Docudharma Times Sunday August 3

First Do No

Harm

Except When Its

Illegal Immigrants

Sick, Injured

Deport Them  No One Will Notice

China’s Olympic challenge

On the eve of the most politically charged Games in decades, can Beijing change its ways?

By Clifford Coonan in Beijing and Raymond Whitaker

Sunday, 3 August 2008

China was under pressure yesterday to lift censorship and honour its human rights guarantees as thousands of athletes, officials and tourists began arriving for the Olympics, which Beijing’s Communist leadership sees as the moment the country takes its rightful place on the world stage.

With only five days to go before the Games, on which the country has spent £20bn, anticipation among Chinese is high. Many in Beijing are quoting the saying “Bai nian bu yu”, which translates as “We’ve been waiting 100 years for this”.

HIV epidemic in U.S. worse than previously thought, CDC says

Based on new testing methods, the CDC says there are actually about 56,300 new infections a year — not 40,000 — and that rate has been fairly constant for a decade.

By Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

August 3, 2008

Federal officials have been underestimating the number of new HIV infections in the United States by 40% every year for more than a decade, a finding that indicates the U.S. epidemic is much worse than thought, researchers said Saturday.

Using sophisticated testing to identify new infections, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that there are about 56,300 new infections each year, not the 40,000 figure that has been gospel for so long.

The new numbers do not mean that the epidemic is growing in this country, just that researchers have been able to provide more accurate estimates, said Dr. Kevin Fenton, director of the CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention. He said the number of new infections has remained relatively constant since the late 1990s.

Still, the higher estimates were a jarring reminder that the United States, while castigating prevention efforts in much of the world, has not been able to get a firm grip on its own problems.

USA

Immigrants Deported, by U.S. Hospitals



By DEBORAH SONTAG

Published: August 3, 2008

JOLOMCÚ, Guatemala – High in the hills of Guatemala, shut inside the one-room house where he spends day and night on a twin bed beneath a seriously outdated calendar, Luis Alberto Jiménez has no idea of the legal battle that swirls around him in the lowlands of Florida.Shooing away flies and beaming at the tiny, toothless elderly mother who is his sole caregiver, Mr. Jiménez, a knit cap pulled tightly on his head, remains cheerily oblivious that he has come to represent the collision of two deeply flawed American systems, immigration and health care.

Hardest Hit

Low-Wage Workers

Hovering Above Poverty, Grasping for Middle Class



By Michael A. Fletcher and Jon Cohen

Washington Post Staff Writers

Sunday, August 3, 2008; Page A01

Low-wage workers in the United States are gripped by increasing financial insecurity as they inch along an economic tightrope made riskier by pervasive job losses and rising prices. Many struggle to pay for life’s basics — housing, food and health care — and most report having virtually no financial cushion should they stumble.

Still, they remain inspired by the American dream, with most saying they are more apt to move up economically than slip backward even if they are frustrated now. Most also expect better for their children.

Europe

Warning on al-Qaeda’s new female recruits



Jason Burke, Europe editor

The Observer,

Sunday August 3 2008

European intelligence chiefs have launched a major investigation into the threat posed by female Islamic militants within the EU, whose involvement runs from logistics or propaganda activity to suicide bombing, they say.

‘This phenomenon has not been really taken into account yet and we need to explore and understand it,’ said one diplomatic official connected with the probe. ‘It is a new strategy by al-Qaeda.’

The moves follow a spate of attacks in the Middle East conducted by women bombers and increasing concerns among European security services about increased radicalisation of female militants. The officials specifically cite the UK and North Africa as problem areas.

Italian government soothes sunbathers burnt by high prices

Official watchdog comes to aid of beach users fed up with €1,200-a-month cost of hiring sun loungers

By Hilary Clarke in Rome

Sunday, 3 August 2008

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Amid criticism about the extortionate prices sun-worshippers in Italy pay to hire a couple of sunbeds and a parasol on the beach, groups representing thousands of private bathing stations last week struck a pact with a government watchdog to cut charges.

In Italy, most of the best stretches of sand are handed over to private concessions, which usually own the beach bar and pedalos as well. Many middle-class Italians will pay an average of €1,200 a month for the same spot every year.

Middle East

Defiant Iran spurns deal over uranium plant

Ahmadinejad ignores world powers’ deadline for suspending enrichment

By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor

Sunday, 3 August 2008

Iran’s President has issued a defiant warning to his country’s “enemies” as Tehran ignored a deadline from world powers hoping to curb Iranian nuclear ambitions.

