Docudharma Times Tuesday August 11

Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Founder of Special Olympics, Dies at 88

By CARLA BARANAUCKAS

Published: August 11, 2009

Eunice Kennedy Shriver, a member of one of the most prominent families in American politics and a trailblazer in the effort to improve the lives of people with intellectual disabilities, died early Tuesday morning at Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Mass. She was 88. Her death, at 2 a.m., was confirmed by her family in a statement. A family friend said that Mrs. Shriver had been in declining health for months, having suffered a series of strokes.

A sister of President John F. Kennedy and Senators Robert F. Kennedy and Edward M. Kennedy and the mother-in-law of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, Mrs. Shriver never held elective office. Yet she was no stranger to Capitol Hill, and some view her work on behalf of the mentally retarded, including the founding of the Special Olympics, as the most lasting of the Kennedy family’s contributions.

With jobs harder to find, work gets easier for Army recruiters

Traditionally the Army has attracted the young. But as the number of jobs dwindles across the country, more Americans are enlisting later in life, drawn by the promise of steady work and benefits.

By Alexandra Zavis

August 11, 2009

If you’re looking for Michael March, he’s probably in the basement, slogging on the treadmill. Or he may be doing push-ups in front of the TV.

At 38, he wants to be prepared when he begins Army basic training later this week.

“I know I’m going to get picked on as the old guy in boot camp,” he said. “I don’t want to be last.”

Traditionally the Army has attracted the young, many of them fresh out of high school. They join for the promise of adventure, the chance to be part of something bigger, and a free college education. But as the number of jobs dwindles across the country, more Americans are enlisting later in life, drawn by the promise of steady work and generous benefits.

Although March may not be as fit as he was in his teens, his recruiters in Torrance say he brings to the Army experience and maturity that younger soldiers lack.

American found guilty of entering Suu Kyi’s home



The Associated Press

Tuesday, August 11, 2009; 2:50 AM

YANGON, Myanmar — A Myanmar court has sentenced American John Yettaw to seven years in prison, including four years at hard labor, for entering pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s home while she was under house arrest.

The 53-year-old Yettaw was found guilty Tuesday of violating the terms of Suu Kyi’s detention by swimming to her lakeside home uninvited and staying for two days.

USA

White House Adapts to New Playbook in Health Care Debate

WASHINGTON – The White House on Monday started a new Web site to fight questionable but potentially damaging charges that President Obama’s proposed overhaul of the nation’s health care system would inevitably lead to “socialized medicine,” “rationed care” and even forced euthanasia for the elderly.

But in introducing the Web site, White House officials were tacitly acknowledging a difficult reality: they are suddenly at risk of losing control of the public debate over a signature issue for Mr. Obama and are now playing defense in a way they have not since last year’s campaign.

Too Young for A Midlife Crisis



By Lindsay Minnema

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Armed with a degree in political science from Northeastern University, Heidi Buchanan came to the District in June 2006 to find her dream job in public policy. What she found instead was that life after college wasn’t all she had hoped it would be.

There was the job she didn’t like, the new city in which she had no friends and the nostalgia she felt for the happiness of her college years. Put them all together, and what Buchanan had was a severe case of post-graduation blues.

Call it a quarter-life crisis, the 20-something version of a midlife crisis, in which sufferers struggle to establish their sense of identity and purpose.

Europe

Bodies of Zarema Sadulayeva and her husband found in car boot in Chechnya

Kidnap and slaying of Sadulayeva and Umar Dzhabrailov in Grozny follows that of another rights activist Natalya Estemirova

Associated Press

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 11 August 2009 07.22 BST

The head of a Chechen aid group and her husband were found dead in the trunk of their car a day after being kidnapped, police and an official of the Russian human rights group Memorial said today.

Memorial’s Alexander Cherkasov said the bodies of Zarema Sadulayeva and her husband, Umar Dzhabrailov, were found in a suburb of the Chechen capital, Grozny. A spokesman for the Chechen interior ministry said the bodies were found in the car’s boot with gunshot wounds in the head and chest.

The abductions followed last month’s kidnapping and killing of another prominent rights activist, Natalya Estemirova. Rights groups blame the forces of the Chechen president, Ramzan Kadyrov, for abductions, killings and torture.

Roberto Saviano: on the run from the Mafia

In 2006, an Italian journalist wrote a bestselling exposé of the Mafia, Gomorrah (also made into a film). Now he is in exile

Roberto Saviano From The Times

August 11, 2009

Life on the move It has been nearly three years now since the Italian State decided to put me under protective custody following threats to my life from the Camorra[. It feels as though it will never end.

From that moment, my life became that of an exile, for ever looking for a place to live and a place to write. I’ve lived in dozens of different houses, never for more than a few months. All of them small or very small – and damn dark. I’d have liked them to be bigger, with more light and to have had a balcony. But I had no choice. Two armoured cars and five guards don’t make it easy to house hunt, especially in town centres where there are always traffic jams and where you can’t park.

Only once did I manage to move to a house with a verandah, and I couldn’t believe my luck.

