This is the best I can do

Six days and counting. It has been a long time since I have been this sick. I have no energy for any kind of commentary. But here are a few bits and pieces I found interesting over the last day or two.

- Tuesday's International Herald Tribune reports that Chung Dong Young, South Korea's unification minister, told the National Assembly on Monday that it was doubtful that North Korea possesses nuclear weapons, despite Pyongyang's claims.

Other government officials, meanwhile, said that Seoul's aid to the North would continue despite reports that the government here has come under pressure at home and abroad to withhold it. ...

Chung, who also heads the National Security Council, conceded that the North possessed the material for the production of weapons.

"There is no doubt that North Korea has 10 to 14 kilograms of plutonium, but there is no evidence that the North has turned it into plutonium bombs," he said.

- "The Gates," an art installation in New York's Central Park by Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude, was officially unveiled on Saturday. Described by one art critic as "a long, billowy saffron ribbon meandering through Central Park," the 23-mile long installation of 7,500, 16-foot-tall, "gates" has brought a world of flowing, billowing, brightly-colored nylon to the February dreariness. If you're going to see it - and I think you should if you can - you'd better hurry: Like all of their works, this is temporary. It comes down the end of the month.

- The issue of same-sex marriage is roiling Canada just as it has the US and, like here, has proven divisive. But as per usual, our neighbors to the north are showing themselves more progressive than we are. According to a poll commissioned by the Toronto Star

42 per cent of Canadians endorse allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry. In contrast, 40 per cent say they oppose marriage for same-sex couples. ...

In a similar survey 18 months ago, just after the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien first announced it would extend the legal right to marry to gays and lesbians, outright support for gay marriage was at 36 per cent while opposition was at 41 per cent.

The paper notes that the survey results appear just days before a

crucial second-reading — or agreement in principle — debate over Bill C-38, the Civil Marriage Act, begins in Parliament. ...

That vote sets the stage for a Commons committee to study the bill, but if approved in principle, it's unlikely it would undergo significant changes. A final vote is expected before June.

- In what I hope does not prove to be a surfeit of confidence,

[t]he Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, said in an interview that the war with the Israelis was effectively over[, the International Herald Tribune reports,] and that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was speaking "a different language" to the Palestinians. ...

In a 40-minute interview in his Gaza office late Saturday night, Abbas spoke with pride about persuading the radical groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad to respect the mutual declaration of truce that he and Sharon announced Tuesday at their first summit meeting in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt.

- A short (2 minute) video worth watching is at the American Friends Service Committee's (AFSC) "Wage Peace Campaign" website. Go here and click on the "Wage Peace Movie" link. While you're there, check out the info about the "Eyes Wide Open" exhibit, the one that displays a pair of boots for every US soldier killed in Iraq.

- One of the worst things about thinking about Iraq is realizing there are people who would regard it as almost heaven. From the BBC for Saturday:

About 80,000 people have been displaced by fighting in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo this year, according to UN officials.

They say nearly half have fled Ituri region in the last four days. ...

Up to 50,000 have been killed since 1999, and rape is still widely used as a weapon of war.

The UN estimates that within the provincial capital Bunia alone there are 50 new cases of sexual violence every week.

Over three million have died and over two million more have been made homeless over the years of war in DR Congo.