Docudharma Times Saturday October 31

Lapses Kept Scheme Alive, Madoff Told Investigators



By DIANA B. HENRIQUES

Published: October 30, 2009

Nobody was more surprised that the Securities and Exchange Commission did not discover Bernard L. Madoff’s enormous Ponzi scheme years ago than Mr. Madoff himself.

After all, it would have been pretty simple, he said in a transcript of a jailhouse interview that is part of a trove of official exhibits released on Friday by the S.E.C.’s inspector general, H. David Kotz.

In the interview, Mr. Madoff said that the young investigators who pestered him over incidentals like e-mail messages should have just checked basics like his account with Wall Street’s central clearinghouse and his dealings with the firms that were supposedly handling his trades.

In the Sumatran jungle, lessons on the river to school

Children in the Indonesian jungle navigate a mighty river with plenty to entice and scare modern-day Huck Finns: giant barges, invisible logs and deep currents. And crocodiles and poisonous snakes.

By John M. Glionna

October 31, 2009

Reporting from Teluk Meranti, Indonesia – They’re equatorial Huckleberry Finns, two wild-hearted boys guiding an old wooden fishing boat along a wide and mighty river.

Fandi and Alfan, brothers with one name each, live in a remote village in the heart of the Sumatran jungle, at once a protected and dangerous place to be a child.

Most mornings they rise before their rooster crows, bolting down a meager breakfast of coconut and chile-spiced vegetables over rice before venturing out on their journey: rowing to school aboard a hand-carved 15-foot sampan.

USA

In Congress, a call to review internal cybersecurity policies

Inadvertent disclosure of ethics committee inquiries sparks furor

By Ellen Nakashima and Carol D. Leonnig

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, October 31, 2009

House leaders on Friday called for an “immediate and comprehensive assessment” of congressional cybersecurity policies, a day after an embarrassing data breach that led to the disclosure of details of confidential ethics investigations.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said they had asked the chief administrative officer of the House to report back to them on the policies and procedures for handling sensitive data as a result of the breach. The inadvertent disclosure of a House ethics committee document, obtained by The Washington Post, summarized the status of investigations into lawmakers’ activities on subjects such as influence peddling and defense lobbying.

For stocks, a correction may come, but probably not a calamity

 

By Tom Petruno

Market Beat

October 31, 2009

 Share prices have surged since early March with only a few modest interruptions. You’ve either been long or you’ve been wrong.

But since mid-October, fresh doubts about the economy have helped to trip the U.S. market and many foreign equity markets.

Now, for the umpteenth time, investors hear warnings that stocks are vulnerable to a steep pullback.

Well, maybe. But there is just as good a chance that the seeming disconnect between the market and the real economy will continue.

Europe

History made as Chirac is told to stand trial

Former head of state accused of embezzling taxpayers’ money to put political allies in non-existent posts

By Genevieve Roberts in Paris

Saturday, 31 October 2009

Jacques Chirac, the former French president, was ordered to stand trial for alleged corruption while he was mayor of Paris. He is accused of embezzling taxpayers’ money to pay more than 20 political cronies for posts that turned out to be non-existent. Mr Chirac now becomes the first former head of state in French history to be put on trial.

In an unprecedented move, an investigating magistrate ruled he should answer charges in court of using the city payroll to fund “ghost workers” who were, in reality working to promote his right-wing political party or in some cases doing nothing at all.

Merkel: no chance of Kyoto-style agreement at Copenhagen

From The Times

October 31, 2009

David Charter and Sam Coates in Brussels

Angela Merkel tried to give the world a wake up call to the glacial progress being made towards a climate deal in Copenhagen yesterday by writing off the chances of achieving a succesor to the Kyoto treaty this year.

Alarmed by the impasse gripping pre-Copenhagen talks, the German Chancellor warned fellow EU leaders that only a broad political framework was now possible from the negotiations due in the Danish capital in December. She said that the chances of a comprehensive treaty had disappeared.

Asia

Can Mrs Ambani sort out her sons’ £10bn feud?

A dispute which has ripped apart India’s richest family is coming to court. Could it be time for the matriarch to step in?

By Robert Verkaik in Delhi

Saturday, 31 October 2009

It began as a family squabble between two brothers who couldn’t agree how to divide their father’s inheritance. Seven years later, Ambani v Ambani is the world’s richest court battle – and one so entrenched it has defied the peace efforts of the Indian government, the brothers’ own mother and even a Hindu god.

This week it was the turn of India’s highest court to try to end the warring between Mukesh and his younger brother Anil, who between them own the country’s gas industry and are commonly referred to as the richest brothers in the world.

China website campaign reunites kidnapped child with father

From The Times

October 31, 2009

Jane Macartney in Beijing

 On Thursday a father walked into an Chinese orphanage and promptly burst into tears – before him stood the son that had been stolen from him as a baby two years earlier.

Confused, the toddler started to cry. Wang Bangyin gathered the child into his arms, aware that his son was probably weeping from fear rather than from any sense of familiarity but also of how lucky he was to have recovered the child from China’s baby-traffickers.

His son had been found by police in May along with 15 others. But with no original identity documents there was little hope of reuniting him with his family.

A picture of Hua Guokang – the name on his police papers – was plastered across television news broadcasts, newspapers and the internet.

Middle East

Clinton continues push for Mideast peace  



By ROBERT BURNS, AP National Security Writer  

 ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is making a new push to get Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table, holding talks Saturday in this Persian Gulf city with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and later in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Clinton was to make a personal plea for the two sides to resume peace talks even as U.S. officials acknowledged they saw little prospect for an immediate breakthrough.

Over the course of the summer, President Barack Obama had hoped for a fast track to renewed peace negotiations, but Clinton reported to him on Oct. 22 that neither side had taken sufficient steps toward resuming the dialogue.

Clinton arrived in Abu Dhabi in the early hours Saturday after completing a three-day visit to Pakistan.

More Iraqis trying to move beyond sectarian divide

 After years of relative calm, many voters are keen to put divisions behind them. Political leaders oblige with several Sunni-Shiite blocs. But in north Iraq, Kurd-Arab tensions will test such efforts.

By Liz Sly

October 31, 2009

 Reporting from Baghdad – On the podium of a sweltering hotel ballroom recently, Sunni tribal leader Ahmed abu Risha stood alongside Interior Minister Jawad Bolani, a Shiite. Next to Bolani was a prominent Sunni religious leader, who stood beside a well-known Shiite human rights campaigner.

So it went, as Sunni and Shiite Muslims lined up together to announce the birth of a new political movement, the Iraqi Unity Alliance, which will run in elections planned for January on a platform of, yes, unity.

Latin America

Pact to restore ousted Honduran leader in Congress

 

By ESTEBAN FELIX (AP)

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – Honduran legislators now have the final say over a U.S.-brokered agreement that could return deposed President Manuel Zelaya to power, and diplomats urged them not to delay.

All sides in the 4-month-old dispute spawned by Zelaya’s military-backed ouster on June 28 declared the negotiated solution a victory, and it drew praise from figures as diverse as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.

“We want to congratulate the people of Honduras for the battle they have won,” Chavez said in Venezuela. Clinton called the developments “a big step forward for the inter-American system,” and Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Thomas Shannon insisted the pact was “a huge accomplishment for Honduras.”

Zelaya hopes to be back in office in about a week, but Congress – which received the plan Friday – has not set a date for voting on his return.

Ignoring Asia A Blog