Docudharna Times Sunday March 21

Vote on Health Bill Today Caps a Journey Back From the Brink



This article is by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Jeff Zeleny and Carl Hulse.  Published: March 20, 2010

WASHINGTON – Speaker Nancy Pelosi was at her wits’ end, and she let President Obama know it.

Scott Brown, the upstart Republican, had just won his Senate race in Massachusetts, a victory that seemed to doom Mr. Obama’s dream of overhauling the nation’s health care system. The White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, once Ms. Pelosi’s right hand man on Capitol Hill, was pushing Mr. Obama to scale back his ambitions and pursue a pared-down bill.

Finding a cure for Indonesia’s sick river

March 21, 2010

By Anna Coren, CNN

Bandung, Indonesia (CNN) — The small village of Sukamaju on the outskirts of Bandung, West Java is nestled within mountains and rice plantations. To the naked eye, the scenery looks beautiful but on closer inspection, this ecosystem is supported by a water source that is sick and heavily polluted.

We’ve arrived to cover a story on the Citarum River, considered one of the most polluted rivers in Indonesia, if not the world. Around 30 million people rely on this water basin and it provides 80 percent of Jakarta’s drinking water.

While this water is obviously treated for consumption in the larger town and big cities, in Sukamaju what’s in the river is pumped directly to the community.

USA

California Tribe Hopes to Woo Salmon Home



By JESSE McKINLEY

Published: March 20, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO – On Friday night, more than two dozen Native Americans embarked from here on a spiritual mission to New Zealand, where they will ask their fish to come home to California.

The unusual journey centers on an apology, to be relayed to the fish on the banks of the Rakaia River through a ceremonial dance that tribal leaders say has not been performed in more than 60 years.

The fish in question is the Chinook salmon, native to the Pacific but lately in short supply in the rivers of Northern California, home to the Winnemem Wintu – a tiny, federally unrecognized and poor tribe supported by some Social Security payments, a couple of retirement plans and the occasional dog sale.

New York schools’ ban on homemade goods at bake sales has parents steamed

Low-fat Doritos and Pop Tarts are in; goodies baked at home are out. School officials say they’re fighting obesity. Angry parents say it sends the wrong message about food habits.

By Tina Susman

March 21, 2010

Homemade spinach pies are out; packaged baked potato chips are in. Mom’s pumpkin bread is out; Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts are in — but they must be the whole-grain brown-sugar cinnamon variety.

At public school bake sales, Pop-Tarts are among 29 items the Department of Education has deemed nutritionally sound enough to sell in lieu of homemade goods, which have been banned in part because they do not list nutritional content.

Europe

Murder case of cheating wife and missing mattress grips France

From The Sunday Times

March 21, 2010

Matthew Campbell

FORMER students recall that Jacques Viguier, a brilliant law professor, liked to engage them in a debate about whether the perfect murder existed. That was before the academic, a fan of Alfred Hitchcock films, was accused of killing his wife.

For a decade the case, revolving around a missing mattress, a set of keys and tales of adultery and deceit, has held France in the same suspense as a Hitchcock murder story.

Anger and disappointment in Ireland as the Pope’s letter fails to heal

Victims of abuse at the hands of priests in Ireland are not satisfied by the Pope’s letter of apology.

By Carissa Casey in Dublin

Published: 7:45AM GMT 21 Mar 2010  

Marie Collins is still a practising Catholic despite years of pain and frustration fighting the Irish Catholic hierarchy.

In 1960, when she was 13, she was sexually abused by a chaplain at Crumlin Hospital Dublin – but didn’t report the abuse until 1995.

Then, she said, “All I got was lies and deceit from the archdiocese (of Dublin). I was bullied and threatened.”

Last year she discovered from a report by Judge Yvonne Murphy into the Dublin dioscese’s handling of sex abuse allegations that the archbishop at the time knew of complaints about her abuser – and so did the Irish police. But nothing was done and the priest continued abusing children in his care.

Middle East

Iranians train Taliban to use roadside bombs

 From The Sunday Times

March 21, 2010

Miles Amoore in Kabul

TALIBAN commanders have revealed that hundreds of insurgents have been trained in Iran to kill Nato forces in Afghanistan.

The commanders said they had learnt to mount complex ambushes and lay improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which have been responsible for most of the deaths of British troops in Helmand province.

The accounts of two commanders, in interviews with The Sunday Times, are the first descriptions of training of the Taliban in Iran.

According to the commanders, Iranian officials paid them to attend three-month courses during the winter.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon demands Israel settlements halt

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said Israeli settlement building anywhere in occupied territory is illegal and must stop.

