Docudharma Times Sunday July 13

Its Tough Being The Decider

That’s Why

I Do Nothing

U.S., Iraq scale down negotiations over forces

Any long-term deal on extended presence will wait for next administration

By Karen DeYoung

U.S. and Iraqi negotiators have abandoned efforts to conclude a comprehensive agreement governing the long-term status of U.S troops in Iraq before the end of the Bush presidency, according to senior U.S. officials, effectively leaving talks over an extended U.S. military presence there to the next administration.

In place of the formal status-of-forces agreement negotiators had hoped to complete by July 31, the two governments are now working on a “bridge” document, more limited in both time and scope, that would allow basic U.S. military operations to continue beyond the expiration of a U.N. mandate at the end of the year.

President George W Bush lobbyist in ‘cash for access’ row



From The Sunday Times

July 13, 2008

Daniel Foggo

A lobbyist with close ties to the White House is offering access to key figures in George W Bush’s administration in return for six-figure donations to the private library being set up to commemorate Bush’s presidency.

Stephen Payne, who claims to have raised more than $1m for the president’s Republican party in recent years, said he would arrange meetings with Dick Cheney, the vice-president, Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, and other senior officials in return for a payment of $250,000 (£126,000) towards the library in Texas.

Payne, who has accompanied Bush and Cheney on several foreign trips, also said he would try to secure a meeting with the president himself.

USA

Editorial

Posturing and Abdication



Published: July 13, 2008

The Bush administration made clear on Friday that it will do virtually nothing to regulate the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. With no shame and no apology, it stuck a thumb in the eye of the Supreme Court, repudiated its own scientists and exposed the hollowness of Mr. Bush’s claims to have seen the light on climate change.

That is the import of an announcement by Stephen Johnson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, that the E.P.A. will continue to delay a decision on whether global warming threatens human health and welfare and requires regulations to address it. Mr. Johnson said his agency would seek further public comment on the matter, a process that will almost certainly stretch beyond the end of Mr. Bush’s term.

Obama, McCain agree on many once-divisive issues

Their similar stances on immigration, nuclear weapons, global warming and stem-cell research are evidence of a centrist shift in the political landscape.

By Janet Hook,, Peter Wallsten and Peter Nicholas, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

July 13, 2008  

WASHINGTON — For Amy Rick, the 2008 presidential election is a win-win situation. Both Barack Obama and John McCain support an expansion of stem-cell research that she has battled for in vain under President Bush.

“Both are very solid,” said Rick, president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research. “We are definitely looking forward with optimism to a change in policy in 2009.”

John Isaacs, an arms control advocate, feels the same way, because both candidates have made nuclear nonproliferation a priority. “We’ll have major progress on nuclear issues no matter who is elected,” said Isaacs, executive director of the Council for a Livable World.

Africa

Scramble to save deal on Mugabe sanctions

Brown to hold urgent talks with EU leaders in Paris today after UN vetoes

Gaby Hinsliff, Tracy McVeigh and Paul Harris

The Observer,

Sunday July 13, 2008

Gordon Brown will hold urgent talks with European leaders about Zimbabwe today after plans to impose UN sanctions on Robert Mugabe’s brutal regime collapsed in disarray.

Russia and China used their vetoes in the UN Security Council to block the measures – only three days after the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, signed a statement endorsing financial penalties against leading figures in Harare. Brown had told MPs on Thursday of a ‘major breakthrough’ at the G8 on Zimbabwe, with Russia now signed up to sanctions. William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, accused him yesterday of being ‘clearly over-confident’ about the deal, with questions now being asked about the government’s diplomatic skills.

Heir takes on ‘Flash’ in Kenya murder trial

The killing of a poacher has split the white elite – and reawakened colonial tensions

By Steve Bloomfield

Sunday, 13 July 2008

For more than two years the Rt€Hon Thomas Cholmondeley, son and sole heir to the fifth Baron Delamere, has been languishing in Nairobi’s Kamiti maximum-security prison, sharing a damp and squalid cell with the odd rat.

Accused of shooting and killing a poacher trespassing on his family’s 56,000-acre Rift Valley estate, he has been waiting for the moment when he could give his version of events. Last week he finally got his chance – and his evidence pointed the finger at another high-profile member of Kenya’s white elite, Carl Tundo, a rally driver known as “Flash”. A trial that threatens to reopen Kenya’s still-raw colonial wounds has seen members of the country’s white community turn on each other.

