Docudharma Times Tuesday October 7

McCain Supporter Calls Obama A Terrorist

Sarah Palin Said Obama Pal’s Around With A Terrorist

$10 Million Spent On This Subject Achieves Nothing

59% Of American Voters Say “IT’S THE ECONOMY STUPID”

Global Fears of a Recession Grow Stronger

 

 By MARK LANDLER

Published: October 6, 2008  

WASHINGTON – When the White House brought out its $700 billion rescue plan two weeks ago, its sheer size was meant to soothe the global financial system, restoring trust and confidence. Three days after the plan was approved, it looks like a pebble tossed into a churning sea.

The crisis that began as a made-in-America subprime lending problem and radiated across the world is now circling back home, where it pummeled stock and credit markets on Monday.

While the Bush administration’s bailout package offers help to foreign banks, it seems to have done little to reassure investors, particularly in Europe, where banks are failing and countries are racing to stave off panicky withdrawals after first playing down the depth of the crisis.

North Korea spy awaits sentencing

Won Jeong-hwa used sexual favors to seduce South Korean military officers into giving up secrets.  

 By John M. Glionna and Youkyung Lee, Special to The Times

October 7, 2008

SUWON, SOUTH KOREA — She’s called the Mata Hari of North Korea, a temptress-spy who for years used her sensual charms to seduce South Korean military officers into giving up secrets.

The method was potentially lethal: Won Jeong-hwa reportedly plotted to assassinate South Korean agents with poisoned needles provided by handlers from Pyongyang.

The 34-year-old North Korean native was arrested during the summer along with her 63-year-old stepfather and accused of engaging in espionage and deceit for seven years after defecting to South Korea. Under questioning, she detailed for investigators a double life working for one of the world’s most repressive regimes.

USA

Fed Considers Plan to Buy Companies’ Unsecured Debt



By EDMUND L. ANDREWS and MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

Published: October 6, 2008  

WASHINGTON – As pressure built in the credit markets and stocks spiraled lower around the world on Monday, the Federal Reserve was considering a radical new plan to jump-start the engine of the financial system. Under a proposal being discussed with the Treasury Department, the Fed could buy vast amounts of the unsecured short-term debt that companies rely on to finance their day-to-day activities, according to officials familiar with the discussions. If this were to happen, the central bank would come closer than ever to lending directly to businesses.

A Nightmare for Sales of Dream Cars

?

  By Joel Achenbach

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, October 7, 2008; Page A01  

Robert Bassam, used-car magnate, isn’t driving his $415,000 Lamborghini these days, or his Porsche, and he has even warehoused his usual get-around-town car, a BMW 750. Instead, he’s puttering along in a four-cylinder Hyundai Accent hatchback. It’s more politically correct, he says. And economically correct: He doesn’t feel like riding in luxury when the economy is tanking.

“Don’t you feel it? I feel it in the air — the negativity!” he says as he walks across the lot of Easterns Select, his dealership near Tysons Corner

Europe

How Benelux is tackling the economic crisis



David Gow in Brussels

The Guardian,

Tuesday October 7 2008

Belgians woke up yesterday to a national strike in protest at falling living standards – and the French takeover of their biggest bank. “Fortis is French” read the headline on the front page of the country’s leading French-language newspaper, Le Soir. After an overnight deal that made it the eurozone’s biggest retail bank, BNP Paribas confirmed that it was paying €14.5bn (£11.2bn) for Fortis’s Belgian banking and insurance business, and for its international banking operations. Fortis, which over-reached itself by paying €24bn for key parts of Dutch rival ABN Amro last year, has shrunk to an international insurance business, including operations in the UK, and a package of risky structured products – some of which are being parked in a special investment vehicle (SIV).

Poker-game execution as Italy declares war on Mafia

 

 By Peter Popham in Rome

Tuesday, 7 October 2008  

 Italy’s Interior Minister, Roberto Maroni, has described it as a civil war – and 18 bullets pumped into an innocent man playing cards on a Sunday morning proved him right.

Stanislao Cantelli was the uncle of two supergrasses and distantly related to another local mafia boss but he had led a blameless life. Having recently retired from his job as a technician in a mozzarella cheese factory, he was often seen pottering around the town of Casal di Principe in his battered Fiat Punto. For relaxation, he repaired to the Circolo Sociale Ricreativo, a shop converted into a social club on Via Umberto I, to play poker.

