Docudharma Times Friday February 19

China anger at Dalai Lama-Obama meeting

A visit by the Dalai Lama to Washington has “seriously undermined” relations between the US and China, Beijing says.

The BBC  Friday, 19 February 2010

It released a strongly worded statement in response to US President Barack Obama’s meeting with Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

China had earlier expressed “strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition” to the meeting with a man they see as a separatist.

It said the US should “take effective steps to eradicate the malign effects”.

Washington had kept the Dalai Lama’s meeting low-key to emphasis it was private rather than political.

Hurt feelings

Despite that, China’s Vice-Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai summoned ambassador Jon Huntsman to lodge a “solemn representation”.

“The behaviour of the US side seriously interferes in China’s internal politics and seriously hurts the national feelings of the Chinese people,” a ministry statement said.

Final Canadian WWI veteran dies

The last Canadian veteran of World War I has died at the age of 109.

The BBC  Friday, 19 February 2010

John Babcock enlisted at the age of 15 after lying about his age. He trained in Canada and England but the war ended before he reached the French frontline.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Mr Babcock was Canada’s last living link to the Great War.

Just two other veterans of World War I remain alive: American Frank Buckles, also aged 109, and British-born Australian Claude Choules, who is 108.

Mr Harper, paying tribute to the 650,000 Canadian men and women who served during WW1, said: “Today they are all gone.

USA

Fed Rate Move Rattles Stocks and Sends Dollar Higher



By SEWELL CHAN and BETTINA WASSENER

Published: February 19, 2010

WASHINGTON – The Federal Reserve’s decision to raise the interest rate it charges on short-term loans to banks reverberated in the financial markets Friday, sending overseas stock indexes lower and giving fresh momentum to a recent rise in the dollar.

The Fed took the move to normalize lending after holding interest rates to extraordinary lows for more than a year to prop up the financial system. But the move, announced after the close of U.S. equities markets, sent Asian stocks lower, with the Nikkei 225 index in Tokyo dropping over 2 percent, and both the Kospi index in Seoul and the Hong Kong’s Hang Seng indexes showing similar declines.

HHS secretary decries higher rates for health insurance



By Alec MacGillis and Amy Goldstein

Friday, February 19, 2010

The Obama administration stepped up its criticism Thursday of health insurers’ efforts to raise their rates, an attempt to harness public aggravation with the industry and rebuild momentum for broad changes to the nation’s health-care system.

Separately, Washington area residents holding individual health insurance policies said they have received notices that their premiums are increasing by as much as 40 percent.

At a news conference, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius cited half a dozen examples, from Maine to Washington state, in which insurers have sought large premium increases on people who buy coverage individually.

Europe

Stalin to be celebrated as a war hero for 65th anniversary of Nazi defeat

From The Times

February 19, 2010

Tony Halpin in Moscow

Stalin is to make a comeback on the streets of Moscow for the first time in decades in a celebration of the Soviet victory over Hitler in the Second World War.

Posters and information booths devoted to the Soviet dictator are to go up across the capital under a proposal by Moscow City Council to mark the 65th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany on May 9. The decision outraged rights groups and opposition parties yesterday, who condemned it as another step towards rehabilitating a tyrant.

It also split the political establishment amid signs of Kremlin unease that Stalin’s legacy of repression could overshadow plans to honour veterans of what Russians call the Great Patriotic War. Millions of people perished in the Gulag slave labour camps during Stalin’s rule.

Silvio Berlusconi shortlists dental hygienist as political candidate

Silvio Berlusconi has shortlisted his dental hygienist to contest crucial elections next month, despite the furore caused by his attempts to promote showgirls as candidates last year.

By Nick Squires in Rome

Published: 7:00AM GMT 19 Feb 2010

The Italian prime minister has spent weeks denying reports that his party would stack its list of candidates with attractive young models or actresses.

But the 73-year-old premier was apparently unable to resist the charms of Nicole Minetti, a showgirl turned dental hygienist who he met when his teeth were being repaired after he was attacked by a man with a history of mental illness in Milan in December.

Despite the furore and the wrath of his wife caused by his attempts last year to promote a string of glamorous women as candidates for the European elections, Miss Minetti is reportedly now on a short list to run as a candidate for Mr Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (PDL) party in Lombardy, northern Italy.

