Docudharma Times Saturday September 5

States Cut Back and Layoffs Hit Even Recipients of Stimulus Aid



By MICHAEL COOPER

Published: September 4, 2009

ST. CLOUD, Minn. – It was just five months ago that Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. made the New Flyer bus factory here a symbol of the stimulus. With several cabinet secretaries in tow, he held a town-hall-style meeting at the factory, where he praised the company as “an example of the future” and said that it stood to get more orders for its hybrid electric buses thanks to the $8.4 billion that the stimulus law devotes to mass transit.

But last month, the company that administration officials had pictured as a stimulus success story began laying off 320 people, or 13 percent of its work force, having discovered how cutbacks at the state level can dampen the boost provided by the federal stimulus money. The Chicago Transit Authority did use some of its stimulus money to buy 58 new hybrid buses from New Flyer. But Chicago had to shelve plans to order another 140 buses from them after the state money that it had hoped to use to pay for them failed to materialize. The delayed order scrambled New Flyer’s production schedule for the rest of the year, and led to the layoffs.

Political infighting threatens survival of the bluefin tuna

The bluefin tuna is one of the ocean’s most magnificent creatures, a half-tonne predator that swims at 40mph. But political scheming in Brussels may condemn it to death

By Martin Hickman, Consumer Affairs Correspondent

Saturday, 5 September 2009

The last chance to save one of the most majestic fish in the sea is on the verge of collapse because of political jockeying in Europe.

A proposal to ban the sale of bluefin tuna is being fiercely opposed by Malta, the capital of the lucrative global business, and by its representative in Brussels, the fisheries commissioner, Joe Borg.

Spain and Italy are also believed to be resisting an application to bar trade in bluefin under the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), which would cut off exports to the main market, Japan.

The European Commission will decide next week whether the EU will submit the application to a Cites committee meeting in March.

Conservationists fear that support from Britain, France and other northerly European nations for decisive action is wavering amid the objections.

This is number 1,000

USA

‘Gang of 6’ Urged to Act Now On Health

Negotiators Pressed To Offer Proposal Before Obama Does

By Lori Montgomery and Shailagh Murray

Washington Post Staff Writers

Saturday, September 5, 2009

The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee pressured his team of health-care negotiators on Friday to agree to a bipartisan overhaul plan before President Obama addresses Congress next week, warning that otherwise he will put forward his own proposal.

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) told his five colleagues in a conference call that he wants a group decision on a bill by Tuesday. Without it, he said, he intends to propose a bill based on the finance panel’s extensive policy work over the past two months, congressional sources said. Baucus pledged to the White House weeks ago that he would keep the “Gang of Six” — all members of the Finance Committee — on track in its already lengthy health-care negotiations.

Ashcroft can be sued over arrests, appeals court rules

A 9th Circuit panel says the ex-attorney general violated the rights of citizens held as material witnesses without cause after 9/11. Rights advocates praise the ruling in Abdullah Kidd’s case.

By Carol J. Williams

September 5, 2009

Then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft violated the rights of U.S. citizens in the fevered wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by ordering arrests on material witness warrants when the government lacked probable cause, a federal appeals court said in a scathing opinion Friday.

In a ruling that said Ashcroft could be sued for prosecutorial abuses, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied the former attorney general immunity from liability for how he used the material witness warrants in national security investigations.

Middle East

Netanyahu to approve new West Bank homes in a snub to Obama

Israeli PM tests White House resolve by violating crucial condition for resumption of talks with Palestinians

By Ben Lynfield in Jerusalem

 Saturday, 5 September 2009

The White House issued a stinging rebuke to Israel last night over plans to approve the construction of hundreds of new homes for Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank.

The decision comes as a major setback to Barack Obama’s efforts to revive the moribund Middle East peace process. It was revealed by aides to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday, who said he wants approval for the new construction to proceed before agreeing to any freeze on settlements. A complete freeze is the Palestinian precondition for the resumption of direct peace negotiations.

“As the President has said before, the US does not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement expansion and we urge that it stop,” said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.

Chalabi aide: I went from White House to secret U.S. prisoner

 

By Hannah Allam | McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq – U.S. authorities detained a top aide to former Iraqi exile leader and Bush administration ally Ahmad Chalabi last year and accused him of helping Iranian-backed militants kidnap and kill American and British soldiers and contractors.

The aide, Ali Feisal al Lami, said he was quizzed about Iranian agents, senior Shiite Muslim politicians and deadly bombings. Then, Lami said, he asked his American interrogator: Have you ever been to the White House?

“He said, ‘No,’ ” Lami told McClatchy. “I told him, ‘Well, I have.’ “

Asia

Rift with Karzai worsens as 95 perish in Nato air strike

 Deadly attack undermines politicians’ attempts to convince public that Afghan war is worth fighting

By Kim Sengupta in Kabul and David Usborne

Saturday, 5 September 2009

Western forces were engulfed in bitter controversy yesterday after Nato air strikes on two oil tankers hijacked by the Taliban in northern Afghanistan led to carnage with a fireball killing 95 people, dozens of them civilians.

Most of those who perished were burned to death. Nato initially insisted that all the dead were Taliban insurgents but later, after angry protests from residents and officials, they acknowledged there had been civilian deaths.

