Docudharma Times Sunday May 30

Gloom grows as BP’s ‘top kill’ effort fails

‘This scares everybody – the fact that we can’t make this well stop flowing,’ an official says. Some hope lies with a new maneuver to cap the leak.

By Margot Roosevelt and Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times

May 30, 2010

Reporting from Los Angeles and Kenner, La. –

BP acknowledged the failure Saturday of its latest “top kill” operation to tamp down oil gushing from its blown-out well, and launched a new interim effort to contain the flow.

“After three full days, we have been unable to overcome the flow from the well, so we now believe it is time to move on to another option,” said BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles at a news conference with federal officials in Robert, La.

Korean War documentary, ‘Uncommon Courage: Breakout at Chosin,’ debuts



By Neely Tucker

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, May 30, 2010

The old Marine is sitting in the lobby of his elegant apartment building in Northwest Washington. Dark pinstriped suit. Checked shirt. Red-and-blue striped tie held in place with a gold pin. Chest full of medals. Black shoes shined to merciless perfection.

He is 84 years old. He is trying to hold his composure.

“I get sentimental thinking about this,” Maj. Kurt Chew-Een Lee says in his gravelly voice, his brown eyes dropping. “Just thinking and talking about it.”

USA

Gulf Coast Fishermen Fear Disruption of Their Way of Life



By AMY HARMON

Published: May 29, 2010

CHALMETTE, La. – Like thousands of other fishermen along Louisiana’s befouled coast, Buddy Greco’s son Aaron was itching to take his family’s boat out to the marshes as yet untainted by the oil gushing from a BP well offshore.

But the elder Mr. Greco insisted that Aaron, 19, accompany him instead last week to three days of BP training classes required for new jobs cleaning up the oil slicks.

“If we don’t get in now, we’ll be locked out,” Mr. Greco, who began fishing some 30 years ago with his own father, told his son.

 Red Dawn is being remade, but China ousts Russia as America’s new enemy

A remake of the 1984 cold war teen action film says much about America’s fear of its declining influence in the world

Paul Harris

The Observer, Sunday 30 May 2010

The film was a classic piece of 1980s teen cinema framed against the paranoid geopolitics of the cold war. Red Dawn starred Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen as all-American teens leading an armed resistance movement against Soviet troops who had invaded the US.

Feeding on Hollywood’s recent appetite for recycling old films, Red Dawn is being remade with a handsome new cast. But there is one vital difference: this time the invading communist army that takes over America is Chinese.

Europe

Keep working: Europe cracks austerity whip

From The Sunday Times

May 30, 2010

Matthew Campbell in Paris and Bojan Pancevski in Brussels  

AROUND him they were chanting anti-government slogans and banging on drums but Philippe Mercier, a 40-year-old French factory worker in jeans, T-shirt and black peaked cap, was fantasising about fishing.

“I’ve always looked forward to retirement,” he said as he marched in an anti-government demonstration through Paris on Thursday. “I’d like more time by the lake, trying to tempt the pike.”

Now, his dream of a happy retirement at 60 is under threat and that is why he joined the protesters. The French are by no means the only ones to complain.

MEPs spend nearly £5 million on foreign fact finding missions

MEPs have lavished nearly £5 million on foreign travel for “fact finding” missions in the past six years, it can be disclosed.

By Melissa Kite, Deputy Political Editor

Published: 8:15AM BST 30 May 2010

The trips included a visit to the Maldives where MEPs stayed in a five star luxury private island resort while researching electoral practice.

Research conducted by the Open Europe think tank reveals that since 2004 MEPs have spent £4.7 million and clocked up over 14 million air miles on trips which critics claimed were often little more than “junkets”.The money spent is in addition to allowances of around £90,000 that each MEP can claim for travel between their country of residence to the European Parliament.

Middle East

Gaza flotilla delayed after mystery faults hit two boats

Sabotage claim as Israeli navy is poised to intercept pro-Palestinian convoy

By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem   Sunday, 30 May 2010

A Gaza-bound flotilla’s confrontation with the Israeli navy was delayed yesterday after mystery faults developed simultaneously in two of its boats. The Greek Cypriot government also prevented up to another 30 pro-Palestinian activists – including European parliamentarians – from joining the crafts.

The flotilla, now down to five instead of the original eight boats, is carrying 10,000 tons of aid supplies and hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists. It prepared to leave Cypriot waters en route to Gaza last night despite warnings by Israel that it would be stopped – by force if necessary – from landing in the besieged territory.

