Docudharma Times Thursday April 2

 So, the Republican’s Gave

The U.S. A Budget

Was It Ground Hog Day Or

Fools Gold

China Vies to Be World’s Leader in Electric Cars



By KEITH BRADSHER

Published: April 1, 2009

TIANJIN, China – Chinese leaders have adopted a plan aimed at turning the country into one of the leading producers of hybrid and all-electric vehicles within three years, and making it the world leader in electric cars and buses after that.

The goal, which radiates from the very top of the Chinese government, suggests that Detroit’s Big Three, already struggling to stay alive, will face even stiffer foreign competition on the next field of automotive technology than they do today.

“China is well positioned to lead in this,” said David Tulauskas, director of China government policy at General Motors.

USA

U.S. Urges GM to Consider Bankruptcy

Government Plan to Split Ailing Brands From Stronger Ones Is an Option, Firm Says

By Peter Whoriskey

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, April 2, 2009; Page A14

The Obama administration’s auto task force has pressed General Motors to consider a form of bankruptcy that would split the company in two, with one entity containing the unprofitable units and the other in essence becoming the new GM consisting of the company’s more successful brands, people familiar with the matter say.

The company prefers not to ever enter bankruptcy because the mere word would stir fear among consumers and further damage sales. But GM will be forced to do so if it fails to win concessions from its bondholders, union and dealers within 60 days. Then bankruptcy court would compel GM stakeholders to make sacrifices, rehabilitating the company by clearing away billions of dollars of debts from its balance sheet.

“They’re all options. They’re all being studied,” Kent Kresa, GM’s new chairman, said in an interview. “The preferred [option] is to do it outside of bankruptcy.”

Many Medicare patients end up back at hospital

Study: 1 in 5 returns within 1 month, costing system billions of dollars year

Associated Press

NEW YORK – One in five Medicare patients end up back in the hospital within a month of discharge, a large study found, and that practice costs billions of dollars a year.

The findings suggest patients aren’t told enough about how to take care of themselves and stay healthy before they go home, the researchers said. A few simple things – like making a doctor’s appointment for departing patients – can help, they said.

The study found that a surprising half of the non-surgery patients who returned within a month hadn’t even seen a doctor between hospital stays.

Middle East

Iraq disbands Sunni militia that helped defeat insurgents

• Gamble may renew sectarian tensions

• Jobs offered in army and police amid cash fears

Martin Chulov in Baghdad

The Guardian, Thursday 2 April 2009

Iraq took a security gamble yesterday when it disbanded the Sunni militias that helped turn the tide against al-Qaida in Mesopotamia and other insurgent groups.

One hundred thousand members of the Awakening Councils will now be given jobs at the interior ministry, but many fear the plan will renew sectarian tension and spark disaffection among those not given security roles.

There are also fears that rapidly falling revenues from an oil-dependent economy will leave the government unable to honour its commitment to create such a large number of new positions.

Widespread salary delays for the past three months have heightened suspicions of a budget shortfall.

Palestinian orchestra leader deported after death threats

By Ben Lynfield  

Thursday, 2 April 2009

The head of a Palestinian youth orchestra who sparked outrage by performing a concert for Holocaust survivers in Israel has been deported from the West Bank because security forces felt “her life to be in danger”.

Israeli-Arab Wafa Younis has been crossing into the Palestinian territories to give music lessons in the Jenin Refugee Camp for the past six years and set up the Strings of Freedom orchestra about three years ago. But when she tried to enter the camp on Monday, armed men in plain clothes took her into custody.

Colonel Raid Assaida, the commander of Palestinian security forces in Jenin, said there had been threats against Ms Younis’s life by the parents of some of her music students, angry about their children playing in front of Holocaust survivors. “I warned her not to enter the Jenin area at all for the time being in order to keep her safety,” Col Assaida said.

Europe  

Tough talk at G20 as the EU awkward squad demand rapid results

Sarkozy and Merkel agree on tighter bank regulation and a crackdown on tax havens but dig in heels on fiscal stimulus

Ian Black and Patrick Wintour

The Guardian, Thursday 2 April 2009

Barack Obama and Gordon Brown may well be confident about closing a deal on global financial reform at the G20 summittoday. But last night Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel stuck firmly to their European alliance and talked tough about their bottom lines.

