Docudharma Times Friday September 19

World Premiere: It’s A Road Picture

The Road To Nowhere Staring Sarah Palin As

The Governor Who Never Accepts Earmarks

Until She Does

Fed and Treasury Offer to Work With Congress on Bailout Plan



 By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

Published: September 18, 2008  

WASHINGTON – The head of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve began discussions on Thursday with Congressional leaders on what could become the biggest bailout in United States history.

While details remain to be worked out, the plan is likely to authorize the government to buy distressed mortgages at deep discounts from banks and other institutions. The proposal could result in the most direct commitment of taxpayer funds so far in the financial crisis that Fed and Treasury officials say is the worst they have ever seen.

For Georgians, a Much-Needed Break

 

By Tara Bahrampour

Washington Post Foreign Service

Friday, September 19, 2008; Page A14  

KVARIATI, Georgia — Kitty Arsenidze had beach plans in August, but then her country went to war. Russian troops occupied her town, Gori. A bomb hit her house. She spent her 50th birthday installing a new roof and windows. Only after the Russians left did she finally make it to the beach.

“We have so much stress after this bombing that I’m thinking that I have to make psychological healing,” she said, leaning on a green lawn chair by the Black Sea. “I feel better than in Gori.”

The people swimming, sunbathing, and zipping around on water scooters this week did not look as if they had just suffered a crushing military defeat.

USA

Sarah Palin said yes, thanks, to a road to nowhere in Alaska

 While seeking votes, she told Ketchikan residents she backed the ‘bridge to nowhere.’ As governor, she spent the money elsewhere and moved ahead with a $26-million road to the nonexistent bridge.

 By Erika Hayasaki, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 19, 2008  

GRAVINA ISLAND, ALASKA — The 3.2-mile-long partially paved “road to nowhere” meanders from a small international airport on Gravina Island, home to 50 people, ending in a cul-de-sac close to a beach.

Crews are working to finish it. But no one knows when anyone will need to drive it.

That’s because the $26-million road was designed to connect to the $398-million Gravina Island Bridge, more infamously known as the “bridge to nowhere.” Alaskan officials thought federal money would pay for the bridge, but Gov. Sarah Palin killed the project after it was ridiculed and Congress rescinded the money. Plans for the road moved forward anyway.

Some residents of Ketchikan — a city of 8,000 on a neighboring island where the bridge was to end — see the road as a symbol of wasteful spending that Palin could have curtailed. Some of them even accuse her of deception.

Official: Why weren’t managers charged in oil-sex scandal?

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By Marisa Taylor | McClatchy Newspapers    

WASHINGTON – The Interior Department’s watchdog criticized the Justice Department on Thursday for declining to prosecute the managers of an oil- and gas-royalty program that’s been tainted by allegations of illicit sex, drug use and taking favors worth thousands of dollars.

The Justice Department prosecuted two employees from the Minerals Management Service, but Inspector General Earl Devaney said he didn’t know why the department’s lawyers didn’t act on his recommendation to prosecute two high-ranking officials who’ve since retired.

“I would have liked a more aggressive approach, and I would have liked to have seen some other people prosecuted here,” he said during a hearing before the House of Representatives’ Natural Resources Committee.  

Europe

EU keeps watch as authorities drag their feet over trial of alleged gangsters

Country may lose millions in funding if it fails to deal with crime and corruption

Helen Pidd in Sofia

The Guardian,

Friday September 19 2008

When two of Bulgaria’s most notorious alleged gangsters were arrested in October 2005 and charged with plotting three contract killings and running a money-laundering operation, it was exactly the kind of publicity the Balkan state needed as it nervously waited to be handed the keys to the European Union.

The arrests of Krasimir Marinov, now 44, and his younger brother Nikolay, 36, both former child wrestlers, were the perfect way for Bulgaria to show how seriously it was tackling the organised crime and corruption that had been the main barrier to EU membership.

T-shirt vendors jailed for breaking anti-terror laws

 

   By Jan M Olsen in Copenhagen

Friday, 19 September 2008  

Six people who sold T-shirts to raise money for Colombian rebels and Palestinian militants have been convicted of breaking Denmark’s anti-terror laws.

The defendants were associated with a Danish company that sold the T-shirts carrying the acronyms Farc (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), and PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine). Both groups are considered terrorist organisations by the EU and the US.

Denmark’s Eastern High Court sentenced five employees of the company, Fighters + Lovers, to between 60 days and six months in jail after they admitted producing, selling and distributing the T-shirts. A sixth defendant was jailed for 60 days for allowing the company to use his server for its website.

Asia

Toxic rice scandal prompts food and drink alarm in Japan



Justin McCurry in Tokyo

The Guardian,

Friday September 19 2008

Thousands of Japanese bureaucrats are under investigation for possible involvement in a toxic rice scandal that prompted a mass recall of alcoholic drinks and has shaken the country’s reputation for food safety.

The probe by the agriculture ministry comes after a rice miller was found to have sold contaminated rice for human consumption to boost profits.

