Docudharma Times Friday January 16

Chesley B. Sullenberger

You Are The Man

All 155 Escape Jet’s Plunge Into Hudson



By ROBERT D. McFADDEN

Published: January 15, 2009

A US Airways jetliner with 155 people aboard lost power in both engines, possibly from striking birds, after taking off from La Guardia Airport on Thursday afternoon. The pilot ditched in the icy Hudson River and all on board were rescued by a flotilla of converging ferries and emergency boats, the authorities said.

What might have been a catastrophe in New York – one that evoked the feel if not the scale of the Sept. 11 attack – was averted by a pilot’s quick thinking and deft maneuvers, and by the nearness of rescue boats, a combination that witnesses and officials called miraculous.

Japan’s Outcasts Still Wait for Society’s Embrace



By NORIMITSU ONISHI

Published: January 15, 2009

KYOTO, Japan – For Japan, the crowning of Hiromu Nonaka as its top leader would have been as significant as America’s election of its first black president.

Despite being the descendant of a feudal class of outcasts, who are known as buraku and still face social discrimination, Mr. Nonaka had dexterously occupied top posts in Japan’s governing party and served as the government’s No. 2 official. The next logical step, by 2001, was to become prime minister. Allies urged him on.

But not everyone inside the party was ready for a leader of buraku origin. At least one, Taro Aso, Japan’s current prime minister, made his views clear to his closest associates in a closed-door meeting in 2001.

“Are we really going to let those people take over the leadership of Japan?” Mr. Aso said, according to Hisaoki Kamei, a politician who attended the meeting.

USA

Bank of America gets $20 billion more from U.S.

The federal government also agrees to share losses on $118 billion of the company’s assets.



Reporting from Washington and New York — Months after the worst of the financial crisis seemed to have passed, fears of debilitating losses for the nation’s banks returned to the forefront Thursday on Wall Street and in Washington.

The federal government said late Thursday night that it had agreed to invest an additional $20 billion in Bank of America Corp. and to share losses on $118 billion of the company’s assets.

The announcement came after a Senate vote gave President-elect Barack Obama access to the second half of the government’s $700-billion financial rescue fund.

Earlier in the day, traders pounded financial stocks on growing worries about the sector and on market rumors that Citigroup Inc. or Bank of America — or both — could even be nationalized.

Democrats unveil stimulus plan, but warn it won’t do job



By Kevin G. Hall and David Lightman | McClatchy Newspaper

WASHINGTON – Democrats in the House of Representatives unveiled their economic stimulus plan on Thursday, proposing $275 billion in tax cuts and credits to jump-start the economy and $550 billion in spending for clean energy, road construction, social welfare programs and emergency assistance to states.

Thursday’s rollout was the first step in what’s sure to be a lively debate in the weeks ahead over the proposed $825 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill of 2009, the largest stimulus measure ever.

Middle East

UAE in line to become first Arab country with nuclear power



Ewen MacAskill in Washington

The Guardian, Friday 16 January 2009

The United Arab Emirates took a step yesterday towards becoming the first Arab country to acquire a nuclear capability, a move that could prompt other states to seek to join the club and alter the balance of power in the region.

The Gulf state said it was seeking a nuclear programme for energy, not to produce an atomic weapon. But other Arab countries, if they built reactors, may be more likely to switch from civilian to military use.

The UAE’s embassy in Washington said yesterday that Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, was scheduled to sign a nuclear co-operation pact with her UAE counterpart, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayid al-Nahyan, at the state department.

Kim Sengupta: Claims that Israel is using illegal bombs won’t go away



Friday, 16 January 2009

The UN’s accusation that Israel used white phosphorus shells in its attack on its headquarters in Gaza was the first direct charge by an international body and, in effect, accuses the Israeli government of lying over its repeated declaration that its forces adhere to international laws in the use of arms.

The attack on the UN headquarters in Gaza City has been internationally condemned. Any proof that white phosphorus shells were used would add to the call for Israel’s military forces to be charged with war crimes.

Chris Gunness, a spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), claimed within hours of the attack that three such shells were responsible for injuries to three of its employees.

