Docudharma Times Tuesday January 29

This is an Open Thread:Time keeps flowing like a river To the sea

Tuesday’s Headlines: Bush Speech Focuses on War and Taxes: Lawmakers Fault FEMA on Trailers: Kidneys ‘removed from poor Indians at gunpoint’: ‘They killed our people, so now we will do likewise.: Murdered Mexican singer’s group to tour: Berlusconi invokes Mussolini in threat to march on Rome

Pakistani Taliban grows bolder, taking fight to doorstep of frontier city

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Islamic militants known as the Pakistani Taliban have extended their reach across all seven of Pakistan’s frontier tribal regions and have infiltrated Peshawar, the provincial capital, heightening U.S. concerns that an insurrection may be broadening in the nuclear-armed nation.

Fighting over the weekend spilled into previously peaceful parts of the tribal belt that borders Afghanistan and intensified in South Waziristan, Bajour and Mohmand. In Bannu, southwest of Peshawar, gunmen fleeing police took dozens of schoolchildren hostage for several hours Monday before tribal elders brokered a deal offering them safe passage, state-run television reported.

USA

Bush Speech Focuses on War and Taxes

WASHINGTON – Facing an unstable economy and an unfinished war, President Bush used his final State of the Union address Monday night to call for quick passage of his tax rebate package, patience in Iraq and a modest concluding agenda that includes $300 million in scholarship money for low-income children in struggling schools

With Senate Democrats already jockeying to amend the stimulus package that the administration negotiated with the House last week, Mr. Bush, in his address, urged lawmakers to resist the temptation to “load up the bill” with other provisions. To do so, he warned, “would delay or derail it, and neither option is acceptable.”

Lawmakers Fault FEMA on Trailers

Democratic leaders of a House science subcommittee alleged yesterday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency manipulated scientific research By Andrew Buncombe in Delhi

Tuesday, 29 January 2008

Police at India’s airports are on the alert for a doctor accused of masterminding an illegal organ transplant ring that harvested more than 500 kidneys from itinerant labourers for wealthy patients. Some donors say they were tricked into taking part and forced at gunpoint to have the operation.

Working from a house in a city near Delhi, the doctor is said to have taken kidneys from hundreds of labourers in the past nine years and transplanted them to high-paying recipients, many from overseas. Neighbours said they wondered what was happening when they saw blood running out of the gutters. Reports say transplant recipients paid up to £300,000 while the people who sold their organs received £625 if they were paid at all.into the potential danger posed by a toxic gas emitted in trailers still housing tens of thousands of survivors of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

FEMA “ignored, hid and manipulated government research on the potential impact of long-term exposure to formaldehyde” on Katrina and Rita victims now living in the FEMA trailers, the congressmen wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, whose department includes FEMA.

Asia

Pakistan school hostages released

Gunmen released dozens of child hostages from a school in north-west Pakistan yesterday after a car chase, a shootout with police and a five-hour siege.

The six armed men stormed into the school near Bannu, on the edge of troubled North Waziristan tribal agency, after kidnapping a government health official and his driver in a nearby town.

As security forces surrounded the school, tribal elders negotiated to prevent the gunmen acting on a threat to kill their captives. Five hours later all walked free after a deal in which the gunmen were allowed to flee unhindered.

Kidneys ‘removed from poor Indians at gunpoint’

By Andrew Buncombe in Delhi

Tuesday, 29 January 2008

Police at India’s airports are on the alert for a doctor accused of masterminding an illegal organ transplant ring that harvested more than 500 kidneys from itinerant labourers for wealthy patients. Some donors say they were tricked into taking part and forced at gunpoint to have the operation.

Working from a house in a city near Delhi, the doctor is said to have taken kidneys from hundreds of labourers in the past nine years and transplanted them to high-paying recipients, many from overseas. Neighbours said they wondered what was happening when they saw blood running out of the gutters. Reports say transplant recipients paid up to £300,000 while the people who sold their organs received £625 if they were paid at all.

Africa

‘They killed our people, so now we will do likewise. We are just revenging’

As 100 die in the tourist idyll of Lake Naivasha, a chilling dispatch on Kenya’s slide towards civil war

By Steve Bloomfield in Naivasha

Tuesday, 29 January 2008

On the one side of the road hundreds of angry men had gathered, armed with machetes, clubs and metal poles. On the other, scores of desperate families huddled together. Only a thin line of a dozen or so policemen stood between the hunters and their prey.

