Docudharma Times Thursday April 30

The First 100 Days Are

Important

Don’t Forget That There

Are More Than 3 Years Left

And They Are Just as Important    

Chrysler Bankruptcy Looms as Deal on Debt Falters



By ZACHERY KOUWE and MICHELINE MAYNARD

Published: April 29, 2009

DETROIT – Last-minute efforts by the Treasury Department to win over recalcitrant Chrysler debtholders failed Wednesday night, setting up a near-certain bankruptcy filing by the American automaker, according to people briefed on the talks.

Barring an agreement, which looked increasingly difficult, Chrysler was expected to seek Chapter 11 protection on Thursday, most likely in New York, these people said.

The automaker, which is in talks with the Italian automaker Fiat, would file for bankruptcy first. It subsequently would present an agreement with Fiat to the court for approval, possibly on Monday, these people said. They requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for the government.

New health threat system was slow to alert

Scores were dead before authorities were fully aware of swine flu outbreak

By David Brown

WASHINGTON – Despite huge efforts in the past six years to make the reporting of disease outbreaks fast and automatic, there were significant delays in bringing Mexico’s swine flu outbreak to the full attention of international authorities.

News of an outbreak of severe respiratory illness in Mexico burst into public consciousness last Friday, April 24.

That was 18 days after public health authorities there started looking into unusual cases of pneumonia in their country, eight days after Mexican authorities notified the World Health Organization of the growing outbreak and four days after the events came to the full attention of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

USA

Swine Flu Is Suspected in Region; WHO Warns of Likely Pandemic

6 Possible Cases Investigated in Md. as Global Alert Is Raised

By Rob Stein

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, April 30, 2009

The World Health Organization took the unprecedented step yesterday of warning that the world is probably on the verge of a pandemic, as new cases of swine flu mounted, the first death was reported in the United States and the dangerous virus appeared to arrive just outside the nation’s capital.

The Geneva-based agency raised the alert level for the second time in three days, elevating it to one notch below a full-scale pandemic, after concluding that the virus was causing sustained outbreaks in the United States and Mexico.

The heightened alert is intended to prompt every nation to activate an emergency response plan, to spur pharmaceutical companies to increase production of antiviral drugs and help speed development of a vaccine, and to prod bankers to help poor countries afford measures to fight the virus, officials said.

Obama injects message of hope into 100-day speech

He uses a prime-time news conference to lay out the range of serious problems facing his administration and the nation, calling for patience and asserting again that ‘America will see a better day.’

By Peter Nicholas and Christi Parsons

April 30, 2009

Reporting from Washington — A somber President Obama warned a recession-weary nation Wednesday that its resilience would be tested even more in the second hundred days of his presidency, as he grapples with a series of crises including two wars, a teetering economy and an outbreak of swine flu.

On the 100th day of his administration, Obama used a prime-time news conference to appeal for patience from Americans who have given him high approval ratings, laying out in unsparing detail the full scope of what the country faces.

The typical president, he said, “has two or three big problems. We’ve got seven or eight big problems. And so we’ve had to move very quickly.”

At times Obama sounded almost wistful as he suggested that some past presidents had only a war or a natural disaster to contend with.

Asia

A long, slow descent into hell

The decades of bitter fighting between the Sri Lankan army and Tamil rebels has left a beautiful country bereft and thousands caught in the crossfire. Novelist Romesh Gunesekera mourns his island’s fate

Romesh Gunesekera

The Guardian, Thursday 30 April 2009

Twenty six years ago, I was writing the earliest of the stories that would end up in my first book, in which a man called CK dreams about opening a guest house on the east coast of Sri Lanka. If one tries to pin his dream down on a map, I guess it would be just a few miles from the so-called “no-fire zone” today, a place where Tigers are said to be shooting Tamil hostages who do not want to be human shields, and the government of Sri Lanka is accused of bombing civilians; the strip of land where the BBC says the endgame of this long civil war is being played out, and from where 160,000 men, women and children have fled in the last couple of weeks. The heart-wrenching images of those refugees are superimposed for me on CK’s dream and an idyllic sepia photograph, in a family album, of the small town of Mullaitivu, where an uncle and aunt lived 60 years ago.

Between my first draft of CK’s story in the spring of 1983 and the second in the summer of that year, Sri Lanka went into freefall. Tension had been building up for some years in Sri Lankan politics.

South Korea’s wartime sex slaves: Hoping for closure at the end of their lives

 The ‘comfort women’ forced into slavery by Japanese soldiers have struggled for years to persuade the world to acknowledge their ordeal. They’re growing tired now, but not giving up.

By John M. Glionna

April 30, 2009

Reporting from Toechon, South Korea — Kang Il-chul rides in the back of a van packed with gossiping old women. The 82-year-old girlishly covers her mouth to whisper a secret.

“We argue a lot about the food,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “To tell you the truth, some of these old ladies are grouchy.”

There are eight of them, sharing a hillside home on the outskirts of Seoul, sparring over everything from territory to room temperature.

