Docudharma Times Tuesday March 23

Whaling: the great betrayal

Outrage as secret deal set to sweep away international moratorium

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor  Tuesday, 23 March 2010

The moratorium on commercial whaling, one of the environmental movement’s greatest achievements, looks likely to be swept away this summer by a new international deal being negotiated behind closed doors. The new arrangement would legitimise the whaling activities of the three countries which have continued to hunt whales in defiance of the ban – Japan, Norway and Iceland – and would allow commercial whaling in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary set up by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in 1994.

World Water Day: Thirsty Gaza residents battle salt, sewage

Untreated pools of sewage, some as large as 100 acres, seep back into the sole aquifer that provides freshwater for Gaza’s 1.5 million people. Aid workers are looking at new ways to replenish the aquifer, this World Water Day.

By Erin Cunningham, Correspondent / March 22, 2010

Gaza City, Gaza

Activists around the world are marking World Water Day today with school campaigns, films, and concerts – all designed to draw attention to the fact that access to safe drinking water is something 1 in 5 people don’t enjoy, while 40 percent of the world’s population doesn’t have adequate sanitation.

An acute example of the human cost can be found in the densely populated Gaza Strip, where experts say a potent mix of politics and geography are pointing toward the onset of a full-blown water crisis. In the small coastal territory, resources are either scarce or contaminated, sewage goes largely untreated, and already ailing infrastructure buckles under an Israeli economic blockade in place since Hamas took over in 2007. According to the United Nations (UN), the current environmental damage could “take centuries to reverse.”

USA

Stimulus Plan for Rail Line Shows System of Weak Links



By MICHAEL COOPER

Published: March 22, 2010

TAMPA – The drive from Orlando to Tampa takes only 90 minutes or so. Despite the short distance, the Obama administration awarded Florida $1.25 billion in stimulus money to link the cities with a fast train to help kick off its efforts to bring high-speed rail service to the United States.

The Florida train would indeed be high speed – as fast as 168 miles per hour. But because the trains would make five stops along the 84-mile route, the new service would shave only about half an hour off the trip.

FDA asks doctors to temporarily halt use of Rotarix vaccine  



By David Brown

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Officials at the Food and Drug Administration advised physicians Monday to temporarily stop using Rotarix, a vaccine commonly given to children to protect them against the stomach bug rotavirus, because it is contaminated with traces of a second virus.

The contaminant, called PCV-1, is a DNA virus that infects pigs and other species but is not known to cause illness in humans or any other animals. The virus appears to have come from the cell cultures used to make Rotarix.

Europe

Is the pope a reactionary or a prophet

Pope Benedict XVI is shy, humble, a man of temperate habits with a love of cats and classicial music. How does this square with his image as God’s rottweiler? And why has he upset more people than any other pope?

John Hooper

The Guardian, Tuesday 23 March 2010

Under an all-but-full moon on the opening evening of the Second Vatican Council in 1962, tens of thousands of Romans poured into St Peter’s Square in a torchlight procession. Called to the window of his study by the multitude, John XXIII, the man Italians called “the good pope” (a term that speaks volumes about their view of the previous 260), delivered one of the great speeches of an eloquent decade. Its emotional high point came when he told the crowd: “Returning home, you’ll find the children. Give your children a caress and say: ‘This is the caress of the pope.'”

Nicolas Sarkozy reshuffles cabinet after regional election humiliation

President Nicolas Sarkozy has dismissed his labour minister and reshuffled several other Cabinet posts after Leftists humiliated his Conservatives in France’s regional elections – a defeat that exposed his inability to convince the public on his economic reforms.

Published: 7:00AM GMT 23 Mar 2010  

Labour Minister Xavier Darcos lost his job after being soundly defeated in his election bid in the western Aquitaine region. Twenty of Sarkozy’s Cabinet members ran for regional posts, and all lost. Budget Minister Eric Woerth was to step in for Mr Darcos on Tuesday.

The election could hand a new opening to Mr Sarkozy’s potential presidential rivals – from IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn in the Socialist camp to former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin on the right. It also puts the onus on Sarkozy to lift public fortunes before the next presidential race in 2012.

“Overall, these elections are a serious warning for Nicolas Sarkozy ahead of the presidential elections,” said Emmanuel Riviere, a pollster at TNS Sofres.

