Docudharma Times Saturday June 7



I Will I Won’t

I Will I Won’t

What Was I Supposed To Do Today?

Saturday’s Headlines:   Holdouts at FEMA Trailer Park Test Limitations of Aid   German city bans waste from Italy     Negotiating a black hole   Leading clerics urge Muslims to learn about other faiths in drive to promote harmony   Israel cuts off Palestinian tax funds as relations hit new low     Vote Mugabe or starve – the latest ploy from a regime clinging on to power    Four accused of Tutsi genocide should be returned to Rwanda   After quake, Chinese open wallets, a few of them under pressure   Tighter Australia-China ties worry Asian neighbors    Guevara children denounce Che branding    Tijuana’s elite flee to San Diego County to escape kidnappings and violence in Mexico

Water drains from swollen Chinese ‘quake lake’

MSNBC News Services

TAOHUA MOUNTAIN, China – Water began flowing into a spillway Saturday from a swollen lake formed by a landslide in China’s devastating earthquake, easing the immediate threat of a flood that had led to the evacuation of more than 250,000 people.

Engineers were monitoring bridges and river banks downstream to see if they would hold under the rush of water, and work crews were trying to dig a secondary channel to improve the flow, China Central Television and the Xinhua News Agency reported.

USA

Record Oil Spike, High Jobless Rate Sink Stock Market

By Steven Mufson and Neil Irwin

Washington Post Staff Writers

Saturday, June 7, 2008; Page A01


A soaring jobless rate, an unprecedented jump in oil prices and a sliding dollar sent tremors through financial markets yesterday and cast fresh doubt on how soon the U.S. economy would be able to break out of a pattern of feeble growth and financial instability.

The nation’s unemployment rate shot skyward last month to 5.5 percent, the biggest leap in more than two decades, and crude oil prices rocketed up $10.75 a barrel, sending U.S. stock markets tumbling and shaking the economic and political landscape just as the general election season begins.

Holdouts at FEMA Trailer Park Test Limitations of Aid

By SHAILA DEWAN

Published: June 7, 2008


BAKER, La. – Theresa August spent the official closing day of the Renaissance Village trailer park singing, muttering to herself and dancing on a picnic table. Finally, wearing an infant’s flowered onesie on her head like a kerchief, she began to pack up.

Ms. August, 39, giggled on the steps of her overflowing trailer last Saturday as Sister Judith Brun asked when she might be able to leave the trailer park that, at its peak, housed almost 600 families displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Sunday? No response. Monday? A smile.

Europe

German city bans waste from Italy

By Mark Duff

BBC News, Milan


Workers in the German city of Hamburg have been told to stop processing Italian hospital waste after finding high levels of radioactivity in it.

A spokesman said the level of radioactivity was 80 times higher than normal and a costly special treatment would be needed to make it safe.

The waste in question came from the Italian region of Campania, which includes the city of Naples.

Waste problems there have been blamed on illegal dumping by the local mafia

Negotiating a black hole

Armenia and Azerbaijan are trying to end the stalemate in Nagorno-Karabakh, and the EU must help them


Alexandros Petersen

guardian.co.uk,

Saturday June 7 2008


The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan are meeting in St Petersburg to discuss the now two-decade-old conflict in the South Caucasus over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. After a bitter war during the breakup of the Soviet Union, Armenian forces occupied the mountainous region within Azerbaijan with the intention of protecting ethnic Armenians in the area.

The simmering stalemate pits Armenian Christians against Azerbaijani Muslims, with several lives lost on either side every year. But why should an obscure ethno-religious conflict concern us, and why is today’s meeting more significant than the numerous failed negotiation attempts of the past 20 years?

Middle East

Leading clerics urge Muslims to learn about other faiths in drive to promote harmony

Riazat Butt in Mecca

The Guardian,

Saturday June 7 2008  


An international appeal was launched yesterday urging Muslims around the world to learn about non-Muslims and their cultures for the sake of peaceful coexistence.

The call was made in a communique issued at the end of the International Islamic Conference for Dialogue, a three-day event that brought together more than 600 influential scholars and academics.

The plea, one of many in the 18-page document, aimed to encourage Muslims to reach out to people from other monotheistic faiths in order to diffuse conflict and restore tolerance. The appeal was careful to make the distinction between integration and assimilation: “Coexistence and cooperation do not mean concessions regarding the fundamental principles nor harmonising among religions.”



Israel cuts off Palestinian tax funds as relations hit new low


By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem

Saturday, 7 June 2008  


Israel has withheld part of its $75m (£38m) monthly tax revenue payment to the Palestinian Authority after a diplomatic offensive by the Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, designed to stop the continued expansion of Jewish settlements.

