Tag: Docudharma Times

So say goodbye it’s Independence Day

It’s Independence Day

All down the line

Just say goodbye it’s Independence Day

It’s Independence Day this time

Thursday’s Headlines: Hilary Clinton’s strategy of last resort: FBI Backs Off From Secret Order for Data After Lawsuit: Iran offers nuclear deal but refuses to stop enrichment: Israel: From independence to intifada: Tibetan woman carries Olympic torch to the top of Everest: US trains Pakistani killing machine: Violence in Zimbabwe Disrupts Schools and Aid: Why South Africa will never be like Zimbabwe: Putin ever present as Medvedev becomes president: Sebastien Loeb’s long hair and stubble causes more of a row than Max Mosley:  

Fears rise over Burma aid delays

Burma’s leaders are facing growing international concern over their reluctance to accept foreign aid, days after the devastating cyclone.

The UN says its planes carrying vital food supplies cannot enter because they still do not have permission to land.

But the regime has now given permission for at least one US aid flight to land in the country.

A US diplomat has said conditions are “horrendous” and warned the death toll could top 100,000 if they worsened.

Teams reaching some of the worst-hit areas have described harrowing scenes.

Some aid workers reported bodies rotting in the fields and desperate survivors fighting over food and water.

Support disaster relief in Myanmar (Burma)

Let me take you far away

Youd like a holiday

Let me take you far away

Youd like a holiday

Tuesday’s Headlines: Who’s More Red, White and Blue-Collar?: 2 soldiers’ deaths in Iraq raise doubts about MRAP vehicle: China’s Hu in historic Japan trip: Gallows broadcast shocks Japan into debating the death penalty: Egypt raises taxes, fuel prices after government wage hike: Le Monde journalists in third strike: A Woman, a Village and a War on Plastic Bags: Tens of thousands riot in Mogadishu in eruption of anger over food prices: The unspoken truths about Aids:

Death toll rises to 15,000 as Burma seeks international aid

The Burmese regime today said that at least 15,000 people were killed and another 30,000 are missing as a result of the catastrophic cyclone that has battered the country.

In one town alone, Bogalay in the Irrawaddy delta, foreign minister Nyan Win said that 10,000 people had died after it was flattened by the storm surge whipped up by the 120mph winds.

The dramatically escalating toll of dead and missing four days after Cyclone Nagris slammed into the south and centre of the country reflects the degree of devastation and remoteness of the worst-affected areas along the coast.

“this dream never ends” you said

“this feeling never goes

the time will never come to slip away”

“this wave never breaks” you said

“this sun never sets again

Monday’s Headlines: Few Details on Immigrants Who Died in U.S. Custody: Fiscal Pressures Lead Some States to Free Inmates Early: Thais sued by Tesco deny that firm contacted them: Sinking without trace: Australia’s climate change victims: Curry houses test Europe’s eastern promise: Zimbabwe run-off vote may face year delay: AfDB adds $1 bln in loans for Africa food crisis: US-backed plan sees shiny future for Green Zone in Iraq: The Best of Buddies, Amid Dust and Danger: Bolivian province votes for autonomy

Aid effort for cyclone-hit Burma

Some aid is beginning to reach victims of the cyclone that hit Burma on Saturday, killing hundreds of people and leaving tens of thousands homeless.

Both Burmese officials and international agencies are working to assess the scale of the disaster, with five regions declared disaster zones.

More than 350 people were killed and thousands of buildings destroyed by the storm, state media said.

But a referendum on a new constitution will still go ahead on 10 May, it said.

“The referendum is only a few days away and the people are eagerly looking forward to voting,” the government said in a statement carried by state media.

Burma’s leaders say the referendum will pave the way for multi-party elections in 2010, but critics say the charter is aimed primarily at further entrenching military rule.

CAMPAIGN OUTSIDER

Democrats do have a nominee

By Muhammad Cohen

HONG KONG – Hundreds of thousands of Democrats will vote in the United States presidential elections in Indiana and North Carolina on Tuesday, and those results won’t matter. But the reason the final tally won’t matter is different from the reason the vote didn’t matter in Pennsylvania two weeks ago.

Senator Hillary Clinton’s win in the Pennsylvania primary didn’t change the calculus in fashion back then: Senator Barack Obama still led in pledged delegates, overall delegates, popular vote, and

states won, and thus remained the prohibitive favorite for the nomination.

