Docudharma Times Friday November 6

Army Doctor Held in Fort Hood Rampage



By ROBERT D. McFADDEN

Published: November 5, 2009

An Army psychiatrist facing deployment to one of America’s war zones killed 12 people and wounded 31 others on Thursday in a shooting rampage with two handguns at the sprawling Fort Hood Army post in central Texas, military officials said.

It was one of the worst mass shootings ever at a military base in the United States.

The gunman, who was still alive after being shot four times, was identified by law enforcement authorities as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, who had been in the service since 1995. Major Hasan was about to be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, said Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas.

Slowed funding threatens AIDS fight, group says

Recession, other factors causing international donors to pull back

By Karin Brulliard

Washington Post Foreign Service

Friday, November 6, 2009

JOHANNESBURG — Slowed funding from international donors, including the United States, is imperiling recent dramatic gains in treating AIDS patients in the developing world, according to a new report.

Billions of aid dollars channeled toward the epidemic in the past decade have helped provide life-prolonging drugs to more than 4 million people, but the rate of infection still outpaces that of treatment. Now the global economic crisis and other factors are causing financial support to taper, undermining progress in nations such as Uganda, where some clinics are refusing new patients or accepting them only after a current patient dies, according to the report by Doctors Without Borders.

USA

Hedge fund insider-trading scandal expands

One man snapped his cellphone in half and bit the memory card to conceal his actions, complaints allege. Fourteen more are charged in the continuing investigation.

By Walter Hamilton

November 6, 2009

Reporting from New York – As an eavesdropping-detection specialist, Kevin D. Murray normally works for companies concerned about possible spying by competitors.

But since a blockbuster insider-trading prosecution built on wiretaps and microphone-wearing informants became public last month, frantic hedge fund managers have raced to hire him.

“The nature of the question is ‘Can you tell me if the government’s bugging me?’ ” Murray said, adding that he turned down the three firms that approached him.

House votes to extend jobless benefits, expand home buyers’ tax credit

 $24 billion bill intended to shore up economy and political support

By Neil Irwin, Dina ElBoghdady and Perry Bacon Jr.

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, November 6, 2009

 Congress gave final approval Thursday for an additional $24 billion to help the jobless and support the housing market as climbing unemployment poses a growing liability for elected officials.

The bill, passed overwhelmingly by the House and headed to President Obama for his signature Friday, extends unemployment insurance benefits that were due to expire and renews an $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers, while also expanding it to cover many other home purchases.

Middle East

Iran tested advanced nuclear warhead design – secret report

Exclusive: Watchdog fears Tehran has key component to put bombs in missiles

Julian Borger, diplomatic editor

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 November 2009 20.45 GMT

The UN’s nuclear watchdog has asked Iran to explain evidence suggesting that Iranian scientists have experimented with an advanced nuclear warhead design, the Guardian has learned.

The very existence of the technology, known as a “two-point implosion” device, is officially secret in both the US and Britain, but according to previously unpublished documentation in a dossier compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iranian scientists may have tested high-explosive components of the design. The development was today described by nuclear experts as “breathtaking” and has added urgency to the effort to find a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis.

Palestinian President Abbas, critical of peace process, says won’t seek reelection

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says he won’t run for reelection, complaining of Israel settlement growth, insufficient US support, and domestic criticism.

By Ilene R. Prusher | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

JERUSALEM – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says he’s made up his mind once and for all: There will be elections in January – and he will not be a candidate in them.

Mr. Abbas’s announcement Thursday night was the pinnacle of a dramatic day’s events in which he gathered together his closest allies and senior members of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) to tell them that he was fed up and would not seek reelection.

Abbas’s statement comes on the heels of an intense but largely unsuccessful week of US diplomatic activity aimed at restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, during which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Palestinian president to come back to the negotiating table despite the lack of a freeze in Israeli settlement building in the West Bank.

Europe

Sin city: show celebrates the Paris brothel that was loved by Cary Grant

A new exhibition in Paris sheds light on the risqué establishments where stars, men of letters and royalty mingled

By Genevieve Roberts in Paris

Friday, 6 November 2009

It was sleaze all right, but sleaze of a refined and exclusive kind. Throughout their long heyday, the brothels of Paris were as alluring and luxuriously chic as any gentlemen’s club or aristocratic salon.

Before he became King Edward VII, the Prince of Wales was a regular client of the brothel at 12 rue Chabanais, the city’s most famous, and endowed it with a “love-chair” in memory of happy times. Others who graced the premises included the Hollywood film stars Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant.

