Docudharma Times Thursday September 18

Sometimes I Think Being A Republican

Is A License For Stupidity

I Thought They Liked Welfare For Corporations?  

Stocks Slump as Investors Run to Safety



  By VIKAS BAJAJ

Published: September 17, 2008  

The financial crisis entered a potentially dangerous new phase on Wednesday when many credit markets stopped working normally as investors around the world frantically moved their money into the safest investments, like Treasury bills.

As a result, the cost of borrowing soared for many companies, while the stocks of Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley that only a couple of weeks ago were considered relatively strong came under assault by waves of selling. Investors were so worried that they snapped up three-month Treasury bills with virtually no yield and they pushed gold to its biggest one-day gain in nearly 10 years. Stocks fell by nearly 5 percent in New York.

Japan releases £13bn to stem Asia market panic

 

From Times Online

September 18, 2008

Leo Lewis Asia business correspondent

Japan’s central bank today poured a further 2.5 trillion yen (£13 billion) into the financial market in an effort to calm panicked investors who continue to dump stock despite America’s $85 billion bailout of AIG, the insurance giant.

Today’s injection – the Bank of Japan’s sixth in one week – takes to its total fillip to 8 trillion yen since Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch was rescued by Bank of America and the US Fed agreed a two-year loan to AIG.

However, Asia markets continued to plunge overnight. Japan’s Nikkei closed 1.8 per cent down while in Hong Kong, the Hang Seng plummeted, losing 1,301.5 points to close 7.3 per cent down. In Australia and Singapore stocks plunged by over 3 per cent in the morning session.

USA

7 U.S. soldiers die in helicopter crash in Iraq

The Chinook was a part of an aerial convoy flying to military base at Balad  

Associated Press    

BAGHDAD – An American Chinook helicopter crashed early Thursday as it was landing in southern Iraq, killing seven U.S. soldiers, the military said.

The CH-47 Chinook was landing after midnight about 60 miles west of Basra at the time of the crash, the U.S. statement said.

A spokesman for the Multi-National Force-Iraq confirmed that the helicopter had crashed. He said five had died, and the bodies of two soldiers who had originally been missing were found.

High Turnout, New Procedures May Mean an Election Day Mess

?

  By Mary Pat Flaherty

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, September 18, 2008; Page A01

Faced with a surge in voter registrations leading up to Nov. 4, election officials across the country are bracing for long lines, equipment failures and confusion over polling procedures that could cost thousands the chance to cast a ballot.

The crush of voters will strain a system already in the midst of transformation, with jurisdictions introducing new machines and rules to avoid the catastrophe of the deadlocked 2000 election and the lingering controversy over the 2004 outcome. Even within the past few months, cities and counties have revamped their processes: Nine million voters, including many in the battleground states of Ohio, Florida and Colorado, will use equipment that has changed since March.

Middle East

Israel: Livni prepares to form coalition after narrow victory in leadership vote



Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem

guardian.co.uk,

Thursday September 18 2008 07:35 BST

Tzipi Livni, Israel’s foreign minister, won a narrow election victory today to become the leader of the ruling Kadima party, putting her on track to become the country’s first female prime minister in more than 30 years.

Final results released by Kadima early today put Livni on 43.1%, only just ahead of her closest rival, Shaul Mofaz, the hawkish transport minister and former army chief, who was on 42%. Exit polls had put Livni ahead by 10 points, but they appeared to have been wide of the mark. In the end her margin of victory was just 431 votes.

Livni, a former Mossad agent and lawyer, now has six weeks to put together a coalition government. If she succeeds she will become Israel’s first female prime minister since Golda Meir resigned in 1974. If she fails, general elections will be held within three months.

To succeed Olmert, Israel’s Mofaz opts for macho politics

But the ruling Kadima Party, which votes on a new leader Wednesday, may not buy into the former army chief’s security policy.

  By Joshua Mitnick  | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor  

Mevaseret Zion, Israel –  Shaul Mofaz borrowed a paratrooper battle motto for his Kadima primary campaign to succeed Ehud Olmert as party leader and possibly prime minister: “After me!” The slogan is apt for a famed commando officer who kept his cool when trapped behind Syrian lines during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

As voters go to the polls Wednesday, Mr. Mofaz is hoping that his hawkish reputation and experience as army chief and defense minister responsible for quashing the Palestinian uprising will appeal to voters. He hopes to garner support from Israelis jittery about leaving threats from Iran and Gaza to untested politicians.

Currently, his rival, Foreign Minister Tzippi Livni, has a double-digit lead in the polls. If Mofaz is able to overcome that, his supporters and critics expect him to align the centrist Kadima with the right-wing security hard-liners of the opposition Likud Party.

Europe

Riot police sent in to contain Parisian gang war

· Man killed as knife and gun attacks escalate

· Locals complain of being pushed into ghettoes

Angelique Chrisafis in Paris

The Guardian,

Thursday September 18 2008

French police are struggling to contain a gang war in north-eastern Paris that has left one dead and several injured, as locals complain that they are being fenced into high-rise ghettoes to make way for the middle-class.

