Docudharma Times Friday December 5

Auto Executives Drive To Washington For Money

Get Handed Their Hats Instead    

Jobless Rate Rises to 6.7% as 533,000 Jobs Are Lost

By LOUIS UCHITELLE

Published: December 5, 2008

With the economy deteriorating rapidly, the nation’s employers shed 533,000 jobs in November, the 11th consecutive monthly decline, the government reported Friday morning, and the unemployment rate rose to 6.7 percent.

The decline, the largest since December 1974, was fresh evidence that the economic contraction accelerated in November, promising to make the current recession, already 12 months old, the longest since the Great Depression. The previous record was 16 months, in the severe recessions of the mid-1970s and early 1980s.

“We have recorded the largest decline in consumer confidence in our history,” said Richard T. Curtin, director of the Reuters/University of Michigan Survey of Consumers, which started its polling in the 1950s.

Auto Executives Face a Hard Sell on Capitol Hill



By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and BILL VLASIC

Published: December 4, 2008

WASHINGTON – The chief executives of America’s foundering automobile manufacturers returned to Capitol Hill on Thursday and found themselves confronting years of pent-up anger, the harsh politics of a recession and the realization that even their strongest supporters might not be able to muster the votes to save them.

Fiscal hawks are worried that taxpayers will lose billions. Pro-labor lawmakers are furious that union workers are being blamed for causing the automakers’ problems, even as tens of thousands face layoffs. Environmentalists like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are fed up after years of battles over fuel-efficiency rules. And Congress, as a whole, is suffering from acute bailout fatigue.

Many Children Lack Stability Long After Storm



By SHAILA DEWAN

Published: December 4, 2008

BATON ROUGE, La. – Last January, at the age of 15, Jermaine Howard stopped going to school. Attendance seemed pointless: Jermaine, living with his father and brother in the evacuee trailer park known as Renaissance Village since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, had not managed to earn a single credit in more than two years.

Not that anyone took much notice. After Jermaine flunked out of seventh grade, the East Baton Rouge School District allowed him to skip eighth grade altogether and begin high school. After three semesters of erratic attendance, he left Baton Rouge in early spring of this year and moved in with another family in a suburb of New Orleans, where he found a job at a Dairy Queen.

USA

Retailers Report a Crisis in All Aisles

November Sales Slump as Shoppers Stow Credit Cards

By Ylan Q. Mui

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, December 5, 2008; Page A01

Retailers posted the worst November sales in more than 30 years yesterday, as holiday shopping not only failed to lift the economy but showed that the financial crisis is further distressing everyday consumers.

About 30 major companies — including Macy’s, Abercrombie & Fitch and Target — posted sales declines at established stores. Overall, retail sales in November fell 2.7 percent compared with the same month last year, marking the second consecutive negative month, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers, a trade group.

And American consumers, whose spending accounts for the bulk of the economy and who have powered the nation out of previous recessions, are turning away from their most potent tool: credit cards.

A mixed bag for women this election year

Advocates have differing views as to just how well things turned out

Associated Press

NEW YORK – Depending on your political tastes, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sarah Palin or even Tina Fey could be considered Woman of the Year. But here’s the harder question: Was this the Year of the Woman?

Some touted it as such, and in many ways it was a watershed election season: The first viable female presidential candidate – and she almost won. A female vice-presidential nominee – and she was a Republican. And a president-elect who’s appointing women to high-profile Cabinet posts and supports family friendly policies.

Asia

School accused of Mumbai terror role opens its doors

• Campus said to be base for banned extremist group

• Media visitors shown classrooms and hospital

Saeed Shah in Muridke, Pakistan

The Guardian, Friday December 5 2008

At first sight, they could be the grounds of an English public school, with neatly trimmed lawns and earnest young pupils walking between classes. But this is the site that India believes is the headquarters of the terrorist group responsible for last week’s Mumbai attacks.

Boarding houses provide spartan accommodation, and orderly rows of trees line the sprawling site, just outside the eastern city of Lahore. Smartly turned-out pupils perform science experiments in the classrooms, peering into microscopes and connecting electric circuits. There is a farm, a swimming pool and a hospital.

India, and some western terrorism experts, believe this is the headquarters of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a banned Islamist group suspected of carrying out last week’s Mumbai attacks.

Sectarian tensions simmer over a pig in Cotabato City

In this majority-Muslim Filipino city, a fight over roast pig sheds light on bigger hurdles Christians and Muslims here navigate.

By Jonathan Adams

from the December 5, 2008 edition

To understand the culture clash wracking the southern Philippines, consider the lechon.

That’s the name for the roast pig that’s a Philippines’ signature dish. Sold by the kilo in public markets, it’s a must-have at any Filipino celebration.

But pork is taboo for Muslims, now a majority in this city (about 60 percent, compared with 40 percent Christian), and who see this part of the southern Philippines island of Mindanao as their ancestral homeland.

Eating pork is a no-no, and even smelling or seeing it is offensive to some.

So what to do about the street lechon sellers?

In Cotabato City last year, shop-owners were ordered to cover their lechon, says Flordeliza Cavite. I found her selling her swine at a stall downtown. Vendors had to use curtains, paint over windows, or move their pork inside to avoid offending passersby and to comply with the ordinance.

Middle East

Israeli riot police evict settlers in Hebron

• Jewish residents dragged from home in surprise raid

• Violent protests after officers follow court order

Rory McCarthy in Hebron

The Guardian, Friday December 5 2008

Riot police forcibly evacuated a house filled with dozens of Jewish settlers in the West Bank city of Hebron yesterday in the most public showdown between the government and the increasingly violent settler movement for more than two years.

