Docudharma Times Tuesday June 16

Logging off – must keep phone line open – will update asap #Iranelection

From Persian Kiwi Twitter

Iran Reports 7 Deaths in Mass Protest Against Vote Result



By NAZILA FATHI and MICHAEL SLACKMAN

Published: June 16, 2009



TEHRAN – Less than 24 hours after the largest demonstrations here since the 1979 revolution, Iranian state radio reported Tuesday that seven people were killed in clashes overnight, ramping up tensions after days of unprecedented protests which have forced a formal review of Friday’s disputed election.

As dawn broke over this tense and divided nation, anticipation grew over what would come next, whether calls for a nationwide general strike and more protests would play out across the country, or if emotions would begin to cool. But, in defiance of the protests, which have undermined his legitimacy around the world, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad flew to a regional summit in Russia.

The millions who can’t go home

Refugees and internally displaced people are desperately vulnerable and must be a priority. Remember them on 20 June



António Guterres

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 16 June 2009 08.30 BST

There are at least 42 million victims of conflict and persecution worldwide living as refugees or uprooted within their own countries, many of them for years on end.

Among them are nearly six million refugees who have been in exile, mostly in camps, for five years or longer in what humanitarians call “protracted refugee situations”. But these interminable situations do not include the millions more uprooted people who are displaced within their own countries and who far outnumber the world’s refugees. Many of them have also been unable to return home, sometimes for decades.

Although international law distinguishes between refugees and the internally displaced, such distinctions are absurd to those who have been forced from their homes and who have lost everything. Uprooted people are equally deserving of help whether they have crossed an international border or not. That is why the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, is working with other UN agencies to provide the internally displaced with the help they need, just as we do for refugees. But we have a long way to go.

USA

Calif. Aid Request Spurned By U.S.

Officials Push State To Repair Budget

By David Cho, Brady Dennis and Karl Vick

Washington Post Staff Writers

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

The Obama administration has turned back pleas for emergency aid from one of the biggest remaining threats to the economy — the state of California.

Top state officials have gone hat in hand to the administration, armed with dire warnings of a fast-approaching “fiscal meltdown” caused by a budget shortfall. Concern has grown inside the White House in recent weeks as California’s fiscal condition has worsened, leading to high-level administration meetings. But federal officials are worried that a bailout of California would set off a cascade of demands from other states.

With an economy larger than Canada’s or Brazil’s, the state is too big to fail, California officials urge.

Obama to propose strict new regulation of financial industry

The plan would give the government new powers to seize key companies whose failure jeopardizes the financial system, as well as creation of a watchdog agency to look out for consumers’ interests.

By Jim Puzzanghera

June 16, 2009

Reporting from Washington — The Obama administration this week will propose the most significant new regulation of the financial industry since the Great Depression, including a new watchdog agency to look out for consumers’ interests.

Under the plan, expected to be released Wednesday, the government would have new powers to seize key companies — such as insurance giant American International Group Inc. — whose failure jeopardizes the financial system. Currently, the government’s authority to seize companies is mostly limited to banks.

But critics say the easing of the financial crisis that gripped the country last year appears to have reduced the momentum for some of the most far-reaching proposals, such as merging several banking regulatory agencies.

Asia

Japan ‘may be over worst of recession’

Upbeat assessment from central bank that economy ‘has begun to stop worsening’ fails to lift markets

Justin McCurry in Tokyo

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 16 June 2009 09.20 BST

Japan may be over the worst of the recession, the country’s central bank said today, after rising exports and production fuelled optimism that the world’s second biggest economy could return to growth during the current quarter.

The Bank of Japan raised its assessment of the economy for the second month in a row, but warned that it was too early to wind down extraordinary measures to support lenders and ease corporate debt.

The BoJ, which kept interest rates at just 0.1% after a two-day meeting, said the economy had “begun to stop worsening” and expected to see more signs that it is levelling out in the coming months.

“Japan’s economic conditions, after deteriorating significantly, have begun to stop worsening,” the bank said.

Pakistan orders army to target Taliban leader after bombing

US has $5m bounty on head of militant dubbed ‘root cause of all evils’

By Omar Waraich in Islamabad and Andrew Buncombe

Tuesday, 16 June 2009

Baitullah Mehsud, a one time body-builder who has emerged as the deadliest and most feared militant leader in Pakistan, is the focus of a major new military operation in the mountainous wilds of Waziristan – also believed to be the hiding place of Osama bin Laden.

Officials say the army is set to launch a “fully fledged” operation against the Taliban leader in what represents a dramatic expansion of an ongoing effort against militants who have seized parts of the country and set in place a wave of suicide attacks. Already the army has been carrying out softening up operations in areas neighbouring Waziristan; in the coming days it is anticipated it will announce the main assault is underway.

Europe

Climate change divides the Alps down the middle

Global warming is already causing flooding in the north and water shortages in south, report says

By Michael Day in Milan

Tuesday, 16 June 2009

The dramatic effect of climate change on the Alps comes into focus as never before this week with the publication of a major report which reveals that the mountain range is rapidly dividing into two contrasting climatic zones, each posing new problems.

The Convention on the Protection of the Alps is a statutory EU body set up in 1991 and its magisterial second report, published tomorrow, which has been seen by The Independent, reveals that the northern ranges of the Alps are suffering ever more serious flooding while the parched southern mountains see less and less snow.

