Docudharma Times Sunday September 19

U.S. contractor accused of fraud still winning big Afghan projects



By Marisa Taylor and Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON – On July 31, 2006, an employee of the Louis Berger Group, a contractor handling some of the most important U.S. rebuilding projects in Afghanistan, handed federal investigators explosive evidence that the company was intentionally and systematically overbilling American taxpayers.

Neither the whistleblower’s computer disk full of incriminating documents nor a trail of allegations of waste, fraud and shoddy construction, however, prevented Louis Berger from continuing to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts.

Gridlock? Men with earpieces? Must be the United Nations

Diplomats worldwide to converge in NYC, bringing traffic and a chance to spot leaders

By KAREN MATTHEWS  

NEW YORK – Restaurants are clearing space for world leaders and their entourages, the Waldorf-Astoria is fluffing the pillows in the presidential suite and people who live on Manhattan’s East Side are just hoping to get into their buildings without a police escort.

Representatives from 192 countries will be in town in the upcoming week for a United Nations anti-poverty summit and the opening of the U.N. General Assembly’s annual ministerial meeting. For New Yorkers that will mean gridlocked traffic and a chance to spot the leader of Bhutan or Andorra at a local eatery.

USA

New Drugs Stir Debate on Basic Rules of Clinical Trials

TARGET CANCER

By AMY HARMON

Published: September 18, 2010

Growing up in California’s rural Central Valley, the two cousins spent summers racing dirt bikes and Christmases at their grandmother’s on the coast. Endowed with a similar brash charm, they bought each other matching hardhats and sought iron-working jobs together. They shared a love for the rush that comes with hanging steel at dizzying heights, and a knack for collecting speeding tickets.

And when, last year, each learned that a lethal skin cancer called melanoma was spreading rapidly through his body, the young men found themselves with the shared chance of benefiting from a recent medical breakthrough.

Delaware’s O’Donnell is a ‘tea party’ hero, but controversy casts a shadow

 

 By Sandhya Somashekhar and Perry Bacon Jr.

Washington Post Staff Writers

WILMINGTON, DEL. – In her opening remarks during a debate that came just two days after her stunning victory in this state’s Republican primary for Senate, Christine O’Donnell acknowledged what had already become apparent.

“There’s no secret,” she said, “that there’s been a rather unflattering portrait of me painted these days.” But, she went on, “as we approach the general election this next month and a half, it is my goal for you to find out who I am.”

Who O’Donnell is has suddenly become one of the most important questions in politics, as leaders in both parties try to figure out whether she is the fresh face of a burgeoning movement or a fringe figure who will soon fade.

Europe

Jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky warns UK on renewed alliance with Russia

Mikhail Khodorkovsky says David Cameron must demand human rights are upheld before re-establishing relations

Luke Harding

The Observer, Sunday 19 September 2010

The jailed former oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, has urged David Cameron not to end Britain’s support for human rights in Russia, amid signs that the coalition is planning to forge a new and pragmatic alliance with the Kremlin.

Writing in the Observer, Khodorkovsky – once Russia’s richest man – argues that the prime minister should not improve relations with Moscow without first setting out “principled conditions” in areas such as democracy, civil liberties and human rights. Khodorkovsky, who was jailed in 2003, ostensibly for not paying tax but in reality for challenging Vladimir Putin, refers to himself as “a political prisoner”. He is now on trial for a second time, with Putin apparently planning to incarcerate him for another two decades. Supporters say the latest “show trial” proceedings against him for embezzlement are ridiculous.

Renegade Spanish mayor declares war on Gibraltar with toll at the border  

Town’s plan to raise cash on the back of the British territory’s thriving economy could lead to a fresh diplomatic row  

By Alasdair Fotheringham in Madrid   Sunday, 19 September 2010

Strange but true: the latest flashpoint of contention between Gibraltar and its closest neighbour, the Spanish town of La Linea, currently consists of a couple of concrete beams, some bollards and a barrier lying on the side of the road. It doesn’t look much now, but when these scruffy arrangements are completed they could loom very large indeed.

They are, although you would not immediately know it, the advanced concrete guard of a tollbooth and gate which will enforce a €€5 levy on every vehicle using the only access road to Gibraltar. It is the project not of a Madrid government eager to resurrect the ages-old squabbles with London, but of a Spanish border town and its renegade mayor.

Middle East

New aid convoy sets off for Gaza

Viva Palestina vehicles leave London en route to besieged Strip for what organisers say will be biggest aid convoy yet.

Last Modified: 19 Sep 2010

A new convoy of vehicles has set off from the UK carrying humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza, more than three months after nine people were killed in another attempt to break an Israeli blockade on the Strip.