Israel key to NPT conference on banning nukes

Arab nations finally won agreement from the US and the other nuclear powers to take the first step toward banning nuclear weapons from the Middle East. Now, the next move is Israel’s.

By Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press Writer / May 29, 2010

After 15 years, Arab nations finally won agreement from the United States and the other nuclear powers to take the first step toward banning nuclear weapons from the Middle East. Now, the next move is Israel’s.Although the U.S. joined the 188 other member nations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty on Friday in giving a green light to a conference in 2012 “on the establishment of a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction,” senior U.S. officials appeared to backtrack afterward, setting several conditions for the talks to go ahead.

Asia

India’s Communist party faces defeat in its West Bengal heartland

The opposition Trinamool Congress smells blood as corruption and the rise of violent Maoism take their toll on the CPIM  

Jason Burke in Kolkata

The Observer, Sunday 30 May 2010

The walls are covered with freshly painted graffiti: hammers and sickles in a range of bright colours. The security precautions are in place: no candidates’ bodyguards are allowed in polling booths and 17,000 policemen are deployed on the traffic-choked, steaming, potholed streets. The adult population of Calcutta, now known as Kolkata, is going to the polls.

So, too, are the inhabitants of 80 other towns and cities across India’s dilapidated eastern state of West Bengal. Today’s municipal elections are unlike any for decades: the Communists, who have held West Bengal’s main towns almost without a break since the 1970s, are facing disaster.

Starving and deluded – yet North Korea is ready for war

From The Sunday Times

May 30, 2010

Sue Lloyd-Roberts in Pyongyang

SITTING in a leather chair in one of Pyongyang’s smartest hotels, the economic adviser to the North Korean government was enjoying giving me a lecture. “Our country has reached new heights of economic achievement,” said Ri Ki-song, “thanks to the strength and self-reliance of the North Korean people and to our plentiful natural resources.”

The room was suddenly plunged into darkness. It was another of the city’s daily power cuts.

The blackout might have cast a shadow on the country’s “new heights of economic achievement” but Ri continued without hesitation. “And, what is more, we are meeting all our people’s needs.”

Africa

10 million face famine in West Africa

Drought and failing harvests bring new fears of a food disaster in two sub-Saharan countries

By Jon Gambrell in Gadabeji, Niger Sunday, 30 May 2010

At this time of year, the Gadabeji Reserve should be a refuge for the nomadic tribes who travel across a moonscape on the edge of the Sahara to graze their cattle. But the grass is meagre after a drought killed off last year’s crops. Now the cattle are too weak to stand and too skinny to sell, leaving the poor without any way to buy grain to feed their families.

The threat of famine is again stalking the Sahel, a band of semi-arid land stretching across Africa south of the Sahara. Its countries constitute a virtual list of the worst famines in recent decades: Ethiopia, Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia.

Tribal king of platinum paid for facilities to be used by England’s World Cup squad

The king of the Royal Bafokeng Nation, whose tribe has been enriched by vast platinum deposits, is behind the training facilities to be used by England’s World Cup squad.

By Jane Flanagan in Phokeng

Published: 8:00AM BST 30 May 2010

A remote outpost off the tarmac between Johannesburg and the gambling resort of Sun City seems an unlikely place to find Africa’s wealthiest tribal kingdom.

But beneath the dusty tribal lands on which the town of Phokeng is built lie the world’s largest deposits of platinum – a seam of the scarce and precious silvery metal which is transforming the prospects for the 300,000-strong Royal Bafokeng Nation.

The sprawl of small single-storey homes that make up the sleepy tribal capital, whose streets are dotted with the occasional rusting car, are not much to look at. Nor is there so far a huge financial return for most who live there, with the average family income around £15 per week.

Latin America

Jamaica violence: Former prime minister fears indefinite martial law

Edward Seaga says Prime Minister Bruce Golding has lost control of Jamaica’s security forces seeking to capture alleged gang leader Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke.

By Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Kingston, Jamaica –

Former Prime Minister Edward Seaga fears Jamaica could fall under indefinite martial law in the aftermath of a week of violence during which, he says, soldiers and police indiscriminately killed dozens of innocent people.

In a telephone interview, Seaga, who was prime minister from 1980 to ’89, said Prime Minister Bruce Golding has lost control of the nation’s security forces seeking to capture alleged gang leader and drug trafficker Christopher “Dudus” Coke. The suspect, who has been indicted in New York federal court on drug and arms-trafficking charges, is still at large.

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