Docudharma Times Tuesday October 20

Afghan Leader Said to Accept Runoff After Election Audit



By SABRINA TAVERNISE and HELENE COOPER

Published: October 19, 2009

KABUL, Afghanistan – Under heavy international pressure, President Hamid Karzai appears set to concede as early as Tuesday that he fell short of a first-round victory in the nation’s disputed presidential election, but the path to ensuring that the country has credible leadership remains uncertain, American and European officials said Monday.

The officials said Mr. Karzai was moving toward accepting the findings of an international audit that stripped him of nearly a third of his votes in the first round, leaving him below the 50 percent threshold that would have allowed him to avoid a runoff and declare victory over his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah.

Oil prices hit high but report warns of supply crunch

• US light crude oil futures pushes above $79 a barrel

• Report blames government for ignoring supply problem

Ashley Seager

guardian.co.uk, Monday 19 October 2009 23.00 BST

World oil prices hit their highest point for a year yesterday, as a major new report urged governments around the world to take drastic action to head off an approaching oil supply crunch.

US light crude futures pushed above $79 a barrel, supported by the view that a recovering world economy would raise demand for crude. Oil prices have more than doubled from the low point they hit in the spring, but are still around half the all-time high of nearly $150 a barrel they reached in early summer last year.

Analysts have been surprised at the recent resilience of oil prices given the impact on energy demand of the global recession. In spite of this year’s volatility in the oil price, the underlying trend for a decade has been for it to rise steadily.

USA

Maine’s gay marriage battle has echoes of Prop. 8

A culture war over the state’s same-sex marriage law is turning out to be a low-budget but potent sequel of California’s.

By Bob Drogin

October 20, 2009

Reporting from Portland, Maine – Brandon Brawner spent a year training Los Angeles groups that opposed Proposition 8. Now the West Hollywood activist runs a phone bank here to block a repeal of Maine’s new same-sex marriage law on election day.

“The tactics they use are fear and lies,” Brawner, 29, said of his opponents.

Up the road in Yarmouth, Kym Souchet worked the phones to urge voters to reject gay marriage. The home-schooling mom said she was stunned at times at the response she heard.

Europe

Raphael drawing expected to break world record at auction

Head of a Muse done as study for Vatican fresco estimated to reach up to £16m in Christie’s sale

Mark Brown, arts correspondent

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 October 2009 09.24 BST

A drawing by Raphael that played an important part in the execution of one of his greatest works is expected to achieve a world record price at auction, Christie’s announced today.

Head of a Muse was drawn by Raphael as a study for a figure in one of his frescoes at the Vatican. If it achieves its estimate of £12m-£16m then it will easily break the auction record for an old master drawing shared by Michaelangelo’s The Risen Christ and Leonardo da Vinci’s Horse and Rider, which both sold separately for £8.1m.

The drawing was part of Raphael’s preparations for one of the towering artistic achievements of the Renaissance.

Kidnapped aid worker flies home after trauma of mock executions

By Peter Popham

Tuesday, 20 October 2009

Irish aid worker Sharon Commins arrived back in Dublin last night, free at last after three and a half months as a hostage of bandits in the mountains of Darfur, in western Sudan.

Ms Commins, 32, and her Ugandan colleague Hilda Kawuki, 42, were seized from the Darfur compound of Goal, an Irish aid agency, in July, when three gunmen burst in and held guns to their heads. They were guarded by up to 18 men who repeatedly went through the motions of executing them.

“There were mock assassinations on a few occasions, so it was extremely scary,” Ms Commins told RTE, the Irish state broadcaster. “We’d be told to kneel on our knees and they would shoot around us.

Asia

Taliban digs in for border battle

By Omar Waraich in Islamabad, and Andrew Buncombe

Tuesday, 20 October 2009

Pakistani troops were yesterday pushing deeper into South Waziristan on the Afghan border in what is being described as Pakistan’s most important operation for a decade, but Taliban fighters were said to be putting up tough resistance.

As the 30,000-strong force pressed further into militant territory on the third day of their operation to crush Taliban and al-Qa’ida fighters, senior military officials claimed progress was steady but admitted it was not rapid. They said 78 militants had been killed, for the cost of two soldiers.

CPI (Maoist) to review the beheading of Francis Indwar



Snigdhendu Bhattacharya, Hindustan Times

Email Author

Kolkata, October 20, 2009

To behead or not to behead, is the latest question the Maoists are grappling with.

Kishanji, the 51-year-old politburo member of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), admitted to HT that the leaders of the banned party would review the beheading of inspector Francis Induwar.

The decapacitated body of 50-year-old Jharkhand police inspector Induwar was found on the Jamshedpur-Ranchi highway on 6 October, a few days after he was abducted, sending shock and dismay throughout the country.

“A higher committee would definitely seek report from the squad involved in that murder on why and under which circumstances the police officer had to be beheaded,” said Kishanji on Monday.

However, the Maoist leader admitted they are generally opposed to “such mode of murder” though they have no doubts that elimination of the enemy was necessary.

Middle East

Iran sets defiant tone at start of talks over nuclear programme

From The Times

October 20, 2009

 Catherine Philp, Diplomatic Correspondent

Iran struck a defiant note as it entered a new round of nuclear talks yesterday, insisting that it would not hesitate to produce highly enriched nuclear fuel if it did not get what it wanted out of negotiations.

The hardline statement came as Iranian representatives met Western and Russian officials in Vienna for talks that were overshadowed by a suicide attack that Tehran blamed on American and British Intelligence.

Representatives from France, the US, Russia and the UN met Iran to build on a proposal that was agreed in principle in Geneva this month to provide Tehran with nuclear fuel for its reactor that produces medical isotopes.

In Najaf, Iraq’s Shiite clerics push for direct elections



By Roy Gutman | McClatchy Newspapers

NAJAF, Iraq — If there’s one place in Iraq outside the parliament itself that will set the tone for the country’s politics, it’s Najaf, a dusty city of about 900,000 that was neglected under Saddam Hussein’s Sunni Muslim dictatorship and now bustles with religious tourists visiting the shrine of Imam Ali, a son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad; a new airport; and construction sites everywhere.

Najaf is to Shiites what Vatican City is to Roman Catholics, but some of Shiite Islam’s highest spiritual figures operate here out of public view, issuing occasional utterances on issues they consider central to Iraqi society.

Africa

No one worthy: Mo Ibrahim prize for good governance in Africa goes unawarded

From The Times

October 20, 2009

Jonathan Clayton, Africa Correspondent

The pitiful state of democracy in Africa was highlighted when the organisers of a multimillion-pound prize for good governance said that they had decided not to give out the award this year.

Only three years after it was set up the Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership – the brain child of Mo Ibrahim, the Sudanese-born mobile phone tycoon – has apparently run out of suitable candidates.

The problem for the organisers is that the $5million (£3million) prize plus $200,000 salary for the rest of the recipient’s life is restricted to former presidents and heads of state who have stood down from office in the previous three years.

Niger votes in contentious poll

Voters in Niger are electing a new parliament to replace the one sacked by President Mamadou Tandja last year.

The BBC Tuesday, 20 October 2009

The MPs were dismissed after they rejected his moves to let him seek a third term in office.

The opposition is urging people not to take part in the vote, which is being held despite international calls for it be postponed.

The constitution was changed after Mr Tandja held a referendum, also boycotted by the opposition.

Mr Tandja, 71, voted early in the capital Niamey.

“I hope this day will be good for Niger, that the voting passes off smoothly and that the MPs elected will be patriots,” he said, surrounded by heavy security, according to the AFP news agency.</blockquote>

Ignoring Asia A Blog