Docudharma Times Saturday October 4

Undisclosed Location: Population 2

Check Shotguns And Booze At The Door

For Treasury Dept., Now Comes Hard Part of Bailout

 

 By MARK LANDLER and EDMUND L. ANDREWS

Published: October 3, 2008  

WASHINGTON – It will be one of the world’s largest asset management firms with an impressive $700 billion war chest. Nothing short of the global economy depends on its success. And the Treasury Department has barely a month to get it up and running.

The bailout bill that President Bush quickly signed into law on Friday must do what financial experts have been unable to do for the last year – put a dollar value on mortgage-related assets that no one wants, move them off the books of ailing banks and unlock the frozen credit markets.

Judge: Government not free of toxic trailer suits

Ruling says there’s evidence FEMA delayed response over liability concerns  

Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS – The government is not immune from lawsuits claiming many Gulf Coast hurricane victims were exposed to potentially dangerous fumes while living in trailers the government provided, a federal judge ruled Friday.

The ruling said there is evidence that the Federal Emergency Management Agency delayed its response to concerns about formaldehyde levels in its trailers due to liability concerns. The preservative can cause breathing problems and is classified as a carcinogen.

USA

US shocked by spate of abandoned children

• 14 given up by parents under new Nebraska law

• State to reconsider age limit of 19 after criticism

Ed Pilkington in New York

The Guardian,

Saturday October 4 2008

Authorities in the United States are reeling from a sudden spate of children being abandoned by their parents and guardians under a new law that allows caregivers to leave any child up to the age of 19 at hospitals without fear of prosecution.

In Nebraska in September alone, 14 children were abandoned in hospitals and another was mistakenly taken to a police station, which is not covered under the law. In a further case, an 18-year-old presented himself for safe keeping, but was not placed in foster care because he was too old.

Las Vegas jury finds O.J. Simpson guilty

?The former football star is convicted on all counts, including robbery and kidnapping.

By Ashley Powers, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

October 4, 2008  

LAS VEGAS — A jury convicted O.J. Simpson of armed robbery and kidnapping Friday night, 13 years to the day after he was acquitted of killing his ex-wife and her friend in Los Angeles.

The verdict was read just before 11 p.m. after prosecutors, defense attorneys, Simpson and codefendant Clarence Stewart gathered in the downtown courthouse.

Both were convicted on all 12 counts. Defense attorneys polled the jurors, who confirmed their verdicts aloud. Simpson was handcuffed and led out of court.

The panel of nine women and three men — none of them black — deliberated more than 13 hours after listening to nearly three weeks of testimony. Their discussions had begun Friday morning.

Europe

Georgia’s Saakashvili: freedom fighter or rights abuser?



By Tom Lasseter | McClatchy Newspapers

TBILISI, Georgia – A large group of influential Georgian opposition leaders has mounted a blistering political campaign against U.S.-backed President Mikheil Saakashvili, accusing his government of running an autocratic regime that tramples human rights and stifles democracy.

The timing could embarrass the Bush administration, which is pressing NATO members to approve an action plan for Georgia – a key step toward full membership – at the organization’s meeting in December.

The claims by many in the opposition, some of which have been affirmed by a top Georgian human-rights official, go to the heart of Washington’s rationale for backing Saakashvili as a democratic force in a region where Russia is trying to re-establish dominance.

Mosley takes privacy battle to Strasbourg

 

Afua Hirsch, legal affairs correspondent

The Guardian,

Saturday October 4 2008

Max Mosley, the president of formula one’s governing body, is to continue his challenge to the law of privacy by taking his case to the European court of human rights in Strasbourg.

Mosley, whose private sexual practices became national news in July when the News of the World published details of his involvement in an orgy, says that the £60,000 damages he received for some of the claims the paper made were not an adequate remedy.

He wants a change in the law that will force editors to contact the subject of their revelations before publishing articles that could invade their privacy.

