Docudharma Times Saturday February 20

Alexander Haig, former secretary of state, dies

Washington Post

US school district spied on students through webcams, court told

Pennsylvania district accused of using remote-control laptops to photograph teenage students at home without their knowledge

Daniel Nasaw in Washington

guardian.co.uk, Friday 19 February 2010

A school district in Pennsylvania spied on students through web cameras installed on laptops provided by the district, according to a class action lawsuit filed this week.

Lower Merion school district, in a well-heeled suburb of Philadelphia, provided 2,300 high-school students with Mac laptops last autumn in what its superintendent, Christopher McGinley, described as an effort to establish a “mobile, 21st-century learning environment”.

The scheme was funded with $720,000 (£468,000) in state grants and other sources. The students were not allowed to install video games and other software, and were barred from “commercial, illegal, unethical and inappropriate” use.

A baby changes everything: The true cost of teen pregnancy’s uptick

Teen couple faces tall odds in a town where life is already a struggle

 Kari Huus

Reporter

Nate Howell has approximately 76 days to adjust to his new reality. That is when he is due to become a parent with his girlfriend, Samantha Keith, who just turned 17.

“It scares the living hell out of me,” says Nate, 19, who is working at a pork-packing plant in his hometown, Elkhart, Ind. “I thought I’d be in college right now playing football.”

Nate is one of five members of the class of 2009 whom msnbc.com has been following as part of The Elkhart Project. After high school, Nate had hoped to go to college and play football but didn’t get a financial scholarship.

USA

Controversial Diabetes Drug Harms Heart, U.S. Concludes



By GARDINER HARRIS

Published: February 19, 2010

Hundreds of people taking Avandia, a controversial diabetes medicine, needlessly suffer heart attacks and heart failure each month, according to confidential government reports that recommend the drug be removed from the market.

The reports, obtained by The New York Times, say that if every diabetic now taking Avandia were instead given a similar pill named Actos, about 500 heart attacks and 300 cases of heart failure would be averted every month because Avandia can hurt the heart. Avandia, intended to treat Type 2 diabetes, is known as rosiglitazone and was linked to 304 deaths during the third quarter of 2009.

Consumers who buy individual health policies feel trapped

They have few options other than dropping coverage as insurers raise rates and slash benefits. Insurers blame the soaring cost of medical care and the churn of customers in the individual market.

By Duke Helfand

February 19, 2010 | 7:06 p.m.

Health insurers across the country are dramatically increasing rates and slashing benefits for many of the estimated 17 million consumers with individual insurance policies, while making it almost impossible to obtain affordable alternatives.

The problems have captured national attention as President Obama steps up his campaign in Washington for a healthcare overhaul and Congress investigates rate hikes of as much as 39% by Anthem Blue Cross in California.

Europe

Tales of a riverbank revolution

Open-air book stalls have been a fixture of Paris’s Left Bank for centuries. Now, an invasion of tourist tat has left them fighting for survival.

By John Lichfield Saturday, 20 February 2010

Uncivil war has broken out on the elegant quays of the river Seine – a war fought with rare books, posters of pop stars and plastic models of the Eiffel Tower.

For four centuries, some say for 1,000 years, the river parapets of Paris have been lined by the stalls of book-sellers, or bouquinistes, offering 18th-century tomes on poultry-breeding; or old copies of Paris-Match (“Grace et Rainier, le marriage!”); or rare copies of the works of Voltaire; or long-forgotten American paperback thrillers (in French translation).

Over the past 10 years, the familiar green boxes on the walls of the Seine quays have been progressively invaded by other merchandise, such as posters of The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Marilyn Monroe; Eiffel Tower key-rings (€1 each); and replica Parisian street signs.

Russia honours one of its heroes – American paratrooper Joe Beyrle

From The Times

February 20, 2010

Tony Halpin in Moscow

He is believed to have been the only American soldier to fight against Nazi Germany for both the US and the Soviet armies.

Now the extraordinary life of Joe Beyrle is being honoured in a new exhibition in Russia that was opened by his son John, the current US Ambassador to Moscow, to commemorate the Allied victory over fascism.

Mr Beyrle, nicknamed Jumpin’ Joe for his exploits as a paratrooper, was only 20 when he was captured by the Nazis three days after parachuting into Normandy with the US 101st Airborne Division on D-Day in June 1944.

After seven months in prisoner-of-war camps, in which he was tortured by the Gestapo, he escaped in January 1945 and ran into a Red Army tank battalion.

