Docudharma Times Monday April 12

Mississippi Delta: the land economic recovery never visits

The land of permanent recession

By Shashank Bengali | McClatchy Newspapers

MIDNIGHT, Miss. – The young men were camped out on the street corner by 10:30 a.m., talking loudly, looking bored. They cracked open tall beer cans and passed them around. Before long someone pulled out a joint and lit it up.

On a weekday morning in the Mississippi Delta, the poorest part of the poorest state in the country, these men in their 20s and 30s had nothing to do. No work. A few had broken their backs picking cotton, when it was cotton season, or bloodied their hands farming for catfish, until those jobs started to disappear too.

Eruptions from Caribbean abyss throw up secrets of ocean life  

From The Times

April 12, 2010

Frank Pope, Ocean Correspondent

British scientists hope that the discovery of the world’s deepest undersea volcanos is about to unlock the secrets of life at the bottom of the ocean.

More than three miles beneath the surface of the Caribbean, in a chasm cut off from the rest of the ocean for millions of years, are a cluster of ethereal spires teeming with life.

Formed by volcanically charged jets of superheated water shooting from the spires, hydrothermal vents rewrote the rules of biology when they were first seen three decades ago.

Now scientists aboard the Royal Research Ship James Cook have located the deepest volcanos yet found, 3 miles (5km) down.

USA

Toyota Delayed a U.S. Recall, Documents Show



By MICHELINE MAYNARD

Published: April 11, 2010

DETROIT – The sense of frustration – and urgency – in the e-mail message was palpable.

“I hate to break this to you,” a Toyota executive wrote, “but we have a tendency for mechanical failure in accelerator pedals of a certain manufacturer on certain models.”

The message continued: “The time to hide on this one is over. We need to come clean.”

The message was written in January by Irving A. Miller, then a group vice president for Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A., to another Toyota staff member.

Back home, defending their healthcare votes

For three lawmakers — one who opposed the bill, one who supported it and one who changed his mind — it’s time to explain themselves to uneasy constituents.

By Faye Fiore, Geraldine Baum and Mark Z. Barabak

April 12, 2010

Reporting from Charlottesville, Va., Murrieta, Calif., and New York — The congressional battle over healthcare may have ended, but not the political fight.

With Congress in recess, members trooped home over the last two weeks to discuss what, for many, could be the most consequential vote of their careers. They explained, defended and sometimes distorted the content of the mammoth bill, now federal law, and what it means for their eager, anxious and often just plain confused constituents.

Europe

The iron Frau: Angela Merkel

Germany is flexing its muscles again – thanks to a tough-talking Chancellor who is enjoying popularity both at home and abroad. How has Angela Merkel done it? Tony Paterson reports

Monday, 12 April 2010  

The comparisons between the two formidable female leaders are almost too obvious to draw. But is Angela Merkel turning into Europe’s new Margaret Thatcher?

If the German and other European media are anything to go by, it would be easy to think that she is. Germany’s first woman Chancellor – a leader once referred to as “Ms Europe” – is nowadays being dubbed “Frau Germania”, “Iron Lady” and even ” Maggie Merkel”, not just by hyper-critical British newspapers but by the press in her own country.

Middle East

We can’t work it out: why Israel’s Arab pop idol isn’t coming to Britain

Claims of death threats and accusations of lies surround rift that put paid to Eurovision star’s visit.  

By Mark Hughes Monday, 12 April 2010

When she became the first Arab to represent Israel at the Eurovision Song Contest last year, it was inevitable that Mira Awad would stir controversy. Her duet with a Jewish singer was held up by many as a symbol of hope between the rival communities embroiled in the Middle Eastern conflict.

But her selection was angrily opposed by extremist Arabs and Jews who demanded, unsuccessfully, that she withdraw.

