Docudharma Times Friday Oct. 19

USA

Senators Clash With Nominee About Torture

By PHILIP SHENON

Published: October 19, 2007

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 – President Bush’s nominee for attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey, declined Thursday to say if he considered harsh interrogation techniques like waterboarding, which simulates drowning, to constitute torture or to be illegal if used on terrorism suspects.

On the second day of confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Mukasey went further than he had the day before in arguing that the White House had constitutional authority to act beyond the limits of laws enacted by Congress, especially when it came to national defense.

USA

Evangelicals Lukewarm Toward GOP Field

By Michael D. Shear and Perry Bacon Jr.

Washington Post Staff Writers

Friday, October 19, 2007; Page A01

For months, Republican presidential candidates such as Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and John McCain have courted evangelical Christians, meeting with religious leaders throughout the Midwest and the South.

Today, thousands of Christian conservatives will gather in Washington to confront the fact that none of the candidates has won them over.

For Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, and former senator Fred D. Thompson (Tenn.), the conference will be an opportunity to do what months of private meetings have failed to accomplish: become the consensus candidate for the evangelical movement, a key constituency of the Republican Party.

Trying to Decipher the State of the Death Penalty

By LINDA GREENHOUSE

Published: October 19, 2007

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 – Is there a death penalty moratorium now in place, and how would we know?

The Supreme Court has granted two stays of execution and refused to vacate a third in the three weeks since it agreed to hear a challenge to Kentucky’s use of lethal injection.

On Thursday, the Georgia Supreme Court became the latest state court to interpret the justices’ actions as a signal to suspend at least some executions. It granted a stay to Jack Alderman, who had been scheduled to die by lethal injection Friday night for murdering his wife 33 years ago.

The top criminal court in Texas, a state that accounts for 405 of the 1,099 executions carried out in this country since 1976, has indicated that it will permit no more executions until the Supreme Court rules, sometime next spring.

Airlines squeeze fliers as profit soars

By Peter Pae, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

October 19, 2007

The nation’s airlines were late more often this summer, lost more baggage and bumped more passengers off flights than in any summer this decade. They also made more money.

Despite the worst summer ever for air travelers, major airlines posted huge profits as they packed more passengers into fewer and smaller planes.

Profit at American Airlines, the nation’s largest carrier, jumped more than tenfold to $175 million in the third quarter while Delta Air Lines, the third-largest, said net income quadrupled to $220 million compared with the year-earlier period. Profit would have been higher if not for rising fuel costs.

The results elated investors but fueled anger among consumer groups.

Asia

Daily Times is Lahore based newspaper where the attack occurred

She came, she saw…

KARACHI: Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto ended eight years of self-imposed exile here on Thursday, being greeted by hundreds of thousands of jubilant supporters as she lead a homecoming parade through Karachi.

Ms Bhutto, dressed in the green and white of the Pakistani flag, sobbed as she descended from Emirates flight EK-606 in Karachi at around 2:00pm, accompanied by senior leaders of her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). She kissed a Quran and raised her hands to the sky.

Benazir overwhelmed: “It’s a historic and very emotional moment for me, I am overwhelmed,” Ms Bhutto told AFP. “I have learned a lot over the last 20 years but we are still fighting a dictatorship, we want to isolate extremists and build a better Pakistan.” “I counted the hours, the minutes and the seconds just to see this land, sky and grass,” she told AP Television News at the airport.

The 54-year-old two-time former prime minister, who flew in from Dubai, said she was fighting for democracy and to help Pakistan defeat the extremism that gave it the reputation as a hotbed of international terrorism.

Compulsory licensing pressure on pharma giants

By Apiradee Treerutkuarkul

The government is piling the pressure on leading pharmaceutical companies to cut the prices for four cancer drugs or face compulsory licensing.

Speaking after chairing a three-hour discussion about price reductions with Roche and Sanofi Aventis, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) secretary-general Siriwat Tiptaradol said three options had been proposed to the drug firms holding patents for four cancer drugs in a bid to cut prices and widen access to the life-saving treatments.

The drugs being discussed were Docetaxel, Erlotinib, Letrozole and Imatinib.

The first option calls for the drug manufacturers to lower the price of the medicines to what Mr Siriwat said was an ”acceptable level”.

