Docudharma Times Friday October 23

Senate Leader Takes Risk Pushing Public Insurance Plan



By ROBERT PEAR and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

Published: October 22, 2009

WASHINGTON – In pushing to include a government-run health insurance plan in the health care bill, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, is taking a calculated gamble that the 60 members of his caucus could support the plan if it included a way for states to opt out.

Mr. Reid met with President Obama at the White House Thursday to inform him of his inclination to add the public option to the bill, but did not specifically ask the president to endorse that approach, a Democratic aide said. Mr. Obama asked questions, but did not express a preference at the meeting, a White House official said.

IG: Pricey new U.S. Embassy in Iraq has ‘multiple’ flaws



By Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The $736 million new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, which American diplomats have occupied for 18 months, contains “multiple significant construction deficiencies,” and the U.S. government should try to recover more than $130 million from the contractor who built it, according to a report released Thursday.

The report, by the State Department’s inspector general, cites flaws in numerous systems throughout the embassy complex and says that the contractor, First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting Co., failed to properly design, construct and commission the largest U.S. embassy overseas.

USA

Pay restrictions may not fix underlying risk-taking



By Steven Pearlstein

Friday, October 23, 2009

With financial markets booming even as Main Street is still largely mired in recession, policymakers in Washington on Thursday were scrambling to contain growing populist anger by proposing new rules to curb runaway pay on Wall Street.

Treasury pay czar Ken Feinberg ordered big cuts in base salaries and perks at General Motors, Citigroup and a handful of other firms that were kept alive only through the government’s extraordinary intervention. More significantly, the Federal Reserve proposed a set of broad new regulations to reduce the kind of reckless risk-taking at regulated banks caused by “heads I win, tails you lose” compensation schemes.

Critical habitat in Alaska is proposed for polar bears

It would be the largest habitat zone in the U.S., but an Interior Department official says it wouldn’t slow oil and gas development, nor address the melting sea ice that threatens the bears.

By Kim Murphy

October 23, 2009

Reporting from Seattle – In what would be the largest habitat zone ever established in the U.S. to protect a species from extinction, the federal government on Thursday proposed designating 200,541 square miles on the coast of Alaska as critical habitat for polar bears.

Officials said the designation was not likely to further slow the pace of oil and gas development, and it would not impose any controls to slow the biggest threat to polar bears: the melting of sea ice as a result of climate change.

Those steps are crucial for polar bears but are being addressed separately in Congress through proposals to cap greenhouse gas emissions, said Tom Strickland, assistant Interior secretary for fish, wildlife and parks.

Middle East

Egypt camel trade runs into the sand

Squeezed by higher costs and cash-poor butchers, middlemen at an Egyptian market wonder if they’ll ever get over this hump.

By Jeffrey Fleishman

October 23, 2009

Reporting from Birqash, Egypt – The sun is high and it’s a slow day for selling and there’s not much for a camel trader to do except scatter hay and greens and listen to the big beasts munch. Sounds like shoes walking through gravel.

Essam Ammar lifts a cellphone from his tunic.

“Hi, Ahmed. No, I won’t lower the price.”

Eyes roll.

Ammar pulls the phone from his ear and looks at it; Ahmed’s words crackle in the air.

Click. It’s not even noon. The day seems in retreat.

Sworn enemies across the disarmament table

Iran and Israel ‘questioned each other’ at nuclear conference

By Ben Lynfield in Jerusalem

Friday, 23 October 2009

Bitter enemies Iran and Israel, whose normal discourse is that of threat and counter-threat, engaged in a rare face-to-face exchange of views at a nuclear disarmament conference in Cairo, Israeli media reported yesterday.

Tehran vigorously denied the reported contact, but Israeli officials confirmed that representatives from both countries had questioned one another at a conference last month, organised by the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament.