Iran’s refusal to give a clear answer by yesterday to the offer of technological and political incentives in return for suspending uranium enrichment rekindled tensions with the West and led to fresh warnings from Israel that military strikes remain an option.

But Tehran yesterday accused the West of double standards in the wake of the US’s nuclear deal with India.

Syria closes in on peace deal with Israel



From The Sunday Times

August 3, 2008

Uzi Mahnaimi in Tel Aviv

The Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert is racing to conclude a peace deal with Syria before he steps down from office in a few months.

Syria is close to agreeing to “normal relations” in the words of its president, Bashar al-Assad, and to disengage from Iran in return for an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Golan Heights. The outline of a deal was reached in talks brokered by the Turks, according to reports in Israel.

“We [Syria and Israel] desire to recognise each other and end the state of war. Let us make peace . . . let us end, once and for all, the state of war,” Imad Mustafa, Syria’s ambassador to the United States, told a Washington audience last week.

Asia

N Korea steps up row with South

North Korea has said it will expel South Korean workers from a mountain resort, in a further sign of worsening relations between the two countries.

The BBC

Sunday, 3 August 2008

The move comes after a South Korean tourist was shot dead last month by a soldier at Mount Kumgang, a special tourist zone in the North.

Seoul questioned the account given by Pyongyang – which said the tourist had strayed into a military zone.

The South has suspended tours to the resort pending an inquiry.

A military statement carried by North Korean media said the government would expel all South Koreans deemed “unnecessary” from the resort.

Pakistan may step up action against insurgents>

Proposals include sending a commando unit against insurgents near the Afghanistan border, officials say.

By Josh Meyer, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

August 3, 2008

The Pakistani commando division, trained by the United States, is an elite special operations force similar to the Army’s Special Forces, or Green Berets. Pakistan has been criticized for sending conventional troops who do not have training in the kind of guerrilla warfare techniques that U.S. officials say are needed to fight the militants in the tribal areas.

Africa

WITNESS-In search of invisible borders in central Africa

Joe Bavier has reported on West and Central Africa for four years. He joined Reuters as Kinshasa correspondent in 2006.

Reuters

Sun Aug 3, 2008

BAMBOUTI, Central African Republic (Reuters) – “We aren’t in Sudan, are we? Because we’re not allowed to go to Sudan.”

The question, asked by an admirably rule-abiding aid worker, made me smile. Here in this forgotten corner of Africa, where simply finding an international border requires patience and 21st century technology, who would ever know we were here?

“Still in Central African Republic,” I said, looking down at the GPS on my satellite phone. “I think.”

A friend and colleague once said Central African Republic has one redeeming quality — it’s easy to find on a map. After all, the directions are in the name.

Zimbabwe has to figure out its future – the West can only hope it gets it right



REALPOLITIK: Trevor Royle

Sunday Herald

YOU?CAN?KNOCK?ANY AMOUNT of noughts off a?nation’s?banknotes, but?readjusting?the figures?won’t?get?rid of?the?basic?problem. When?Zimbabwe’s head?banking?honcho?Gideon?Gono announced that every 10 billion zimdollar note would be revalued at one zimdollar,?he?was?acting?with?the best?of?intentions.?Hyper-inflation has made a nonsense of the nation’s economy and it was patently absurd to print more supplies of the new $100 billion banknotes now that they can be revalued at 10 zimdollars?and?everyone?can?have lighter wallets.

It’s not a new idea and it can only offer a sticking plaster to a gaping wound. Weimar Germany tried the same ploy when its economy spun out of control in the 1920s but it hardly helped matters and left a situation which the Nazis were later to exploit. With inflation running at 2.2 million per cent in Zimbabwe it’s unlikely if Gono’s intervention will do very much better. What is needed is an immediate political solution to the impasse which has bedevilled the country since the elections earlier this year.

Tomorrow will see the first deadline in the power-sharing talks between President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF and Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) but even if it comes and goes, as well it might, hopes are still reasonably high that some kind of accommodation can be found. In the past any hint of stalling would have sent the talks into freefall, but now there seems to be a new willingness to compromise. It’s not impossible that the vexed question of leadership roles will finally be solved, thus opening the door to a workable power-sharing arrangement.