Docudharma Times Friday July 18

Terror Funds and

The Lap

Of Luxury

So!

What About The

Terrorists?

Electrical Risks at Bases in Iraq Worse Than Previously Said  



By JAMES RISEN

Published: July 18, 2008

WASHINGTON – Shoddy electrical work by private contractors on United States military bases in Iraq is widespread and dangerous, causing more deaths and injuries from fires and shocks than the Pentagon has acknowledged, according to internal Army documents.

During just one six-month period – August 2006 through January 2007 – at least 283 electrical fires destroyed or damaged American military facilities in Iraq, including the military’s largest dining hall in the country, documents obtained by The New York Times show. Two soldiers died in an electrical fire at their base near Tikrit in 2006, the records note, while another was injured while jumping from a burning guard tower in May 2007.

India’s Government accused of buying votes



From The Times

July 18, 2008

Jeremy Page in Delhi

The Indian Government, on the brink of a crucial no-confidence motion that is regarded as a turning point in the world’s biggest democracy, has been accused of buying votes on an epic scale.

In the run-up to Tuesday’s vote, Delhi has been gripped by a frenzy of mud-slinging, back-slapping and deal-making as the Congress Party and its main rivals try to make up the numbers. An MP said this week that the Government was offering to pay as much as 250 million rupees (£3 million) for each vote in parliament.

USA

Terrorism Funds May Let Brass Fly in Style

Luxury Pods for Air Force Debated

By R. Jeffrey Smith

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, July 18, 2008; Page A01

The Air Force’s top leadership sought for three years to spend counterterrorism funds on “comfort capsules” to be installed on military planes that ferry senior officers and civilian leaders around the world, with at least four top generals involved in design details such as the color of the capsules’ carpet and leather chairs, according to internal e-mails and budget documents.

Production of the first capsule — consisting of two sealed rooms that can fit into the fuselage of a large military aircraft — has already begun.

Can anything slow Obama’s fundraising juggernaut?



By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON – Barack Obama raised $52 million in June, a sum that far outpaced the fundraising of Republican rival John McCain and promised a wideranging Democratic campaign that will reach into states that previous Democratic candidates had considered unwinnable.

Obama’s campaign said it had finished its latest record-smashing fundraising month with $72 million in cash on hand. The Democratic National Committee, which spends almost all of its money in support of the party’s presidential candidate, announced separately that it had raised $22.4 million in June, and ended the month with $20.3 million in cash on hand.

That gives Obama and the Democrats a combined $92 million in cash, as of June 30, just slightly below the $95 million that McCain and the Republican National Committee reported they had on hand at the end of June.

Asia

Tight security, visa restrictions and high fares deter Olympic tourists

· Beijing hotels warn occupancy will be low

· Industry hit as business travellers put off by rules

Tania Branigan in Beijing

The Guardian,

Friday July 18, 2008

Tight security restrictions and higher prices are hampering domestic demand for Olympic package tours in China and reducing the number of overseas visitors, travel agencies and hotels have warned.

The Chinese government has made security a top priority for the games, but some of its stringent measures are deterring people. A clampdown on visas has cut the number of international business travellers, while tour companies reported that Chinese people had been put off by the security checks and cost.

“Fewer people are going to Beijing because the ticket prices are too expensive and there are too many strict rules to get into the city,” said an employee at the China Travel Agency in Chongqing.

North Koreans revamp ‘world’s worst building’



By Jon Herskovitz in Seoul

Friday, 18 July 2008

A hotel in Pyongyang once described as “the worst building in the history of mankind” is back under construction after a 16-year break.

According to foreign residents, the Egyptian conglomerate Orascom has just begun refurbishing the top floors of the pyramid-shaped Ryugyong Hotel, whose 330m (1,083ft) frame dominates the skyline of the capital of North Korea, which is one of the world’s most reclusive and destitute countries.

The firm has put glass panels into the concrete shell, installed telecommunications antennae – even though the North forbids its citizens to own mobile phones – and put up an artist’s impression of what it will look like. An official with the group said its Orascom Telecom subsidiary was involved in the project, but gave no details.

Africa

Nelson’s 90th is strictly South African affair



By Basildon Peta in Johannesburg

Friday, 18 July 2008

His birthday has been the party that much of the world wanted to attend. But, in the end, Nelson Mandela turns 90 today with only friends and family to mark the occasion, far from the frenzy of Hyde Park concerts, in his birthplace of Qunu, a village in the Eastern Cape.

The acclaim for the man sometimes mooted as the world’s leading moral authority has been such that some in South Africa have been left feeling that their icon has been appropriated by global showbiz celebrities. As a result, the African National Congress has said it will give ordinary South Africans the chance to celebrate his life.

