Docudharma Times Saturday April 10

Man accused of death threats released on bail

BY CHRIS BRISTOL

YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC  

YAKIMA, Wash. — Over the objection of prosecutors, a Selah retiree accused of making death threats against U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., was released from jail Friday after posting $20,000 bond.

Charles Alan Wilson, 63, had been in custody since the FBI arrested him Tuesday. At a Friday morning court hearing, U.S. Magistrate Judge James Hutton ruled the retired carpenter is not a flight risk and has no criminal history.

“While the allegations are serious, and while they have a particular edge to them, I’m convinced … conditions can be imposed to ensure the safety of the community,” said Hutton, who noted Wilson cooperated with authorities after his arrest.

U.S. Now Trying Softer Approach Toward Karzai



By HELENE COOPER and MARK LANDLER

Published: April 9, 2010

WASHINGTON – After more than a year of watching America’s ability to influence President Hamid Karzai ebb, Obama administration officials now admit privately that the tough-love approach Mr. Obama adopted when he came to power may have been a big mistake.

The difference in approach was evident in two recent scenes on Air Force One.

Scene 1, March 28: Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, visited reporters flying with the president from Washington to Kabul and promised that President Obama would take on the Afghan president for ignoring American demands on corruption and drug trafficking.

Hooters restaurant underscores mixed sexual messages in China

The Beijing Hooters is a lot like its American counterpart, but it’s also a snapshot of changing attitudes toward sex in China, a country full of contradictions.

By Lily Kuo

Reporting from Beijing

Sunday is a slow night for the Beijing Hooters girls. Jiang Xin — or Summer, as her name tag reads — takes the opportunity to teach the new hires one of their dance routines.

With smoky dark eyes and her all-black trainer uniform, 24-year-old Jiang is sexy, smoldering and standoffish until she smiles. This she does when she gently admonishes the girls to loosen up, laugh, and stop tugging at the bottoms of their shorts.

USA

Exhibit reflects Camp Pendleton’s role as refuge for Vietnamese

‘Images at War’s End’ shows weddings, baptisms, Buddhist ceremonies, even a hula hoop contest. Refugees say they think often of their experiences at the base.

By My-Thuan Tran

April 10, 2010  

A few years ago, Faye Jonason received a call from a Vietnamese couple from Roseville, Calif., who asked if she had a photo of their wedding. By Peter Finn

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, April 10, 2010The couple were married at one of the “tent cities” erected at Camp Pendleton that housed tens of thousands of Vietnamese refugees after the war.

Jonason, the Marine base’s museum division officer, rummaged through her archives and found a black-and-white photo of a young, smiling bride in a white dress kneeling beside the groom and another couple. It was dated May 22, 1975.

Federal judge orders release of Guantanamo Bay detainee



By Peter Finn

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, April 10, 2010

In an opinion released Friday, a federal judge ruled that the government cannot continue to hold a Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detainee simply because it fears he will renew his ties with al-Qaeda or commit unlawful acts.

U.S. District Court Judge James Robertson ruled that Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian, must be released from custody because the government was unable to prove that at the time of his capture he was part of al-Qaeda or was providing any support to the organization.

Europe

To Russia without love

Diplomatic incident as American woman who adopted orphaned boy sends him home alone to Moscow

By Shaun Walker in Moscow Saturday, 10 April 2010

Russian authorities reacted with fury yesterday after an American woman sent her adopted seven-year-old son unaccompanied on a one-way flight to Moscow with a note in his pocket saying she wanted nothing more to do with him.

The boy, Artyom Savelyev, turned up on the doorstep of a Russia ministry yesterday, just six months after leaving a Russian orphanage to start a new life with a family in the United States.

French praise EastEnders as inspiration for television

From The Times

April 10, 2010

Adam Sage, Paris

The soap opera was once scorned in France as an inferior art form – entertainment for British philistines but unworthy of lofty French minds. Not any more. Soaps are being acclaimed as high culture, defined by EastEnders, the programme being held up as a beacon for French creative artists.

The change was underlined yesterday as the inhabitants of Albert Square – and the French soap that they inspired – were dissected at a festival in Paris. Film buffs listened intently as Kate Harwood, head of series and serials at the BBC, explained the success of EastEnders and showed a scene where Stacey Slater edges towards suicide.

