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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 23, 2008

Zimbabwe Denies Entry For Carter, Humanitarians

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's 84-year-old president, clinging to power after 28 years in office, barred another famous 84-year-old - former President Jimmy Carter - from entering the country Saturday.

The globe-trotting, Nobel Prize-winning Carter said it was a novel experience for him. He had never before been denied a visa.

Mugabe's decision to forbid a humanitarian visit by Carter, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Graca Machel, Nelson Mandela's wife, was a measure of the Zimbabwean leader's disdain for international opinion at a time when deepening hunger, raging hyperinflation and the collapse of health, sanitation and education services have crippled Zimbabwe.

Carter, Annan and Machel said they had hoped to get a firsthand sense of the crisis and to assess the help the country needs.

"It seems obvious to me that leaders of the government are immune to reaching out for help for their own people," Carter said at a news conference in Johannesburg.

Bush Reminisces During Pacific Rim Summit

LIMA, Peru - The White House said quite emphatically that President George W. Bush's final trip to a summit of Pacific Rim nations was no farewell tour.

Sure sounds like it, though. And a lot of the sentiment is coming from Bush himself.

At a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Bush reflected fondly on their time working together, and joked that his "forced retirement" begins Jan. 20.

That's when President-elect Barack Obama takes office.

Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino quoted Bush as saying he "felt a little nostalgic" about having his last meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao as a head of state on Friday.

And the end of his presidency also was on his mind in his sole speech at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit. He reached back to the seminal moment of his eight years in office - the Sept. 11 attacks - and how nations responded.

Bolivian President Causes Stir In U.S. Visit

WASHINGTON - The students buzzed excitedly as they stood in the freezing dark at American University last week while Secret Service agents searched their backpacks. They filled one auditorium and overflowed into another, waiting to see a Latin American leader who has become a folk hero to his poor countrymen in Bolivia - even as he has alienated its elite, alarmed U.S. officials and polarized the area's Bolivian immigrant community.

There were grizzled professors and nonprofit types in the reserved seats, chatting of bygone wars and revolutions, mentioning Salvador Allende and Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. A hush fell as Bolivian President Evo Morales strode in, flanked by security men, and the entire room rose in a standing ovation.

Morales looked every bit the part of an indigenous peasant leader turned politician. He wore a simple collarless jacket and a rough white cotton shirt with no tie. When he spoke, in Spanish, it was not to tackle the host of thorny U.S.-Bolivian issues but to present his version of Bolivia's tortured racial history and of his own quest for power.

Palin Fielding Offers For Books, TV, Movies

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Sarah Palin is juggling offers to write books, appear in films and sit on dozens of interview couches at a rate astonishing for most Hollywood stars, let alone a first-term governor.

Oprah wants her. So do Letterman and Leno.

The failed Republican vice presidential candidate crunched state budget numbers this past week in her 17th-floor office as tumbling oil prices hit Alaska's revenue. Her staff, meanwhile, fielded television requests seeking the 44-year-old Palin for late-night banter and Sunday morning Washington policy.

Agents from the William Morris Agency and elsewhere have come knocking. There even has been an offer to host a TV show.

Palin may have emerged from the campaign politically wounded, with questions about her preparedness for higher office and reports of an expensive wardrobe. But she has returned to Alaska with an expanded, if unofficial, title - international celebrity.

A wire report

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