Just hours after the US president and the British prime minister did an upbeat double act in the gilded splendour of the Foreign Office’s Locarno room, the Franco-German couple made clear they were speaking “with one voice” and holding out for the most rigorous agreement they could get – with a little dig at the man the world is watching most closely.

“I trust Mr Obama, but we are talking about today and tomorrow,” Sarkozy told a separate bilateral press conference that felt like an opposition event. “Decisions need to be taken now. This is not the time for fancy speeches.”

Protests rock London as leaders open G20 meetings

Violent protests on the eve of the G20 summit in London overshadowed the talks beginning on Thursday as campaigners vandalized banks and clashed with heavily armed riot police.

POLITICS | 02.04.2009

Police said that 63 protestors had been arrested and several officers were injured in the clashes. One fatality was reported in the wake of the demonstrations, but the cause was not immediately clear. Some 4,000 protestors converged with chants of “hang a banker” and “storm the banks” on the Bank of England and later vandalized the London headquarters of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). Only a minority of the demonstrators were involved in the confrontation with police, reporters said.

Authorities reported that a man was found unconscious in the street Wednesday evening by a person who alerted police. The man was not breathing when two officers arrived at the scene, and they were pelted with bottles while attempting artificial resuscitation. Medics said that the man died while being transported to a hospital, according to British media.

A handful of protestors, their faces masked by bandanas, managed to enter the RBS building and gain access to the roof.

Asia

Taliban in policy shift on beards and burqas

Negotiations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai reveal new pragmatism ahead of US offensive

By Kim Sengupta and Jerome Starkey in Kabul

 Thursday, 2 April 2009

The Taliban, whose extreme interpretation of Sharia law and its harsh punishments made Afghanistan one of world’s most repressive and reviled regimes, have agreed to soften their position on such things as beards and burqas as part of a trade-off in negotiations with the Afghan government.

Afghanistan is increasingly the focus of international diplomatic attention following a major international conference in The Hague this week. It will surface on the fringes of the G20 summit and dominate this week’s Nato meeting in Strasbourg. Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, floated the idea of talking to “moderate” Taliban at the Hague conference, saying that those who gave up “extremism” would be granted an “honourable form of reconciliation”.

Publicly, a Taliban spokesman yesterday rejected the American offer, describing it as “a lunatic idea”.

BJP leader Jaswant Singh claims election payouts ‘were charity, not bribes’

From The Times

April 2, 2009

 Jeremy Page in Delhi and Rhys Blakely in Mumbai

One of the top leaders of India’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been caught on camera doling out cash to voters, just over two weeks before the start of India’s month-long parliamentary elections.

Jaswant Singh, a former Defence, Finance and Foreign Minister in BJP governments, was shown on several television channels yesterday handing out banknotes during a campaign rally in his son’s constituency in the state of Rajasthan.

The scandal threw a fresh spotlight on the rot at the core of Indian politics, just a week after a survey showed that at least 63 candidates in the election have criminal backgrounds – including 11 charged with murder.

Also caught in the video footage was Kailash Meghwal, another former minister and current national vice-president of the BJP, which was ousted from power at the last election in 2004 by a coalition led by the Congress Party.

Latin America

As Mexico Battles Cartels, The Army Becomes the Law

Retired Soldiers Tapped to Run Police Forces

By Steve Fainaru and William Booth

Washington Post Foreign Service

Thursday, April 2, 2009; Page A01

PETATLAN, Mexico — President Felipe Calderón is rapidly escalating the Mexican army’s role in the war against drug traffickers, deploying nearly 50 percent of its combat-ready troops along the U.S.-Mexico border and throughout the country, while retired army officers take command of local police forces and the military supplies civilian authorities with automatic weapons and grenades.

U.S. and Mexican officials describe the drug cartels as a widening narco-insurgency. The four major drug states average a total of 12 murders a day, characterized by ambushes, gun battles, executions and decapitated bodies left by the side of the road. In the villages and cities where the traffickers hold sway, daily life now takes place against a martial backdrop of round-the-clock patrols, pre-dawn raids and roadblocks manned by masked young soldiers.

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