Docudharma Times Thursday April 1

U.S. Navy frigate captures pirate mother ship

USS Nicholas takes 5 pirates prisoner after coming under fire, Navy says

CIA given details of British Muslim students

Outrage as personal files of undergraduates at Detroit bomb suspect’s college handed to US

By Syma Mohammed and Robert Verkaik Thursday, 1 April 2010

Personal information concerning the private lives of almost 1,000 British Muslim university students is to be shared with US intelligence agencies in the wake of the Detroit bomb scare.

The disclosure has outraged Muslim groups and students who are not involved in extremism but have been targeted by police and now fear that their names will appear on international terrorist watch lists. So far, the homes of more than 50 of the students have been visited by police officers, but nobody has been arrested. The case has raised concerns about how the police use the data of innocent people and calls into question the heavy-handed treatment of Muslim students by UK security agencies.

Who Were the First April Fools?



By Ian Yarett | NEWSWEEK

We know that April Fool’s Day, a worldwide celebration of pranks and hoaxes, was around before 1539, when the earliest clear reference appears in a Flemish manuscript. Beyond that, we’re not really sure. Theories on the origins of the goofy celebration abound-but, then again, they could be hoaxes themselves.

The French?

The most popular theory attributes the day to 16th-century France. When King Charles IX moved New Year’s from the end of March to Jan. 1, those who kept celebrating in spring were mocked and called fools. Another theory ties the tradition to the ease with which newly hatched fish could be caught in early April. Fooling people on April 1 became a way of celebrating the abundance of “foolish” fish. The French still call April Fool’s pranks Poisson d’Avril, or April Fish.

USA

Rushed From Haiti, Then Jailed for Lacking Visas



By NINA BERNSTEIN

Published: March 31, 2010  

More than two months after the earthquake that devastated Haiti, at least 30 survivors who were waved onto planes by Marines in the chaotic aftermath are prisoners of the United States immigration system, locked up since their arrival in detention centers in Florida.

In Haiti, some were pulled from the rubble, their legal advocates say. Some lost parents, siblings or children. Many were seeking food, safety or medical care at the Port-au-Prince airport when terrifying aftershocks prompted hasty evacuations by military transports, with no time for immigration processing. None have criminal histories.

Administration seeks to change pay incentives at major firms



By Tomoeh Murakami Tse

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, April 1, 2010

When the Obama administration imposed restrictions on executive pay last year at some of the largest companies the government had bailed out, officials said they were aiming to set a new standard for compensation across corporate America that would discourage risky business practices.

But as firms begin to disclose last year’s bonuses ahead of annual shareholder meetings, it is becoming clear that companies across a wide range of industries are paying executives in ways that officials worry will not discourage the kind of excessive short-term risk-taking that led to the financial crisis.

Europe

Saakashvili had no involvement in the Russian invasion hoax

To claim that Georgia’s media is controlled by the president is outrageous

Giorgi Badridze

The Guardian, Thursday 1 April 2010

Salome Zourabichvili made a number of interesting points in her article about the hoax by a Georgian TV station this month which fooled many into thinking the Russians were invading again (The invasion that wasn’t, 22 March).

I was in Tbilisi when the report was aired. It brought back horrible memories of when Russian forces poured across Georgia’s border in 2008, ravaging, pillaging and supporting widespread ethnic cleansing.

But it was plain wrong for her to claim that President Saakashvili was in any way responsible. Zourabichvili alleged that the Georgian leader “never knows when to stop.

Kitchens stand empty as young French lose their appetite for la cuisine

From The Times

April 1, 2010

Adam Sage, Paris  

La Grange aux Fleurs, a rural restaurant in a 100-year-old converted barn that serves such dishes as stuffed pigs’ trotters, is the embodiment of the Gallic gastronomic tradition. But when Denis Dufosset, the owner, put it up for sale to take a break from his duties in the kitchen, he had a nasty surprise: no one made an offer. The reason, he says, is that young French people are turning their backs on la cuisine in favour of easier trades with shorter hours.

So yesterday Mr Dufosset joined 60 or so other restaurant, café and hotel owners from the Cantal region in central France on a day trip to Paris in an effort to find buyers for their establishments.

Middle East

‘Sorcerer’ faces imminent death in Saudi Arabia  

The lawyer for a Lebanese man sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia for witchcraft has appealed for international help to save him.  

