotel bomb blasts which killed at least 57 people and injured 96 on Wednesday night. They turned the city center into a sea of national flags in a show of unity and defiance against the Jordanian-born leader of al-Qaida in Iraq whose group has claimed responsibility for the suicide attacks. On one car window a young woman had used lipstick to write "Why? What for?".
Meanwhile a fresh statement posted on the Internet on Friday in the name of al-Qaida claimed the bombings were carried out by four Iraqis, including a husband and wife "who chose to accompany her husband to his martyrdom," the AP news agency reported.
Jordan's security forces have been searching poor neighborhoods of Amman where many Iraqi workers live and have been interrogating scores of Arab suspects of various nationalities, including Iraqis, security sources said.
In a televised speech to the nation, King Abdullah, who fosters close relations with the West, said "these acts will not make us retreat from our role in fighting terror in all its forms". He called for a global strategy against terrorism. Jordan is an important ally of the USA and has become a base for Western workers coming in and out of Iraq. As such, many analysts say the country is a prime target for terrorists.
Even though they are still reeling from what is being called "Jordan's 9/11," the Jordanian people are determined to prove they are, as King Abdullah said in his televised address, not afraid. The demonstration was attended by mainly younger people, some with tears in their eyes, and had been organized by the Jordanian national mobile phone service which had sent out SMS text messages to all its customers with details of the venue. "Of course we knew that in theory we were targets for terrorists," one protestor told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "But I never imagined that it would actually happen."
Indian Textbooks: Hitler Wasn't Such a Bad Guy
Israel has complained that thousands of Indian children are getting a warped view of Adolf Hitler through a schoolbook that describes the Nazi dictator as a skilful army commander and an astute economist while saying little about the Holocaust.
Israel's general consul in Bombay, Daniel Zohar Zonshine, told the Indian Express newspaper that he would lodge an official complaint with the regional government of Gujarat about a schoolbook for tenth graders.
"I feel personally insulted," said Zonshine. "The portrayal of history is causing anger and sadness because it distorts the facts." He said he may get the German embassy involved to make a combined effort to change teaching of Nazi Germany in the western Indian state.
The textbook says: "By setting up a strong administration Hitler rapidly won dignity and respect for the German government."
The chapter on "Achievements of the National Socialists" reads like Nazi propaganda. Of Hitler is says: "He created the giant state of the Greater German Empire. He assumed a policy of opposition to the Jewish people and espoused the superiority of the German race. He adopted a new economic policy and made Germany wealthy. He worked to eradicate unemployment. He made tireless efforts to make Germany independent within a decade. He ignored the Treaty of Versailles which he dismissed as 'just a piece of paper' and stopped paying reparations. He instilled a spirit of adventure in ordinary people."
The book also praises the strong national pride that Hitler gave the German people. The Holocaust is dealt with only briefly: "The Nationalists committed the cruel and inhuman act of killing 6 million Jews in gas chambers."
Protests against the book started a year ago but it was not changed. The education secretary of Gujarat, whose government has been criticized within India and abroad for its strong Hindu nationalism, has said he will take action in response to the Israeli initiative.
Climb Every Mountain with Heidi
If there is one thing that irritates women more than unrealistically skinny models, it's unrealistically skinny models who have babies and then get straight back into modelling lingerie. Which means that Heidi Klum's catwalk comeback, just two months after giving birth to baby Henry, will probably impress and annoy in equal measure.
Heidi's father Günther Klum told tabloid Bild that she started being whipped back into shape three weeks ago by the famous "body guru" David Kirsch. His hourly fee of €100 was probably an incentive to lose the flab as quickly as possible.
Carbs were banned and replaced by vegetables, low-fat meat, scrambled eggs and high-protein shakes. In between bouts of breast-feeding Henry, Klum who appears to have the endurance of an East German swimming champion, has managed to squeeze in an hour of sit-ups and push-ups every day. And if that's not enough to make young mothers feel inadequate, then the 14-hour days she has been putting in filming the series "Germany's Next Top Model" for the German television channel ProSieben probably will.
The 32-year-old model's comeback was the highlight of the show by lingerie label Victoria's Secret in New York. As the baby's pop star father Seal sang, Heidi showed her newly-acquired abs to full advantage by appearing as a bikini-clad angel sporting enormous wings.
A Veiled Attempt at Human Rights
While Heidi bares all, Turkish women continue to fight for their right to cover up. The European Court of Justice in Strasbourg has ruled that Turkey's ban on women wearing headscarves in universities does not violate human rights, but rather helps safeguard the status of women.
A Turkish student, Lelya Sahin, lost her battle with Europe's supreme human rights court on Thursday. She first brought her case to the courts in 1998 after Istanbul University excluded her from medical school for wearing a headscarf. A court spokesman said that the verdict leaves Sahin with no possibility of further appeal.
The ruling is seen as a victory of Turkey's secularists over the ruling conservative and Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP). In the run-up to the 2002 elections the AKP promised to do away with the ban on headscarves in state organizations. But strong support of the ban has meant that they have been unable to carry out their pledge.
The issue has become a divisive one in Turkish society. President Ahmet Necdet Sezer even went so far as to ban headscarves from his palace. By effectively knocking many women, including Prime Minister Erdogan's wife, off the guest list for his receptions, he has managed to ruffle conservative feathers.
Prime Minister Erdogan, on the other hand, has called wearing a headscarf a basic human right. This week he went a step further by criticizing France's ban of religious symbols in schools. He said this was a sign of religious discrimination, which had helped fan anger and contributed to the unrest which France is currently experiencing.
I Spy a Journalist
Germany's foreign intelligence service (BND), the equivalent to the CIA, has admitted to spying on journalists and researchers during the 1990s to find out who in its rank was leaking information about it. Well almost. What the BND's president, August Hanning, actually said was that he couldn't "rule out that disloyal employees were kept under observation, and I can't rule out that in the process journalists may have fallen into the spotlight" -- about as close to an admission as you're likely to get from a spy.
In the mid-1990s at least three journalists were followed by employees of the BND. Helmut Markwort, editor-in-chief of the news magazine Focus, said it was "monstrous" that his colleagues had been spied on. One journalist who worked for Focus was apparently under surveillance for 10 months. Agents also used false identities to obtain photographs of Focus reporter Josef Hufelschulte.
In a rare show of solidarity, politicians from both the main parties, CDU and SPD, have fiercely criticized the BND's behavior. BND president Hanning maintains the organization was within its rights to observe journalists in order to preserve internal security. The issue now is to find out just how much journalists were spied on and whether the government at the time knew about it.
