Docudharma Times Tuesday April 15

Got styrofoam boxes

for the ozone layer

Got a man of the people,

says keep hope alive

Got fuel to burn,

got roads to drive.

Tuesday’s Headlines: Retailing Chains Caught in a Wave of Bankruptcies: Delta, Northwest Agree to Merger: Zimbabwe braced for strike action: 19 children die in Uganda school fire: Berlusconi sweeps back to power as left concedes defeat in Italian elections: Stalin’s space monkeys: Iraqi troops free British journalist: Devising Survival at Factory in Iraq: Beijing bans construction projects to improve air quality during the Olympics: Tibetan monks resist ‘education’ campaign, say rights groups: Mexico opposition barricades Congress

Biofuel: the burning question

The production of biofuel is devastating huge swathes of the world’s environment. So why on earth is the Government forcing us to use more of it?

From today, all petrol and diesel sold on forecourts must contain at least 2.5 per cent biofuel. The Government insists its flagship environmental policy will make Britain’s 33 million vehicles greener. But a formidable coalition of campaigners is warning that, far from helping to reverse climate change, the UK’s biofuel revolution will speed up global warming and the loss of vital habitat worldwide.

Amid growing evidence that massive investment in biofuels by developed countries is helping to cause a food crisis for the world’s poor, the ecological cost of the push to produce billions of litres of petrol and diesel from plant sources will be highlighted today with protests across the country and growing political pressure to impose guarantees that the new technology reduces carbon emissions.

USA

Retailing Chains Caught in a Wave of Bankruptcies

The consumer spending slump and tightening credit markets are unleashing a widening wave of bankruptcies in American retailing, prompting thousands of store closings that are expected to remake suburban malls and downtown shopping districts across the country.

Since last fall, eight mostly midsize chains – as diverse as the furniture store Levitz and the electronics seller Sharper Image – have filed for bankruptcy protection as they staggered under mounting debt and declining sales.

But the troubles are quickly spreading to bigger national companies, like Linens ‘n Things, the bedding and furniture retailer with 500 stores in 47 states.

Delta, Northwest Agree to Merger

Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines last night announced a proposed merger that would create the world’s largest carrier and possibly spur an industry-wide round of restructuring that could vastly change air travel for millions of Americans.

The proposal, which was months in the making, would create a global airline with seven domestic hubs and international destinations stretching from Asia to South America to Europe. It comes as new international agreements have reduced barriers to competition, fuel prices have skyrocketed and the economy has weakened. In the past month, four discount airlines have sought bankruptcy protection.

The merger of the two carriers is far from a certainty, however. It would need to pass regulatory muster, and Northwest has yet to reach an agreement with its pilots, an employee group that could complicate integrating the airlines.

Africa

Zimbabwe braced for strike action

Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change has called a general strike, with tight security even though no demonstrations are planned.

It comes after the High Court ruled against an MDC demand for the release of presidential election results.

The opposition says Morgan Tsvangirai beat President Robert Mugabe in the vote and one of its poll agents has since been killed by Zanu-PF militia.

Police accuse the MDC of “agitating for violence” by calling for the strike.

Rather than street protests, opposition officials have called for a “mass stay-in until the results are released,” MDC Vice-President Thokhozani Khupe was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.

19 children die in Uganda school fire

A fire killed 19 schoolchildren and two adults at a primary school dormitory in Uganda last night, police said.

Most of the girls’ dormintory had burned down by the time firefighters arrived. The students were between the ages of seven and 10.

Authorities were investigating the blaze at Buddo primary school, seven miles (12km) from the capital, Kampala, said a police spokeswoman, Judith Nabakooba.

The doors to the dormitory had been locked from the outside and the electricity was off at the time, said a school worker, James Kiiza.

