Docudharma Times Sunday January 20

This Thread is Open: Never to be foreclosed

Sunday’s Headlines: Overseas Investors Buy U.S. Holdings at a Record Pace: Caucus training prepares participants to spread the love: Violence fear over Islam film: China hushes up Olympic deaths: Tijuana’s new chief knows the cartel’s killers are after him: Ex-child soldier’s literary bestseller is ‘factually flawed’

McCain Beats Huckabee in S. Carolina; Clinton and Romney Win in Nevada

Florida Now Looms as Key GOP Primary

Sunday, January 20, 2008; Page A01

COLUMBIA, S.C., Jan. 19 — Sen. John McCain conquered the South Carolina Republican primary Saturday, giving his once-embattled presidential campaign another significant boost and helping to wipe away bitter memories of his defeat here eight years ago.

McCain (Ariz.) opened his victory speech in Charleston by alluding to that loss. “It took us a while, but what’s eight years among friends?” he said, a big smile crossing his face.

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, looking for a victory in the first Southern primary of the 2008 nomination battle, finished second to McCain, but not getting a victory in this conservative state is a blow to his underdog hopes of winning the GOP nomination.

Just one more year! Good riddance to George W Bush

But what kind of mess will the next president inherit, exactly 12 months from today? By Rupert Cornwell in Washington

Arabia is the land of illusion and desert mirages. And as he jetted last week from kingdom to sheikdom, to be regaled with feasts and falcons, jewels and ornamental swords, George Bush might have imagined that all was well with his presidency. But this, his longest and most ambitious trip to the Middle East, will surely be remembered – if it is remembered at all – as a gaudy, irrelevant footnote to a presidency that has long since failed.

Today is a sombre milestone, marking the start of the last of Mr Bush’s eight years in the White House. This being a leap year, exactly 366 days remain until 20 January 2009, when his successor will be sworn into office. It is a time when incumbents look to their legacies. And for this President the view could scarcely be bleaker.

USA

Overseas Investors Buy U.S. Holdings at a Record Pace

Last May, a Saudi Arabian conglomerate bought a Massachusetts plastics maker. In November, a French company established a new factory in Adrian, Mich., adding 189 automotive jobs to an area accustomed to layoffs. In December, a British company bought a New Jersey maker of cough syrup.

For much of the world, the United States is now on sale at discount prices. With credit tight, unemployment growing and worries mounting about a potential recession, American business and government leaders are courting foreign money to keep the economy growing. Foreign investors are buying aggressively, taking advantage of American duress and a weak dollar to snap up what many see as bargains, while making inroads to the world’s largest market.

Caucus training prepares participants to spread the love

By BRAD WONG

P-I REPORTER

Seattle-area supporters of Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid sat patiently at an Aerospace Machinists lodge Saturday, listening and learning about helping the senator win the state’s Democratic caucus on Feb. 9.

Volunteer Jim Kainber advised them to use reason, passion and humor to sway supporters of other candidates to their side.”Treat it like you’re cruising for a date in your single days,” he joked.

With the state’s precinct-level caucus approaching, Democrats and Republicans gathered this weekend to review party caucus rules and chart plans to catapult their candidates to victory.

The delegates selected Feb. 9 proceed to larger caucus meetings in the state and eventually to the Democratic and Republican national conventions.

Europe

Violence fear over Islam film

Counter-terrorism alert as a Dutch right-winger launches a movie that will denounce the Koran

The Dutch government is bracing itself for violent protests following the scheduled broadcast this week of a provocative anti-Muslim film by a radical right-wing politician who has threatened to broadcast images of the Koran being torn up and otherwise desecrated.

Cabinet ministers and officials, fearing a repetition of the crisis sparked by the publication of cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper two years ago, have held a series of crisis meetings and ordered counter-terrorist services to draw up security plans. Dutch nationals overseas have been asked to register with their embassies and local mayors in the Netherlands have been put on standby.

Rip off Monsieur Oliver? Moi? Non, says French chef

He tackles school dinners and has a restaurant called Fifteenth. But Cyril Lignac is no fan of Jamie’s ‘nosh’

Cyril Lignac became a celebrity chef in France by making a TV series in which he trained young, disadvantaged people to be chefs, then he tackled the issue of school food. He also has a restaurant called Le Quinzième, or Fifteenth. Sound familiar?

Mr Lignac, 30, agrees that he owes Jamie Oliver “a great deal”. Strange, then, that he has got into a row over remarks that appear to show disdain for the cheeky British chef whose TV formats he has copied. Recently he was quoted as dismissing Mr Oliver, two years his senior, as a “young bloke who makes nosh [tambouille]”. Unlike the Englishman, he implied, he was a “master chef”, trained in the great French gastronomic tradition.

But, in an interview, Mr Lignac denied the slights attributed to him by a French gastronomic website. “I never said that Jamie Oliver was ‘just a young bloke who makes nosh’,” he said. “Never.”

Asia

China hushes up Olympic deaths

At least 10 workers have been killed while working on the Olympic stadium but, in a rush to complete the project, Chinese officials have denied the deaths

CHINA has systematically covered up the accidental deaths of at least 10 workers, and perhaps many more, in a rush to construct the futuristic “bird’s nest” stadium in Beijing for this summer’s Olympic Games.

