Docudharma Times Monday September 1

Questioning Qualifications Is One Thing

Acting Like The National Enquirer

Is Something Else

Coast Braces for Storm; G.O.P. Cuts Back



By ADAM NOSSITER

Published: September 1, 2008  

NEW ORLEANS – Nearly two million people from Texas to Alabama fled the Gulf Coast on Sunday ahead of Hurricane Gustav, anticipating a storm that could rival Hurricane Katrina in its destructive power.

New Orleans was largely emptied of its residents after a mandatory evacuation order, and interstate highways across the region were jammed bumper to bumper in one of the largest evacuations in American history.

With memories of the shaky response to Hurricane Katrina fresh, officials from President Bush on down were on high alert; Mr. Bush himself described the preparations and warned residents to get out of the storm’s way.

A Long and Weary Bus Ride to Anywhere

?

By SHAILA DEWAN

Published: August 31, 2008  

ABOARD A BUS FROM NEW ORLEANS – The 40-odd people boarding the black, red and white bus that the city provided late Saturday afternoon embarked on a journey of pure faith. They did not know how long they would be away or whether they would have anything to come home to. It would be many hours before they even learned where they were going.

They had no way of knowing that when they finally reached their refuge, roughly 350 miles away, it would be ill-prepared for their arrival. But they did have a firm grasp of what the worst could mean if they stayed in the broad, unpredictable path of Hurricane Gustav.

So, uncomplaining, they hoisted themselves aboard, taking advantage of the government’s offer of free transportation for those without cars.

USA

Even without Bush in St. Paul, GOP can’t escape his record



By David Lightman | McClatchy Newspapers  

ST. PAUL, Minn. – In many ways, the Republican National Convention here this week is President Bush’s convention, and that’s not good political news for John McCain.

Even though Bush canceled his live Monday night appearance so he could monitor the impact of Hurricane Gustav, he’s still the leader of the GOP – and the key reason why its political fortunes are under a cloud.

Not since Lyndon Johnson stayed away from his party’s 1968 Democratic convention, after being advised by party officials not to come, has an incumbent president been such a liability to his own party.

The Beer That Takes You Back . . . Millions of Years

Enterprising Scientist Finds New Use for Ancient Yeast?

By Gabe Oppenheim

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, September 1, 2008; Page C01  

Raul Cano is the real-life “Jurassic Park” scientist. Yes, there is one.

A day before that movie opened in 1993, Cano announced that he had extracted DNA from an ancient Lebanese weevil entombed in amber, just as the fictional employees of InGen do with a mosquito to create their dino-amusement park. One newspaper account said the “achievement” refuted “the long-held view of many biologists that DNA of so great an age” couldn’t be preserved.

But Cano was less interested in extinct reptiles than in Homo sapiens now roaming the earth. He next revivified ancient bacteria from the gut of an amber-encased bee and hoped to turn the strains into new antibiotics

Middle East

Woman who wore a suicide bomb takes up fight for Middle East peace  

 

By Kim Sengupta and Said Ghazali in Tulkarem, West Bank

Monday, 1 September 2008

Shifa al-Qudsi stood in the dark corner of a room while a young man from the Al-Aqsa Brigade checked the suicide vest rigged to her body to make sure the explosive charge was correctly connected. “All you have to do is press the button,” he said, before stressing the importance of ensuring that she produces her martyr’s will in front of a video camera.

“It was the hardest, cruellest moment of my life,” Ms Qudsi recalls. “I did what was asked, and I made my will trying to explain to my six-year-old daughter and my parents what I was doing. I also sent a message to the Israelis and the outside world that I was a freedom fighter and not a terrorist.”

Iraq army still needs U.S. support, commanders say

Iraqi commanders do not want U.S. forces telling them what to do, but both sides say Iraq still needs the U.S. to provide military backup.

By Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 1, 2008  

BAQUBAH, IRAQ — Ances Najim hovered anxiously as Iraqi soldiers peered into the trunk of his car and clambered up a wall to see what was stashed in a neighbor’s courtyard.

When an officer informed him the search was done, the lawyer broke into a wide grin and readily signed a form confirming that nothing was taken from his home.

“It’s the first time that the Iraqi army has come in here, and nobody hit me, nobody broke anything,” Najim, a Sunni Arab, said incredulously. “This will make the area more secure, and the terrorists will be finished.”

Europe

Owner of Russian opposition website killed



 Reuters

Monday, 1 September 2008

An opposition internet news site owner in Russia’s troubled Ingushetia region was fatally shot yesterday soon after being detained by police, and his colleagues called for a rally to protest his death.

Magomed Yevloyev is one of the most high-profile journalists to be killed in Russia since investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead near her Moscow apartment in 2006, provoking condemnation of Russia’s record on media freedom.

