Docudharma Times Sunday March 28

DR Congo rebel massacre of hundreds is uncovered

Evidence of the massacre of at least 321 people in Democratic Republic of Congo has been uncovered by the BBC.

By Martin Plaut

Africa editor, BBC World Service

The killings took place last December but have not previously been reported.

Fighters from the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army raided several villages in a remote part of north-eastern DR Congo, killing and abducting children.

Human Rights Watch says this is one of the worst massacres carried out by the LRA, whose fighters roam across several countries after spreading from Uganda.

The rebel leaders initially claimed to be fighting to install a theocracy in Uganda based on the Biblical Ten Commandments, but they now sow terror in Sudan and Central African Republic, as well as DR Congo.

$500 million launcher lacks one thing: rocket

Space industry tense over pending demise of Constellation program  

By Joel Achenbach

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. – Anyone need a $500 million, 355-foot steel tower for launching rockets into space?

There’s one available at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Brand new, never been used.

The mobile launcher has been built for a rocket called the Ares 1. The problem is, there is not yet any such thing as an Ares 1 rocket – and if the Obama administration has its way, there never will be.

President Obama’s 2011 budget kills that rocket, along with the rest of NASA’s Constellation program, the ambitious back-to-the-moon effort initiated under President George W. Bush.

USA

Washington Post poll finds split on health-care law remains deep



By Jon Cohen and Dan Balz

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Americans overwhelmingly see the new health-care law as a major shift in the direction of the country, but they remain as deeply divided today over the changes as they were throughout the long congressional debate, according to a Washington Post poll.

In the days since President Obama signed the farthest-reaching piece of social welfare legislation in four decades, overall public opinion has changed little, with continuing broad public skepticism about the effects of the new law and more than a quarter of Americans seeing neither side as making a good-faith effort to cooperate on the issue.

There goes the neighbourhood: change sweeps black America’s cultural home

For much of the last century Harlem was the heart of the black community, but now some locals fear that whites and Hispanics are invading their turf

Paul Harris in New York

The Observer, Sunday 28 March 2010

There was a time when the sight of Sandra Schulze’s blond hair in the middle of Harlem’s Marcus Garvey Park would have been a shock. But last week, as the 38-year-old graphic designer played with her two-year-old son, it was more a sign of the times.

Harlem has long been one of the most famed names in black American culture. The neighbourhood produced jazz greats, political giants and sports heroes. It kept a firm black foothold in the heart of Manhattan. But that is changing, and fast. Schulze, who moved to Harlem from Connecticut a week ago with her advertising executive husband, is the new face of what was once a place synonymous with either black pride or black ghetto-isation.

Europe

Pope considers emergency ‘abuse summit’

Senior clergy call for crisis gathering of bishops as fears grow that the scandal is spiralling out of control

By John Phillips in Rome Sunday, 28 March 2010

As pilgrims, tourists and the faithful congregate in St Peter’s Square today to collect olive branches during a solemn Palm Sunday Mass, an embattled Pope Benedict XVI is coming under mounting pressure to call an emergency synod of bishops from around the world to hammer out a new strategy to deal with the worsening child abuse scandal, Vatican sources say.

A number of Roman Catholic prelates have strongly urged the Holy See that such an extraordinary synod, or conference, be held on the grounds that the German pontiff and the Vatican evidently cannot cope effectively on their own with the spiralling image crisis.

Italian regional elections to test Berlusconi

Italians are going to the polls in regional elections being seen as a test of popularity for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

By Duncan Kennedy

BBC News, Rome Sunday, 28 March 2010

Thirteen out of Italy’s 20 regions are involved in the ballot.

Mr Berlusconi has been at the centre of a number of controversies in recent months, which may affect his party’s chances.

Meanwhile, Italian authorities say they have intercepted a letter to Mr Berlusconi containing a bullet.

In a separate incident an incendiary device addressed to his interior minister caught fire and injured the hands of a postman in Milan.

An anarchist group said it sent the package. It is not known who sent the letter.

Coalition questioned

Outside of the European elections, this is the biggest test of public opinion since Silvio Berlusconi was elected two years ago.

His centre right People of Freedom party only holds two of the regions but had been expected to pick up more this time.

Middle East

Patrick Cockburn: Iraq – violent, divided, but hopeful  

The election result marks another stumbling step towards an independent and, ultimately, peaceful existence  

Sunday, 28 March 2010

As people in Sunni areas of Baghdad heard the full results of the election, they ran through the streets firing their rifles into the air in celebration and triumphantly chanting the name of Iyad Allawi, the leader of the political bloc winning most seats in parliament.

Mr Allawi had been expected to do well but the extent of his success is still surprising. His al-Iraqiya coalition won 91 seats in the 325-seat parliament, against 89 seats for the prime minister Nouri al-Maliki’s State of Law bloc.

