Docudharma Times Monday December 8

 Prepare For The No Pain No Gain

Economic Recovery  

Pakistan’s Spies Aided Group Tied to Mumbai Siege

This article was reported by Eric Schmitt, Mark Mazzetti and Jane Perlez and written by Mr. Schmitt.

By ERIC SCHMITT, MARK MAZZETTI and JANE PERLEZ

Published: December 7, 2008

WASHINGTON – Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based militant group suspected of conducting the Mumbai attacks, has quietly gained strength in recent years with the help of Pakistan’s main spy service, assistance that has allowed the group to train and raise money while other militants have been under siege, American intelligence and counterterrorism officials say.

American officials say there is no hard evidence to link the spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, to the Mumbai attacks. But the ISI has shared intelligence with Lashkar and provided protection for it, the officials said, and investigators are focusing on one Lashkar leader they believe is a main liaison with the spy service and a mastermind of the attacks.

In Hard Times, Russia Moves In to Reclaim Private Industries



By CLIFFORD J. LEVY

Published: December 7, 2008

BEREZNIKI, Russia – In late October, one of Vladimir V. Putin’s top lieutenants abruptly summoned a billionaire mining oligarch to a private meeting. The official, Igor I. Sechin, had taken a sudden interest in a two-year-old accident at the oligarch’s highly lucrative mining operations here in Russia’s industrial heartland.

Mr. Sechin, who is a leader of a shadowy Kremlin faction tied to the state security services, said he was ordering a new inquiry into the mishap, according to minutes of the meeting. With a deputy interior minister who investigates financial crime at his side, Mr. Sechin threatened crippling fines against the company, Uralkali.

USA

New Auto Rescue Plan Focuses on Oversight

Some Lawmakers Want To Replace GM Chief

By Lori Montgomery

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, December 8, 2008; Page A01

Congressional Democrats are drafting legislation that would give the teetering Detroit automakers at least $15 billion in emergency loans early next week and grant the federal government broad authority to manage a massive restructuring of their operations.

The proposal, which could be put to a vote in Congress as soon as tomorrow, would establish a seven-member “auto board” of Cabinet officials and a chairman to be appointed by President Bush to oversee both the short-term loans and a long-term effort to restore the faltering industry to profitability. If the companies take the cash, they would be accountable to the government for nearly every move, and for every transaction of $25 million or more.

Paul Volcker is back, and he warns of tough times ahead

Volcker has been chosen by President-elect Barack Obama as a special economic advisor. His ‘no pain, no gain’ fiscal strategy worked in the ’80s, and there’s no sign he’s softened that philosophy.

By Ralph Vartabedian

December 8, 2008

A generation ago, Paul A. Volcker was a household name, the Federal Reserve chief who waged a hard-nosed but successful battle against virulent inflation that clouded the nation’s economic future. He did it by engineering a horrific recession, clamping on the financial brakes and sending the economy into a tailspin in 1981.

Nobody knew whether his strategy would work. It certainly caused widespread pain. But by 1986, double-digit inflation was gone and price increases had dropped to about 2% annually, setting the stage for the next two decades of economic stability.

Now Volcker is back, tapped by Barack Obama as a special economic advisor. And if the president-elect follows his advice on the current economic crisis, there could be pain again and no doubt many protests — but also the possibility of long-term benefits.

Asia

Taliban destroy 100 trucks in biggest raid on Nato supplies bound for Afghanistan

• Islamist leader warns of increase in armed attacks

• $10bn given to Pakistan to fight war on terror ‘wasted’

Saeed Shah in Islamabad, Richard Norton-Taylor and Simon Tisdall

The Guardian, Monday December 8 2008

Gunmen mounted the biggest attack yet on Nato supplies going to Afghanistan yesterday, torching more than 100 trucks carrying equipment at a depot in north-west Pakistan, the main route for supplies to troops in land-locked Afghanistan.

Security guards at two depots in Peshawar were outnumbered by more than 200 militants at around 3am. About 70 Humvees, which were loaded on some of the trucks, were destroyed. Most of the vehicles were reduced to charred hulks of metal. “They fired rockets, hurled hand grenades and then set ablaze 96 trucks,” said a senior police officer in Peshawar, Azeem Khan.

The attack came as Taliban chief Mullah Mohammed Omar urged western forces to leave Afghanistan before thousands of their troops were killed in the Islamist group’s renewed insurgency.

Tiger, tiger, fighting back

A census that revealed a shocking drop in numbers could be the big cat’s salvation as an effective rescue plan is developed in India

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor

Monday, 8 December 2008

There are signs of hope that the world’s rapidly diminishing population of wild tigers may at last be able to make a comeback. Stephen Mills, a writer and film-maker who has spent more than 20 years watching the biggest of the big cats in the wild, believes initiatives by the Indian government, and growing awareness by local people in tiger areas of the need to conserve the animals, offer new grounds for optimism in what has been a remorseless decline over the past 40 years.

There may now be as few as 4,000 tigers left in the wild from a world population estimated at 100,000 a century ago. Destruction of their forest habitat, clashes with local communities, and ceaseless hunting – not least for tiger bones to be used in traditional Asian medicine – have been the main drivers of a decline which seemed to slope towards extinction.

Europe

Cracks appear in Brandenburg Gate despite €4m restoration



Kate Connolly in Berlin

The Guardian, Monday December 8 2008

It is to Berlin what the Arc de Triomphe is to Paris or Trafalgar Square is to London. So news that growing cracks have been observed in the pillars of the Brandenburg Gate has caused alarm in the German capital.

