Docudharma Times Thursday March 18

Most power plants still spewing toxic mercury, report says



 By Renee Schoof | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON – Many of America’s coal-fired power plants lack widely available pollution controls for the highly toxic metal mercury, and mercury emissions recently increased at more than half of the country’s 50 largest mercury-emitting power plants, according to a report Wednesday.

The nonpartisan Environmental Integrity Project reported that five of the 10 plants with the highest amount of mercury emitted are in Texas. Plants in Georgia, Missouri, Alabama, Pennsylvania and Michigan also are in the top 10.

The report, which used the most recent data available from the Environmental Protection Agency, found that mercury emissions increased at 27 of the top 50 plants from 2007 to 2008.

Idaho first to sign law against health care reform

March 18, 2010

By JOHN MILLER

Associated Press Writer

BOISE, Idaho – Idaho is leading the charge in a states-rights push to defeat a proposal in Congress that would require people to buy health insurance, a key piece of reforms being pushed by President Barack Obama.

Republican Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter used a ceremony Wednesday afternoon to become the first governor to sign into law a measure requiring the state attorney general to sue the federal government over any such insurance mandates.

There’s similar legislation pending in 37 other states, a point Otter stressed when asked if the bill he signed can succeed, given constitutional law experts are already saying federal laws would supersede those of states in a U.S. District Court fight.

USA

Pentagon Sees a Threat From Online Muckrakers



By STEPHANIE STROM

Published: March 17, 2010

To the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States, the Pentagon has added WikiLeaks.org, a tiny online source of information and documents that governments and corporations around the world would prefer to keep secret.

The Pentagon assessed the danger WikiLeaks.org posed to the Army in a report marked “unauthorized disclosure subject to criminal sanctions.” It concluded that “WikiLeaks.org represents a potential force protection, counterintelligence, OPSEC and INFOSEC threat to the U.S. Army” – or, in plain English, a threat to Army operations and information.

WikiLeaks, true to its mission to publish materials that expose secrets of all kinds, published the 2008 Pentagon report about itself on Monday.

Senator Smiley: Al Franken pulls no punches, but adds a few punch lines



By Jason Horowitz

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, March 18, 2010  

Al Franken is working on some new material.

After arriving in the Senate in July after a bitterly contested recount, the former “Saturday Night Live” satirist immediately set out to prove that he was no court jester. He pursued Hillary Clinton’s expectations-defying model of bipartisan workhorse and convincingly assumed the role of diligent policy wonk.

But by so effectively suppressing the punch lines, Franken exposed an irascible, sometimes nasty side of his personality. In a chamber where goodwill helps a freshman rack up legislative achievements, that can be just as damaging.

Europe

Eta cell in deadly Paris shootout

French police officer dies after suspected Basque separatists open fire

By Anita Brooks in Madrid Thursday, 18 March 2010

A French police officer has been killed in a shoot-out near Paris with suspected members of the Basque separatist group Eta.

It is the fifth police shoot-out with Eta in France since 2001, but the first time a French officer has died.

Dozens of high-ranking Eta operatives have been arrested in France in recent years, thanks to increased co-operation with Spanish investigators.

“This time France has paid a high price for its collaboration in the fight against Eta which is so important for our freedom and our security,” said the Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, in an address to parliament.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatens to expel 100,000 illegal Armenians

From The Times

March 18, 2010

Suna Erdem  

Turkey’s Prime Minister has raised the stakes in an international row over the mass killing of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey by threatening to expel 100,000 Armenians living in the country.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that action could be taken if foreign parliaments continued to increase the pressure by recognising the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks a century ago as genocide.

Middle East

Tehran accused of arming Taleban with weapons and explosives

From The Times

March 18, 2010  

Tom Coghlan

The Iranian Government has been accused by Afghan and Western officials of delivering tonnes of weaponry to the Taleban, including plastic explosives, mortars, grenades and technical manuals.

Weapons and documents shown to Channel 4 News indicate that more than ten tonnes of weapons have been intercepted at Iran’s desert border with Afghanistan in the past year, with a tonne and a half recovered in the past week.

The reports come as General David Petraeus, the head of US Central Command, warned the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Iran also provided a base for al-Qaeda operatives.

Brazil steps between Israel and Iran  

THE ROVING EYE

By Pepe Escobar  

Talk about a Via Dolorosa. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is the first Brazilian president to visit Israel officially. Lauded for his charisma, swing and formidable negotiating powers – United States President Barack Obama refers to him as “the man” – little did Lula know that to engage his hosts this week he would have to give the Prophet Abraham a run for his money, no less.

