Docudharma Times Tuesday January 26

In Haiti, U.S. troops embrace a new role

The aid effort is insufficient for the vast need in the quake-devastated nation, but soldiers are able to provide some food and water to the people, who gratefully accept it.

By Mitchell Landsberg

January 25, 2010

Reporting from Port-Au-Prince, Haiti – Cite Soleil looks like a place where an American soldier might be expected to fight. An impossibly crowded warren of tin-roofed shacks, open sewers and blind alleys, it is one of the poorest slums in the Americas, with a long history of unrest, crime and violence.

So picture the scene: Just as dawn was breaking Sunday, a battle-hardened platoon from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division rolled into the area behind a well-armed convoy of Brazilian soldiers attached to the United Nations’ longtime peacekeeping mission in Haiti.

Tim Burton to head Cannes film festival jury

Batman Returns and Charlie and the Choclate Factory director to lead Cannes festival jury

Peter Bradshaw

The Guardian, Tuesday 26 January 2010

Just as Hollywood succumbs to its annual pre-Oscar tension and Britain to its Bafta jitters, the Cannes festival has contributed to the seasonal film fever by announcing the name of its jury president for this year: Tim Burton.

The tousle-haired 51-year-old director of dark and cult classics such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns and Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, starring Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka, has it in his power to make or break the reputations of auteurs everywhere.

Burton – whose partner is the British screen star Helena Bonham Carter, with whom he has homes in London and Los Angeles – was a member of the Cannes jury in 1997 and on the short film jury in 2006.

USA

An Investigator Presses to Uncover Bailout Abuse



By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

Published: January 25, 2010

Neil M. Barofsky is not a household name like some special investigators of the past – Kenneth Starr during the Clinton administration or Archibald Cox in the Watergate years.

But increasingly, Mr. Barofsky is setting off fireworks on Capitol Hill as he quietly and methodically pieces together the most complete historical record yet of the financial bailout. His reports are careful but not cautious, showing a willingness to stand up to some of the most powerful people and institutions in Washington or on Wall Street.”Neil is not afraid to just follow things where they lead,” said Anthony S. Barkow, a friend and fellow former prosecutor in the United States attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York. “He is undeterred by having powerful people angry at him for doing what he does.”

For Md. couple, dream of adopting Haitian orphan comes true



By N.C. Aizenman

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Shortly after midnight Monday, Christie Hubner scooped up the Haitian girl she had been waiting to adopt since 2006 and gazed into the toddler’s eyes.

Three-year-old Yslande Dorsica — soon to be renamed Ila Yslande Ann Hubner — looked back at her new mother with an equally intense expression, then stretched her little mouth in a big yawn.

“Oh!” whispered Hubner. “Are you getting sleepy? I am, too. I don’t think I’ve ever been awake this long.”

Even before the Jan. 12 earthquake that reduced Ila’s orphanage in Port-au-Prince to rubble, Hubner and her husband, David, had faced multiple bureaucratic delays.

Asia

Sri Lankan election: explosions obstruct voters in Tamil city

Polling stations in Colombo crowded but areas dominated by Tamil minority show less enthusiasm and blasts hit Jaffna

Associated Press

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 26 January 2010 07.49 GMT

Sri Lankans crowded polling stations throughout Colombo today to vote in a hard-fought election to decide whether the incumbent president or his former army chief should lead the nation’s recovery from a brutal civil war both men helped win.

However, enthusiasm for the poll in Tamil minority areas most affected by the fighting remained light, and early-morning explosions in the northern city of Jaffna were expected to further suppress voting.

Though it has been just eight months since President Mahinda Rajapaksa and retired General Sarath Fonseka led the country to victory in the quarter-century war against the Tamil Tiger rebels, many voters were focused on the stagnant economy.

Dalai Lama’s envoys arrive in China for new talks

From Times Online

January 26, 2010

Jane Macartney in Beijing

Special envoys for the Dalai Lama have arrived in China for the first talks between the two sides in 15 months, but there was no hint that this round would bring progress.

Tibet experts said it was no coincidence that Beijing had agreed to resume the stalled negotiations on narrowing differences between the Communist Party leadership and the Tibetan god-king shortly before President Obama is due to meet the exiled monk.

Europe

Calais wants to be ‘part of England’ for Olympics

French council leader pushes for athletes and tourists to stay across the English Channel during 2012 games

Lizzy Davies in Paris

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 26 January 2010 01.26 GMT

When the English lost Calais in 1558, the French rejoiced in the streets and celebrated an end to decades of foreign occupation. Now, more than 450 years later, authorities across the Channel are volunteering to become part of England again – but only so they can make the most of the Olympic Games in London.

Councillors in Pas-de-Calais, the coastal region in northeastern France which is, at points, just 21 miles from Dover, are insisting their home can play a crucial role in the facilities for 2012 by providing sporting and leisure facilities for participants and tourists.

German politics set for shake-up as cancer forces Red Oskar to quit

Tuesday, 26 January 2010

By Tony Paterson in Berlin

He has been called “the most dangerous man in Europe”, but “Red” Oskar Lafontaine, veteran leader of The Left party in German, has announced plans to step down. And whatever risk he may have posed in the past, there is little doubt that his departure will reshape German politics – and pose a significant new risk to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s right-wing government.

Mr Lafontaine, 66, declared at the weekend that he was resigning as The Left’s leader and leaving parliament for good because he is suffering from cancer. His announcement followed weeks of speculation about his future.

Middle East

‘Chemical Ali’, the killer of 5,000 Kurds, is executed

  Most brutal of Saddam’s henchmen hanged on the same day that suicide bombers kill 36 at Baghdad hotels

By Patrick Cockburn Tuesday, 26 January 2010

Iraq yesterday executed by hanging Ali Hassan al-Majid, Saddam Hussein’s chief enforcer and supervisor of mass killings, also known as “Chemical Ali” for using chemical weapons to kill tens of thousands of people.

He was the cruellest and most violent of top Iraqi leaders under Saddam Hussein, his first cousin to whom he was wholly loyal. He had already been sentenced to death four times, most recently earlier this month for the killing by poison gas of 5,000 Kurdish civilians at Halabja in 1988.

Mohamed Ali Harrath, Islamic TV chief, is held over terror claims

From The Times

January 26, 2010

Jonathan Clayton, Dominic Kennedy

The head of the Islam Channel, Britain’s most popular Muslim television station, has been arrested in South Africa and faces deportation to Tunisia over terrorism allegations.

The Times disclosed more than a year ago that Mohamed Ali Harrath, a Scotland Yard adviser against Islamic extremism, was wanted by Interpol because of his alleged activities in his homeland. His arrest on Sunday after a flight from London is being blamed by supporters on a security clampdown by the South African authorities in the run-up to this summer’s World Cup.

Harrath, 46, is the force behind the Islam Channel, which is watched by 59 per cent of British Muslims and beamed by satellite to 132 countries.

Latin America

Venezuelans protest censorship of popular TV channel

Security forces fire tear gas and plastic bullets at thousands of protesters in Caracas and elsewhere after RCTV is banned for violating a law that requires stations to air the president’s speeches.

By Mery Mogollon and Chris Kraul

January 26, 2010

Reporting from Caracas, Venezuela, and Quito, Ecuador — Protests broke out in Venezuela on Monday after cable companies dropped transmission of a popular channel that the government declared had broken telecommunications laws by not broadcasting President Hugo Chavez’s speeches.

Government critics and supporters of Radio Caracas Television took to the streets of Caracas, the capital, and several other cities after companies dropped RCTV’s programming under threat of losing their licenses.

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