Docudharma Times Monday April 5

Scores rescued from flooded Chinese mine

Dozens of Chinese miners trapped in a flooded pit for more than a week have been rescued and brought to the surface, Chinese state media says.

Damian Grammaticas The BBC Monday, 5 April 2010

The Wangjialing mine in Shanxi province flooded after miners broke a wall into an abandoned shaft on 28 March.

State media says so far 114 of the 153 missing miners have been rescued. TV pictures showed survivors being taken to hospitals amid jubilant scenes.

Correspondents say the rescue is rare good news for the industry.

Chinese mines are notorious for fatal accidents.

Some 3,000 people have been working round the clock for eight days to try to pump out water and reach the trapped miners.

Eyes covered

The first survivors were brought to the surface shortly after midnight on Monday (1400 GMT on Sunday).

A crowd of people outside the entrance of the mine clapped as an initial group of nine miners were carried out one by one.

Diverse Hay Festival line-up promises 11 days of illumination

International theme features prominently in programme for annual literature festival

Mark Brown, arts correspondent

Bill Clinton called it the “Woodstock of the mind” while Joseph Heller said it was like a cross between “an international conference and a country wedding”. This year’s Guardian Hay Festival promises to be no different with a diverse line-up that includes Pervez Musharraf, Martin Amis, Zadie Smith and Nadine Gordimer.

More than 100,000 visitors are expected at Hay-on-Wye this summer, where some of the biggest themes are explored over 11 days by some of the biggest names.

Announcing the programme today, the festival’s founder and director Peter Florence said Hay was the place to be “if you’re interested in the world and people, in love and death, in what is the best thing to do and how to be happy”.

USA

In Colorado, health-care debate reverberates in congressional race



By Dan Balz

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, April 5, 2010  

FORT COLLINS, COLO. — Rep. Betsy Markey, a first-term Democrat in a Republican district, was one of just eight House members who switched their votes from “no” to “yes” when President Obama’s health-care bill finally passed Congress. Her vote left the endangered incumbent in an even more precarious position.

In the days since, Markey has been both praised and vilified. The National Republican Congressional Committee taunted her with an e-mail release proclaiming, “Bye Bye, Betsy.” She made former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s list of targeted Democrats. But they were only ratifying the obvious. In November, the race in Colorado’s 4th District will be crucial to Republican hopes to take over the House.

Ranchers Alarmed by Killing Near Border





DOUGLAS, Ariz. – Sooner or later, they all feared, one of them would be killed.

The ranchers, retirees and others who prefer to live off the grid in the vast desert near the Mexican border regularly confront the desperate and dehydrated illegal border crossers, who knock on their doors for directions and water, and lately more of the less innocent, who scurry across their land or lie low in the brush, stooped with marijuana and other drugs bundled on their backs.

Europe

Support for Pope in the face of ‘petty gossip’

Michael Day: Vatican flouts Easter tradition by giving cardinal a platform to defend Benedict.

By Michael Day in Milan Monday, 5 April 2010

The Vatican broke with papal ritual yesterday, allowing a leading cardinal to begin the Easter Sunday Mass with an address that seemed more like a pep talk for Pope Benedict, who is in the eye of a growing storm over clerical sex-abuse.

In his surprise speech, Cardinal Angelo Sodano lauded the pontiff as “a solid rock”, praised his “unfailing leadership” and declared “the Church is with you”, as the thousands of faithful huddled under umbrellas in St Peter’s Square cheered and applauded.

Pope makes no mention of abuse scandal in Easter sermon

Pope Benedict XVI urged humanity to undergo a “spiritual and moral conversion” during his Easter Mass. A senior cardinal dismissed the allegations against him as “petty gossip.”

RELIGION | 04.04.2010

Applause rang out in St. Peter’s Square as Pope Benedict XVI concluded a much-anticipated Easter Mass on Sunday, in which a senior cardinal praised the pontiff’s leadership and dismissed the allegations against him as “petty gossip.”

The pope urged humanity to undergo a “spiritual and moral conversion” during his traditional Easter message, but did not directly address the ongoing scandal over child abuse which has rocked the Roman Catholic Church worldwide.

