Docudharma Times Monday September 8

Where In The World

Is Kim Jong-il?

A Sigh of Relief, but Hard Questions Remain  



  By VIKAS BAJAJ , KEITH BRADSHER and  DAVID JOLLY

Published: September 8, 2008  

Investors around the world breathed a sigh of relief Monday after the U.S. government took over and backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, assuring a continued flow of credit through America’s wounded mortgage system. Stocks rallied in Europe and Asia, after the U.S. Treasury’s announcement that it would transfer control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to conservatorship. Stocks in Tokyo closed 3.4 percent higher.

In Europe, the FTSE 100 index in London rose 3.7 percent at the opening while the CAC 40 in Paris registered a 4.3 percent gain and the DAX in Frankfurt 3.1 percent.

Dharavi, India’s largest slum, eyed by Mumbai developers

The rich of Mumbai want to turn the prime real estate into high-rises and parks. The poor but industrious residents won’t go without a fight.

By Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 8, 2008  

MUMBAI, INDIA — Reincarnation is Kallu Khan’s stock in trade.

His workshop floor is a swamp of cardboard strips hacked from salvaged boxes. Laborers scoop them up, work them over and give them new life as smaller boxes, which Khan then sells to stationery and packing companies.

In another warehouse a few doors down, dozens of rubber soles cut from discarded shoes also await a second chance. Next to these, a mountain of plastic castoffs — toys, computer keyboards, car parts — is separated by squatting workers, to be melted down into tiny pellets before being reborn in some new form.

One man’s junk is another’s fortune in Dharavi, the largest slum in India. With the economy and consumption soaring, recycling is good business here, a source of jobs for thousands, from scavengers to sorters to manufacturers.

USA

Sarah Palin’s leadership style has admirers and critics

Some who have worked with the Alaska governor say her bold approach is lacking in follow-through, and that she punishes those who dare say ‘no.’

By Tom Hamburger and Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

September 8, 2008  

ANCHORAGE — Three years ago, when a Democratic state legislator tried to get bipartisan support for investigating charges of unethical conduct by a senior Republican official, only one member of the GOP answered the call: Sarah Palin.

Palin pursued the allegations — as well as ethics charges against another top GOP official — so vigorously that both had to leave office.

The public acclaim that followed helped propel her into the governor’s office a year later with promises of reform and a more open, accountable government that would stand up to entrenched interests, including the big oil companies.

Yet a strange thing happened on the ethics issue once Palin became governor: She appeared to lose interest in completing the task of legislating comprehensive reform, some who supported the cleanup say.

An e-mail to friends from Wasilla becomes Internet hit

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 Posted on Monday, September 8, 2008

 By S.J. Komarnitsky | Anchorage Daily News

WASILLA, Alaska – At 3 a.m. Thursday, Anne Kilkenny unglued herself from her computer and went to bed after spending hours answering an endless string of e-mails from strangers.

By 9:15 the next morning, she had 382 fresh ones in her inbox and her phone was steadily ringing with calls from news media from all around the world.

That’s how it’s been the past week for the Wasilla stay-at-home mom turned accidental celebrity. All because of a letter she wrote to friends and family about Sarah Palin.

Europe

Riot in Spanish resort town after immigrant dies in stabbing



Graham Keeley in Barcelona

The Guardian,

Monday September 8 2008

Immigrants went on the rampage yesterday after a Senegalese man was stabbed to death in a southern Spanish resort town popular with British expatriates.

Barricades were erected, at least two houses were set on fire and nine cars were damaged in Roquetas de Mar, a small town 15 miles east of Almería.

The violence flared in an area with a large immigrant population after the 28-year-old man died. Firefighters, trying to put out the blazes, described the scene as a “pitched battle” between immigrants and riot police.

Police said the violence, which started just before midnight on Saturday, was brought under control at 5am.

Peter Popham: Don’t try and predict the Italian police

Rome Notebook: The genial mass of police raised shields and billy clubs and marched towards the protesters

 Monday, 8 September 2008

 Italy has an unnerving ability to switch in a flash from being a kind and obliging country to a nasty place capable of ruthless violence. The latest to find this out was a group of activists protesting about the plan to build a of a new American military base in the city of Vicenza.

As part of their effort to monitor whatever is going on behind the walls of the planned base, the protesters decided to build an observation tower nearby so they could peek over. They told the local police in advance. One can imagine that in Britain they would have met with a firm thumbs down, but here the police gave every indication that they didn’t give two hoots about the tower. After some negotiations, said Stephanie Westbrook, an American activist, they were allowed to proceed.

Africa

Africa needs GM food, says top scientist



 By Steve Connor, Science Editor

Monday, 8 September 2008  

The Government’s former chief scientific adviser will criticise anti-GM advocates such as Prince Charles today in an outspoken attack on those who believe organic farming will be able to feed the growing population of the developing world.

Sir David King, who once said that global warming is a bigger threat than terrorism, will say in a speech tonight that advanced approaches to agriculture, such as GM crops, are the only way Africa will be able to feed itself.

Sir David’s views directly contradict the recent comments from the heir to the throne, who said last month that growing GM crops in the developing world represents the biggest environmental disaster of all time.

  Mbeki bids to save Zimbabwe talks

South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki is due in Harare to revive Zimbabwe’s deadlocked power-sharing talks.