From KOREAN CENTRAL NEWS AGENCY of DPRK

Kim Jong Il Meets Participants in Celebrations of Anniversaries of Revolutionary Schools
  Pyongyang, October 18 (KCNA) — General Secretary Kim Jong Il met and congratulated graduates and teaching staff of Mangyongdae Revolutionary School and Kang Pan Sok Revolutionary School who participated in the celebrations of the 60th anniversaries of the schools.
  When he appeared at the plaza of the Kumsusan Memorial Palace the participants broke into rousing cheers of “Hurrah!” shaking the earth and the sky and loud shouts of “Let us defend the headquarters of the revolution headed by the great Comrade Kim Jong Il at the cost of lives!”, “Single-minded unity!” and “Devoted defence!” which reverberated far and wide.
  He acknowledged their enthusiastic cheers and extended warm greetings to them.

Eurpoe

Poland’s vote: More nationalism or closer ties to Europe?

By Robert Marquand 1 hour, 37 minutes ago

WARSAW – For the leading opposition party, Sunday’s election here is the most important event since 1989, when Poland extracted itself from the Soviet Union while 250,000 troops were still in the country. They term it a historic battle between light and dark.

For center-right Civic Platform candidate Donald Tusk, Sunday’s vote decides whether Poland turns inward, chauvinist, and authoritarian under Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski – or flowers into a more open economy and civil society, as well as a closer partner to Europe. The party also favors pulling Polish troops out of Iraq.

EU leaders agree new treaty deal

European Union leaders have reached a deal on a landmark treaty to reform the 27-member bloc, officials say.

The agreement in Lisbon was sealed shortly after midnight after objections from Italy and Poland were overcome.

The treaty is designed to replace the European Constitution that was rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005 and will be formally signed on 13 December.

It includes the creation of a new longer-term president of the European Council and an EU foreign policy chief.

If what will become known as the Treaty of Lisbon is ratified by all member states, it will come into force in 2009.

Africa

S African reggae star shot dead

The South African reggae musician, Lucky Dube, has been shot dead in front of his children in Johannesburg during an attempted car hijacking.

He had been dropping his teenage son and daughter off in the suburb of Rosettenville on Thursday evening.

Police say they were already out of the car when three shots were fired through a car window killing their father.

One of South Africa’s most popular artists, Lucky Dube toured the world singing about social problems.

The BBC’s Mpho Lakaje in Johannesburg says the murder reflects the high crime rate in South Africa.

Congolese warlord accused of massacre placed in ICC custody

Xan Rice in Nairobi

Friday October 19, 2007

The Guardian

A Congolese warlord accused of organising an ethnic massacre of 200 civilians in 2003 and sexually enslaving some of the survivors has been transferred to the international criminal court .

Germain Katanga, 29, the alleged leader of the Patriotic Forces of Resistance in Ituri in north-east Democratic Republic of the Congo, was flown from Kinshasa to The Hague on Tuesday. He is the second suspect in the ICC’s custody, joining a fellow Congolese, Thomas Lubanga, who was involved in the war for control of the mineral-rich Ituri province in 2002-03. About 8,000 civilians were killed and half a million people displaced in the war.

Middle East

The roadblocks to another Mideast summit

By Joshua Mitnick | Correspondent

and Dan Murphy | Staff Writer

from the October 19, 2007 edition

Jerusalem and Cairo – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spent four days in the Middle East this week to drum up support for an international summit that the US hopes will push the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process forward.

While there were positive signs from her shuttle diplomacy throughout the visit – Israeli and Palestinian officials described the conference, expected for late November or early December, as an important opportunity, and Egypt and Jordan lent some support to the idea – obstacles to getting all sides to the table remain, as has long been the case with the Palestinian-Israeli peace process.

But the Bush administration has not yet exhausted all efforts to lay the groundwork ahead of the Annapolis, Md., gathering. It is banking on this conference to kick off formal talks to create a Palestinian state, and to help salvage a Middle East policy battered by the Iraq war and muddled by the Iran nuclear dilemma.

In the Middle East,Even Actors Have To Play Politics

By MARIAM FAM

October 19, 2007; Page A1

CAIRO, Egypt — Earlier this year, Egyptian actor Amr Waked landed a role in a miniseries about the life of Saddam Hussein. For Mr. Waked, who had appeared with George Clooney in the film “Syriana,” the job seemed like another big career boost.

Instead, it sparked an outcry here in the Arab world’s movie-making capital. Igal Naor, the 49-year-old actor playing Mr. Hussein, is Israeli. And that’s a big problem in Egypt, where anti-Israel feelings still run deep. The country’s actors’ union has launched an investigation of Mr. Waked’s participation in the series, a joint-production of HBO Films and the British Broadcasting Corp., and could expel him from its ranks.