As interim prime minister in 2004-2005 Mr Allawi ran an administration chiefly notable for its incompetence and corruption, so his political rebirth is astonishing.

Saudis fund Balkan Muslims spreading hate of the West

From The Sunday Times

March 28, 2010  

Bojan Pancevski in Skopje

SAUDI ARABIA is pouring hundreds of millions of pounds into Islamist groups in the Balkans, some of which spread hatred of the West and recruit fighters for jihad in Afghanistan.

According to officials in Macedonia, Islamic fundamentalism threatens to destabilise the Balkans. Strict Wahhabi and Salafi factions funded by Saudi organisations are clashing with traditionally moderate local Muslim communities.

Fundamentalists have financed the construction of scores of mosques and community centres as well as handing some followers up to £225 a month.

Asia

Goa: property frenzy and crime poison the hippy dream

For decades, waves of westerners have swept through the beautiful Indian resort, some settling in search of the good life. But the trial of two men accused of killing a British teenager is just the latest source of tension in a community beset by fears over rising crime and economic insecurity

Gethin Chamberlain in Anjuna, Goa

The Observer, Sunday 28 March 2010

On the narrow lanes that lead towards the Anjuna flea market, impromptu convoys of motorbikes and scooters weave around the ubiquitous cows and bump over the potholes, heading in the direction of the beach.

Their riders are an odd mix: the hippies, semi-naked with their intricate tattoos and wraparound shades, straddling old Enfield Bullets, studiously ignoring the fat, pink, middle-aged package tourists clinging nervously to their scooter handlebars and wishing they were sipping their first cool Kingfisher beer of the day. These men, too, have discarded their shirts, preferring to expose their beer bellies to the sun; the women favour strappy vest tops and shorts that ruck up around the thighs. If they notice the cold stares they receive from some of the local people who move among them, it does not show.

Thai PM agrees to meet with anti-government protesters



From Kocha Olarn, CNN

March 28, 2010  

– Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva will sit down Sunday for face-to-face talks with the leaders of an anti-government movement that is demanding he dissolve the parliament.

The meeting is expected to take place at 4 p.m. (3 a.m. ET), with both sides sending about three or four representatives, said Panitan Wattanayakorn, acting spokesman of the government.

Abhisit’s decision to meet is an abrupt reversal from a position he took hours earlier when he said he would not negotiate with protesters while they continued to issue threats and ultimatums.

The announcement came after an estimated 80,000 protesters held a demonstration in Bangkok Saturday, the latest mass rally staged by supporters of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. They demand incumbent Abhisit Vejjajiva’s government holds new elections.

Africa

White farmers ‘being wiped out’

Over 3,000 have been killed since 1994. Now the ANC is accused of fanning the hate.

From The Sunday Times

March 28, 2010  Dan McDougall in Ceres, Western Cape

THE gunmen walked silently through the orchard. Skirting a row of burnt-out tyres, set ablaze months earlier to keep the budding fruit from freezing, they drew their old .38 revolvers.

Inside his farmhouse Pieter Cillier, 57, slept with his 14-year-old daughter Nikki at his side. His 12-year-old son JD was having a sleepover with two teenagers in an adjoining room.

As the intruders broke in, the farmer woke. He rushed to stop them, only to be shot twice in the chest.

In his death throes he would have seen his killers and then his children standing over him, screaming and crying.

South African stars to miss out on World Cup

Musicians plan protests over being left out of opening ceremony in favour of foreign acts

Alex Duval Smith, Cape Town

The Observer, Sunday 28 March 2010

If Alicia Keys performs You Don’t Know My Name when she headlines at the opening ceremony of the World Cup on 10 June, she will be echoing the feelings of top South African artists who have been left off the bill.

In the latest blow to South African pride in hosting a competition expected to be watched by billions of TV viewers, local artists are to stage protests over being sidelined by the likes of Keys, the Black Eyed Peas and Shakira.

To mark the disappointment of local musicians, Arthur Mafokate, a star of the local musical genre known as kwaito, has called on South African radio stations to play only African music for the duration of the tournament. “At least the tourists might hear us on the radio,” he said.

Latin America

In Mexico, Catholic order is haunted by past

Worldwide, the Legion of Christ is struggling with the fallout of revelations that its late founder sexually abused boys, had affairs and had been addicted to drugs. But in Mexico, support is strong.

By Tracy Wilkinson

March 28, 2010

Reporting from Mexico City – He hobnobbed with Mexico’s rich and famous, cut lucrative real estate deals and was rumored to travel on occasion with a briefcase full of cash. He fathered at least one child, molested seminarians and boys and is said to have boasted that he had the pope’s permission to get massages from young nuns.

And all the while the conservative priest was building one of the most influential organizations in the Roman Catholic Church.

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