Some wear makeup and stylish hats; others are happy in robes and slippers. A few are bitter, their golden years tarnished by painful memories; others have sweet dispositions and enjoy visiting beauty salons or performing an occasional dance in the living room.

Middle East

Six years after Saddam Hussein, Nouri al-Maliki tightens his grip on Iraq

The Iraqi prime minister arrives in Britain today seeking UK investment. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reports on how a leader once seen as weak is now being compared to his infamous predecessor

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

The Guardian, Thursday 30 April 2009

Baghdad has always produced more than its fair share of surreal conversations, but few can match the one I had with three Iraqi intelligence officers in the garden of a newly opened restaurant a few weeks ago. The three were former members of Saddam’s notorious Mukhabarat. Now “reformed”, they worked for the newly established Iraqi National Intelligence Service (INSI), a highly independent security service which some in the Iraqi government accuse of being too close to the US.

After a few pleasantries, which included frisking my shirt for wire-tapping devices, we sat around a plastic table while the most senior officer told me that his men were actively monitoring intelligence and military activities inside the government of Nouri al-Maliki. The two other officers looked in opposite directions as their colleague spoke.

UK Iraq combat operations to end

British combat operations in Iraq will come to an end on Thursday lunchtime with a handover to American forces.

The BBC

The move, a month ahead of schedule, ends a six-year UK military presence.

A memorial service has taken place in Basra for the 179 British personnel who have died during the conflict, attended by Defence Secretary John Hutton.

The focus was a memorial wall featuring the names of the 234 UK and foreign troops who lost their lives while serving under British command in Iraq.

The official end of operations will come when the UK’s 20 Armoured Brigade hands over to an American brigade at 1215 BST.

British forces began their official pull-out last month when the UK’s commander in the south of the country, Maj Gen Andy Salmon, handed over to a US general.

Europe

Battle of the Berlusconis: Italy’s first couple at war over ‘harem’

The Italian leader’s wife has had enough of him using women as ‘political costume jewellery’. And she’s not afraid to say it

By Peter Popham

Thursday, 30 April 2009

Silvio Berlusconi and Veronica Lario’s second honeymoon is over. The rumour that, having already packed his cabinet with slender beauties, the Italian Prime Minister was grooming a new harem replete with showgirl, beauty queen, reality show starlet and singer to run in the European elections has elicited a ferocious response from his wife.

Taking the unusual step of directly emailing the Italian news agency Ansa, Mrs Berlusconi lambasted the Freedom People party’s plans for the June poll as “shameless rubbish” and “entertainment for the emperor”.

“What’s happening today behind a front of bodily curves and female beauty is grave”, she wrote, adding that female politicians should not be used like “pieces of costume jewellery” to attract votes.

Moscow police chief Vladimir Pronin sacked over killing spree

 From The Times

April 30, 2009

Tony Halpin in Moscow

Moscow’s top policeman has been sacked as shockwaves from a killing spree by a senior officer continue to ripple across the city.

President Medvedev dismissed Colonel-General Vladimir Pronin, who had been Moscow’s police chief since 2001, and dismissed the head and three deputies of the southern police district where Major Denis Yevsyukov had served. The presidential order cited the shooting spree at a supermarket on Monday, when Mr Yevsyukov killed three people and wounded six after an argument with his wife at his 32nd birthday party.

The tragedy seems to have strengthened public feeling that Moscow’s police force is out of control.

A Kremlin spokesman told Interfax news that Moscow’s police leadership was being held accountable for the incident.

Africa

 Egyptian Christians riot after swine flu cull

From Times Online

April 29, 2009

Philippe Naughton

Egyptian leaders ordered the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of pigs today to help protect against swine flu, prompting angry protests from the poor Christan farmers who feed their animals with a country’s food scraps. The decision was also criticised as a “real mistake” by a senior UN food expert.

The Arab world’s most populous nation has been been badly hit by the H5N1 bird flu virus in recent years and the move to cull up to 400,000 pigs – seen by Muslims as unclean animals – was designed to calm fears of an impending pandemic.

But it left Egypt’s large Coptic Christian minority up in arms, especially the slum-dwelling “Zebaleen” rubbish collectors who rely on the hogs for their livelihood. Scores of them blocked the streets and stoned the vehicles of Health Ministry workers as they arrived to carry out the government’s order at pig farms on the outskirts of Cario this afternoon.

Zimbabweans still groaning as aid remains elusive  

HARARE (Reuters)  

 By Cris Chinaka

A Zimbabwean government plan to rescue the shattered economy hasn’t made life any easier for many people who are losing patience with no Western aid in sight.

The credibility of the unity government between President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai depends largely on its ability to persuade Western donors and foreign investors to pour billions of dollars into the country.

That could take months, or years, because donors first want serious political and economic reforms before making any commitments. So the new leadership will come under mounting pressure to ease widespread hardships in the meantime.

The unity government has launched a short term recovery plan designed to raise industrial output and remove government controls over the economy. It also involves political reforms.

The plan has injected life into what was a promising African economy before what critics say were catastrophic Mugabe policies such as seizures of white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to inexperienced black farmers.

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