United States

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- After the United States has spent more than $5 billion in a largely failed effort to bolster the Pakistani military campaign against militants from al-Qaida and the Taliban, some American officials now acknowledge that there were too few controls over how the money was spent, and that the strategy to improve the Pakistani military needs to be completely revamped. In interviews in Islamabad and Washington, officials in the U.S. military and in the Bush administration said they believed that much of the American money was not making its way to front-line Pakistani units.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have left little room for news coverage or informed discussion of what is going on in the rest of the world and how it relates to U.S. security interests. This goes double for Africa, which was largely ignored in policymaking circles even before Iraq and 9/11 began to dominate the foreign policy agenda. Thus, few Americans are likely aware that the U.S. relationship with Africa has become increasingly militarized. In the long run, such a focus is not beneficial for either Africa or the United States.

GENEVA -- The United States, which regards itself as a bastion of human rights, found itself under attack from friend and foe alike during the first week of the United Nations' annual meeting on global democratic rights.The sharpest blow came from America's ally, Germany, whose foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, announced that the 15-member European Union for the first time would submit an anti-death-penalty resolution to the U.N. Human Rights Commission.He told delegates from the 53 member countries that the resolution was intended to prevent "the execution of minors, of the mentally ill, enforcement before completion of ongoing procedures, and extradition to countries where the death penalty is in force."

PARIS -- The arrival of a common European currency is a watershed in the relationship of the United States to the new Europe.It is the most important event for European integration since the Treaties of Rome in 1957. It promises to be the most important event for the United States since Communism collapsed.Since 1989, the United States has been, in economic and military terms, the most powerful state in the world. Washington has imagined no serious challenge to American power until the distant future.

FOR anyone who imagines that the new information-based economy is a panacea for America's economic ills, the U.S. trade figures released Sept. 21 are a startling wake-up call.Not only do they show that the United States' chronic trade problems have not gone away, but they also raise fundamental questions about the wisdom of America's New Age economic strategy.Quite simply, the new industries that the United States has been so enthusiastically embracing -- whether computer software, financial services, entertainment or Internet web site construction -- are no match for the export prowess of the old manufacturing industries that were the backbone of the American economy at its zenith.

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- The stories are making the rounds among Fort Jackson's battalion commanders and drill sergeants.There's the one about the recruit who showed up for basic training missing a trigger finger.There are tales of several trainees who arrived missing toes.And another whose X-ray showed a drainage tube running from his brain to his chest.Most of the stories are, to the Army's dismay, true.At Fort Jackson, a training post that is the portal of entry to 35,000 Army recruits each year, new soldiers have arrived recently with hepatitis C, severe psychological disorders and histories of confinement to mental institutions.

BEIJING -- For the first time since large protests ended here last week, Chinese people returned to the American Embassy yesterday -- not to hurl stones or epithets -- but to ask for visas to visit and study in the United States.A 26-year-old Chinese student, who attends Michigan State University and who asked that his name not be used, stood outside waiting in vain to hear when the battered consular office would reopen."It shouldn't change the relationship between China and America," said the student, referring to the May 7 NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia that set off the largest anti-Western protests here in more than two decades.

BEIJING -- A middle-age Chinese mother showed up recently at the apartment of an American friend bearing gifts and fighting tears. Her 15-year-old daughter had been selected for a two-week school trip to the United States -- an extraordinary opportunity for a Chinese teen-ager.The U.S. Consulate, however, had rejected her visa application out of fear she wouldn't return. The woman presented her American acquaintances with a small vase and a bowl. Then she placed $250 -- a large sum by Chinese standards -- on the coffee table.

Charles Mraz 94, a beekeeper who since the 1930s had been the United States' leading evangelist for the therapeutic use of bee stings, a still unproven treatment, died Monday at his home in Middlebury, Vt.Thousands of people with chronic diseases knew him for his campaign to have bee venom and other bee products accepted as medical therapies in the United States -- a quest that began when he deliberately bared his arthritic knees for bee stings.W. Arthur Garrity Jr., 79, a U.S. District Court judge whose 1974 order to desegregate Boston schools led to rioting, racial turmoil, and resentment that lingers, died Thursday of cancer.

Few consider it a rematch. But nobody believes it's a mismatch.A year after the United States' 15-14 overtime victory over Canada in the World Championships, the first World Cup of Lacrosse has ambitiously attempted to re-create the magic of what many consider the greatest lacrosse game ever played. A best-of-three championship series between the two countries begins tonight at Johns Hopkins' Homewood Field.However, most of the United States' World Cup team remember that game as spectators in the stands.

