Docudharma Times Thursday June 25

He apologizes to everyone including the ‘moral people of the nation.’

To Bad

Mark Sanford

Doesn’t Have

Any Of Those

Limits on Emissions Have Wide Support



By Steven Mufson and Jennifer Agiesta

Washington Post Staff Writers

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Three-quarters of Americans think the federal government should regulate the release into the atmosphere of greenhouse gases from power plants, cars and factories to reduce global warming, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, with substantial majority support from Democrats, Republicans and independents.

But fewer Americans — 52 percent — support a cap-and-trade approach to limiting greenhouse gas emissions similar to the one the House may vote on as early as tomorrow. That is slightly less support than cap and trade enjoyed in a late July 2008 poll. Forty-two percent of those surveyed this month oppose such a program.

Tehran ‘like a war zone’ as ayatollah refuses to back down on election

• Reports militia drafted in and paid to beat protesters

• Ministers threaten to cut diplomatic ties with UK

Mark Tran, Robert Tait and agencies in Tehran

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 25 June 2009 06.02 BST

Bloody clashes broke out in Tehran yesterday as Iran’s supreme leader said he would not yield to pressure over the disputed election. The renewed confrontation took place in Baharestan Square, near parliament, where hundreds of protesters faced off against several thousand riot police and other security personnel.

Witnesses likened the scene to a war zone, with helicopters hovering overhead, many arrests and the police beating demonstrators.

One woman told CNN that hundreds of unidentified men armed with clubs had emerged from a mosque to confront the protesters.

“They beat a woman so savagely that she was drenched in blood and her husband fainted. They were beating people like hell. It was a massacre,” she said.

USA

GOP to press Sotomayor on gun rights

Republicans say they will question the Supreme Court nominee on the divisive issue at her confirmation hearings in hopes of weakening her support among moderate Democrats.

By James Oliphant and David G. Savage

June 25, 2009

Reporting from Washington — Senate Republicans said Wednesday they would press Judge Sonia Sotomayor on gun rights, a politically divisive issue that they hope could weaken Democratic support for the Supreme Court nominee.

Though Republicans are a pronounced minority in both the House and Senate, they have used the gun issue to their advantage to divert the legislative agenda, forcing Democrats from moderate and conservative states to take politically risky votes on gun provisions.

Sotomayor’s judicial record appears to provide the GOP with another opportunity to bring the issue to light. Since the Supreme Court decided in a landmark case last year that restrictive laws in Washington, D.C. — a federal entity — infringed on a constitutionally protected right to own a handgun, the debate has shifted to whether that ruling also affected handgun control laws in individual states.

Steve Jobs’s health: A personal or public matter?

Many investors see the innovative Apple CEO as fundamental to the company’s success. If he’s unwell, they think they should be told.

By Michael B. Farrell | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the June 24, 2009 edition

SAN FRANCISCO – Reports this week of Steve Jobs’s liver transplant in a Tennessee hospital raised questions about just how much information US corporations are obliged to release about their top executives.

Do investors, analysts, and Apple employees, for that matter, have the right to know the private details of Jobs’s health, or is prying into the medical lives of CEOs unwarranted?

Jobs’s health has been the subject of dogged curiosity among Silicon Valley insiders, technology reporters, and bloggers since he underwent surgery to treat pancreatic cancer in 2004. The interest grew even more intense when he began showing signs of weight loss and announced in January that he was taking a leave of absence from the Cupertino, Calif., company because of an undisclosed health issue.

Apple is known for being tight-lipped, but it has come under criticism from shareholders for not being more transparent about the health of its visionary head. Jobs is credited with turning the company around and for its successes with the iPod, the iPhone, and iTunes.

Asia

Eight years and counting …

Osama bin Laden is believed to be in mountains on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. But is he any nearer to being captured?

Julian Borger and Declan Walsh

The Guardian, Thursday 25 June 2009

He is still alive. That is the one thing that can be said about Osama bin Laden these days with any degree of certainty. At least, he was still alive at the beginning of the month, when an audio tape was delivered to al-Jazeera bearing words in a familiar voice.

The tape, aired by al-Jazeera on 3 June, is genuine, according to British and US intelligence, and his references to recent events are proof that it is contemporary. It is a muttered sermon, mainly devoted to decrying Barack Obama on the day the new US president arrived in Saudi Arabia on the start of a Middle East tour – to sow “seeds of hatred”, Bin Laden claimed.

But that is where the certainty ends, the facts peter out and the guesswork begins. We do not know what he looks like these days. His last 10 messages have been audio only. There has been no video of him since September 2007, and even that raised questions over exactly when it had been made.

Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo formally arrested

From The Times

June 25, 2009

Jane Macartney in Beijing

China’s most prominent dissident has been arrested formally after more than six months in detention at a secret location near Beijing on charges that could bring a lengthy prison term.

Liu Xiaobo had been held virtually incommunicado under “residential surveillance”, being allowed only two visits from his wife, since he was taken from his Beijing home on December 8 – a day before publication of a document that he co-authored calling for democracy in China.

Middle East

Now Mousavi’s family feels force of crackdown

Fears grow that opposition leader’s outspoken wife is among the hundreds of protesters who have been detained By Kim Sengupta

Thursday, 25 June 2009

There were fears last night that the wife of Iran’s opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi had been arrested after a defiant statement that protesters should not buckle despite being in a situation she likened to martial law.

Zahra Rahnavard, who came to prominence by campaigning alongside her husband (a double act unprecedented in Iranian politics), criticised the presence of armed forces in the street and insisted that the opposition had a constitutional right to hold demonstrations. The regime should not suppress it “as if martial law had been imposed”, she said.