The classical columns, which are synonymous with the ecstatic scenes of reunion after the Berlin wall was dismantled in 1989, are thought to have cracked under the strain of nearby construction work and because of shoddy restoration work carried out on it six years ago.

The cracks, which are up to 30cm (12in) deep, are being opened even wider so that they can be sealed properly from within.

City heritage experts said the cracks should have been unthinkable following the lengthy €4m (£3.45m) sandblasting and restoration project, which was financed through sponsorship and advertising.

Greeks riot after teenage boy is shot dead by police



 By Elena Becatoros in Athens

Monday, 8 December 2008

Hundreds of youths angered by the fatal police shooting of a teenager have rampaged through Greece’s two largest cities for a second day in some of the worst rioting the country has seen in years.

Gangs smashed stores, torched cars and erected burning barricades yesterday in the streets of Athens and Thessaloniki. Riot police clashed with groups of mostly self-styled anarchists throwing Molotov cocktails, rocks and bottles. Clouds of tear gas hung in the air, sending passers-by scurrying for cover.

Rioting in several cities, including Hania in Crete and cities in northern Greece, began within hours of the death Saturday night of a 15-year-old shot by police in Exarchia. The downtown Athens district of bars, music clubs and restaurants is seen as the anarchists’ home base.

Africa

Chikaunga water Elephant Pump transforms lives



From The Times

December 8, 2008

Rosemary Bennett in Chikaunga

Between sunrise and sunset, the new pump in the village of Chikaunga is in constant use. Dozens of women and girls queue patiently under the shade, laughing and chatting until it is their turn to hop on to the platform of the Elephant Pump, turn the handles and fill up their empty containers.

The new pump serves five villages and more than 1,000 people who between them need about 10,000 litres a day to survive in this searing heat in the Salima district of Malawi. Installed just two months ago by Pump Aid, one of The Times’s charities for this year’s appeal, it is already having an enormous impact on life in this impoverished but hopeful village.

The old open well which the Elephant Pump replaced was dug by British colonials in 1937. It was regularly contaminated by dirt and full of dead frogs in the rainy season. Earlier this year a dog fell in and drowned, but the villagers had to keep on using the supply because there is no other.

Albinos hunted for body parts in Africa>

 White-skinned albinos are being killed by their own people in Tanzania, who believe their body parts will add potency to black magic rituals.

08 Dec 2008

Elizabeth Hussein, 13, was attacked by men with machetes and Ezekiel John, 47, had his arms and legs cut off after being shot. Their deaths bring the toll to 35 murders in just more than a year, the Independent reports.

There is similar violence against albinos throughout east and central Africa.

The killings are orchestrated by witch doctors who claim they can make people rich using limbs and blood from their white-skinned neighbours.

In some parts of the country, albino children go to school with bodyguards and the graves of albinos are piled with rocks to deter grave robbers, the paper said.

Many albinos have fled the towns and cities to the remote island of Ukerewe where they can live in relative safety.

The island is believed to have the highest concentration of albinos, or zeru, in the world.

Middle East

University brings American-style learning to Iraq

At the year-old American University of Iraq-Sulaimani, students are encouraged to think independently.

By Jane Arraf | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the December 8, 2008 edition

SULAIMANIYAH, IRAQ – In a makeshift university classroom in northern Iraq, from the back of the class, Kosar Osman voices what would be a radical goal in the Middle East – a meritocracy.

“Right now, if you don’t have a relative somewhere, you won’t get hired,” says the student at the American University of Iraq-Sulaimani (AUIS). “When we graduate, we’re going to have a lot of talent and … qualifications…. [Iraq needs] people who really serve their country, not just themselves and their families.”

In a region of authoritarian teachers and governments, the one-year-old AUIS is trying to reinvent university education and produce independent-minded graduates who can help rebuild Iraq in the process.

“The whole of their high school training has been people standing up in front of the room lecturing to them,” says provost Joshua Mitchell, who is on leave from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. “They think they’re supposed to sit there quietly and listen. We’re teaching them in this first year … substance in their course work, but we’re also teaching them how to be a new kind of student.”

Most of the students have never written an essay or worked with computers. But they seem to be absorbing the lessons.

Millions of Muslims completing Mecca pilgrimage

The faithful from around the world are making the trip to Saudi Arabia in the annual hajj, which is one of the five ‘pillars’ of Islam.

By Steve Padilla

December 8, 2008

More than 2 million Muslims from across the globe descended on Saudi Arabia over the weekend to perform the ancient rituals of the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca that is considered the spiritual pinnacle of a devout Muslim’s life.

As Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Hajj notes in a website on the event, the word “hajj” merely means “to set out for a place.” But the hajj itself, based on events in the life of the Prophet Abraham, symbolizes essential concepts of Islam, such as submission to God and unity.

The hajj is one of the five “pillars,” or basic requirements, of Islam. The others:

* Belief in one God and in Muhammad as his final messenger;

* Prayer five times a day;

* Zakat, a form of tithing to the needy;

* Fasting during the holy month of Ramadan, if physically able.

This month the Ministry of Hajj announced that it had granted 175,000 visas for foreigners — among them the Chechen and Sudanese presidents — to enter the kingdom for the pilgrimage. Thousands of Saudis also will attend the rituals, which began Saturday.