Middle East

Soul-searching within Israel at ‘amateurish’ operation

Officials thought to be embarrassed by series of clues left behind by Mossad agents

By Donald Macintyre and Kim Sengupta  Saturday, 20 February 2010

The Foreign Office yesterday angrily denied that Britain had been tipped off by Israeli agents before the killing of a Hamas commander in a luxury Dubai hotel by a team which included assassins using UK passports.

The British Government insisted that it only knew about the role of the passports just hours before it was revealed in a news conference held by the Dubai police last Monday. It has offered new passports to six dual Israeli-British nationals whose names appeared on the “fraudulent” passports on which the assassins travelled.  The latest moves came as European and US security sources suggested that serious questions were being raised inside and outside the Israeli intelligence services after what is being increasingly regarded as the “hugely problematic” consequences of the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

Russia hints it will back Iran sanctions calls

From The Times

February 20, 2010

 Catherine Philp, Diplomatic Correspondent

Iran’s Supreme Leader took to the deck of a naval guided missile destroyer yesterday in defiance of the international storm sparked by the United Nations’ warning that Tehran may be building a nuclear bomb.

There were renewed calls for sanctions from the United States, Britain, France and Germany. But some of the strongest reaction came from Russia, the country traditionally most reluctant to impose them, raising hopes of a consensus at the UN Security Council.

A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Iran, the first since the departure of its controversial former chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, said the evidence that the agency had gathered “raises concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile”, which Iran had repeatedly refused to address.

Asia

Dutch cabinet collapses in dispute over Afghanistan

The Dutch government has collapsed over disagreements within the governing coalition on extending troop deployments in Afghanistan.

The BBC  Saturday, 20 February 2010

After marathon talks, Christian Democratic Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende announced that the Labour Party was quitting the government.

Mr Balkenende has been considering a Nato request for Dutch forces to stay in Afghanistan beyond 2010.

But Labour, the second-largest coalition party, has opposed the move.

Just under 2,000 Dutch service personnel have been serving in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan since 2006, with 21 killed.

Their deployment has already been extended once.

The troops should have returned home in 2008, but they stayed on because no other Nato nation offered replacements.

In Aceh Indonesia, Islamic police take to the streets

Islamic police in Aceh, Indonesia, patrol daily for women wearing tight clothes and unmarried couples sitting too close.

By Kathy Marks Correspondent / February 19, 2010

Banda Aceh, Indonesia

“Excuse me,” says Iskandar, as his mobile phone beeps for the umpteenth time in the past half hour. It’s another anonymous tip-off, alerting him to a young couple who have been seen spending time together alone.Iskander is head of the Wilayatul Hisbah, a special police unit that enforces Islamic law, or sharia, in the Indonesian province of Aceh. Teams of his officers patrol the Acehnese capital several times a day, looking for unmarried couples, women in close-fitting clothes or not wearing an Islamic headscarf, and anyone drinking alcohol or gambling.

Aceh – known as the “Veranda of Mecca” because Islam entered Indonesia there centuries ago – has long been the most devout spot in the world’s most populous Muslim nation.

Africa

Ex-U.N. official ElBaradei eyes run for Egypt’s top job



By Miret el Naggar | McClatchy Newspapers

CAIRO – Nobel Peace Prize winner and former United Nations nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei is shaking up Cairo’s entrenched political elite by eyeing a run for the presidency of this authoritarian state.

Hundreds of Egyptians chanting “We want change!” welcomed ElBaradei at Cairo’s airport on Friday as the former head of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency returned to Egypt for the first time since leaving his U.N. post.

As arguably Egypt’s best-known international public face, ElBaradei represents the stiffest challenge yet to President Hosni Mubarak, 81, who has been at the helm of the Arab world’s most populous country for the past 28 years.

Latin America

Poor Sanitation in Haiti’s Tent Camps Adds to Risk of Disease



By SIMON ROMERO

Published: February 19, 2010

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – As hundreds of thousands of people displaced by last month’s earthquake put down stakes in the squalid tent camps of this wrecked city, the authorities are struggling to address the worsening problem of human waste. Public health officials warn that waste accumulation is creating conditions for major disease outbreaks, including cholera, which could further stress the ravaged health system.Some American and Haitian public health specialists here consider the diseases stemming from the buildup of human waste in the camps as possibly the most pressing health threat in the city. Doctors are already seeing a spike in illnesses like typhoid and shigellosis, which arise from contaminated food or water.

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