Docudharma Times Friday May 8

Samuel ‘Joe the Plumber’ Wurzelbacher

Leaves The Republican Party

What Will John McCain Do?

Pakistani planes bomb Taleban in Swat Valley

From Times Online

May 8, 2009

Times Online

Pakistani aircraft bombed Taleban positions in the Swat Valley today, hours after the Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani ordered the military to “eliminate militants and terrorists.”

Helicopter gunships, fighters and troops were all involved in operations in Swat, and up to 12 militants were killed after as many as 55 were killed the previous day, Major Nasir Khan, a military spokesman in Swat, said by telephone.

Mr Gilani said in a televised address late on Thursday that militants were trying to hold the country hostage at gunpoint.

“In order to restore honour and dignity of our homeland and to protect the people, the armed forces have been called in to eliminate the militants and terrorists,” he said, setting the stage for a major offensive against Taleban fighters battling security forces in Swat.

Afghans riot over air-strike atrocity

Witnesses say deaths of 147 people in three villages came after a sustained bombardment by American aircraft. Patrick Cockburn, in Herat, reports

Friday, 8 May 2009

Shouting “Death to America” and “Death to the Government”, thousands of Afghan villagers hurled stones at police yesterday as they vented their fury at American air strikes that local officials claim killed 147 civilians.

The riot started when people from three villages struck by US bombers in the early hours of Tuesday, brought 15 newly-discovered bodies in a truck to the house of the provincial governor. As the crowd pressed forward in Farah, police opened fire, wounding four protesters. Traders in the rest of Farah city, the capital of the province of the same name where the bombing took place, closed their shops, vowing they would not reopen them until there is an investigation.

A local official Abdul Basir Khan said yesterday that he had collected the names of 147 people who had died, making it the worst such incident since the US intervened in Afghanistan started in 2001. A phone call from the governor of Farah province, Rohul Amin, in which he said that 130 people had died, was played over the loudspeaker in the Afghan parliament in Kabul, sparking demands for more control over US operations.

USA

U.S. to Wind Down Help for Some Banks

Stress Tests Find Most Can Absorb Losses

By Binyamin Appelbaum and Neil Irwin

Washington Post Staff Writers

Friday, May 8, 2009

The government signaled yesterday that its financial rescue efforts may have reached their high-water mark, announcing that the much-anticipated “stress tests” of 19 large banks showed that only one, GMAC, was likely to need additional taxpayer aid and that it would begin to unwind assistance for the healthiest firms.

Despite a deepening recession and projections that banks will continue to lose money, the government will require the firms to increase their combined capital by as little as $9.5 billion. The government will require the banks to further strengthen their capacity to absorb losses by adding $74.6 billion to the portion of their capital that comes from common equity. Banks are likely to raise some of that money from investors and some by converting other forms of capital.

Postal Service rate hike may not end funding shortfall

The agency posts a loss of $1.9 billion in its latest quarter as businesses cut back on mailing expenses.

By Ronald D. White

10:08 PM PDT, May 7, 2009

When most postal rates rise on Monday — among other things, mailing a first-class domestic letter will cost 2 cents more — Washington will be depending on businesses like PouchSmart Inc. of Santa Monica, which still considers the post office to be the best option for delivering its products.

PouchSmart designs flexible pouch packaging with a resealable spout, such as a single-serve juice container. Its products can also be used in other applications, such as a squeezable applesauce pouch.

Because the company’s president, Dan Pritikin, thinks nothing sells his products like getting samples into the hands of potential customers, the U.S. Postal Service will remain his first choice in spite of rate increases.

The Postal Service is still so much less expensive than alternatives such as United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp., “that the savings are too compelling to ignore, especially for a small business in an economy like this,” Pritikin said.

