Docudharma Times Friday April 2

Wash. refinery blast kills one; 3 are missing

Witnesses in homes as far away as 5 miles said they felt their houses shake

Kids stranded in Haiti often not welcome home

Not all families have the resources to take their children back

By MIKE MELIA Associated Press

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Stranded since the earthquake, 9-year-old Ana toes the dusty concrete outside her orphanage and tells a social worker she wants to go back to live with her half-sister. Within hours, the aid worker hits pay dirt, finding the adult sister in a sprawling shantytown.

But there’s a problem. The sister, an impoverished woman with two children of her own, was the one who dropped the girl at the orphanage in the first place.

“This is going to be difficult,” sighed Mario Marcellus, a Haitian caseworker for World Vision – one of five international aid groups working to trace children living in orphanages or homeless camps since the earthquake and return them to their families.

Britain names Chagos Islands world’s largest marine preserve

The government of Britain named the Chagos Islands – home to the military base of Diego Garcia and some of the Indian Ocean’s healthiest coral reefs – the world’s largest marine preserve.

By Peter N. Spotts, Staff writer / April 1, 2010

A patch of ocean roughly the size of Texas and harboring some of the world’s most pristine coral reefs has received tough new protection from the British government.

The 210,000 square-mile area, which embraces the Indian Ocean’s Chagos Island archipelago, now represents the world’s single largest marine protected area trumping the previous record marine-conservation set-asides. President George W. Bush approved the establishment of national marine monuments around the northern Hawaiian Islands in 2006 and along the Marianas Islands in 2009.

USA

Democrats map out midterm campaign strategy for Obama



By Anne E. Kornblut

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, April 2, 2010  

Facing a tough midterm election in which they could potentially lose their majorities in Congress, Democrats are privately debating where and how President Obama can help — or hurt.

The president is unlikely to campaign in Arkansas and hasn’t been to Illinois since last summer, even though both states have important Senate races.

Although many states won’t hold primaries until next month, Obama has appeared at only one campaign rally this year — for Martha Coakley, who lost a special Senate election in Massachusetts.

Census project adds to the job picture when it counts

About 700,000 are getting temp work. Critics say that’s a drop in the bucket.

By Nathan Olivarez-Giles and Alana Semuels

April 1, 2010 | 7:34 p.m.

When March employment figures are released Friday by the Department of Labor, analysts are expecting to see the biggest U.S. job gains in more than two years.

But perhaps half the 200,000 or so positions expected to be added to payrolls may be the byproduct of a government effort that has turned into a fortuitous job generator: the U.S. census.

The constitutionally mandated nationwide head count arrives this year at a crucial time — after the start of the country’s economic recovery, but before private-sector employers have created many jobs.

Europe

Shared nuclear submarine patrols would benefit Britain and France

A joint policy would end the stark choice between total disarmament and Trident replacement

Peter Burt

The Guardian, Friday 2 April 2010

Your article discusses the possibility of arranging shared patrols between British and French nuclear weapons submarines (Split la différence – France offers to join forces with UK’s nuclear submarine fleet, 19 March). This opens up interesting opportunities for taking steps towards disarmament without compromising the security of either nation.

You explain that “officials from both countries have discussed how a deterrence-sharing scheme might work but Britain has so far opposed the idea on the grounds that such pooling of sovereignty would be politically unacceptable”. Yet the scheme offers a number of potential advantages that should encourage ministers and civil servants to look more closely at the potential for Anglo-French co-operation.

Vatican was warned about paedophile priests in 1963

Lawyers for US victims of abuse reveal letter of concern written to the then Pope

By David Usborne  Friday, 2 April 2010

A letter sent in 1963 to Pope Paul VI by a senior American priest who outlined the “problem of the problem priest” suggests that the Vatican was fully aware – or at least should have been aware – of the extent of sexual abuse within the US Catholic Church almost five decades ago.

The missive, unearthed and made public yesterday by lawyers representing victims of alleged sexual abuse in Los Angeles, argued even then that the best solution for dealing with priests found to have violated young men and boys was to defrock them, rather than shuffle them to other dioceses, as was the practice of the Catholic Church for so long.