Asia

Why Australians love car crashes



Marc Abrahams

The Guardian, Tuesday 11 August 2009

Australians are peculiarly fascinated by car crashes, contends Catherine Simpson of Macquarie University in Sydney.

Simpson explains in her monograph Antipodean Automobility and Crash: Treachery, Trespass and Transformation of the Open Road, published in the Australian Humanities Review: “I explore the significance of the car crash in postcolonial Australia and argue that car accidents are not only presented as an everyday and acceptable form of violence but that the attention to car crashes in Australian films suggests they figure as a moment of rupture in unspoken settler/indigenous violence.” It’s clear that more research needs to be done, however. Either way, if you find yourself in the midst of a car crash and are injured, you should look for legal advice, as in real life they are much more dangerous than in films. You can read more here about the possible options.

Al-Qa’ida intervenes in battle for control of the Pakistan Taliban

Militant organisation in disarray as authorities try to prove that leader was killed in US drone strike last week

By Omar Waraich in Islamabad and Andrew Buncombe

Tuesday, 11 August 2009

Al-Qai’da militants may be trying to install their own “chief terrorist” to succeed Baitullah Mehsud as the head of the Pakistan Taliban following his death during a US drone strike, Pakistan’s top security official believes.

The head of the country’s interior ministry, Rehman Malik, said the Pakistan Taliban was in disarray following last week’s targeted killing of Mehsud and that in the ensuing uncertainty al-Qa’ida was using its influence to try to ensure it selected his replacement.

Mr Malik voiced his concern as Pakistan said it was trying to collect DNA evidence to conclusively confirm the Taliban commander’s death in the rugged and inaccessible wilds of Taliban-controlled South Waziristan.

Middle East

French student Clotilde Reiss’s ‘confession’ at Iran court sparks outrage

From The Times

August 11, 2009



Charles Bremner in Paris

Images of a French woman in an Iranian court confessing to spying for France sparked outrage in her homeland yesterday, with President Sarkozy coming under fire for allegedly neglecting her case.

Video and photographs of Clotilde Reiss, 24, apparently admitting her guilt as officials and guards, almost all men, looked on, touched hearts and stirred anger in France.

She delivered her testimony to the crowded auditorium in steady, clear tones before taking questions, watched by rows of prisoners.

Although the images were provided by Iranian state television, it was clear from her delivery and language that she was reciting a confession that had been prepared for her.

Shi’ite unity deal explodes US myth



By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON – The agreement announced last week between Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and a Shi’ite resistance group called the League of the Righteous (As’ib al Haq) formally ended the group’s armed opposition to the regime in return for the release of its leader and eight other Shi’ite detainees. This deals a final blow to the US military’s narrative of an Iranian “proxy war” in Iraq.

The US command in Iraq has long argued that Iran was using “special groups” of Shi’ite insurgents who had broken away from cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army to destabilize the US-supported Iraqi regime – but pro-Iranian groups were weakened by US military pressures throughout 2007 and defeated by the Maliki regime in 2008.

Africa

Hillary Clinton aims to revive US influence in Angola

The secretary of State’s visit to Africa’s top oil producer on Sunday and Monday is being seen as an effort to counter China’s clout there.

By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the August 10, 2009 edition

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA – Hillary Clinton’s visit to Angola on Sunday and Monday shows that the cold war is well and truly over, but that its techniques are alive and well.

Once a battleground between Soviet-armed and Cuban-trained government forces and an American-armed rebel force, Angola has belatedly become the center of a different kind of rivalry between the US and China – over Angola’s oil resources.

Just months after Angolan president Jose Eduardo dos Santos traveled to China to extend a lengthy line of credit, Mrs. Clinton has arrived to witness a major corporate agreement between Chevron and the government of Angola.

Angola has become Africa’s largest oil producer, ahead of Nigeria and Libya. Clinton also signed a trade agreement that would pave the way for more US investment in this wartorn African country, particularly in job-producing areas such as agriculture.

Latin America

At Mexico summit, Obama says immigration reform will have to wait

The president, noting he has ‘a pretty big stack of bills’ to deal with, says pushing through a bill to overhaul immigration is unlikely before 2010.

By Peter Nicholas and Tracy Wilkinson

August 11, 2009

Reporting from Guadalajara, Mexico — Locked in a healthcare debate that is claiming much of his energy, President Obama acknowledged that a push to overhaul the nation’s immigration system will have to wait until 2010 and even then will prove a major political test.

Obama suggested it would be too ambitious to aim for passage of new immigration laws before the end of the year, at a time when he will be confronting “a pretty big stack of bills.”

Speaking at the end of a two-day summit meeting of fellow North American leaders, Obama said, “Now, I’ve got a lot on my plate, and it’s very important for us to sequence these big initiatives in a way where they don’t all just crash at the same time.”

The summit provided a brief forum for addressing lingering grievances among the trio of North American countries. Mexico is upset that the U.S. won’t allow truckers to move cargo within American borders, while Canada is unhappy about “Buy American” provisions written into the $787-billion stimulus bill passed into law in February. Obama sought to placate his counterparts on both points. But other issues were also raised, including the coup in Honduras and the human rights record in Mexico.

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