The move appeared to mark a new low in relations between Israel and a moderate Palestinian leadership increasingly disillusioned by the lack of progress in talks with Ehud Olmert’s government.

Israel has accused Mr Fayyad, who is widely respected by Western governments, of trying to “undermine” its relations with Europe

Africa

Vote Mugabe or starve – the latest ploy from a regime clinging on to power

 By Claire Soares

Saturday, 7 June 2008  


 The spectre of massive enforced starvation is looming over Zimbabwe as President Robert Mugabe’s regime unleashes a sinister new tactic to help him cling to power in the presidential run-off vote in less than three weeks’ time.

The US ambassador in Harare accused government officials yesterday of blackmailing opposition supporters, by denying them food unless they surrendered their national identity card and thus gave up their right to vote.

Four accused of Tutsi genocide should be returned to Rwanda

From The Times

June 7, 2008

Russell Jenkins


A district judge ruled yesterday that there was no legal reason to delay the extradition of four Rwandans to their own country to answer charges that they played leading roles in genocide.The men slipped into Britain under false identities after the backlash to the violence in which about 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis, were killed by rival Hutus over 100 days in 1994.

Vincent Bajinya, 46, accused of being a “category one” offender, changed his name to Dr Brown and became a British citizen, working for an East London charity helping refugees. He faces charges of organising the militia in Kigali, the Rwandan capital.

Asia

After quake, Chinese open wallets, a few of them under pressure

By Tim Johnson | McClatchy Newspapers

 BEIJING – Chinese citizens have opened their wallets to the victims of last month’s savage earthquake, but not all their generosity has been voluntary.

At some companies, bosses have put up lists of names of employees who’ve donated and how much they’ve given. Pressure is high to pony up.

The president of the Hasee computer company in Shenzhen, Wu Haijun, circulated a notice labeling the 1 percent of his employees who didn’t offer donations “coldblooded people” and said, “We hope they leave this company.”

For most Chinese, generosity has come naturally since the earthquake ravaged southern China’s Sichuan province May 12, killing more than 69,100 people. So far, China has tallied $6.3 billion in relief donations from at home and abroad. Tens of thousands of volunteers flocked to the quake zone to offer assistance, and millions more participated in an unprecedented outpouring.

Tighter Australia-China ties worry Asian neighbors

By Nick Squires  | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor  

Sydney, Australia –  It is a match made in heaven – China’s ravenous appetite for raw materials and the billions of dollars’ worth of minerals lurking beneath the rust-red dirt of Australia’s vast outback.

Australians are growing rich, in large part because of the Chinese economic juggernaut, which has sent property prices soaring, propelled the stock exchange to new heights, and plunged unemployment to its lowest level in more than 30 years.

But as economic and political ties between Canberra and Beijing strengthen on the back of the mining boom, alarm bells are ringing across other parts of Asia. India and Japan, in particular, feel that the Australians are paying far too much attention to China. Japan is acutely aware that last year it was eclipsed by China as Australia’s top trading partner. And while Australia had strong trading ties with China under former Prime Minister John Howard, ties have ratcheted up under Kevin Rudd, the only Western leader who speaks fluent Mandarin

Latin America

Guevara children denounce Che branding

· Daughter denounces exploitation of image

· Comments made during Cuba internet forum




Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent

The Guardian,

Saturday June 7 2008


The scraggly beard, the beret adorned with a star, the intense gaze: it is an instantly recognisable image which has been used to sell everything from booze to T-shirts to mugs to bikinis.

Che Guevara is an icon of the 20th century whose brand has turned into a worldwide marketing phenomenon. If you want to shift more products or give your corporate image a bit of edge, the Argentine revolutionary’s face and name are there to be used, like commercial gold dust.

The fact that Guevara was a communist guerrilla and Marxist ideologue is an irony of little interest to his capitalist exploiters. It has, however, become a problem for his children.

Tijuana’s elite flee to San Diego County to escape kidnappings and violence in Mexico

By Richard Marosi, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

June 7, 2008


The Plascencia family boasts the brand name for fine dining in Tijuana. Their showcase restaurant — Villa Saverios — is a foodie destination, its elegant dining room a gathering spot for the city’s political and social elite.

But the family’s success has also drawn other attention.

Three years ago, gunmen tried to kidnap chef Javier Plascencia’s younger brother. A year later they tried again but, in a case of mistaken identity, snatched the wrong man.

Enough close calls, the family decided.

Nearly 40 years after they opened their first Tijuana restaurant, the entire extended family — 18 people, including Javier Plascencia’s wife and four children — moved across the border to a suburb southeast of San Diego.

1 comment

    • RiaD on June 7, 2008 at 15:10

    you’re about halfway thru your weekend & i’m just starting mine!

    heading back out to the garden before the heat gets oppresive….its already 82 (its 9AM here)

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