Docudharma Times Friday May 28

Estimates of oil leak gush past twice the previous levels; drill permits yanked



By Joel Achenbach and David A. Fahrenthold

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, May 28, 2010

With mud continuing to battle oil in an attempted “top kill” of the leaking well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the historic scale of the disaster became clearer Thursday when scientists said the mile-deep well has been spewing 12,000 to 19,000 barrels of oil a day, far more than previously estimated.

The new figure supports what many observers have assumed from the images of oil slicking the gulf surface, slathering beaches and spurting from a pipe on the sea floor: This is the worst oil spill in U.S. history.President Obama, feeling pressure to act in a crisis now in its sixth week, yanked the exploratory drilling permits for 33 deepwater rigs in the gulf and suspended planned exploration in two areas off the coast of Alaska.

World music’s great visa fear

Intimidating forms, biometrics, illegal immigration paranoia – Robin Denselow on why new visa rules might take Britain off the world music touring circuit

Robin Denselow

guardian.co.uk

It was supposed to be a quick trip to relaunch the career of one of the most successful hip-hop bands in Africa. Daara J, from Senegal, have headlined at Womad, won a BBC World Music award and performed alongside Wyclef Jean. Now a duo, renamed Daara J Family, and with a new album to promote, they were scheduled to play at the Jazz Cafe in London on Tuesday night before appearing on Radio 4’s Midweek the following morning.

Instead, N’Dongo D and Faada Freddy found themselves in Paris, unable to board the Eurostar to London, because they had been refused entry to the UK by the UK Border Agency. They had visas to enter Europe, but not to cross the Channel.

USA

Detecting a crime before it happens

Could the blink of an eye or the curl of a lip give away a terrorist? Government scientists are trying to find out.

By Bob Drogin, Los Angeles Times

May 28, 2010

Reporting from Washington – If Bob Burns is correct, terrorists may betray themselves someday by jiggling on a Nintendo Wii balance board, blinking too fast, curling a lip like Elvis – or doing nothing at all.

Burns and his team of scientists are researching whether video game boards, biometric sensors and other high-tech devices can be used to detect distinct nonverbal cues from people who harbor “mal-intent,” or malicious intent.

“We’re looking pre-event,” said Burns, the No. 2 at the Homeland Security Advanced Research Project Agency, a counterpart of the fabled Pentagon agency that developed Stealth aircraft and the Internet.

A frustrated White House press corps bites the hand that feeds it



By Margaret Talev | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama Thursday grudgingly faced his first full-blown East Room news conference at the White House in almost a year, and it was no love-fest.

A press corps that was accused early in his administration of treating him with kid gloves has grown increasingly critical of its limited access to him, and the result Thursday was an aggressive and skeptical line of inquiry.

Obama dislikes formal but unpredictable news conferences. He prefers shorter, more controlled interactions with handpicked journalists and leaks to elite news organizations, and his communications team uses new tools such as blogging and Twitter to bypass the media.

Europe

Your money or your life: £28m lottery winners targeted by the Mafia



By Michael Day in Milan Friday, 28 May 2010

Mobsters from the feared Camorra crime syndicate tracked down 30 Italian villagers who shared a €33m (£28m) lottery jackpot win and threatened to kill them unless they handed over their winnings.

Although the lottery winners’ names and details were never made public, the Naples-based syndicate was determined to claim its “share” of the huge, 2008 prize after learning that the winners came from the surrounding southern Campania region, investigators revealed after arresting the five ringleaders this week.

Camorra expert Roberto Saviano, who has a 24-hour armed escort following his exposé of the crime syndicate in his best-selling book Gomorrah, said the lotto extortion scam marked a rite of passage for 19-year-old Marco Antonio Genovese.

Face-to-face again with the secret police landlady who snooped on me

From Times Online

May 28, 2010

Roger Boyes, Warsaw

The sun was glaring through the back window, two wheezing boxer dogs were slobbering over a plastic ball and all seemed well with the world for Agent Monika as she reached for her 19th cigarette of the day.

Then I laid my secret police file on the dining table and her face crumpled.The stillness of the moment was so complete that I could hear the churning of her stomach juices. “You’re in it, I’m afraid,” I said and we both knew that I had gained absolute control over her life.

Middle East

 Syria accused of arming Hezbollah from secret bases

From The Times

May 28, 2010

Richard Beeston, Foreign Editor

Hezbollah is running weapons, including surface-to-surface missiles, from secret arms depots in Syria to its bases in Lebanon, according to security sources.

The Times has been shown satellite images of one of the sites, a compound near the town of Adra, northeast of Damascus, where militants have their own living quarters, an arms storage site and a fleet of lorries reportedly used to ferry weapons into Lebanon.

Tensions rise over Gaza aid fleet



FRIDAY, MAY 28, 2010

The UN chief has called for restraint as some 700 activists from around world vow to deliver 10,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid to break the blockade of Gaza.

Israel has cautioned that the Freedom Flotilla would be stopped, if necessary by force.

The nine-ship flotilla is by far the largest fleet of aid to try to reach the coastal Palestinian territory since Israel imposed its siege on it in 2007.

“We strongly urge that all involved act with a sense of care and responsibility and work for a satisfactory resolution,” a spokesman for Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday.

Asia

Rebels blamed as India train crash kills 65

Associated Press  

Friday, 28 May 2010

A bomb planted by suspected Maoist rebels derailed an overnight passenger train which was then hit by a cargo train in eastern India today, killing at least 65 people and injuring an additional 200, officials said.

Survivors described a night of screaming and chaos after the blast and said it took rescuers more than three hours to reach the scene. The blue passenger train and the red cargo train were knotted together in mangled metal along a rural stretch of track near the small town of Sardiha, about 90 miles (150 kilometers) west of Calcutta.

Nearly 10 hours after the blast, railway police and paramilitary soldiers were using blowtorches and cables to try to reach at least a dozen passengers still trapped in the wreckage, said A.P. Mishra, general manager of the railway system in that area.

Australia to mount legal bid against Japan whaling

Australia has said it will begin legal action against Japan over its whaling in the Antarctic.

The BBC Friday, 28 May 2010

It will argue that the annual whaling hunt in the Southern Ocean is in violation of an international ban on commercial whaling.

Japan, which kills hundreds of whales ever year, says the hunt is carried out for scientific research purposes.

Critics say this is a cover for commercial whaling and that whale meat not used in research is sold for food.

The Australian government says it will lodge formal proceedings at the International Court of Justice in The Hague next week.

Latin America

Kingston manhunt for Dudus Coke continues as death toll hits 74

The Jamaican police manhunt for alleged drug lord Dudus Coke, which has 74 dead in Kingston fighting, continued Thursday. If Mr. Coke is caught, will it change the role of Jamaica’s criminal dons?

 By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / May 27, 2010

Boston

Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding’s about face on a US request to extradite alleged drug lord and Shower Posse gang leader Christopher “Dudus” Coke last week has so far left 67 dead in Kingston fighting, raised questions about the criminal ties of Golding’s ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), and raised civil society demands for an investigation of police brutality.

Some flights to tourism-dependent Jamaica have been canceled and relations with the United States, a close ally and benefactor, have been strained. But the one thing the bloody manhunt has not delivered has been its object: Mr. Coke.

Jamaican media reported that Kingston’s so-called garrison community of Tivoli Gardens, which was a war zone earlier in the week, was calmer today, amid rumors that Coke had slipped through the police cordon and escaped. Some 500 people have been arrested in the police raids.

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