Docudharma Times Thursday March 25

Warned About Abuse, Vatican Failed to Defrock Priest



By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Published: March 24, 2010  

Top Vatican officials – including the future Pope Benedict XVI – did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.

The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.

Fingerbone points to a new type of human who fell off the family tree 30,000 years ago

From The Times

March 25, 2010  

Mark Henderson, Science Editor

A new species of ancient human that lived side by side with Homo sapiens and Neanderthals as recently as 30,000 years ago has been discovered, rewriting the history of humanity’s spread around the world.

The creature, nicknamed “X-woman” by researchers, is the first human cousin to be identified purely from a DNA sample – extracted from a bone fragment of a little finger found two years ago in a Siberian cave.

USA

G.O.P. Forces New House Vote on Package of Health Bill Changes



By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and ROBERT PEAR

Published: March 25, 2010

WASHINGTON – With the Senate working through an all-night session on a package of changes to the Democrats’ sweeping health care legislation, Republicans early on Thursday morning identified parliamentary problems with at least two provisions that will require the measure to be sent back to the House for yet another vote, once the Senate adopts it.

Senate Democrats had been hoping to defeat all of the amendments proposed by Republicans and to prevail on parliamentary challenges so that they could approve the measure and send it to President Obama for his signature. But the bill must comply with complex budget reconciliation rules, and Republicans identified some flaws.

 Obama backtracking on detainee rights, critics say

Human rights activists object to a focus on overseas prisons and arrests without trials. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham is weighing in.

By Julian E. Barnes and David S. Cloud

March 25, 2010

Reporting from Washington – The newest option for detaining terrorism suspects — an Afghan prison that serves the same purpose as the lockup in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — suggests that President Obama’s policies are becoming more like those of his predecessor, George W. Bush, in the view of human rights groups and legal experts.

Obama began his presidency vowing to close Guantanamo, end CIA detention practices and transform the post-9/11 system created by Bush. But the administration gradually has backtracked, and is now revisiting some of the practices in use under Bush: military tribunals, detention without trials and overseas prisons.

Europe

Migrants feel the chill as the French clamp down

‘They don’t treat us like humans,’ says student from Gaza, as police try to make migrants disappear

Alexandra Topping in Calais

The Guardian, Thursday 25 March 2010

Minutes from the buzzing bars and bistros in the trendy Canal St Martin area in Paris, the scene could not have been more different.

Dozens of migrants gathered round open fires, some sat on old office furniture, others crouched. Nearby, in a fenced-off area under a bridge, half a dozen tents were surrounded by discarded food and plastic bags full of dirty clothes, like a miniature shantytown at the edge of the city of light.

The reason why many of them are here lies about 150 miles north of Paris, in Calais. A zero tolerance stance towards migrants has succeeded in reducing numbers in the port but has made life a misery for those who remain and pushed migrants to other places.

Europe in crisis as debts grow and Germany pursues its own interests, say diplomats

From The Times

March 25, 2010

David Charter in Brussels  

Europe is suffering its worst crisis in a generation because of chronic debts and poor growth combined with a resurgence of national self-interest from Germany, senior figures warned on the eve of the quarterly EU summit today.

Berlin’s insistence that Greece should be bailed out by the International Monetary Fund, rather than the eurozone, and a downgrading of Portugal’s credit rating sent the euro to its lowest level for months yesterday. “The debate in Germany over Greece is polluting the atmosphere and creating anti-European feeling,” said Guy Verhofstadt, the federalist former Prime Minister of Belgium. “In the space of a few weeks we are destroying all our efforts to bring Europe closer together.”

Middle East

Hackney: the promised land for Yemen’s Jews

 Families from the Middle East’s poorest country have fled persecution to the East End. Jerome Taylor meets them

Thursday, 25 March 2010

In a small flat in the London borough of Hackney, Yousef al-Zahari’s family is busily cleaning floors in preparation for Passover, the annual Jewish festival which commemorates the Israelites’ escape from enslavement in Egypt. For Jews worldwide, Passover is a time of celebration, spiritual reflection and renewal. But for the al-Zaharis, who came to Britain from Yemen three years ago, it has an added layer of authenticity. Like the Israelites, they know all too well what it is like to flee from persecution in the desert.

Fury as plan for new homes in East Jerusalem is agreed

Scheme to redevelop hotel in Arab part of city further threatens peace talks

By Donald Macintyre In Jerusalem Thursday, 25 March 2010

A fresh row that could place even further strain on US-Israel relations was triggered yesterday after Jewish settlers were given the final go-ahead to build 20 new homes in a highly sensitive part of Arab East Jerusalem.

Furious Palestinian negotiators denounced the approval for a settlement at the site of the old Shepherd Hotel in Sheikh Jarrah which started to come to light just before the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met the US President Barack Obama on Tuesday night.

Asia

North Koreans fear another famine amid economic crisis

Women who fled to China describe acute shortages and anger after a disastrous currency devaluation. As an ailing Kim tries to secure his son’s ascension, some people are beginning to speak out.

 By Barbara Demick

March 25, 2010

Reporting from Yanji, China – North Koreans who recently fled to China say many of their fellow citizens are losing faith in the regime of Kim Jong Il after a disastrous currency revaluation that wiped out savings and left food scarcer than at any time since the famine of the mid-1990s, when as many as 2 million people died.

“People are outspoken. They complain,” said a 56-year-old woman from the border city of Musan who gave her name as Li Mi Hee.

China and the internet: Tricks to beat the online censor

Charles Arthur on some of the ways Chinese users get around censorship on the web

Charles Arthur, technology editor

The Guardian, Thursday 25 March 2010

The biggest challenge for someone inside China who wants to get around the Great Firewall is the teleological one: how do you search for information that is itself banned? Of necessity – because the Chinese government monitors internet use inside the country, and the data passing across the fibre-optic cables at three points where it goes international – such knowledge tends to spread by word of mouth.

For those who want to know what’s not accessible inside China, there’s whatblocked.com, which shows the present status of various sites and services. Sometimes whole sites vanish. “One day the site addresses just don’t resolve,” as a former Microsoft employee explained this week.

Africa

Commercial ship strikes back in deadly shootout with Somali pirates

The attack by Somali pirates on the MV Almezaan Tuesday, in which one pirate was killed, highlights how more commercial ships are hiring private armed security groups for protection.

By Scott Baldauf, Staff Writer / March 24, 2010

Johannesburg

Private security guards protecting a commercial ship shot dead a Somali pirate Tuesday, the first recorded incident of its kind.

The pirate attack on the Panamanian-flagged MV Almezaan occurred off the coast of Somalia, and comes at a time when increasing numbers of commercial ships are hiring private armed security units to protect them during their passage through the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea. While US and French Navy crews have killed Somali pirates before during hostage rescues on the high seas, today’s shooting shows that the Somali piracy problem is potentially growing more violent.

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