Docudharma Times Friday September 26

When Stupidity Rules The Roost

The Roosters Come Home

Oh The Drama Of The Drama King

WaMu seized, sold  

Deposits safe, but losses here likely to be deep

By BILL VIRGIN, ANDREA JAMES AND DAN RICHMAN

P-I REPORTERS    

Washington Mutual Inc. came to an ignominious end Thursday, with federal regulators seizing the company and selling its branches, deposits and loans to New York-based banking giant JPMorgan Chase in the largest bank failure in U.S. history.

Although WaMu, as recently as two weeks ago, had told investors that it had sufficient capital to work its way through the housing market and losses in its own loan portfolio, regulators said they stepped in because depositors had lost confidence in the institution. The federal Office of Thrift Supervision said $16.7 billion in deposits had been pulled from the company just since Sept. 15.

Talks Falter on Bailout Deal

White House Summit Fails to Yield Accord as House GOP Floats New Plan

By Paul Kane and Lori Montgomery

Washington Post Staff Writers

Friday, September 26, 2008; Page A01  

A renegade bloc of Republicans moved to reshape a massive bailout of the U.S. financial system yesterday, surprising and angering Bush administration and congressional leaders who hours earlier announced agreement on the “fundamentals” of a deal.

At a meeting at the White House that included President Bush, top lawmakers and both presidential candidates, House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) floated a new plan for addressing the crisis that has hobbled global markets.

Democrats accused Boehner of acting on behalf of GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) in trying to disrupt a developing consensus.

USA

Palin won’t have to reveal finances until after Biden debate

 

By SHARON THEIMER

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) – Sarah Palin requested and received an extension of the deadline for revealing her personal finances, until the day after her debate with Democrat Joe Biden.

The Republican vice-presidential candidate received a four-day extension today from the Federal Election Commission.

The federal financial disclosure report was initially due Monday. Now Palin has until Oct. 3, the day after her debate in St. Louis with Biden, the Democratic vice presidential nominee.

Greenhouse gas emissions shock scientists

Carbon dioxide output is rising rather than falling, despite efforts to curb it. ‘It’s scary,’ one researcher says.?

 From Times Wire Services

September 26, 2008  

WASHINGTON — The world pumped up emissions of the chief human-produced global warming gas last year, setting a course that could push beyond leading scientists’ projected worst-case scenario, international researchers said Thursday.

The new numbers, which some scientists called “scary,” were a surprise because experts thought an economic downturn would slow energy use. Instead, carbon dioxide output rose 3% from 2006 to 2007.

That amount exceeds the most dire outlook for emissions from burning coal and oil and related activities as projected by a Nobel Prize-winning group of international scientists in 2007.

Meanwhile, forests and oceans, which suck up carbon dioxide, are doing so at lower rates, scientists said. If those trends continue, the world will be on track for the highest predicted rises in temperature and sea level.

Middle East

Israel asked US for green light to bomb nuclear sites in Iran

US president told Israeli prime minister he would not back attack on Iran, senior European diplomatic sources tell Guardian

Jonathan Steele

guardian.co.uk,



Israel gave serious thought this spring to launching a military strike on Iran’s nuclear sites but was told by President George W Bush that he would not support it and did not expect to revise that view for the rest of his presidency, senior European diplomatic sources have told the Guardian.

The then prime minister, Ehud Olmert, used the occasion of Bush’s trip to Israel for the 60th anniversary of the state’s founding to raise the issue in a one-on-one meeting on May 14, the sources said. “He took it [the refusal of a US green light] as where they were at the moment, and that the US position was unlikely to change as long as Bush was in office”, they added.

Protests force Paul McCartney to switch West Bank visit

 

From The Times

September 26, 2008

James Hider in Tel Aviv

It was always John Lennon who was the controversial one, once famously claiming that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus”. Try as he might, though, his former band-mate Sir Paul McCartney, who was due to play his first concert in Israel last night, has been unable to duck the controversy that has swirled around his visit to the Holy Land.

Sir Paul was forced to abandon a trip to the West Bank city of Ramallah on Wednesday because of planned Palestinian protests against his gig, billed as part of the celebrations of the Jewish state’s 60th birthday.

Instead, he was diverted to Bethlehem, where he visited the church marking the birthplace of the man whom Lennon claimed to have eclipsed in the popularity stakes.

Europe

Turkish court acquits British artist over portraying PM as US poodle

 

Robert Tait in Istanbul

The Guardian,

Friday September 26 2008

A British artist walked free yesterday after being cleared of insulting Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, by portraying him as a dog in a case seen as a test of Turkey’s tolerance of free speech.

A Turkish court acquitted Michael Dickinson of criminal charges despite citing “some insulting elements” in his depiction of Erdogan as a dog attached to a leash in the colours of the US flag. But the court ruled that the artwork was “within the limits of criticism”.