According to the report, precipitation in the south-east of the region has fallen nearly 10 per cent in the past 100 years while rain and snowfall in the north-west ranges has increased by the same amount over this time.

“Predictions that the European climate is dividing into two are becoming all too real,” said Marco Onida, secretary general of the Convention, who will present the report at the organisation’s headquarters in Bolzano, Italy, tomorrow, in the presence of EU officials and national representatives. “The result will be havoc for the Alps and the communities and wildlife that rely on area.”

For Gitmo Uighurs, new life is no walk on the beach

The former detainees, including Uighurs released to Albania, say they are eager to put “terrorist” label behind them.

By a Staff writer

from the June 15, 2009 edition

“Uighurs in Paradise” is the headline atop one of the many stories published today chronicling the first day of freedom for a group of four Uighurs released from Guantánamo to Bermuda.

There have also been tales of the guava juice-sipping lifestyle that awaits several Uighur prisoners who are expected to be resettled soon in the Pacific island republic of Palau.

Much of the news coverage has focused on the fears of local residents: How can someone locked in Guantánamo be declared safe? Are they Al Qaeda? What’s a Uighur, anyway?

These are the same questions asked in 2006 when a group of five Uighurs from Guantánamo were released after a US federal court found their detention to be illegal.

Although China considers the Uighurs to be domestic terrorists (many, in fact, want their own Muslim homeland) their time in Guantánamo appears owed more to bad timing and poor luck than geopolitical considerations.

WRONG TIME, WRONG PLACE

The men had fled their home province of Xinjiang, China, and were near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in 2001 when the US bombing campaign began. The Uighurs have contended their time in Guantánamo was the result of overly zealous bounty hunters.

Regardless, the men have long been declared innocent of wrong-doing, yet few countries were willing to risk angering China by accepting them.

Africa

From corporate America to the Horn of Africa, money makes the world go around

From The Times

June 16, 2009

Tristan McConnell

The dusty, potholed streets of Hargeysa in Somaliland are filled with battered cars and ambling pedestrians. The tangled birds’ nests of wires that cling to every telegraph pole are testament to a boom in telephony, informal stalls line the roads, selling imported goods and Ethiopia-grown khat, a plant chewed as a stimulant – and behind bricks of local currency sit the money changers.

It is a long way from Western Union’s pristine headquarters in Colorado or Moneygram’s in Minnesota, but not quite a different world. Here, in a perhaps unlikely northwestern corner of Somalia, is the home of a multimillion-dollar financial services company. One, indeed, that almost single-handedly keeps the East African country afloat.

Dahabshiil’s office in Hargeysa has the relaxed charm of many a family-run African business. As I arrived, Mohamed Saïd Duale, Dahabshiil’s founder and chairman, shuffled by in his sandals, a length of printed material wrapped around his waist and a short, traditional walking stick tucked under his arm. He made his way to a private office on the roof, where he sat cross-legged on the floor in front of a computer.

Congo’s Bemba to stand ICC trial

Congolese ex-Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba will face five counts of war crimes, the International Criminal Court has ruled.

The BBC  Tuesday, 16 June 2009

The charges relate to the actions of his troops in the neighbouring Central African Republic in 2002 and 2003.

But his lawyers are appealing, saying the militia was not under his command once they had crossed the border.

Mr Bemba led a rebel movement during DR Congo’s long civil war but became vice-president under a peace deal.

He is the most high-profile of four Congolese warlords facing trial at the ICC.

A pre-trial panel of judges “found that there is sufficient evidence to establish substantial grounds to believe that Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo is criminally responsible” for murders, rapes and pillaging, said a statement from the ICC.

He is to face trial on three counts of war crimes and two of crimes against humanity.

Middle East

By Haaretz Service

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told CBS in an interview released on Tuesday that he has opened the door to peace by declaring Israel’s readiness to see a Palestinian state created alongside a Jewish state.

“I’m disappointed because I took a step, not an easy step,” the prime minister said when asked whether he was disappointed by the negative Arab response to the foreign policy address which he delivered on Sunday. “And I said, ‘Here’s what we are prepared to do for peace. We’re prepared to have a Palestinian state next to a Jewish state.'”

“I think this is an equitable formula for peace. It’s one that enjoys enormous unity in the in the Israeli public and I think among Israel’s friends and supporters abroad and the supporters of peace abroad,” he said.

“So, yes, I supposed I’d like a better response. And maybe it’ll sink in over time. But I think I’ve opened the door for peace. And I hope that the Palestinians and the Arab world responds to it.”

3 foreign hostages found dead in Yemen

Shiite Muslim rebels deny kidnapping the two German nurses and South Korean teacher. They were among nine foreigners, including three children, taken captive Friday.

By Jeffrey Fleishman

June 16, 2009

Reporting from Cairo — The bodies of at least three foreign captives, including two German nurses and a South Korean teacher, were found in a mountainous haven for rebels and Islamic militants in northwestern Yemen, the official government news agency said Monday.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the women’s slayings, but Yemeni officials had blamed the kidnappings on a Shiite Muslim sect seeking to overthrow the majority Sunni government. The group denied any role in the attack, and there were suggestions that Al Qaeda militants might have been involved. Kidnappings are common in Yemen, but the killing of hostages has been rare.

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