Docudharma Times Sunday May 4

This is a matter of utmost urgency

You might even call it a police emergency

Suckers got ill when they finally heard the G

Wasn’t sellin’ out

Sunday’s Headlines: Even the Insured Feel the Strain of Health Costs: Uranium claims spring up along Grand Canyon rim: Ireland’s immigrants return home as slump sharpens fear of racism: Vivaldi’s long-lost opera returns to Prague after 278: Betrayed: The Iraqis who risked all for Britain years: Baghdad hospital damaged by U.S. missile, dozens injured: Turkish Schools Offer Pakistan a Gentler Islam: Dalai Lama’s envoys begin talks with China: Zimbabwe’s opposition divided over boycott of election re-run: Can liberal democracy save Zim?: New Columbia drug gangs wreak havoc

Mahdi Army fighters grateful for sand storm standstills in Sadr City

On a bare patch of ground outside the entrance to Sadr general hospital, 15 women clad from head to foot in black squatted in a sandstorm, wailing and waiting for their dead.

Lightning flashed, thunder rolled and the women’s robes were spattered with mud falling from a sky filled with rain and sand, but they did not notice.

“Ya’mma, Ya’ba” (“Oh mother, oh father”), cried Amira Zaydan, a 45-year-old spinster, slapping her face and chest as she grieved for her parents Jaleel, 65, and Hanounah, 60, whose house had exploded after apparently being hit by an American rocket.

“Where are you, my brothers?” she sobbed, lamenting Samir, 32, and Amir, 29, who had also perished along with their wives, one of whom was nine months pregnant.

USA

Even the Insured Feel the Strain of Health Costs

The economic slowdown has swelled the ranks of people without health insurance.

But now it is also threatening millions of people who have insurance but find that the coverage is too limited or that they cannot afford their own share of medical costs.

Many of the 158 million people covered by employer health insurance are struggling to meet medical expenses that are much higher than they used to be – often because of some combination of higher premiums, less extensive coverage, and bigger out-of-pocket deductibles and co-payments.

Uranium claims spring up along Grand Canyon rim

A rush to extract uranium on public lands pits environmentalists, who worry about the local effect, against mining companies, which point out that nuclear power wouldn’t contribute to global warming.

GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, ARIZ. — Thanks to renewed interest in nuclear power, the United States is on the verge of a uranium mining boom, and nowhere is the hurry to stake claims more pronounced than in the districts flanking the Grand Canyon’s storied sandstone cliffs.

On public lands within five miles of Grand Canyon National Park, there are now more than 1,100 uranium claims, compared with just 10 in January 2003, according to data from the Department of the Interior.

In recent months, the uranium rush has spawned a clash as epic as the canyon’s 18-mile chasm, with both sides claiming to be working for the good of the planet.

Environmental organizations have appealed to federal courts and Congress to halt any drilling on the grounds that mining so close to such a rare piece of the nation’s patrimony could prove ruinous for the canyon’s visitors and wildlife alike.

Europe

Ireland’s immigrants return home as slump sharpens fear of racism

With growing concerns over job losses and the credit crunch starting to bite, Ireland’s migrant workers are feeling the strain – not just in their pockets, but in their relationship with the adopted homeland. Henry McDonald reports from Dublin

Founded by immigrants from Dracula’s homeland, Transylvania FC is one of the many casualties of Ireland’s economic downturn. The Romanian football club that plays in Dublin, birthplace of the vampire’s creator, Bram Stoker, has seen its squad severely depleted as migrant construction workers leave either for home or more lucrative projects such as London’s Olympic village.

Like the tens of thousands of other immigrant workers who flocked to Ireland’s Celtic Tiger economy at the start of the 21st century, Marcello Rus sought a better life than the one he had in Romania. But Transylvania’s coach has noticed over the past eight months that many of his compatriots are going home. Rus, whose side gained promotion last season into one of Ireland’s top amateur soccer tournaments, the Leinster Senior League, has suffered from the slump.

Vivaldi’s long-lost opera returns to Prague after 278 years

After hunting the missing manuscript down in a German archive, Czech conductor revives ‘Argippo’

By David Randall

Sunday, 4 May 2008

A long-lost opera by Antonio Vivaldi was to have its first performance in centuries last night. Argippo, discovered by a Czech musician as he rummaged through an old archive of anonymous scores, was being staged at a castle in Prague, the city where it had its premiere in 1730. Fittingly, it will be conducted by Ondrej Macek, the man who found the manuscript, and played by his Baroque Music Ensemble Hofmusici.

Vivaldi, called by contemporaries “the Red Priest” for the colour of his hair, is known these days, to all but serious lovers of Baroque music, for a single work: The Four Seasons. However, he was a prolific composer who produced more than 500 concertos, 73 sonatas, numerous pieces of sacred music and 46 operas. One of them, Argippo, opened in the Palace of Count Spork in the centre of Prague 278 years ago.

