Docudharma Times Thursday Dec.20

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Headlines For Thursday December 20: E.P.A. Says 17 States Can’t Set Emission Rules for Cars: Democrats savor power for a year but end it feeling unfulfilled: The last days of Private Scheuerman: Putin, scourge of the US, named person of the year by Time: A surge of their own: Iraqis take back the streets

USA

E.P.A. Says 17 States Can’t Set Emission Rules for Cars

WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday denied California and 16 other states the right to set their own standards for carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles.

The E.P.A. administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, said the proposed California rules were pre-empted by federal authority and made moot by the energy bill signed into law by President Bush on Wednesday. Mr. Johnson said California had failed to make a compelling case that it needed authority to write its own standards for greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks to help curb global warming.

The decision immediately provoked a heated debate over its scientific basis and whether political pressure was applied by the automobile industry to help it escape the proposed California regulations. Officials from the states and numerous environmental groups vowed to sue to overturn the edict.

Democrats savor power for a year but end it feeling unfulfilled

Their approval of a bill giving Bush funds for a war they oppose helps sum up their 2007 congressional record.

By Richard Simon and Noam N. Levey, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

December 20, 2007

WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats ended their first year in control of Congress in more than a decade Wednesday, approving a $555-billion government spending measure that gave President Bush $70 billion for an Iraq war they had promised to end.

And underscoring the frustrations that have beset the new majority much of the year, Democratic leaders left the Capitol complaining that much of their agenda had been thwarted by congressional Republicans who repeatedly stopped their most cherished initiatives.

“We could have accomplished so much more,” said a rueful Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) at a news conference in the old office of a Reid predecessor, Lyndon Johnson.

Despite the more than five dozen Iraq-related votes throughout the year, Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) were never able to muster the support needed to compel the president to begin withdrawing U.S. forces.

The last days of Private Scheuerman

Father says military support system failed suicidal soldier

SANFORD, N.C. – Private First Class Jason Scheuerman nailed a suicide note to his barracks closet in Iraq, stepped inside and shot himself.

“Maybe finaly I can get some peace,” said the 20-year-old, misspelling “finally” but writing in a neat hand.

His parents didn’t find out about the note for well over a year, and only then when it showed up in a government envelope in his father’s rural North Carolina mailbox.

The one-page missive was among hundreds of pages of documents the soldier’s family obtained and shared with The Associated Press after battling a military bureaucracy they feel didn’t want to answer their questions, especially this: Why did Jason Scheuerman have to die?

Europe

Putin, scourge of the US, named person of the year by Time

He has derided US power, raged against the Pentagon’s missile plans, and recently described Americans as “snotty”

But yesterday Vladimir Putin received an unlikely accolade from Time magazine, naming him its 2007 person of the year.

The Washington-based journal said that Putin had returned Russia from chaos “to the table of world power”. It conceded that he had squashed democratic principles along the way, but singled out Putin as the person who had had the greatest impact on events, for better or worse.

Scotsman on death row in US will be home for Christmas

Dan Glaister in Los Angeles

Thursday December 20, 2007

The Guardian

A British man who has spent 20 years on death row in the US is to be released on Thursday and will be home for Christmas, his attorney said yesterday.

Kenny Richey, 43, was due to enter a plea of no contest to charges of involuntary manslaughter, child endangering, and breaking and entering in a hearing scheduled for Thursday at a court in Ohio.

Under a plea bargain reached with prosecutors, Richey would be released and plans to return to his native Scotland on Friday, his attorney said.

Middle East

A surge of their own: Iraqis take back the streets

Attacks plummet as Shias join Sunnis in neighbourhood patrols to tackle militants and reunite communities

Michael Howard in Baghdad

Thursday December 20, 2007

Under the embers of the wintry evening sun the Tigris river, usually as brown as old boots, had turned almost blood red. Its waters were calm but its oily sheen was disturbed by the oars of a rower as he sculled his way through the city’s fractured heart.