The estimates are drawn from dozens of interviews conducted over six months, under a guarantee of anonymity, with employees from the huge building site in a northern district of the capital.

Witnesses have told The Sunday Times of seeing workers plummet to their deaths from the perilous heights of the stadium, which was designed by a consortium including Arup, the British engineering firm, and Herzog & de Meuron, the Swiss architects.

Al-Qa’ida sent me to kill Bhutto, says teenager

A teenage suspect arrested in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas has told police that he was a member of a team sent by an al-Qa’ida-linked militant leader to kill the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto last month.

Aitezaz Shah, 15, had confessed to investigators he had been part of a five-man squad deployed on 27 December in Rawalpindi, where Ms Bhutto was killed, a senior intelligence official said. Shah said the killers were dispatched by Baitullah Mehsud, a militant leader from the South Waziristan region with strong ties to al-Qa’ida and an alliance with the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan. Shortly after Ms Bhutto’s assassination, President Pervez Musharraf’s government said it had intercepted a phone call in which Mehsud congratulated the perpetrators. A spokesman for the leader denied the claim.

Latin America

Tijuana’s new chief knows the cartel’s killers are after him

They’ve already shot up his house and gunned down three cops. He urges citizens to stand with him.

TIJUANA — The bullet holes pockmarking the walls of his home were just three days old when Alberto Capella Ibarra took over the police force of this violence-plagued city.

Twenty gunmen dressed in black had swarmed his yard in the middle of the night, and he’d fought them off, firing an automatic rifle.

Taking office Dec. 1 as the city’s secretary for public security, Capella, a longtime activist, declared war on organized crime and challenged citizens to join him in the battle.

Even he had no idea it would get so bloody.

Seventeen people were killed last week as organized crime struck back. Last Monday night and Tuesday morning, heavily armed men killed three of Capella’s senior police officers, shooting one at his home along with his wife and two daughters.

Chavez warns banks on farm lending

CARACAS, Venezuela – President Hugo Chavez threatened on Saturday to take control of banks that fail to meet state-imposed loaning requirements designed to benefit Venezuela’s farmers.

Chavez, who says he is leading Venezuela toward “21st century socialism,” accused many private banks of neglecting laws requiring them to set aside nearly a third of all loans for agriculture, mortgages and small businesses at favorable rates.

“The law must be applied,” Chavez said during a televised meeting with farmers. Any bank that doesn’t comply with these lending requirements “should be seized.”

Middle East

Hezbollah’s leader claims to have Israeli bodies

Comments in rare public appearance appear aimed at prisoner exchange

BEIRUT, Lebanon – Hezbollah’s reclusive leader claimed Saturday the militant group had the remains of Israeli soldiers killed in Lebanon during the 2006 war, saying the dead were left behind “in our villages and fields.”

Sheik Hassan Nasrallah’s graphic description appeared aimed at pressuring Israel to accept a prisoner exchange. Israel is thought to be holding at least seven Lebanese prisoners while Hezbollah has two Israeli soldiers it captured in July 2006, triggering the war.

Iraqi Shiite festival escapes bloodshed

BAGHDAD – Hundreds of thousands of Shiite Muslims clambered aboard buses or began trekking homeward on foot Saturday at the end of Ashoura, a 10-day ritual to cleanse the spirit and scourge the body in honor of their founding saint.

The high holy days in Karbala passed absent the slaughter of pilgrims witnessed in the years since the U.S.-led invasion nearly half a decade ago, but militants did assault gatherings of Ashoura worshippers elsewhere.

Fearing a spectacular attack on the masses of self-flagellating faithful who marched on the shrines in Karbala, Iraqi authorities flooded the city with 30,000 police and soldiers. Soviet-made tanks guarded approach roads.

Africa

CHRONOLOGY-Kenya in crisis after disputed elections

Jan 19 (Reuters) – Five people hiding in a refugee camp in Kenya’s Rift Valley were killed on Saturday by opposition supporters in the latest flare-up of violence in one of the regions worst hit by ethnic killings.

Kenya’s opposition has said it will resume protests next week over a disputed election, just having finished three days of demonstrations in which at least 23 died.

Here is a chronology of the crisis:

Dec. 27 – Voters elect a new president and parliament. Most opinion polls put Kibaki’s opposition rival Raila Odinga of the Orange Democratic Movement in the lead.

Dec. 30 – The Electoral Commission of Kenya declares Kibaki winner of the election and he is hurriedly sworn in.

Ex-child soldier’s literary bestseller is ‘factually flawed’

The dates don’t add up, say critics of acclaimed book by orphaned survivor of Sierra Leone’s war

Barbara McMahon in Sydney

Sunday January 20, 2008

The Observer

He is a former child soldier whose account of being a cocaine-addicted killer forced to fight in Sierra Leone’s civil war was a literary sensation.

More than 600,000 people have bought Ishmael Beah’s memoir A Long Way Gone, which received rave reviews from authors such as William Boyd and Sebastian Junger, was marketed in Starbucks and which was number three in Time magazine’s top 10 non-fiction books last year.

Now an Australian newspaper suggests there may be serious flaws in the young man’s account of his life as a teenage killing machine, forced to become part of a government corps of boy soldiers before being rescued by Unicef, the UN’s children’s agency.