Middle East

In gender-sensitive Iran, a car designed specially for women

 

Robert Tait and Noushin Hoseiny

The Guardian,

Tuesday October 7 2008

Iran’s biggest motor manufacturer is to take the country’s gender sensitivity to new levels by producing a car specially for women.

It will be fitted with features common on the international market but seen as female-specific in Iran’s male-dominated culture. These include an automatic gearbox, electronic parking aids, a navigation system and a jack designed to make it easier to change a wheel, suggesting that women drivers lack the mechanical competence of their male counterparts. Alarms may also be installed to warn of flat tyres. The vehicle will be painted in soft “feminine” colours and include interior designs tailored to women’s tastes. There will also be audiovisual entertainment systems for child passengers

Secrets of Iraq’s death chamber

Prisoners are being summarily executed in the government’s high-security detention centre in Baghdad. Robert Fisk reports

Tuesday, 7 October 2008

Like all wars, the dark, untold stories of the Iraqi conflict drain from its shattered landscape like the filthy waters of the Tigris. And still the revelations come.

The Independent has learnt that secret executions are being carried out in the prisons run by Nouri al-Maliki’s “democratic” government.

The hangings are carried out regularly – from a wooden gallows in a small, cramped cell – in Saddam Hussein’s old intelligence headquarters at Kazimiyah.

Asia

Asia stocks rebound as Reserve Bank of Australia cuts interest rates    



From Times Online

October 7, 2008

Jane Macartney in Beijing

A surprise 100 basis points interest cut by the Australian central bank, its biggest reduction in 16 years, spawned anticipation in markets that other countries might soon follow suit to try to end the global financial turmoil.

Investors across Asia took heart, erasing some of the earlier losses that dragged down shares from Sydney to Seoul to Shanghai.

Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Glenn Stevens cautioned that the percentage point cut – twice the size analysts had expected – to 6.00 per cent was justified given the severe deterioration in the outlook for global growth and the sharp rise in funding costs for banks.

New tests: Chinese milk melamine-free >

South Korean officials recall M&M’s and Snickers, as China’s production standards improvBy  

Peter Ford  | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the October 7, 2008 editione.

Beijing –  China’s widening poisoned milk scandal ensnared some of the world’s top food brands Monday, as South Korean authorities recalled Chinese-made M&M’s, Snickers bars, and Ritz crackers.

The products were among 10 processed foods exported from China that were found to contain traces of melamine, the toxic chemical used to adulterate powdered milk that has killed four babies in China and sickened 54,000 others.

As officials worldwide continue to check for tainted Chinese milk products, there are signs that production safety in China is improving. New government tests show that the latest batches of milk are melamine-free. Meanwhile, victims of the contaminated dairy products are beginning to take legal action.

Although the melamine levels in the goods on sale in South Korea “do not pose a big health threat … we will take the necessary measures to ensure food safety,” the South Korean Food and Drug Administration said.

Africa

US author of anti-Obama book detained in Kenya  

 

By TOM ODULA, Associated Press Writer  

NAIROBI, Kenya – The American author of a book critical of Barack Obama is being detained in Kenya while his immigration status is checked, a senior immigration official said Tuesday.

Jerome Corsi, who wrote “The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality,” was being held at immigration headquarters in Nairobi after police picked him up from his hotel Tuesday, said Carlos Maluta, a senior immigration official in charge of investigations.

“We still haven’t decided what to do with him,” Maluta told The Associated Press.

Africa is the dark continent on solar power

FROM household solar panels to thermal generators big enough to power a town, sun power has enjoyed explosive growth around the world.

Jerome Cartillier

October 07, 2008

Everywhere, that is, except on the sun-drenched continent of Africa.

With an average daily dose of five to seven kilowatts per hour (kWh) for every square metre, Africa has more potential for producing energy from the sun than almost anywhere on Earth, with the possible exception of northern Australia or the Arabian peninsula.

Yet the continent accounts for only a miniscule percentage of the world’s solar energy output. And most of what it does generate is produced in one country, South Africa.