The BBC   Sunday, 21 March 2010

Mr Ban is in the Middle East to meet Israeli and Palestinian leaders and press them to resume peace talks.

Israel’s controversial announcement of plans to build 1,600 more homes in East Jerusalem has inflamed tensions in the region and between Israel and the US.

The Palestinian leadership has said the plan is an obstacle to resuming talks.

Mr Ban’s statement comes a day after he made a similar call, speaking for the international Quartet of Middle East peace mediators – the UN, Russia, the EU and the US.

Asia

West Bengal villagers pay with blood for a steel plant

A battle between Marxists, Maoists and government allies has brought a wave of kidnappings and murders to the Indian state

Jason Burke in Salboni

The Observer, Sunday 21 March 2010

The site is a patch of arid wasteland, ringed by a half-built wall, just off the potholed road from the flyblown town of Midnapore in West Bengal. There is little to indicate it is the cause of a murderous gang fight pitting communists, Maoists and allies of India’s ruling government against one another in a battle for cash, power and resources.

A £30m steel plant is due to be built here by Jindal, India’s biggest privately owned producer. The aim is to bring jobs and prosperity to the impoverished town of Salboni, but the plant’s arrival has brought a wave of kidnapping, murder, arson and intimidation.

How the West poisoned Bangladesh

A UN project aimed to help millions – but it brought them water contaminated with arsenic  

By Andrew Buncombe  Sunday, 21 March 2010

Up to 20 million people in Bangladesh are at risk of suffering early deaths because of arsenic poisoning – the legacy of a well-intentioned but ill-planned water project that created a devastating public health catastrophe.

Four decades after an internationally funded move to dig tube wells across the country massively backfired, huge numbers of people still remain at higher risk of contracting cancer and heart disease. The intellectual development of untold numbers of children is also being held back by the contamination of drinking water. Poor diet exacerbates the risk.

Africa

South African rapper Jub Jub accused over deaths of four schoolboys is targeted by angry pupil army

Police intervene as thousands of stick-wielding, stone-throwing children attempt to storm court hearing

David Smith, Johannesburg

The Observer, Sunday 21 March 2010

The mob was baying for blood. When a South African rapper known as “Jub Jub” appeared in court last week on murder charges, thousands of schoolchildren wielded sticks, threw stones and tried to storm the building. “We will kill him today, but we are thinking of ways to kill him,” one pupil was reported to have said.

Molemo “Jub Jub” Maarohanye, pictured right, and his friend, Themba Tshabalala, are accused of killing four schoolboys after racing two Mini Coopers in the streets of Soweto only to lose control and plough into a group of children. A magistrates’ court has heard that Jub Jub tested negative for alcohol but positive for cocaine and morphine. He denies drag racing in the township or being under the influence of illegal substances.

Years of conflict etched on a Congo village chief’s face

He has lost his family and only the UN guards at his camp now keep him safe. But when they go, what will happen?

Peter Beaumont in North Kivu

The Observer, Sunday 21 March 2010  

The face of Nangwahafil Makuza maps out the history of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The features are sad and beaten, the cheeks sunken from poverty, the eyes lost-looking and confused when he tells his story. And there is fear for the immediate future.

Makuza, aged 70, is a refugee whose home is a camp on the outskirts of the village of Kabizo, high on Tongo mountain in eastern Congo’s North Kivu region. He is a witness to the world’s deadliest conflict since 1945, which has claimed the lives of up to 5.4 million people, and has been displaced four times by violence in the past 12 years.

Latin America

After the revolution: Why are Farc’s young soldiers laying down their guns?

For more than 40 years, Farc’s Marxist-Leninist guerrillas have waged bloody war against the Colombian Government. But now its soldiers are deserting in droves. Paul Bignell travels to the heart of the country to hear their stories of abuse and ideological betrayal – and the difficulties they face in trying to reintegrate into society

Sunday, 21 March 2010

Bogota, Colombia. Yandri Gonzalez sits in a café, sipping at a can of fruit juice, pondering a question about her time as a soldier in one of the world’s most notorious armed guerrilla groups. The 21-year-old is petite and timid, with a measured demeanour. She rarely makes eye contact, preferring to look at her hands when she speaks. But occasionally she will shoot a sharp glance that offers a glimpse into the world of violence and mayhem she was thrust into at the age of 13.

“My uncles and aunts belonged to the guerrillas. Then my brother enlisted and I started feeling lonely. I wasn’t brought up by my family, as my mother abandoned my brother and me when I was a baby, so it was easy for me to join.”

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