In the message posted on her husband’s website, she also demanded the immediate release of people detained since the election. But before the day was out, there were reports – which could not be confirmed because of the media clampdown – that she herself had been detained.

Security fears over US pullout as market bomb kills more than 60 in Baghdad



From The Times

June 25, 2009

Alice Fordham in Baghdad



A bomb blast ripped through a crowded market in Baghdad last night, killing more than 60 people amid growing fears that sectarian violence may once more engulf Iraq as US forces prepare to withdraw.

The blast was the latest in a spate of incidents in recent days and came days after a car bomb targeting a Shia mosque in Taza near the northern city of Kirkuk killed more than 70 people. It was the bloodiest attack in Iraq in 16 months.

The violence is thought to be related to the June 30 deadline for American troops to withdraw from Iraqi cities. It has led to increasing doubts about how well equipped and trained local forces are to maintain security.

Yesterday’s attack was in a bird market in the Shia neighbourhood of Sadr City at 7.30pm. It is believed that a bomb was hidden among fruit and vegetables in a motorised rickshaw, Interior Ministry officials said. About 120 people were injured.

Africa

Exclusive: The return of blood diamonds

Six years ago, the world came together to stop a trade in gems that was fuelling civil war in Africa. Now the architect of the deal has quit, warning that jewels ‘have blood all over them’ again

By Daniel Howden, Africa Correspondent

Thursday, 25 June 2009

The leading architect of the international system to stop the trade in blood diamonds has warned that the safety net is close to collapse with governments and the industry failing to act against gross violations.Ian Smillie, the “grandfather” of the landmark Kimberley Process, that was agreed in response to appalling civil wars in Africa fuelled by illegal gems, said he had “stomped out” on his scheme as it was no longer working.

“It isn’t regulating the rough diamond trade,” the Canadian expert said yesterday. “It is in danger of becoming irrelevant and it’s letting all manner of crooks off the hook.”

The Kimberley safeguards came into effect in 2003 and helped restore consumer confidence in precious stones. Today they regulate 99.98 per cent of the rough diamond trade, but if the process loses credibility, experts say criminals will re-enter the trade with conflict diamonds quickly reappearing in shops in London, Paris and New York.

Somalia amputations carried out

Hardline Islamists in Somalia have carried out double amputations on four men for stealing phones and guns.

 

They have each had a hand and foot cut off after being convicted by a Sharia court in the capital earlier this week.

More then 300 people, mainly women and children, watched as masked men cut off their limbs with a machete.

The four men reportedly admitted to the robberies, but were not represented by a lawyer and were not allowed to appeal against their sentence.

The al-Shabab group, which controls much of southern Somalia, has carried out amputations, floggings and an execution in the southern port of Kismayo but such punishments are rare in the capital.

Europe

Silvio Berlusconi: court orders villa party pictures seized

An Italian court has ruled that a collection of 5,000 photos which are said to show guests cavorting at Silvio Berlusconi’s lavish villa in Sardinia should be confiscated for violating privacy laws.

By Nick Squires in Rome

Published: 7:00AM BST 25 Jun 2009

The pictures, some of which reportedly show a bizarre mock “wedding” between the Italian prime minister and a young woman, were allegedly taken by a freelance photographer between 2006 and early 2009.

Spain’s El Pais newspaper has already published seven of the photos, showing topless women taking outdoor showers and lying on sun loungers, and a former Czech prime minister, Mirek Topolanek, standing naked beside a swimming pool.

Mr Berlusconi’s lawyers successfully argued to a court in Tempio Pausania, northern Sardinia, that the images, which were taken with a long-range lens, were an invasion of the prime minister’s privacy.

The court’s decision bolstered Mr Berlusconi’s attempts to have the photographs banned from publication in Italy.

But they may prove hard for his lawyers to seize – the photographer, Antonello Zappadu, claims he has sold them all to a photo agency in Colombia.

Croatia’s bid to join the EU suffers a blow

The European Union has cancelled a round of accession talks with Croatia after it failed to resolve a border row with EU member Slovenia.

EUROPEAN TIES | 25.06.2009

The eleventh hour decision to cancel Friday’s accession talks did not come as a surprise.

The Czech EU presidency postponed the meeting indefinitely after Slovenia and Croatia failed to resolve an 18-year-old dispute over their common border by last week.

“The presidency regrets the fact that despite determined efforts and numerous attempts by the presidency and the European Commission there has been no progress in the accession talks,” the Czech EU presidency said in a statement.

Croatia had hoped to conclude EU entry talks by the end of the year, but that that now looks like an unlikely prospect.

EU member Slovenia has blocked Croatia’s entry talks, arguing that they are prejudicial to the outcome of the two countries’ border dispute, which centers around the coastal town of Piran and access rights to the Adriatic Sea.

Latin America

Peru’s indigenous people win one round over developers

Logging and other activities ruin tribal lands and set off protests that lead to the revocation of laws to further open the Amazon to outsiders. ‘The Indians beat them by a knockout,’ one analyst says

By Chris Kraul

June 25, 2009

Reporting from Yurimaguas, Peru — Peruvian tribal leader Luis Pizango says private investment in his part of the Amazon has brought only misery to him and his people.

Deforestation by loggers ruined tribal hunting grounds. An oil spill in the nearby Corrientes River diminished fishing. A 10,000-acre African palm plantation to produce biofuels displaced dozens of families. And a government plan to build a port facility on the Huallaga River to ease trade with Brazil stands to limit his people’s access to the waterway.The Shawi indigenous people in northeastern Peru have many reasons for bitterness, Pizango, who is apu, or chief, of the group, said last week at a roadblock set up a few miles west of Yurimaguas to protest government policies.

“It’s been a long trajectory of abuse,” Pizango said. “We got tired of it.”

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