Middle East

 Israeli planes strike multiple targets in Gaza air raid

The air strikes were in apparent retaliation against a rocket attack on southern Israel  

Matthew Weaver and agencies

guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 April 2010 09.23 BST  

Israeli planes carried out several air strikes on Gaza overnight in apparent retaliation against a rocket attack on southern Israel.

The Israeli military said the aircraft struck four targets: two weapons-making factories and two weapons-storage facilities.

Palestinian witnesses and Hamas officials said 10 sites were hit including farms, a metal workshop and a cheese factory in Gaza City.

Hospital officials said two children suffered minor injuries, according to Reuters.

Saudis ‘give Lebanese sorcerer stay of execution’

A Lebanese man sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia for sorcery has been given a temporary reprieve, his lawyer says.

 

The BBC  Friday, 2 April 2010

Ali Sabat’s execution was scheduled for Friday but his lawyer, May el-Khansa, told the BBC she had been assured by a Lebanese minister it would not happen.

Mr Sabat, who is in his 40s, was the host of a satellite TV programme in which he predicted the future.

He was arrested by religious police while on pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in 2008 and convicted of sorcery.

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri had been urged to intervene on his behalf.

“The minister of justice for Lebanon called me and told me that nothing would happen [on Friday],” Ms Khansa told the BBC.

Asia

Robert Fisk: Glossy new front in battle for hearts and minds

Once it was grainy video footage on websites. Now the Taliban believes its best chance of winning the propaganda war lies in a magazine

Friday, 2 April 2010  

It’s sleek, it’s glossy, it’s in eloquent Arabic, Pashto and Dari, and it pours derision on American and Nato forces in Afghanistan; it is the brand new propaganda wing of the Taliban: not just internet video of attacks on the western armies in Helmand and Kandahar, but professionally produced magazines, carrying stories of the Taliban’s own “martyrdom” operations and the names of its dead fighters. For once, the cliché “well-oiled publicity machine” is correct.

Signs of life in China’s flooded mine: state TV

Rescuers at a coal mine in north China have heard signs of life from a flooded shaft where 153 workers have been trapped for five days, China’s state television has reported.

Published: 9:08AM BST 02 Apr 2010

“(Rescuers) heard a continuous tapping sound coming up a dredge pipe,” a reporter at the scene said on China’s CCTV news channel. “Everyone was really excited as it showed that efforts were not in vain.”

The vast Wangjialing mine in Shanxi province, China’s coal-producing heartland, was flooded on Sunday, leaving 153 workers trapped up to 1,000 meters underground. More than 100 workers were able to escape.At least 3,000 rescuers have been working round-the-clock shifts to pump water out millions of gallons of water from the mine in a bid to reach the missing.

Africa

Nigeria forced to deal with revival of Islamist group Boko Haram

From The Times

April 2, 2010

Jonathan Clayton, Lagos  

The text message was blunt. “You will all be killed.” It was one of many received in recent days by Nigerian security services on duty in the Muslim north of the country.

The text was signed Boko Haram – Nigeria’s Islamist militant group and self-styled Taleban. After several days of battles last July the authorities believed that they had destroyed the movement. Now, knowing from bitter experience to take such messages seriously, the police and army are on alert.

Sudan opposition parties in elections boycott

Most of Sudan’s main opposition parties have said they will boycott presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections this month.

The BBC  Friday, 2 April 2010  

The southern SPLM has already said it is boycotting the presidential election over fraud and security fears.

It is a major blow to the credibility of the 11-13 April elections – the first national multi-party polls for 24 years, the BBC’s James Copnall says.

The announcement comes after crisis talks hosted by US envoy Scott Gration.

President Omar al-Bashir, wanted for alleged war crimes in Darfur, now faces only one major challenger.

Veteran Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi confirmed that candidates from his Popular Congress Party would contest the polls.

Latin America

Why are beheadings so popular with Mexico’s drug gangs?



By Tim Johnson | McClatchy Newspapers

CUERNAVACA, Mexico – The preferred form of cruelty by drug cartel henchmen is to capture enemies and behead them, a once-shocking act that has now become numbingly routine.

Since March 22, authorities have come across four separate grisly scenes of beheaded bodies, in one case with several heads placed neatly in a row.

Dozens of people have been decapitated in recent months, most of them apparently members of rival drug gangs locked in turf battles over narcotics routes, betrayals of loyalty and territorial influence.

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