In the end, he stood his ground. He made no concessions. And unlike United States Vice President Joseph Biden last week, he even managed not to be publicly humiliated by his hosts.

Lula is no stranger to tough neighborhoods. Former bouncer turned hardline politician Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s foreign minister, boycotted Lula’s speech at the Knesset (parliament) as well as Lula’s meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Asia

North Korean executed for botched currency reform

North Korea’s finance chief Pak Nam-gi was executed after currency reform worsened markets and prompted national anger

Associated Press

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 18 March 2010 08.02 GMT

North Korea has executed a senior finance official as punishment for a botched currency reform which damaged economic confidence and prompted national anger, reports said today.

In November, the country revalued its currency as part of efforts to lower inflation and reassert control over the country’s nascent market economy. However, the measure reportedly worsened the country’s food situation by forcing the closure of markets and sparked anger among many North Koreans left with piles of worthless bills.

Robert Fisk: Into the terrifying world of Pakistan’s ‘disappeared’

In the first of a series of reports from Pakistan, our correspondent meets the wife of one of 8,000 citizens who have gone ‘missing’ at the hands of the state

Thursday, 18 March 2010

If you want to know how brutally Pakistan treats its people, you should meet Amina Janjua. An intelligent painter and interior designer, she sits on the vast sofa of her living room in Rawalpindi – a room that somehow accentuates her loneliness – scarf wound tightly round her head, serving tea and biscuits like the middle-class woman she is. And although neither a soldier nor a policeman has ever laid a hand on her, she is a victim of her country’s cruel oppression. Because, five years ago, her husband Masood became one of Pakistan’s “disappeared”.

Africa

Nigeria leader Goodluck Jonathan dissolves cabinet

Nigeria’s acting president, Goodluck Jonathan, has dissolved the country’s cabinet.

The BBC Thursday, 18 March 2010

Mr Jonathan became acting president in February amid the continuing illness of President Umaru Yar’Adua.

Mr Yar’Adua went to Saudi Arabia for treatment in November last year and, despite returning to Nigeria recently, has not been seen in public.One outgoing cabinet minister denied there was any power vacuum, saying civil servants would take over.

The cabinet was picked by Mr Yar’Adua and correspondents say Mr Jonathan is now trying to stamp his own authority.

Observers see Wednesday’s move as an attempt to consolidate power at the expense of Mr Yar’Adua.

Inside Al Shabab: How the Somalia militant group rules through fear

As the Somalia government fends off militant group Al Shabab, the Al Qaeda-linked insurgency shows its power through intimidation of a whistle-blower.

By Scott Baldauf Staff write  

Nairobi, Kenya

On Oct. 27, 2008, Ali Abdullahi Egal saw the Al Qaeda-linked militant group Al Shabab stone to death a 13-year-old girl, Aisha Duhulow, under the charge of adultery. The act was not only brutal, but also, in his view, un-Islamic.

The girl had apparently been raped, was not given the right to a legal advocate, and Al Shabab didn’t even bother to produce four eyewitnesses before declaring her guilty.

When Mr. Egal, a human rights activist, reported this event to local and international news organizations two days later, it produced an outcry, and helped set in stone Al Shabab’s image as a cruel and totalitarian regime in control of large portions of southern Somalia. Within a day, Egal received his first death threat, and then his second.

Latin America

Rio protests: Sharing Brazil’s oil revenues will hurt 2016 Olympics

Residents of Rio de Janeiro are staging protests today against a law that give more of Brazil’s oil revenues to other states, reducing Rio’s share. And the governor of Rio says it will undermine the state’s ability to host the 2016 Olympics and the 2014 World Cup.

By Andrew Downie Correspondent / March 17, 2010

Sao Paulo, Brazil

Thousands of Brazilian schoolchildren and city and state workers were given the afternoon off to gather in Rio de Janeiro today and protest a federal law that would reduce the amount of petroleum royalties the energy-rich state now gets.

Less oil money, they say, could also hamper plans to host the 2014 soccer World Cup and the 2016 Olympics in Brazil.

Rio’s governor said the proposed law, which would share Brazil’s oil revenues more evenly among the country’s 26 states, was “a lynching” for his state, and openly wept when discussing the legislation.

If passed, the amendment would cost Rio at least $2.8 billion in annual income and be calamitous for the state’s future, said Gov. Sergio Cabral.

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