Docudharma Times Sunday August 23

Swine Flu Campaign Waits on Vaccine  

Only Third of Supply Is Expected for First Round of Vast Effort

By Rob Stein

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Government health officials are mobilizing to launch a massive swine flu vaccination campaign this fall that is unprecedented in its scope — and in the potential for complications.

The campaign aims to vaccinate at least half the country’s population within months. Although more people have been inoculated against diseases such as smallpox and polio over a period of years, the United States has never tried to immunize so many so quickly.

But even as scientists rush to test the vaccine to ensure it is safe and effective, the campaign is lagging. Officials say only about a third as much vaccine as they had been expecting by mid-October is likely to arrive by then, when a new wave of infections could be peaking.

Britons let their hair down for art

Antony Gormley’s project, ‘One & Other,’ features random people on a 30-foot plinth in Trafalgar Square doing whatever they choose for an hour. Charades, semaphores and nakedness have been involved

By Henry Chu

August 23, 2009  

Reporting from London – In most countries, stranding someone on a narrow platform 30 feet off the ground, exposed to the elements, probably would constitute a form of torture.

But in Britain, it’s art.

And thousands of people are vying for a chance to be part of it. Their goal: an hour of fleeting glory atop a patch of prime real estate, an empty pedestal in London’s Trafalgar Square, alongside such illustrious neighbors as Adm. Horatio Nelson on his famous column, King George IV on horseback and the inevitable clumps of tourists below.

Since the art project kicked off last month, hundreds of lucky winners have had their 60 minutes in the sun — or, this being England, the wind and rain — during which they are free to do whatever they want on top of the plinth, as long as it’s legal.

USA

 Clock ticks down on a deadly chemical stockpile

Efforts have been stepped up at the Blue Grass Army Depot to wipe out the last of the U.S. chemical weapons’ stockpile. But disposal isn’t expected to be completed until 2021, well past deadlines.

By Bob Drogin

August 23, 2009

Reporting from Richmond, Ky. – Behind armed guards in bulletproof booths deep in the Kentucky woods, workers have begun pouring the foundations for a $3-billion complex designed to destroy America’s last stockpile of deadly chemical weapons.

The aging arsenal at the Blue Grass Army Depot contains 523 tons of liquid VX and sarin — lethal nerve agents produced during the Cold War — and mustard, a blister agent that caused horrific casualties in World War I.

The Obama administration has pushed to speed up the disposal operation after decades of delay, skyrocketing costs and daunting technical problems.

Urban public schools push for more students

Schools go door-to-door in fight against perceptions, budget cuts

Associated Press

RICHMOND, Va. – Most students try not to think about school during the summer. But a number of them took to the streets on a sweltering August day to talk up public education to people who might normally enroll their children in private or parochial schools.

Clad in T-shirts promoting “The Choice,” about 100 students, parents and administrators went door-to-door on a recent Saturday, asking Richmond homeowners to give their neighborhood schools a second look. Joining them was Virginia’s first lady Anne Holton, a product of city schools.

Middle East

Why Israeli Jew Uri Davis joined Fatah to save Palestine

The first Jewish member of the Revolutionary Council of Fatah talks about a unique political journey

Peter Beaumont

The Observer, Sunday 23 August 2009  

Uri Davis is used to denunciations. A “traitor”, “scum”, “mentally unstable”: those are just some of the condemnations that have been posted in the Israeli blogosphere in recent days. As the first person of Jewish origin to be elected to the Revolutionary Council of the Palestinian Fatah movement, an organisation once dominated by Yasser Arafat, Davis has tapped a deep reserve of Israeli resentment. Some have even called for him to be deported.

He has been here before, not least as the man who first proposed the critique of Israel as an “apartheid state” in the late 1980s. Davis’s involvement in the first UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban in 2001 was condemned by the Anti-Defamation League.

With scuba gear under a burka, French spy Herve Jaubert made his escape from Dubai

  Herve Jaubert, a former French spy, dressed in scuba diving gear and covered up like an Arab woman to flee from threatened torture.

By Richard Spencer in Dubai

Published: 9:00AM BST 23 Aug 2009

On a quiet spring morning, when the Arab villagers were at Friday prayers, Herve Jaubert dragged his rubber dinghy down an empty beach, started the engine, and chugged away to freedom.

As befits a former French naval officer and spy, he had made immaculate preparations for his escape from the United Arab Emirates.

The night before, he claims he had donned wetsuit and scuba diving gear, which had smuggled to him from France in pieces. He dressed himself in women’s clothes, and covered himself with a black abaya, the all-enveloping burka-like robe worn to preserve modesty in the Gulf.

Not a small man, he shuffled awkwardly out of the hotel where he was staying under an assumed name, made his way to the seafront and slipped in.

Europe

The magical mystical tour: Why are the relics of St Thérèse such a holy hit?