Mass deportation feared after West Bank permit ruling  

From The Times

April 12, 2010

James Hider, Jerusalem  

The Israeli army is to enact a ruling that could leave tens of thousands of Palestinians vulnerable to deportation from the West Bank, human rights groups have claimed.

A coalition of ten Israeli groups appealed to the Defence Ministry not to enact the military order, due to come into effect tomorrow, that would define anyone in the West Bank who does not hold an Israeli permit as an “infiltrator”.

Those without a permit would be liable to seven years in prison and the cost of their deportation from the West Bank – most likely to the Gaza Strip.

Asia

One year on, life slowly returns to the Tamil Tigers’ shattered stronghold

In the first dispatch from within the former rebel base of Kilinochchi, Jason Burke finds refugees cautiously coming home to rebuild their ruined lands

Jason Burke in Kilinochchi

guardian.co.uk

For 20 years or more it was a combat zone, a frontline and a strategic asset. Now light traffic travels down the narrow A9 highway.

From the checkpoint at Omanthai, where Sri Lankan soldiers and fighters from the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam (LTTE) once exchanged their dead, to Elephant Pass – scene of fierce battles in the 1990s – all is quiet. The Tamil Tigers are no more. This territory, once their de facto state, is now very much part of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka.

Soldiers patrol the narrow strip cleared of mines and jungle beside the road.

Thailand PM Abhisit says government ‘remains unified’

Thailand’s Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has said his government and the military remain unified in the face of the red-shirt political protests.

The BBC Monday, 12 April 2010  

He was speaking in a televised broadcast after the country’s army chief said parliament should be dissolved to end the crisis.

Early elections are a central demand of the protesters, camped out in Bangkok.

Mr Abhisit also said an investigation would take place into weekend violence which left 21 people dead.

Seventeen of those killed in Saturday’s violent clashes were civilians. Four policemen were killed and about 800 people were injured.

Africa

Sudan election: Voters savor a tiny taste of democracy

Day One of the complicated three-day Sudan election ended without violence. Despite a widespread boycott by opposition parties and allegations of fraud, many voters seemed happy just to cast their ballots.  

By Scott Baldauf, Staff writer / April 11, 2010  

Khartoum, Sudan

Given the 24-year lag since Sudan’s last multiparty election, voting in today’s Sudan election proceeded rather smoothly.

On Day One of the three-day vote, millions of Sudanese crowded into polling stations across the country to choose their president, their national and state assemblies, their governors, and other local officials in a very complex balloting process that Sudan’s National Election Commission says was designed to prevent rigging.

Several parties have boycotted the elections in general, citing fears of rigging by the government, and the nation’s two largest opposition parties – including an armed former rebel group that runs the semiautonomous south of the country – have withdrawn their candidates for presidency, leaving President Omar al-Bashir as a virtual shoo-in.

Micro-insurance plans extend health care in Africa



By KATHARINE HOURELD

Associated Press Writer

KISAJU, Kenya – Kenyan student Shadrack Silipo had a heart operation five years ago, the sort of surgery that often bankrupts families in Africa.

Silipo’s parents normally would have paid by selling off land – the same green acres that form the inheritance for their eight children. But Silipo’s father, a retired principal, had enrolled the family eight years ago in a micro-insurance plan that covered the $5,000 operation in full.

Latin America

Buildings, nerves under stress in border region a week after quake

As California and Mexican officials work to assess harm to infrastructure, a series of ‘robust’ aftershocks have added to emotional turmoil in the area hit hardest by the 7.2 earthquake

By Tony Perry

April 12, 2010

Reporting from The Calexico-Mexicali Region

Residents and public officials on both sides of the border were assessing damage and looking to repair shattered nerves Sunday amid aftershocks from the magnitude 7.2 earthquake that struck on Easter, the strongest to hit the region in more than a century.

In the California city of Calexico, most of the city’s downtown business district remains closed as structural engineers decide whether the aging buildings can be saved. A squad from the Federal Emergency Management Agency is expected this week.

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