Yevloyev, owner of the www.Ingushetiya.ru website, was a vocal critic of the region’s Kremlin-backed administration, accused by opponents of crushing dissent and free speech.

Georgia: Divided EU prepares to review stand on Russia at emergency summit

· Unflinching Putin dares Europe to make first move

· Brown pledges tough stance, France cautious

Ian Traynor in Brussels

The Guardian,

Monday September 1 2008

Calls grew louder yesterday for Russia to face greater international isolation because of its invasion and partition of Georgia as European leaders prepared for an emergency summit on the Caucasus crisis and to review the basis of the EU’s relations with Russia.

France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, the EU’s current president, who negotiated a ceasefire agreement between Moscow and Tbilisi, has convened the first EU emergency summit since February 2003 in the run-up to the Iraq war in order to concentrate the minds of leaders on their policies towards Moscow.

Asia

Army helps as desperation mounts in flood-hit India



Sept 1 (Reuters)

PATNA, India, The Indian army and navy stepped up efforts on Monday to rescue hundreds of thousands of people marooned by floods and facing severe shortages of food in the east of the country.

Some villagers have been living on rooftops for days, while others are eating plants and leaves after exhausting food stocks. Aid agencies said the government of the impoverished state of Bihar should have done more to anticipate the disaster and plan relief operations in a region hit by monsoon flooding every year.

“Lessons from the past disasters should be kept in mind while planning response,” ActionAid said in a statement. “A long-term comprehensive response is necessary to deal with relief, recovery and disaster preparedness.”

 Asia tops world usage of Internet, broadband>



Bangkok Post

The Asia-Pacific region is the world’s largest broadband market with 39 per cent of the total, the largest mobile phone market with 1.4 billion subscribers and claims 42 per cent of the world’s Internet users, a UN report revealed Monday as ITU Telecom Asia 2008 began at Muang Thong Thani.

By mid-2008, China and India alone had over 600 and 280 million mobile phone subscribers respectively, representing nearly a quarter of the world’s total, said a report on telecommunications and information communication technology indicators by the International Telecommunication Union released in Bangkok.

The Asia-Pacific region, covering a vast and disparate area from West Asia to the Pacific Islands, notched up several “superlatives” in this year’s report.

The Philippines, for instance, emerged as the text-messaging champion of the world. Filipinos send 650 text messages per subscriber per month, according to the report.

The region claims almost half the world’s fixed telephone subscribers, with close to 2 billion, and leads in mobile phone subscriptions at 1.4 billion.

Africa

Bodies found in the tomb of ‘boy king’ Tutankhamun’s tomb are twin daughters



From The Times

September 1, 2008  

Aditi Khanna

Two foetuses found buried with Tutankhamun may have been his twin daughters, an expert has claimed.

Professor Robert Connolly, an anatomist who is working with Egyptian authorities to analyse the tomb of the Egyptian Pharaoh, says that preliminary tests on the mummified remains of the two still-born babies indicate that Tutankhamun may have fathered them both. He will present the new findings at the Pharmacy and Medicine in Ancient Egypt Conference at the University of Manchester today.

Professor Connolly, who first studied the remains of Tutankhamun in the Sixties, said: “The two foetuses in the tomb of Tutankhamun could be twins, despite their very different size and thus fit better as a single pregnancy for his young wife [Ankhesenamun]. This increases the likelihood of them being Tutankhamun’s children.”

In Africa, a New Middle-Income Consumerism



By Stephanie McCrummen

Washington Post Foreign Service

Monday, September 1, 2008; Page A01  

KAMPALA, Uganda — Meet Denis Ruharo, an entrepreneur with a master’s degree, a man who carries a BlackBerry and two Nokia cellphones, buys organic greens at a grocery store and sometimes does business over a cold Nile beer at a club called Silk.

“I have the mortgage and home improvement,” he said, glancing at the budget he and his wife keep on their computer. “The car, carwash and parking tickets. Entertainment — cable TV, two movies a month. The health club. Then normally we vacation twice a year. Last time it was Nairobi.”

Latin America

Fear of kidnapping grips Mexico

The number is rising, and the rich are not the only ones targeted. Criminals sometimes want as little as $500.

By Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 1, 2008

MEXICO CITY — Perhaps nothing reveals this country’s kidnapping dread better than one product now on offer from a Mexican company: a tiny transmitter that is implanted under the skin to beam the person’s whereabouts to a satellite.

Employing more conventional safeguards, businessmen travel with bodyguards, and children in tony neighborhoods attend classes behind Ft. Knox-like security. The insurance industry has pondered whether to offer kidnapping protection.

Although the country’s drug violence may make headlines abroad, Mexicans are far more preoccupied with its kidnapping problem, among the world’s worst. Its frequency and variety, including “express” and “virtual” kidnappings, have made it a kind of national plague, and one with unusual political resonance.