Asia

The short cut to the top of Everest

The latest attempt on the world’s highest mountain takes an unconventional route  

 By Mark Hughes

Saturday, 4 October 2008

Conquering Everest is the ultimate aspiration of every climber. More than 2,500 mountaineers have reached the summit and 210 have died trying. Today, a group of 32 men and women will become the latest hardy souls to attempt to overcome the world’s highest mountain.

But, while their predecessors have all scaled the mountain that straddles Nepal and Tibet from the bottom to the top, this band of adventurers are planning something rather different.

The international group, which includes men and women from Britain, Iraq and Pakistan, have already spent six days trekking to their base camp, which sits at 12,350ft (3,764m), a good way up the mountain.

Tata scraps world’s cheapest car factory

Following months of violent demonstrations from local landowners, the Indian conglomerate will look to relocate

From Times Online

Rhys Blakely in Bombay

Tata has abandoned the partially completed factory that was to build the world’s cheapest car, the £1,250 Nano, following months of violent demonstrations from local landowners.

The move will cost the Indian conglomerate as much as $350 million in investment that will now be written off plus an additional $100 million in relocation charges, analysts estimated. Indian business leader fear it also deals a severe blow to India’s standing as an emerging industrial power.

“You cannot run a plant when bombs are being thrown, you cannot run a plant when workers are being intimidated,” the Tata chief executive Ratan Tata said.

Middle East

Turkish troops killed in clashes  

Kurdish rebels have killed 15 Turkish soldiers near Semdinli in the country’s south-east, the military says.

The BBC

The soldiers died during an attack by fighters said to be from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), based over the border in northern Iraq.

Generals said troops fought back, killing 23 rebels, but that two soldiers were missing after the attack.

Turkey blames the PKK for a series of bomb attacks on its cities, and often targets rebels with air strikes.

More than 40,000 people are thought to have been killed since 1984, when the PKK launched its campaign for a Kurdish homeland in south-eastern Turkey.  

US military: Mastermind of Baghdad bombings killed  >

 

Associated Press  

BAGHDAD – The U.S. military says it has killed a senior al-Qaida in Iraq leader suspected of masterminding deadly bombings in Baghdad. The military says U.S. troops acting in self-defense also killed his wife in Friday’s firefight.

Saturday’s statement identifies the man killed as Mahir Ahmad Mahmud Judu’ al-Zubaydi, also known as Abu Assad or Abu Rami.

It says he directed the insurgent cell that was believed to be responsible for nearly simultaneous car bomb and suicide attacks that killed at least eight people on Thursday.

Africa

South Africa ANC at brink of split

Supporters of former President Thabo Mbeki and backers of current party leader Jacob Zuma square off in acrimonious discord.

By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

October 4, 2008

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA — The fact that the ruling African National Congress has a deep-seated sense of moral superiority is not entirely surprising. Led by Nelson Mandela, it was at the forefront of the campaign to bring down the apartheid system.

Sometimes, its sense of itself can be a little over the top. Party leader Jacob Zuma has been quoted as saying it’s the only party that God wants to rule South Africa. The ANC will rule “until Jesus comes back,” he said. The worst possible epithet one party member can use against another is to accuse him or her of “un-ANC” behavior.

But the ugly public wrangling that has followed former South African President Thabo Mbeki’s humiliating dismissal two weeks ago has made the ANC look just like, well, any other political party.

UN envoy says Congo fighting could escalate  

 

By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer  Sat Oct 4

UNITED NATIONS – The top U.N. envoy to Congo warned Friday that renewed fighting in eastern Congo has heightened ethnic tensions and could lead to the renewal of a wider conflict in central Africa.

Alan Doss urged all militias in the country’s hilly eastern border area – the scene of the worst fighting and a humanitarian crisis in Congo – to support a U.N. disengagement plan to bring peace to the conflict-wracked region.

He expressed dismay at reports this week that a key rebel leader, Laurent Nkunda, who initially said he would discuss the plan, was now reported to be backtracking and “walking out of any effort to move the peace process forward.”