New irrigation project a boon for Senegalese farmers

Villagers plan to use the project – developed by the Israeli embassy in partnership with local and international nongovernmental organizations – to drastically increase their local production.

By NAOMI SCHWARZ  | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the July 17, 2008 edition

Dap Dior, Senegal –  D’dieme Faye’s muscular arms pump energetically as she pounds millet for her family’s lunch with an over-sized mortar and pestle.

In the past, Ms. Faye would have cooked a rich dish of rice, fish, and vegetables. But food prices are going up around the world, and West Africa has been one of the hardest-hit regions. The price of rice, alone, has doubled here in the past year.

“Life is too expensive,” she says, “too expensive.”

Her husband, Mamadou Diouf, says he hopes a new irrigation project in his village, Dap Dior, will be the answer to his family’s food problems. Villagers plan to use the project, developed by the Israeli Embassy in partnership with local and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), to drastically increase their local production.

Middle East

Soaring inflation undermines sustainability of Persian Gulf region

States scramble to protect themselves from skyrocketing energy costs, but measures such as government subsidies are proving ineffective.

By Liam Stack  | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the July 18, 2008 edition

Cairo – Just as Persian Gulf cities such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi were becoming synonymous with excess and success, the Gulf boom is in danger of going bust. Instead of conjuring images of towering skyscrapers and indoor ski slopes, they are struggling with soaring inflation rates. Indeed, the Gulf region may want to position itself at the center of global capitalism, but it will first have to contend with the impact that skyrocketing energy costs and a cooling global economy are having on the local economy and the impoverished migrant labor force that bears the brunt of rising oil and food costs.

High inflation is causing concern among policymakers in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a regional organization that includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

NEWS ANALYSIS

Talks signal Mideast shift





By Michael Slackman

Published: July 18, 20

BEIRUT, Lebanon: After years of escalating tensions and bloodshed, the talk in the Middle East is suddenly about talking. The shift is still relatively subtle, but hints of a new approach in the waning months of the Bush administration are fueling hopes of at least short-term stability for the first time since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Much is happening, adding up not to any great diplomatic breakthrough, but to a distinct change in direction. Syria is being welcomed out of isolation by Europe and is holding indirect talks with Israel. Lebanon has formed a new government. Israel has cut deals with Hamas (a cease-fire) and Hezbollah (a prisoner exchange).

Europe

Spain: Eta killer’s business auctioned to pay victim’s widow

· Separatist murdered man who had saved his life

· Wife of former terrorist buys share in glass shop

Graham Keeley in Barcelona

The Guardian,

Friday July 18, 2008

Spotting the toddler rush into the road to fetch a ball pursued by his terrified mother with a baby in her arms, Ramón Baglietto did not think twice. He grabbed the baby from the mother as she tried to stop her other son from being crushed by an approaching lorry.

Baglietto’s actions saved the infant, but the mother and older son were killed.

For Azkoitia, the small town in the Basque country, where he was mayor, Baglietto was a hero – and the infant, Kandido Azpiazu, was never left in any doubt to whom he owed his life. But growing up, Azpiazu became radicalised in a society in which separatism can be a deadly force.

World Focus: Italians and the Gypsies – an old prejudice revived



By Peter Popham

Friday, 18 July 2008

The decision by Silvio Berlusconi’s government that all Italian citizens should now be fingerprinted, and that from 2010, all national identity and residence cards will carry fingerprints seems bizarre. There is no urgent reason for such an elaborate programme and fingerprints are out of date as an identification method.

The real reason for the decision, which received initial assent from a parliamentary committee on Wednesday, is to enable the government to continue taking the fingerprints of Roma or Gypsies who live in camps, both legal and informal, on the outskirts of many Italian cities, a policy which bears comparison with the worst days of Benito Mussolini.

A month ago the Interior Minister, Roberto Maroni, a member of the anti-immigrant Northern League, announced that all residents of such camps, including children, would be fingerprinted – a decision that prompted outrage inside Italy and beyond.

Latin America

Oil prices threaten Latin America’s economic gains

About 26 million people in the region climbed out of poverty between 2002 and 2006, but now inflation is bringing inflation and misery.

By Marla Dickerson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

July 18, 2008

SAN SALVADOR — Are exploding oil prices about to burn Latin America?

With the largest petroleum reserves outside the Middle East, the region has been on a roll in recent years. Record exports of crude and grain fueled economic growth not seen since the 1970s. The region’s stock markets roared. Easier credit spawned a consumer class that snapped up homes and cars. About 26 million Latin Americans climbed out of poverty between 2002 and 2006, United Nations figures show.

But the same forces behind that prosperity are now, paradoxically, creating misery in the midst of bounty. Surging fuel prices have ignited inflation throughout the region, driving up the cost of food, whose prices were already on the upswing thanks in part to ravenous global demand for Latin America’s farm products.