Europe

The thinking man’s oligarch with his eye on a British institution

Billionaire bidding for ‘Evening Standard’ has blazed a trail for press freedom in Russia

By Shaun Walker in Moscow and Andy McSmith

Friday, 16 January 2009

Negotiations that would turn a Russian billionaire into a British newspaper owner stalled last night, as the parent company of the Evening Standard reacted angrily to leaks about the potential sale of the title. Alexander Lebedev, a Russian oligarch and ally of former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, is seeking to buy a majority shareholding in the loss-making London paper. But its owner, Associated Newspapers, which also owns the Daily Mail, is holding out for guarantees about its future.

It is understood that the Standard’s proprietor, Lord Rothermere, wants reassurances that the potential new owner sees the paper as a long-term investment. The Standard reportedly loses up to £25m a year, and it is thought that Mr Lebedev wants it for the prestige and political influence that newspaper ownership can confer.

Marc Dutroux house of horrors to be razed

From The Times

January 16, 2009

Roger Boyes in Berlin

Belgium is set to bulldoze its house of horror – the grim place where the paedophile killer Marc Dutroux imprisoned five of his victims.

The town council of Charleroi wants to wipe out the stigma of crimes committed over a decade ago – but it has provoked protests from the parents of some of the children held in Dutroux’s improvised dungeon.

It has also stirred again the debate about what to do with properties that not even the most imaginative estate agent could promote.

“I want this house kept intact,” says Jean-Denis Lejeune, father of one of the abused and murdered girls. “It has to be there to show how devilish Dutroux was, how the girls were kept prisoner and how incredible it was that the police failed to find this hiding place.”

Asia

Chinese women ‘want more babies’

The authorities in China say they have found that most Chinese women would like to have more than one child.

The BBC

Family-planning officials say their research indicates that 70% of women want to have two babies or more.

Chinese couples who ignore China’s strict one-child policy must pay fines and often face discrimination at work.

The authorities say the policy, which will not be relaxed, has prevented hundreds of millions of births and has helped to make people wealthier.

The research was conducted in 2006 but has only been released now.

China has the world’s biggest population, of more than 1.3 billion people, and has restricted most families to one child since the late 1970s.

Little emperors

The China Daily reported the survey results, which showed parents would like a son and a daughter, at least.

“Our research shows that 70.7 percent of women would like to have two or more babies,” the China Daily quoted Jiang Fan, vice-minister of the National Family Planning Commission, as saying.

Miliband begins key Pakistan trip>

UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband has arrived in Islamabad on a two-day visit as part of international efforts to diffuse India-Pakistan tension.

The BBC

Relations between the South Asian neighbours have been under severe strain since November’s Mumbai attacks.

More than 170 people died in the attacks, which India has blamed on Pakistan-based militants.

On Thursday, Mr Miliband visited Mumbai where he urged Islamabad to show “zero tolerance” towards militant groups.

Mr Miliband is expected to hold talks with Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi.

He is also due to meet President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and army chief Gen Ashfaq Kayani before flying out on Saturday, Pakistani officials say.

Africa

War crimes charges rattle Sudan

The World Court could soon issue an arrest warrant for President Bashir on charges of genocide.

By Heba Aly | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the January 16, 2009 edition

KHARTOUM, SUDAN – The arrest late Wednesday night of veteran Sudanese opposition leader Hassan al-Turabi, days after he called on Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir to turn himself in to face war crimes charges, is an indication of what may lie ahead in the capital, Khartoum.

The mood here has been growing increasingly tense since July, when the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) sought an arrest warrant for Mr. Bashir on charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity for his role in the Darfur conflict, which has killed up to 300,000 people and displaced close to 3 million others, according to United Nations estimates.

People here have been bracing themselves for a number of possible outcomes if the court decides to grant the warrant, as expected, in late January or February. “Anything is possible,” as one Western diplomat put it.

Among the most pressing concerns is that an indictment of the notoriously volatile country’s sitting president could worsen the war in the troubled Darfur region and jeopardize the tenuous peace between Sudan’s Arab-dominated north and its Christian and animist south.

Mugabe ‘to hold talks with rival’



By Donna Bryson, AP  

Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader today said he is to meet with President Robert Mugabe in the next week to try to resolve their crippled country’s political impasse.

Morgan Tsvangirai that he hoped for results despite the Mugabe regime’s beating and detention of opposition supporters and attempts to violate a power-sharing deal that has been stalled since September.

Tsvangirai said his Movement for Democratic Change was committed to the deal, which calls for him to take the new post of prime minister and the 84-year-old Mugabe, in power since independence in 1980, to remain president.