“They killed our people,” said Francis Mbogo, calmly gesturing with his machete to across the road. “So now we will do likewise. We are just revenging.”

Warning shots were fired as the would-be lynch mob surged forward, baying for blood.

Chad peacekeepers get Brussels green light

A 3,700 strong peacekeeping force for Chad and the Central African Republic has finally been given the go-ahed by European Union foreign ministers, to help to protect hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the violence in neighbouring Darfur.

The mission, which will start deploying this week under a UN mandate, was scheduled to begin in November but was delayed by a shortage of troops, equipment and funding.

The year-long operation is the EU’s most ambitious military engagement since Bosnia. It has the triple task of protecting refugees and displaced persons, helping to deliver humanitarian aid and ensuring the safety of UN staff and installations.

Middle East

Israel lets it be – with apology for banning Beatles 43 years ago

By Andy McSmith

Tuesday, 29 January 2008

It has been a long and winding road, but Israel has at last apologised to the surviving Beatles for banning them from the country in the 1960s as a supposed threat to the morals of the nation’s youth.

Visiting the Beatles museum in Liverpool yesterday, the Israeli ambassador to Britain, Ron Prosor, handed a letter of apology to Julia Baird, sister of the late John Lennon, expressing regret over the snub of 1965. Mr Prosor, one of Israel’s most senior and long-serving diplomats, was seven years old when the “misunderstanding” took place.

Lebanon in mourning after fresh violence

Lebanon is in official mourning after a night of anti-government street demonstrations in southern Beirut left seven people dead and many Lebanese wondering if the country was slipping into civil war.

Schools and universities closed and troops patrolled the streets of Beirut to prevent fresh outbreaks of rioting.

“This is an hour of sadness. Our country is passing through the most dangerous times,” said Fouad Siniora, the Prime Minister.

Lebanese newspapers said that the riot evoked grim images of the 1975-90 civil war. “Black Sunday”, the pro-government Al-Mustaqbal daily labelled it. A headline in the independent French-language L’Orient-Le Jour said: “The demons of discord are attempting to reignite the fires of civil war”

Latin America

Hostages held in Venezuelan bank

CARACAS, Venezuela – Would-be robbers took about 30 people hostage inside a Venezuelan bank Monday after police arrived outside, the country’s top emergency official said.

Police were negotiating with the gunmen as they held customers and employees inside the bank in the town of Altagracia de Orituco in central Guarico state, said Gen. Antonio Rivero, head of emergency management agency.

Emergency teams waited outside to help hostages and their families, Rivero told The Associated Press. He said no one had been hurt.

The hostage standoff began about 11 a.m., shortly after four gunmen entered the bank, when a uniformed police officer pulled up to use the cash machine, said Amanda Saldivia, a reporter for local radio station Guarana Radio FM.

Murdered Mexican singer’s group to tour

MEXICO CITY – Members of the K-Paz de la Sierra band vowed to go ahead with a planned tour despite the murder of their lead singer, Sergio Gomez, who was killed Dec. 2 in the latest in a string of slayings of Mexican musicians.

“Obviously, it is a big loss. Nobody is prepared for something like this, but it is a big motivation to carry on,” vocalist Humberto Duran told reporters Monday. “We are not going to stand around with our arms crossed.”

With Gomez’s brother Juan taking over as the new lead singer, the group expects to go ahead with a planned tour of North and South America and possibly release a new album later this year.

Europe

Plot to kill’ Nobel laureate

Thirteen people have been arrested in Turkey as part of an investigation into an ultra-nationalist gang reported to be planning the assassination of Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk.

According to reports in the Turkish press, the author of international bestsellers including My Name is Red was targeted as part of a campaign to sow chaos in preparation for a military coup, scheduled for 2009.

Berlusconi invokes Mussolini in threat to march on Rome

By Peter Popham in Rome

Tuesday, 29 January 2008

Silvio Berlusconi will meet President Giorgio Napolitano this morning to explain why he has threatened to put “millions of people on the streets of Rome” if a general election is not scheduled immediately.

The meeting comes on the last day of talks held by Mr Napolitano with all the main forces in Italian politics. He is trying to thrash out an agreement on how to escape from the thorniest crisis Italy has faced since the implosion of the First Republic amid a massive bribery scandal 15 years ago.