Mikasa Foods in Osaka admitted earlier this month that it had sold on about 400 tonnes of inedible rice – intended for use as fertilizer, animal feed and glue – as more expensive grain to hundreds of companies across Japan.

The rice was later used to make sake and shochu, a distilled spirit, and rice crackers. One of Mikasa Food’s clients later supplied several hundred kilograms of the toxic rice to more than 100 hospitals, homes for the elderly and at least one school.

China milk contamination scandal spreads to fresh supplies



From Times Online

September 19, 2008

Jane Macartney in Beijing

The tainted milk powder scandal that has claimed the lives of four babies in China has spread to the dairy industry.

Investigators have found contamination in liquid milk from three of the country’s top dairy companies.

Sales of domestic milk products have slumped, with consumers turning to imports or to alternatives such as rice water, in the latest shock to the “Made in China” mark already reeling from a series of scams.

The World Health Organisation has demanded Beijing find out why it took months to report that companies had sold milk powder tainted with the industrial chemical melamine to parents to feed to their babies. The organisation’s China representative Hans Troedsson said the government “must find out if this was deliberate or due to ignorance”.

Africa

Mugabe: Signing coalition deal was humiliating  

 

 By Basildon Peta, Southern Africa Correspondent

Friday, 19 September 2008  

Zimbabwe’s fragile power- sharing government was already foundering yesterday, after President Robert Mugabe refused to agree on the make-up of the cabinet and openly referred to working with the former opposition as a “humiliation” for his party.

Fears that the 84-year-old autocrat would sabotage the new set-up by refusing to yield authority to his supposed partners, were quickly vindicated yesterday as the deadline forappointing 31 ministers came and went with no agreement.

South Africa’s ANC to Decide Whether to Oust Mbeki >

 

By Mike Cohen

Sept. 19 (Bloomberg)

South Africa’s ruling party will decide over the next three days whether to topple President Thabo Mbeki, following allegations that he tried to pressure prosecutors to charge ruling party leader Jacob Zuma with graft.

Mbeki’s fate is in the hands of the African National Congress’ 86-member National Executive Committee that starts meeting today in Johannesburg, according to ANC Secretary-General Gwede Mantashe. If the party decides to oust him, it can use its majority in Parliament to dismiss him as president for wrongdoing or pass a vote of no confidence in his government.

“This is the most serious challenge Mbeki has ever faced,” said Susan Booysen, a politics lecturer at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. “It’s a serious crisis of government.”

Middle East  

Can Livni clean up Israeli politics?

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni won the Kadima Party primary to replace Ehud Olmert who has been beset by corruption charges.

By Ilene R. Prusher  | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the September 19, 2008 edition

Jerusalem –  Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni set her sights Thursday on taking the office of prime minister and got started working on building a new coalition government.

But an official count released after Wednesday’s Kadima Party primary showed her besting her closest competitor, Shaul Mofaz, by just one percentage point, leaving her with less decisive mandate to lead Israel’s ruling party. Nonetheless, Ms. Livni strode into the political limelight as if that made no difference.

Livni said her party’s choice showed that today “there is a different kind of politics. For a very long time I was told there was no such thing, and today Kadima proved that there is.”

The language of political change – which has drawn comparisons to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s campaign – has permeated Livni’s lingo as she has moves from behind-the-scenes power broker to front-page policymaker.

Arabs denounce cleric’s fatwa on ‘immoral’ TV  



By DONNA ABU-NASR, Associated Press Writer  

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Arabs across the ideological spectrum, from secular-minded liberals to Muslim hard-liners, are denouncing a top Saudi cleric’s edict that it was permissible to kill the owners of satellite TV stations that show “immoral” content.

Many expressed worry the recent comments by Sheik Saleh al-Lihedan – chief of the kingdom’s highest tribunal, the Supreme Judiciary Council – would fuel terrorism, encouraging attacks on station employees and owners.

The edict, or fatwa, has also focused the spotlight on Saudi Arabia’s legal system because of al-Lihedan’s senior position in the judiciary. The system is run by Islamic cleric-judges, many of them hard-liners, and has increasingly been criticized by some Saudis because of the wide discretion judges have in punishing criminals and the perception that many judges are out of touch with the realities of the world.

Latin America

Mexican prison riot toll rises  

At least 21 inmates have been killed and dozens injured in two uprisings in four days at a Tijuana prison. Authorities initially reported no fatalities.

 By Richard Marosi, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 19, 2008  

TIJUANA — As the death toll mounted after two separate riots at a prison here, Baja California state authorities came under fierce criticism Thursday for allegedly brutal tactics used by police on inmates and the treatment of inmates’ relatives who had gathered outside the prison.

At least 21 inmates died and dozens were injured in uprisings Sunday and Wednesday at La Mesa State Penitentiary, most after state and federal police officers stormed the prison firing heavy weapons, said police officials and witnesses.

Human rights groups and families of inmates expect the death toll to climb further, saying authorities had failed to give a full accounting of casualties. Many asked why police used live rounds instead of rubber bullets or other nonlethal weapons against inmates armed with rocks.