Docudharma Times Monday January 25

As night falls, Haitians head into the streets

Since the devastating earthquake, Port-au-Prince has become a city afraid of the indoors. People play it safe, lugging out bedding each night, even if their homes are intact.

By Scott Kraft

January 25, 2010

Reporting from Port-Au-Prince, Haiti – The ritual began just as the soft winter sun ducked behind the mountains Sunday, casting haunting shadows on this jittery Caribbean capital.

Blackened pots bubbled with suppers of rice and beans above glowing charcoal. Sheets, cardboard mats and mattresses were laid neatly on the streets; a lucky few pitched pup tents. Chunks of rubble blocked roads to protect alfresco sleepers from passing motorists.

The magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti nearly two weeks ago, and dozens of aftershocks, including a 5.9 temblor at dawn last week, has turned Port-au-Prince into a city deathly afraid of the indoors.

Save the elephant: ivory trading is set to resume

Britain urged to oppose demands from Tanzania and Zambia to lift ban on tusk sales / Conservationists fear the move would intensify slaughter of elephants

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor Monday, 25 January 2010

Two African countries are trying to open a new breach in the worldwide ivory trade ban, which conservationists fear could lead to more African elephants being slaughtered by poachers.

Environmental campaigners called on Britain to take a clear lead in opposing the proposals by Tanzania and Zambia to sell their ivory stocks, which will be voted on at the next meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Qatar in March.

USA

In Standoff, Insurer Seeks More Control Over Costs



By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS

Published: January 24, 2010

A front in the national health care battle has opened in New York City, where a major hospital chain and one of the nation’s largest insurance companies are locked in a struggle over control of treatment and costs that could have broad ramifications for millions of people with private health insurance.

The fight is between Continuum Health Partners, a consortium of five New York hospitals, including Beth Israel Medical Center and St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, both major teaching hospitals, and UnitedHealthcare, which includes Oxford health plans and has 25 million members across the country, one million of them in New York.

Stakes are high as government plans exit from mortgage markets



By David Cho, Neil Irwin and Dina ElBoghdady

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, January 25, 2010

For more than a year, the government pulled out the stops to revive home buying by driving down mortgage rates.

Now, whether the housing market is ready or not, the government is pulling out.

The wind-down of federal support for mortgage rates, set to end in two months, is a momentous test of whether the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve have succeeded in jump-starting the housing market and ensuring it can hold its own. The stakes for the economy are massive: If the market again falls into a tailspin, homeowners could face another wave of trouble, and it would deal a body blow to President Obama’s efforts to get the economy on track.

Middle East

Ethiopian plane crashes into sea off Beirut

All 90 on board Ethiopian Airlines plane – including two Britons – presumed dead after crash into sea in stormy weather

Peter Walker and agencies

guardian.co.uk, Monday 25 January 2010 05.41 GMT

Ninety people, including two British nationals, are presumed dead after an Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed into the sea early today just minutes after taking off from Beirut in stormy weather. Witnesses reported seeing a “ball of fire” plunging into the Mediterranean.

Among those on flight 409, which was heading to the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, were two British nationals of Lebanese origin, as well as the wife of the French ambassador to Lebanon, Reuters reported. The majority of the passengers were Lebanese or Ethiopian.

Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel will never quit settlements

The Israeli prime minister has taken part in tree-planting ceremonies in the West Bank while declaring Israel will never leave those areas.

The BBC   Monday, 25 January 2010

Benjamin Netanyahu said the Jewish settlements blocs would always remain part of the state of Israel.

His remarks came hours after a visit by US envoy George Mitchell who is trying to reopen peace talks between Israel and Palestinians.

A Palestinian spokesman said the comments undermined peace negotiations.

“Our message is clear: We are planting here, we will stay here, we will build here. This place will be an inseparable part of Israel for eternity”, the said.

Asia

Tamils may hand power to general who crushed Tigers

President’s former ally has raised the stakes with appeal to minority he conquered in bloody civil war

By Andrew Buncombe in Colombo Monday, 25 January 2010

If the outcome of Sri Lanka’s bitterly contested presidential election were decided solely by which candidate had the largest billboard, then incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa could sleep easily in his bed.

At the international airport near Colombo, a huge hoarding shows the president, dressed entirely in white, a beatific smile beaming across his face. His advisers believe that as voters go to the polls tomorrow, their best asset is the candidate himself, a man who oversaw the defeat of separatist rebels and ended a brutal 30-year civil war.

Afghanistan will take longer to tackle than Iraq, General David Petraeus says

From The Times

January 25, 2010

Deborah Haynes, Defence Editor

The new American-led surge in Afghanistan will take longer to fight the insurgency than a similar injection of force in Iraq three years ago when violence fell sharply within months, the top US general in the region told The Times.

General David Petraeus, the head of Central Command, also warned that the fight in Helmand province, Afghanistan, where British and US forces are based, as well other areas, would become even tougher before the situation improved.

Frontline offensives will run alongside initiatives to reach out to Taleban elements. When the time was right, General Petraeus said, there was a possibility that Afghan officials would hold reconciliation talks with senior Taleban and other insurgent leaders, perhaps also involving Pakistan.

Europe

Berlusconi gossip magazine editor to appear before extortion inquiry

  From The Times

January 25, 2010

Josephine McKenna in Rome

The editor of two top-selling Italian gossip magazines owned by Silvio Berlusconi may be summoned by Milan prosecutors who have started an investigation into an alleged extortion racket by paparazzi.

The prosecutors are investigating claims that several photographers extorted payments in return for withholding photographs.

Lapo Elkann, the heir to the Fiat company, is among the celebrities, media personalities and politicians allegedly compromised by the paparazzi photographs.

Two thousand year old Roman aqueduct discovered

 A pair of British amateur archaeologists believe they have found the hidden source of a Roman aqueduct 1,900 years after it was inaugurated by the Emperor Trajan.

By Nick Squires in Rome

Published: 7:00AM GMT 25 Jan 20

The underground spring lies behind a concealed door beneath an abandoned 13th century church on the shores of Lake Bracciano, 35 miles north of Rome.

Exploration of the site has shown that water percolating through volcanic bedrock was collected in underground grottoes and chambers and fed into a subterranean aqueduct, the Aqua Traiana, which took it all the way to the imperial capital.

Centuries later, it provided water for the very first Vatican, after Rome began to convert to Christianity under the Emperor Constantine.

The underground complex, which is entangled with the roots of huge fig trees, was discovered by father and son documentary makers Edward and Michael O’Neill, who stumbled on it while researching the history of Rome’s ancient aqueducts.

Latin America

Haiti earthquake: Restauranteur turns Port-au-Prince eatery into soup kitchen

Clifford Rouzeau has turned Muncheez – a popular pizza-and-ribs joint that the poor could once only dream about – into a place where thousands of those left homeless by last week’s magnitude-7.0 earthquake can get a free hot meal.

By Howard LaFranchi Staff writer / January 24, 2010

Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Clifford Rouzeau stands on the second-floor terrace of his restaurant-turned-soup-kitchen in the Haitian capital’s Petionville quarter, and explains his turn to philanthropy in the matter-of-fact manner of the businessman that he is.

“Look, none of my three restaurants here got damaged in the earthquake. I see that as a blessing from God,” he says. “So I figure I might as well pass on the blessing.”

The form that blessing takes is the free hot food that Mr. Rouzeau has prepared in his restaurant kitchen every day since shortly after the earthquake hit on Jan. 12. Every afternoon lines form outside the downstairs entrance of the Muncheez restaurant in Petionville, Port-au-Prince’s chic neighborhood – if anything here can be called chic.

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