Middle East

‘As I watch the footage, anger calcifies in my heart

A novelist and former prisoner of Saddam Hussein’s regime gives her reaction to the Wikileaks Iraq video  

Haifa Zangana

The Guardian, Saturday 10 April 2010  

I know the area where this massacre was committed. It is a crowded working-class area, a place where it is safe for children to play outdoors. It is near where my two aunts and their extended families lived, where I played as a child with my cousins Ali, Khalid, Ferial and Mohammed. Their offspring still live there.

The Reuters photographer we see being killed so casually in the film, Namir Noor-Eldeen, did not live there, but went to cover a story, risking his life at a time when most western journalists were imbedded with the military. Noor-Eldeen was 22 (he must have felt extremely proud to be working for Reuters) and single.

Israel’s spies jolted again  



By Victor Kotsev  

There is a mythical aura surrounding Israeli intelligence. Much of it is well-deserved, as a string of spectacular covert operations has consistently shown in the decades since the formation of the Jewish state.

Feats such as the 1967 destruction of the Egyptian air force, Operation Entebbe (1976), the destruction of Osirak (1981) and, more recently, of the Syrian plutonium reactor (2007), have enshrined the central role of the intelligence arm in Israeli military strength and deterrence.

Asia

Kyrgyzstan’s head reveals overthrown president left only $80m in the budget

• Bakiyev ‘plundered state and favoured family’

• Otunbayeva says Russia recognises new regime

Luke Harding in Bishkek

guardian.co.uk, Friday 9 April 2010 22.03 BST  

The head of Kyrgyzstan’s new interim government yesterday revealed that her country was broke and said that the former president who was overthrown in a street-led revolution this week had left only $80m in the budget.

In an interview with the Guardian, Roza Otunbayeva appealed for urgent international aid so that the impoverished Central Asian nation could meet its immediate bills. “Tomorrow we should pay pensions. This is a really serious problem,” she said.

The Cheonan cover-up



By Aidan Foster-Carter  

It’s now almost two weeks since the Republic of Korea navy corvette Cheonan mysteriously exploded and sank close to Baengnyeong, South Korea’s northwestern-most island, late on Friday night, March 26. Fifty-eight of its 104 man crew were swiftly plucked from the chilly waters, but 46 drowned – although only two bodies had been found as of April 8.

Since then 10 more have died: one navy diver, and nine fishermen on a boat commandeered to help the search after it was apparently in collision with a Cambodian-registered freighter. The original explosion was powerful enough to tear this substantial vessel – 88 meters long, 1,200 tonnes – in half.

Africa

Sudan goes to the polls but the result is already certain

The people have waited two decades to vote but tomorrow’s election is a sham. Daniel Howden reports from Juba  

Saturday, 10 April 2010

John Garang’s grave has been given a makeover. The tomb of the rebel leader who oversaw a 20-year civil war in Sudan was dressed with tinsel and plastic flowers yesterday and the approach covered with a filthy red carpet. In the field behind the tiled epitaph, a small crowd gathered at dusk for the final rally before a historic vote that begins tomorrow.

The election that Garang’s Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) spent two decades in the bush fighting for, and in which 2 million people died, has already been condemned as an expensive and empty dress rehearsal paid for by an international community intent on trumpeting progress.

Cairo’s revered Al Azhar University now overshadowed by TV imams

Al Azhar’s edicts were once heeded from Morocco to Indonesia, but the Cairo institution has lost clout as TV imams are reaching larger audiences and Egypt’s President Mubarak has taken greater control. That’s a problem for the regime as it braces for its biggest political transition in nearly 30 years.

By Sarah A. Topol, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor / April 9, 2010

Cairo

One of the most historically important centers of Sunni Islamic thought turned a new page in March, when Egypt appointed a Sorbonne-educated cleric to take the helm of Cairo’s ancient Al Azhar University.But Ahmed el-Tayeb, who holds a PhD in Islamic philosophy, faces an old battle: how to preserve Al Azhar’s independence and influence.

Al Azhar today is suffering from a perceived lack of credibility in the face of pressure from the Egyptian government and a loss of popularity amid the rising influence of TV preachers and Internet imams.

Latin America

At least 80 gunmen terrorize Mexican town, kill 4



Associated Press  April 10, 2010

MEXICO CITY – Police say at least 80 gunmen terrorized a town in northern Mexico for several hours and killed four people.

Sonora state attorney general Abel Murrieta says the assailants arrived in the town of Maycoba in at least 15 pickup trucks, opened fire on the state police headquarters and set it ablaze.

Murrieta said Friday the assailants terrorized the town for at least five hours Thursday afternoon. He said the gunmen are members of organized crime but gave no other details.

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