This is a matter of utmost urgency

You might even call it a police emergency

Suckers got ill when they finally heard the G

Wasn’t sellin’ out

Sunday’s Headlines: Even the Insured Feel the Strain of Health Costs: Uranium claims spring up along Grand Canyon rim: Ireland’s immigrants return home as slump sharpens fear of racism: Vivaldi’s long-lost opera returns to Prague after 278: Betrayed: The Iraqis who risked all for Britain years: Baghdad hospital damaged by U.S. missile, dozens injured: Turkish Schools Offer Pakistan a Gentler Islam: Dalai Lama’s envoys begin talks with China: Zimbabwe’s opposition divided over boycott of election re-run: Can liberal democracy save Zim?: New Columbia drug gangs wreak havoc

Mahdi Army fighters grateful for sand storm standstills in Sadr City

On a bare patch of ground outside the entrance to Sadr general hospital, 15 women clad from head to foot in black squatted in a sandstorm, wailing and waiting for their dead.

Lightning flashed, thunder rolled and the women’s robes were spattered with mud falling from a sky filled with rain and sand, but they did not notice.

“Ya’mma, Ya’ba” (“Oh mother, oh father”), cried Amira Zaydan, a 45-year-old spinster, slapping her face and chest as she grieved for her parents Jaleel, 65, and Hanounah, 60, whose house had exploded after apparently being hit by an American rocket.

“Where are you, my brothers?” she sobbed, lamenting Samir, 32, and Amir, 29, who had also perished along with their wives, one of whom was nine months pregnant.

Out on the streets, that’s where we’ll meet

You make the night, I always cross the line

Tightened our belts, abuse ourselves

Get in our way, we’ll put you on your shelf

Another day, some other way

Saturday’s Headlines: For Bush in Last Year, It’s the Principle: Love and death in the South’s deadliest prison: Elections 2008 London: In paintings by Monet and Manet we see how men’s hobbies begin: Quartet opens door to ending Hamas isolation: Palestinian forces deploy to West Bank town: Ivorian ex-rebels begin to disarm: Election body confirms Mugabe lost the vote: Pakistan coalition averts collapse with deal to restore ousted judges: Cuba puts first computers on sale to the public

After Hiatus, States Set Wave of Executions

HUNTSVILLE, Tex. – Here in the nation’s leading death-penalty state, and some of the 35 others with capital punishment, execution dockets are quickly filling up.

Less than three weeks after a United States Supreme Court ruling ended a seven-month moratorium on lethal injections, at least 14 execution dates have been set in six states between May 6 and October.

“The Supreme Court essentially blessed their way of doing things,” said Douglas A. Berman, a professor of law and a sentencing expert at Ohio State University. “So in some sense, they’re back from vacation and ready to go to work.”

Though his mind is not for rent,

Don’t put him down as arrogant.

His reserve, a quiet defense,

Riding out the days events.

The river

Friday’s Headlines: As Gas Costs Soar, Buyers Are Flocking to Small Cars: Fed to Pursue Aggressive Checks on Credit Cards:  Call to Arabs on Palestinian aid: Turkey launches intensive air strikes in north Iraq: Mugabe invents coup plot as poll chaos continues: Diamond miners strike gold with wreck: The Litvinenko files: Was he really murdered?: Income tax secrets go up online – and promptly come down amid fury: Tibetans shot officer ‘to avenge killing of monk’: Ecuador leader shakes up military

Police remove Hong Kong torch protesters ‘for own protection’

Police removed human rights protesters from the streets of Hong Kong this morning as the anger of pro-China supporters flared on the first day of the Olympic torch’s domestic journey.

Several activists were bundled into a van and driven away after furious pro-Olympic demonstrators waving Chinese flags tried to break through the police line protecting them, haranguing them and attempting to seize their placards and Tibetan flag – which is banned in China.

Around 50,000 spectators gathered to celebrate the approach of the games and set the flame on the road to Beijing. Most were in upbeat mood despite the rain.

“It is a great and solemn honour for Hong Kong, Asia’s world city, to welcome back the Olympic flame on behalf of our proud nation,” the region’s chief executive, Donald Tsang, said at the relay’s start.

Teacher fired for refusing to sign loyalty oath

Cal State system ousts another instructor who objects on religious grounds to a pledge adopted by California in 1952 to root out communists.