Middle East

Iran could be building a warhead, says UN inspector

Chief of International Atomic Energy Agency says work on a weapon ‘might be under way’

Julian Borger

The Guardian, Friday 19 February 2010

The UN’s nuclear watchdog raised concerns for the first time yesterday that Iran might be developing a nuclear warhead for a missile.

In his first report on Iran, the new director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Yukiya Amano, suggested Iran could have looked into the construction of a weapon, and that work on a weapon could be under way.

Amano’s report to the IAEA board also confirmed that Iran had succeeded in producing 20% enriched uranium, a level of enrichment much closer to weapons grade than it had attempted before. It criticised the Iranian authorities for taking the step without giving IAEA inspectors notice.

West turns diplomatic screw – but Israel refuses to crack

‘We know nothing’, say ambassadors called for talks over how assassins who killed Hamas leader were holding foreign passports

By Kim Sengupta, Donald Macintyre and Ben Lynfield in Jerusalem Friday, 19 February 2010

Dubai yesterday explicitly accused Mossad of assassinating Hamas military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh on its soil, as David Miliband declared the use of British passports in the plot “an outrage” and demanded “full co-operation” from Israel in finding out what had happened.

The Foreign Secretary’s comments came after an apparently fruitless meeting in London between the Israeli ambassador Ron Prosor and Sir Peter Ricketts, the permanent secretary who heads Britain’s diplomatic service, which lasted just 14 minutes with no sign of any intelligence being shared.

Asia

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd gives Japan ultimatum over whaling

From Times Online

February 19, 2010

Anne Barrowclough in Sydney

Kevin Rudd, the Australian Prime Minister, has put Japan on notice to stop hunting whales by November or face international court action.

The warning, which comes just a day before a visit by Japan Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, is one of the strongest statements yet by the Australian premier, who has been accused in the past of backing away from his election campaign pledge to take Japan to the International Court of Justice.

Mr Rudd told Australia’s Channel 7 television station this morning that Australia would “work with the Japanese to reduce, through negotiation, their current catch to zero.

India, Myanmar: Reluctant brothers in arms

South Asia

By Brian McCartan  Feb 19, 2010

BANGKOK – Myanmar’s up and down relationship with neighboring India is on the up again with a new commitment for coordinated counter-insurgency operations along their mutual border. While previous promises to tackle armed groups failed in the actual implementation, analysts suggest there could be new impetus for strategic cooperation.

India’s Home Secretary G K Pillai led a delegation to Naypyidaw in January for three days of secretarial-level talks with Myanmar officials led by Brigadier General Phone Swe. The elimination of insurgent camps in Myanmar across the border from India’s violence-plagued northeastern region, featured in discussions.

Africa

Renegade troops kidnap Niger’s president Mamadou Tandja

Coup and attack on palace follow leader’s assumption of near-totalitarian powers

AP, Niamey

The Guardian, Friday 19 February 2010

Renegade soldiers in armoured vehicles stormed Niger’s presidential palace in a hail of gunfire in broad daylight yesterday, kidnapping the country’s president.

They then appeared on state television and announced that Niger’s constitution was suspended and all its institutions dissolved. A spokesman said the Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy was in charge, and he asked citizens and the international community to have faith in their ideals which “could turn Niger into an example of democracy and of good governance”.

The illegal camps that threaten to destroy Kenya’s Masai Mara

Explosion of unlicensed accommodation edges park’s black rhino population closer to brink

By Daniel Howden in Nairobi Friday, 19 February 2010

The riverine forest on the banks of the Olkeju Ronkai, close to where it meets the waters of its sister river the Mara, has long been a sanctuary for critically endangered black rhinos. Two-thirds of Kenya’s remaining population of these shy leviathans were until recently living among the fever trees in what was the largest intact forest of its kind in the Masai Mara wildlife reserve.

Today, the rhino sanctuary has been transformed into a building site, the tranquillity has been shattered and trucks deliver concrete into what is becoming one of the largest lodges in the Mara.

Latin America

During desperate times, Mexican families turn to ‘Aunt Pity’

LETTER FROM MEXICO

By William Booth

Washington Post Foreign Service

Friday, February 19, 2010

There are worse places for a Mexican family to hock its jewels than the national pawnshop, headquartered atop the ruins of the Aztec emperor Montezuma’s residence in the heart of the capital.

The pawn palace, built of volcanic stone and eccentrically renovated over the past five centuries, once served as the treasure house for conquistador Hernando Cortés. Today it is where Mexicans trade in their wedding rings to pay for their children’s school uniforms.

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