Saint Thérèse, or what’s left of her, is about to arrive in Britain for the first time – but is she a holy Roman circus act or an icon for our times? Joanna Moorhead reveals how a long-dead young nun from northern France became a 21st-century superstar

Sunday, 23 August 2009

One afternoon in a few weeks’ time a train will pull into the Eurotunnel terminal at Folkestone, and a hearse containing an unusually ornate coffin will drive carefully on to the platform to meet it. The hearse will then thread its way out on to the motorway before setting off through Kent to a church where a small band of people will be waiting eagerly to pay their respects.

There will be prayers, and maybe a hymn or two, but no tears. The occupant of the coffin, after all, died more than a century ago: she was a young girl from northern France who entered a Carmelite convent at the tender age of 15, before dying nine years later of tuberculosis.

Wildfires out of control near Athens

From Times Online

August 23, 2009

Times Online

Thousands of Athens residents were forced to flee their homes overnight as out-of-control wildfires reached the city’s northern suburbs, destroying scores of homes.

Nearly 400 firefighters struggled to contain the fire that is feared to have damaged or destroyed scores of rural and summer homes as it raged for a third day.

“The situation is tragic. Fires are out of control on many fronts,” greater Athens local governor Yiannis Sgouros said.

A state of emergency was declared in greater Athens, in the worst destruction seen here since massive fires struck southern Greece in 2007 and killed more than 70 people.

After daybreak, planes and helicopters resumed water drops following an eight-hour pause that allowed the wildfire to spread across parts of Mount Penteli and reach suburban homes.

Africa

Christine Grahame: Al-Megrahi is home. And he is innocent

 The release of the so-called Lockerbie bomber was long overdue, for the case against him was politically driven

Sunday, 23 August 2009

I became involved with Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi quite by accident. Like many people I had been suffering from Lockerbie fatigue. For me, and for you, I suppose, life had moved on from that horrendous crime over 20 years ago and the imprisonment of the Libyan murderer. That was that.

At least it was, until I agreed, by chance, to sponsor the showing of a Dutch documentary about the Lockerbie bombing at Parliament. I invited all MSPs and researchers, and indeed the press corps, to see this film. One MSP and one member of the press came, and I really only saw it because I felt obliged to attend. But that film changed my perspective.

Banking shake-up in Nigeria sets off jitters  

LAGOS (AFP)

by Joel Olatunde Agoi – Sun Aug 23

Panic withdrawals by depositors and a thick cloud of uncertainty are shaking Nigeria’s financial sector after the sacking of the directors of five key ailing banks, operators and analysts said.

Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi earlier this month removed the heads of Afribank, Intercontinental Bank, Union Bank, Oceanic Bank and Finbank for piling up billions of dollars in bad debts.

The books of about a dozen other banks are also currently under CBN scrutiny to determine their viability, debts and liquidity status.

“There are apprehensions in the industry on what will be the fate of the remaining banks because of CBN’s action,” a treasury manager in one of the nation’s banks, Sunday Adeola, told AFP.

The dismissals of the bank chiefs and the anti-graft agency’s threat to arrest, prosecute or seize property of the debtors of the banks if they failed to pay in a week has put the heat on the sector, analysts said.

Asia

Hakimullah Mehsud named as new Pakistan Taleban leader

 From Times Online

August 23, 2009

Zahid Hussein in Islamabad  

After weeks of speculation and reports of infighting the Pakistan Taleban have appointed a top militant commander as their new chief to replace Baitullah Mehsud who was killed in a US missile attack.

The appointment Hakimullah Mehsud, the 28-year-old commander known for his ferociousness and believed to have masterminded the bloody attack on Sri Lankan cricket team early this year raised fears of new wave of militant violence in Pakistani cities. A spokesman for Tehrik-e-Taleban Pakistan, a loose alliance of disparate groups of tribal factions said a 42-member Shura (Council) had elected Mr Hakimullah to succeed Mr Mehsud.

 S Korea funeral heralds ties thaw

A state funeral attended by some 20,000 people has been held in South Korea for former President Kim Dae-jung.

The BBC  Sunday, 23 August 2009

Mr Kim won the Nobel prize in 2000 for his work to foster better relations with North Korea and his death seems to be having a similarly positive effect.

Before the funeral, South Korean leader Lee Myung-bak met senior North Korean envoys who came to pay condolences.

The meeting is being seen as a significant thaw, as Mr Lee has been denounced as a traitor by the North.

The delegation from Pyongyang brought a message from North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, saying they hoped to ease bilateral problems.

Latin America

Amazon Indians warn of further protests

Row over the government not appointing its representative to a truth comm ission to investigate June violence

Associated Press

The Observer, Sunday 23 August 2009

Peruvian Amazon Indian leaders are warning of renewed protests, alleging that the government has not honoured promises made in the aftermath of June violence that left at least 23 police and 10 Indians dead.

Indian leader Salomon Awananch accused the government of blocking the formation of an independent truth commission to investigate the June violence. The government agreed to the commission more than two months ago but has not appointed its representative, he said. Calls to President Alan García’s cabinet chief, who is leading negotiations, were unsuccessful.Talks “haven’t advanced at all. It seems they lack the good will” to resolve the conflict, said Awananch, a member of confederation’s national council.

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