Radovan Karadzic wins extra time to prepare defence over war crimes‘

From The Times

November 6, 2009

David Charter, Europe Correspondent

The former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic won some of the extra time that he insists he needs to prepare his defence on genocide charges when his trial was adjourned until March yesterday.

Judges at the war crimes trial in The Hague will appoint a lawyer who will use that time to prepare to stand in for Dr Karadzic if he continues to boycott proceedings.

Dr Karadzic, 64, who was arrested in Belgrade 15 months ago, refused to take part in the first three days of his trial, arguing that he needed another nine months to digest 1.3 million pages of prosecution evidence on 11 war crimes charges.

Asia

Burmese army targets India rebels

Burmese troops have surrounded a base of Naga separatists in the country’s northwest and begun bombing it, Indian military officials said.

By Subir Bhaumik

BBC News, Nagaland

They said Indian troops have fanned out in the hills opposite this base in Sagaing to arrest any rebels who may try to flee into Indian territory.

The base is operated by the Khaplang faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN).

There are around 300 rebels at the base, Indian intelligence agencies say.

Two Burmese light infantry regiments are involved in the attack, they said.

But Burmese military officials or diplomats were unwilling to provide details.

Villagers around Maniakshaw in Sagaing said they could see the Burmese troops firing mortars, targeting the camp.

US puts its faith in Pakistan’s military



By Syed Saleem Shahzad

ISLAMABAD – Abdullah Abdullah, who this week withdrew from the presidential election runoff in Afghanistan, thereby handing victory to the incumbent, Hamid Karzai, did so under pressure from the United States, Asia Times Online has learned.

In exchange for the pullout of the non-Pashtun Abdullah, Pakistan’s military has agreed to actively mediate between Washington and the Taliban over a reconciliation plan that will allow the US to exit from Afghanistan, as it is doing in Iraq, with a semblance of success.

A senior Pakistani diplomat involved in backchannel negotiations on Pakistan, Afghanistan and US relations told Asia Times Online on the condition of anonymity that the deal over Abdullah, whom Islamabad considers to be pro-India, was made during the three-day visit to Pakistan last week of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Africa

Prosecutor arrives in Kenya on trail of war crimes

Intervention by International Criminal Court greeted with fury by senior politicians

By Daniel Howden in Nairobi

Friday, 6 November 2009

Some of Kenya’s most powerful figures could find themselves in the dock at The Hague charged with crimes against humanity after the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) said he would pursue the masterminds behind the country’s post-election violence last year.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo arrived in Nairobi yesterday for what is seen as the biggest test for the court since his decision to indict the serving president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir. The chief prosecutor met with Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga before announcing that he would request permission from the pre-trial chamber at The Hague to start an investigation into the bloodbath that followed the disputed election.

Women and children are killed in attacks on starving villagers

From The Times

November 6, 2009

Ramita Navai in Akobo

Thousands had gathered under the shade of the trees by the airstrip in Akobo, waiting for the arrival of a United Nations helicopter packed with food aid.

Bony-armed women in ragged clothes held children with distended bellies, slack skin hanging off tiny limbs, their hair turned orange by severe malnutrition. Most stared blankly ahead, too weak from hunger to cry.

Every person here has fled bloody inter-tribal violence. More than 2,000 people have been killed by fighting in southern Sudan so far this year – more than in the war-torn western region of Darfur. More than a quarter of a million have been displaced in three southern states alone. South Sudan is now in the grip of a humanitarian crisis, and one and a half million people do not have enough food, with the UN warning that it is on the brink of a famine.

Latin America

Brazil crime wars: Spiderman’s story of drugs and Jesus in Rio’s slums

How evangelical preachers are trying to stem the tide of killings in the Olympic city  

Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 November 2009 23.57 GMT

“If you add them all up I control 15 communities,” boasted Spiderman as his shiny 4×4 hurtled through the narrow backstreets of western Rio de Janeiro. Behind the wheel was Juarez Mendes da Silva, 28, one of the Brazilian capital’s most wanted drug lords, better known by the nickname Spiderman. The words “Jesus” and “Christ” were tattooed on to his forearms in black. In the boot his pet dog, Bloodsucker, shared space with an M-16 assault rifle.

With the dashboard’s electronic clock marking 2am, the car careered through the Complexo da Coréia, one of the city’s largest and most notorious slums, home to around 60,000 Brazilians and the HQ of one of the city’s three main drug factions, the Pure Third Command.

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