Middle East

Israel defies Obama over Jerusalem settlements

 From The Times

March 23, 2010

Richard Beeston, Foreign Editor  

Israel will defy American pressure to halt the construction of controversial Jewish housing in Arab east Jerusalem, when President Obama meets Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, in the White House today.

Fresh from his historic victory to reform American healthcare, the US leader is to be confronted, within hours, with a foreign policy crisis. This time Mr Obama must resolve the worst breakdown in relations in decades between America and its closest regional ally, Israel, and try to get the Arab-Israeli peace process moving again.

But any hopes of a compromise were dashed yesterday when Nir Barkat, the Mayor of Jerusalem, insisted that Jewish settlements would go ahead in spite of US objections.

Israel government to be formally accused over ‘Mossad’ assassination

The Israeli government will be formally named as responsible for the assassination last month of a senior Hamas commander by a hit squad travelling on cloned British passports.

By Rosa Prince, Political Correspondent

Published: 6:00AM GMT 23 Mar 2010

Ron Proser, the Israeli Ambassador to London, was summoned to the Foreign Office on Monday to be told the results of an inquiry into the murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, whose body was discovered in a luxury Dubai hotel room in January.

Several members of the team suspected of killing him were found to be travelling on passports cloned from documents belonging to British citizens living in Israel. Other passports had been stolen from Irish, German, Australian and French citizens.

Asia

Pakistan’s nuclear ‘godfather’ in new inquiry

Reports link AQ Khan to attempts to sell nuclear secrets to Iraq and Iran

By Andrew Buncombe and Omar Waraich in Islamabad Tuesday, 23 March 2010

The Pakistan government has said it wishes to question the shamed nuclear scientist A Q Khan over fresh claims that he tried to sell nuclear weapon technology to both Iraq and Iran.

In a petition before a court in Lahore, the government applied for permission to interrogate the “godfather” of the country’s nuclear programme and prevent him from further speaking publicly about sensitive issues. The move follows the recent publication of two articles in a US newspaper which provided further details to longstanding allegations that Dr Khan – with the knowledge of the Pakistan military – was involved in efforts to illicitly transfer the technology to Iran and Iraq.

The black marketeers stealing Indonesia’s islands by the boat-load

From The Times

March 23, 2010  

Richard Lloyd Parry, Krakatoa

For the people of Sebesi Island, who spend their lives next to the world’s biggest natural time bomb, it seemed to be an offer that they could not refuse.

A businessman from the Indonesian mainland landed one day with a remarkable proposal: to make safe their deadly neighbour, the notorious volcano island of Krakatoa, hulking in the sea a few miles across the water.

When Krakatoa exploded in 1883 36,000 people died and the dust thrown up by the eruption lowered temperatures and darkened skies across the globe.

Africa

Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir ‘will expel poll observers’

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has threatened to kick out foreign election monitors, after they suggested next month’s vote should be delayed.

The BBC

Mr Bashir said if the observers intervened in Sudan’s affairs, “we will cut off their fingers and crush them under our shoes”.

The US-funded Carter Center recently suggested the 11 April election should be postponed amid security concerns.

The poll will be the first genuinely multi-party vote since 1986.

But opposition politicians have repeatedly suggested that the election should be put back amid chronic instability in the south and a continuing refugee crisis in the Darfur region.

Recovery from war

The Carter Center, which runs the only long-term monitoring mission in the country, said last week that the poll was “at risk on multiple fronts”.

“Logistical preparations are straining the limited capacity of the NEC [National Election Commission],” the centre said.

Egypt names Ahmed el-Tayeb sheikh of Al-Azhar University

Ahmed el-Tayeb, who holds a PhD in Islamic philosophy from the Sorbonne, is expected to be a better face for Egypt’s Al Azhar University, which was once preeminent in the Sunni world.

By Sarah A. Topol, Correspondent / March 22, 2010

Cairo

As Egypt gears up for a succession battle over who will fill President Hosni Mubarak’s shoes, a smooth succession has just been carried out at the top of one of the Egyptian institutions that he’s long relied on to secure and support his rule.

Today, the French-educated Ahmed el-Tayeb become Egypt’s top cleric, taking the helm of Cairo’s ancient Al Azhar University and replacing Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, who passed away earlier this month.

Once the preeminent center of Sunni Islamic teaching from Morocco to Indonesia, Al Azhar steadily lost influence in the 20th century as television gave regional voice to Muslim scholars outside its hierarchy and as Al Azhar came to be viewed by Islamists like Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood as a co-opted branch of the Egyptian state.

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