Europe

Berlusconi sweeps back to power as left concedes defeat in Italian elections

· Government likely to be most rightwing in 14 years

· Two-party divide seen as basis for political stability

Silvio Berlusconi was last night set to return to power at the head of Italy’s most rightwing government since he first came to office 14 years ago. Projections from the general election held yesterday and on Sunday gave his Freedom Folk movement a convincing victory over Walter Veltroni’s centre-left Democratic Party (DP).

After Veltroni conceded defeat, an uncharacteristically subdued Berlusconi said: “I feel a great responsibility, because the months and years ahead will be difficult ones.” They would, he said, be “decisive for the modernisation of the country”.

Stalin’s space monkeys

It looks like a neglected zoo. But the Institute of Experimental Pathology and Therapy has its own macabre chapter in the history of the Soviet Union. Shaun Walker reports from Sukhumi, Abkhazia

From the old railway station, now a hollow shell covered in weeds, a long concrete stairway, sheltered by sub-tropical foliage, winds from the centre of Sukhumi up to a collection of buildings, many pocked with bullet holes or crushed by bombs.

The first thing that registers is the putrid smell of animal faeces, then from inside one building comes a primeval squawking that sounds like a child being tortured. Cage after cage of distraught-looking monkeys come into view, nearly 300 in all, gnawing at mandarins and scampering around their enclosures.

Middle East

Iraqi troops free British journalist

A British journalist kidnapped in Basra was freed after two months in captivity when Iraqi security forces raided the building where he was being held.

Richard Butler, a photojournalist with CBS, was found hooded and with his hands tied behind his back by soldiers searching an area which previously had a heavy militia presence.

The soldiers came under fire, according to Iraqi officials, from four gunmen, one of whom they captured.

Mr Butler told Iraqi television: “The Iraqi army stormed the house and overcame my guards and then burst through the door.

Devising Survival at Factory in Iraq

BAGHDAD – Before April 2003, when the maze of crooked lanes that branch away from Rasheed Street downtown were crammed with hundreds of small leather goods factories, Hassan Attiya, now 43, designed fancy women’s shoes under his signature “Cowboy” label. And his workers manufactured and sold them by the thousands.

Now Mr. Attiya, humbled by security fears, the shuttering of Iraqi tanning factories that provided his raw materials and an avalanche of cheap imports from China and Syria since the invasion, hangs on in a crumbling former dentist’s office with a handful of workers.

Asia

Beijing bans construction projects to improve air quality during the Olympics

· £8.6bn being spent to tackle smog, say officials

· Factory closures also part of pollution-cutting plan

China yesterday unveiled ambitious plans to improve its capital’s heavily polluted air in time for the Olympics, including halting construction and heavy industry.

Beijing’s Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau laid out a range of tough measures to cut back pollution, such as closing numerous petrol stations and even banning spray-painting.

The bureau’s deputy director, Du Shaozhong, warned that even more “strident” measures would be taken if the weather was unfavourable by the time the games begin in August. The month is regarded as one of the worst in terms of pollution in the city because the air is humid and often stagnant.

Tibetan monks resist ‘education’ campaign, say rights groups

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A number of monks were detained at a key Buddhist monastery near the Tibetan capital Lhasa after they resisted efforts to force them to denounce the Dalai Lama, an overseas Tibet group said.

The report was the latest to indicate continued simmering tension in the Himalayan region after Chinese security forces moved in to quell widespread protests against Beijing’s rule last month.

Security forces were called in to the Drepung monastery at the weekend after the monks protested the arrival of a “patriotic education” team, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said in a notice posted on their website Monday.

Latin America

Mexico opposition barricades Congress

MEXICO CITY – Leftist lawmakers erected makeshift barricades Monday around the podium in Mexico’s lower house of Congress, where they have been camped out for more than five days to protest the president’s oil reform proposal.

They piled heavy chairs around the speaker’s platform, while their colleagues in the Senate began fasting to demand that Congress schedule a four-month national debate on the energy bill backed by President Felipe Calderon.

Seeking to end the takeover, senators with Calderon’s National Action Party, or PAN, and the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, offered later Monday to compromise and debate the issue for 50 days.