Docudharma Times Tuesday April 6

Judge dismisses scores of Guantanamo habeas cases



By Carol Rosenberg | McClatchy Newspapers  

WASHINGTON – A federal judge has dismissed more than 100 habeas corpus lawsuits filed by former Guantanamo captives, ruling that because the Bush and Obama administrations had transferred them elsewhere, the courts need not decide whether the Pentagon imprisoned them illegally.

The ruling dismayed attorneys for some of the detainees who’d hoped any favorable U.S. court findings would help clear their clients of the stigma, travel restrictions and, in some instances, perhaps more jail time that resulted from their stay at Guantanamo.

Spying on Computer Spies Traces Data Theft to China



By JOHN MARKOFF and DAVID BARBOZA

Published: April 5, 2010

TORONTO – Turning the tables on a China-based computer espionage gang, Canadian and United States computer security researchers have monitored a spying operation for the past eight months, observing while the intruders pilfered classified and restricted documents from the highest levels of the Indian Defense Ministry.

In a report issued Monday night, the researchers, based at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, provide a detailed account of how a spy operation it called the Shadow Network systematically hacked into personal computers in government offices on several continents.

USA

Obama to meet at the White House with black church leaders



By Hamil R. Harris and Krissah Thompson

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

President Obama will sit down Tuesday with about 20 black religious leaders, including representatives of the major African American denominations, in the second White House meeting in three months to discuss the needs of the black community.

The president has faced growing questions about whether he has done enough to help African Americans deal with the nation’s economic downturn. Blacks have been hurt more than other communities by the lack of jobs and the difficulty in obtaining bank financing, among other issues, and some — including political commentator Tavis Smiley and some members of the Congressional Black Caucus — say that Obama has not responded urgently.

Unemployment benefits expire as Congress debates extension

Lawmakers are likely to take up the issue when they return from spring break next week. The sticking point is how to pay for an extension.

By Clement Tan

April 6, 2010

Reporting from Washington – As unemployment benefits expired Monday for tens of thousands of jobless workers, Democrats and Republicans renewed their haggling over whether to vote for an extension when Congress returns from its spring break next week.

At the heart of the dispute is whether the extension should be offset by spending cuts, as Republicans are demanding, or whether it constitutes an emergency, as Democrats say.

The expiration means 212,000 unemployed people will lose benefits this week, according to figures provided by the National Employment Law Project.

Europe

France’s wealthy young Muslims fuel boom in halal food

An affluent middle class of young Muslims is driving a boom in sales of halal products, including alcohol-free sparkling wine and Islam-approved foie gras in France.

Published: 7:00AM BST 06 Apr 2010

The new consumers, known as the beurgeois – a combination of bourgeois and beur, slang for a French person of North African descent – have spending power worth an estimated 5.5bn euros a year.

But they don’t want the foods that their parents grew up with, instead they want high end halal luxuries and a range of halal cuisines, the Guardian reports.

In response to the growing demand for halal products, which is increasing by 15 per cent a year, supermarket group Caisno has started stocking an increasing variety of halal meats.

The fast-food chain Quick has a number of halal-only burger bars and Muslim corner shops selling exclusively halal foods and drinks are also flourishing.

One year after earthquake, L’Aquila remains a ghost town

Survivors denounced politicians in L’Aquila, Italy, at a ceremony to remember those killed in last year’s earthquake. Residents are still waiting for the most basic reconstruction processes to begin.

NATURAL DISASTERS | 06.04.2010

Survivors gathered early on Tuesday in L’Aquila, Italy to commemorate the one year anniversary of an earthquake that killed 308 people and left most of the city in ruins.

About 25,000 people, among them aid workers, displaced citizens and members of the civil defense service, gathered under the open sky for a candlelight procession to honor the dead. Four lines of people walked toward the city’s cathedral, aiming to arrive at 3:32 a.m., the exact time of the quake. A human chain and balloon launch were scheduled for later in the day as part of the commemorations.

A year after the 6.3 magnitude quake, life inside the walled city in central Italy still has not returned to normal. Of the 120,000 people affected by the earthquake in and around L’Aquila, more than 52,000 have yet to return home or move into new housing.

Middle East

What are the rules for public behavior in Dubai?

The case of a British couple sentenced to one month in jail for kissing in Dubai highlights the challenges of proper public behavior in the emirate.  

By Staff writer / April 5, 2010  

If you’re a Westerner visiting Dubai, an Arab city-state with traditional Islamic mores and laws, you may need to watch your public behavior.Here are a few do’s and don’ts (mostly don’ts):

Dress code: You can wear a bikini/swimming suit (or swimming trunks for men) on the beach, but it is an arrestable offense to go topless or wear a thong. Wearing swimsuits away from the beach can also get you arrested under public decency laws.