Europe

A tale of romance by the king of chick lit – Napoleon Bonaparte

• Novella about first love is translated into English

• Historian pieced together manuscript of lost book

Maev Kennedy and Catherine Neilan

The Guardian, Friday 8 May 2009

Napoleon is already credited with writing some of the most romantic – or revolting, depending on your sensibilities – words in his urgent message to Josephine: “Will return to Paris tomorrow evening. Don’t wash.”

Now the man the world knows as emperor, war hero and bogeyman, the ruthlessly ambitious Little Corporal who rose from provincial obscurity in Corsica to become the terror or ruler of half the world, will be revealed in a surprising new guise: Napoleon the failed romantic novelist.

“I feel numb. Come to me without delay,” may not have quite the same ­panting ardour as his famous love letters, but then Napoleon had not yet met his Josephine when he wrote the words.

Poles arrested in connection with blaze that killed four firefighters are bailed

 Four Poles arrested in connection with a warehouse blaze which killed four firemen have been freed on bail, police have confirmed.

Last Updated: 9:51AM BST 08 May 2009

The three men and one woman were detained at addresses in Birmingham, Smethwick and Evesham, Worcestershire, early yesterday morning by officers investigating the blaze in November 2007.

Detective Superintendent Ken Lawrence, who is leading the investigation into the fire in Atherstone on Stour, said those arrested had been bailed until July pending further inquiries.

In a statement issued by the Warwickshire force, Mr Lawrence said information about the fire was still being gathered from every possible source.

The officer said: “This is a very complex investigation and these arrests are part of that process.

“The joint police and Health and Safety Executive investigation is ongoing – we are still interviewing people and gathering new information and will be for some time to come.”

Asia

Witch hunts, murder and evil in Papua New Guinea

A tide of torture and killing of innocent women linked to ‘sorcery’ and the ‘dark arts’ is overwhelming the nation’s police. Ramita Navai, in Port Moresby, reports

Friday, 8 May 2009

Nearly all the residents of Koge watched as Julianna Gene and Kopaku Konia were dragged from their homes, to be hung from trees and tortured for several hours with bush knives. No one came forward to help. In the eyes of the villagers, the women were witches. They deserved to die.

“They used their powers to bewitch a man to death,” said Kingsley Sinemane, a community leader. “We had to get rid of them, as they could have killed others. We had to protect our village.”

The finger of suspicion fell on the women after a local man died in a car accident. The only sign now of the horror that unfolded in this remote Papua New Guinea village is a black, charred clearing where some dozen homes once stood.

Terror suspect Mas Selamat Kastari recaptured after year on the run

From Times Online

May 8, 2009

Anne Barrowclough

A top Islamist terror suspect accused of plotting to crash a plane into a Singapore airport has been captured in Malaysia after a year on the run.

Mas Selamat Kastari, believed to be the head of the Singapore cell of Jemaah Islamiyah, the militant group linked to al-Qaeda that was behind the 2002 Bali bombings, was re-arrested after escaping from a detention centre 16 months ago.

Mas Selamat, 48, had been on the run since squeezing through a toilet window and climbing over a fence, sparking a massive manhunt stretching from Singapore to Indonesia and Malaysia.

Middle East

The Pope heads for the Holy Land (just don’t mention the war)

Vexed question of the Vatican’s appeasement of Hitler will overshadow Benedict’s first visit to Israel

By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem

Friday, 8 May 2009

When Pope Benedict XVI pays his respects to the six million Jews killed in World War II at the Yad Vashem holocaust memorial in Jerusalem next Monday evening, he won’t actually tour its stunning museum, inaugurated just four years ago.

The Vatican is at pains to say that this simply reflects the multiple demands already being made on the 82-year-old Pope during his long awaited first tour of the Holy Land. But it also means he will be spared a sight of the museum’s short, but for the Roman Catholic hierarchy highly sensitive, notice questioning the wartime role of his most controversial predecessor of modern times, Pope Pius XII.

A victory for cheese eaters? US-EU trade spat defused.

Roquefort prices won’t triple for Americans, and Europeans can block hormone-treated US beef.