When Wendy Gonaver was offered a job teaching American studies at Cal State Fullerton this academic year, she was pleased to be headed back to the classroom to talk about one of her favorite themes: protecting constitutional freedoms.

But the day before class was scheduled to begin, her appointment as a lecturer abruptly ended over just the kind of issue that might have figured in her course. She lost the job because she did not sign a loyalty oath swearing to “defend” the U.S. and California constitutions “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

Long as I remember the rain been comin down.

Clouds of mystry pourin confusion on the ground.

Good men through the ages, tryin to find the sun;

Thursday’s Headlines: For Striking Factory Workers, U.S.-First Pledge Falls Flat: Low Spending Is Taking Toll on Economy: Air raid ‘kills Somali militants’: Zimbabwe prepares to verify count: Russia’s new rich help British luxury cars drive out the venerable Zil: Wanted: The last Nazis: Unholy water: Delhi’s rotting river: Tibetan rebel in gunbattle with China police: two dead: A fabled Iraqi instrument thrives in exile: Chavez orders expropriation of Venezuela’s largest steel maker  

Clinton Gas-Tax Proposal Criticized

Economists Share Obama’s View

A growing chorus — including a top congressional Democrat — labeled Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s proposal for suspending the federal gasoline tax ineffective and shortsighted yesterday, even as she continued to paint Sen. Barack Obama as insensitive to drivers’ woes for not endorsing the plan.

The Democrats’ clash on the issue has emerged as a flash point in the week before the presidential primaries in Indiana and North Carolina and is emblematic of the broader contrast that the candidates have presented: Clinton says she would make immediate bread-and-butter fixes for struggling Americans, while Obama portrays himself as a truth-teller who would bring a new kind of politics to Washington and produce more lasting change.

And the thought occurred to me

How come that everything you see

Is so bad

So bad

Tuesday’s Headlines: From Chief Prosecutor To Critic at Guantanamo: An Irascible Firebrand, Finally Quieted by Term Limits: Tariq Aziz due on trial in Iraq: Is an Iranian general the most powerful man in Iraq?: China jails 17 over Tibet protests: Drugs for guns: how the Afghan heroin trade is fuelling the Taliban insurgency: Mozambique police ‘kill at will’: Zimbabwe health minister accused as terror campaign reaches hospital wards: A port without shelter: Clandestine migrants stuck in ‘jungle’ by Calais: Supermarket sweep poses threat to French high streets: Cuba walks tightrope of reforms  

Cheney lawyer claims Congress has no authority over vice-president

The lawyer for US vice-president Dick Cheney claimed today that the Congress lacks any authority to examine his behaviour on the job.

The exception claimed by Cheney’s counsel came in response to requests from congressional Democrats that David Addington, the vice-president’s chief of staff, testify about his involvement in the approval of interrogation tactics used at Guantanamo Bay.

Ruling out voluntary cooperation by Addington, Cheney lawyer Kathryn Wheelbarger said Cheney’s conduct is “not within the [congressional] committee’s power of inquiry”.

“Congress lacks the constitutional power to regulate by law what a vice-president communicates in the performance of the vice president’s official duties, or what a vice president recommends that a president communicate,” Wheelbarger wrote to senior aides on Capitol Hill.

When the stranger came to town

All the people watched with wonder

In their tattered clothes

Gathered round and raised their eyes up from the dirt

Monday’s Headlines:Loan Industry Fighting Rules on Mortgages: Brownsville’s Bad Lie: UN troops ‘armed DR Congo rebels’: Zimbabwe opposition’s hold on parliament confirmed: Apathy dooms plan to save Tempelhof, site of Berlin airlift: Satirical comedian Beppe Grillo may dictate outcome in Rome elections: Israeli attack kills four children of Palestinian family: Warring factions to gather in Iraq: For Chinese Athletes, Western-Style Perks: North Korean officer defects to South: military: Mexico City gives girls a party to remember

The blind man who was given the gift of sight by gene therapy

By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor

Monday, 28 April 2008

A pioneering gene therapy trial has helped a blind man to see in a breakthrough that brings hope to millions affected by eye diseases. British scientists have claimed a world first for the revolutionary treatment, which involved a single injection into the retina at the back of the eye.

