Revered Chinese Author Ba Jin Dies at 100

Elaine Kurtenbach, Associated Press

BEIJING (AP) — Ba Jin, one of China's most revered
communist-era writers who attacked the evils of the
pre-revolutionary era in novels, short stories and essays,
died Monday of cancer in Shanghai, the official Xinhua News
Agency said. He was 100.

Best known for his 1931 novel "Family," the story of a
disintegrating feudal household, Ba Jin also translated the
Russian writers Ivan Turgenev and Pyotr Kropotkin.

Ba Jin worked well into his later years writing essays and
compiling anthologies of his work.

He was part of the young intelligentsia in the early 20th
century that looked to Western philosophies — Marxism,
anarchism, and liberalism — for solutions to China's
backwardness and social inequality.

Chavez Moves Venezuelan Money Out of U.S.
Associated Press

Venezuela has moved its central bank foreign
reserves out of U.S. banks, liquidated its investments in U.S. Treasury
securities and placed the funds in Europe, Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez said Friday.

"We've had to move the international reserves from U.S. banks because of
the threats," from the U.S., Chavez said during televised remarks from a
South American summit in Brazil.

"The reserves we had (invested) in U.S. Treasury bonds, we've sold them
and we moved them to Europe and other countries," he said.

Chavez, a sharp critic of what he calls "imperialist" U.S.-style
capitalism, has often criticized foreign banks for the power they wield in
international financial markets at the expense of poorer countries.

Chavez again proposed the creation of a South American central bank that
would hold the foreign exchange reserves of all the central banks in the
region.

"Goodbye Joe"

Jamal Mecklai

me gotta go, me oh my oh

me gotta go pole the pirogue

down the bayou…

The heartbreaking scenes out of New Orleans these past two weeks brought to mind the lyrics of "Jambalaya," one of thousands of great songs that sprung out of the bayou mud of Southern Louisiana over the past few hundred years.

I know – I guess, "knew" would be a better word today – New Orleans, the Cajun country stretching across South Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf Coast extremely well, having been taken to New Orleans on my first fall break in college – a wide-eyed 21-year old graduate student (relatively) fresh off the boat from India.

It was – to use a contemporary phrase – awesome. Not only did we drink all night and whatever part of the day we were up – I particularly remember sitting on the sidewalk swigging Boone’s Farm Apple wine (99 cents a bottle, I kid you not) – but we danced on the streets, heard the finest music and I almost ended up married to a girl who was dancing naked on my table at a bar just off Bourbon Street one night.

"U.S. Congressman Says Atta Papers Destroyed on Orders"

Donna De La Cruz, Associated Press

A Pentagon employee was ordered to destroy documents that identified Mohamed Atta as a terrorist two years before the 2001 attacks, a congressman said Thursday.

The employee is prepared to testify next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee and was expected to name the person who ordered him to destroy the large volume of documents, said Rep. Curt Weldon, a Republican from Pennsylvania.

Weldon declined to name the employee, citing confidentiality matters. Weldon described the documents as "2.5 terabytes" — as much as one-fourth of all the printed materials in the Library of Congress, he added.