By James Hagengruber – Staff writer and Anna Momigliano – Correspondent

BOSTON; AND MILAN, ITALY – Penny-pinching foodies can relax a bit.

A trade war that pitted hormone-treated beef from the United States against gourmet food items from the European Union (EU) appears to have been averted.

In the US, this means wedges of Roquefort cheese won’t be tripling in price. Proposed punitive duties against 34 other “luxury” food products from the EU – from Irish oatmeal to Italian mineral water – also will not take effect.

In Europe, the tentative trade dispute settlement means consumers won’t have to worry about hormones lurking in the beefsteaks and burgers that come from the US.

The US dropped the tariff increases after the EU agreed to quadruple the allowed quotas of duty-free beef from the US. The beef, however, must be free from hormone treatments.

Hormone-treated beef was at the center of the dispute. The EU banned US beef in 1998 out of concerns that growth hormones widely used in US cattle posed health risks for humans.

Africa

Somali insurgency driving thousands of refugees to Kenya

Islamist militias’ clashes with Somalia’s government has forced more than 25,000 to flee.

By Shashank Bengali | McClatchy Newspapers

HAGADERA, KENYA – The pirates get the headlines, but what drove Habibo Kune and her teenage son out of Somalia and into this sprawling, sand-blown refugee camp was a different group of men with guns.

Islamist militants, who’ve waged a two-year, blood-soaked insurgency, continue to battle progovernment forces for territory throughout southern Somalia. Since January, a surge in violence has driven more than 25,000 people into the camps of eastern Kenya – already overflowing with two decades’ worth of Somali refugees – which has badly strained one of the world’s largest humanitarian operations.

In Hagadera, the largest of three camps, new arrivals like Ms. Kune are crowding with relatives in bare, tree-branch huts covered in plastic sheets or fraying strips of clothing. The refugees say that the insurgents – a wholly separate phenomenon from the secular, ransom-hungry pirates – have imposed religious law on their towns and killed civilians who resisted.

“The pirates cause problems in the ocean,” said Kune, seated on the dirt floor of a hut, her round face creased with worry, “but the Islamists cause many more problems inside the country.”

 Sudan opens up to more aid groups

Sudan’s government says it will invite new aid groups to work in Darfur and allow those still operating there to expand their activities.

The BBC

The UN’s head of humanitarian affairs welcomed the move.

Sudan expelled 13 foreign aid groups in March after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

Meanwhile, the backer of a conference on Darfur says it may be cancelled because of opposition from Sudan.

The UN says that up to 300,000 people have died during the conflict in Darfur and 2.7 million driven from their homes.

Sudan had agreed last month to allow some aid back into Darfur following its expulsion of humanitarian groups.

On Thursday, the minister for humanitarian assistance, Haroun Lual Ruun, said Khartoum would invite new non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to Darfur.

Latin America

Some schools and businesses reopen in Mexico

The country tallies the cost of the H1N1 flu outbreak: 44 deaths, 1,204 infections and a deeper recession.

By Thomas H. Maugh II and Tracy Wilkinson

May 8, 2009

Reporting from Los Angeles and Mexico City — Millions of students in Mexico returned to class Thursday as the country reopened universities and high schools after a two-week closure aimed at containing the H1N1 flu virus. Elementary and kindergarten classes are scheduled to resume Monday.

Museums also reopened across the country, and in Mexico City patrons again filled restaurants, bars and other public places — although authorities required people in such venues to maintain a distance from one another.

Classrooms were disinfected before students were allowed to return.

The number of confirmed dead rose by two to 44, Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova said. He did not give dates for the two deaths — a 46-year-old woman from San Luis Potosi and a 23-year-old man from Tlaxcala state just east of Mexico City — but indicated they were not recent.

A total of 1,204 people have been infected, including the dead, Cordova said. A little more than 50% of the dead lived in Mexico City.

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