Alone and apparently indifferent to the threat of a sniper’s bullet, Muhammad Rafiq eased up on his stroke rate and tacked over to the shore. He hauled his craft up the bank to a mosque – the temporary headquarters for his rowing club since US soldiers had commandeered its real boathouse in 2003. Inside the courtyard, his forehead beaded with sweat, Muhammad laid a few old blankets over his upturned boat and padlocked the oars to a railing.

“My friends said I was mad when I started rowing,” said the 22-year-old former science student. “They said I would be sharing the river with dead bodies and that people would shoot at me. But it keeps me fit and it keeps me focused for my night work.” As dusk fell, he checked the contents of his kit bag, slung it over his shoulder andjumped into a waiting taxi.

Iraq government ‘failing Falluja’

Three years after the massive US assault on Falluja, the city’s mayor has accused Iraq’s central government of starving the city of resources.

Mayor Sa’ad Awad says Shia officials still consider the former insurgent stronghold a haven for Sunni militants.

Support was particularly lacking for the city’s 2,000-strong police force, he added, as it takes on a bigger role.

The head of the US military in Falluja said he shared some of the mayor’s concerns over scarce police resources.

Colonel Richard Simcock told the BBC there were no immediate plans to withdraw the 5,000 US Marines currently are stationed in the area.

Africa

Ethiopia PM attacks UN on Somalia

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has accused the UN of playing a damaging role in the Somali crisis.

“The situation there – as hard as it is – it could do with less hype and exaggeration,” he told the BBC.

It is nearly a year since Mr Meles sent troops to help Somalia’s government oust Islamists from much of Somalia.

The UN now says persistent fighting between insurgents and Ethiopian-backed forces in Mogadishu has created Africa’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Asia

Japan hepatitis patients reject government aid plan

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese hepatitis patients on Thursday rejected a government compensation proposal in a high-profile scandal over tainted blood, a move that could further erode Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s falling support rate.

Media have presented the emotive scandal, in which patients were infected with tainted blood products years ago, as a test for Fukuda, who already faces voter anger over mishandled pension records and a bribery scandal involving a former top defense official.

At least 10,000 people are estimated to have contracted hepatitis C from tainted products. Most of the cases have been linked to the coagulant fibrinogen, used to stop hemorrhaging during childbirth or surgery and sold in Japan even after it was withdrawn in the United States in 1977.

A Win for South Korea’s ‘Bulldozer’

Lee Myung Bak is known as the “Bulldozer,” and he earned his nickname in an era when South Korea made the extraordinary seem almost routine. Two decades ago, when Lee was running Hyundai Engineering and Construction Co., the country made a bloodless transition from an authoritarian dictatorship to democracy, hosted a successful Summer Olympics, and repeatedly racked up annual economic growth of eight per cent or more, creating Korea’s own economic miracle. On Wednesday, a nation pining for those days of hyperfast growth elected Lee President in a landslide, giving him about 48 per cent of the vote in a field of 10 candidates. Addressing his supporters at the Grand National Party’s headquarters after his victory, the President-elect declared flatly, “I will revive the endangered national economy.”

Latin America

5 mutilated bodies turn up near Mexico City

Authorities suspect that drug cartels are sending a grisly message after a major cocaine shipment was seized.

By Marla Dickerson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

December 20, 2007

MEXICO CITY — Five decapitated or mutilated bodies have surfaced around the capital in recent days in what authorities think may be the work of drug smugglers retaliating for a major cocaine seizure at an airport last week.

The killings are the latest in a spasm of violence that has convulsed Mexico this year as the government has led a massive crackdown on drug traffickers and the major cartels have battled for control of smuggling routes.

The severed heads of two men who worked for a private customs broker turned up near Mexico City International Airport on Saturday. Their bodies were found north of the capital on Sunday stuffed in the trunk of a Chevrolet Cavalier after neighbors alerted police to a foul smell wafting from the car.

The victims had their index fingers sliced off, news reports said. Police confirmed that at least one of the severed heads had a finger stuffed in its mouth.