Docudharma Times Tuesday April 22

So keep your auditions for somebody

Who hasn’t got so much to lose

`Cause you can tell by the lines I’m reciting

That I’ve seen that movie too

Tuesday’s Headlines: Detainees Allege Being Drugged, Questioned: What to look for in the Pennsylvania primary: Monsoon divorce: Samsung chairman to resign after indictment: Russia bans play about deadly siege at Moscow theatre: Key Sudan census gets under way: Shiite cleric’s followers ready to fight: Syria tunes in the West on Medina FM:    

A Developer, His Deals and His Ties to McCain

Donald R. Diamond, a wealthy Arizona real estate developer, was racing to snap up a stretch of virgin California coast freed by the closing of an Army base a decade ago when he turned to an old friend, Senator John McCain.

When Mr. Diamond wanted to buy land at the base, Fort Ord, Mr. McCain assigned an aide who set up a meeting at the Pentagon and later stepped in again to help speed up the sale, according to people involved and a deposition Mr. Diamond gave for a related lawsuit. When he appealed to a nearby city for the right to develop other property at the former base, Mr. Diamond submitted Mr. McCain’s endorsement as “a close personal friend.”

USA

Detainees Allege Being Drugged, Questioned

U.S. Denies Using Injections for Coercion

Adel al-Nusairi remembers his first six months at Guantanamo Bay as this: hours and hours of questions, but first, a needle.

“I’d fall asleep” after the shot, Nusairi, a former Saudi policeman captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2002, recalled in an interview with his attorney at the military prison in Cuba, according to notes. After being roused, Nusairi eventually did talk, giving U.S. officials what he later described as a made-up confession to buy some peace.

“I was completely gone,” he remembered. “I said, ‘Let me go. I want to go to sleep. If it takes saying I’m a member of al-Qaeda, I “will.’ “

What to look for in the Pennsylvania primary  

The primary may be just another day of voting for Democrats. Or it could be the beginning of the end for one of the candidates.

WASHINGTON — Today in Pennsylvania’s hard-fought Democratic presidential primary, there will be a winner and a loser. But the winner might not be the one with the most votes.

With neither Hillary Rodham Clinton nor Barack Obama able to secure the nomination without support from the so-called superdelegates who will cast decisive votes, many dynamics are at work beyond who comes out on top in one day of balloting.

In what may seem like a paradox, the Clinton victory predicted by nearly all public opinion polls might actually turn out to be a loss if she doesn’t win by a significant margin. And if Obama keeps the results closer than some surveys suggest, he could be considered victorious — unless it appears that Clinton’s campaign has succeeded in casting doubt on his credentials to be commander in chief or his ability to win support in the fall from white, working-class voters.

Asia

Monsoon divorce

India is a country where marriage is considered sacred, so it is hardly a surprise that there is no word in Hindi for divorce. But increasing numbers of women trapped in unhappy relationships are finding a way out

To the casual observer, Heena may have appeared to have everything that many young Indian women aspire to. She had her own burgeoning career, a marriage and two children. What she also had – albeit largely hidden from public view – was an alcoholic and abusive husband.

For Heena, an interior designer living in Delhi, the time to get rid of that husband was when he started to get violent with their children. “You carry on as long as you have hope … But the day he turned on my children was the day I said ‘enough’,” Heena explained. With her own career developing, Heena moved into the ground floor of her parents’ house and began the long and arduous task of trying to rebuild her life after 11 years of marriage.

Samsung chairman to resign after indictment

SEOUL: Lee Kun Hee, Samsung Group’s chairman, indicted on tax evasion charges, announced Tuesday that he will step down after 20 years of leadership, during which Samsung soared to become South Korea’s best-known global brand but was dogged by corruption scandals

“Today I decided to resign,” Lee, 66, told a nationally televised news conference, with top executives from his 59-company conglomerate standing behind him with grim faces.

“I thought I had a long road to travel and a lot of things to do. I have regrets. But I think this is time for me to leave, taking all the mistakes of the past with me.”

It was a surprise move. Although Samsung insiders had indicated that Lee might take decisive action to salvage his group from its worst public relations crisis in years, few South Koreans had predicted Lee’s resignation. He had survived the previous corruption scandals and even a conviction on bribery charges in the 1990’s to hold on to his chairmanship.