Hundreds of police mounted a surprise raid on the three-storey house, which had become the latest symbol of defiance for Israeli settlers. Troops fired teargas into the crowds and dragged settlers from the house one by one. Around 30 people were injured, including one policeman who had acid thrown in his eyes.

Although the house was emptied within an hour, the operation triggered broad settler protests across the occupied West Bank and in Jerusalem that continued into the night.

Palestinian bickering strands Gaza’s pilgrims



By BEN HUBBARD, Associated Press Staff Writer

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Mohammed Habboush and his wife Ikram wanted so badly to make the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca from their Gaza home that they sold her gold jewelry to pay for the trip.

But while Muslims from around the world head to Saudi Arabia for the annual “hajj” pilgrimage, which starts Sunday, the couple remains at home, two of thousands of Gazan pilgrims prevented from traveling by the latest round of Palestinian squabbling.

The power to decide which Gazans can undertake the sacred hajj has become the latest battleground between rival Palestinian factions. Both the Hamas government in Gaza and President Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority in the West Bank have used this year’s pilgrimage to flex their muscles, drawing harsh condemnation from Muslim leaders for politicizing one of Islam’s most sacred acts.

Europe

Fiat heiress set for court fight over will



By Peter Popham in Rome

Friday, 5 December 2008

A feud at the Fiat dynasty has taken a dramatic turn after a close adviser to the car-maker’s founding Agnelli family agreed to take up a court challenge from the only surviving child of the late Gianni Agnelli.

Margherita Agnelli has accused Gianluigi Gabetti of keeping her in the dark about the true value of her father’s will. In May 2007, Ms Agnelli, whose father died in 2003, said she was suing Mr Gabetti and two other advisers.

She claimed Mr Gabetti had insulted her after Mr Agnelli died, declaring, “You don’t deserve to be the daughter of Gianni Agnelli”, and that he and others prevented her inheriting her rightful share of her father’s wealth.

500 years on from the Inquisition, DNA is able to show the Moors never went home>

 

From The Times

December 5, 2008

Mark Henderson, Science Editor

The medieval reconquest of Spain from the Moors left a genetic legacy that can be detected today in the DNA of men from the Iberian Peninsula, scientists have discovered.

A high proportion of Spanish and Portuguese males have a genetic profile indicative of North African or Jewish ancestry, according to research that sheds light on the region’s history. As many as one in five has a Y chromosome of apparently Jewish origin, while one in ten has a Y chromosome showing a North African heritage.

“These proportions attest to a high level of religious conversion, whether voluntary or enforced, driven by historical episodes of social and religious intolerance, that ultimately led to the integration of descendants,” said Professor Mark Jobling, of the University of Leicester, who led the research.

Africa

In Ghana, a political neophyte, with a household name, campaigns

Samia Nkrumah is the daughter of Ghana’s first president. She’s returned home to run for a seat in Parliament in Sunday’s elections.

By Peter DiCampo | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

from the December 5, 2008 edition

BEJIN, GHANA – Samia Nkrumah, the daughter of Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, had been leading “an ordinary life” in Rome as a consultant and freelance journalist.

But after spending 24 years away, she’s moved back to Ghana with her husband and 11-year-old son to campaign for a seat in parliament in the remote western district of Jomoro, where her father was raised.

Children capitalizing on their parents’ name is not new in politics, as the Bush and Gandhi families can attest. But in postcolonial Africa, the children of the continent’s elite are often content to attend university in Europe or the US and live a comfortable life abroad.

“I just felt that this is where I should be. I have a sense of responsibility to come back and honor my father’s legacy,” Ms. Nkrumah says. “Here, people give me the strength, they give me the blessing, they give me the push to go on.”

S.Africa must fight climate change, poverty



By Gabriela Baczynska and Alister Doyle

Fri 5 Dec 2008

(Reuters) – South Africa needs millions of dollars in aid to tackle environmental degradation, since it must also deal with problems ranging from poverty to AIDS, an environment ministry official said on Thursday.

Among developing countries, South Africa is one of the most active in fighting climate change, and the United Nations, sponsoring climate talks in Poland, often commends it for its efforts.

But South Africa says it needs international assistance to invest in environmentally friendly technology, such as solar power plants to replace coal-fuelled generators that supply 90 percent of electricity.

“For (a solar power plant) we would have to raise around 350 million euros and we are looking towards the international community to fill in this gap,” said Joanne Yawitch, deputy head of the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism.

Latin America

As Mexico’s drug war rages, military takes over for police

Tijuana’s anticorruption police chief was fired and replaced with an Army officer Monday, following three days of drug-related violence that left 37 people dead.

By Sara Miller Llana | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the December 5, 2008 edition

MEXICO CITY – Even for Mexicans accustomed to ghastly headlines chronicling the country’s drug-related violence, the current level of killing in Tijuana causes consternation. Some 200 people have been slain in one month. Last weekend turned into one of the city’s deadliest: nearly 40 were killed, four of whom were children, and nine of them beheaded.

The immediate answer by city officials was to replace Tijuana’s public security chief with an Army officer, to “ratify the position that it is with the military … that security will be restored in Tijuana,” said Mayor Jorge Ramos.

Putting Army officers, particularly retired ones, in police positions is nothing new in Mexico. But as President Felipe Calderón has declared war on drug traffickers, dispatching troops across the country, the cooperation between the military and local law enforcement is at new highs. And responses like the one in Tijuana are a logical – albeit controversial – evolution as the military rotates troops in and out of affected towns and cities across the country.