Middle East

Betrayed: The Iraqis who risked all for Britain

Sami Faleh Mohammed, 44, was killed because he was a translator for the British Army. His widow says it failed in its duty of care. His is one of 12 families seeking justice. Robert Verkaik reports from Damascus

Sami Faleh Mohammed was one of thousands of exiled Iraqis who after the invasion of Iraq decided to give his country another chance.

In September 2004 he led his wife and three children from the safety of Jordan to Basra, where he found work as a translator for the British Army. Two years later he was dead, murdered by members of the Shia militias who have targeted Iraqis who risk their own lives to help the British try to bring stability to the region.

His case is now one of 12 test claims being brought in the High Court by Iraqi translators and other workers who believe they have been betrayed by Britain.

Baghdad hospital damaged by U.S. missile, dozens injured

BAGHDAD – A major hospital in Baghdad’s Sadr City slum was damaged Saturday when an American military strike targeted a militia command center just a few yards away, the U.S. military said.

American troops also killed 14 people in separate incidents in and around Sadr City as bloody street battles continued to mark the U.S. effort to rid the area of suspected Shiite Muslim militants, military officials said.

The rocket strike near Sadr Hospital injured 30 people, shattered the windows of ambulances and sent doctors and hospital staff fleeing the scene, hospital officials said.

Asia

Turkish Schools Offer Pakistan a Gentler Islam

KARACHI, Pakistan – Praying in Pakistan has not been easy for Mesut Kacmaz, a Muslim teacher from Turkey.

He tried the mosque near his house, but it had Israeli and Danish flags painted on the floor for people to step on. The mosque near where he works warned him never to return wearing a tie. Pakistanis everywhere assume he is not Muslim because he has no beard.

“Kill, fight, shoot,” Mr. Kacmaz said. “This is a misinterpretation of Islam.”

Dalai Lama’s envoys begin talks with China

Envoys for the Dalai Lama began a series of meetings Sunday with Chinese leaders, the first time the two sides have come together since violence broke out in the Tibetan regions of China in March.

The talks began Sunday morning, said Tenzin Takhla, the secretary to the Dalai Lama, from the northern Indian city of Dharamsala. Later in the week, the two sides will carry out further meetings, he said.

Chinese President Hu Jintao told Japanese reporters Sunday that he hopes the talks yield positive results.

“I am confident that through joint efforts by both sides, this visit will be able to achieve the expected results,” Hu said, according to a report by Japan’s Kyodo News agency.

Africa

Zimbabwe’s opposition divided over boycott of election re-run

MDC members fail to make a decision as their leader Morgan Tsvangirai remains abroad amid fears for his safety

After a day of top level meetings, Zimbabwe’s main opposition party yesterday failed to make a decision on whether it will take part in presidential run-off elections scheduled for next month. Observers now fear that there is a fierce dispute within the Movement for Democratic Change – whose leader Morgan Tsvangirai is staying out of the country for his safety – over whether to boycott the second round of voting that was announced on Friday by Zimbabwe’s Electoral Commission.

Tsvangirai claimed an outright majority after the polls and the MDC says the results released this weekend were doctored. Election officials announced on Friday that Tsvangirai had beaten Mugabe in the 29 March presidential poll but failed to win the absolute majority necessary to avoid a second ballot.

Can liberal democracy save Zim?

By Patrick Laurence

As the controversy over the Zimbabwean March 29 elections reaches a new level of acrimony on the question of whether the presidential election result has been skewed in favour of Robert Mugabe, it is appropriate to pause and appraise the significance of events in Zimbabwe over the past month.

A broadly based conclusion can be confidently offered: Mugabe’s grip on unfettered power has finally been broken, even if he succeeds in prolonging his tenure of the presidential office for a few more months.

The officially confirmed results of the parliamentary elections affirmed the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) as the winner, thereby conferring control of the legislative and budgetary processes on it.

Latin America

New Columbia drug gangs wreak havoc

The killing of a farm leader who opposed growing coca suggests the emergence of former right-wing paramilitary fighters.

SANTA ROSA, COLOMBIA — In the end, getting his picture taken with President Bush and attaining a modicum of local fame was no help to Miguel Daza. In fact, his high profile may have been the death of him.

The young farmer was killed in a roadside ambush in February near this mining and drug trafficking hub in north-central Colombia, apparently by one of a new generation of criminal gangs that have emerged in the two years since right-wing paramilitary fighters officially disbanded.

The status of the paramilitary fighters has serious ramifications for President Alvaro Uribe, a conservative U.S. ally who famously broke up the militias, which were playing a role in destabilizing the country. But he has seen his presidency challenged by revelations that many of his closest allies were tied to the right-wing gunmen.