Non-Muslim women are not required to cover their heads in public, but if you enter a mosque it will be required.

Series of blasts destroys Baghdad buildings



Reuters

Tuesday, April 6, 2010; 3:33 AM  

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Coordinated blasts destroyed at least four buildings in the Iraqi capital on Tuesday, killing at least two people and wounding 12, civil defense and police sources said.

A suicide bomber also struck near the former British embassy in central Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said.

The building blasts took place in the Shula and Chukook districts of northwestern Baghdad, the al-Shurta al-Rabaa area of southwestern Baghdad and the Alawi district in the center of the city, the sources said.

Asia

Shadow lands: Pakistan – A nation under attack

American drones overhead, Taliban troops on the offensive, and the horrifying rise of child kidnapping – Pakistan is in pieces, writes Robert Fisk, in a devastating portrait of a country thwarted by violence and corruption

Tuesday, 6 April 2010

Pakistan ambushes you. The midday heat is also beginning to ambush all who live in Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province. Canyons of fumes grey out the vast ramparts of the Bala Hisar fort. “Headquarters Frontier Force” is written on the ancient gateway. I notice the old British cannon on the heights – and the spanking new anti-aircraft gun beside it, barrels deflected to point at us, at all who enter this vast metropolis of pain. There are troops at every intersection, bullets draped in belts over their shoulders, machine guns on tripods erected behind piles of sandbags, the sights of AK-47s brushing impersonally across rickshaws, and rubbish trucks and buses with men clinging to the sides. There are beards that reach to the waist. The soldiers have beards, too, sometimes just as long.

Archaeology sparks new conflict between Sri Lankan Tamils and Sinhalese

From The Times

April 6, 2010

Jeremy Page, South Asia Correspondent  

Recent visitors to Kilinochchi, the former capital of the Tamil Tigers, had noticed something unusual – there was a single, new building standing among the bombed-out ruins of the abandoned city in northern Sri Lanka.

It was a whitewashed Buddhist shrine, strewn with flowers. “We thought it strange because there was no one there except soldiers – the civilians had all fled,” one of the visitors said.

Officers told them that the shrine had been damaged by the Tigers and renovated by the army – recruited largely from the Sinhalese Buddhist majority – after the rebels’ defeat a year ago next month. “It’s an ancient site,” Major-General Prasad Samarasinghe, the chief military spokesman, told The Times.

Africa

Congo’s president urges peacekeepers to leave

AP  

Tuesday, 6 April 2010  

Congo’s president called for the UN’s 20,000-strong peacekeeping force to leave before September 2011 so the country can “fly with its own wings,” but the UN secretary-general isn’t signing off on a date, according to a report.

Ban Ki-moon said he wants to ensure that military operations against rebels in eastern Congo are successfully completed, that well trained and equipped Congolese army units can take over the UN force’s security role, and that the government extends its authority in areas freed from armed groups before the largest UNpeacekeeping operation in the world departs.

The secretary-general did recommend in the report to the Security Council that the withdrawal start immediately with up to 2,000 troops leaving peaceful areas of the central African nation by June 30, the 50th anniversary of Congo’s independence.

Mom: Son, 15, helped kill white supremacist

Boy and adult charged with murder of Terreblanche

By MICHELLE FAUL AND THOMAS PHAKANE Associated Press

VENTERSDORP, South Africa – The mother of a 15-year-old murder suspect said Monday that her son struck a notorious white supremacist leader with an iron rod after the farmer refused to pay him, a slaying that heightens racial tensions as South Africa prepares to host the World Cup.

“My son admitted that they did the killing,” the mother said in an exclusive interview with AP Television News conducted in the Tswana language from her two-room home in Tshing township on the outskirts of Ventersdorp town.

Latin America

Why Mexicali earthquake damage is nothing compared to Haiti

Sunday’s 7.2-magnitude Mexicali earthquake killed only two, despite being stronger than the Jan. 12 Haiti quake that killed more than 200,000 and made 1 million homeless. Why?

By Sara Miller Llana, Staff writer / April 5, 2010

Mexico City

Sunday’s 7.2 Mexicali earthquake was the third major quake to rattle the western hemisphere in less than three months.

The quake was more powerful than the 7.0 earthquake that left more than 200,000 dead and more than 1 million homeless in Haiti on Jan.12. It was also a relatively shallow earthquake, at six miles underground, meaning there was less earth to absorb the shaking.

But with only two reported dead, the damage is far more contained than the quake that destroyed Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, and the massive 8.8-magnitude quake that left 700 dead in Chile on Feb. 27.

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