By Sebastian Usher

BBC News, London Thursday, 1 April 2010

Ali Sabat was the host of a popular Lebanese TV show in which he predicted the future and gave advice.

He was arrested by religious police on sorcery charges while on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in 2008.

His lawyer, May el-Khansa, says she has been told Mr Sabat is due to be executed this week.

Ms Khansa has contacted the Lebanese president and prime minister to appeal on his behalf.

There has been no official confirmation from Saudi Arabia, but executions there are often carried out with little warning.

Hezbollah denies responsibility for truck bomb blast that killed Hariri

Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the militant Shiite group Hezbollah, said Wednesday his group was not behind the 2005 truck bomb blast that killed Lebanon’s former prime minister. Many fear instability if an investigating tribunal issues indictments in the Hariri assassination against Hezbollah officials.  

By Nicholas Blanford, Correspondent / March 31, 2010

Beirut, Lebanon

The leader of Lebanon’s militant Shiite Hezbollah confirmed for the first time late Wednesday that a tribunal investigating the murder of a former Lebanese prime minister has summoned several members of the party for questioning.

But Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah rejected accusations that his party had a hand in the assassination of Rafik Hariri in a February 2005 truck bomb blast, claiming that such allegations were intended to weaken the “resistance,” a term used for Hezbollah’s formidable military apparatus.

“We have been a target for years,” he said in a live interview on the Hezbollah-owned Al-Manar television. “Destroying Hezbollah is a dream. The objective is to distort Hezbollah’s image and pressure and intimidate the party.”

Asia

How I became a target of China’s war in cyberspace

Clifford Coonan, our man in Beijing, knew his email had been hacked when he found bad spelling

Thursday, 1 April 2010  

Logging on to my Yahoo email account this week, I was greeted with the message: “We’ve detected an issue with your account.” My inquiries appeared to reveal that this was part of a sophisticated and co-ordinated hacking campaign against journalists, academics and rights activists based in China, or dealing with the China story elsewhere.

The attacks seem to be focused solely on Yahoo email accounts. It is not clear who is behind the hacking, but sensitivities about internet security have been high since the web giant Google started to fulfil its January promise to pull out of China in response to cyber attacks on rights activists and censorship.

Pakistani general: Al Qaida-Taliban haven to be cleared by June



By Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – The Pakistani army has launched a military operation to clear insurgents from North Waziristan – long a haven for al Qaida and the Afghan Taliban – and hopes to wind up offensive actions in all its tribal areas by June, according to the Pakistani general who’s in charge of the special paramilitary force for the area.

Maj. Gen. Tariq Khan said the main Pakistani army was leading the assault in North Waziristan with a series of small operations, while his Frontier Corps was leading a major offensive in Orakzai, to which insurgents have fled after operations in other tribal areas.

Africa

ICC to investigate Kenya election violence. Will leaders cooperate?

The International Criminal Court has told Luis Moreno Ocampo to investigate the role of senior politicians in 2008 Kenya election violence. But some are already suspected of working to undermine the ICC.

By Scott Baldauf, Staff Writer / March 31, 2010

Johannesburg, South Africa

The International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, has given its prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo the green light to investigate the role of senior politicians in Kenya’s post-election violence that killed 1,300 Kenyans in 2008.

The decision allows Mr. Ocampo to take the next step, which would be passing down indictments against senior Kenyan politicians, some of whom are thought to be ministers and cabinet members in the powersharing government of President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

The presidential and parliamentary elections of Dec. 27, 2007 – considered by international observers to be deeply flawed – were followed by communal violence that also displaced nearly 300,000 Kenyans from their homes.

Latin America

18 gunmen die in attack on two army bases in Mexico

Seven assaults in two northern states take place almost simultaneously, apparently marking a major escalation in Mexico’s drug war.

The Associated Press

March 31, 2010 | 10:58 p.m.

VILLAHERMOSA, Mexico – Dozens of gunmen mounted rare and apparently coordinated attacks targeting two army garrisons in northern Mexico, touching off firefights that killed 18 attackers.

The attempts to blockade soldiers inside their bases — part of seven near-simultaneous attacks across two northern states — appeared to mark a serious escalation in Mexico’s drug war, in which cartel gunmen attacked in unit-size forces armed with bulletproof vehicles, dozens of hand grenades and assault rifles.

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