Dickinson, 58, who has lived in Turkey for 20 years, was charged with “insulting the prime minister’s dignity” in September and could have faced up to two years in jail if convicted. He was arrested after unfurling the picture at a court hearing of an art exhibition organiser, who had been charged with insulting behaviour for displaying another of Dickinson’s works.

EU bans children’s food imports from China

 

 By Geoff Meade, PA Europe Editor, in Brussels

Friday, 26 September 2008  

A Europe-wide ban on all food for children coming from China comes into force today.

The European Commission’s ban comes amid growing concern over contaminated milk powder which has already caused infant deaths in China and affected thousands more children.

A Commission spokeswoman said some EU countries – and some sectors of the food industry – had already announced their own bans, but now Brussels was activating an explicit total ban on all products from China aimed at infants and young children and which could pose a threat of contamination.

The decision, under EU health and safety provisions, was announced yesterday and will be formally adopted today, along with an agreement to step up testing of all other food imports from China which contain at least 15% milk products.

Africa

Zimbabwe power-sharing deal faces disaster



 From The Times

September 26, 2008

Martin Fletcher and Jan Raath in Harare

Zimbabwe’s power-sharing deal is close to collapse after only 12 days because Robert Mugabe and his generals are determined to thwart it, Western diplomats said yesterday.

“We are looking at the possibility of this thing failing,” a senior diplomat told The Times as Mr Mugabe demanded an end to the “illegal and unilateral” sanctions at the UN General Assembly in New York last night. Another gave the deal a mere 25 per cent chance of survival, saying Mr Mugabe had entered it in bad faith and had duped the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

Both gave warning of catastrophe if the deal collapsed. One spoke of Zimbabwe’s “final implosion”, with “Ethiopian-style” mass starvation and another million desperate people flooding into neighbouring countries.

Transition inSouth Africa >

 

Irish Times

Friday, September 26, 2008

SOUTH AFRICA’S political transition is fully under way following Kgalema Motlanthe’s election yesterday as interim president by the national parliament in Cape Town.

He replaces Thabo Mbeki, who resigned as president last weekend following the African National Congress’s withdrawal of political support, and is universally understood to be holding the position open for Jacob Zuma after next April’s general elections. Mr Zuma defeated Mr Mbeki as ANC president last December in a resurgence of the movement’s populist left-wing on an egalitarian programme.

These events are being watched closely at home and abroad to see whether they herald a major change of economic and social policy. They have been stable since the ANC took power in a powersharing coalition after the end of apartheid in the 1990s and then in the governments led by Mr Mbeki when he took over from Nelson Mandela.

Asia

India faced with home-grown terrorism

 Police have arrested the head of Indian Mujahideen, which claims responsibility for recent bombings.

By Mark Sappenfield  | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the September 26, 2008 edition

New Delhi –  Five arrests made over the past two weeks in connection with the Sept. 13 bomb blasts here are forcing the country with the world’s second largest Muslim population to acknowledge that it cannot blame every bomb attack solely on Pakistan. India is seeing a rise in home-grown terrorism.

The portrait of an Indian terrorist has long been a caricature: poor Indian Muslims indoctrinated in radical seminaries and funded by Pakistan, India’s neighbor and longtime enemy. But two of the suspects arrested Wednesday were software engineers, one ran a hotel.

It suggests that Indian terrorism is not motivated by dire poverty alone, but also by the perception of systemic prejudice against Muslims here. This is a bitterly controversial idea in the Hindu-majority nation sensitive to claims of intolerance, but the arrests are creating a small window for India to consider it more deeply.

Pakistani and American troops exchange fire

 



By Eric Schmitt

Published: September 26, 2008



WASHINGTON: Pakistani and American ground troops exchanged fire along the border with Afghanistan on Thursday, a top American military official said, ratcheting up tensions as the United States increases its attacks against militants in Pakistan’s restive tribal areas.

The clash started after the Pakistanis fired shots or flares at two American helicopters that Pakistan says had crossed its border.

The two American OH-58 Kiowa reconnaissance helicopters were not damaged and no casualties were reported.

But American and Pakistani officials agreed on little else about what happened.

Latin America

In Mexico City, bicycles rule the Sunday streets  

One day a week, the capital’s roads are cleared for two-wheelers, who hardly stand a chance amid the everyday vehicular chaos.

By Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 26, 2008    

MEXICO CITY — On wheels, we charge — a vast and exultant army of cycling, skating, spinning, scooting, sweating warriors in the thrill of conquest.

We rule this city — at least for a few hours.

Every Sunday morning, some of the biggest streets of car-flooded Mexico City are handed over to bicyclists, who roll in by the tens of thousands. Joining them are skateboarders, rollerbladers, toddlers on push toys and parents behind strollers in what has become a weekly festival on wheels.

The leftist government of Mayor Marcelo Ebrard launched the program last year, barring cars, trucks and buses from the regal Paseo de la Reforma and other streets around the historic downtown. Once a month, the route is expanded to form a 20-mile, engine-free circuit called the Cicloton.