Docudharma Times Monday September 7

Obama Readies Reform Specifics

n Health-Care Address, President Is Expected to Take Firmer Positions

By Ceci Connolly

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, September 7, 200

Looking to rescue his signature domestic policy initiative with a prime-time address to Congress on Wednesday, President Obama for the first time is poised to “draw some lines in the sand” over the size and shape of legislation to remake the nation’s health-care system, top advisers said Sunday.

Until now, Obama has resisted taking firm positions on specific elements of a broad health-care bill, instead expressing openness to many ideas. But the approach has left lawmakers divided over contentious elements, such as how to rein in costs. And with a growing chorus in favor of a slower, less ambitious approach, Obama is inching toward a proposal that would bear his name and carry the political risks of sponsorship.

Japan vows big climate change cut

Japan’s next leader has promised a big cut in greenhouse gas emissions, saying he will aim for a 25% reduction by 2020 compared to 1990 levels.

The BBC  Monday, 7 September 2009

Democratic Party leader Yukio Hatoyama is due to take over as prime minister on 16 September, after a resounding election victory in August.

His predecessor, Taro Aso, had pledged cuts of only 8%.

Mr Hatoyama said the plan was dependent on other nations agreeing targets at December’s climate talks in Copenhagen.

But Monday’s announcement has already sparked resistance from Japanese business groups, and parts of the automotive industry are expected to lobby against the targets.

USA

She’s at home in the circus sideshow

Performer Jackie Molen, who was born with only one tiny leg, is proud to walk on her hands onstage (alongside her flamethrower boyfriend). Some see her act as exploitation; she calls it tradition.

By DeeDee Correll

September 7, 2009

Reporting from Pueblo, Colo. – Jackie Molen isn’t the only star of “The Strangest Show on Earth.”

There’s also Sonny, a steer with a pair of stunted legs growing out of his back, and Daisy Mae, a red Holstein with two pink noses on her misshapen face.

But top billing at the Big Circus Sideshow goes to Molen, 24, who was born with only one tiny leg. The medical term is proximal femoral focal deficiency, but both she and the man who hired her have a different name for it.

Politics stymie National Labor Relations Board

Ahead of Labor Day, decisions remain stalled on dozens of disputes

Associated Press

WASHINGTON – Another Labor Day, another year of dysfunction in the agency that’s supposed to protect workers from unfair labor practices and referee clashes between unions and management.

The enduring stalemate at the National Labor Relations Board, the longest in its history, comes as evidence that elections don’t always settle political tugs of war. Ten months after the election of a president and Congress from the same party, no end is in sight to the deadlock.

Decisions are stalled on dozens of disputes that could set labor-management policies for decades to come.

Asia

Caught in the crossfire: the forgotten casualties of war in Afghanistan

Some Afghans say foreign forces are as dangerous as Taliban

Jon Boone in Lashkar Gah

The Guardian, Monday 7 September 2009

The stooped and withdrawn 18-year-old breathed painfully as he relived the day last month when shrapnel from a missile ripped through his lung and bowels.

It was 9am and he was out collecting fruit from his family’s trees in a village so small it is not included on most maps of Helmand province.

Although it was the day of the Afghan elections he, like everyone else in his neighbourhood, had no interest in voting in an area too insecure for polling stations to open. “I was just a few steps outside my front gate when about eight rockets landed,” he says, sitting in a hospital in the provincial capital of Helmand, bandages around his chest. “I was hit and ran into the house where women and children were yelling because a rocket had also landed on one of the rooms.”

Unicef worker James Elder expelled from Sri Lanka over media comments



From The Times

September 7, 2009

Rhys Blakely in Mumbai

The UN official who represents vulnerable children in the aftermath of Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war has been expelled for making adverse remarks, the Government said.

The move will heighten concerns that the refusal by President Rajapaksa to brook dissent is hindering the work of humanitarian groups, even though about 280,000 refugees from the former war zone being held in internment camps are in dire need of aid.