Maryland emitted more cumulative global warming pollution between 1960 and 2005 than more than 150 other nations surveyed, according to a report released this week by Greenpeace. And that makes it one of the least-polluting states on a per-person basis. The United States has long been considered the chief emitter, but months ahead of a global forum on the subject, the environmental organization was seeking to underscore the level by compiling Department of Energy statistics for individual states and comparing them with World Resource Institute data from 184 other countries.

Violence is significantly lower these days in Iraq, and the Americans who still keep the peace there are busy planning for a significant troop withdrawal over the next 18 months. But that country's hopes for a brighter economic future are shadowed by the loss of more than 2 million refugees - many of them doctors, lawyers, teachers and engineers - who have fled to Jordan, Syria and other neighboring countries. Most of these displaced people are afraid to return to Iraq, which they believe remains unsafe.

Everyone knows that the Chesapeake Bay is in deep trouble. One of the clearest signs is the state of our fishing industry. There are bans on clamming, serious limits on yellow perch fishing and restrictions on crab harvests so severe that the federal government is spending $10 million to help watermen. This is a far cry from the Chesapeake of 400 years ago, when John Smith wrote about fish "lying so thick with their heads above the water, as for want of nets." Despite today's desperate situation, I am more optimistic than ever about Maryland's fisheries.

DOUMA, Syria - Second of three parts Mustafa Hamad Rassoul doesn't see how his family can survive. Back in Baghdad, the 55-year-old Iraqi Kurd says, the money he made running a clothing shop was more than enough to house and feed his two wives and 10 children. But here in Syria, where he came last year after being threatened by the Mahdi Army, the food and cash assistance his family receives doesn't last the month. Rassoul blames the United States. "America always talks about human rights," he says while waiting at the U.N. refugee registration center in this city outside Damascus.

WASHINGTON - As President George W. Bush's term comes to a close, the United States has the world's dominant economy and its most powerful military. Yet its global influence is in decline. The United States emerged from the Cold War a solitary superpower whose political and economic leverage often enabled it to impose its will on others. Now, America usually needs to build coalitions - and often finds other powers are not willing to go along. In the 1990s, America exerted leadership in all the remote corners of the globe.

In the 1960s, millions of Americans bought their first homes without subprime lending. Over the last 20 years, that became almost impossible. Why? One factor has been the decline of the much-traveled road from poverty to lower middle class and then higher - to homeownership, college for the children and a funded retirement. That path was a good job in basic manufacturing, making steel, paper, even iPods. Now these things are made abroad. The United States has lost millions of manufacturing jobs.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's secessionist sympathies sparked minor hysteria earlier this month. Her crime was hailing with round praise the work of the cranky Alaskan Independence Party, which advocates a statewide plebiscite on the secession of Alaska from the Union. "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government," the party's founder, gold miner Joe Vogler, once said. "And I won't be buried under their damn flag." Mrs. Palin's husband was a member of the AIP for seven years, and Mrs. Palin herself has courted the AIP for more than a decade.

The U.S. men's basketball team is proving in Beijing what every coach from pee-wee hoops to the big guys has known all along. Defense will conquer all. The Americans have struggled with their three-point shooting and even their free throws, but their defense has been spectacular. Against Greece, which beat the United States in the world championships two years ago, the Americans helped force 25 turnovers yesterday. The U.S. had 15 steals and seven blocked shots. Greece, meanwhile, had just four steals and one blocked shot.

As the Bush administration sought last week to play down Hezbollah's success in boosting its power and legitimacy in Lebanon, the militant group's rising influence around the world has led some intelligence and counterterrorism officials to ask whether the Iranian-financed organization has grown more dangerous to the United States than al-Qaida. Though few believe Hezbollah would launch an attack in the West, continued hostility between the United States and Iran could significantly raise the threat level here, several former counterterrorism officials and analysts said - especially if the tensions evolve into full-blown conflict.

FIRN to honor residents May 7 Francis A. Afoakwah, licensing coordinator for Maryland State Social Services Administration, and his wife, Joyce, a residential assistant at Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center, will be honored May 7 for their contributions to the community and the county's economy at the sixth annual American Success Awards dinner sponsored by the Foreign-Born Information and Referral Network. Also to be honored are Peter S. Lee, owner of Leeway Development Group, and Dr. Saba S. Sheikh, a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, Commissioner of the Howard County Commission on Aging, volunteer physician at the MCC Free Clinic in Silver Spring, and lead organizer of the Howard County Muslim Foundation Health Fair.