It will be one of the biggest parties in US history, but half of the country will be left out. With a price tag of up to US$50 million, US President George W Bush's inauguration in 10 days' time will be an unashamed celebration of Red America's victory over Blue America in last November's election.
It is going to be the most expensive, most security-obsessed event in the history of Washington DC. An army of 10,000 police, secret service officers and FBI agents will patrol the capital for four days of massive celebrations that some critics have derided as reminiscent of the lavish shindigs thrown by Louis XIV, France's extravagant Sun King.
More than 150,000 people, nearly all Republicans whose tickets are a reward for election work, will pack the Mall to hear Bush take his oath of office on Jan. 20. There will be nine official balls, countless unofficial ones, parades and a concert hosted by Bush's daughters, Jenna and Barbara.
Amid the official pageantry will be many huge parties laid on by companies wishing to win favor with Washington's power players.
Anyone who is anyone in Republican circles will be in town. Many Democrats will be leaving.
With so many big names in one place, security measures will include road blocks, anti-aircraft guns guarding the skies and sniper teams patrolling the rooftops.
Many observers say it is all too much.
"We have elected a president who seems to have quite a monarchical role. It is a bit of a coronation," said Larry Haas, a former official in Bill Clinton's White House.
Certainly, Bush's inauguration will be an orgy of gladhanding and partying by the Republican faithful from all over the country. One Washington hotel, the Mandarin Oriental, is offering visitors four nights in its Presidential Suite for US$200,000. The price tag includes a 24-hour butler, a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce or Humvee, daily champagne and caviar and a flight to the hotel in a private jet.
One highlight of the bonanza is the Black Tie and Boots Ball organized by Bush's home state of Texas, with the president as star guest. Ten thousand tickets sold out in less than 50 minutes, and are now trading privately at US$1,300 each. Another is the Commander-in-Chief's Ball where Bush will honor US soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is billed as the centerpiece of the inauguration, which itself has a theme tinged with the idea of military service.
All the partying is being condemned by many commentators as in poor taste for a nation fighting a bloody war.
Carroll Wilson, editor of the Texas newspaper the Times Record, has called the cost obscene and "a horrendous waste."
"There's something inherently embarrassing about spending US$50 million on a party that will start and end in the blink of a very red eye," he said.
The fighting in Iraq has provoked calls for the celebrations to be toned down, as they were during the two world wars when some were even cancelled. Bush's second inauguration will be the first in wartime since president Richard Nixon took office in 1969 during the Vietnam conflict.
Yet the partying is being intensified. The Commander-in-Chief's Ball is being hailed by organizers as a fitting tribute to US soldiers on active service. More than 2,000 troops and their partners, selected by the Pentagon, will take part. Most have served in Iraq or Afghanistan or are about to go there. The parades will have a stronger than normal military theme.
That angers many anti-war protesters who say the lavish celebration is inappropriate during conflict. Some conservative commentators have even joined the fray, contrasting the spending with a recent scandal over a shortage of armor for US soldiers and their vehicles.
A huge series of demonstrations is now being planned which organizers say will be much larger than the ones that marked Bush's first inauguration after the contested Florida recount in 2000.
"We want our voices to be heard," said a spokesman for the Answer Coalition, which is co-ordinating the protests.
The huge security presence means there is likely to be little disruption, especially of the oath-taking ceremony itself. More vulnerable may be the corporate events taking place all over the city.
The US$50 million bill is mostly being paid by private donations from people and firms currying political favor. With a strict ban on large single donations to active political campaigns, the inauguration offers a rare chance for companies and individuals to lavish large sums of money on the president and his party simultaneously.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.