The leader of some 1.1 billion Catholics was under pressure to reiterate his condemnation of predator priests in his “urbi et orbi” message to the world, but the only oblique reference to the scandal came in a surprise speech by the dean of the Vatican’s College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano.

Middle East

Israel allows goods to go to Gaza traders after three years

From The Times

April 5, 2010  

Foreign Staff  

Clothes and shoes have been allowed into Gaza by Israel for the first time in almost three years. Although clothing was allowed in as aid, the deliveries were the first to traders since the economic blockade was imposed.

Merchants said that they have had to pay 2,000 shekels (£356) a month to store their goods at the Israeli port of Ashdod for the past three years. They also said that yesterday’s shipment was not enough to replenish their stocks, and demanded that Israel release more goods held at its ports since 2007.

“Some of it even smells bad. I can say half of the merchandise is still good, but the other half is damaged. I fear I may not be able to recoup my outlay,” said Ziad Barbakh, a merchant, while inspecting his clothes shipment.

Inside the world of the ‘Kennedys of the Gulf’

The death of Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Ahmed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, controller of the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, has thrown the spotlight on one of the world’s most powerful families.

By Richard Spencer in Abu Dhabi

Published: 7:30AM BST 04 Apr 2010  

He was a multi-billionaire, and scion of one of the world’s most powerful families. But until his microlight aircraft crashed into a Moroccan lake last weekend few outside the narrow confines of the Gulf, and the even narrower confines of sovereign wealth finance, would have heard of Sheikh Ahmed bin Zayed al-Nahyan.

To some extent, that is understandable. In the world of Gulf princes, he was one among a secretive cast of thousands. As managing director of the world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund, discretion was his watchword.

Asia

A new danger for sex workers in Bangladesh

The prostitutes in Bangladeshi brothels are often underage and unpaid – and now, many of them are hooked on steroids that are damaging to their health

Joanna Moorhead

The Guardian, Monday 5 April 2010

I’m walking along a brightly painted corridor when a couple of young girls catch first my eye, and then my arm. They smile at me, and giggle; they look about the same ages as my elder daughters, 17 and 15. Just like my daughters, these girls have taken a lot of time over their makeup and their clothes: and they look beautiful. In their faces I see the same fun and youthful optimism that I see every day in my own house.

But there the comparisons end. Because I am in Faridpur in central Bangladesh, on the banks of the Padma river; and these girls are sex workers.

Each day they must have intercourse with four or five different men, for the price of around 100 taka, or £1, a time.

Afghanistan’s women defy militants to learn to read

In the Taliban heartland, women are again going underground to get an education. Julius Cavendish reports from Kandahar

Monday, 5 April 2010  

Unsuspected by their Taliban neighbours, hundreds of women in Afghanistan are attending secret literacy classes, defying the militants in some of their most redoubtable strongholds. In dozens of villages across Zabul province, the mountainous landscape where the insurgency first spluttered to life, underground programmes have sprung up in mud-walled houses under the guise of Koranic study-groups.

The exact locations are secret, but, in an interview with The Independent, the man behind the covert schools said they have reached 29 villages and around 450 students. Ehsanullah Ehsan has devoted his life to educating women in some of the most culturally conservative places on earth.

Africa

South Korea tanker hijacked by Somali pirates

A South Korea-operated, Singapore-owned oil tanker has been hijacked by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean.

 

The 300,000-tonne Samho Dream – loaded with crude oil – was on its way from Iraq to the United States with 24 crew when it was seized on Sunday.

South Korea has sent a destroyer already in the area to intercept the tanker before it reaches any port.

Pirates targeting ships off the coast of Somalia made tens of millions of dollars in ransom payments last year.

The Cheong-hae destroyer was on patrol in the Gulf of Aden, where pirates have often staged attacks.

It has been diverted some 1,500 km (930 miles) to the south-east to the area where the hijacking took place. In recent months, pirates have been attacking ships further out to sea – in some cases closer to the Indian coast than Somalia.

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