Docudharma Times Monday December 22

While  Average Wokers

Lose Their Jobs

Wall Street Executives Get Their Bonus’s  

More Firms Cut Labor Costs Without Layoffs



By MATT RICHTEL

Published: December 21, 2008

Even as layoffs are reaching historic levels, some employers have found an alternative to slashing their work force. They’re nipping and tucking it instead.

A growing number of employers, hoping to avoid or limit layoffs, are introducing four-day workweeks, unpaid vacations and voluntary or enforced furloughs, along with wage freezes, pension cuts and flexible work schedules. These employers are still cutting labor costs, but hanging onto the labor.

And in some cases, workers are even buying in. Witness the unusual suggestion made in early December by the chairman of the faculty senate at Brandeis University, who proposed that the school’s 300 professors and instructors give up 1 percent of their pay.

Toyota to make first loss in 67 years

From Times Online

December 22, 2008

Leo Lewis, Asia Business Correspondent

Profits at Toyota Motor, the Japanese motor giant, are set to dive into the red for the first time since 1941 as exports screech to a halt and margins are hammered by the soaring yen.

Toyota’s full year loss – unprecedented since the company stopped making looms and turned its hand to car making – is expected to reverberate throughout Japan.

Toyota’s president, Katsuaki Watanabe, said today: “The change that has hit the world economy is of a critical scale that comes once in a hundred years.”

It is the second time in less than two months that the carmaker has lowered its profit forecast and emerges as Japan’s Ministry of Finance revealed a 26.7 per cent annual fall in exports had contributed to the country’s first November trade deficit in 28 years, totalling Y223 billion.

USA

Senate openings pose quandaries for governors

Blagojevich isn’t the only one charged with filling a spot: In Delaware, New York and Colorado, governors face political pressure and strategic considerations as they choose among would-be senators.

By Robin Abcarian

December 22, 2008

I’m going to keep this Senate option for me a real possibility, you know, and therefore I can drive a hard bargain. And if I don’t get what I want . . . then I’ll just take the Senate seat myself.”

— Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, as quoted in his federal corruption complaint.

Rod R. Blagojevich may have gotten carried away by the heady opportunity to appoint a United States senator. But he is not the only chief executive of a state to face that exquisite quandary this season. With the elevation of Illinois’ junior senator (Barack Obama) and Delaware’s senior senator (Joe Biden) to the executive branch, plus the Cabinet appointments of senators from New York (Hillary Rodham Clinton) and Colorado (Ken Salazar), four states will be getting new senators untouched by the grinding process of raising millions of dollars and seeking votes.

Secret Tapes Helped Build Graft Cases In Illinois

Hospital CEO Reported Shakedown, Wore Wire

By Carrie Johnson and Kimberly Kindy

Washington Post Staff Writers

Monday, December 22, 2008; Page A01

CHICAGO — The wide-ranging public corruption probe that led to the arrest of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich got its first big break when a grandmother of six walked into a breakfast meeting with shakedown artists wearing an FBI wire.

Pamela Meyer Davis had been trying to win approval from a state health planning board for an expansion of Edward Hospital, the facility she runs in a Chicago suburb, but she realized that the only way to prevail was to retain a politically connected construction company and a specific investment house. Instead of succumbing to those demands, she went to the FBI and U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald in late 2003 and agreed to secretly record conversations about the project.

Middle East

Gaza near to collapse as Israel tightens grip, says bank



Toni O’Loughlin in Jerusalem

The Guardian, Monday 22 December 2008

Israel’s blockade of Gaza is pushing the territory to the brink of collapse and fuelling the growth of a black money market controlled by Hamas, the World Bank warned yesterday.

As tit-for-tat attacks across the Gaza border began to intensify following the end of a six-month truce on Friday, the World Bank said that an acute cash shortage in Gaza was playing into Hamas’s hands. The militant Islamists, who took control of Gaza in June 2007 following violent street clashes with their more secular rival, Fatah, have large stashes of shekels which they have been selling on the black market at a premium because of the cash shortage.

There is also a worry that Hamas, with its dominant militant and bureaucratic control of Gaza, will begin to replace the shekel with US dollars, which are more easily obtained, to smuggle through the tunnels from Egypt in the south.

 Comedy heralds return of cinema to Saudi Arabia



Reuters in Riyadh

The Guardian, Monday 22 December 2008

Cinema has made a low-key return to Saudi Arabia after a three-decade absence, but a sharp reaction by the religious police chief shows efforts to relax Saudi’s strict Islamic laws face tough opposition.

A locally-produced comedy, Menahi, premiered in two cultural centres in Jeddah and Taif this month before mixed-gender audiences, a taboo in Saudi Arabia whose strict Islamic rules ban unrelated men and women from mixing.

Turnout for the movie, produced by billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s media company Rotana, was so big the film had to be played eight times a day over a 10-day period, the organisers said.

Africa

Mugabe unleashes wave of terror with mass abductions



By Daniel Howden in Harare

Monday, 22 December 2008

Fears are mounting in Zimbabwe for the lives of more than 40 opposition officials and human rights activists who have been abducted as part of a renewed crackdown by the regime in Harare. At least two more members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change have disappeared in the past week, along with a freelance investigative reporter.