The Viva Palestina 5 convoy, which departed from London on Saturday, will be joined by participants from a number of countries before it eventually attempts to cross the Rafah border from Egypt into the besieged Palestinian territory.

Al Jazeera’s Tania Page, reporting from London, said organisers of the trip say the attempt is the biggest and most international aid convoy ever bound for Gaza.

“By the time the convoy reaches the Strip it will have grown from 15 vehicles to 150 – picking up support across Europe and the Arab world,” she said.

“Most of the journey will be over land, but the aid will be transferred to ships for transportation between Syria and Egypt.

In West Bank, corruption-busting teenagers shake up local government

While Israeli-Palestinian talks aim for Palestinian statehood, a devoted band of educators is grooming the rising generation to be citizens of a vibrant democracy.

By Christa Case Bryant, Staff writer / September 18, 2010

Fatmeh Abu Afifeh doesn’t look like someone who could intimidate tough bureaucrats. Demure and only 17, she had never even spent a night away from her family until now.

But armed only with fine pearl pins that keep her head scarf firmly in place, Fatmeh is here in Ramallah with dozens of other students who exposed significant corruption across the West Bank.

“All the people [we interviewed] would say, ‘We are engineers and we are unable to grasp what’s going on – how can young girls?’ ” recalls Fatmeh, who says that confronting local officials about lax oversight of a sports stadium building project made her a better citizen. “I no longer care only about my interests; I care about the interests of society.”

Asia

Eight die as the Taliban disrupt Afghan elections

Some voters too scared to cast ballots, but officials claim 92 per cent of polling stations remain open  

By Amir Shah and Rahim Faiez in Kabul Sunday, 19 September 2010

Afghans braved Taliban rockets and polling site bombings yesterday to vote for a new parliament in elections seen as a measure of the government’s competence and commitment to democratic rule. It was the first nationwide balloting since a fraud-marred presidential election last year undermined international support for President Hamid Karzai. Security has worsened since then, and the Taliban made good on threats to disrupt yesterday’s polling.

At least three civilians and five militiamen were killed, and the governor of Kandahar province survived a bomb attack. Observers had expected the vote to be far from perfect, but hoped it would accepted by the Afghan   people as legitimate..

Kashmir protests claim more lives  

Three more killed as Indian security forces clash with protesters in troubled Himalayan region.  

Aljazeera  

At least three more people have been killed in continuing violence in Indian-administered Kashmir, bringing the number of civilian deaths in the region during the ongoing unrest to over 100.

Saturday’s deaths came as thousands of Kashmiris poured onto the streets shouting “Go back India” and “We want freedom”, defying curfews imposed by the federal government to contain the spiralling unrest.

Two young men died after police opened fire on protesters blocking a key highway in Palhalan village, north of Srinagar city.

“We now have two people who are dead, we were forced to open fire because of the violence,” a police spokesman in Palhalan told AFP news agency.

However, residents say the protest had been peaceful.

“They didn’t even try to disperse the protest with tear gas or a baton charge. They fired directly without any provocation,” Ghulam Ahmed Tantray, a a resident in Palhalan, said.

Africa

Robert Mugabe’s 2008 crackdown: torture, death and a stolen election

Rhodesian-born journalist Peter Godwin returned to Zimbabwe in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 presidential election. In this extract from his new book, The Fear, he describes meeting victims of Mugabe’s terror  

Peter Godwin

The Observer, Sunday 19 September 2010

In late March of 2008, I headed home to Zimbabwe, in great excitement, to dance on Robert Mugabe’s political grave. The crooked elections he had just held had spun out of his control, and after 28 years, the world’s oldest leader seemed about to be toppled.

Eighty-four years old, with his dyed black hair and his blood transfusions, his Botox and vitamin-cocktail shots, he had querulously dominated his country for a generation. He had fixed elections with ease in the past, using a combination of rigging, fraud and intimidation, but now Zimbabweans had rejected him in such overwhelming numbers that it looked like he would finally be forced to accept their verdict.

Latin America

Trapped miners celebrate independence

 

By Karl Penhaul, CNN

September 19, 2010

Copiapo, Chile (CNN) — Half a mile underground, the hollow echo of the Chilean national anthem rings out. And slowly, the red, white and blue Chilean flag is hoisted up a makeshift metal flagpole.

These are the opening images of a new, nine-minute video the 33 miners sent Saturday from the cavern where they’re trapped 700 meters (2,300 feet) down. They were putting a brave face on disaster to celebrate Chile’s Independence Day in their own way.

It was left to Bolivian Carlos Mamani, the only one of the men who is not Chilean, to record an Independence Day message.

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