Docudharma Times Thursday May 1

Long as I remember the rain been comin down.

Clouds of mystry pourin confusion on the ground.

Good men through the ages, tryin to find the sun;

Thursday’s Headlines: For Striking Factory Workers, U.S.-First Pledge Falls Flat: Low Spending Is Taking Toll on Economy: Air raid ‘kills Somali militants’: Zimbabwe prepares to verify count: Russia’s new rich help British luxury cars drive out the venerable Zil: Wanted: The last Nazis: Unholy water: Delhi’s rotting river: Tibetan rebel in gunbattle with China police: two dead: A fabled Iraqi instrument thrives in exile: Chavez orders expropriation of Venezuela’s largest steel maker  

Clinton Gas-Tax Proposal Criticized

Economists Share Obama’s View

A growing chorus — including a top congressional Democrat — labeled Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s proposal for suspending the federal gasoline tax ineffective and shortsighted yesterday, even as she continued to paint Sen. Barack Obama as insensitive to drivers’ woes for not endorsing the plan.

The Democrats’ clash on the issue has emerged as a flash point in the week before the presidential primaries in Indiana and North Carolina and is emblematic of the broader contrast that the candidates have presented: Clinton says she would make immediate bread-and-butter fixes for struggling Americans, while Obama portrays himself as a truth-teller who would bring a new kind of politics to Washington and produce more lasting change.

USA

For Striking Factory Workers, U.S.-First Pledge Falls Flat

DETROIT — American Axle and Manufacturing employees viewed their boss Richard E. Dauch as a hero. He bet against the odds when he led a group of investors who bought five decrepit auto parts plants 14 years ago. An outspoken champion of American manufacturing, he backed his words by pouring $3 billion into modernizing the old factories. The strapping Dauch often walked the assembly line, stopping to arm-wrestle employees or to ask about their children.

But times are changing, and Dauch is reneging on a critical part of the wager. The America-first chief executive says he can no longer afford the $73 an hour his employees cost. Without worker concessions, he said American Axle’s five major U.S plants could be forced to close.

Low Spending Is Taking Toll on Economy

For months, beleaguered American consumers have defied expert forecasts that they would soon succumb to the pressures of falling home prices, fewer jobs and shrinking paychecks. Now, they appear to have given in.

On Wednesday, the Commerce Department reported that the economy continued to stagnate during the first three months of the year, with a sharp pullback in consumer spending the primary factor at play.

Pressures on households in which cash is tight appeared to weigh significantly in the calculations of the Federal Reserve as it rolled back interest rates Wednesday for the seventh time since September – this time by one-fourth of a percentage point – in a bid to prevent a further falloff in the economy.

Africa

Air raid ‘kills Somali militants’

The leader of the military wing of an Islamist insurgent organisation in Somalia has been killed in an air strike, reports say.

Aden Hashi Ayro, al-Shabab’s military commander, died when his home in the central town of Dusamareb was bombed.

Eight other people, including a senior militant, are also reported dead.

Al-Shabab, considered a terrorist group by the US, was the military wing of the Somali Sharia courts movement until Ethiopian troops ousted them in 2006.

The group has since regrouped and is in effect in control of large parts of central and southern Somalia.

Zimbabwe prepares to verify count

Zimbabwe’s Electoral Commission is due to start verifying the country’s delayed presidential election results.

Representatives from both the governing Zanu-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change will oversee the collating process in Harare.

There is no indication when the result of March’s election will be announced.

Meanwhile, the MDC downplayed official reports that Morgan Tsvangirai had defeated President Robert Mugabe while failing to secure an outright victory.

The opposition criticised what it said appeared to be a government leak of some results.

Europe

Russia’s new rich help British luxury cars drive out the venerable Zil

A love of English style opens up UK’s third biggest vehicle market

The 100,000th Land Rover Freelander 2, recently rolled off the company’s production line at Halewood on Merseyside. Its destination was the city of Surgut in the Siberian oil fields and the Rimini red 2.2 diesel is part of a flood of British-made luxury cars heading for the Russian market.

Land Rover sold more than 12,000 vehicles in Russia last year. In the first quarter of 2008, the total has reached 4,690 vehicles and the company expects Russia will soon overtake Italy to become its third largest market after Britain and the US.

Bentley is another luxury marque aiming to appeal to well heeled Russians, who are no longer content to drive a mere Mercedes or BMW. The days of Zil limousines – the car of choice among Russia’s communist aristocracy – are a distant memory. Instead, you are more likely to spot a Bentley or a Rolls-Royce parked outside central Moscow’s flashier restaurants, and in the bucolic garden suburb of Rublyovka, where President Putin has his dacha.