The attack at the village of Haji Aman, around seven miles from Kunduz, could not have come at a more volatile time in Afghanistan, with intense anger over civilian casualties and an intensifying clash between President Hamid Karzai and Washington over the disputed national election. The incumbent President has repeatedly complained about civilian deaths from Nato air strikes.

Police patrol after China unrest

Riot police have been deployed again on the streets of the western Chinese city of Urumqi, to try to prevent further protests over a spate of stabbings.

The BBC Saturday, 5 September 2009

Several roads have been blocked to cars after days of demonstrations by thousands of residents from the majority Han Chinese community.

The biggest protests about the syringe stabbings were on Thursday when five people died and 14 were injured.

Local officials have blamed Uighur Muslim separatists for the attacks.

They accused them of trying to damage ethnic unity.

China’s top security official, Meng Jianzhu, has arrived in the city to try to restore order.

On his arrival he was quoted by state-run news agency Xinhua as saying the syringe attacks were a continuation of the July unrest in which 200 people – mostly Han Chinese – were killed in ethnic riots.

Europe

Bright future for a Gothic wonder

 Chartres cathedral is being restored to its original painted glory – but some of its mystery may be wiped away.

By John Lichfield

Saturday, 5 September 2009

One of the most venerable and adored old ladies in the world – the 13th- century cathedral at Chartres, south of Paris – is undergoing a dramatic facelift.

When the first “bandages” are removed later this year, the effect will be startling, and could be deeply controversial. Imagine how you might feel if your great, great, great grand-mother was suddenly made to appear 20 years old again.

The interior of one of the most beautiful and most visited of all Gothic cathedrals, now grey and leprous with 800 years of whitewash, paint and grime, is being gradually returned to its medieval condition.

Campaign to change Irish minds on Lisbon Treaty falters



From The Times

September 5, 2009

David Sharrock, Ireland Correspondent

With less than a month to go before the Irish vote on the Lisbon treaty for a second time, the campaign to get them to change their minds and vote “yes” is running into trouble.

An opinion poll found that support for the treaty – which will create the EU’s first president and end national vetos on several key policy areas – has fallen by eight points over the summer to 46 per cent. The number of those intending to vote “no” has risen by one point to 29 per cent and the “undecideds” stand at 25 per cent.

The poll bears an astonishing resemblance to one conducted a month before the treaty was last put to the country in a referendum, which was lost by a margin of 53-47 per cent. The Irish Republic is the only country to allow its people to vote on the treaty, which replaces the failed EU constitution.

Africa

Libyan Foreign Minister, Musa Kasa, defends UK Government over Lockerbie

 From The Times

September 5, 2009

Martin Fletcher in Tripoli

A top Libyan official once expelled from Britain for plotting the deaths of exiled dissidents rode to the defence of the British Government over Lockerbie yesterday.

In one of the few interviews he has given, Musa Kusa, the Libyan Foreign Minister and long-time member of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s inner circle, told The Times that he was astonished by the controversy over the release of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber.

Filming the flamingos of Tanzania’s salt flats

For 13 months three filmmakers have documented the lives of hundreds of thousands of flamingos in Tanzania’s salt flats. Isabel Albiston watched the filming, and learnt how the project has had an unexpected impact

 Published: 8:00AM BST 05 Sep 2009

From the air, the surface of Lake Natron in northern Tanzania looks like a different planet. Vast craters and dramatic red swirls in the cracked, dried-out soda make the lake appear inhospitable and an unlikely location for a wildlife film. But Natron is an important breeding ground for more than a million flamingos, the stars of The Crimson Wing. This is less a nature documentary than a series of beautiful images set to music and accompanied by a slightly indulgent narrative, which ostensibly follows the life cycle of these flamingos.

These initial glimpses of the lake, seen on my way to the film location in December 2007, were similar to the aerial images that first inspired the wildlife filmmakers Matthew Aeberhard and Leander Ward to make Natron their subject. After meeting in 1998 at nearby Lake Manyara, where Aeberhard was filming baboons and Ward was filming buffalo, the British filmmakers were on the lookout for a joint project when a pilot friend showed them footage he had taken of Lake Natron from the air.

Latin America

Oil expertise from Venezuela gives Colombia’s industry a boost

Banished oil executives and engineers are providing added energy to production efforts. The country is also benefiting from an influx of investment attracted by improved security.

By Chris Kraul

September 5, 2009

Reporting from Bogota, Colombia – Until recently in a free fall because of terrorist attacks that scared off wildcat drillers, Colombia’s oil production is staging a surprisingly robust rebound, boosted in no small part by the arrival of oil industry executives and engineers banished by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Increased production in Colombia, a close U.S. ally, is important for U.S. consumers because it advances the goal of reducing the country’s reliance on oil imports from unstable, unreliable or unfriendly governments.

At a public forum last month, Mining and Energy Minister Hernan Martinez said Colombian crude output would reach an average 700,000 barrels a day by December, cementing the nation’s position as Latin America’s fourth-largest producer after Mexico, Venezuela and Brazil. Colombia’s oil production for all of 2009 is estimated to average 645,000 daily barrels, up 10% from average daily output of 589,000 in 2008.

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