Steven Howarth, 18, from Bolton, who has a rare inherited eye disorder which has left him with extremely poor vision and completely unable to see in the dark, improved sufficiently after the treatment to be able to navigate a “maze” in conditions similar to street lighting at night.

I know what nobody knows

Where it comes and where it goes

I know its everybodys sin

You got to lose to know how to win

Sunday’s Headlines: Letters Give C.I.A. Tactics a Legal Rationale: If Clinton can’t run campaign, can she run White House?: Hizbollah builds up covert army for a new assault against Israel: The Iraqi teenage girl killed for loving a British soldier: How do you like your eggs? Read our undercover investigation into Britain’s battery farming: City boy’s survival guide to the gulag: Kim Jong-il builds ‘Thunderbirds’ runway for war in North Korea: Karzai unhurt after parade attack: In Zimbabwe jail: A reporter’s ordeal: Tribesman tells of risks he took as a translator in Darfur: Massive gunbattles break out in Tijuana; 13 dead, 9 wounded

The New Economics of Hunger

A brutal convergence of events has hit an unprepared global market, and grain prices are sky high. The world’s poor suffer most.

The globe’s worst food crisis in a generation emerged as a blip on the big boards and computer screens of America’s great grain exchanges. At first, it seemed like little more than a bout of bad weather.

In Chicago, Minneapolis and Kansas City, traders watched from the pits early last summer as wheat prices spiked amid mediocre harvests in the United States and Europe and signs of prolonged drought in Australia. But within a few weeks, the traders discerned an ominous snowball effect — one that would eventually bring down a prime minister in Haiti, make more children in Mauritania go to bed hungry, even cause American executives at Sam’s Club to restrict sales of large bags of rice.

Come with me

Into the trees

Well lay on the grass

And let the hours pass

Saturday’s Headlines: Party Fears Racial Divide: Detainees’ Mental Health Is Latest Legal Battle: In Beijing, No Answer to The Bulldozer: Country for sale: Scores arrested in police raid on MDC and poll monitors: Jacob Zuma: President in waiting: Spain’s military banned from websites showing models or giving sports results: Georgia steps up its diplomatic push for NATO membership: Militias ‘recruit child bombers’:   Questions Linger on Scope of Iran’s Threat in Iraq: Protest in Mexico’s Congress over PREMEX bill ends

U.S. Afghan supply lines depend on Islamic militant

BARA, Pakistan – The only thing standing between Pakistan’s Taliban and the lifeline for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan may be an Islamist warlord who controls the area near Pakistan’s famed Khyber Pass.

In an interview with McClatchy, Mangal Bagh, who leads a group called Lashkar-i-Islam, voiced his disdain for America but said he’s rebuffed an offer from the Taliban to join them.

Truckloads of food, equipment and fuel for NATO troops wind through the Khyber Pass daily to the bustling border at Torkham. Last month, Taliban fighters bombed fuel trucks waiting at Torkham to cross into Afghanistan, and last week, fighting between Bagh’s men and a pocket of Taliban resistance closed the highway for several days.

Its my own design

Its my own remorse

Help me to decide

Help me make the most

Of freedom and of pleasure

Nothing ever lasts forever

Friday’s Headlines: Bush Plan To Contract Federal Jobs Falls Short: More GOP ads target Obama: Syria ‘had covert nuclear scheme’: Gaza fuel crisis forces UN to stop food aid deliveries: Thousands queue to see corpse of Padre Pio: Historians call for Mein Kampf reprint as time runs out in fight against far Right: Pakistan claims impending deal with militants: Beijing to meet Dalai Lama’s representative: Winners and losers in land of starving billionaires: Senegal’s Wade says India to fully supply rice needs: Applying Capitalism to Protect Dwindling Brazilian Forestland

For Airlines, Runways Are the Danger Zone

WASHINGTON – The recent groundings of thousands of flights have raised flags about skipped airplane inspections and botched repairs to wiring.

But what really worries aviation specialists? Runway collisions.

“Where we are most vulnerable at this moment is on the ground,” the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, Mark V. Rosenker, said. “To me, this is the most dangerous aspect of flying.”

For the six-month period that ended March 30, there were 15 serious “runway incursions,” compared with 8 in the period a year earlier. Another occurred at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on April 6 when a tug operator pulling a Boeing 777 along a taxiway failed to stop at a runway as another plane was landing, missing the tug by about 25 feet.