Iran’s delegate used the opportunity to ask the Israeli representative whether the Jewish state had nuclear weapons. This enquiry met with a smile but no answer, according to a report in yesterday’s Haaretz. Israel is widely believed to possess nuclear arms, though always refuses to confirm or deny it.

Asia

Sri Lanka blasts US report on human rights abuses

US state department report on Sri Lanka

Daniel Nasaw in Washington

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 22 October 2009 19.12 BST

The Sri Lankan government today angrily rejected a US state department report containing allegations of human rights abuses in the final days of the country’s civil war, saying the document would fan further conflict.

According to accounts said by a senior US state department official to be “credible and well substantiated”, government forces abducted and killed ethnic Tamil civilians, shelled and bombed no-fire zones, and killed senior rebel leaders with whom they had brokered a surrender.

Although the US stressed the allegations in the report did not constitute an accusation of war crimes, the Sri Lankan foreign affairs ministry in Colombo accused the US of smearing its reputation.

UN envoy says North Korea should feed its 9 million hungry citizens

Vitit Muntarbhorn’s UN report says World Food Programme is able to reach fewer than 2 million needy due to aid shortfall

Mark Tran

guardian.co.uk, Friday 23 October 2009 09.34 BST

North Korea should take urgent steps to improve its “abysmal” human rights record by providing food to its hungry citizens, a UN envoy said yesterday as he released a scathing report on the reclusive country.

The report noted that almost 9 million people in North Korea were suffering from food shortages, with the World Food Programme (WFP) able to reach fewer than 2 million of the hungry population due to a shortfall in international aid as countries cut funding in response to Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile tests.

The UN imposed new sanctions on North Korea after it tested a second nuclear device in May, following a first test in 2006.

Europe

Legal threat to web group that opposes Berlusconi

Thousands of Facebook users to be investigated over fears of assassination plot

By Michael Day in Rome



Friday, 23 October 2009  

The 20,000 members of a Facebook group called “Let’s Kill Berlusconi” face an investigation after Rome magistrates said that the group could prompt an assassination attempt against the Italian Prime Minister.

But new members were continuing to join the group (Uccidiamo Berlusconi in Italian) yesterday after prosecutor Nello Rossi announced the move, following government pressure for action against the Facebook users.

Angelino Alfano, the Justice minister, said: “I’m waiting for the magistrates to do their duty and investigate, pursue and find the ones, who by encouraging hatred and murder against Silvio Berlusconi, are committing a punishable offence.”

Nicolas Sarkozy retreats as nepotism fury forces ‘Prince Jean’ out of key job

From The Times

October 23, 2009

Charles Bremner in Paris

President Sarkozy was humiliated last night when his 23-year old son announced that he was withdrawing from the race to become the head of a £100 million-a-year public agency amid allegations of nepotism.

Jean Sarkozy, a second-year undergraduate student who has been a county councillor for 18 months, went on national television to say he had listened to the outrage that had surrounded his imminent promotion. “A lot of it was excessive, a lot of it true,” he said. “I do not want a victory stained by doubt.”

Latin America

Top Colombian judges threatened as they investigate lawmakers

 Supreme Court justices face death threats as they investigate dozens of legislators’ links to paramilitary groups.

By Sibylla Brodzinsky | Correspondent

BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA – Three motorcycle police escorts zip through Bogotá’s evening traffic jam, siren lights flashing. They stop cars at every intersection so the bulletproof SUV carrying one of Colombia’s most threatened men can speed through. Inside, Supreme Court President Augusto Ibáñez sinks into the back seat, weary from a 13-hour day.

Last month he was informed of an assassination plot against him, the vice president of the court, and the president of the court’s criminal chamber.

Colombian authorities have long been targeted with violence from right-wing paramilitary groups, drug cartels, and leftist rebels involved in the country’s decades-long civil war. But Supreme Court justices here are facing a new flurry of threats as they proceed with a huge effort to investigate, prosecute, and convict dozens of lawmakers who allegedly colluded with paramilitaries in the “parapolitics” scandal.

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