James Elder, the official spokesman for the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) in Sri Lanka was ordered to leave the country. His job involved speaking regularly to foreign media and describing the war and its effects on young people.

Europe

German conservatives turn to the cult of Matron Merkel

 Posters featuring the Chancellor’s face are at the heart of election campaign

By Tony Paterson in Berlin

Monday, 7 September 2009

There is no name, just the smiling, matronly face of Angela Merkel. With a confident stateswoman-like air she looks down benevolently from giant posters plastered across Berlin. Overnight they have turned Germany’s capital into a sort of Teutonic Pyongyang.

The slogans that accompany the flattering images of Germany’s first woman Chancellor are also reminiscent of an era when political leaders relied on a personality cult to strengthen their hold on power. “We have the power” insists one. “A new togetherness” promises another.

Apparently bereft of vote-winning policies and with less than three weeks to go before Germany’s September 27 general election, Mrs Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats have now shifted into top gear with a new campaign which focuses entirely on their best and possibly only asset; Mrs Merkel herself.

Challenge to Berlusconi as Church backs new centre-right party



From The Times

September 7, 2009

Richard Owen in Rome

Talks to form a new, Church-backed conservative party in Italy to challenge Silvio Berlusconi are under way as polls showed that support for the Prime Minister among Roman Catholic voters has faded.

It emerged yesterday that Catholic politicians are attempting to form a new centre-right party supported by the religious establishment to try to tap into the growing dissatisfaction among the church-going public with Mr Berlusconi’s behaviour, and a rift between him and the Vatican.

Rocco Buttiglione, president of the Christian Democratic UDC party, said a “new centrist political force” would be discussed early in October at a gathering of Catholic groups in Sicily aimed at reviving the fortunes of an alliance which dominated Italian politics for almost half a century after the Second World War.

Middle East

Iran defiant over nuclear ‘rights’

 Reuters

Monday, 7 September 2009

Iran will continue its disputed nuclear work and will never negotiate on its “obvious” rights, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said today, in comments that are likely to disappoint Western powers.

US President Barack Obama has given the Islamic Republic until later in September to take up a six powers’ offer of talks on trade benefits if it shelves nuclear enrichment, or face harsher sanctions.

“From our view point our nuclear issue is finished,” Ahmadinejad told a news conference.

“We will continue our work in the framework of global regulations and in close cooperation with the (U.N.) International Atomic Energy Agency. We will never negotiate on the Iranian nation’s obvious rights,” he added.

Israel to expand West Bank homes

Israel has officially approved the construction of nearly 400 new homes in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli defence ministry has announced.

The BBC  Monday, 7 September 2009

It says the decision to build 366 housing units has been authorised by Defence Minister Ehud Barak.

This is the first new government-approved construction project in the West Bank since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhyahu came to power in March.

It comes despite a US pressure to halt building at settlements.

Palestinians have ruled out resumption of peace talks with Israel until a complete freeze to the settlements.

The settlement issue is expected to be discussed when Mr Netanyahu’s aides meet US special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, later this week.

Latin America

Deadly force: Venezuela’s police have become a law unto themselves



Rory Carroll in Caracas

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 6 September 2009 20.15 BST

The question hung in the air, leaving an awkward silence. Martha Lia, a human rights advocate, looked at her class of 18 police officers and repeated the query. “You can’t just kill anyone,” she said. “Can you?”

The officers, heavy-set men wedged behind desks, said nothing. Some scribbled in notepads, some chewed gum and gazed out of the window.

It was not, after all, a straightforward question. The law says they cannot kill with impunity. But in the slums of Venezuela a separate set of rules applies, which all too often allows police officers to do just that.

This human rights training workshop is part of a new effort by the authorities to rein in trigger-happy officers who gun down an estimated 900 people every year, the vast majority poor young men.

Ignoring Asia A Blog