“The abductions are increasing and it now seems to be happening nationwide,” Nelson Chamisa, an MDC spokesman,said yesterday.

The operation, codenamed Chimumumu according to sources in the army, aims to eliminate political opponents and remove human rights monitors.

With Barack Obama, world has chance to end Robert Mugabe’s grip on Zimbabwe

From The Times

December 22, 2008

Comment: Richard Beeston, Foreign Editor

Zimbabwe may be on its knees economically, while a cholera epidemic claims more than 1,000 lives, but Robert Mugabe’s grip on power is unshaken. To date a dozen countries, including Britain, America and France, have called for his removal, but the 84-year-old ruler has not budged. In a speech to his supporters at the ruling Zanu (PF) annual conference, Mr Mugabe mocked his adversaries. African nations were “not brave enough” to topple him, Britain would never win its battle against him – “Zimbabwe is mine,” he declared.

It is hard to challenge his assertion. Nine months ago Mr Mugabe and his Zanu (PF) thugs used violence and intimidation to reverse the results of an election victory for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The world was suitably outraged. Gordon Brown and Lord Malloch-Brown, the Foreign Office Minister responsible for Africa, pushed for action at the United Nations, confident that quiet diplomacy combined with Zimbabwe’s isolation would bring the regime to its knees. Mr Mugabe had “at most, weeks or months left in office”, they predicte

Europe

Moscow riot police flown in to smash protests against car tarrifs in Vladivostok

From The Times

December 22, 2008

Times Staff

Riot police flown in from Moscow clubbed, kicked and arrested dozens of people in Russia’s Far East yesterday as hundreds across the country demonstrated against an increase in car import tariffs.

Officers held around 200 people – including several reporters – as up to 1,000 demonstrators protested for a second day running in Vladivostok. About 200 others rallied in Moscow in support.

Inflation, rising unemployment and a slide in the rouble have driven discontent and the Kremlin fears the deteriorating economic situation could lead to public unrest.

With domestic production suffering, the Government announced this month higher tariffs on imported cars.

For Italians, past domestic terror still a taboo topic>

Reaction to a recently released documentary on the Red Brigades underscores the difficulty of coming to grips with the violence of the 1970s.

By Anna Momigliano | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the December 22, 2008 edition

MILAN, ITALY – When a documentary on the origins of the infamous Red Brigades terror group was released here recently, many screenings were canceled, following harsh criticism of the film by Minister of Culture Sandro Bondi, who accused the filmmakers of turning terrorists into celebrities.

But last month, at a rare showing of the film, some students in Milan booed when members of the Red Brigades were described as terrorists. “They were freedom fighters!” many shouted.

For investigative journalist Giovanni Fasanella, who helped produce the film, the disparate reactions indicate that Italy hasn’t begun to come to grips with the widespread violence and political turmoil caused by both leftist and right-wing militants during the “years of lead,” from the late 1960s and early 1980s.

Asia

Insecurity drives farm purchases abroad

Wealthy countries seek land in Cambodia, Madagascar, and Brazil

By David Montero | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the December 22, 2008 edition

PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA – The farm fields of this country once fed the legendary civilization of Angkor, the world’s largest empire in the 9th century. Tomorrow they may feed the megacities of the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Qatar.

Reeling from food prices that have doubled on average from a year ago, several Gulf countries are pursuing land deals worth billions of dollars in Cambodia, according to recent statements by Cambodia’s government. Those countries would lease land, grow rice and corn, and then ship it home – potentially saving millions by bypassing world markets.

The race for farmland in Cambodia underscores how countries desperate to boost farming amid an ongoing food crisis are turning to global outsourcing, hoping to grow their own food on land abroad.

Assaulted Mumbai hotels reopen with ceremony

The Taj Mahal and Oberoi resume business less than a month after the terrorist attacks, though entire wings of both remain shuttered.

By Peter Spiegel

December 22, 2008

Reporting from Mumbai, India — With a mix of solemn prayers and Bollywood glitter, India’s financial capital on Sunday took its most symbolic step yet toward a return to normalcy when both of the five-star hotels assaulted by terrorists last month reopened their doors to guests.

With senior government officials in attendance, hotel executives portrayed the quick repair of their facilities as a sign that the city too would quickly rebound. Gunmen attacked the hotels and other sites in Mumbai on Nov. 26, fighting off security forces for nearly three days. The violence left more than 170 people dead.

“I believe that the opening of this hotel will send a message that we can come alive again in a record period of time,” said Ratan Tata, the high-profile chairman of the group that owns the stately Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel, whose famous red dome surrounded by flames has become the iconic image of the attacks. “We can be hurt, but we cannot be knocked down.”

Latin America

Brazil citrus industry threatened by disease

Orange growers have been devastated by the effects of ‘greening,’ which is destructive and incurable. Officials say it’s only a matter of time before it takes a toll on California’s industry.

By Chris Kraul

December 22, 2008

Reporting from Bebedouro, Brazil — By the time orange grower Gabriel Simoes noticed symptoms of the incurable “greening” disease last year, it was too late to do anything about it. Now four of every five trees in his 1,000-acre orchard are dead or dying.

Industry officials say it’s only a matter of time before California’s $1.2-billion citrus industry is threatened by the “mother of all citrus diseases,” which has invaded thousands of acres here in Brazil’s citrus belt with sickening speed.