Europe

Nicolas Sarkozy: what a difference a year makes

A year after France voted for Nicolas Sarkozy and his promise of renaissance, the beleaguered President will try this week to win back favour in the eyes of a country that seems close to writing him off.

Mr Sarkozy is banking on a 90-minute television appearance on Thursday to give him renewed momentum after weeks of muddle and Cabinet feuding. The troubles have undermined a winter makeover that followed his marriage to the singer and model Carla Bruni.

Russia bans play about deadly siege at Moscow theatre

A British playwright says her play about the Moscow theatre siege has been banned by Russian authorities after one performance.

The play, In Your Hands, seeks to recreate the horror of the 2002 theatre siege when Chechen rebels took more than 800 theatre-goers hostage in what was one of their worst attacks on Russian soil. More than 100 people died, many from the effects of the gas that the Russian authorities pumped into the building to disable the attackers and end the siege.

Natalia Pelevine’s play includes actors dressed as terrorists running through the audience to recreate the events. The play opened two weeks ago in the southern city of Makhachkala, capital of the turbulent Dagestan region. It was a controversial choice of venue for the play – it was the invasion of Dagestan by Chechen forces led by the warlord Shamil Basayev in 1999 that was one of the triggers for Vladimir Putin’s second Chechen war.

Arica

Masai return to their hunting grounds as tourism collapses

By Steve Bloomfield in the Masai Mara

Tuesday, 22 April 2008

A leopard has been stalking Enkereri. Every night for the past week the hungry leopard has cleared a 10ft fence in the Masai Mara village with a single bound and made off with a goat.

For the herders who are losing animals to the marauding beast, the temptation to shoot the predator and protect their livestock is almost too much to resist. The only thing that has been stopping them is a compensation scheme set up by the Mara Conservancy which ensures they are reimbursed at the market rate for every animal killed by a predator. But this innovative project is now under threat – an unexpected casualty of the political turmoil that has rocked Kenya to its core.

Key Sudan census gets under way

A national census, which was a vital step in the ending of years of civil war in Sudan, has begun.

It will help determine the way power and wealth is shared between Sudan’s north and the oil-rich south ahead of next year’s national polls.

The census was a key part of the peace deal signed in 2003, but the South says it will not be bound by the outcome.

In the troubled western Darfur region, many are refusing to take part in the count and rebel groups are opposing it.

From the outset, the census has shown the ongoing distrust between the two former enemies from north and south, who are now joined in a national coalition government, supposedly as partners in peace, says the BBC’s Amber Henshaw in Khartoum.

Middle East

Shiite cleric’s followers ready to fight

Anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement is “ready for all options” in a growing confrontation between his followers and the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a spokesman said Monday.

Nassar al-Rubaie said the rival parties that dominate Iraq’s government failed to meet conditions al-Sadr laid down in his March 30 declaration that temporarily halted fighting between Shiite militias and government forces in the southern city of Basra.

He said responses from members of the United Iraqi Alliance who have served as mediators in the confrontation have not met “the level of seriousness required by the Sadrists.”

Syria tunes in the West on Medina  FM

Popular ‘Good Morning Syria’ host Honey Sayed and others on the airwaves are mixing thumping music and racy U.S.-style talk shows, providing a rare cultural bridge in the Arab world.

DAMASCUS, SYRIA — It’s the midmorning commute, and time for the horoscope on “Good Morning Syria,” the nation’s hottest radio show.

“Cancer,” host Honey Sayed addresses listeners first in Arabic, then in English, with an air of sisterly candor, “don’t get all worked up for nothing.”

On the other side of the window, deejay Abdullah Shaaban cues an oldie from John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. “I got chills, they’re multiplying,” Travolta sings. “And I’m losing control.”

Honey laughs and continues with her astrology report. “An opportunity is present,” she coos into the microphone, “so take it, Leo.”

Newly instituted freedom on the nation’s airwaves has transformed Syria’s sonic landscape. Some say it is shaping the way people view themselves, part of a wave of global influences turning this nation, whose government is the most hostile to the West in the Arab world, into the culture most amenable to it.