The BBC  

Both Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai claim to have won this year’s elections.

Since South Africa-brokered crisis talks broke down last month, both sides have hardened their positions.

Mr Mugabe has said he is ready to form a government alone, while Mr Tsvangirai over the weekend said there should be new elections if a deal is not reached.

South African Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa said Mr Mbeki would meet both men, as well as Arthur Mutambara, the leader of a smaller opposition faction.

‘Surrender powers’

Before talks broke down the two rivals had agreed that Mr Tsvangirai would be named prime minister while Mr Mugabe remained president, but they could not agree on how to share powers.  

Middle East

U.S. begins hunting Iraq’s bombmakers, not just bombs

Fatalities from improvised explosive devices, the biggest killer of US troops in Iraq, declined 78 percent over the past year.  

By Tom A. Peter  | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the September 8, 2008 edition

Baghdad –  When members of the Air Force’s 447th Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit first arrived here in May, they were dealing with three to four roadside bombs a week. During prior tours, the group’s veterans say at least one a day was normal.

But last month, they went their first week without encountering a single roadside bomb.

For US soldiers in Iraq, this decline is perhaps the loudest herald of a quieter Iraq. It’s also representative of the US military’s greater strategic shift, focusing less on individual threats like improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and broadening their scope to the larger counterinsurgency mission.

“We’ve made a mistake focusing on IEDs as a technological threat,” says Frederick Kagan, a military expert at the American Enterprise Institute. To defeat roadside bombs in Iraq, the military had to broaden their focus beyond the devices and look at them as a piece of the entire conflict. “As we’ve been winning the counterinsurgency, the effectiveness of IEDs has been wearing off,” he says.

Cairo disaster leaves many blaming Mubarak  >

Many Egyptians complain the government is not doing enough to save slum-dwellers buried in a Saturday morning rock slide that killed at least 31 people.

By Liam Stack  | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the September 8, 2008 edition

CAIRO –  The day after massive boulders, some larger than houses, tumbled down a Cairo cliff and crushed much of a city slum, killing scores, frustration continued to grow over the government rescue effort that residents say is more focused on security than on saving lives.

By Sunday, more security officials than rescue workers converged on the Mansheyet Nasr slum where at least 31 people have died and hundreds remain buried. Since the collapse on Saturday morning, clashes between locals and police have been intermittent, with residents saying the government wasn’t moving fast enough.

Witnesses at the scene reported Sunday that many of the buried are still alive and that some are making cellphone calls to their relatives from underneath the rubble.

“They are doing nothing to help us, not the police, not state security – nobody has done anything,” says Gomaa el-Khodary, a young man standing in the shade of a one-room brick house.

The episode is one of many high-profile disasters or accidents in recent years that have eroded public faith in the government’s ability to handle emergencies and stoked the anger that everyday people feel toward the regime of Hosni Mubarak, who has been president since 1981.  

Asia

Democrats lose seats in Hong Kong polls



By DIKKY SINN  

HONG KONG (AP)

Hong Kong’s pro-democracy politicians lost several legislative seats according to final election results announced Monday, but held onto their veto power over major legislation as they push for greater political freedoms in the Chinese territory.

Democratic parties won 23 of 60 legislative seats in Sunday’s voting, down from their previous 26. Ordinary citizens directly elect 30 of the seats, while the rest are chosen by special interest groups that tend to side with China’s central government in Beijing. Fourteen of the interest group seats were uncontested.

The results came as a relief to the opposition, which had been expected to fare significantly worse than in the last legislative polls four years ago as concerns over wages, inflation and education eclipsed issues of democratic reform. The 2004 vote came amid widespread public outrage over proposed national security measures and the territory’s Beijing-backed leader at the time, which propelled more democrats into office.

This time, however, they faced a tougher challenge.

China’s Outsourcing Appeal Dimming

Fuel Prices Squeeze Profit Margins for U.S. Manufacturers

By Ariana Eunjung Cha

Washington Post Foreign Service

Monday, September 8, 2008; Page A13  

SHANGHAI — Harry Kazazian built his business on sleeping bags that are made in China and shipped across the ocean to the United States, but he realized recently that the math doesn’t work anymore.

With fuel prices at record highs, the cost of sending a standard 40-foot container of goods has gone from $3,000 in 2000 to about $8,000 today, squeezing profit.

So this summer Kazazian, chief executive of Exxel Outdoors, a Los Angeles-based maker of recreational equipment, did something radical: He moved the manufacturing back to Haleyville, Ala.

Latin America

El Sereno instrument-maker carves out a niche

Cesar Augusto Castro Gonzalez started learning folkloric music and making the instruments as a youth in his native Veracruz, Mexico.

By Kristopher Fortin, Special to The Times

September 8, 2008

Cesar Augusto Castro Gonzalez found his calling when he went looking for a buddy to play some soccer during recess.

Castro was attending middle school in the Mexican coastal city of Veracruz and was told he could find his friend, Omar, at a workshop that taught young people how to play traditional music known as el son jarocho. Castro found Omar and was immediately drawn to the sound of an eight-string rhythmic guitar, the jarana.

“The happiness of the jarana really just got me,” Castro said. He was 13 at the time. In two years, he was giving lessons. Today, at 31, he continues to teach in Los Angeles and make instruments at a tiny workshop tucked behind his home overlooking El Sereno.