The 19th arrondissement in northern Paris was supposed to be celebrating its renaissance this autumn with the old state funeral parlour transformed into a major new arts quarter opening next month.

But north of the canal, a war between rival gangs on high-rise estates has escalated, with riot police moving in to control it. For 15 years, local rivalries between the Curial and Riquet estates have seen vicious knife-fights and score-settling, but now more youths are turning to “le gun”.

‘Big bang machine’ is back on collision course after its glitches are fixed  



From The Times

September 18, 2008  

Mark Henderson, Science Editor

The Large Hadron Collider is ready to start smashing its first particles together early next week, after glitches with the £3.6 billion “big bang machine” were fixed by engineers.

Although scientists had hoped that the successful creation of the particle accelerator’s first beams last Wednesday would clear the way for trial collisions this week, the timetable has had to be delayed because of power failures that affected its cooling system.

The problems were resolved finally yesterday and the team was planning to resume circulating beams of protons around the 17-mile (27km) ring last night.

Asia

  Afghanistan’s forgotten frontline

 So often overshadowed by Nato losses, the Afghan National Army is also suffering casualties says Terri Judd.

 By Terri Judd in Garmsir, Helmand.

Thursday, 18 September 2008

Five weeks ago Private Noorulah gave a string of prayer beads to his commanding officer as a token of friendship and respect.

A few days later he was standing sentry at a patrol base when a 14-year-old suicide bomber approached. The 25-year-old Warrior – as the Afghans call their lowest rank – shot the teenager but not before another boy, believed to be just nine, remotely detonated the explosives killing Noorulah and a fellow soldier.

“He worked in my office for me. He was a very good man. He saved a lot of lives that day,” said Lieutenant Colonel Abdulhai Neshat.

Six more arrested in China baby milk scandal >

 

From Times Online

September 18, 2008

Jane Macartney in Beijing

As thousands of inspectors fanned out across China to check for tainted milk powder today , police arrested six more people for involvement in a scandal that has killed four and sickened more than 6,200 infants.

Six more people have been arrested in Hebei province, where the Sanlu Group that is at the heart of the milk powder contamination is based, bringing the total in custody to 18 by this morning (Thursday).

Police said six had allegedly sold the industrial chemical melamine, used in plastics and fertilisers, but mixed with milk at collecting stations to bamboozle tests for protein. The other 12 were milk suppliers accused of selling the contaminated milk.

Africa  

Zimbabwe: Latest test of Africa’s power-sharing model

Zimbabwe follows Kenya’s path. Will international donors be as supportive?

By Scott Baldauf  | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the September 18, 2008 edition

Johannesburg, South Africa – The power-sharing deal signed in Zimbabwe this week may seem nearly unworkable in a continent of one-party states and autocratic rulers. Within the week, talks to determine who will fill which cabinet ministry seat were broken off indefinitely, a sign that there is still much contention between the two sides. But Zimbabwe’s coalition partners have a model to follow in Kenya, where a similar power-sharing arrangement was hammered out earlier this year.

“Kenya showed how African partnership can work,” says Wafula Okumu, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in Tshwane (as Pretoria is now called), who has studied the Kenyan power-sharing government. “In Kenya, the continued presence and pressure of the international community was important. The international community, and particularly the African Union, invested heavily in Kenya to make sure that everything would work. They couldn’t let it fail.”

Ethiopia accused of hiding famine as millions starve

Army ‘is keeping food from rebel areas’

From The Times

September 18, 2008

Jonathan Rugman in Jijiga

Ethiopia has been accused of deliberately underestimating the scale of a deadly drought facing millions of its people, some of whom are being deprived of emergency food aid by the country’s military.

The humanitarian crisis, caused by three years of failed rains, currently affects about 4.6 million people, though the official number could jump to as high as 6.7 million this week.

United Nations agencies say that the real number at risk is above 8 million, an estimate disputed hotly by Addis Ababa, which is insisting on publishing a much lower figure.  

Latin America

Mexicans fear they are all targets now  

In the wake of the deadly explosions in the capital of Michoacan state, Mexicans are forced to confront a new kind of victim in the drug wars: anyone.

By Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 18, 2008    

MORELIA, MEXICO — Gloria Alvarez never got to shout “Viva Mexico!”

The 32-year-old homemaker, cradling her infant son, jostled with the rest of her family and thousands of other people who packed the center of this colonial-era city Monday night to celebrate Mexican Independence Day.

Then came the blasts. Alvarez’s husband and 7-year-old daughter were seriously injured. The 3-month-old baby, Uriel, somehow escaped unharmed, but Alvarez, gravely wounded, died later in a public hospital.

The devastated family was among many people in Mexico reeling Wednesday from what many considered an escalation in the vicious violence that has been racking the nation for months.

Twin grenade attacks on the dense, celebrating crowd, on a major holiday and in the Mexican president’s hometown, killed at least seven people, wounded scores and sowed panic among a population already unnerved.