Docudharma Times Friday Nov.30

Headlines for Friday November 30: Citing Statistics, Giuliani Misses Time and Again: Immigrants’ children grow fluent in English, study says :Sanctuary Was a Lovely Word. Then the G.O.P. Got Hold of It.: Musharraf Sets Date for End of Emergency Rule: Iran Holocaust drama is a big hit

USA

Citing Statistics, Giuliani Misses Time and Again

In almost every appearance as he campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination, Rudolph W. Giuliani cites a fusillade of statistics and facts to make his arguments about his successes in running New York City and the merits of his views.

Discussing his crime-fighting success as mayor, Mr. Giuliani told a television interviewer that New York was “the only city in America that has reduced crime every single year since 1994.” In New Hampshire this week, he told a public forum that when he became mayor in 1994, New York “had been averaging like 1,800, 1,900 murders for almost 30 years.” When a recent Republican debate turned to the question of fiscal responsibility, he boasted that “under me, spending went down by 7 percent.”

Immigrants’ children grow fluent in English, study says

By Anna Gorman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

November 30, 2007

Manuel Pereda, 57, spent years studying English during the day and working as a dishwasher at night. His wife, Rosa, 54, practiced common phrases and constantly looked up words in an Spanish-English dictionary.

The more English the couple learned, they assumed, the better jobs they could get and the more money they could send home to their families in Mexico. Still, despite more than three decades in the United States, they feel more comfortable in their native language, often speaking Spanish at home, at work and while doing errands in their Huntington Park neighborhood. Their U.S.-born daughter, Damaris, 20, however, speaks primarily English with her friends, at college in Azusa and at her seasonal job at Disneyland. She values her bilingualism but said growing up in the U.S. has made her more articulate in English than in Spanish.

Sanctuary Was a Lovely Word. Then the G.O.P. Got Hold of It.

ANKARA, Turkey – An Atlasjet plane crashed shortly before it was to land in southwest Turkey early Friday, killing all 56 people on board, the airline’s chief executive said. The cause was not immediately known.When they finally got down to business, after being serenaded by a guitarist on YouTube, it took the Republican presidential candidates 11 ½ minutes Wednesday night for one of them to acknowledge that illegal immigrants are human beings.

Not bad. Nearly 26 minutes passed before any of them – New York’s former mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani broke the ice – got around to uttering the word “Bush.” You’d have thought from the general mood that the president’s name carried the MRSA bacterium.

Asia

Musharraf Sets Date for End of Emergency Rule

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 29 – Hours after being sworn in to a second term, President Pervez Musharraf announced Thursday that he would lift his state of emergency on Dec. 16, leaving barely three weeks for election campaigning and setting the stage for further confrontation with his opposition.

Mr. Musharraf made his promise to lift the emergency a day after he ended eight years of military rule, moving him a step closer to meeting the most urgent demands both at home and abroad return the country to democracy.

US envoy says he hopes for nuclear-free NKorea in 2008

SEOUL (AFP) – The chief US negotiator with North Korea said Friday he hopes the communist state will be nuclear-free next year, but cautioned that it must give up all its atomic material.

Christopher Hill is visiting South Korea for consultations before flying Monday to North Korea.

Hill said he would inspect work under way at its Yongbyon complex to disable three plutonium-producing nuclear plants, and would hold talks about the North’s upcoming declaration of its nuclear programmes.

Middle East

Iran Holocaust drama is a big hit

The scene is wartime Paris. Swastikas adorn the Champs Elysees.

Jackbooted Nazis are rounding up Jews for the concentration camps, while terrified Parisians look on.

It is a familiar plot for a television blockbuster. And this time the formula has been as popular as ever, drawing in massive audiences week after week.

The only difference is that this is a series made for Iranian state TV, and it has been piling up the ratings in the country whose president once questioned the very existence of the Holocaust.

Jet with 56 aboard crashes in Turkey

ANKARA, Turkey – An Atlasjet plane crashed shortly before it was to land in southwest Turkey early Friday, killing all 56 people on board, the airline’s chief executive said. The cause was not immediately known.

A rescue helicopter reached the wreckage of the plane in a mountainous region near the town of Keciborlu, in Isparta province, and reported that no one had survived the crash, airline CEO Tuncay Doganer said.

A reporter for the state-run news agency, Anatolia, reached the scene on board a police helicopter and said bodies were lying around the wreckage, some still attached to seats.

Europe

Russia signs Europe arms pact suspension into law

MOSCOW (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin signed a law on Friday suspending Russia’s participation in a key post-Cold War arms treaty, a move which could allow it to deploy more forces close to western Europe.

Putin’s moratorium on the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty follows months of increasingly aggressive rhetoric directed against the West ahead of a parliamentary election on Sunday and a presidential vote next March.

“President Putin signed the federal law on suspending the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty,” the Kremlin said in a short statement. The bill was passed by parliament this month and needed the president’s signature to become law.

UK troops ready for Kosovo crisis

Ian Traynor, Europe editor

Friday November 30, 2007

The Guardian

Britain yesterday offered to be the first Nato country to send extra troops to Kosovo within weeks, as the Conservatives and Balkan experts warned of a potentially violent crisis brewing.

While David Cameron accused the Kremlin of stirring up trouble in the Balkans and warned of a new crisis by Christmas, Gordon Brown’s government also risked Russian wrath by issuing a robust statement of support for quick Kosovan independence.

Lord Ashdown, the former international governor of Bosnia, accused the Russians and the Serbian government of fomenting trouble in Bosnia and Kosovo, and demanded troops reinforcements to try to keep the peace. “Unless we get a grip on this situation very fast, the issue of the Balkans will be back on our agenda with a vengeance,” Ashdown told the BBC.

Latin America

Colombia seizes videotapes of hostages

BOGOTA, Colombia – Colombian officials on Friday revealed recently-seized videotapes of rebel-held hostages, among them three U.S. defense contractors and a former presidential candidate – the first images in years providing evidence the captives may be alive.

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High Commissioner for Peace Luis Carlos Restrepo said the tapes were confiscated after the arrest Thursday evening of three suspected urban members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as the FARC.

The government said it had also recovered a series of letters apparently written by the hostages, including what appeared to be the will of U.S. contractor Thomas Howes.

Africa

Zimbabwe war vets in “million-man” Mugabe march

HARARE (Reuters) – Thousands of Zimbabwean war veterans gathered in Harare on Friday to lead a “million-man march” in support of President Robert Mugabe’s bid to extend his rule despite a severe economic crisis blamed on his government.

Mugabe, 83 and in power since Zimbabwe’s independence from Britain in 1980, is seeking re-election in presidential and parliamentary elections set for March 2008 after some senior officials in his ZANU-PF party failed to stop him from running.

Mugabe, who looks fit for his age and remains combative in the face of a crumbling economy and growing discontent — has mobilized his independence war veterans, his shock political troops, to assert his authority.

Sudanese court sentences teacher to 15 days in jail

By Cahal Milmo and Anne Penketh

Published: 30 November 2007

A British teacher charged with “inciting religious hatred” for allowing a class of seven-year-olds to name a teddy bear Mohamed was sentenced to 15 days in a Sudanese jail yesterday.

Gillian Gibbons, 54, was convicted by an Islamic court and faces deportation. She escaped being given 40 lashes for the more serious charge of “inciting racial hatred” which also carried penalties of a six-month jail term and a fine.

Although the verdict appeared harsh given the nature of the crime, it was described as “very fair” by Robert Boulos, the headmaster of Ms Gibbons’ school, who noted she had spent five days in prison and would be free in 10 days.