Asia

Olympic crackdown: China’s secret plot to tame Tibet

Beijing is putting on a show of moderation but internal party papers reveal a sinister crackdown

From The Sunday Times

July 13, 2008

Michael Sheridan in Hong Kong

Internal Communist party documents have revealed that China is planning a programme of harsh political repression in Tibet despite a public show of moderation to win over world opinion before the Olympic Games next month.

A campaign of “re-education” has been outlined in confidential speeches to meetings of Communist party members by Zhang Qingli, the hardline party secretary of Tibet.

Verbatim texts of the speeches have been kept out of the Chinese media but were printed in the April and May editions of the Xigang Tongxun (Tibet Communications) – a classified publication restricted to party officials. Translations were handed to The Sunday Times in Hong Kong.

N Korea rejects Seoul talks offer  

North Korea has rejected an offer by the South Korean president to resume talks that he suspended in February.

The BBC

The North’s state newspaper said President Lee Myung-bak was trying to avoid his personal responsibility for the countries’ strained relations.

Mr Lee was criticised in the South for offering to restart the talks so soon after a South Korean tourist was shot dead by a North Korean soldier.

Pyonyang has rejected calls from Seoul to be allowed to investigate the death.

It says the 53-year-old woman had strayed into a restricted military zone and had tried to run away when repeatedly ordered to stop by the soldier.

Middle East

New Saudi Arabia university will have a Western feel

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology will feature coed classes, a curriculum in English and other touches seen as dangerous liberalism by Islamic fundamentalists.

By Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

July 13, 2008

THUWAL, SAUDI ARABIA — Up the corniche, along a coast where boats carrying pilgrims bound for Mecca sailed for centuries, a thicket of cranes rises over whitewashed mosques along the Red Sea.

Steel flashes and blowtorches glow as 20,000 workers build a $10-billion university ordered up by a king who hopes Western ingenuity will revive the economy of this ultraconservative Muslim nation. When finished next year, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology will offer coed classes, Western professors, a curriculum in English and other touches loathed as dangerous liberalism by Islamic fundamentalists

Iran confirms missile tests



CNN

Iranian officials confirmed Saturday the nation test-fired missiles earlier in the week, although some experts have said their technological capability is not as great as Tehran claimed.

Two Iranian officials told CNN missiles were test-fired near the Persian Gulf on Wednesday. Another missile was launched Thursday, but that one did not go off on Wednesday, the officials said.

Some experts, however, have said the prowess of the missiles was not as great as Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed in Iranian media, which provided the first confirmation of the tests.

Europe

A new fashion catches on in Paris: Cheap bicycle rentals





By Steven Erlanger

Published: July 13, 2008



PARIS: They’re clunky, heavy and ugly, but they have become modish – and they are not this season’s platform shoes.

A year after the introduction of the sturdy gray bicycles known as Vélib’s, they are being used all over Paris. The bikes are cheap to rent because they are subsidized by advertising, and other major cities, including American ones, are exploring similar projects.

About 20,600 Vélib’ bicycles are in service here, with more than 1,450 self-service rental stations. The stations are only some 270 meters, or 300 yards, apart, and there are four times as many as there are subway stations, even in a city so well served by its metro system.

In the first year, the city says, there have been 27.5 million trips in this city of roughly 2.1 million people, many of them for daily commutes. On average, there are 120,000 trips a day. And on July 27, at the conclusion here of the Tour de France, 365 lucky Vélib’ riders will be chosen to ride along for a while and cross the finish line.

Lourdes fears priestly scandal will make profits dry up



Jason Burke in Lourdes

The Observer,

Sunday July 13, 2008

It is called the ‘Zambelli Affair’ and for the town of Lourdes, one of the world’s most famous sites of pilgrimage, it could not have come at a worse time. Last week it was disclosed that Fr Raymond Zambelli, the priest in charge of the sanctuaries of Lourdes, was being investigated by financial police after a computer highlighted suspicious deposits in his personal account, amounting to £360,000. Rumours of money-laundering were soon rife and, since then, the town has waited anxiously for the next dramatic twist.

Zambelli, at a hastily called press conference, denied all wrongdoing and explained that the cash was a donation from an ageing worshipper. But though he has been backed by the Bishop of Tarbes, Jacques Perrier, the damage has been done.