Wanted: The last Nazis

They are accused of some of the worst war crimes of the 20th century. Now a final bid has been launched to bring them to justice before they die

By Claire Soares

Thursday, 1 May 2008

At first glance, the mugshots appear to be a gallery of roguish grandfathers, but the octo- and nonagenarians are the 10 most-wanted fugitives of one of the most heinous regimes the world has ever seen. They are the last remaining Nazis, and the codename of the hunt to find them – Operation Last Chance – says it all

More than 60 years after the Nuremberg trials put the first of Hitler’s henchmen in the dock, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre yesterday released its most wanted list of the remaining Nazi war criminals. The battle to bring them to justice is complicated by a mix of political apathy, legal wrangling, legendary powers of evasion and what Nazi-hunters term “misplaced sympathy” for the craggy-faced men in their twilight years.

Asia

Unholy water: Delhi’s rotting river

The Yamuna is the largest tributary of the revered Ganges, but its polluted waters pose an increasing health hazard to the Indian capital. Now campaigners are calling for urgent action to clean it up

By Andrew Buncombe

Thursday, 1 May 2008

On Delhi’s sacred Yamuna River, beneath a wrought-iron bridge built by the British more than 100 years ago, the remains of the dead were falling on to the living.

From the footbridge – or else from the windows of passing cars and passenger trains – people were throwing bags containing human ashes and garlands of flowers. On the black stinking river below, children sitting astride homemade rafts waited for the bags to fall and then paddled quickly towards them, ripping them apart and collecting the polythene. Sometimes the bags broke open in mid-air, creating a cloud of ash and petals that fell on to those waiting below.

Tibetan rebel in gunbattle with China police: two dead

Two Tibetans – a policeman and a suspected protest leader – have been killed in a rare gunfight in northwestern China after a raid to arrest the wanted man.

It is the first time China has announced that a protester has been killed since the latest bout of anti-Chinese unrest in Tibet in March. The outburst of anger against Beijing is among the most serious to challenge Chinese rule of the Himalayan region since an uprising in 1959, when the Dalai Lama fled into exile.

The protesters and rioters have traditionally taken up knives and stones to attack security forces and Tibetans armed with guns are almost unheard of.

Middle East

A fabled Iraqi instrument thrives in exile

BAGHDAD: Dhia Jabbar hides his oud in a sack when he walks down the street in his Baghdad neighborhood.

He used to teach students in the back room of a photo shop, where the sound could not be heard. But last week, militia gunmen invaded the store, destroying one of his instruments and ordering him to stop teaching. He had dreamed of a performing career, but now he has lost hope.

“Iraq is dead,” he says.

Seven thousand miles away, Rahim Alhaj, who fled Iraq in 1991, carries his oud without a second thought through the streets of Albuquerque, where he now lives. In New York, Washington and other cities, he plays for audiences of hundreds. An album he recorded was recently nominated for a Grammy Award.

The two musicians are bound by their passion for the oud, a pear-shaped instrument whose roots run deep in Iraq’s history. Some say that in its music lies the country’s soul.

Iran-US talks await new leadership era

By Omid Memarian

BERKLEY, California – A week after Democrat Senator Hillary Clinton’s harsh remarks that if hardliners in Tehran were to attack Israel, it would result in the “total obliteration” of Iran, a Republican member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, Peter Hoekstra, suggested on CNN that “engaging in a full-court diplomatic press with Iran is a good thing to begin the process” of reaching out to Tehran.

The hawkish tone of Clinton and the more moderate view of Hoekstra about dealing with Iran’s so-called threat leaves a major question unanswered: What can and should the United States do about Iran’s alleged influence in Iraq and its nuclear program?

Latin America

Chavez orders expropriation of Venezuela’s largest steel maker

CARACAS, Venezuela – President Hugo Chavez on Wednesday ordered the expropriation of Venezuela’s largest steel maker after attempts by the government to acquire a majority stake in the company failed.

Venezuela’s government will turn Siderurgica del Orinoco, which was controlled by Luxembourg-based Ternium SA., into “a socialist company,” Chavez told workers gathered at a Caracas theater.

Sidor, as the company is known, “has now recuperated by the revolutionary government,” Chavez said.

Since winning re-election in 2006 on promises to steer his country toward socialism, Chavez has made nationalizing major industries a top priority.